#literally what happened when they met cricket

[mey-rin-is-fabulous]

"Why didn't you go too?"

Oh I don't know Nami maybe because he asked and Luffy said he didn't need help and Zoro is so incredibly whipped that if Luffy tells him not to fight he listens, if Luffy tells him to stay he stays

Like Nami where the hell have you been the past 100+ episodes, those two are about as in love as in love gets without them making out

[slytherinboysvip]

hiiii, i love ur writing so much, u capture the slytherin boys perfectly chefs kiss 😘 and i was wondering if u could do 69 or ab/thigh riding with any of the boys?? heehee 🤭 if ur not comfortable with that that’s totally ok, js wanted to ask and see

thanks!!

Hide and seek- T.R

(tw: thigh riding, 69, ab riding, overstim, praise, slight degradation, prey+predator mindset)

first of all thank u smmm, annnd okay sooo how about both.. hehe >:)

you see, tom was a man who was into many things. some, usual, and some well.. deranged?

he wasn’t the type to immediately get into sexual relations upon getting together, but believe me once he’s there, there’s no going back. he watched over you constantly as if you were his prey, ready to be taken over by him, your main predator.

and when i say predator i mean it, once hes got you you’re his and there’s no getting out, he will literally eat you out the second he’s got you. he loves playing this special little game, one where you run, hide, and he seeks. now it seems easy, the castle is huge there’s no way he could catch you.

not to mention the fact that you two only play at night- prefect privileges.

you’re running, heart pounding against your chest at the thought that any given moment tom would snatch you up and you’d lose your game, though that’s what you really wanted. the adrenaline starts kicking in when you hear echoed footsteps from another hall, attempting to sprint away as quietly as possible failing miserably; hearing the footsteps getting louder and closer.

no thinking necessary you ran out of the castle and it was pitch black. peeking behind as you were running you caught a glimpse of tom chasing after you- this time you did think but only for a split second before running towards the forbidden forest not looking behind at all and rushing throughout different bushes and passing creatures.

finally stopping for a second to take a rest and catch your breath you slid down a tree and sat breathing heavily. you closed your eyes for a second and as you were getting up you heard a twig break. looking behind you there stood tom smirking. you had two options in this part of the game, surrender and have some mercy, or the fun option, run more and whatever happens.. happens.

obviously choosing the fun option you immediately ran for your life in the opposite direction of him and swerved around trees trying to offset him from your trail, to no avail you heard twigs breaking behind you after you’ve thought you’ve gotten away.

stopping for a moment you realized there were no more breaking twigs, or any noise at all for that matter. you looked around worried, there was not even the sound of a cricket. all you could hear was your breathing, until you felt warm sporadic breathing over your left shoulder. abruptly turning around you were stopped by strong arms. “caught you dove”

even though you knew it was tom, even though you knew he wouldn’t hurt you, your heart was practically beating through your chest. you could never imagine what he was going to do to you whenever you lost this specific game, even if you’ve never actually won.

“you know, running into the forest like that.. not very smart of you. i think someone might need a bit of a punishment”. his hand met your throat tightly wrapping around it, whispering a charm that brought you back to his dorm. “how the fuck” you breathed out suddenly dizzy. “watch your tone” he slapped your ass harshly pushing you on the bed.

“strip for me doll”, his voice was deep and seductive his words making you hypnotized doing exactly what you were told. removing your skirt slowly looking up at him with your fuck me eyes, followed by removing your shirt giving him a smile. “i have no problem ripping that shit off hurry up.” no hesitation you threw your underwear and bra across his room revealing yourself completely.

“mm you get hotter and sluttier everyday” he breathed out walking towards you unbuttoning his shirt. though your boyfriend didn’t look it, he was hiding a raging six pack underneath that white button down. absolutely toned to perfection you stared in awe, as you did everytime he took his shirt off. “can i touch” you looked up at him reaching for his stomach.

he smirked slapping your hand down “actually, you’re going to do something for me.” he laid on the bed and looked over at you, “you’re going to ride my abs, just like the slut you are doll” his smirk only growing wider at your visual embarrassment. “what’s wrong? i thought you loved them..” he chuckled mockingly in amusement.

your face was an indescribable color of crimson and you couldn’t even look him in the eyes as you straddled yourself over his stomach and brought yourself down onto his abs. “spit” he nodded towards your pussy not even looking back up at you, doing as you were told you spit down onto his abs lifting yourself slightly so it could roll down underneath you, lowering yourself back down.

his hands met your hips harshly and began grinding you back and forth onto his abs, to your surprise your clit was being perfectly stimulated dragging over his abs your wetness now mixing with the previous spit as low moans escape your mouth. “i knew you’d like this shit whore” he slapped your right breast causing a loud moan to leave your mouth “i need you tom” you cried out desperately for his dick.

“well dick is only for good girls who surrender for me, someone didn’t surrender.” he pushed you off of his stomach and shoved you on his thigh, “get yourself off for me, and maybe, just maybe i’ll let you have dick” his eyes darkened waiting for your next move, wanting any chance to fuck him you began moving your hips chasing your high just looking at him.

you desperately moved yourself back and forth leaving a slick spot of wetness on his school pants that he’d yet to remove. your eyes trailed up and down his body- scanning his abs admiring how shiny they look covered in your arousal. balancing yourself onto him your hand landed onto his raging boner. it felt like a complete fucking rock. and you absolutely needed it. just the thought of it alone made your immediately reach your high. moaning for him as he watched you carefully.

he reached his fingers down to your pussy sliding them under and pushing them inside the pleasure making you moan even more before he abruptly removed them taking them into his mouth “so delicious dove” he smirked. “i think overstimulation is the perfect punishment for your forbidden forest incident.” he pushed you off of him and onto the bed, getting off the bed and dragging your legs to the end. he bent down and his head dived into your pussy.

he shook his head back and fourth licking and twirling his tongue all over your clit you could feel another high coming and you didn’t want him to stop no matter how much the pleasure hurt. just when you were about to cum he shoved three fingers inside of you pumping them in and out at a harsh speed. you were unable to control your own reactions drool ready to spill from your mouth as you moaned like there was no tomorrow.

you tried to keep yourself from cumming, you didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of it. he sucked and twirled his tongue around your clit licking up and down all while fingering you expertly. he knew every spot that made you feel pleasure and had no problem finding new ones. everything finally took over and you couldn’t hold back.

even when you screamed “i’m cumming oh fuckkk”- he didn’t stop. tom curled his fingers up and began curling and un curling them all while pumping in and out of you, his long slender fingers hitting your g-spot perfectly. he suddenly stopped. removing all fingers and his face from your pussy. without any words he got back on the bed and smirked. “ever done six nine before, love” he winked dragging your ass to his face and immediately going back to eating your pussy.

through your moans and undeniable pleasure you tried your best to remove his throbbing boner from his pants, most of it springing out of his boxers you took what you could in your mouth and began bobbing your head. “fuckk” he took a break from your pussy leaning back and groaning lowly. you swirled your tongue around his tip multiple times before taking all of it and leaving it there for a second.

you were about to keep going when his mouth began to suck harshly on your swollen clit. your moan barley escaping over his dick in your mouth the vibration itself gave him pleasure, he continued abusing your clit, slapping your ass over and over before you bobbed your head more. you were a moaning mess gobbing on tom’s cock, spit was all over yours and tom’s body.

managing to get one arm to his dick you pumped the base of his shaft and sucked only the tip, attempting to give him a taste of his own medicine. you knew he wouldn’t last long if you did this. just then he began thrusting himself up into your throat fucking your face all while eating you out. at this point it wasn’t only a game of pleasure and overstimulation, but it was a game of you trying to breathe while he attempts to catch his own high.

his thrusts were harsh and your throat would surely be bruised by tomorrow but oh my god did it make you want to cum. and so you did, you came hard, loud, and well, you squirted all over his face. the noise that left your mouth was almost demonic-yet heavenly to him as the pleasure truly became too much. and with that you felt tom’s cum shooting down your throat making you gag at the harsh impact of his thick cum.

“good fucking girl.. fuck y/n” he sighed heavily pulling you off of him and bringing you on top of him, “i love this game” you sighed catching your breath.

this was so fun to write tbh not having to come up with my own ideas is great LMAO

[natequarter]

🎉 yourbutchboyfriend Follow

considering changing my url but like what even to. yourbutchboyfriend?

💣 commiedyke Follow

DO ITTT

🎉 yourbutchboyfriend Follow

alright :3 here goes nothing

#anything for you

3 notes

🎉 yourbutchboyfriend Follow

man why does the doctor always act like i don't know what sex is? i'm 17 not 7 lol

🖋️ edwardianadvcnturess  Follow

He does the same with me! It's so utterly infuriating, why does he think just because I'm young I don't know what an orgy is?

🔫 thebrigadier Follow

I do believe he views all humans as deeply immature. I am nearing fifty now and he still patronises me whenever we meet.

❄️ icemaiden Follow

You're FIFTY??? No wonder the Doctor refuses to talk to you about such matters, that's practically cradle snatching. Or grooming.

⚰️ themaster Follow

hey didn't you lie about your age the first time you met the doctor? also you are literally 120. TIME TOT ☝️

❄️ icemaiden Follow

And you are literally a mass murderer. Go away.

⚰️ themaster Follow

you are like a little baby. watch this

*dies in his arms and he cries because he loves me unlike you who he could never love*

🎉 yourbutchboyfriend Follow

are you guys done yet or

#man what the fuck #is this like. time lord flirting

617 notes

🐧 coordinatorsupreme Follow

Tell me why the Rassilon character study I was just reading has an author's note that says "Sorry I haven't updated in decades, I got kidnapped and tortured by Daleks for twenty years!" Are all Mo3 users like this or is it just r*negades

🧶 elizabethtudor-blog Follow

Isn't this what happened to the president of Gallifrey?

🐧 coordinatorsupreme Follow

First of all, get off my post, I specifically have it in my DNI that humans are blocked on sight. Second of all,

WHAT?

👑 fred Follow

well what were YOU doing at the devils sacrament dare i ask

🐧 coordinatorsupreme Follow

None of those words are in the Matrix.

#What in Rassilon's name is a sacrament

132 notes

🗡️ worsthumanongallifrey Follow

it's always the little things in life. for example today i discovered that the writer behind all those doctor/romana fics on mo3 is none other than romana herself

#but does she write anything about me #nooo #no she does not

550 notes

📑 anordinaryjournalist Follow

Having a lovely coffee date with Harry to celebrate twenty years of the Doctor abandoning me! For some reason Harry hates it when I phrase things this way

📑 anordinaryjournalist Follow

Only 3 people died this time, it sounds terrible but I was hoping for something more interesting in all honesty

#the cafe didn't even explode or anything this time round #last time we had to pick up the dismembered bits of several corpses. much more fun #on the other hand Harry had to take his shirt off today (long story) #so that was fun #I mean it wasn't even really necessary but shhh he doesn't need to know that #eternally glad someone else is willing to put up with my nonsense (exploding fish-puma alien hybrids)

12 notes

🚬 fitz-crier Follow

nneed himmto fied merinto a pjper shrrder thrgn eastthe paper until wahts ke and whsts him is indenifinsble

📺 compassion Follow

I think he should not do that. Get help.

1 note

🏏 the--adventurer5 Follow

Repeat after me: your psychosexual obsession with an alien threat that wants to kill you is valid. Cosplaying as intergalactic mass murderers does not make you a bad person.

👑 fred Follow

if you make ONE MORE post glorifying cricket like this i may actually have to report you to the high council

🏏 the--adventurer5 Follow

Wait Romana I didn't mean it I'm sorry. I'll do anything. I'll unexplode Adric please don't report me to the High Council

👑 fred Follow

i'm not angry, i'm just disappointed.

✈️ donewiththisshit573 Follow

I'm angry! Stop fucking bringing up Adric when clearly none of you care about him!

⚰️ themaster Follow

what she said. be psychosexually obsessed with ME please please pretty please. i'll treat you right i won't report you to the high council i won't even kill you a little bit this time

🏏 the--adventurer5 Follow

You are pathetic.

#if you died right now I wouldn't even be sad I would be overjoyed

467,343 notes

[wonderingpanda]

Remember back in high school the juiciest gossip was always about someone like-like-ing someone else? Will you write headcanons or something about the Mayhem boys hearing a rumor about someone (Reader) like-like-ing them? What would they do with this super important information?

I just really need some fluffy goofy high school shenanigans now-a-days.

Have You Heard?

MM!Turtles x Reader

This was so much fun to write. I loved adding hints of my own comedy and little cliches while giving each turtle their own individual story to follow. Thank you for the request, enjoy!

Leo

This was unexpected

Oh this was VERY unexpected

See Leo was a loser

He didn’t get to be cool, he didn’t get to be  smart, he didn’t get to be funny and he didn’t get the girl

At least that’s what he thought

According to April though, this was entirely inaccurate

According to April, you’d had a crush on him for the last month

Someone went a whole MONTH harbouring romantic feelings for him!

And not just anyone; his cool, pretty friend whom he had fallen head-over-heels for the first day they met

This was unbelievable!

Of course his brothers didn’t believe him

I mean, why would they? According to them, he naturally makes girls gravitate away from him

Now it’s not like you knew April told Leo this

You had simply shared the information during a sleepover and blindly trusted her

A bad choice really considering sharing news was her whole gig

Still you were none-the-wiser the next day as to why Leo was anxiously pulling at his shirt

Or why he avoided your eyes like the plague

Or why when you chose to sit next to him in geography he felt like his heart was about to erupt

You had no clue

So what was Leo to do in this situation?

Trust in April’s words and confess his feelings, risking the possibility of making things more awkward?

Or stay silent and let fate decide when was right, risking losing the chance to be with you forever?

It was a tough choice

But Leo’s a wimp so obviously he wasn’t going to say anything

That was until his brothers forced him to

Donnie had cleverly hacked his computer to send an email to you, asking you to meet in one of the art rooms

He in turn did the same to your computer and gave explicit times to ensure you both crossed over

It was believing those emails that lead you to to your current situation

Locked in an art room by April and Leo’s insufferable brothers, forced to wait it out until you found a way to escape

Heart pounding, mind racing and palms sweating

Leo knew exactly what they wanted out of you two and he had no idea how to do it!

So… Guess we’re stuck, in here … Seems like it’ll be a while- Did I upset you Leo? What, no!? Really? Cause you’ve been acting weird all day Not because of you! Well it sure seems like it’s because of me! How!? You literally made a point to stare at nothing but the ground the second I tried talking to you today! I was nervous! Why were you nervous!? Because I really like you! I really, really like you And I guess the thought that you might like me back is so thrilling it’s kind of terrifying But I-I don’t expect you to feel the same, I get this is probably off-putting with the green and the shell and the baldness- Leo! You grabbed his head and forced him to finally meet you face-to-face No tan, hair-covered, bare-backed guy could ever make me feel the way I do for you

You quickly kissed him and upon pulling away realised he had melted into a puddly, flustered mess

And you were released from the art room

Eventually

In the end it was a win-win

April got to succeed in her matchmaking schemes, you got to kiss the turtle of your dreams, Leo got a girlfriend and his brothers had something new to tease him about

Ok, so maybe it wasn’t a 100% win for Leo but close enough

Raph

Raph had met you first when he joined the wrestling club at school and you just so happened to be there

You also happened to be there when he tried out for the track team

And footy team

And basketball team

And cricket team

And just about every single sport he experimented with

For some reason you were consistently always there, always in his head with your stupid pretty face and swooshy hair and bright eyes and dumb little smile

GOD WHY WERE YOU ALWAYS THERE &$!#%!!??

Well… since you seemed to follow him everywhere Raph figured he may as well befriend you

And you two got along well, soon enough it seemed like he had found his new best friend

Also it may have turned out that you’d been widely involved in the school’s sport program for years but we don’t talk about that!

Anyhow, you guys stuck together pretty consistently

Always hanging out and goofing off, ranting about teachers and friends

In a weird way you were also each other’s therapists, being forced to be the reasonable one whenever the other was in a firey state

His brothers greatly appreciated it as it meant they had to deal with less violent endeavours from him

If only Donnie hadn’t been feeling so bored that day, maybe then he’d still be alive

Or at least have a chance of living to the next day

See you and Raph had just been chilling at your locker while you grabbed stuff for class

No biggie, the closest you contact you had was Raph’s arm being slightly around you

But when Donnie came around and saw you two he couldn’t think of a better way to brighten his day than to embarrass his brother in front of the girl he’d been talking about for weeks

So as he walked by he slyly turned to you two, eyebrows raised and commented “You two look comfy” before contently strutting off

Raph’s face blended in with his mask as he stared angrily at his brother’s back

I’m gonna kill him Don’t I have P.E with him today

Donnie ended up returning home with a LOT of bruises that day

But it was worth it for the information he managed to squeeze out of you

All which he spouted to Raph like a proud toddler

Raph didn’t believe him

He genuinely didn’t

No way you had a crush on him

You liked to watch him wrestle for the fight not the visuals

And the only reason you were insistent on having him at your locker every morning was so you had someone to talk to. You’d replace him with any of your friends if they arrived earlier

Also, the fact that you showed off your muscles to him at a swim competition was purely to brag and in no way hinting towards any feelings!

