#literally before this he got into that distressed status when there's too many enemies

[sebdoeswords]

Sorry bby :(

[multi-obsessed-fanfic-writer]

Calculated Risk (Anakin x Reader)

Author’s Note: Here’s the Anakin fic I said was coming out today! Don’t worry, this one is all fluff after the last angst one I posted haha. I hope you guys enjoy! And as always, my tag list/ask box/requests are always open! Thanks so much!

Requested?: Yes, by @cluelessgurl - “I’d love to see a jedi reader coming to Anakin’s rescue during a battle, even though he felt like he didn’t need it but being grateful anyway, just the reader being badass basically lmao. That doesn’t mean the reader doesn’t get a scolding from Anakin after the mission though with some fluff of course.”

Summary: You swoop into battle to help your crush, Anakin, who has vehemently denied the need for any back-up on his mission. 

Calculated Risk

Anakin Skywalker x Reader

Word Count: 1.9k

Warnings: None, I don’t think!

“Ready to report a status update.” Anakin’s voice crackles to life on a hologram behind you. Out of curiosity, you turn to see Obi-Wan talking to Anakin.

“Yes?” Obi-Wan prompts, raising an eyebrow. You drift over to Obi-Wan’s side, ignoring the glance he gives you as you train your eyes on Anakin. Yes, you have a crush on Anakin. But it’s not like he actually likes you back, so it’s no big deal.

“A small droid army has intercepted us and we are working our way through,” Anakin says, and you hear blaster shots firing all around him. 

“Do you need...help?” Obi-Wan asks, hearing a few grunts from clones who are getting shot.

“Oh, no, we’re fine. I’ve got this mission completely under control, don’t even worry about it.” Anakin chuckles, refusing help a little too much. You and Obi-Wan give each other a knowing glance.

“Anakin, we can easily send a squad-”

“Obi-Wan, I assure you, I can handle this myself. Ahsoka’s here, too, and she would say the same thing. Right, Ahsoka?” Anakin calls out.

“Master, we need your help over here! There’s too many of them!” Ahsoka’s voice comes ‘off-screen’ from the hologram.

“See? We’re doing just fine on our own. Gotta go!” Anakin quickly ends the transmission.

Obi-Wan turns to you, clearly still not convinced by Anakin’s antics. 

“It’s obvious that he needs a little help, but he refuses to call in more troops. If I send in reinforcements behind his back, he won’t be happy about it.” Obi-Wan grumbles.

“When has Anakin being grumpy ever held you back?” You laugh.

“Well-”

“What if I could offer a compromise?” You interject again, actually happier with your plan than what Obi-Wan wants to do.

“And what do you suggest we do instead?” He lifts an eyebrow at you and folds his arms. You have a habit of getting into trouble just like Anakin, so he probably doesn’t trust your ideas too often.

“Send me.” You grin triumphantly at him.

“Send...you?” He repeats back slowly, turning the idea over in his mind. It’s not a no, so you continue to explain yourself.

“I’m one of the best Jedi Knights, even you can’t deny that. I can be reinforcements. But I’m still not a squad being dispatched to him so he can’t be mad because you didn’t technically ‘send reinforcements.’” You smirk, knowing you’ve outwitted Anakin. Obi-Wan sighs, but you see the small smile he’s trying to hide.

“You have a fair point...and Anakin is always happy to see you, so he won’t be upset that you’ve been sent.” Obi-Wan thinks out loud.

“What?” 

“What?” 

“I’m...gonna go now.” You murmur, still not sure if you heard him correctly.

“Okay, stay safe. And...keep Anakin out of trouble, please.” He sighs. You grin wickedly at him.

“You’re telling me that?” You ask.

“That’s true, you egg on his antics... Still, you know the difference between reckless stupidity and calculated risks that need to be taken.” He groans, motioning for you to leave already.

“Sure, Obi-Wan. I’ll see you once I save Anakin and complete the mission!” You laugh, running to the hangar. You climb into your speeder and take off from the cruiser, headed toward Anakin.

~+~

Upon your arrival on the planet, an imperial bomber greets you. You try to maneuver your ship around the blast, but unfortunately, it takes out one of your wings and your speeder starts to go down. 

As the ship plummets to the ground, you (as gracefully as possible) flip out of the top of it and land on a nearby rock, not too far from the battle. You watch as your ship makes contact with the ground and blows up. Sigh, you suppose you’ll have to take a ship back with the others.

You slide down the rock you’re currently on and join in the battle, taking down droids as you fight your way to Anakin and his crew. 

You spot Anakin fighting near Ahsoka, getting pushed back by the sheer amount of droids trying to overwhelm them. That’s the thing about the empire. They may not have good fighters, but they had a lot of them.

“Anakin!” You call, flinging your lightsaber like a boomerang through the sea of droids. You call it back to your hand with the force and find that you have successfully cleared a path to Anakin. You decide to take your chance while you have it and run to him.

“(Y/n)? What are you doing here?” Anakin grunts, still fighting off droids. You deflect a blaster shot that was aimed at him while he’s preoccupied.

“Helping you, duh.” You make a face, jumping into battle next to him. The two of you work flawlessly together, making quick work of the droids.

“I said I didn’t need reinforcements.” He sighs.

“Oh, don’t worry. I’m not reinforcements. I just came here to see you, of course.” You wink at him, taking down another entire line of droids. Anakin watches in almost-awe as you fight off the droids, much more efficient than the rest of his crew, and maybe even him. He’d never admit that, though.

He watches you do a backflip over a droid, slicing it straight through the middle as you land behind it. This elicits a chuckle from his lips.

“Always one to put on a show, huh?” He smirks, glancing over at you as if he wasn’t just staring.

“Only if I care who’s watching,” You flirt, giving him a quick smile as the two of you fall back into sync.

It’s only a moment later when you speak again.

“Bend down,” You tell him.

“What?”

“Bend down.”

“Why?”

“Just do it!” You groan. Does he always have to question you? You never question his antics.

“Fine!” He crouches down and slashes at the feet of droids for a moment. You grin wickedly and use his back as a stepping stone, propelling yourself forward as you slice straight through a line of at least five droids.

“Gotcha!” You laugh, continuing to have fun despite being in the midst of a battle. Anakin shakes his head at you, but you see the small smile gracing his face.

“Always so dramatic with your fighting,” He tsks.

“Says Anakin Skywalker, the man who always has to have a dramatic entrance.” You tease him. He’s silent for a moment.

“...Touché.”

~+~

Once the battle is over, you look over to Anakin who had made his way across the battlefield while fighting. He’s walking over to you, and he doesn’t look quite happy.

“Before you get mad-” But before you can even finish your sentence, he roughly grabs your wrist and yanks you over to the side of the group that was forming to get ready to leave.

He lets go of you and turns around to look at you, his eyes scanning all over your body. You suddenly feel slightly self-conscious.

“Um...Anakin? Are you checking me out?” You try to tease, but your words seem more shy than bold like you intended. 

“Checking you out for injuries, yes.” He huffs, but you see a slight blush rise to his cheeks, making you feel a little bit triumphant for at least a small victory.

“We have a medic for that.” You muse, growing bolder now that you know you’re not the only one slightly flustered.

“I know but- you could’ve gotten hurt, (Y/n). Why did you come out here?” He seems slightly distressed even after he concludes that you definitely didn’t get any injuries.

“I came to...help? Didn’t you hear me when I arrived?” 

“I didn’t need the help-” 

“Anakin I was literally here. I fought the battle, too, and I saw how many enemies there were. You needed the help.” 

“I...I didn’t want it to be you, though.”

You’re hurt by his words. Your brows furrow and you start to turn away from him. If he’s going to be like that, then you’ll just leave. You don’t have to put up with this.

“No, wait! Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that…” He grabs your upper arm to stop you. He rubs the back of his neck nervously as you turn to look back at him.

“How did you mean it, then?” You hum skeptically.

“I...I just worry about you, that’s all. I didn’t want you to get hurt because of me, I wouldn’t be able to take the guilt.” He murmurs, much quieter than he was before. You turn back to face him fully again, stepping just slightly closer to him than you were earlier. His face is downcast to the floor.

“Why?” You ask him, tilting his head up to meet your eye.

“I like you.” He blurts out. This makes your eyes widen in surprise. You didn’t think he’d be so...blunt with it.

But once again, before you can continue he tries to explain himself further.

“I like you, (Y/n), and I don’t want to be the reason you get hurt. I wanted to handle myself so that you...well, you wouldn’t have to come down here and you’d be impressed by me getting it done all by myself.” He explains, almost rambling at this point. You put a finger to his lips, successfully shutting him up.

“Ani, I’m already impressed by you every day. You don’t need to take on an entire droid army to impress me, but I do appreciate the thought.” You giggle, pressing a feather-light kiss to his cheek. You see his face flush again and you smile at the thought of making him feel this way.

You see movement in the background and you look behind Anakin to see some boxes shifting slightly to block the two of you off from the rest of the group.

“What are you doing?” You ask Anakin, knowing that he’s definitely using the force to do that. 