Raph knew you didn’t like him and he could prove it

So Donnie dared him to ask you

Then after regaining consciousness, told Raph he’d call him out for being a wimp if he didn’t

3 beatings in one day, way to go Donnie!

So Raph wasn’t feeling too psyched the next day when he was talking to you and noticed Donnie’s lingering gaze but a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do (terrible under other context but you get the point)

Ok Y/n, now this is totally random but stupid Donnie has been nagging me to ask you. Do you like me? Like, like-like me Donnie told you that? No he just wanted me to ask- Well he’s right Huh? He told me you feel the same way, I’m assuming you do After all it would make sense as to why you’re constantly displaying signs of high dopamine, noradrenaline, releases of phenethylamine and hormonal changes around me I don’t know what any of those words mean but I love you You turned to him with a genuine smile I love you too, but it has only been a few weeks so can we just take things a bit slow for now? Uh huh Awesome

You gripped the top of his plastron and pulled the lovestruck turtle into a small kiss

Sadly you were torn apart when an annoying voice called out from across the hall

I told you so!

He bolted, but at least you two had managed to get together. Raph may have actually killed Donnie otherwise

Donnie

You and Donnie were childhood friends, platonic besties, a power duo of friendship

There were no romantic feelings between you two AT ALL

…

So it started in maths

You, Donnie and Leo were being the ultimate nerd trio, figuring out equations and such when one of the annoying kids, Harvey, thought it would be funny to call out

Hey Donnie! Did you know Y/n likes you!?

Some kids started laughing and others talking while you sat there with your face beet red

Donnie’s face flushed as he stumbled over his words, desperately trying to defend you which he didn’t succeed well in

He did take note of your reaction to the whole scenario which peaked his interest

(Side note: Leo did slightly enjoy the whole thing, finally not the butt of the joke 😃)

After that day Donnie’s thoughts grew

He had pictured these scenarios a thousand times in his head but never had they felt so possible

Asking you out, you asking him out, going on dates, exchanging gifts, hugging, crying, kissing

Then it happened again, sort of

He and Raph were leaving class together

Easy, simple, completely normal

Till a random girl, who he recognised as your friend, yelled from behind

Donnie, do you like Y/n!?

He panicked. What was he meant to say?

He couldn’t say yes, what if you didn’t like him? But what if you did like him?

However, they were getting further away and he only had seconds to answer

So he made the “smartest decision of his life” and called back

U-uh, um, no!

Since then you’d been more distant

And with all this evidence; Donnie became a full analyst

He noted down your behaviours, how you acted before and now

How your interests changed with him, when you were louder and quieter, what gestures you made to hint any feelings

He looked deep and saw all the signs

Sadly you were still pretty distant after what you heard from your friend and Donnie was determined to change that

First off, he tried to initiate more conversation and when you attempted to cut it short he kept pushing

No matter how hard his social anxiety was screaming he knew he had to keep conversations going

He also kept making an effort to sit next to you

Any scenario be it lunch, class or just general group hangouts; he was always by your side

And after a week or so when you seemed to be loosening up more he chose to take things a step further with physical contact

He’d give you a high-five, fist bump or hug as a greeting

Maybe lean on your shoulder or get closer when you were showing him something

Sometimes if he was feeling particularly happy he’d sneak his hand over yours

Soon enough, it seemed like you had finally gotten over everything and were back to your old self. But there was still something you had to address

Lunch time, alone. That’s when you chose to bring it up

Donnie, do-um… did uh my friend ever tell you anything a few weeks ago? He began choking on his food *Cough* N-no uh why? Well it’s just that the last few days you’ve been different Different how? Uh… just small stuff like the hand thing and I guess you’ve seemed a bit closer Oh! I mean psh, I just thought you were upset or something so I wanted to cheer you up, no big deal You thought I was upset? Why? Well you were acting more distant and I didn’t want to bring it up cause I thought it might be sensitive so I figured I’d just help on the side, you know? That’s actually really sweet. But are you sure there’s no other reason for it? Uh nope! None, I mean why else would I want to hug you and hold your hand and stuff it’s not like I have a crush on you. Cause that- that would be crazy you and me together like whaaat? A mutant and a human who, how!? Donnie Yes Did you lie to my friend? Maybe … So it wouldn’t be weird if we dated? I’d love it if we dated

Of course you kissed and both of you loved it

Donnie had never felt this happy in his whole life, not even when they saved the city!

And he had enough blackmail to shut his brothers up if they ever tried teasing you two

Mikey

You two were the best of buddies

Two peas in a pod

Always acting and performing at each others side

Mikey loved it

Mikey loved you

And the day he heard you may feel the same caused his mind and heart to simultaneously explode

It was Leo, of course it was Leo

They were in art discussing the struggles of having human crushes

It was when Leo said “At least yours likes you back” that he knew he screwed up

Mikey wasn’t panicked though, Mikey’s Mikey

He was of course very happy when he heard the news and didn’t leave Leo alone about it for days

Every waking moment was spent getting updates from Leo and insights into your friend group

And whenever you two saw each other be it before school, after school, breaks, in class or at improv, he was ecstatic

This guy just couldn’t get enough and made every effort to let you know he liked you

Soon enough he felt like he had enough confirmation on your feelings and gained the confidence to just go for it

It was during a game of freeze tag when he tapped out the person you were previously with and started a new scene

Jessie! Hey, thank gosh I found you Lucas, what’s up? I haven’t seen you in a while Oh well, you know, I’ve just been busy; things have been a bit different lately Different how? Well the word is that someone I know likes me but I just don’t know who That sure is a dilemma Yeah, if it’s the person I think it is though I recon it’ll end pretty well You got some hopes do you? Ahh just someone, nothing to worry about I don’t know if you’re associated Try me Alright well… they have h/c hair ooh and pretty e/c eyes! They’re also one of my closest friends and I don’t think they realise just how much I like them Wow Lucas that must be really keeping you on edge Yeah, if only I knew who it is At this point you and Mikey had moved so close to each other your hands were almost touching Mikey I- FREEZE!

And just like that, the scene was over

But not the story

At the end of the rehearsal you and Mikey walked out of school together and the discussion of feelings was unavoidable

You two were walking silently side-by-side till he finally said it

I like you Y/n Do you like me back? I like you so much Mikey you don’t even know

His face lit up as he cheerfully pulled you into a hug and spun around

You took the opportunity as he slowed down, cupped one of his cheeks and planted a kiss on his lips

From that day forward Mikey got to walk around boasting about having the greatest partner in all of New York

And you went on to kick Leo’s butt for exposing your secret so easily

Again, I loved writing this so much. Also I think I’m going to use indented for my Headcanons from now on (although I guess they’re more listed stories at this point). Anyway thank you for reading and please, have an awesome day/night wherever you are!✨

[honkytonk-hangman]

In Sickness...

Jake Seresin x Aviator!Reader

Summary: Jake feels his pulse jump and his stomach fly when he talks to or about you. Obviously, this must mean he's gravely ill.

Notes: mentions of a cheating boyfriend, jake convinced he's sick when really he is in loooveeee

Masterlist

“Hey, Hangman, can I talk to you for a minute?”

Jake, despite his usual goal of doing everything in his power to get on Phoenix’s nerves, finds himself ignoring the need to be quite annoying. His antics aside, he knew his fellow aviator well enough by now to recognise when she was up for his shit, and when she absolutely wasn’t.

That doesn’t mean he’s not going to be a little bit of a douchebag, though.

“Give me a second, Trace, I’ll need to start my timer.” he makes a show of observing his watch and starting a countdown from sixty seconds. Phoenix ignores him, and in place of possibly giving him a dead arm, she instead comes to a stop in front of him, her arms crossing over her chest in a way that was just a Natasha Thing, and not actually a sign of closed body language-thing

“You’re going to be at Mav and Penny’s later, right?” she asks, even though he knows he’s never given the impression of having any other plans, and she knows it. Jake simply nods, still pretending to count down.

“Right. Well… maybe take it easy on Cricket tonight, okay?” Phoenix asks him, her voice soft and quiet in a manner that makes Jake mess up his countdown, and subsequently drop his wrist and the bit entirely.

“I’m under the impression that I always take it easy on my favourite member of the orthopteran insect family,” he poses, and it's not untrue. He didn’t snipe with Cricket like he did with the others, mostly because she never sniped back, so trying to maintain a faux adversarial relationship would just be boring. No, Cricket was far sweeter and more wholesome than literally anyone he’d ever met, like Elle Woods had a lovechild with Barbie, and instead of banter, he’d found it irresistible and perpetually rewarding to tease her about her Certified Disney Princess status.

(Jake will never let her forget the time a small child at the beach approached her to ask if she was a mermaid, and that wasn’t even the only instance he’d witnessed something like that happening.)

 Phoenix shifts uncomfortably in front of him and purses her lips.

“Look, just… give her a break tonight,” she pushes. Jake frowns even deeper, his own mood becoming solemn now.

“What's wrong? Is she alright?” the questions leave his mouth before he can really consider perhaps only asking one, to keep some semblance of cool. Phoenix dances from foot to foot again and nods, but then quickly makes the universal noise, gesture and expression of ‘well, no, actually’.

“She, uh, broke up with her boyfriend a few days ago.” Nat reveals, and oddly, it's the last thing Jake was expecting to hear, and the last thing he’d expect her to divulge to him.

“Oh.” he says, a little unsure of what else to say. Blinking rapidly, Phoenix starts nodding again, this time in a sort of commiserating manner, as if they often gossiped.

“Yeah, she came home to find the prick was fucking one of his colleagues…” She all but spits the words. Her hands form fists where they’re still tucking into her folded arms.

“She's actually really torn up about it, but you know Cricket. She’s not very good at not being positive, you know? So she’s just bottling it up, and I figured, maybe your usual game with her might not be so lighthearted right now. You know she would never tell you if you actually hurt her feelings, so…” Phoenix manages to catch herself before she descends into a full on ramble.

In all the years he’d known her, Jake had only ever witnessed Phoenix fully ramble once, several years ago back in Lemoore, when she and Halo had downed eight shots in ten minutes, and she then proceeded to give him a thirty minute TEDTalk about how cockroaches were basically just incredibly simple AI machines, interrupted every so often when she dozed off against his shoulder, only to pick right back up like nothing had happened.

Pushing the memory aside, Jake takes in her words slowly before at last he releases a deep breath.

He actually finds himself a little taken aback by the sheer depth of anger that lances through him at the thought of Cricket being treated like that. Nobody deserves to be cheated on, but Cricket was simply someone that Jake doesn’t believe anything bad should ever happen to. Around the same time he comes to this conclusion, Jake also becomes aware that as his anger simmers down, he’s struck with the need to seek out his squadmate, and comfort her, something which, if Jake is honest with himself, is not something he has much experience with. He was much more likely to offer space to someone in need, so this sudden urge causes his brow to furrow.

Jake chooses to compartmentalise this oddness for now, but makes a mental note for later to figure out when exactly he’d developed such a strong fondness for Cricket, and more importantly, how exactly that had happened without him knowing.

For now, Jake just gives Pheonix a level nod, and what he hopes is an expression she takes to mean he understands. He then tries to get a hold of his rogue fondness and leashes it with what he thinks is a brotherly, friendly reaction, a more normal reaction for him to have towards his squadmate.

“Does she want him punched or something?” he asks, feeling as though anything more would reveal too much of his scattered, fond thoughts. Jake purses his lips when he realises that ‘fondness’ was quickly becoming an understatement he’ll have to address at some point.

Phoenix's lips curve into a genuine smile, and she chortles softly, shaking her head.

“Well, you’ll have to get in line if she does. I’ve got first dibs.” she states, cracking her knuckles and then her neck, making Jake snort, and shrug, glad to know that perhaps he wasn't the only one suddenly feeling protective.

“I’m sure we could come up with a wrestlemania-worthy finishing move, a la The Hardy Boys to sort him out.” Jake chortles, imagining he and Nat in matching championship belts, and ignoring her raised eyebrow. He knows from that one movement alone that she is filing this information about him away to whip out like a trap card, but compared to the other information she might have gleaned from his reaction to the situation, he doesn’t care so much.

(Besides, Jake felt no shame about his love for Attitude-Era WWE, and if he ever gets the chance to repay her for the thirty minutes of cockroach facts he could have lived his whole life without needing to know, well, now he knew exactly what his topic of choice would be.)

Four hours later, Jake, for some reason, cannot stop thinking about his conversation with Phoenix. He tried chalking it up to the fact that it was an unusual request she’d made of him, but he knows that is bull. Jake is far too invested all of a sudden in your personal life, in your feelings, in a way that honestly, he never has been before. Or at least, has never realised before, because the more Jake lingers on the idea that you were cheated on, he has to confront the fact that these feelings might just have been there all along, and that actually, your happiness and wellbeing are extremely important to him.

He keeps his distance when you arrive with Halo at Penny and Mav’s, but he eyes you hawkishly anyway, uncaring if he’s obvious about it or not. He wants to believe that if he hadn’t known, he’d have spotted your much more reserved demeanour immediately, but honestly, he's not really sure of anything now when it comes to you. Jake isn’t sure if Phoenix spoke to the others, if he was just the last to know, but there is an air of tenderness in the way the others greet you, which wasn't entirely unusual in itself, yet the softness is palpable even from where he sits on the other side of the yard.

He watches you put on a good show, smiling sweetly at Penny as she rushes over to say hello, but the moment you dont think others are paying attention, your features fall and Jake decides that it is basically unacceptable for you to look that sad ever again.

When you disappear through the backdoor, to put the share platter you’ve bought into the fridge he assumes, Jake doesn’t even excuse himself from the conversation he’s supposedly in before he’s beelining for the house. Behind him, he can vaguely hear Javy and Payback protest, but he doesn’t pay them any mind.

Jake steps through the sliding back doors quietly, closing the door behind him and shutting out the rest of the barbeque, if only for a few minutes. He moves softly through the small back room and towards the kitchen, once more surprised to find out just how pleased he is when you turn to look at him right away. That was new… or was it? Jake thinks perhaps he should stop trying to figure things out.

“Hey! Jake!” you greet cheerfully, and he’s comforted a little that your smile reaches your eyes.

“I didn’t catch you this afternoon, so I didn't get to find out your fruit platter preference, but Javy told me anything but pineapple–” you launch right away into friendly conversation, and oddly, this small normality brings him comfort too, after his afternoon of quiet worry. Jake nods at your words as you continue explaining your fruit platter, and if he hadn't other things on his mind, he would have voiced his amusement at the fact you’d somehow managed to cut or arrange all the fruits into the shape of jets.

Anger bubbles in him once again, at the idea that anybody would do anything to cause you to be upset. You, who cuts fruit into themed shapes, and who makes sure to ask every member of the team their food preferences, and who, he’s almost certain, has made the yoghurt dip you're currently unwrapping completely from scratch just for this casual get together.

How could any sane person know you, know how sweet and caring and fundamentally, altogether good you are, and still choose to do something that would hurt you?

More importantly, how could a man be with you and want anyone else?

Jake takes a step forward and fixes you with what he hopes is not an expression that reflects his inner anger, but gives off something more like softness. He’s not sure he’s ever really had a serious conversation with you before, especially not one that wasn't about work, so he’s surprised how natural it feels to show you something more genuine than his usual playful amusement.

“Are you alright?” he hears himself ask you, almost regretting it when your expression drops immediately, and you look away from him, back to your fruit platter which you now seem to be pointless rearranging just so you don't have to look at him. You attempt to wave him off after a few moments, plastering a smile on and scrunching your nose as you continue to not look at him.

“I’m okay. Really. Things weren’t right for a while, so it’s sort of a relief, really.”

Jake thinks that maybe in a few months time, those words might actually be believable, but Phoenix was right. You were such a naturally happy and uplifting person, it’s clear to Jake that you were struggling to let yourself be sad or angry about it all.

You seem to be expecting him to speak, because you glance back at him several times before you seem to really get a look at his face, at which point you stop messing with your platter and turn to face him properly.

“Thank you for asking, though, I… I really appreciate that,” you murmur, wringing your hands together, before realising what you’re doing and smoothing them out over your sundress instead. Jake feels his pulse speed up. Or maybe it slows, he’s not sure, he just knows that his heart beat becomes irregular, and before he knows what he's doing, he’s stepping even closer towards you.

“Cricket,” he begins, a frown beginning to crease his brow, which your eyes flicker to consciously, as if you were concerned about his feelings. “Just say the word, and his nose will be irreparably broken. For the rest of his life he’ll be telling people it's an old football injury. Maybe he’ll even need surgery to fix it enough that it’s even remotely normal again,” Jake watches your eyes widen and blink as he speaks, but he makes sure to keep any trace of humour from his voice, so you properly understand just how serious he’s being. “Hell, it doesn't even need to be his nose. I’ll break his collarbone, I've heard that's the most painful in the long run…”

When you let out a soft sound halfway between a laugh and a sigh, Jake almost thinks he needs to rephrase his offer, but your soft smile and the almost shy look you shoot at him before you drop your gaze for a moment assures him you understood that he wasn’t joking, even a little.

“Sometimes…” you purse your lips and frown, struggling to find the right words, but you begin wringing your hands slowly again and the movement seems to lend you some confidence. “Sometimes I really wish I could be more like Phoenix… or, more like anybody else, really–” Jake has to physically clamp his mouth shut to stop himself protesting that point and let you talk.

“Sometimes, I wish I was someone who would take you up on that offer. I… I feel like I should want to want that… but I don’t…” you trail off and sigh again, but this time, the exhale seems to take a weight off your chest, like simply admitting these feelings out loud was what you really needed.

You look back up at him properly, and smile again. Jake thinks his pulse has stopped altogether now, and begins to seriously consider reporting to medical first thing Monday morning.

“But, I promise that if I ever change my mind about the severe breaking of certain bones, I’ll know exactly who to talk to.” Your smile widens just slightly, a little mischievous almost, like even just joking about it was very cheeky of you. Jake on the other hand, just believes it to be the only correct course of action.

He opens his mouth to respond, but you begin talking again, dropping your fidgeting hands to hang more relaxed at your sides.

“A lot of my life I haven’t really been surrounded by people who’ve looked out for me, or folks who I can really trust… and I know we’re not really friends, more like work friends, but–” you suddenly cut yourself off and shake your head with a little chortle.

“It doesn’t matter, ignore me–”

“–We’re friends.” Jake can’t stop himself from protesting this time. You blink at him like this is surprising to you. “We are friends, Cricket… I know I–” Jake cuts himself off like you had just done and grinds his teeth a little. This was not a conversation he went around having very often, if ever, at all. “You know I wouldn’t poke fun at you if I didn’t care. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think we were friends,” he says, hoping his words didn’t give away exactly how much he cared. You seem to search his face, but you’re nodding, as if he was the one who needed assuring in this situation.

Jake starts to wonder then if he was actually becoming seriously ill, and all of his reaction to this afternoon has just been one big fugue episode. That idea is genuinely more believable to him at this moment, that Jake is really, actually currently unconscious in the on base hospital, with a skyrocketing fever and some other terrible things, than all of this sudden personal change and inner realisation happening so naturally and smoothly and without him having a say in it.

But then you’re smiling at him again, bright and genuine and all thoughts of climbing fevers and sudden illness evaporate. As sad as it sounds, Jake would never dream of you smiling at him like that, the sight so affecting and sweet that he could never come up with on his own. However, he does conclude he’ll probably be seeing it a lot in his dreams from now on. He thinks this should cause panic in him, he should not be planning to dream about one of his squad mates smiling at him, but unsurprisingly to him now, panic is the furthest thing he feels about it.

“Well, I just know that I’m not always good at asserting myself, but I know that you guys… you guys will do it for me.” You give a little shrug. Jake feels a little shame then, that he’s worked with you for several months now and has not once picked up on the fact that you were completely aware of your own tendency to be a bit of a pushover.

It dawns on him that every time he teased you for being ‘too nice’, and every time you laughed or shook your head in amusement, the real joke was on him. It’s a joke that Jake doesn't find particularly funny right now. He’s not sure he ever will.

“Sorry, I’m being so dramatic and grim!” you say suddenly, and this time your mood change isn’t fake or put on. Jake shakes his head at you, and at last feels some of his regular programming begin to seep back in. He chooses to make a show of leaning back against the counter and carefully crosses his arms over his broad chest in a way that he knows looks incredibly sexy (Javy has assured him), a small smirk slowly spreading over his features.

“Cricket,” he drawls out slowly, somewhat relieved that he feels more himself again. You double take as you look back up at him from where you’ve started fiddling with your fruit platter again, your eyes blinking rapidly as you now quickly try to avoid his whole side of the room. Jake’s grin grows ever so slightly when he has your attention, even if you seem too nervous to look at him now.

Unlike most of the women Jake had worked with, you didn't seem to try to, or perhaps you simply were unable to, hide the effect Jake had on you, how he could so easily make you flustered. It's not something he’s totally unfamiliar with, after all, plenty of women around the Hard Deck were the exact same, but the fact that you aren't some civilian looking to get laid, and are in fact one of the best aviators he knows, makes it all the sweeter.

(Jake had once tried to reconcile the way you handled yourself in the air, with the way you were at all other times, but he could never quite do the maths on it, so it was better for his brain if he didn't think about it at all.)

Honestly, Jake knows his getting a reaction out of you is an act of self ego-stroking, but he loved making a spectacle of himself, just to watch how you would sputter and go all mushy, and if he’s even more honest, a big part of his enjoyment lay in the thought that perhaps, he was doing you a favour, giving you something to think about, boyfriend be damned. He supposes he doesn’t need to worry about that being a problem anymore.

Jake then pauses then, and wonders when exactly you having a boyfriend had become a ‘problem’, a threat to him specifically, because the more he thinks about the idea now (hypothetical as it is), the more his skin starts to itch under his shirt.

Perhaps he was getting sick after all.

“Yes, Jake?” you ask, still avoiding looking his way, and trying to use a tone of voice that was either exasperated or ignorant, but your slightly higher pitch gives you away.

“You didn’t say that I was your friend, too,” he faux complains, watches you shake your head a little, but fail completely at keeping the smile off of your face.

With your platter now deemed ready, you pick it up and turn toward him, holding it out for him to take. Jake, without thought, does so.

“You are my friend, too, Jake,” you tell him, far more sincerely this time, and Jake feels his pulse do that odd thing again. He swallows thickly, and nods, before you direct him out the back door.

For the rest of the afternoon, Jake can’t help but hover, never moving too far away from where you are, and when he doesn’t have an excuse to linger close to you, he always keeps one eye directed your way.

[anchoeritic]

Jake sully pregnancy anything !!! Please . I NEED DILF JAKE

your habits jake learned to grow used to after you became pregnant with his child:

• constant need for cuddles / physical touch. your number one love language is cuddles, second is probably acts of service. it can vary from time to time.

• it didn’t matter what time of day it was, where you were sitting or standing, you always needed to feel him in one way or another. you tend to hold his hands a lot more when you’re in public rather than hugging onto him though. you knew the clan wouldn’t mind but it’s much more personal.

• jake smiles to himself when he feels your hand slip into his, your fingers intertwining gently. your hands were smaller than his so it felt like he was melting your hands but you loved that. the warmth of your mate could never steer you away, only drag you closer to him.

• another habit jake got used to, the emotional rollercoasters you would go on because of your hormones. it would happen almost all the time and only he knew how to deal with it.

• being more emotional can also lead to becoming more anxious: as jake calls it, you can be a little over the edge sometimes. refusing to

• sometimes you’d wake up crying in jake’s arms, using him as a shield to shy away. it would work out pretty well because you’ll usually be met with kisses and breathy reassurances by your mate: “you’re okay, baby.” “i’m right here, don’t worry.”

• sobs. he is the cutest person to ever exist. literally the most wholesome in the entire universe.

• his favourite thing to do when you’re falling asleep is hum to you. he’s not a great singer, he knows that, but it took him time to realize that maybe you thought different.

• his singing is trash but you would never tell him that. you’d rather listen to his voice right as you fall asleep than listen to the crickets of silence and his heavy snores.

• so he likes to hum nursery rhymes or old songs that his friends would sing to him during his time as a marine and pet your hair, hoping the lil lovebug in your belly could hear the bonding of their parents. jake would do anything to make his loved ones happy.

• something else you picked up was a lot more gentle training, like yoga! preparing for birth was something unexpected so you had to get ready for it.

• jake would come back from his training to you in a warrior pose, it didn’t look close to the warrior poses he had to endure training with the clan, but he still joined you.

• pressing a kiss to your head as a quiet greeting, he’d get into position, following your voice as his commands. “let the wind flow through you, let it feel your emotions, let everything blow out,”

• let’s just say the session would be ruined by jake laughing at how you worded your sentences, finding them a lot dirtier than you did. “shut up.” “jeez, i’m sorry, honey!”

• little did he know, you’d be laughing under your breath too.. just a lil bit quieter than he did though so he wouldn’t notice.

• “you’re a child, jake.” you scolded him, moving down into a different position, feeling the stretch of your muscles. he chuckled, shaking his head. “how did you expect me not to laugh?” true.

• you began to become more of a motherly figure to the other children, trying to teach them the language of the sky people. you weren’t a teacher, but someone that was willing to share the world jake once set life on.

• from the nature around, you would weave them into small gifts, giving them to each of the children with a smile. those handmade gifts can vary from hats, bracelets, and even rings.

• your partner in crime was, you guessed it, jake. he would collect and you would weave. a two man job for a couple, this was light work.

• while taking care of the children from time to time, you developed a group meeting; called it a sharing circle. jake recommended it as a type of way to get closer to one another. each day, a couple of kids would talk about themselves like a show & tell, telling stories or just about their favourite hobbies.

• soon after, some of the adults would start to join, sitting beside their kids and listening to their stories. neytiri loved to talk about the history of toruk makto, creating tiny shadow figures with her hands to entertain the children.

• life wasn’t so easy on pandora but it was your homeland, you were surrounded by the people you loved, the mate of your dreams. you wouldn’t trade it for anything else.

[acaaai-t]

drinks on me

gn! reader x kamisato ayato

✧ cw: mild angst, hurt/a little comfort, mentions of alcohol, implied cheating, miscommunication

One shot.

“Forever…” his voice— so low that only you were able to hear him. His gaze lingered on you as he slowly slipped the wedding ring onto your finger.

“Forever,” you echoed, a small smile appearing.

Two shots.

You didn’t know what compelled you to wake up so late that night, but you found yourself unable to fall back asleep. You glanced over at the sleeping form of your beloved, the slow rise and fall of his chest with every breath he takes.

You reached up and gently brushed a strand of his hair away, admiring your lover’s features. Your hand unconsciously cupped his cheeks, stroking it with your thumb.

The sharp and sudden chirp of a cricket outside startled you, and immediately you pulled back your hands. He stirred and you froze. A pair of startling blue eyes met your own. He blinked groggily, looking confused.

“Love?” he croaked out.

“Oh sorry, did I wake you?”

He shook his head. “No. Why are you still awake at this hour?”

“I… I just woke up and now I can’t sleep.”

He hummed lightly and wrapped an arm around you, pulling you in. You happily snuggled into his embrace, warmth quite literally radiating off of him. “Come here,” he mumbled, his words just barely coherent.

You couldn’t help but smile to yourself when you felt him press a light kiss on top of your head. The arm wrapped around you slightly slackened as he dozed off once again.

You closed your eyes and took a slow deep breath, waiting for the whispers of sleep to whisk you away somewhere far.

Three, four, five shots.

“Not enough…” you mumbled to yourself, pouring another shot of alcohol into your cup. The bartender gave you a worried glance, yet no words were exchanged.

It was the second time this week.

The first time it happened, he’d left all too hurriedly in the morning without a single word exchanged with you. And when the sun dipped below the horizon, he still wasn’t home. That night you waited anxiously by the living room, waiting for him to come home.

But when the clock struck 1 in the morning, when sleep threatened to overtake you, when Thoma— unbeknownst to you, who was still awake, urged you to go to bed, was when you finally gave up waiting. Feeling defeated, you climbed onto your shared bed and pulled the blanket over you, eyes drifting closed already.

The next morning, he would act as if nothing had happened. You questioned him, yet each time he would change the subject— as if it was his second nature. In the end, you gave up.

“When the time comes,” he told you, his lips brushing against your cheek.

You held onto that hope.

The sixth shot was when you’d finally felt the alcohol taking effect. The feeling of dizziness kicking in as your vision begins to blur. You never had a high tolerance for alcohol, yet tonight, you chose to drink your sorrow away.

To drink until you forget everything.

A lipstick smudge.

You’d noticed it while helping the maids organize the laundry. You tried not to think too much about it, chalking up to the fact that one of those stupid nobles had tried to seduce him again. Your husband was smart. Smart and loyal. You knew it in your heart that he’ll never cheat.

Yet all the coming home late… the lingering scent of sake… it was all enough to plant the seeds of doubt deep in your mind.

He… couldn’t be cheating on you right? Were you not enough?

Seven.

By now your world had faded into a blur of vibrant colors. Voices confused and disoriented.

He came home late again.

You wrapped the blanket around yourself tighter, eyes watching as your lover hung his coat and set his keys down. Your figure, hidden by the darkness, went unnoticed by him— his shadow gliding pass you without sparing a single glance. You caught onto a familiar scent wavering in the air.

saku night co.

A relatively popular perfume brand trending in Inazuma. Despite the smell of sake mixing in with it, you could recognize that scent from anywhere. It was your husband's least favorite. Yet having that very same perfume he claimed to hate lingering on him… your grip tightened on the blanket.

“Did I do anything wrong?” your voice was small, whispering aloud so that only you can hear. “Was I the problem?”

A tear slipped.

“Did he ever love me?”

Too far drowned in your sorrows, you didn’t notice a familiar face taking a seat next to you.

“Hey…”

You couldn’t hear him, memories— ones that you’ve been drinking to forget, resurfacing in shattered fragments.

“Are you cheating on me?”

You’d finally gained the courage to confront Ayato about this behavior. Yet your voice still trembled.

For a moment he was silent, and you feared the worst. He looked up from his documents and stared at you, eyes that use to look at you with adoration, now cold.

“I’m not cheating on you,” he began. “I don’t know where you got that idea from, but I’m busy right now. Let’s save this conversation for another time.”

His voice was faraway. You hadn’t even fully register what he had said before your body moved on its own. By the time you snapped out of your trance, you were lying on your shared bed, tears still streaking your face.

A bed meant for two people.

Two people, yet it was always just you. When did this start happening? When did the two of you began drifting apart like this?

A slight nudge to your shoulders drew you back. Neon lights danced across your tear-streaked face. It felt as if even the world was taunting you.

“Look I’m sorry…” he said. “I was just stressed.”

You refuse to look at him.

Biting down on your lips anxiously, you watched as Ayato scribbles away on the stack of documents on his desk. You wanted to ask him again, but scared that you'll be shut down again, you didn't speak up. You could only watch in silence, heart heavy.

What happened to forever?

What happened to the sweet promises he made during your wedding ceremony? When the two of you had snuck away, when he had held you close to him...

"Please... just look at me," his voice, edging on desperation.

You remained silent.

"Look!" your voice was bright, breaking through the silence. "This bird looks like you, don't you think so? Ayato?"

On the palm of your hand sat a small blue bird, its feather ruffled. Ayato silently crept up behind you and snaked an arm around your waist, placing a small kiss on your cheek. The bird, spooked by his sudden behavior, chirped loudly— as if voicing its complaints, and flew away. 

You gasped. "Ayato! You scared him away!"

"Did I?" he mumbled. "Maybe he was just too mesmerized by my beauty." There was a light tease to his voice.

You rolled your eyes, yet you couldn't repress the smile slowly appearing. "Sure sure, Mr. Handsome."

You pushed yourself up from your stool, hands gripping onto the edge of the table to steady yourself. From the corner of your eyes, you saw him reach out.

"Go away," you muttered. "Cheater."

The box of lunch you grasped in your hands fell, it’s contents spilling.

“Nobody cheats even if they’re stressed,” you said, pointing a finger at him. “Nobody…”

Ayato was silent.

“You left me alone for days, weeks even,” you continued, the alcohol clouding your mind. “I thought you were just busy doing commissioner things, so I didn’t pry.”

“Ayato, what’s the meaning of this?” you asked, tears pricking at the corner of your eyes.

He was frantic, stuttering over his words. The women next to him scoffed and quickly gathered her things. You felt your heart drop when she hooked her arm over Ayato’s arm.