“Just moving some boxes in the way of prying eyes so I can do this.” You don’t have time to react before his lips are on yours. You kiss him back eagerly, wrapping your arms around his neck as his arms snake around your waist. 

Once the two of you pull apart for air, there’s a goofy grin on both your faces. 

“I was wondering when that was going to happen,” You giggle.

“We’ll have to keep this a secret from the Order.” Anakin breathes out, the smile not leaving his face as he takes your features in from up this close.

“I’m willing to take the risk.” You smile at him, kissing him again. He melts into your touch.

“Good, because I am, too.” He kisses you one last time. You finally break away from each other, knowing that staying here too long would cause suspicion.

“See you on the ship, Anakin.” You wink at him and walk toward the boxes, shifting them back with the force as you join the group again.

Anakin trails behind a bit, a dumbstruck look still on his face. You’d tell him to be more subtle, but it’s only Anakin’s squad of clones and you know they wouldn’t say anything. That, and it’s too cute for you to ruin.

Obi-Wan was right about you being the one to take calculated risks that you deemed worth it, and you’ve never been more sure about anything: Anakin is a calculated risk that is more than worth it.

~~~~~

Tags: @spideyboipete @rowley-with-ackerman @official-hitmxn @anakinlove

[feralphoenix]

SONGS OF RESISTANCE: The View Myla Grants Us Of Hallownest’s Moths

hello again hollow knight fandom, i am back with my picante takes and ready to discuss two things i love: myla hollowknight and the moth tribe! Let Us Be Sad About Them Together.

as with my previous essay i’m going to be putting this fellow up on dreamwidth later for accessibility purposes since my layout text may be too small for high-res pc users. this time i’ll be attaching that in a reblog to avoid this post getting eaten by the dread tungle algorithms.

CONTENT WARNINGS FOR TONIGHT’S PROGRAM: This essay discusses colonialism and genocide both in real life and the fictional depictions in Hollow Knight, as well as racism in the zombie horror genre and in fandom.

ALSO: if youre from a christian cultural upbringing (whether currently practicing, agnostic/secular, or atheist now), understand that some of what i’m discussing here may challenge you. if thinking thru the implications of this particular part of hollow knight worldbuilding/lore is distressing for you, PLEASE only approach this essay when youre in a safe mindset & open to listening, and ask the help of a therapist or anti-racism teacher/mentor to help you process your thoughts & feelings. just like keep in mind that youre listening to an ethnoreligiously marginalized person and please be respectful here or wherever else youre discussing this dang essay

SONGS OF RESISTANCE: THE VIEW MYLA GRANTS US OF HALLOWNEST’S MOTHS

In this house we are all love Myla.

Well, in all fairness, there are probably plenty of Hollow Knight fans who aren’t interested in her character, since which fictional characters one attaches to is always a matter of personal preference. But she’s still well-loved for a minor NPC and inspires a high level of devotion in her fans. There’s nothing that whips folks into a frenzy like a cute character you can’t do anything to help, and unlike some other characters in Hollow Knight Myla’s fate leaves no room for ambiguity. Once you pick up the Crystal Heart you’re left with only two choices: Avoid her, or kill her.

A lot of Hollow Knight’s world is designed to make you care about it so that it will hurt more when Ghost’s violent skillset proves too limited to save something or someone. The consequences of Hallownest’s founding and policies have directly or indirectly caused a great deal of damage to everything, and chief among those consequences with massive damage and a wide splash range is the Infection. Much has been said elsewhere by other people about Hollow Knight’s predominating mood being a struggle against futility, with Ghost arriving at the eleventh hour and every new tragedy designed to make the player more desperate to find something actionable, only finding out by trial and error what’s beyond your personal ability to save.

Myla, in that sense, is a typical example of that worldbuilding. She’s a particular kind of stock character in the zombie horror genre, the innocent who falls victim to the plague and cannot be saved, wrenching audience hearts and demonstrating the stakes.

But Hollow Knight plays with the trappings of zombie horror in a very unusual way, one I find thematically fascinating.

For a quick overview, the “zombie” as we know it in popular culture is an appropriation of a voudou (the Black American spiritual practice) concept that deals with the fear of slavery killing one’s spirit. (People more versed in/with roots in voudou culture can give a much more comprehensive overview than this simplistic one.)

The zombie horror genre, especially in Western media, is part of the great white fragility stock plot trifecta (the other two being alien invasions and robot uprisings). Zombie horror in particular expresses white fears that marginalized ethnic groups will rise up violently in revenge for their mistreatment and destroy white society. The fear of “that which is human, which ‘humanity’ is not” (to borrow mecha visual novel Heaven Will Be Mine’s pithy term) and the extreme levels of violence towards human-but-not bodies typical of zombie horror are often an expression of such bigotries. This is, again, a subject that’s been discussed in greater depth and with more nuance elsewhere.

But what Hollow Knight does is take the ugly metaphors and it makes them literal, makes it harder to ignore the toxic subtext of the genre. The Infection is literally a native god’s revenge on the settlers who committed genocide* against her people. How the Pale King’s colonization of the crater negatively affected the preexisting groups of bugs underpins every level of the worldbuilding, as does Hallownest’s cruelty towards its neighbors.

Hollow Knight is a game that is about the tragedy of Western imperialism. It is one of the work’s central themes. There are a lot of conversations that need to be had about the ways these themes manifest and, on a real-world level, about fandom’s predisposition to avoid the subject.

But, for now, let’s get back to Myla. If she fits such a stock zombie horror archetype, and Hollow Knight uses zombie horror tropes to underline the conversation it attempts to have about colonialism, then what has Myla got to teach us about the overall worldbuilding?

There's two topics I’d like to broach here: First we’ll get into how the circumstances of Myla’s infection fit in to the implied role of Crystal Peak in pre-Hallownest society. Then let’s take a long look at the lyrics of Myla’s song and what it implies.

MYLA, THE CRYSTALS, AND THE HOLY MOUNTAIN

If you think about it, Myla is an interesting outlier compared to the other NPCs we encounter on the verge of succumbing to the Infection. Both Bretta and Sly are unhappy: Bretta is a lonely, anxious bundle of abandonment issues yearning for someone to sweep her off her feet; Sly misses his pupils and loved ones who’ve left him in death (we never learn who Esmy is or what they were to Sly, but we sure can tell they’re not around anymore). The temptation to dream away those sadnesses seems to play a part in their vulnerability to the Infection, and also why Ghost’s interruption brings them back to reality.

Not so Myla. She appears to be blissfully unaware of her fellow miners’ fate, and most of her dialogue prior to her infection (besides the song - we’ll get to that later) is about how much fun she’s having at her job and how much she enjoys Ghost’s occasional company.

Yet she still winds up infected when Ghost’s back is turned. Why?

Not to discard the possibility that Myla’s got her own issues too, but in her case there seems to be another likely cause at hand: The crystals. If hit with the Dream Nail before infected, she mentions that she can hear them “singing” and “whispering”.

Under the The Hunter’s Hot Takes section of the Hunter’s Journal entries on various Crystal Peak enemies, we can learn more about the crystals - particularly in the entries for the Husk Miner and Crystallized Husk.

Crystal Peak’s crystals were thought of as particularly precious in Hallownest and harvested en masse for use in luxury items and the like. To do so, the mining operation was set up throughout most of the mountain, though the area around its peak still remains largely untouched. However, there’s more to the crystals than just that. Like Myla, the Hunter notes that the crystals can be heard to sing very very softly if one listens closely enough.

Perhaps of even more interest than that is this particular comment he gives us, from the Crystallized Husk journal entry: “There is some strange power hidden in the crystals that grow up there in the peaks. They gleam and glow in the darkness, a bright point of searing heat in each one.”

I don’t think it’s a particularly revolutionary idea to point out that there’s some connection between the crystals and Radiance’s power; this is something many players have intuited just based on Myla’s dialogue. But, in order to understand what Myla is demonstrating about the game’s world I think it’s important to think about what that connection is.

Speaking of which, the local Whispering Root has two important clues for us: The phrases “light refracted” and “energy contained”.

The very top of Crystal Peak is one of the only places in the crater where the moths’ architecture has escaped Hallownest destroying it, and is the only place in the entire game setting where their religious iconography remains fully intact. There are stone monuments covered in their language (which has been destroyed with the rest of their culture) and the statue of the Radiance - this is easier to see in the Wanderer’s Journal tie-in book, but the huge stone arches upon the Crown represent Radi’s halo and its rays and encircle her when viewed head-on or from a distance instead of the side view we get in the game.

The crystals grown here were used by the moths to store and cultivate Radiance’s light. It’s impossible to know what sort of architecture/infrastructure existed inside the mountain before Hallownest stole it from the moths. But between the massive scope of her statue and all the texts at the Crown, and the fact that the moths were working with their literal actual god’s freely given power here, it can be safely asserted that Crystal Peak was a holy ground to them.

Hallownest didn’t care about the mind-boggling level of spiritual significance Crystal Peak must have had to the natives, though. To the Pale King and his people, the crystals are just a natural resource to be harvested for personal profit.

This is unfortunately a conflict that still plays out in colonized countries today. If you’re American, #NoDAPL probably comes to mind; Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are filled with these sorts of horror stories too. Settler disrespect for indigenous sacred grounds is a huge problem that needs addressing. If you’re looking at the story of Crystal Peak and thinking it’s very on-the-nose... maybe it needs to be.