Ayato shook her off and reached out for you. But you were long gone by then, leaving nothing but the mess of a lunch on the floor.

“I don’t want to see you,” you whispered.

For once, the commissioner was at a loss for words. The cunning and clever Ayato, couldn’t formulate any words.

He knew what he did was wrong. Archons, what had gotten into his mind? What is wrong with him?

“Look, the stars are so bright tonight,” you pointed up at the glittering river of stars. “They’re so pretty…”

You were sitting along the edge of a cliff, right next to your lover. He gently smiled and ran his fingers through your hair. “They are very pretty tonight.”

Nights where the two of you could hang out like this was rare, seeing as how he was almost always drowning in paperwork.

You rested your head against his shoulder, the light breeze tugging at your hair.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered.

His apologies meant nothing to you. You could only give him a pitiful look before gathering your things and leaving.

Ayato watched as your figure merged with the clusters of people under the rainbow lights. He didn’t try to stop you, he knew it was futile.

“Are you happy?”

The cold air was stinging against your cheeks, but you paid no heed to it. Tears threatened to fall again, but you hastily wiped them away.

“…”

There was no need to cry anymore.

The sky above rumbled, dark heavy clouds shadowing the moonlight. You came to a stop.

“I don’t… I don’t know.”

The conversation you had with Yoimiya replayed in your mind.

“He makes me happy, that I know for sure. He gives me a sense of comfort— a sense of companionship I never really got to experience. Whenever I’m with him, I feel free, like the burdens that weight me down is gone.”

“And you still love him even after he… cheated?”

You laughed, a bitter taste in your mouth. “Yeah, I do.”

You hated him. You really do.

You hate how even though he neglected you for days, you still yearn for his touch. You hate how despite the fact that he cheated, you still long for his presence. You hate how this man captured your heart and locked it in a cage— and even when the lock had long rusted off, you still couldn’t bring yourself to fly free.

The rain had completely soaked through your jacket, yet you payed no mind to it. Thunder cracked and the lightning crashed, and for a moment, it elicited the world in a blinding flash of white.

Even the sky weeps for your broken heart.

The rain pattering down on you came to a halt, a image of a umbrella overshadowing you. You looked up, making eye to eye contact with your lover.

Can you even call him your lover anymore?

You immediately shifted your gaze and instead opted to stare at a sweet flower, who looked like it was going to snap in half.

“I’m… I’m really sorry,” he mumbled. “If you would just let me explain.”

“What’s there to explain?” you quietly asked.

Ayato took a seat next to you, not caring whether or not it’ll dirty his clothes. “Please, will you hear me out?”

“What’s there to explain?” you repeated.

He winced. “Love please.”

“…You have two minutes.”

He was speechless, hastily wiping at his lips. “Why the fuck did you do that?”

“Oh come on, you knew exactly why I did—”

“Stop,” he said. “If my relationship with my wife fails because of you, I’ll destroy your clan and wipe them off the face of Teyvat.”

Her face paled. “You wouldn’t.”

“I would,” his voice was low, taking on a threatening tone. The air seemed to have gotten colder.

“Why are you saying this when you kissed me?!”

“You. You kissed me,” Ayato hissed. He pointed a finger at her. “You, a lowly noble, attempting to seduce a married man— oh but not just any married man, but the head of the Kamisato. I’m sure all the reporters and journalists would have a field day with that information.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Watch me.”

Almost in an instant, she was gone. Her stuff was a-strewn, left to collect dust in the private room of Komore Teahouse. Ayato sat down on the floor, face buried in his hands.

“I’m serious… I’ve just been so busy with work—” his voice cracked. “I’m sorry.”

You didn’t know what to make of that information. Your mind was still processing everything that had happened, and the effects of alcohol that still lingered.

“I… I need to think…” you mumbled, slowly getting up. The world swayed with your movement.

Ayato quickly got up, and carefully guided you away from the cliff side. “Let’s get you home first,” he whispered. “I don’t want you getting sick.”

“Mmhm…” you didn’t try to protest against his touch, mind already shutting down. Perhaps you shouldn’t have drank that much.

He brought out the umbrella and held it over you. His arm hovered protectively over your waist. You stumbled and would’ve probably fell had Ayato not caught you in time.

“Careful there, do you me to carry you?”

“No.”

The rain had slowed to a light drizzle, dark clouds finally parting way for the moon and the stars to peek through. From eastward, the glow of the sun had already begun to merge with the dark blue, coloring the entirety of the skies in a deep shade of orange and red.

Thoma was waiting frantically by the entrance of the estate, pacing around with his broom in hand. His eyes lit up at the sight of the two of you. “Oh my lord! There you are,” he breathed out. “Ah is that…?”

Ayato nodded. “Thoma, have you prepared their chamber?”

“Yes, yes it is. Should I bring her over?”

“No, I’ll do it myself. Thank you, Thoma.”

You were half-conscious, Ayato dragging you as gently as he can, across the estate. The sight was ridiculous, as you would say if you were sober. Ayato trying his very best to pick you up bridal style, yet each time you pushed him away and nearly collapsed on the floor. He felt that picking you up and bringing you to your room was the best option, but you seem to heavily disagree.

Ayaka watched from the corner, stifling a laugh.

“Brother, do you need my help?” her voice was quiet, a fluttering feeling to it.

“No— ah wait love, not that way,” Ayato steered you away from the closet. “I’ll do it myself. It’s the least I can do.”

Ayaka dipped her head. “I’ll leave you to it. They’re really angry at you, by the way.”

“I’m aware,” he whispered.

After what felt like forever, he has you finally tucked in your bed, layers upon layers of quilts covering you. By then, you had completely fell asleep.

He pressed a light kiss to your forehead. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” he muttered softly.

I promise.

✩ ·┆ masterlist

a/n: have this short drabble while i continue to work on [resurface, my love] 👯‍♀️ I might do a part two where Ayato makes it up to you 🙏

© acaaai-t — do not plagiarize, repost, or translate

[highladyjane]

The assault at Sangravah happened in early ACOMAF (before Elain's existence even came into picture for Azriel - 3 days before he even got to meet Feyre)... So I don't get how G and Az are supposed to be mates when he's had all that time to feel something?

There's the parallel of Rhys' father feeling his mating bond snap into place the moment he met his mother being assaulted.

"One look at her, and he knew what she was..." (ACOMAF, ch. 16)

Or Rhys himself feeling the bond when Feyre was being tortured by Amarantha...

"And I knew as I picked up that knife to kill her... I knew right then what you were. I knew right then that you were my mate." (ACOMAF, ch. 54)

Or Cassian simply meeting Nesta. "Say what I've guessed from the moment we met" he breathed. What I knew from the first time I kissed you. What became unbreakable between us on Solstice night." (ACOSF, ch. 62)

Bonus from Nesta: “‘From the moment I met you, I wanted you more than reason. From the moment I saw you in my house, you were all I could think about. And it terrified me. No one had ever held such power over me."

Or even Lucien after Elain was Made and maybe even while being thrown into the Cauldron... I don't even need a quote for them, but even Lucien knew and has tried seeking Elain out after the incident.

It's stated in the books and shown again and again that it's the males who are deeply affected by the mating bond. That they can know from the moment they meet. They all in one way or another sought after the females. Even Nesta and Feyre felt something before they knew or opened themselves up to it. And since they all met - They. Couldn't. Stay. Away.

But there's like... no hint of it from Az after stumbling upon G? Like he just literally stumbles upon her - never actually even actively seeking her out through all those years? He hasn't even actively tried to stay away? He's just... *crickets*

It's been Gwyn making noises and attracting his attention through all their scenes together. It was Gwyn asking for dagger lessons. It was 'Gwyn' making Az the new ribbon (whatever that means). And it's Az's shadows reacting to Gwyn, not Az himself. But there's no real hint that Gwyn feels anything romantic for him. There's barely any interactions between them without linking it to her assault in Sangravah and her growth from it.

Besides Az's shadows reacting to G, and that ribbon moment that everyone deems so pivotal when Az realises what it means for the Valkyries (that he's had a hand in training) and maybe even reflects upon Gwyn's character development and therefore what the ribbon means for Gwyn - which made me feel proud too, and that's how I interpreted it - but I can't see an undeniable sign of it being a mating bond anywhere.

I thought at first that mayhaps he was giving her space because of the assault, but then the BC came and he went "It was too late to bank without appearing like he was running," and then "He wouldn't go so far as to call Gwyn a friend,". (ACOSF, Azriel's Bonus Chapter)

Let's not even mention the part where Gwyn was actually in danger (no matter how capable she was at that point), while Cassian was going ballistic at Nesta being in danger, but Az is all like "Let's go save Eris". Eris who both he and Cassian hates. Eris who Az himself nearly killed during the HLs' pre-war meeting (before he exhibited actual mate behaviour and sought and risked his life to save Elain who's not even his mate). But no, he gave just as much or even less action and reaction about Gwyn as Tamlin gave when Feyre was UTM.

And I was like...

How are they mates? Where's the mate behaviour every male - mated or not - in Prythian has exhibited throughout the books? Why did I keep seeing things about them being mates and endgame?

The only hint between them that I could even begin to consider it from is the second to last sentence in Az's BC.

"But Azriel tucked away the thought, consciously erasing the slight smile it brought to his face. Buried the image down deep, where it glowed quietly."

But I basically have the same interpretation about that as this post from @merymoonbeam. (Although I'm still neutral about the lightsinger theory, it's the most interesting take.)

Because again.

Why hasn't Azriel felt/shown anything or actively sought her out or even actively stayed away if he's known Gwyn since Sangravah?

If they're mates, shouldn't he have felt and shown something - like that glow - and Gwyn be the one to snap him out of his 'love' for Mor before he even had the chance to meet Elain? If he's just lonely and jealous of his brothers having mates then... Why has he barely noticed or sought out Gwyn who's supposed to be his mate?

What, he had to wait until his shadows reacted to her to even think about her?

I'm not an expert at analysing things - I wouldn't even say I'm good at interpreting things especially when I've got my rose-tinted glasses on, so/but I'm always open to being wrong and changing my mind accordingly.

But/so convince me with actual canon and not just your biased opinions, delusions, self-insertions, or ships.

[dollishbabess]

ROMANCE-TOBER :: BONFIRE - dollish

A/n: I literally disappeared wtf anyways these past days I been so busy that I skipped two romtober days literally and messed up my schedule too😭 this was supposed to be out by oct 7th but it’s literally oct 8th..

Anyways this is the last dick Grayson prompt for romance-tober! Kinda sad but np ofc but the next one is jason!! I CHANGED MY WRITING STYLE BTW

The warmth of the bonfire crackled in the cool October night air, casting soft, dancing shadows across your faces. You sat close to the fire, knees pulled up, gazing into the flames. The smell of burning wood and the distant sound of crickets surrounded you, a peaceful contrast to the whirlwind of your usual Gotham nights.

Dick Grayson sat beside you, his eyes reflecting the orange and yellow flames, a gentle smile on his face. The two of you had decided to take a break from the chaos of the city for one night, escaping to this secluded spot to enjoy a simple, quiet evening. A bonfire, some marshmallows, and the open sky above it was perfect.

"I can’t believe you’ve never been to a bonfire night like this," you said, poking the fire with a stick, the embers swirling up into the night sky.

He chuckled, shaking his head. "When I was a kid, there wasn’t much time for bonfires. The circus didn’t exactly have bonfire parties."

You smiled softly, loving when he opened up about his past. "What was it like? Growing up in the circus?"

Dick leaned back, propping himself up on his elbows, staring into the flames as if searching for memories. "It was… a lot of things," he said, his voice soft but full of nostalgia. "It was exciting, chaotic, and beautiful. Every day was an adventure. You never knew what would happen next. I remember the lights, the smell of popcorn, and the crowds cheering. And my parents…" He paused, a wistful smile playing on his lips. "They made it magical."

You scooted closer to him, sensing the bittersweet tone in his voice, wrapping your arm around his. He glanced at you, his smile reassuring, though his eyes were far away for a moment.

"After everything happened," he continued, "after I lost them, I didn’t think I’d ever find that kind of magic again. But…" He looked over at you, his eyes softening. "Then I met Bruce, and eventually, I found my own kind of magic."

You leaned your head on his shoulder, the crackling of the fire filling the comfortable silence between you. "You’re always so good at finding the light in things, even after everything you’ve been through."

“Comes with the job," he teased, but you knew there was truth in it. Dick always had this way of finding hope, of pushing forward even when things were dark. It was something you admired about him.

He shifted slightly, draping his arm around you, pulling you closer until you were both wrapped up in the blanket he'd brought. The fabric was soft, and the warmth of his body combined with the heat of the fire made the chilly night air bearable.

"You know," Dick said after a while, his voice low, almost a whisper, "I don’t talk about it often, but I’ve been thinking a lot about the past lately. About how far I’ve come. And… how lucky I am now."

"Lucky?" you asked, tilting your head to look up at him.

He smiled down at you, brushing a lock of hair behind your ear. "Yeah, lucky. For a lot of reasons. Lucky to have found Bruce when I did. Lucky to have my family, as crazy as they are. And…" He paused, his fingers lightly tracing the edge of your cheek, his voice softening even more. "Lucky to have you."

Your heart fluttered at his words, the sincerity in his eyes making your chest feel warm. You reached up, placing your hand over his. "I’m the lucky one," you murmured.

He chuckled, shaking his head. "No, you don’t get to steal my line."

"Too late," you teased, shifting slightly so you were more comfortable against him, resting your head back on his shoulder. "I win."

Dick laughed quietly, wrapping both arms around you, pulling you fully into his chest as he leaned back against the log behind him. "Alright, alright. You win."

The two of you sat like that for a while, wrapped in the blanket, the fire crackling gently beside you, sending occasional sparks up into the starry sky. The night felt endless, peaceful, as if the world outside didn’t exist for just this moment.

"You ever wonder what life would’ve been like if things had been different?" you asked after a while, your voice barely louder than a whisper, not wanting to break the serene atmosphere.

Dick hummed, considering your question. "Yeah, sometimes. But I don’t think I’d change it. As hard as some things were… everything led me here. To this moment. To you."

You glanced up at him, his eyes reflecting the flickering flames, and you couldn’t help but smile. "I’m glad," you whispered.

He leaned down, pressing a soft kiss to your forehead. "Me too."

As the fire began to die down, the stars above seemed to shine brighter. You felt his arms tighten around you, his chin resting gently on top of your head, and for the first time in a long time, everything felt perfectly right.

"I think I could get used to more nights like this," Dick murmured after a while, his voice soft, almost drowsy.

You smiled, nuzzling closer to him. "Yeah? A bonfire night tradition, maybe?"

"Definitely," he said with a grin, pulling the blanket tighter around the both of you. "As long as you promise to be there every time."

"Deal," you whispered, your eyes drifting shut as you let the warmth of the fire, and the comfort of being in his arms, lull you into peaceful contentment.

Under the stars, wrapped up together, the world seemed to fade away, leaving only the two of you in your perfect little bubble of warmth and love. And for now, that was all that mattered.

Second divider: @cafekitsune

Creds: me! @dollishbabess

[whatswrongwithblue]

The Fire in the Sin

Chapter 24 - Just Pretend

Word count: 5,932. Read on AO3. Series Masterlist. <- Previous Chapter.

Summary: Old tensions come to the surface.

Series Summary

In the 1950's, Alastor met the woman he would eventually marry but unfortunately his Radio Demon persona went for her soul rather than her hand. He has to learn what it means to love, and cherish, without possessing and he does. Their relationship is beautiful, strong, unbreakable . . . but he carries a dark secret through their marriage for decades until eventually he has to face the consequences of that secret and leave her, without warning, for seven years. He returns, finding her at the Hazbin Hotel, and has to convince her to forgive him, while being literally bound to secrecy, unable to tell her any of things he now is desperate to explain to her.

(This is a duel timeline fic, timestamps will be a the top of every chapter.)

Chapter 24 - Just Pretend

Present Day

It was the silence that pulled her from her sleep more than anything.

Over the last few months, Mina had grown accustomed to the white noise of the bayou in her room; the sound of crickets and frogs singing and the whisper of a light breeze through the willow tree leaves. Even in her sleep she heard those sounds; the soothing melody of the swamp lulling her into sweet dreams.

There was also the background hum of the hotel. The barely audible sound of electricity running through the walls, the occasional footsteps from down the hall, a cough or a sneeze or a laugh from another resident. A hotel full of other people, even in the dead of night, was a chorus of sounds that one usually tuned out.

But once those sounds were missing, the silence was deafening.