Anyway, Myla is nowhere near as miserable as Bretta or Sly, but she still notices that something’s up with these crystals. She hears the voice coming from inside, and she’s curious, and she tries very very hard to listen to it... so she DOES end up hearing Radiance’s voice. Radiance’s real voice, not the songs and whispers inside the crystals: The voice of a frightened, angry, grieving god who knows there’s a new vessel running around in Hallownest, and doesn’t want any part of that. A voice that’s pleading for someone, anyone to kill this dangerous creature, and save her from the threat Ghost poses.

Between how freaked out Radi is to know Ghost is poking around, the tendency we see in her boss battles for her to panic and kneejerk blast things at full volume/vibrance when she’s panicking, and the way her dream broadcast seems to be only a one-way communication line while she’s in the Black Egg... naturally this spells disaster for poor Myla.

Similar to the Moss Prophet, this small tragedy is a demonstration of the eleventh-hour state the conflict is in: The Pale King has escalated this situation so far, and Radiance is so traumatized and isolated, that bystanders who might in a kinder timeline have become Radi’s allies instead get caught up in her AOE. Myla’s definitely not as aware of the overall situation as the Moss Prophet, since she’s a Hallownest bug and not an indigenous one the way they are. But she noticed things were not as they seemed, and she was curious. Who knows what new possibilities could have opened up, if Radiance was able to truly communicate with bugs in the outside world?

Small side note before we move on, but I’ve noticed a tendency among some folks who notice the missed connections to come down extra hard on Radiance and chalk Myla’s infection/Moss Prophet’s death down to deliberate cruelty on her part. I’d like to gently push back against this.

Living in a post-colonial world we all absorb some level of prejudice from our surroundings, and it’s important to take a look at our first assumptions about people (or, in this case, fictional characters lol) to examine whether these prejudices we’ve inherited have influenced those assumptions.

So, if your first instinct is to look at this situation and say the problem is that Radiance is being too harsh and too angry where she should have stepped back and softened her emotions for others’ benefit to gently persuade them to her side... Please think about how when people of color and non-Christians express anger or hurt at our treatment, or even so much as calmly assert our boundaries, white/Christian viewers often view us as much more aggressive and threatening than we actually are. The “angry black woman” trope is a good example of this stereotype. You may want to look up the HuffPost article “Why It’s So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism” and its discussion of white fragility to further understand this phenomenon.

It is absolutely essential to remember the complex power dynamics in play in Hollow Knight and that the Pale King deliberately imprisoned Radiance (who had at this point already gone through an extreme amount of trauma) in a way that would compromise her ability to communicate with others. If you can extend compassion to characters like Ghost or the Pale King and empathize with their motives/feelings when their actions cause harm, but you are not willing to do the same with Radiance... it’s important to sit down with yourself and examine why that is.

THE MEANING BEHIND MYLA’S SONG

Okay, let’s switch gears and take a look at the lyrics to the song Myla sings, since it’s got some interesting things to tell us too.

The first verse, which you can hear from Myla the first time you meet her/before you acquire Vengeful Spirit, goes:

Bury my mother, pale and slight Bury my father with his eyes shut tight Bury my sisters, two by two, And then when you’re done, let's bury me too

There’s not much particularly story-related going on here except foreshadowing that Myla may in fact wind up dying. Most of what we get here is that a) this is a song about burying the dead and b) it’s morbid as fuck.

Curious, a new player might think of the mention of burying the dead; there are a lot of corpses just lyin’ around all over the ground - something that might lead one to believe Hallownest didn’t have such a custom. Later players will discover the Resting Grounds, confirming Hallownest did bury its dead... and that the gravekeepers are all dead too.

Let’s look at the second verse, which Myla remembers and will sing after you pick up Vengeful Spirit:

Bury the knight with her broken nail, Bury the lady, lovely and pale Bury the priest in his tattered gown, Then bury the beggar with his shining crown

This right here is where it gets interesting. The first verse describes the singer’s family as dead or dying, but the people we’re burying now sure do have some parallels to Hallownest's ruling body, don’t they?

Among Hallownest’s Great Knights, three of them - Dryya, Isma, and Ze’mer - were women. They are also very dead or might as well be: Dryya was killed by Traitor Lord’s resistance, Isma is a tree spreading acid through the kingdom’s waters to cut off access to the City of Tears, and Ze’mer hung up her nail after her mantis girlfriend’s death and only lingers on as a revenant.

While there aren’t any characters who are described in-text as “priests” in Hallownest, the idea of a tattered gown might bring Lurien the Watcher to mind, or perhaps the Soul Sanctum’s magicians before they went rogue.

The lovely, pale lady in the song can only refer to the White Lady, Hallownest’s queen. And there’s only one man in the game who has a shining crown: The Pale King. The lyrics are particularly derisive towards him in a way they aren’t to any of the other figures listed, too.

So, it seems like whoever came up with this song didn’t think much of Hallownest. With that in mind it’s hard to think that it originated from any sort of faction loyal to the king.

We’re missing a line from the third verse, which Myla sings after you’ve beaten Soul Master and she’s beginning to become infected. But what we do see of it is Huge in terms of lore:

Bury my body and cover my shell, [...] What meaning in darkness? Yet here I remain I’ll wait here forever ‘til light blooms again

So. The “protagonist” of this song’s family has died, and they expect to die as well, but even unto death they're waiting for Hallownest to fall and the light to return.

The moths became Hallownest’s gravekeepers after the Pale King forcibly assimilated them. Under the Pale King’s light, the moths forgot Radiance and most of their original culture, but Seer tells us in her final monologue that a few individuals remembered just enough to pass bits and pieces down through the generations. This secret resistance among the moths was what kept Radiance alive and prevented her from being sealed away entirely.

This song Myla sings comes from that moth resistance.

Code songs amongst oppressed ethnic groups are very much a real thing, especially when groups have to communicate or signal each other within hostile parties’ hearing. Since I’m American (and had a big ol crush on Harriet Tubman as a little kid lmao!) the first thing that came to mind for me when I made this connection was the working songs escaped Black slaves used in the Underground Railroad.

These have another point in common with the moth gravedigger song Myla sings, in that they enter the general cultural consciousness through out-group people who don’t know the true context. If you ever pick up a book of American baby songs, you’ll probably find some Underground Railroad code songs in there - often because generations ago white kids heard these songs from Black slaves or servants, and went on to sing the same songs to their children with zero awareness of what the songs were really for.

So some Hallownest bug somewhere probably heard the moths’ song and liked it and sang it in a context totally divorced from its original one, and it got spread around and passed down to become one of Myla’s old favorites, with her seemingly not realizing the meaning behind the lyrics. The moths’ song of devotion to their lost god survived them as a people.

This is some VERY realistic and layered worldbuilding. There is so much to glean from just one NPC’s dialogue when put together with other clues. Of course all of it is SAD and DEPRESSING, but Hollow Knight is a tragedy with a super unsubtle point to make about the unsustainability of Western imperialism.

What happens to Myla is awful, and upsetting, and unfair. So was what happened to the moths and their sacred ground, and to Radiance too. It’s important to understand the scope of the conflict that led to all this happening, trace it to its roots, and lay it at the feet of the ones responsible for engendering all this tragedy in the first place: Hallownest and the Pale King.

*A NOTE ABOUT MY USE OF THE TERM “GENOCIDE”

This is a tangent, but since there’s some debate about whether it’s appropriate to define the Pale King’s actions towards indigenous bug nations as genocide, allow me to cite the official definition of genocide here.

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention for short) defines genocide like this:

Genocide is any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, religious, or racial group, as such:

A) Killing members of the group

B) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

C) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

D) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

E) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Among the abovelisted, Hallownest is guilty of A (Deepnest and the moths), B (Deepnest physically/the moths vis a vis brainwashing), C (the mantis tribe and the hive), and E (the moths, which we know from Marmu, and possibly the mosskin also - Isma is mosskin).

Then there is cultural genocide, i.e. acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, religious, or racial group's way of life. Let’s look at the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIP) and how it defines cultural genocide:

A) Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities

B) Any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their lands, territories or resources

C) Any form of population transfer which has the aim or effect of violating or undermining any of their rights

D) Any form of assimilation or integration by other cultures or ways of life imposed on them by legislative, administrative or other measures

E) Any form of propaganda directed against them

Hallownest is guilty of every item on this list. A: The moths, attempted with Deepnest. B: The moths, the mantises, the flukes, the mosskin; also attempted with Deepnest. C: The moths, the mantises, the flukes. D: The moths; attempted with the mantises and Deepnest. E: The mantises and Deepnest.