Mina sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes, still half asleep and confused by how eerily quiet everything was. And dark. There was supposed to be the soft green blue glow of the bayou in her room but she kept blinking and it was still blindingly dark.

Her feline eyes eventually adjusted and she saw the bayou was gone. Her room was just the same as it had been before Alastor had returned.

Mina threw the covers off, suddenly alert and panicked, and jumped out of bed as if to run somewhere. But then she just stood in the middle of her bedroom, dazed and puzzled, unsure of what to do next.

No, the room wasn’t exactly as it had been before Alastor returned.

The bayou was gone, but all of his stuff was still there. A half finished whiskey glass left on his nightstand, the book he had been slowly making his way through next to it with the bookmark still in place, a few pages of doodles scattered across his work desk.

She walked over to the fireplace, which usually burned all night with the magical, cooling fire Alastor had used as their air conditioning. It was completely out, the ashes at the bottom room temperature, as if it hadn’t just been a roaring fire when she fell asleep.

The room was the same, only all of the magic had been pulled from it.

Mina’s heart stuck in her throat as she realized she had lived this moment before.

She pulled on her robe, tying it loosely over her nightgown, and ran out of the room.

“Alastor!” she screamed as she fled in the direction of his radio tower but her voice echoed back at her.

She raced up the several flight of stairs, her panic and the sudden exertion making her gasp for air, but she didn’t slow down and when she finally reached the end of the last hallway and flung open the doorway that led up to his radio tower, she nearly fell right over the edge.

It was gone. The entire structure that stuck out from the side of the very top of the hotel was completely gone, and she was nearly dangling over several stories of empty air.

Mina just barely managed to pull herself and the door back and she stumbled several steps away from the gaping wound of the hotel where her husband’s tower once stood.

“No,” she whimpered, choking on the sob that boiled up with the singular word.

This couldn’t be happening again. She wouldn’t survive this again.

She made her way through the rest of the hotel, unsure if she was running, or walking, or floating. It felt like an out of body experience and it was so dark.

The lights of the hallways wouldn’t flip on but it wasn’t the darkness itself that scared her. Mina would rejoice if she saw shadows deepening, moving towards her to wrap her in a cool embrace. But this darkness didn’t move; it was stagnant, empty, dead.

With nerves turning numb, her legs feeling like ice, she made her way down the final set of stairs and into the lobby.

Charlie was there, sitting in the middle of the floor, with her back turned to her. She was crying softly, her quiet sniffles the first sounds Mina had heard other than ones she had made herself.

Mina ran to her, her barefeet slapping against the hard polished floor of the lobby, and the sound felt hollow.

“Charlie!” she said as she fell to her knees in front of the other woman, grabbing her by her shoulders. “What happened?!”

There was blood on Charlie, which confused Mina because she didn't seem physically hurt.

“How could you let him do it?” she asked. Charlie’s eyes burned red with hate as she looked up at Mina finally. “Why didn’t you warn us?”

Mina pulled away from her and looked down at her hands. That was why she had seen blood on Charlie when she touched her. 

Mina’s hands and arms were covered in red.

She looked back up at Charlie, an apology on her lips. She still didn’t know what had happened but she felt the burning blade of guilt lodged deep in her gut.

Charlie was standing over her now, a look of disgust and contempt on her face, one that matched Mina’s sister’s expression the last time she had seen her.

“We trusted him. We trusted you.”

____

It was the morning before the Extermination and Alastor was expecting it to be a busy one. There was still so much prepping to do in order to fortify the hotel; make sure everyone was armed and capable of wielding their weapon of choice, going over battle strategies one last time, etc etc. Plus, all of the ordinary tasks of running a hotel full of people. Making sure the bar and kitchens were stocked and meals were prepped on time. The laundry room was barely functioning as it was and now the two small machines were having to service dozens of people. It was disturbing how much toilet paper they were all going through in one day. Not a single cannibal had thought to bring shampoo or body wash with them. Charlie only had half the rooms stalked with towels and linens at first. Somebody had broken the ice machine on the second floor. There were constant complaints about water pressure in the showers and the damn toilets kept clogging. It was a mess.

Rather than get any work done on his station, Alastor sat alone in his radio tower, savoring his morning coffee and the peace and quiet before the storm. He had his feet up on his workstation, completely relaxed and content, thoroughly enjoying this little slice of alone time he was indulging in.

His shadow interrupted him, spreading itself out across the window in front of him, impossible to ignore.

Alastor sighed. “What is it now, old friend?”

It darted from wall to wall, visibly anxious. Alastor rolled his eyes and sighed again.

“Use your words,” he chided.

Its glowing eyes narrowed at him, insulted and annoyed, and then Alastor was flooded with a sickening feeling of pity and worry that twisted his insides enough to make him sit up. Then Mina’s face flashed before him, her large eyes brimming with tears.

“Well, you could have led with that,” he huffed and stood, joining with his shadow and slipping through the floorboards.

He found her still in bed, the large comforter pulled tight around her, with only the tips of her black and gold ears peaking out over the top, but he could hear her crying even from across the room.

Alastor materialized on the bed, seated on the edge and rubbed her shoulder through the thick comforter.

“Now, now, ma cher,” he whispered to her, and began to pull the blankets slowly away from her face. “Who do I have to kill this time?”

“Alastor?” She sounded confused and hopeful when she said his name and blinked up at him in a daze.

“Were you expecting someone else in our bed?” he teased and brushed a strand of her black hair away from her tear-soaked face.

She sat up and pulled him into her arms, hugging him in a vice-like grip.

And suddenly, he understood the source of her affliction.

“Bad dream?” he asked, rubbing her back as she cried into his shoulder.

“You left,” she croaked out, her ears pulling flat out to the sides.

“In the dream or are you talking about before?”

“Yes.”

“Which?”

“What?” she asked, pulling away to look up at him, her eyebrows pinched in confusion and hurt.

He summoned a tissue for her and she took it silently, wiping her nose and then her eyes.

“Did you have a nightmare that I left again or were you dreaming about before?” he clarified.

Her scowl deepened.

“Does it matter?” she said, her voice less shaky with crying now but a single tear still fell down her cheek. “It could happen again, either way.”

“Not possible,” he said with a shake of his head. “I told you before, I’m not going anywhere.”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

She pulled the covers off and stood. He reached for her hand, trying to keep her next to him, but she yanked it away.

“Mina- “

“I just want to be alone right now.”

He narrowed his eyes and tilted his head at her, feeling his irritation rise at her dismissal of him.

“You’re afraid I’m going to leave you so you want me to leave?”

“Don’t be a spanner,” she said as she turned her back on him and headed for the bathroom.

He materialized in front of her, blocking her way, and holding her by her biceps. She startled at first but then glared up at him.

“Darling, I am really tired of you punishing me for things out of my control.”

“I’m not punishing you, Al’. I know this is out of your control and that’s what scares me the most. For the longest time, I thought you were unbreakable. And then you’re ripped out of my life and now I have to try and live with the fact that you’re in chains. That you belong to someone else and they could take you again if they wanted to. And I’ll fight for you, love, I really will. But it’s fucking exhausting.”

He let go of her and crossed his arms.

“You think you’re tired of all this? You don’t know the half of it.”

“I know I don’t, no thanks to your deal. I didn’t ask for any of this to happen, you did. If I had known . . .”

She trailed off, looking away from him, and he swore his undead heart skipped a beat. He dropped his arms to the side, afraid of what she had left unsaid, but that fear quickly turned into indignation.

“Care to finish that sentence, my dear?”

He watched her swallow back more tears before she looked back up at him.

“It was just a dream. Let me just . . . take a shower and forget it, alright?”

She walked away, made it all the way to the bathroom door and flipped on the lights.

He shouldn’t say it, shouldn’t ask a question if he was afraid to hear the answer to, but as she went to shut the door, he heard the words leave his lips despite himself.

“Do you wish you’d never met me?”

He watched her pause in the doorway and turn to him, her eyes full of fresh tears.

“Loving you used to be so easy,” she said.

Alastor wanted to fade away then, disappear before she could say the rest. He knew what she would say next, knew it was his worst fear about to be realized. That she regretted being with him, that she was scared of him now, and that if one more thing went wrong she would run out of his life forever.

But then she went to him, crossing the room in a few short steps, and was holding him. Mina stood on tiptoe and he melted into her embrace, suddenly needing the comfort of her arms around him as his anger gave way in the face of all his insecurities. He pressed his face into the side of her head, kissing her on the jaw and neck, fighting the ache in his throat that threatened to tear out of him in the form of a sob.

“It’s hard now,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, but it is. It hurts so much some days, but I could never stop loving you. I would do it all over again with no regrets.”

Every promise he wanted to make stuck in his throat. All the explanation he was desperate to give to her, to help her see and understand the reality of their situation, could not form into words. It was as frustrating and tiring as ever, seeing her so afraid, knowing how traumatized she was, and being able to give so little comfort to her.

All he could do to soothe both their frayed nerves was hold her tight and repeat the same promise he had made to her the day he had returned.

“I’m never letting you go again. Never,” he said darkly. He looked down at her, the reflection of his red furious eyes shining back at him in hers. “Haven’t I always made sure you get your revenge? I promise you, I will break my chains. And these beautiful hands,” he kissed her fingertips, letting her claws brush against his lips, “will be bloody with justice.”

She smiled weakly at him and pulled away. It baffled him, he had expected more of thrill in her expression, but instead she kept the same tired and sad look about her.

Mina leaned back up and kissed him quickly on the cheek.

“I’m going to take that shower now. I’ll see you downstairs in a bit.”

Alastor frowned, feeling his smile twitch with uncertainty as she shut the door behind her.

___

He did his best to keep one eye on her the rest of the day; a distraction he wasn’t sure he could afford but he felt a growing unease at the idea of her having her mind on other matters with the battle so close. His own safety was of no concern, he was plenty confident in his role in things and Adam would be easy enough to handle. But Mina, despite her return to power, had little idea of what she was getting herself into. The angels were one thing but the consequences of Charlie winning the fight, which she was sure to do, was another.

The decision to keep her there with him rather than pushing her away still tore at him. He knew, from the very beginning, that his reluctance to keep her at bay any longer was caused by a combination of his pride and his spite. It was insulting enough to have been forced to do what he had done; his ego simply wouldn’t let him lose anything else. And it was a rather large fuck you to the forces that had made him leave her behind in the first place that she was back in his life when they hadn’t expected her to be. But the hungry guilt still gnawed on him day and night, more ravenous with each passing day, that his selfishness was putting her in danger.

Alastor just had to make sure that the risk was worth the reward. Make certain Mina was levelheaded come the morning.

He stepped out into the courtyard in front of the hotel and came to stand next to Charlie, who like him, seemed to be observing the preparations of the rest of the staff.

Vaggie was taking turns sparring with cannibals, teaching them proper defensive stances and attack maneuvers, while Mina and her friends were sorting through weapons and helping others choose which ones would be best for them.

He watched as she picked up an axe and eyed it approvingly before setting it aside for herself. Mina always had a bit of a thing for axes, ever since she had hacked her first husband to bits with one and his smile grew wider at the thought of getting to watch her use one on the angels tomorrow.

“A bit exciting, isn’t it?” he said to Charlie as they watched over those they each cared about the most. “Knowing that victory is right around the corner. It almost makes one feel young again, or at least, alive.”

“I guess,” Charlie said. She looked unsure of herself, anxious and almost miserable with worry. That wouldn’t do. He needed Charlie’s head in the game even more than he needed Mina’s.

“My dear girl,” he said sweetly, putting an arm around her shoulders. “There’s no need to worry! They all know what they signed up for and they wouldn’t be here if they weren’t confident in your ability to lead them into success. And you,” he tapped her nose with a finger, “are much more powerful than you give yourself credit for.”

“I don’t know about that. My parents are . . . maybe. But they won’t be here. And even if they were, it’s not like they haven’t lost against Heaven before.”

“Tomorrow will be different, trust me.” He tried to say even a little more but with Charlie, just as it was with Mina, the truth stuck in his throat. Annoyed, he felt his power slip out a little but decided to lean into it, towering over Charlie as his voice warped and his antlers spread out wide. “Tomorrow you will wipe the floor with their golden blood.”

“Okaaaaay, Al’,” Charlie said and pulled herself out from under his arm as he returned back to his normal height.

“If you don’t believe me, you should at least believe your own eyes,” he said, brushing off his jacket sleeves and then giving her a side eye. “You saw how much power was released when we made our deal. That was all you, darling. So have a little faith in yourself, hmm? I know I do.”

The air was knocked out of him when she crashed herself into his side, wrapping her arms tightly around his ribs. At first the intrusive contact irritated him but then his eyes softened as he looked down at her.

“There, there,” he said, patting her head and rolling his eyes. “No need to get emotional on me.”

“Sorry . . . sorry,” she mumbled and pulled away from him, looking abashed and blushing. “Just . . . thank you. For believing in me. Even though you’re . . . you, it means a lot that you think I can really do this. And I’m glad you’re here. I don’t think I would have made it even this far without you.”

“Yes, well,” he said, clearing his throat and straightening his bow tie. “I’ll remember you said that the next time you call me an asshole and tell me to go away.”

She laughed and was about to say something in response when something across the courtyard caught her eye and her smile fell.

“Oh shit.”

Alastor followed her line of sight and saw Mina and Vaggie, clearly getting into a heated argument.

“Don’t lecture me about weapons when you only know how to use one.” Mina’s voice carried across the courtyard, his ears picking up the bite in her voice now that he was paying attention.

“This one is all the exterminators are going to be wielding, so you should be choosing weapons best at defending against them.”

“I am,” Mina hissed. “I know what I’m doing child, so go back to playing and let the professionals handle the rest.”

Vaggie raised up her spear and let its base hit the cobblestones beneath her feet with a metallic clank that echoed through the courtyard.

 “Alright, perra, you think you know so much about Exterminators? Show me what you got. But you might want to put on some padding.”

Mina laughed in her face. “I’m not going to need protection to fight you.”

Charlie started to walk towards them but Alastor grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

“Best to let them work this out themselves. I believe this has been building for quite some time.”

“You’re really okay with them beating each other to a pulp?”

Alastor waved his hand dismissively at her and leaned against the pillar behind him. “Just shut up and enjoy the show,” he replied with a cackle.

Mina shocked him by unbuttoning her sweater, exposing her spots along her shoulders and back for the first time, and sitting it on top of the wagon full of weapons before grabbing a spear for herself. She really was a sight to behold when she was pissed off.

Vaggie raised an eyebrow at her.

“Want to change out of your sundress?”

“I’m gonna beat your ass bloody with my skirt on and my hair down, thank you very much.”

Vaggie charged at her, aggressively and directly, and Mina blocked it easily, lifting the other woman’s spear up before slamming the tip of it into the ground with her own.

“Not used to people fighting back, are you?” she challenged.

Vaggie yanked her spear out from under Mina’s and came at her again, faster and more agile, and Mina stepped back several paces as she had to focus on her blocks.

“You’re good at defense,” Vaggie said, stepping back and twirling her spear. “But I’ve yet to see you make a move that impresses me.”

Mina snarled and jumped into the air, spinning and bringing her spear down hard, making Vaggie block her attack with both hands braced on her spear, and Charlie gasped at how close Mina’s spear still managed to get to Vaggie’s shoulder before the shorter woman shoved back, using Mina’s own weight against her.

It was like a dance after that, both women spinning and flourishing their weapons with expert grace and precision, the sharp whack of their weapons ringing through the air over and over again, and Alastor was certain Charlie flinched with every hit.

After several minutes went by, both women were visibly panting, sweating, and red in the face with the exertion from their fight but at the same time, they both looked like they were beginning to thoroughly enjoy the challenge.

With a roar, Vaggie swung her spear, forcing Mina to duck, but the taller woman quickly recovered, standing back up before Vaggie could bring her weapon back around, and Mina spun the end of her spear up and the blunt end hit Vaggie in side of her face.

Charlie gasped and Vaggie stumbled to the side from the force of it, before she looked back up at Mina with a look mixed with respect, shock, and fury.

It was the only hesitation the warrior gave before she went back on the offensive, coming at Mina in a way that forced her to brace her own spear with both hands. Vaggie swiftly brought her spear up and back down, threading it in between Mina and her own weapon, locked her arm down and spun, flipping Mina onto the ground and on her back and Vaggie towered over her with both spears now in her grasp.

Vaggie raised her spear up and Mina’s rolled backward over her shoulder and came up in a crouch, her fist engulfed in angelic fire with her teeth bared and her ears pinned back.

“Been a while since someone actually managed to land a hit on me,” Vaggie said.

“I don’t think anyone’s been able to take my own weapon from me before,” Mina admitted, slowing standing up from her crouched position.