Any sort of discussion of the wide-reaching harm Radiance caused MUST include the context that the Infection is her response to multiple levels of genocide. Discussion that does not include this context loses nuance and simplifies the conflict and power dynamics portrayed in the game in ways that reflect real-life racism and Christian supersessionism.

Now, this is NOT some sort of holier than thou Fandom Purity dunk to say that it’s Bad or Wrong to care about Hallownest’s nobility. Like, one of my favorite characters in this dang game is the White Lady, who spent a long ass time enabling her husband’s actions before she finally walked out on him over the mass infanticide thing. You can, and it is okay to, love TPK and want rehabilitation for him while acknowledging that the dude has done objectively bad things.

I just feel that it’s important to keep things in perspective so that we don’t wind up stirring a bunch of real-world bigotry into our fandom funtimes. A lot of us don’t have the luxury of turning our brains off and simply Not Seeing It, because these same sorts of dynamics are behind a lot of the hardships that threaten our everyday stability.

It’s pretty hard to have conversations about those things in real life if one can’t even recognize them in fiction. So, this might be a good opportunity to start practicing anti-racism so we can better utilize that ideology in real life, where the stakes are much higher.

[qhazomb]

I had a slightly angsty idea inspired sort of by your Thingrey AU and an anime with shapeshifting alien parasites.

Body Horror Warning

So let's say Gordon gets severely wounded, like impaled and suffering damage to some vital organs. Benrey panics bc he doesn't want to lose Gordon, so he calls on all the information he gained from eating enemy humans, figures out which organs are required for survival, and he uses shapeshifting to recreate the vital ones with some of his own biomass and then carefully sets them in place so they can pick up the slack left by the ruined human organs (which were removed, and possibly consumed by Benrey for 'recycling' purposes)

It would take some work, to make sure the replacement organs don't follow a "consume and convert" directive and end up completely replacing the human, but if it does work, then Gordon wakes up with a few enhancements.

(Or he wakes up partway through the process to see an alarmed Benrey with one limb tendril reaching into his chest. Wouldn't THAT be a shock)

And overtime, the result of living with alien organs means Gordon becomes less human (or more than human) as the alien organic matter integrates properly.

Basically another take on the concept of Benrey unintentionally making Gordon like himself, and teaching him how to exist in this new state.

OKAY SO THIS GOT REALLY LONG CAUSE I GOT TWO AUS/PLOTS THAT SHARE IDEAS WITH THIS HERE WHOOPS i’ve thought about something kinda similar to that whole “thingrey heals gordon by basically giving him a biomass transplant” thing! i’ve mentioned before that gordon doesn’t get his hand fully cut off in this au, but it does get cut down to the bone, and aside from some sweet voice to stop the bleeding, it doesn’t get proper treatment until they get back to the states. he keeps his hand, but it’s got nerve damage, and how well he can feel and move his hand fluctuates often. thingrey feels kinda guilty over this, both ‘cause if he’d just stuck around longer he probably could’ve healed the wound up fully, and also the only reason that red shirt attacked gordon in the first place was cause the dude was paranoid about gordon being another “thing”. he tries brainstorming ways to maybe fix the damaged nerves.... all he can think of is by replacing those nerves with his own biomass... but then, since literally every part of himself is connected to his consciousness, he’d basically become gordon’s hand, and neither of them are very jazzed about that idea. so he tries to figure out a way to replace the damaged nerves, and then maybe... remove his consciousness from those cells? and hope they don’t do like you said and basically turn into a fucked-up alien cancer. he tests this out on some deer in the woods, giving them non-fatal injuries that at least fuck up their nerves, replacing those damaged nerves with some of himself, trying to yank his own ‘brain’ out of them (takes a few tries, but he’s able to do it eventually!) and then very closely watching the deer to see if his old cells go all super cancer on the deer. when they don’t, just integrating cleanly and seamlessly with the deer’s body, he is absolutely delighted :) this doesn’t end with gordon turning into his own thing-alien, tho. i have another au that DOES, though! it also involves a “sharing a body” thing.

so gordon’s dying from some sort of unknown cancer-like disease he developed during those times he had to swim through fuckin’, probably-radioactive sewage water while there was a hole in his HEV suit with a big open wound. despite their best efforts, nobody’s able to figure out how to cure him, but then benrey gets the idea of just making him a new body like he does for himself. but to get gordon’s consciousness in said new body and actually stick, gordon needs to have a direct link to the cosmic ether like benrey does, so that his life energy will actually be strong enough to keep the body going. and to do THAT, gordon’s consciousness/life energy needs to hang out in a space that’s already full of cosmic energy. which benrey’s brain just so happens to be. this happens still kinda early on in them being roommates, so when benrey proposes the idea he is more than half expecting gordon to turn it down, rather dying than being stuck THAT close to benrey for however long it’d take to get him all cosmic-i-fied. thankfully benrey was wrong on that front, as gordon tells him that “Dude, you’re annoying as hell, but are in NO way worse than straight-up death. Let’s do it.” gordon doesn’t get to control benrey’s body any, he’s just riding shotgun. “spectator mode” as benrey describes it. he is able to feel all of benrey’s senses, though, and benrey uses this to do him another solid and offers to do stuff that gordon missed being able to do while bedbound, benrey’s like “i’m your player character in a life sim game now, bro.” the first thing gordon asks benrey to do is eat some fast food from like bk or mcdiddy’s or something because “All I could eat for well over a month was that nasty fucking slop they served at the hospital. In liquid form. I want. A fucking. Cheeseburger.” some weird dream shit also happens, and gordon ends up learning a whole lot more about his weird alien annoyance-turned-enemy-turned-roommate-turned-savior while stuck in his head. once gordon officially achieves glowcloud status, benrey puts him together a new body (he tried to get as many details about gordon’s old looks right, but also assured gordon that if any where off, he could fix them himself. grats feetman, YOU’RE a shape-shifter now, too!) oh yeah, and in order to get gordon out of benrey’s body, benrey just does what gets his own consciousness out of it. and dies. by just casually snapping his own neck. gordon is VERY DISTRESSED by this but tries to calm down cause he knows for a fact that benrey ain’t dead. it’s still awkward as hell having to tip-toe around his at-the-moment lifeless body, after gordon slips into his brand new one. tho when benrey ‘wakes back up’, gordon just yells at benrey for not giving him a proper warning before the guy broke his fucking neck. also later mr. coolatta does his bs time freeze thing to have a word with the newly ‘ascended’ gordon, and gordon decks in the fucking face, having now learned not only about benrey’s lab rat childhood, but that mr. coolatta is p much the whole reason benrey had to grow up like that. thankfully mr. coolatta is just ‘that’s fair’, as tommy was similarly pissed at him when he learned. (tommy didn’t punch him, but he did near completely avoid interacting with his father for over a month, and what little interactions they did have at that time, tommy made a point to give off just the angriest fucking vibes. mr. coolatta would rather have been punched, honestly.) THAT GOT LONG WOW, i’ve just had a lot of thoughts about this “sharing a body/becoming non-human” mix au of mine, ha ha. might make a whole fic one day. maybe. dunno.

[hello-im-not-a-possum]

Werewolf Thomas x Merman Sammy.

This might end up taking multiple chapters, in addition to me digging in too deep, this ship in general just gives off a petty enemies, to reluctant allies due to supernatural circumstances, to ‘hey you’re not as bad as I thought.’, to friends, to lovers vibe.

Occam's razor indicates that the simplest explanation to a scenario is also the most likely scenario to be the true one.

For example: when an animation studio suddenly closes down and gets condemned, people who are on the outside looking in are much more likely to blame the studio's poor money management than go look for some extraordinary truth. That, paired with the workers of the said studio also coming out to site the terrible conditions of the place as an added cause for the studio's demise. When people have to work long hours with little pay to show for it in a dingy, gloomy, constantly-falling-apart studio that clearly wasn't going anywhere except six feet under or lower, they aren't exactly motivated to work hard or happy.

The Hunger was intense, growing beyond mere gnawing and was now consuming the cursed mechanic. The first change he felt was his teeth, the Curse deciding it was easier to make them all fall out at once so his new ones would grow in. He cut up his own tongue on the newly-made fangs. Call it an act of mercy or an act of mockery, but the tongue followed the teeth's example, falling out altogether so that the tongue of a wolf could grow in.

No one batted an eye when a majority of the studio's former workers left with some of them being untraceable, the lucky ones moved on to greener and happier pastures, others simply got a change in scenery, and sadly, accidents happen all the time in such an unsafe studio, people got severely injured in there all the time, so it was gut-wrenching for many, but not a shock to discover that it was common for unlucky people to lose their lives in the Dancing Demon's domain.

His entire body burned on the inside and outside, taking off his clothes did nothing for him as his new, thick coat grew in, a coat that was the same pitch black as his hair, at least, most of it was. The change did not hurt as much as he thought it would. As painful as it sounded when his bones became a crackling choir that reminded him of fireworks, it was not pure agony, he was sore, afraid, and so, very, very, hungry, but he was physically fine.

No one suspected anything like somebody intentionally sabotaging the many pipes that pumped ink through the entire building, that would just be silly! It was more than obvious that the pipes got the same treatment as the rotting wooden walls: they were ignored until it was too late. With all the wood, paper, flammable ink, candles, no windows, and avid smokers in that place, it was only a matter of time before that place went up in flames.

Colors began to dim and fade out leaving him with vision that could only see black, white, and the several shades of gray inbetween them. The trade off with his senses made itself clear as his sense of smell and hearing both grew stronger, he could barely think as the smells and sounds his human self had been blind to came to him at full force, overwhelming the mechanic. He held back the urge to scream and call for help, he knew none would come, unless it was the dogcatcher at this point. However he would not hold back the urge to whine, whimper and cry, as pathetic as he looked and sounded, he would at least give himself that mercy, even if he didn't deserve it.

No one thought the ink machine was anything more but an expensive and stupid project that definitely sped up the studio's already fast decline, but only with it's mere presence. Honestly, a machine that made models out of ink, wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to make a statue of your beloved mascots out of plastic or something like that?

Thomas yelped in surprise when the tail grew in, it felt like somebody gave his spine a good sharp yank. He was furious, scared, even remorseful as he knew he was responsible for this happening to himself and possibly others knowing Mr. Drew, and by god, did he want to sink his teeth into something.

No one except for crazy cross-clutching worrywarts who want to spoil every one else's fun and or conspiracy theorists would assume that the Little devil darling who graced the comics and silver screens for at least a decade would have literal satanic magic going on behind the scenes, no matter how screwy the man in charge seemed.

He was starving all day ever since the ritual, but now that the changes were over, he felt hungrier than ever before, like his stomach was a black hole that would make him consume everything in his path.

No one would ever seriously suggest that magic was real and led to being the studio's final nail in the coffin instead of becoming its savior like it's founder had wanted it to.

In the moment, Thomas Conner believed that Occam's razor was bullshit.

The mechanic knew what he'd seen, he knew to an extent what he took part in, he saw what happened to some of the unluckier members of the "Missing" studio workers, and most importantly of all, he experienced what he just went through. There was no 'simple' or 'normal' explanation for it; the ritual failed and as a result, he and a handful of other people had gotten cursed.

Here the new wolf was, squeezing his now much larger body underneath his bed to do nothing but cower like a frighted animal while trying to convince himself not to panic or to eat his pet snake. Keeping his human mind at the moment was both a blessing and a cur- -some extra salt to rub into his fresh wounds.

On one hand, the fact he was still smart enough to know better than to jump out the window and follow his nose for food like his instincts were telling him to was a lifesaver that kept him safe from animal control. On the other hand; if he was a beast in mind, he would at least be doing something more productive than sulking in his apartment thinking about anything else other than how badly he got fucked over, how his life was in shatters and how he had nobody but himself to blame for it (Well, aside from Joey, but that wasn't the point).

While far from ideal, his current plan was to remain under that bed, try his best to go to sleep, and occasionally chew its legs to stop himself from going on a rampage. He might not be the most supernaturally informed person, but he had seen enough werewolf horror flicks to know that nothing good would come if he gave into his hunger or if he tried to leave. Best case scenario; he'd become as sick as a dog after eating something he found in the garbage. Worst case scenario; Somebody decides that he'd make a great living room rug and BANG!

And then, his ears perked up as he heard the song.

It was a simple, repetitive tune, made with a music box maybe? It was the first time he heard it yet it felt familiar to him. The song itself was muffled, used a lot of ambiance in its melody, and if he strained his ears enough, he could almost pick up the sound of a voice singing along with it, but it was far too faint for him to tell who or what was singing, let alone what the lyrics to the song were. It sounded nice in spite of it's strangeness, but it gave him goosebumps. He knew it wasn't playing from the radio, he only kept it on when he was fixing something at home.

The curious wolf struggled to push a window open with his snout to figure out where it was coming from. He was making progress, the song did sound slightly less muffled now that he was poking his head out the window. Was it just him, or did the tune become faster? And it was also louder and more frantic, and he swore that the constantly repeating motif sounded like something he knew. The mechanic never considered himself to be a man with a keen ear for music, but he knew he heard it before.

Three short notes, three slightly longer notes, three more short notes, again and again and again repeating endlessly...---...Wait a minute. Thomas didn't recognize that pattern from a song, he recognized that that was a call for help!

"Don't do it..." He grumbled to himself as he put his paws up on the windowsill. "You don't know what'll happen, or if you'll even get there in time. Just go back inside and you'll figure out what to do with yourself in the morning."

The song, almost as if it was aware he was trying to ignore it like he was ignoring his hunger, grew louder and faster.

"Don't give in..." The wolf turned back. "You can't help anyone like this anyway, you'll only end up hurting yourself."

It... started to die down, back to its regular, chilling melody and grew even softer. Flickering away like a candlelight in the cold.

"Don't..." The wolf let out a very tired sigh as he looked out the window. "Oh fuck me."

Thomas leapt out the window and sped towards the source of the song, not caring who or what saw him in the city that never sleeps, he bolted directly into the forest. He tried to block out the new sounds of various creatures he couldn't hear before as well as the new smells of the earth underneath his paws and the plants all around him.

Strange marks were on the ground, they looked like someone dragging themselves through the dirt and the marks themselves smelled vaguely of fish and ink.

The song, while faint was very close, he was hot on the mysterious caller's trail! In fact, the wolf's new sense of smell started to become useful as he picked up some familiar scents in the woods; the smell of ink, smoke from a fire, and the smell of cologne- Wait, he recognized that specific cologne, it was that fancy European brand that the "missing" hot-headed music director used to keep himself from smelling like cigar smoke, vomit, and despair.

And the voice of the singer in the distress call 'song' did sound like him now that he was close enough to hear it. He felt a pit of dread in his stomach that almost made him forget his hunger. He knew that the musician was far too prideful to call for help for anyone unless this was his very last option and his will to live made the difficult task of overpowering his ego.

Squelch.

Almost confirming his fears and adding a new one that he was too late, the mechanic made the mistake of looking down and saw that he stepped on a severed leg. A black, tar-like substance that smelled like ink and rotten meat was squeezed out of the part of the thigh that should've been attached to a person.

"...Mr. Lawrence?" He hesitantly called out, thankfully getting him an exhausted groan in response. "Lawrence, where are you?"

"Here." A hoarse yet relieved sounding voice answered. "Look down."

The wolf looked down into a shallow pool to see what had become of the musician. If he was being honest with himself, he wouldn't deny that the music director was always easy on the eyes, and while the curse effected him drastically, that fact about him didn't change.

The water was clear enough to show off the musician's jet black, fish-like tail which glistened in the moonlight, the still human half of his body went through some changes as well; his hands were webbed and clawed, unlikely to properly hold any instrument, let alone use it, his torso, arms, and neck had patches of black scales scattered about haphazardly like splashes of paint on a canvas. Aside from the siren's new set of teeth (which looked like they could haunt anyone's nightmares), waist-long hair when it was previously shoulder length hair, and glassier eyes, the man's head seemed relatively unchanged.

"Could you stop gawking!?" Sammy re-positioned himself to keep his tail out of sight, or at least he tried to, the damn thing was two thirds of his body and he didn't exactly have something to cover himself up with. "I'm not exactly 'thrilled’ about this... Change, for lack of a better term."

"That's one way to put it." The mechanic almost let out a sympathetic chuckle. "I’d never thought I’d be saying this, but it’s great to see you haven’t died yet.”

“Why thank you.” The merman sarcastically responded. “That’s exactly why I went through all the trouble of literally singing my fucking lungs out!” He exclaimed while gesturing to a pair of charcoal-black things that the wolf previously thought were rocks. “To hear you tell me that ‘it’s great I haven’t died yet’.”

The wolf rolled his eyes.

“So why did you go through all the trouble for summoning me here then? Aside from the whole ...fish thing, you seem perfectly fine.”

“It... wasn't intentional.” The fish-man begrudgingly admitted, his voice sounded bitter, but his eyes shone with fear. “I wasn’t thinking about who or what would hear me or come at the moment. My body was falling apart before my eyes and all that was on my mind during it was; ‘Oh god, I’m going to die here, aren’t I?! And if not, my life will be ruined beyond repair!’. And when I sang out as a panicked response, you became the first to show up. Nothing more, nothing less.”

The siren swam to the other side of his aquatic prison and sighed resignedly.

Tom’s ears folded back in guilt, It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the musician was cursed by the failed ritual HE played a giant part in. As strongly as he disliked the musician, it didn’t feel right to leave him like this; alone, scared, and immobile in a place that could even spell out his death if he was unlucky enough.

He walked over to the other side of the pool and laid down beside the edge of it.

“Hey, you don’t need water to breathe, right?”

The siren looked confused.

“I’ve been breathing air just fine, in fact, I think one of the few advantages to this new body is that it replaced my old lungs with healthier ones. Why are you asking?”

“Climb on my back and I’ll take you out of here, granted, I don’t know where we’re gonna go, but where ever it is, it’ll be better than sitting around waiting for your pool to dry up.”