“Truce?” Vaggie said, holding out her hand.

Mina smiled, flashing all her sharp teeth at Vaggie as she took her hand. “Truce. Lunch?”

Vaggie sighed. “Oh fuck yeah, I’m starving after that work out.”

Mina went over to the weapon’s wagon and grabbed her sweater.

Vaggie walked away, heading for the hotel but she looked over her shoulder at Mina as she was buttoning up. “Those spots are kinda hot, by the way.”

Alastor laughed inwardly as he watched the blush creep up his wife’s neck and cheeks.

When Mina headed for the doors herself a moment later, Alastor joined her.

“My, you have learned a thing or two in the last few years,” he said flirtatiously.

“Enjoy the show?” she asked, still sounding a bit winded but her mood was clearly lifted.

“Ooooh, yes, quite a bit,” he laughed and playfully slapped her ass, uncaring for a rare moment who was watching.

____

Mina was feeling a lot more like herself after her sparing match with Vaggie. It had given her the much needed opportunity to blow off some steam and get her head out the funk her nightmare had put her in.

She had already been awake when Alastor had found her that morning but still lost in the emotions it had left in her. Though the light of the bayou had instantly soothed her when she opened her eyes, telling her logically it had all just been a dream, the feelings of abandonment and shame had stayed with her. And when Alastor had made his comment about getting her hands bloody, it had unnerved her. The way that dream had ended, with her covered in blood and feeling betrayed and guilty over . . . something she still didn’t understand, but it had been haunting her all morning.

Now there was a full blown party happening at the hotel and Mina had a pleasant buzz going as she sipped her cocktail and lounged with her friends.

Alastor had been down there earlier, socializing with everyone, playing the gracious host, and had shared a couple dances with her but then he had wandered off, a full glass of whiskey in his hand.

“So you guys torture people like Mina used to,” Angel said, pointing at the hyena twins, Kaden and Silva. “And you, too huh?” he asked, looking over at Alina.

The vampiric silver haired beauty smiled widely at Angel and laughed.

“Not for centuries. No, I’ve been hunting for Abaddon for most of my existence. I’m very good at it,” her black eyes flashed luminously with pride before she took a sip of her drink.

Mina was pressed between her friends on the couch, the twins on her right and Alina on her left, with Angel laying across a lounge chair in front of them, his long limbs hanging off either side.

“Bounty hunting. What a gig that would be,” Angel said, mostly to himself.

“I’d rather stick to torture,” Silva said with a giggle. “More control over the situation. And tastier.”

“You two are cannibals, too?” Angel asked.

“Sure, most carnivorous demons are. You’ve never tried it?” Kaden asked.

“Not my thing,” Angel replied, barely hiding his disgust.

“Well, since Mina left, we’ve gotten to take over most couple sessions and less of the cannibalizing ones. That was always her thing, and since we were her apprentices, we got to step up to the plate,” Silva said.

“Couple’s sessions?” Angel asked, raising an eyebrow.

Mina opened her mouth to explain but Silva beat her to it.

“Yeah, Mina fucking invented them. If a couple gets sent to The Pit, she came up with the idea of offering them a deal. Their own torture gets to stop, but only if they can handle torturing the significant other they got sent in with.”

Angel looked at Mina warily and she smiled shyly back at him.

“But there’s a catch,” Kaden interrupted. “Whoever breaks first, Mina only lets them up for a fraction of the time they were meant to be serving. Then she lets the other one get their revenge and torture them back. That way, the demon that betrayed the person they supposedly loved, has to live with that fact and still get tortured. It’s fucking beautiful man. The woman is always so much more vicious than the guy.”

“What, like it’s always the guy that gives in first with straight couples?” Angel asked.

“Usually,” Mina and the twins answered together.

“You guys are fucked up,” Angel said and got up, stumbling his way back over to the bar and to Husk.

“He’s a sensitive one, isn’t he?” Alina asked.

The hyenas cackled and Mina felt the need to defend her new friend to her old ones, but bit her tongue. They all had a way of hardening their hearts against their jobs and Angel didn’t quite understand that the souls they dealt with in The Pit were the worst of the worst that Hell had to offer. It was two worlds collide with the two found families Mina had built around herself but she knew that given time, they would all warm up to each other.

Astra and Lilah came over with a fresh tray of drinks and Lilah took over Angel’s discarded seat with Astra lounged comfortably across the floor, her blue skin shimmering before it settled into a darker indigo color.

“Where did Al’ run off to, I got a rye just for him,” Lilah said.

Silva scoffed. “Still taking off without a word, huh?”

Astra sat up and smacked her on the shin. “He’s right up on the balcony, talking with Niffty, you twit.”

Mina glanced up and sure enough, he was there, leaning over the railing and even from the distance, she could see his fond smile as he watched the animated Niffty telling him about something she was clearly excited about.

“Whatever,” Silva said, crossing her arms after taking a peek for herself. “I still don’t buy his story. He left Mina totally broken hearted. A pathetic shell of herself-”

“Thank you,” Mina interjected sarcastically.

“It’s true! And you just take him back the moment he gets back-”

“Shut up, Silva,” Lilah said. Like Astra, she had been there for the very start of Mina and Alastor’s relationship. Had seen their rise and fall, and everything in between, so they both understood Mina’s decision to stay, but others were more skeptical.

Mina gave her an appreciative smile and downed the rest of her drink, then stood up before the group could get into a proper argument over her marriage.

“Well, this has been wonderful, but before we all die tomorrow, I think I’m going to go get laid,” Mina said and walked away.

___

She found Alastor right where she had last seen him, leaning against the rail of the balcony that looked over the lobby, but now he was alone. He looked up and smiled a wide and bright smile as he saw her approaching and the closer she got, the stronger the smell of whiskey became. Mina may have been tipsy but Alastor was properly drunk.

That boded well for her. He was usually a happy drunk, jovial and lively when in the company of others but when she was alone with him, he was very handsy and that was exactly what she was looking for tonight.

“What are you doing up here, all alone?” she asked and he stood up straighter, holding his microphone and both hands behind his back.

“Looking down on my royal subjects.”

She smiled and raised an eyebrow, glancing up at the ring of dead roaches he was wearing in his hair like a crown.

“Alastor, what in the world-”

“Ah ah,” he corrected, and cleared his throat before puffing out his chest and putting his hand over his heart. “It is King Roach to you, my lady.”

He broke into a fit of laughter, once again leaning over the railing, giggling until there were tears in his eyes.

His mood was infectious and Mina felt herself start to laugh as well. It had been too long since she’d seen this side of him; this goofy, childish, strange, and a little insane but happy version of him. Her worries about the battle and the lingering unease that her dream had left her with were dispelled in that moment.

She stepped closer until they were toe to toe and wrapped her arms around his waist, smiling up at him. The crown of bugs was crooked, pushing down a lock of hair awkwardly over his forehead, and his red eyelids were heavy, making every blink slow and adorably mesmerizing.

“You have very pretty eyes, my King.”

Alastor’s smile went wide with surprise, the sleepiness left his expression for a moment, before he relaxed again and tilted his head at her, his long ears flopping a bit to the side.

“You think I’m pretty?”

“Hmmm,” she said, feeling the effects of that last drink she had downed hitting her, making her head a little warmer and fuzzier than just a moment before. She pressed her face into his chest, purring and nuzzling her cheek into his jacket. “You’re beautiful.”

“That’s an odd compliment for a King,” he mused. “One would think I should be called regal, or handsome, perhaps aristocratic or even dapper. The very image of omnipotence, a terrifying sight to behold, the horrors of which haven’t been seen since the Eldritch Terrors roamed the Earth.”

“Hmmm mmm,” she nodded, still pressed against his chest with her eyes closed. “You are all those things and more, my love, but you’re also my pretty man. My fruitcake.”

“You’re . . . what?”

He pulled away from her a bit and she looked up to meet his expression, her arms still wrapped around him, but when they made eye contact, they both broke into another fit of laughter.

After a moment, Alastor caught his breath again and brought a hand up to cup her cheek.

“So what are our opinions on sex tonight?” he asked, his strange wording making another giggle break out of her. “Would you be willing to bed this fruity King of yours?”

She reached up and straightened his crown and brushed the stray lock of hair away from his forehead.

“There’s no one else I’d rather spend tonight with,” she said quietly, and his smile softened before, to her utter astonishment, he pressed his lips to hers.

They were alone on the balcony but still in full view of the packed lobby and sure enough, with Alastor’s mouth still firmly on her own, she heard the distinctive sound of Angel’s voice from down below.

“OW OOWWWW!” he shouted and then someone else followed his cheering with a wolf whistle.

Alastor didn’t break the kiss but she felt his weight shift a little and his hand left her cheek. She turned her face to the side and opened her eyes, and saw Alastor’s arm pulled straight over the railing, his middle finger lifted on proud display for the crowd below, even as he peppered her jawline with more kisses.

He was never this brazen with her in front of others and she felt wetness begin to gather between her legs at the unusual thrill of it.

Alastor pulled his face away from hers and let his hand fall back to her hips, but the smirk on his face told her he had no regrets.

“That’s enough of a show for them, wouldn’t you say? Shall we find a place more private?”

She could only nod, at a loss for words, as she looked up at him over her lashes.

He leaned forward and kissed her once more and she felt her body melting with his shadow as he whisked them away into the darkness of the hallway.

Next Chapter ->

@inuhalfdemon @saccharine-nectarine @whoknowswhoiamtoday @redvexillum @visara-valentina @reath-solia

[unsaidwordsmusingsx]

alluring : shubman gill one shot

Well I don't know what was in my mind when I wrote this but this piece is too close to my heart for now.

even though this is a scrap for tumblr debut as a writer, lol.

am free for requests on any cricketer, so do drop it in <33

The weather was soothing, quite different from the usual chilling of early January. People were rejoicing the sun's rays and warmth as they soaked in the festivities of the new year, on the streets and shops.

Everything is so bright and all smiles, totally different from her point of view. You can't blame Y/N although. Spending the first week of a new year without her loved one is what none would want to experience.

But she has to, again, for another year.

She isn't disappointed though. How could she blame him? Shubman Gill? The cricketer who's out of home for at least 10 months thanks to high tight schedule and is as helpless as her. He longs for her beside him, when he's there, representing the nation with pride. But given her work pressure, and familial responsibilities, she can't do so every time.

Distance teaches us to love, respect and adore harder. And it was so and much more for Shubman Gill and his beloved, Y/N L/N Gill, his wife, his soulmate, his lover, his own, the owner of his everything.

Y/N was at this restaurant, babbling about her life and how she came to experience adultery thanks to her life choices (read her subject and internship). He was curious about the woman sitting behind him, talking her heart out without any care in the world.

Soft chuckles escaped his lips at her rants and he had to be a creep literally and mumble, "Cute." And a lot of things. She, having heard that, had to turn around with a scowl, only to have added looks  of surprises and disbelief on her face on seeing him. The famous personality. A deep blush coated her cheeks as she has bit back the words she has planned for the nosey guy.

They again met when she had checked in the hotel the Indian Cricket Team was staying, in Melbourne. He was sitting in the lobby, going through his phone, waiting his turn for check-in when the familiar perfume filled his nostrils. The lavender perfume he had sniff of only once, when he met that cute woman.

His eyes shot up, as all the incidents of that day came flooding in. His orbs searched through the place, until it fell on her. She had noticed him too, so sent a small wave at him with this unintentional frown. And damn his heart and gut did somersaults.

He pondered upon a lot and finally decided to have a talk, but didn't mustered up and lost her in the sea of time.

One is something. Two is a coincidence. Three is something to really analyse.

So he took no chances and approached her in this party he was present, and had spotted her, looking elegant in this Georgette saree, minimal make-up and that natural glow.

And that's how it started.

Thinking he might lose the chance to ask her, he approached, and what happened is for the history books.

[kxttsstuff]

Naming Conventions

🌷;; Borrower names are often borrowed from nouns or adjectives, or borrowed from animals/human names.

🍀;; The following shows the most common borrower names. Some names have strong female or male associations, but most of them are unisex. Most borrowers' names are strictly dictionary, literal nouns and rarely have deeper forms.

❄️;; After seasons: Spring, Winter, Summer or Autumn/Fall. Often because they were born in that season or because it holds a special meaning for the parents. Example: The parents met in Summer, the kid was born in Winter, or they found a home in Spring.

🌺;; After flowers: Rose, Lily, Ivy, Violet, Magnolia, Lilac, Rosemary, Bluebell, Wisteria, Tulip, Margaret, Buttercup, Peony, Orchid, Camellia, Lavender, Petal.

🌳;; After herbs, trees and other plants: Basil, Dandelion, Laurel, Cedar, Leaf, Willow, Aspen, Clover, Cypress, Ginger, Olive, Mint, Herb, Sage, Moss, Pine, Oak, Branch.

🌎;; After noble occupations that their family used to have or that they find brave and charming: Archer, Hunter, Ranger, Author, Gather, Dancer, Rider, Fisher, Rogue, Striker, Chaser, Poet, Explorer

🍎;; From fruits, spices or food: Apple, Honey, Apricot, Cherry, Cinnamon, Plum, Peach, Tangerine, Lemon, Almond, Sesame, Rue, Strawberry, Saffron, Pepper, Maple, Berry, Clove, Tea, Thyme, Fennel, Coriander

🛠️;; From household items or tools: Penny, Denim, Clay, Quill, Blade, Treasure, Dagger, Cotton, Jewel, Velvet, Calico, Anchor, Feather, Dice, Coal, Shell, Guitar, Bell

🐿️;; From animals or bugs: Robin, Raven, Hummingbird, Byrd, Fox, Bee, Fawn, Lark, Cricket, Newt, Crow, Teal, Buck, Sparrow, Doe, Dove, Crane, Swan, Canary, Wren.

🌙;; From natural phenomena: Rain, Storm, Sky, Snow, Cloud, Sun, Moon, Star

⭐;; From human names/pet names: for example, being named after a cool name your parent saw in a magazine, or once when they saw what the human called the housecat.

Changing your name in borrower culture:

• Contrary to popular belief, often borrower names given by parents don't actually have a deep value, like with humans. They're often more than welcomed to change it however they wish, this is known as "to borrow a name".

• Some borrowers will change their name just because they found a nicer one, or they want to transition to one that fits more their current identity or their age. Some nicknames may transform into a borrowers' name, this is surprisingly common. This tradition is popular, especially reaching adulthood or even late teens, and some communities heavily encourage the borrowing of a name to signal a borrower is ready to get involved within the community. A borrower may have borrowed lots of names through their lives.

• Some people give their kids ‘baby names’. This is the case of names like ‘Peanut’, 'Raindrop', "Button" or ‘Seed’ and they are expected to be changed later on when the borrower finds their own identity. The new name shall be called the "Chosen name/true name", and it is considered demeaning/patronizing/sometimes mocking to insist on using the baby name of someone to address them (if you happen to know it); this happens a lot with parents and their young. Baby names lose their value the second they change it, so it's not really necessary to let others know what it was unless you want to explain the term to a human and get teased for one month.

🪲;; Some spelling has changed over time, transforming “Bird” into “Byrd”, for example. There is also a tendency of choosing shorter names, making "Leaf" or "Petal" one of the most common ones.

🪲;; Giving nicknames based on their skills, personality or appearance is very common. This tradition has developed from survival purposes but now it is considered cultural, a form of showing love and is especially seen from older borrowers to the young.

🪲;; Borrowers don't have middle names.

About last names: This depends on the family, some of them consider them superficial and have no last names. Some borrowers do HAVE last names, especially the ones living in communities. As with names, last names don't usually hold a deeper value and have very literal meanings. Most of them reflect the particular part of the landhouse their hideout is close by, whether it's the Clock, the Cabinet, the Shower, etc. Their last names may or may not be subject to change in case they move out, some could be slightly attached to them so they choose to keep it.

Generally speaking, when a borrower "marries" another and they move out, they'll get a new last name based on the location they're building their hideout on, which their children will inherit until they move out. This would make most Borrower's last names transitory.

[ramonathinks]

Last postttt honestly and seriously but i feel like this needs to be said because this is just pure mean girl behavior! Only posting this because of the unnecessary comment that she posted and the shady posts from her mutual as well. As stated in this post, i never accused her of stealing anything… read the post: “i don’t want to be accused of copying… i should’ve wrote it in 2022” now explain how that sound like any implications. even in the screenshot that i showed on my account, it was in a draft and not posted. the day before i posted this i literally asked a mutual about writing something if someone else was doing it and while they said yeah, EYE just didn’t want anyone to accuse me of copying, since i have to keep repeating that fact, which was why i made the post just expressing how i felt.