The merman, while hesitant, did climb up on the wolf man’s back, wrapping his arms around his neck to keep him from falling off, the wolf stood up and ran deeper into the woods.

[taexual]

HOLIC - 46 | jb x reader

pairing: Im Jaebum x Reader

genre: enemies to lovers au | roommate au

warnings: angst + some conflict resolution

words: 3k

disclaimer: i do not own the gif, please let me know if it belongs to you, so i can give proper credit

           prev / next

You’d left a hundred voicemails. You'd called a thousand times. You’d sent a million texts. And yet, even despite your ruthless ambush, Jaebum – in an equally as ruthless manner – still did not reply to you. That was understandable, however, and, more than expected, really – but it still brought you great distress.

You didn’t know where he was and, after having stayed awake the entire night, trying to get ahold of him and waiting for him to return home, you suddenly weren’t too sure where you were, either. Your own room felt foreign and the apartment itself lost all of its’ familiarity.

Finally, at around five in the morning (or, in other words, about five centuries later), your phone rang with a text from Jaebum. You nearly gave yourself whiplash as you leaped from your spot on the bed to reach your phone that you’d left charging across the room.

His text was short and right to the point – he was simply letting you know he was with his friend – but the very fact that he had texted you lifted some of the heaviness off your shoulders. There was plenty more of it still there, though, and you crouched down, hugging your knees to your chest as you re-read Jaebum’s text message another dozen times.

You wanted to call Mark and Jackson to see if he was with them but then you paused. Jaebum obviously needed some space – and time – right now. And, although you felt like he’d left the apartment a long while ago, it was obviously not long enough.

You were dying to explain yourself but you also recognized that he needed to be away from you for a little while longer. The text he’d sent you sparked a new hope that this period of you and him being away from each other wouldn’t last long. You just had to endure it without losing your mind completely. The text had to mean that he knew you cared about him – even despite what you’d done – and he didn’t want you to crawl out of your skin with worry – even if that was precisely what you’ve been doing since he’d left – which, in turn, had to mean that he cared about you, too. But you knew that already – you didn’t need his text to show you that; his reaction when you told him about Jiho was proof enough.

You’d postponed the conversation so you wouldn’t hurt Jaebum and, predictably, you ended up doing so anyway.

Giving him some space was the right thing to do now, so you let him be. Until, a few hours later, you couldn’t take it anymore. It had started to feel like the more space you were giving him, the more place you left for his doubts to take over him. Soon, there would be no space left in his mind to hear you explain what had happened in the past few weeks.

But, just like before, no matter how much you called or texted, Jaebum didn’t answer. Shortly, he turned his phone off altogether. The phone could have died, of course, but still, hearing the operator announce that the person you were trying to reach was unavailable felt very personal. It felt like he’d turned his phone off specifically to avoid seeing your name on his screen.

You knew you called this upon yourself by not telling him earlier but knowing didn’t make this easier. If anything, the guilt you were feeling only seemed to magnify whenever you allowed yourself to think about how easily this could have been avoided.

Jaebum didn’t return home the whole night—this wasn’t the first Sunday night you’ve spent awake but it certainly was the most significant one—and, although your heart had already torn itself into the smallest pieces, you resisted and gave him the space he needed. You still called periodically and left as many messages as you could before your service provider got concerned, but you weren’t going out of your way to get him to respond to you.

By Monday afternoon, you were really only leaving him voice messages so he'd know that you really did care about him and you were aware of how big of a mistake you’ve made by not talking to him about this sooner.

By Monday night, however, you’ve started to have auditory hallucinations and lost count of how many times you thought you’d heard the lock of your apartment door click. Choosing to wait until nighttime, in case Jaebum would choose to return home after all, you sat patiently in your kitchen, doing anything and everything to keep your gaze from shifting to the door.

You wondered if Jaebum would have admired your loyalty – he’d have certainly called you clingy and, perhaps, even compared you to a dog waiting for its’ owner to come home – or if he’d have hated to know that you were still waiting for him to return even after what you’ve done. Frankly, you didn’t spend all of this time sulking – you got angry a couple of times, too. Sometimes, you’d think you didn’t do anything wrong – really, nothing happened between you and Jiho; you were just working on your career in the only way that was possible – but, immediately after, you’d find yourself admitting that this wasn’t even the real problem here.

Jaebum didn’t really storm out of your apartment just because you were working with Jiho and he hated the guy. He left because you worked with Jiho behind his back, purposefully dodging his questions about your work just so you wouldn’t have to admit the truth. Even after giving you a fair amount of openings – not that you needed an excuse to share the events of your day with him, considering your relationship status – you still stayed quiet, choosing vague words and plain silence as a way to answer his questions. It was a form of defense in a way and, consequently, a form of lying.

While you listened to Jaebum give you breakdowns of his day and updates on his career, you did not reciprocate and secretly cherished his carefulness – how many times did you thank God that Jaebum was so understanding and so willing to ignore your unusual behavior? – and that was so much worse than just lying about Jiho to him.

When your alarm clock rang the next morning, you got out of bed with a definite plan – you would seek both Mark and Jackson out to see if Jaebum was staying with either of them and you would do anything in your power to talk to him and explain. You could only give him space to think for so long before you drowned in your own thoughts and watched him to drown in his.

Before you could follow your plan – although, perhaps calling it a plan was generous; you really had no idea what you were going to say to his friends if they even agreed to help you – you still had to get through a full day of work at the gallery.

Having always dreaded to see Jiho there, you didn’t really expect today to be any different but a surprise awaited you on your phone when you picked it up to check the time after exiting your car outside of your gallery. It was a text notification from Hyojin, warning you about an article, evidently recounting the photography event you and Jiho had gone to on Friday night. Your stomach sunk before you even opened it, completely disregarding the message your friend wrote before she attached the link.

Instead of reading Jiho’s recap of the event – he’d sworn he would use your pictures for it but you ended up not taking any – you were forced to read through another pile of tabloid-like garbage that, predictably, focused completely on your relationship with Jiho.

Now, on the one hand, the article proved that Jiho’s publicity stunt was a complete success – you nearly suffocated when you saw a picture of yourself leaving the gallery and Jiho storming off after you, an ominous “young photographer couple” written in the description of the shot; clearly, you and him have been noticed – but, on the other hand, not a single sentence in the entire article even mentioned your aspiration to become a successful photographer.

Not only did the writers – tipped off by Jiho, no doubt – assumed that you and him were together but they also allowed themselves to speculate if, perhaps, you and him were going to be the next big artist-and-his-muse names in the world of photography. They even went as far as to compare you and him to Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick – which was right on point, considering that Edie was, really, one of many Warhol’s muses – further proving that they didn’t even consider you a photographer. At least, not in the literal sense of the word – they saw the camera in your hands and pointed it out in the description of another photograph of you by the entrance to the gallery. But Jiho was “the photographer” and, according to the writers, in the relationship hierarchy, you were either Jiho’s apprentice (the writers dismissed the possibility after merely toying with it for a sentence of two) or his muse. Not his colleague. Not a photographer. Barely even a person, really.

Beyond frustrated, you walked through the double doors of the gallery and, before you could toss your phone across the empty foyer, you caught sight of Jiho, talking to someone on the phone next to the staircase. You really considered strangling him for a hot minute but, after taking a few deep breaths, you decided to handle this like an adult – or, as close to one as you could get with your blood boiling and pulse pounding in your ears.

“Did you fucking read this?” you demanded as soon as you reached him, pushing your phone to his face. “This is the second god-damn time this happens.”

“Wh—I’m—l-let me call you back,” Jiho said before hanging up the call and putting his phone away so he could focus on yours. He squinted as he read the headline. “Oh, so we’ve definitely been seen, huh? That’s good.”

“That’s not good,” you disagreed. “And we were not seen at all. You were. I was your shadow if even that. Again!”

Jiho wasn’t listening to you as his eyes continued to scan the contents of the article.

“Your little stunt of leaving early worked out nicely, too,” he added in regards to the last bit of the article that recounted, in epic little detail, how you left the event early and Jiho “followed right after like a love-sick puppy”.

“It wasn’t—Jesus, how much money did you pay to get them to write this bullshit?” you asked, retrieving your phone after noticing that it didn’t bring the expected result – not that you knew what you were expecting; it was hard to imagine Jiho doing something other than grinning like a deformed jack-o-lantern.

“You think I paid for this?” Jiho’s eyebrows reached his hairline. “Wow, you must think I’m a millionaire.”

“What are you talking about? You knew so many people who were there—”

“So, I talked to them,” he said as if that was the most obvious thing in the world. Probably rolled his eyes, too, but you weren’t looking at him – you were reading the article and further fueling your anger. “I mean, some damage control had to be done, you caused quite a fuss there. I tried to give the others the impression that—”