But regardless of the situation I mainly felt like I need to clear my name because while i never said anything bad about dej this is what im being met with…

Not to mention the goon squad of several people who aren’t in the conversation yet inserting themselves and wondering why im not replying or getting annoyed by the dms they’re sending me or just overall annoyed by the conversation. everyone wants me to hear her out and everyone wanna take her side rather than when i said that wasn’t the case? and trying to force an apology out of me or whatever in an attempt to make me ‘admit’ where i was wrong when the post wasn’t worded in any way that gave malicious intentions.

Then I messaged her like everyone begging me to do because now instead of talking about the situation she’s talking about me and now im blocked (even though i admit i was rude but i don’t like it when people try to come for my character), messaged her mutual as well and got no response even though since i sent the message it has shown she was active lol. But either way if it was a problem just as she said i could’ve dm’ed her about it (which i never felt the need to because it wasn’t shady or messy, or anything against her so it wasn’t no reason for that.), but the same applies to me if not more so because i didn’t have no intentions on her getting hate but it seems as that’s what she wanted to do to me lmao like if she told me in private about how she felt about the post or the hate she was getting then that would’ve been one thing because i never said i was feeling some type of way about the concept just that i wanted to do it a while ago and didn’t want to be accused of copying HER never once was what i said “shady” “messy” or “tacky” but her responses are ! if anyone is victimizing themselves in this conversation it’s her because if you are feeling some type of way about someone it’s your choice to confront that person but making a public statement when all i said was i didn’t want to be accused of copying you is messy in what sense?? like how do you read that as shady at all?? & how am i victimizing myself for defending myself against you and several people? and even when i said that wasn’t my intention, it was crickets! no deletion of the post, no anything because it’s not like im asking for an apology. i said it wasn’t my intention and that was it after that the conversation should’ve been over yet you and your mutual are posting shady stuff or bashing me like girl??

Plus I don’t have anyone publicly defending me besides the two mutuals who reblogged my post and im basically getting jumped like hello! I had to turn my mailbox completely off, when at first it was turned off just for anons. I had to turn my DMs off so that only people i follow can message me because your weirdo supporters are harassing me. If you’re against someone being harassed why would you in turn allow this to happen to me like make it make sense!

[wasteland-wrecker]

14 year old Overboss

Is he an annoying Brat? Yes. Do we love him? Yes.

Do we wanna know what happened to his family? Yes?

Well too bad! You're only getting cripted hints!!

After their disappearance, Grayson was super... gone. He used to be an obedient, sweet kid who followed people around to help. Their.... leaving... switched something inside of him. He loved it. Loved a thrill of taking and not giving.

A farm kid always gets bored being around the farm so much. Not to mention his father being a merc too made him always... curious about shooting a gun.

Literally with stolen caps he bought his beauty. His loving gun!! Spray 'N Pray! From Cricket.

The about of destruction from this kid after that HEIGHTENED. He was harassing people at Sunshine Tidings Co-op when his pipboy caught that signal. An old amusement park? That place where a bunch of traders set up a while ago? A bunch of traders to loot? Well done deal!

When he met Harvey? He scoffed, spit on him, told him his families good as dead because he left them and then turned on the train to go, telling Harvey he'd consider checking on his family. Dude. Redeye pissed him off through the whole gauntlet, but another fun thing, since he had Spray 'N Pray, that one area where pack, operator, and disciple people are shooting at you? He mostly killed them before they could even land a bullet...

Okay a couple bullets did hit him but no one was alive to see so Shh!!!!

Then he got to Colter. Keep in mind he's still in power armor. So Gage is talking to him about the squirt gun and Grayson is barely hearing him becuase he saw a secret path to a new fusion core. After that Grayson keep half listening to him, at least hearing only that the squirt gun takes out the force field. So he goes to kick Cotler ass... here is where you THINK "Oh yeah this guy is definitely an adult that's so violent". That's what Gage was thinking. Or really he wasn't even considering the guy was a kid.

So then he meets back at the Grille Mountain blah blah blah. Halfway though Gage's sentence, Grayson gets out of his power armor, setting it in the armor thing before looking at Gage and saying, "now I can hear you better, whatcha talking about with this park plan?"

Gage is silent for 3 whole minutes, debating on killing the kid or keeping this shit secret. He decides on keeping this shit secret because, well, one, he's just a baby, and two, he's a violent baby.

And that's the full story. Definitely didn't exaggerate some things per Grayson's request about his time in the gauntlet!

(Help I have a gun to my head)

Oh man I adore this kid, he’s not just a kid, he has his own personality that perfectly fits the fallout vibe. I’m sure he’d survive and get old too, he’s too smart.

And the moment where Gage finds out he’s a kid… priceless. (3 minutes??? That’s a lot dude!!!)

(Gray don’t shoot pls)

[bro now I wanna know who you are, show yourself - at least in private, come on! 🌞]

[mouthsfullofsharpteeth]

let me to be insane for a moment and say that the first time brian and jay got . uhm. intimate. was completely unplanned and really couldnt have been expected all things considered. brian didnt allow himself to slip up, it wasnt something he thought he could do. he was always two steps ahead of everyone else, theres was no way he could screw up. but he did and did so royally. in his defense, jay should have been asleep. then again, he should have been quieter. it was addicting, though. skirting just out of view, just barely not getting caught. seeing footage of himself that jay unknowingly took sent a shiver up his spine. so he pushed it. so he got more daring. so he got a bit clumsy.

the floorboard creaked under his foot and jay's eyes met his instantly. he was frozen for less than a second. his heart stopped beating. even the sound of crickets was deafened by the blood rushing through his ears. and then he bolted.

pounding footsteps, yelling, swearing— it was exhilarating. he had never felt more alive. he turned a corner, aiming for the front door he came through, but he wasn't fast enough.

jay tackled him to the ground. pinned him, really. the camera he was recording with was knocked out of his hands, now filming the ceiling. brian tried to get free, and as he did so, something hard poked into his back. a knife or a gun, he couldn't tell, but his heart was in his throat. he felt like prey that had got caught and— fuck, he was hard.

he struggled, of course he did. in the skirmish he ended on his back with jay straddling his thighs. it was a knife that had been threatening him, and it was now at his throat. worst of all, jay noticed. he started calling brian a pervet, a no-good creep who got off on spying on him.

most importantly, though, brian noticed that jay was getting hard as well. that, or he had a second knife in his pants.

they ground against each other, jay calling brian disgusting names as brian tried not to make any sounds. jay lifted brians hoodie and pressed the knife right under his ribs. the blade cut into his skin, leaving a thin line of blood that jay licked away. they both came like that.

brian escaped while jay was still coming down from his high. as uncomfortable as it had been, his mask had stayed on the entire time, so jay still had no idea who he was. and if he continued to be a bit more sloppy when stalking around jay, that was only something for him and jay to know

i feel like the luckiest blog in the world that im just getting full little oneshots in my ask box. kicking my feet, twirling my hair.

no but this is literally so them. brian totally prides himself on always being two steps ahead, coming off as being all knowing, seeming like he's completely aware of everything while jay stays clueless, having to solve brian's hints and riddles and codes just to get an idea of whats going on. so he would definitely test the boundaries and try to get even closer without jay knowing, and it would make them both so fucking excited when he slips up and their cat and mouse game switches roles. jay would go mental for that. and they would absolutely go nuts for it happening again.

[rogueshadeaux]

Chapter Twenty-One — Spectral

It wasn’t just the light that made her shine, though; it was her, the same person in those pictures with Dad, no gray to her skin or sullen cheeks or bones that protruded just a bit too much to be healthy. Her hair was even back to fully pink, brushed out of her face as those eyes, Brent’s eyes, met mine, turning soft.  “Mom?”

5.8k words | 18 min read time | TRIGGER WARNINGS: unreality vibes if those freak you out

⚠ AUTHORS NOTE: image credit to Withoutafuss on deviantart. Full (and absolutely beautiful) version here

The scent faded in first. 

It smelled like the beauty of nature. Like sunlight bouncing off warmed rocks and fertile soil. There was something flowery there I couldn’t name if you asked me; usually flowers came with pollen, and pollen would stock up my nose. But not this time. 

There wasn’t any sound, which should have scared me. No birds or crickets or the scream of cicadas. There was a breeze, but even then it barely whispered. I shifted slightly, and something standing against me tickled my nose. That’s what got me to spring up from my slumber, jolting up straight in place with a gasp. 

I was lying in a field of barley, hidden away in its heart by the tall stalks until I stood. The golden grain stretched as far as I could see, all the way to the horizon and probably past it, a beautiful offset to the clear blue sky. There was light, but…I couldn’t find the sun, no matter how hard I looked. Skyline to skyline was alight, but void. Just blue. Where the hell was I?

I fought to remember what happened. How I got here. Arguably, my biggest question at first was where the fuck was the sun, but that melted away when I realized I…I didn’t know where I was. Why I was here. Wasn’t I at the Longhouse a bit ago? How did…

Barley doesn’t grow in winter. It’s a spring crop. Wasn’t it…it was Christmas Eve, right? What was today? There was no snow, it wasn’t cold. I wasn’t even dressed for cold weather — I wasn’t sure if this counted as being dressed at all. 

Water was my dress, as blue as the ocean with the white froth of sea foam billowing at its trims. The wet crept up my chest until it found a comfortable spot to sink into my skin, and didn’t stop its soft ebbs as I stood — the angle of its tide just shifted. 

“What the fuck?” I whispered under my breath, looking around. There was literally nothing, nothing, but a field of gold, stretching until the horizon curved away. I didn’t know it was possible to be freaked out by wide open spaces, but I definitely began to hyperventilate a bit as I spun in place, looking for something, anything that indicated a difference. By my third spin, I wasn’t even sure which way I was originally facing. 

Everything was peaceful, calm, and entirely uncanny. I wracked my brain, trying to think of what happened or how I got here but got nothing but static in response with the briefest of flashes; waves, shattered wood, Brent diving down from a cloudy sky. 

“Brent?” I called out, my voice carrying away with the soft breeze that made the grain ripple like an ocean. He’d have to have a better idea of what was going on, right? I hope so, ‘cause I sure the fuck did not. 

Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to start walking. Arguably, I should have stayed put — it would have made me easier to find. But I couldn’t stay here in the middle of this giant field, not when there was nothing else to go by. I couldn’t even depend on the sun for a directional point, the fucking thing was missing — but I couldn’t leave without leaving behind a hint or something of the sort. 

The water was slow to call up, which was concerning. It slugged onto my arms, moved lazily around my wrists as I forced the streams on my skin down to my hands. I had to leave something behind for Brent, probably something he’d see from the sky. I turned back to the divot in the grain where my sleeping form pressed down the barley and pushed the water out of my hands into the depression, pushing and refining and pinching until there was a liquid version of the Conduit emblem in its crater with an arrow pointing towards my right. 

And once I was satisfied with how it looked, once I was sure he’d see the glint of the two-headed eagle as it reflected rays from a nonexistent source, I turned in the direction of the arrow and started walking. 

You don’t realize how big the world is until you try to trek it on foot — barefoot, I realized. Where the hell were my boots, my leather jacket? I could remember searching through Dad’s closet and pulling out a jacket of his with a little Seattle 138 patch on its arm, and that was gone too. My hair wasn’t even pulled back anymore. 

The barley stretched for miles and I walked each one for hours, maybe even days, if those existed anymore. I’d have to pause, sit and rest for a while, but nothing changed outwardly — including my energy. I was worried time and space and whatever disappeared with the sun, that this was some weird sort of purgatory I was meant to be trapped in to walk forever like some kind of remixed Sisyphis when the sky began to change. The blue lightened a bit, and turned yellow at the edges before pink and purple overtook the entire sky in a way I’d never seen before, sunset triggering throughout its entirety as something dark grew on the horizon. 

It grew taller with each step, hard to really tell what it was in the bright contrast of the sky and the depth of the distance until I was nearly on it. The golden grain disappeared and was replaced with soft dewy grass, running like a border between the fields behind me and the border of trees. It looked like the Clatsop State Forest in Oregon. It looked like home. 

We’d go hiking in forests like this a lot when I was younger — It was one of Dad’s favorite ways to get us out of the house and away from the world. I paused just in front of a toppled, moss-covered trunk to look out at the field behind me, at the trail I walked into it and the sky that was beginning to shift from purple to black even without the sun. I’d walked for what felt like forever, and yet…I wasn’t tired. The soles of my feet weren’t even red, I’d realized when I sat on the ground and crossed them. The journey was barely even registering in my mind as long, already compacting in that disassociated way when you dream, and I decided that had to be what was happening right now. Right? This had to be a dream. A weird one, but a dream. Maybe I fell asleep at Betty’s?

I leaned against the log behind me and watched the purple sky bruise, stars breaking out of the murk unnaturally. Everything was peaceful and quiet and serene but oh so wrong. Stars wouldn’t appear in the sky until I looked away from a point and then glanced back, the lights twinkling like they’d been there the whole time. Nothing made sense! I tried to think about how I could have gotten somewhere like here. There was…Brent had wings, so we’d gone outside at some point. Wood chips…did the Akomish Reservation have a park? Did we sneak away to play at a park? Was I asleep in a tube slide again?

I tried to force myself awake. Pinching the thigh, slapping the face, jumping, counting, all of the tricks people say to use when you want to get out of a nightmare — none of them worked, but they all felt real. This couldn’t be real, right? 

Just to test, though, I filled my hands with water and dunked my face in the cold, trying to see if that’d work. 

It didn’t, but the bite of the cold came with new flashes; frosting arms, frozen ribs. Something twinged hard in my back and suddenly I was reliving those last moments of the true before. Before I froze over, before I fainted in the silt of the Sound. 

I jolted up from my spot, freaking out. Did Archangel get me? I mean, this place had no fucking sun, no moon — just aurora borealis that switched on unnaturally like someone turned on a night light as I dove into the woods, running away from where I was first found. I didn’t know what was going on or where I was. All I knew was something was wrong, and I needed to both get away from where I was left and find out more. 

I wasn’t tired yet. My body felt a lot like how it did when I was suspended in the Sound a while ago; rested yet ready, able to vault over fallen logs and around foliage that scratched at my exposed legs but left no marks. I know, I checked. The slice in my side was gone and while I couldn’t see back there, I didn’t feel any holes left behind by the icicles. Could this have been the long con, that grand plan Augustine was intent on achieving? Weaken Dad for a while so they could move him to some weird facility where the stars seemed to shine a bit too bright — and since I got hurt instead, they decided I’d be the next safest bet into luring out Dad? They’d already tried it once with those Akurans and knew it’d work. I must be their ransom. 

As I ran, I caught more of those brief flashes of life that happened before I went unconscious; there were soldiers that could wield ice, a dozen of them, maybe even more! Were they transferred powers like Augustine’s old footsoldiers, the DUP? She’d know how to do something like that, right? History class only told us the government had the capability to activate inactive Conduits and transfer over an artificial power — nothing beyond that. Couldn’t imagine why they wouldn’t want a bunch of kids to know how to become Conduits. It’s a mystery. 

But that confirmed enough to me; Archangel were making their own soldiers. Maybe not concrete-wielding DUP, but how far could they go? Dozens of troops wielding dozens of different kinds of powers wasn’t exactly a nice idea. Who’s to say they wouldn’t find something stronger than ice or concrete? Who’s to say they weren’t waiting to do something to me?

I had to find the edge of this…whatever it was. Maybe I could break out or escape through an HVAC vent or something. 

Dad was nearly there. I saw him running atop the Sound at the speed of sound, ahead of some…god, it looked like a knight with wings chasing down a thousand demons that ran from hell. Were they chasing him? Was that the Archangel?

Either way, the only thing that mattered was that he had been close, last I saw him. He wouldn’t leave me behind, he wouldn’t have let Archangel take me without being right there ready to get me back out. I had to get to him, try and meet him halfway. 

The forest was beautiful. When the green and the blue of the northern lights that were too far south lit up the canopy, it bled through the leaves in a way that bathed the entire woods in this soft blue glow that reminded me of enchantments. Like this wasn’t some farce built up by a bunch of psychos but an actual border between the real world and something even more magical. Dad used to read me Narnia when I was little, it was our thing; he’d read through a chapter and I’d always return home from school the next day with a new drawing based on it and a complaint from my teacher that I wasn’t paying attention in class. I loved the idea of the Woods Between the Worlds, of a forest full of magic and portals that could transport you everywhere and anywhere so long as you stepped in a puddle. 

Now, I wanted absolutely nothing to do with such a nexus. 