“This is your fault, then!” you cut him off with a high-pitched shriek that he seemed to flinch away from.

“I’m not sure I understand what I’m being accused of, here,” he said as calmly as he could. The calmness was a façade, as you’ve already learned, and the veins on his neck were becoming more prominent by the second. “We needed exposure and we got it. What’s the problem?”

“What kind of exposure is this? You told me this wouldn’t seem like a romantic relationship. That they would focus on our professional relation instead of twisting it around to make it seem like—”

“Professional relationships don’t sell nearly as well as—”

“Sell?” you scoffed. “What are these people buying, exactly? That you’re a photographer? Well, they knew that already, I would hope. Or you’ve surely wasted the past years of your life.”

“Right—”

“There’s not really much else in there about me. Except that I’m—”

Seemingly having had enough of your endless tirade, Jiho crossed his arms over his chest, cutting you off, “maybe if you wanted there to be more descriptions of you, you shouldn’t have left early.”

“Oh, so they could have taken more pictures of us to strengthen their narrative of us being romantically involved? No. That’s not okay,” you shook your head, finding it difficult to voice your thoughts rationally and not start screaming. Screaming would have felt so nice. “These articles… they’re not helping anyone but you. Next week, they can write one about you and some other “muse” you’ve brought to a photography event. No one will give a shit about me. I agreed to do this to get myself more exposure as a photographer. Instead, I’m just a new toy you can play around with to get yourself more well-known.”

“Listen, you have this warped sense of how this works,” Jiho said. His patronizing voice made you clench your fists. “These things take time. You think you’ll get popular overnight—”

“Don’t tell me what I think!” you yelled, your patience wearing thin.

“Okay, alright. I’m sorry,” he said, not sounding one bit apologetic. He just felt like he was winning because you were suddenly shouting and he was still successful at resisting to raise his voice. “Let’s not talk about this here—”

You took a deep breath and closed your eyes for a second or two – purely a precaution so you wouldn’t punch him and get yourself fired – even if you were already one step away from quitting – and probably arrested.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” you said then. “This is the last article depicting me as someone’s rumored girlfriend.”

Jiho didn’t seem surprised to hear this.

“See, that’s good because, actually, I’m having second thoughts about this, too,” he said, the bitter tone of his voice dripping with arrogance and entitlement. “Clearly, you’ve got it in your head that you’re in a position to demand an exhibition when you’re virtually nothing in the photography world. You don’t listen to a single word I say and you have enough guts to give me ultimatums as if you know how this works better than I do. I don’t know who you think you are but this is not how any of this works. All I did was try to help you—”

You thought you could only recall one other instance when you felt this frustrated – and more than ready to either rip all of your hair out or to beat Jiho to a pulp – and that was when you met up with Suji and had to listen to her boast about her happy relationship with Jaebum. My God, what a pair her and Jiho would have made – both bull-headed, arrogant, and so unbelievably thick, it was a miracle they’ve gotten this far in life without getting all of their teeth knocked out.

“This was no help for me,” you said through clenched teeth and then unlocked your phone to see the headline of the article again. You pointed your phone at him as proof. “This was all for you.”

“It was meant to help both of us and the gallery we represent—”

“Oh, open your fucking eyes, the gallery’s not even mentioned in the article,” you groaned.

Jiho swallowed, an undeniable – and very well-executed – image of someone who felt wronged and disrespected evident on his face.

“This isn’t working,” he stated, then, obviously taking immense pleasure in having the ability to say this. He knew he was above you in this situation and he relished it. “I’ve lost count of how many rules listed in the contract you’ve broken and yet I closed my eyes, thinking it’d be worth it. I don’t really think so anymore. I think you’re too full of senseless pride and I’m afraid I can’t work with that. You told me you’d quit if we didn’t host your exhibition and, admittedly, that caught me off-guard and, perhaps, even impressed me. But I can see everything clearly now – you’re absolutely not the sort of artist we’re looking for.”

“What sort of artists are you looking for?” you asked, your blood hot and about to pour out of your ears in rapid squirts of burning rage. “Pushovers, willing to follow you around like newborn puppies? Fresh, vulnerable university graduates who lack the spine to tell you that what you’re doing is preying on their lack of experience and using them to your own gain?”

“I’m sorry if that’s how you feel,” Jiho said. “Unfortunately, this partnership is over. Don’t worry about the contract anymore. We’re not going to be hosting your—”

“Oh, good! Perfect!” you shouted before he could finish. “I never wanted to work with you in the first place.”

You turned around, walking away, but Jiho couldn’t resist not having the last word. He simply felt too proud to let you leave this easily.

“Hopefully you’ll continue to feel that way,” he called out after you, “because you can forget all about your dream of hosting your own exhibition.”

You didn’t want to turn around and say something else because it felt like admitting defeat but you couldn’t resist it. You’ve still had a few things you’ve always wanted to say to him and now was finally the time to stop holding yourself back.

“Fuck you,” you dropped over your shoulder, your expression – finally – calm. “And fuck that exhibition. That’s not what my dream is.”

       chapter directory

[stardust-and-blades]

Coma

klance drabble 2 from insta: Keith is in a coma from a mission gone wrong and the team is not sure he will make it

pairing: Keith/Lance fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender

---------

Keith cannot fully remember what happened on the mission. All he can recall in the moments of waking up is him setting up a bomb, getting trapped in said room until Pidge hacked the system, and a flash of light as he neared an escape ship. 

He isn’t sure how long he has been out. All he is sure of is when he did come to, his head was wrapped up, cradled by a soft pillow. A blanket is draped over him, scratchy but somewhat warm. There is a quiet beeping in the background, no doubt registering the easy pace of his heartbeat. 

He felt like he slept a thousand years. His body is stiff from its stance, his spine aching to move into a different position. Keith tried to move his legs, but the most he can move is his feet. His shoulders even feel like he was strapped to blocks of lead. 

Except when his vision merged two into one, he registers he is not alone. 

Shiro is on a chair pulled up on the left side of Keith’s bed. His chin is resting against his knuckles, a forgotten book falling off his lap and his white hair in his face.

Hunk is on the opposite side, he too asleep with Pidge on his lap. Pidge’s glasses are slipping off, drool leaking onto his jeans. 

And Lance. Dear Lance has Keith’s hand in a death grip, afraid if he lets go keith will too. Becoming an anchor for Keith’s titanic spirit. 

He does not know where his mother and Allura are. Keith guesses she stepped away for a second, her blade jacket on a nearby chair. Maybe Allura is checking on his vitals with the doctors since he just woke up. 

A little slow from the drugs, he weakly squeezes Lance’s hand. 

His voice is raspy when he speaks, a desert without an oasis.

“Lance?”

It has been months since Lance has seen Keith awake. Since they talked, the two giggling underneath the sheets of their shared bed. Since they travelled to a far off planet for a date, lance trading keith that he wasn’t as fast as he used to be now that Lance had Red.

Since the mission the group went on. One that left the team scared shitless as they watched from their lions the enemy ship go up in raging flames. Lance had flown down to the wreckage as soon as it was clear, his heart a hammer in his chest as he flung Red around in a frantic search. 

It did not help his fear when he saw the escape pod empty, and for a moment—a black hole of a second—he believed they were too late. 

But Red hummed in his head of assurance, her thrum guiding him to floating red armor scratched and bent, but Keith breathing.

But while Keith’s body survived, they weren’t sure his head did. His helmet was extremely damaged, enclaves scattered about and the glass near to shattering. Allura said he was lucky. The doctors skeptical. But the team remained hopeful. Even as days turned to weeks. Weeks into a month, when sure enough six months had gone by since the incident. 

The day prior the doctors said there was a 70% chance he would never wake up. They said it was their call to pull the plug or not, slightly intimidated by the death glare Krolia gave them. 

Lance is glad they held onto their hope despite the odds, for he almost burst into tears as he met soft violet jewels, Keith looking like hell but nevertheless, alright. 

“Holy shit,” he exclaims, rising from his place and immediately checking his body, warm palms cupping his cheeks and combing through his hair. “You’re awake! Oh my god, Keith you’re awake!”

“I know.” Keith rasps, amused. He leans into Lance’s touch, recalling the last time they were like this, Keith was being kissed upon his brow and promising he’d be back in barely an hour. 

Keith kisses the inside of Lance’s palm, closing his eyes. Bathing in the attention. But he couldn’t keep them closed for long, for Lance quietly asks him to not go back to sleep.

“Please don’t go back to sleep,” he says, his lids burning. “Please stay a little longer. It has been...it’s been rough.”

Keith stares at him, noting the lines under his eyes. The dark circles. His chapped lips, and how his beautiful glow dimmed into a meek semblance. 

Lance isn’t okay, no matter the masks he puts up. 

Keith pulls him in, wrapping his arms around his thin frame. Lance nuzzles underneath Keith’s chin, listening to the sweet beat of his heart. It is music to his ears. A symphony compared to the nightmare silence he had been dealing with. 

To the day they brought him in, mangled, worn, and as white as death’s bones. 

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

“Keith!” Lance dove for Keith as Red opened her mouth. He activated his jetpack, pushing himself to snatch the collar of Keith’s armor. 