So I ran, the billowed skirt of my watery dress lagging behind me like the splash of choppy waters off of a boat’s body. That was another thing that worried me; where were my clothes? If Archangel got me, that simply meant they had access to me, all of me, and while the worst of what that could mean definitely flew through my head, my biggest worry was that they took a part of me I’d never be able to regain. The copy of my Conduit gene. 

I wasn’t getting tired, but I was getting winded — eventually I leaned against a pine tree, practically collapsing into it, gasping loudly. The woods were worse than the barley fields! I wasn’t sure if I was still running straight, if I was facing the direction I was originally or just spinning in circles. It sure felt like I wasn’t making progress. 

I leaned my forehead against the bite of the bark, scraping my head against the splintering bits just to see if I’d wake up from this nightmare, if I was wrong and just in some delusional stage of sleep paralysis. Of course, it didn’t work though. 

I lifted my head and looked around, already unsure of where I came from. I was in the middle of debating whether I should go forward or just lay down and cry in frustration when I heard…something. Not an owl or a wolf or any of the other scary things that usually prowl at night. It had an electrical patter to it, a chirping noise that sounded all too familiar as a streak of neon pink shot off between some firs far ahead, its illumination barely reaching me. 

“Dad?” I called, shouting, “Dad!” louder when the pink dissipated into the dark of the woods. He was so far, he couldn’t hear me — if he was going faster than the speed of sound, would he even be able to? 

I didn’t care. All I cared about was following him, making sure none of this was a night terror…or worse. 

I was back to running, shooting off parallel to where I saw Dad run. The worst part about his speed was it left behind nothing more to go by than an imprint on the back of my eyelids, guided by that and faith more than anything. I called his name as I ran, breathless begging for him to suddenly shoot in front of me and reassure me that nothing was bad enough that he couldn’t fix. That he was there, he was going to get me out of here, and that everything was going to make sense. That everything was going to be okay. 

I didn’t realize I was nearing the end of the thicket until I burst out of it, nearly tripping over a huge rock that jutted out of the ground in front of me. I was entering a quarry of some sort, only not for regular stone; slabs of translucent crystals laid everywhere, giant geodes cracked in half and lining out the trail down into an open pit. 

It was breathtaking; the shine of the northern lights bounced around in their natural lapidary and escaped out of each corner, bathing the spiral trail deeper into the pit in a reflected green light. Everything rippled down there like sunlight did underwater, mesmerizing me as I fell deeper into the unoccupied trench until I reached the shaft opening for its underground. 

“Dad?” I called out into the entrance, my voice bouncing around a thousand times as it crawled deep into the earth. This was the direction he ran — but to be fair, he could have changed course and I wouldn’t have seen it. I definitely wasn’t sure that he’d go into the cave without a cause.

But if he was looking for me, missed me in the woods, and couldn’t find me anywhere else above surface, he’d look underground next. It was the only place I could think he’d be. 

Inside was illuminated by gas lit lanterns that bathed the burrowed cave in a soft amber glow, the crystals in the walls absorbing the flame and centering its shine, giving off their own glints. There weren’t stalactites — they were the ends of long white crystals all positioned like teeth. In fact, looking at them made something new flash in my mind; Brooke Augustine hiding behind the maw of some giant beast, smirking. Augustine — wasn’t she in Curdun Cay? How’d she get out? 

I nabbed one of the lanterns from a hook in the wall as the trail into the quarry dove deeper. Would Archangel be able to make something like this, something so big not only above ground, but under it? Why would they even be digging in the first place? I mean, unless this was all some elaborate set of some sort, then good for them, it looked great — but just…why? 

God, I needed Dad. 

The ramp dove deeper and deeper, curved in a spiral that left me feeling dizzy. How long had I been walking? That weird feeling was back, already compacting time into something smaller and easier to manage and making me feel like everything was shorter than it really was. I called out Dad’s name a few times as I descended, each step leaving me feeling like I made a wrong choice. I should have stayed above surface, Dad wouldn’t have gone diving in a hole to look for me! Not without a good reason to come looking here — and I hadn’t given him one. I didn’t even leave a little sign I was in here. 

I was about to turn back and climb up the ramp again when light, more light than what was cast by the lanterns, blitzed into view, neon pink bathing the black of the rock as that electrified chirp pattered off again in an echo. “Dad?” I called gently before rounding the corner. Maybe it was some cavern, the end of the excavation, and he’d be right there looking for me. 

No such luck. Instead, I somehow stumbled outside again into a grove with the strangest trees I’d ever seen. 

They were tall like maples, trunks void of any sort of run off until the top third of its bark, but the bark itself…it glistened with rainbow colors that shined with the dance of the auroras above. Like someone took waxy crayons and ran them along the groove of the bark until it melted into the wood, staining it forever. Rows of those as far as I could see, shining away in their cool glow. 

I’d almost forgotten why I came here in the first place — Dad was close. I’d seen him before rounding the corner, and was hearing that same chirping again, growing louder quickly. Pink and blue blew past me so quickly I stumbled back with the buffet of wind, barely caught by a rainbow tree trunk. It took me a moment to recover — the sound made my ears pop so roughly they began ringing, and something about the blast made me dizzy — but I managed to keep an eye on Dad’s neon aura as he blasted past the pit and somewhere into the grove of rainbow trees. 

“Dad!” I shouted, pushing off of the trunk. I was sure he didn’t see me in the woods, but there was no way he didn’t notice me just now! Was he avoiding me?

God, he was quick. He could probably eclipse the speed of light if he really tried, and that did nothing to benefit me or my position as I rushed after him at a normal gait, restricted by my unfortunate humanity. Brent gets metal muscles, Dad can do this — why didn’t I get anything cool? It was bullshit. I was going to have to figure out a way to keep a wave going and ride that wherever I wanted — because this? “This is bullshit,” I gasped as I ran. 

But I ran. Kept it up even as something burned in my left side, the stitch begging me to stop, until I burst out of the trees into arguably the most beautiful place I’d ever been. 

It was that moment before daybreak where the sky itself seemed to struggle to wake up, the last of the stars catching in the glint of the crystals. It looked like a retention pond that was drained out, now a crater lined by nothing but glittering rocks in colors and shades and patterns I’d never seen in real life. I didn’t know there could be pinks that rich or greens that deep in a stone! Their jagged ends stuck out of the edge of the dry pond like scales, patterned in a way that almost tricked my eyes into thinking they were moving. Were these the stones they were trying to find at that excavation site a ways back? No wonder they were digging so deep.

There was a beaten path in the dirt around the edge of the pond, rich smelling soil soft against my feet as I walked around it. Light was beginning to permeate from that unknown source again, an entire day already gone in here, and the way the light bounced off of the crystals…my god. I’d never seen anything like it. It reminded me of figuring out that I could hold my quartz necklace up to a ray of sunlight and cast little rainbows everywhere, only quadrupled in awe; the entire area became basked in rainbows and glittering dots, bouncing off of the grove behind me and dancing in the refraction of my dress. The bottom of the emptied pond was smooth rock, almost white and not at all rough as I flitted down the crystals as a waterfall and regathered from the rush of my liquid dress, standing at the edge of the dome. 

I turned in place, running a finger along the closest wall of crystal to see if any were loose. They were so close together but it didn’t seem like they were placed there, either; blue and pink and purple and green all sprouted beside each other like siblings. 

There was a bzzzzzzZZZT behind me, and the wall I was facing lit up as it absorbed the light of Dad’s neon as he flitted around the pond. I spun in place in time to watch the ball of neon jump, reaching a height that shouldn’t have been possible even with Conduit powers before landing opposite me on the other side of the pond and releasing the grip on the power, form returning…returning to…

Neon stayed in segments, ribbons that acted as clothing waving in the breeze of the speed. There was still an edge to it all, slits in the pink neon skirt that slipped high past her hips and exposed the blue of the undergarment, the two colors creating a geometric crop top that turned purple where their weave intersected. She stayed charged, pulses of neon literally letting off of her skin in soft blitzes that audibly crackled and illuminated everything about her ethereally. It wasn’t just the light that made her shine, though; it was her, the same person in those pictures with Dad, no gray to her skin or sullen cheeks or bones that protruded just a bit too much to be healthy. Her hair was even back to fully pink, brushed out of her face as those eyes, Brent’s eyes, met mine, turning soft. 

“Mom?” I gasped out after forgetting to breathe the entire time she settled in place, straightening. Neon stayed playing on her hands, wrapping around it again and again like a pet snake. 

How…how was she here? Mom was gone. She’d been gone since before I’ve been conscious — so how was she here, in front of me, able to tilt her head to the side slightly while looking at me?

You shouldn’t be here, sweetheart. 

She didn’t open her mouth, and yet I heard her voice rattle around in my head. God, was that what she sounded like? Dad wasn’t kidding when he said she had an accent. The pet name caught on the Jersey dialect and shattered some preconceived notion in me I didn’t even know was there. Modulated and adenoidal, it probably would have pulled me in even without it being the fact that that was my mother speaking. “You’re alive?”

Her words didn’t even really register until I realized my gaping didn’t make that look on her face change. Shouldn’t be here? “Where are we?” I asked, looking around at the crystals. They were all so alight now that the entire area was bathed in either blue or pink. Mom was caught in a halo of her power, a bit hard to look at — but I didn’t avert my eyes. I barely even blinked. “Have they kept you in here this whole time?”

Oh my God. Oh my God! My mom was alive, and she was tangible, right there! I could reach out and touch her if I wanted! I moved forward a half-step, intending to do just that, when Mom flinched in place, backing up to keep me away. Why was she shaking her head? Why did she look so upset, so worried? 

This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. 

Her voice echoed around in my head again, whispers of each syllable catching on each other and amplifying how sad she sounded. “How what’s supposed to go?” I asked. Were they keeping her here for a reason? “Do you know what’s going on?”

She didn’t answer at first; just kept looking at me with a melancholy that slightly shifted in her eyes. Maybe it was because of the tears pooling in mine, I don’t know. It made her drop her hands in defense, though, and take a step closer. 

Something shattered in that air between us, and we were suddenly booking it towards each other — well, I tried to. She burst into a neon aura I realized was much more pink, more pure looking than Dad’s, and beat me to the punch — or, tackle. She sorta slammed into me, enough to make my gasp breathless as for the first time I could remember, my mother hugged me. 

You always imagine moms are soft and gentle. At least, I did. Mom, though? She was tough. The surprisingly strong grip held on to me like I’d turn into sand in her hands and she needed to take the chance to feel me while she still could. I understood, I felt similar; I needed to make up for nearly 15 years of hugs. Love we missed out on as she was, evidently, trapped here. 

Trapped. There had to be something more, something bigger going on. “We should go, there’s gotta be a way out, right?” I asked, pulling back slightly. I didn’t get far; her arms tightened so hard around me that my water rode over her neon, making the contact on my back skin to skin. 

She smiled slightly at this, one arm pulling back to scoop away at the bit of my dress in the back and watch the water drip off of her fingertips. 

Water. Haven’t seen that one yet.

This one came with a laugh, a beautiful sound that chittered like a bird. She smiled wide, shaking her head. 

“It’s pretty cool.” I turned pink, sniffing a bit. “You should see Brent’s though. He gets wings, it’s kinda unfair. He’ll show off for you all you want once we break out.”

Something in her expression changed again, and her one hand came up to cup my face, swiping away at a rogue tear. 

You look so much like your father.

I knew I did, but I was beginning to see pieces of Mom in myself now that she was in front of me: the same lips, the same eye shape. Brent got the most of her but now that I had proof that pieces of her lived in me? 

Well, it was more than I could ask for. It was everything I ever wanted.

Dad. “Have you seen him?” I asked. “I — we were attacked, those Archangel guys — they broke out Augustine and sent her to kidnap him but he wasn’t there — he was coming back, but I had to do something to stop them from killing more people and I—“ I looked around. “I don’t remember how I got here.” Her fingers were playing in my loose hair now, a sensation I never thought I’d experience. The neon in her hand crackled against my eardrum, sent pleasant little tingles up and down my scalp as her hand brushed against my skull. “Come on,” I finally said, grabbing her hand before it could brush through my hair again. “Let’s — there’s gotta be some way we can get out. How long have you been here? Have you noticed anything?”

I meant to keep ahold of her hand when I broke away from her, to begin traveling hand in hand and figuring out how to leave. If I could get Mom out — god, Dad would lose his mind. And Brent! She needed to see Brent! 

But she stayed in place, gently pulling her hand from mine when I took a side-step away and shook her head again. 

I can’t leave. 

“What?” I gawked. “What do you mean you can’t leave?” Why did she suddenly look so dejected? “If we work together, there’s gotta be some way we can break out of whatever this place is! Archangel can’t have a compound that huge, there’s gotta be a border—“ 

Jeanie.

My name. That’s what it sounded like when she said it? I’d never heard it said that beautifully before. 

But she stayed looking at me in that sort of dejected melancholy, like she was regretful of everything she missed. Like she planned on missing more. That sadness in her eyes made something heavy land in my chest. “Mom? What's wrong?” 

She moved forward, both hands coming up to gently grip my head and she tilted it forward, kissing the top of it. She stayed there long after releasing the kiss, unmoving until she said—

You need to go back. 

Yeah, I did — with her! Why was she suddenly acting like that possibility was impossible? “Did Archangel do something to you?” I asked when she released me. She said this wasn’t how it was supposed to go — did she cut some deal with Archangel? “Mom it’s — we can get away, Dad should be coming soon and Dr. Sims was with him—“ 

Mom took a step back. And another. Her hand came out to stop me in place when I tried following her. 

You can’t stay here. This isn’t where you’re supposed to be. Not yet.

There was a sudden burst of light, and Mom flitted back, forming from the neon as quickly as she disappeared in it. That aura of neon stayed around, played stronger on her skin, more snakes of ribboned pink crawling down from her shoulders to dance around her arms. “Mom, I don’t — what’s going on?” 

Not if I have anything to say about it. 

The ribbons around her arms began to spin until I couldn’t even differentiate them from each other — she was just alight at the arms. The dance of the color lit up the pit until it was hard to keep my eyes open, surrounded by rainbows of blue and pink. 

Mom lifted a hand, the same one I was holding moments ago, the fingers I could barely see in the glow giving away to that same glow as it charged. What was she doing? 

Her hand pointed off to the side, to the face of the retention pond, and shot a beam so powerful the trill of its ability made my eardrums throb. It hit a rather large crystal protrusion, its blue turning purple, and refracted off of its surface, shooting for me. 

The beam slammed into where that stitch in my side laid, burning into me and making me cry out in pain. My mom was attacking me! Why was she attacking me? The beam stopped, zapping away without the fanfare of electricity, and I stumbled back in its hit, casting a hand over the wound. “Mom—“ I cut off when skin touched the rawness, hissing instead. 

You have more you need to do. 

The other hand lifted and shot a beam at a crystal on the right, bounding off of it and practically punching me in the chest. I doubled over, tears coming to my eyes both because of the pain and because I didn’t understand what I did for her to do this! It felt like more than being set of fire — I felt like I was being incinerated. The beam dissipated, and I barely straightened in time to see her lift both arms, a mournful smile on her face complimenting the tears streaming down her cheeks.

I love you, so much. But I can’t keep you. 

More neon slipped down from her spine, pushing into her hands until they practically glowed like little suns, and she released, the beams crisscrossing a thousand times in the drained retention pond before colliding with my back. 

I tried to bring up some water to stop it, but there was no point — something that powerful couldn’t be stopped by liquid. It cut through my water and lit up my entire body until it felt like it was aflame, leaving me to scream in place as I tried to repel it somehow. The neon danced in my water, combined with my water until the entirety of what encapsulated me grew to glow like a supernova, and my vision began to white with it, losing Mom in the haze. 

Over my screams and the pain and the ringing in my ears, I heard her one last time. 

Our boys need you. 

The white overtook my vision, and I slipped away into this in between; pain was still there, in my side and chest and back. I felt like I was traversing through jello, trapped to experience every atom of anguish individually. The hiss of the neon even seemed to slow, like I was beyond sound itself; it just became a ring of tinnitus, barely anything at all until something else began to happen. 

Beeping. There was beeping, and a gross sort of sterile smell, like bleach. Is that what a body smells like when you zap it? “Defrosted plus six minutes, doctor.” 

“Good. Vitals?”

“Pulse is forty-five, respiratory ten.” 

I love you. Mom’s voice called from the back of my mind, distant. Like she was already worlds away from me. 

The hum of neon disappeared, and the dilation of my experience began to crunch, the pain growing and becoming compounded into itself as the voices grew clearer. The white light disappeared from my eyes and I gasped out as the world, its agony and soreness and confusion crashed into me, and my eyes shot open.