“Hang on, love. You’re going to be okay.” Lance settled Keith’s limp body gently. He moved his hair away from his eyes, silently hoping those dark lashes would flutter open and tell him the blood sticking to his curls was “just a scratch”.

But when Lance got him to a medical cruiser, all was not sound.

“The impact caused severe trauma to his brain. It has swelled to a significant rate and, at the moment, has affected his brain stem.” The doctor stated, overlooking the medical papers as the group digested the information in the waiting area. 

“You say he was in an explosion?”

“Yes. He was meant to be in an escape pod when the bomb detonated.” Pidge explained, hugging herself and avoiding eye contact. “But he was trapped. I had to get him out. I thought he...I thought...”

The doctor switched from technical to sympathy, alert of her distress. “The swelling may go down and he could wake up. There is a chance when he hit it, the helmet took most of the brunt.”

“But?” Lance asked quietly.

The doctor sighed. “But there is also a chance that his reticular activating system—the part of him that alerts and wakes him up—may be too damaged.” He paused. “The fluid is pushing up against his skull. It may even be bleeding. At this rate, there is no telling he will awaken.”

“What do you mean no telling?” Lance snapped. “You’re intergalactic doctors. Don’t you have a way of fixing this?”

“The mind is a sensitive organ. No matter the species, tampering it can be deadly.”

Lance veered to Allura. “Is there anything you can do?” Lance begged. “Anything? You healed me once. Can you heal him too?”

“I...I can try.” Allura said, hesitant. “But Lance...please be prepared in case...in case I can’t. With you, it was your body. With Keith, it’s more fragile.”

When Allura went in and came out, Lance sat down and put his head in his hands. There was nothing to do but wait. 

And as time went by, Lance practically became a resident of the hospital Keith was transferred to. He was closely monitored, but every time they would finish tests, every time a doctor would come out of the room, the update remained the same. 

Each time Lance would nod, walk in with a book in hand, some flowers, and sit there holding Keith’s hand. He would set up Keith’s favorite flowers in a case, aware he promised some on their next date. He would read to him, hoping if he could give anything, he could give keith an adventure only he can hear, and an escape for Lance. 

Yet even as months went by, pages of the books would be spotted with tears. The group would come in every week, but not nearly as much as Lance and Krolia.

Occasionally, if Lance was really struggling, the doctors would give him family status and let him stay the night alongside Krolia. He would always be found on the same side, holding onto Keith’s hand and conked out hunched over the mattress. 

Upon awakening, he’d pray to the Gods before he opened his eyes for the hand to be gone and the sleeping beauty alert and dressed, waiting to give Lance a soft smile.

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

On the morning Keith woke up, the doctors suggested pulling the plug. 

Lance nearly lost his mind. 

“The hell we are giving up on him!” Lance yelled, baring his teeth and shoving his body in front of the doctors as if they were the many galra soldiers they fought. “He still has a chance to pull through.”

The doctor lowered his voice, quietly talking to Lance and the nurse raised her eyebrows, used to Lance’s calm demeanor. 

“We understand. But with all the monitoring we have done, he shows no signs of getting better.”

“You said his swelling went down.”

“It did. And that’s good. But with how big the blast was, it...isn’t enough. His scans have been the same for the past six months.”

“He is literally still breathing!”

The doctor bowed his head. “That may be, but while his body lives, his brain could very well be...gone. The probability of him waking up has decreased.” He looked up to krolia, who stood behind Lance, brushing her fingers through her son’s hair. 

“You’re his mother, correct?”

“Yes.” She said, keeping her gaze on the sleeping boy.

“It is ultimately up to you on what you believe is best for your son. Whether to keep him here and hope, or...” he glanced at the heart monitor. “To let him go.”

“Krolia, come on. He’s your kid—the one who throws himself in front of danger to protect others. The one who got you out of the bad situation you two were in when you met. The same one who gave you a chance and fought nearly every blade member to prove himself. you know he’s a fighter. You can’t give up on him!”

Krolia said nothing. 

“Krolia, please. He can do it. I feel it in my gut. Please.” 

She waited a few ticks before answering. When she took in a breath and opened her mouth, he waited for the guillotine to fall or the pardon to be announced.

She was not able to spend the most time with her son. It wasn’t so long ago they reunited. For Krolia to take in she was meeting a fierce man, not the vulnerable baby boy she held in her arms. He had grown up. And she missed it all. 

Missed his tiny snores as he slept in his crib while her and his father laid nearby. Missed his first walk, where he waddled to a waiting father coaxing for him to make it. Missed his first words, the earth word “papa” easily coming out of his mouth rather than the sweet sound of him calling for Krolia. 

Missed his first day at school. Missed his first birthday. Missed his laughs and smiles. Missed the first time he road a vehicle, even if it was stolen from the garrison. Missed his first fight, his first friend, missed his everything.

Krolia missed so much of his life, and just when she was about to gain a taste of what she was absent from, it was ripped away from her grasp. 

Many times she had let go and let the universe make the decisions for her. Allowed obstacles to form. For bridges to burn. For paths to diverge.

But this time she would not stand for it. Would not relinquish her right as a mother. To abandon her beloved boy again, not to the destiny of a paladin, and certainly not to the end card of a fallen warrior. 

He was her son. He, like her, would fight tooth and nail to be alive. 

The world may give up on him. But Krolia would not.

“Lance is right,” she said, standing. “Regardless of the situation, regardless of the results, my son is not dead. He lives, both mind and body. It may be a percentage, but it is not zero. You will not unplug my son. Not unless he breathes his last breath and the monitor goes straight.”

Lance almost cried from those words.

Almost. 

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

“I’m not going anywhere.” Keith says, petting Lance from the top of his head down to his back. “My head hurts, but I’m here. Don’t worry.”

“Please stop being so reckless, it’s bad for my health.” Lance half jokes.

“I was only out for, what, a couple weeks?” He looks around, seemingly searching for a calendar. “How...how long have I been out?”

When Lance tells him, Keith is left speechless. A gaping fish out of water. And each detail Lance went into, the hold on keith tightens. If he wasn’t so scared of losing Keith, he could’ve crushed his ribs. 

“Wait, so if I was brain dead according to the doctors, how am I awake?”

Lance shrugs. “I don’t know. One moment you’re almost gone, the next you’re waking me up. I thought I was dreaming.”

“It’s...a miracle. I don’t usually believe in...miracles.” Keith absently began toy with the bandage around him, feeling for anything that could have caused him to defy the odds. 

“Maybe it was true loves kiss.”

Keith gave Lance a questioning look, to which he answered back with a mumble. 

“What?” Keith doesn’t hear him. Lance is stubborn in answering, prompting Keith to poke his side. “What is it? I just woke up from a coma, no secrets.”

“It’s cheesy.”

“Name one moment Pidge didn’t say we were cheesy.”

Lance purses his lips. “Point taken.”

“So?”

Lance dramatically sighs, burying his face in Keith’s neck. “I used to kiss your forehead before I left. You know, like when we got up in the morning.” 

Keith can recall those moments as clear as day, and he melts. And he can also recall, though it is covered in muddy waters and an echoing train station, a hint of someone talking as he dreamed away. 

He had no concept of time. No idea he was comatose, stuck in a state between life and death. 

He thought he was already awake. Believed based on the vivid sense of crisp hot wind caressing his cheeks, the sweat on his brow, and the overwhelming clutter of his father’s shack. Moments where his mother care by, his friends visited, and he road around on his motorcycle with Lance behind him.

He had no memory of the accident. Of being a paladin, for all that mattered was the days mirroring reality. When you dream, you forget you are in a dream. Convinced you are well. Normal. At peace.

But there were times when he was doing these normal things he heard a voice in the distance. His dream would become background noise. The faces of those he loved blurred and froze, a computer frozen due to an error. 

He would close his eyes and listen. Take in the far away voice speaking tales of adventure and woe. Keith would wonder how such a phenomenon could happen. How the disembodied stories sounded so much like his Lance when he was right beside him. 

It defied all logic. But he couldn’t help but disregard it, for who spoke to him was sad. He would be slow in his speech; a veil covering the truth with beauty to hide pain. And when the stories ended—when his dreaming began to resume and he fell once again to his injury—something soft kissed his cheek.

His forehead.

His nose.

His lips. 

It wasn’t all at once. The kisses would be different, depending on the day. Some days keith went without them, not being aware of their absence until it happened again. 

Afterwards there would always be a strange sensation in the back of his mind. Like he had forgotten something. Like he had a mission to complete, even if he wasn’t sure what that mission was.

He had to go home.

But...he was home.

Wasn’t he? 

It wasn’t until his surroundings began to fade away did he fight. 

Before he was lingering. Convinced the lie before him was reality rather than fantasy.

But then he stopped hearing his friends. Their faces became distorted, their features morphing into blobs than the stark angles and shapes ingrained in his memory. Their conversations became jumbled, a scratch in a CD that kept playing the same verse or skipping three songs all together. 

His home lost pieces of its defining features. The bookshelves melted away. The pictures on his walls shattered. The ground beneath his feet no longer was solid, holes popping up from corner to corner. 

He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t understand what was happening. 

Until he heard two very distinct voices.

Two very important people.

“My son, it is time to wake up. Wake up, my boy. I want to create more memories with you.”

“Keith, please wake up. We promised to see each other again. So I can tell you I love you.”

I love you.

I love you.

For that, he snapped out of his state of oblivion. His world was crumbling away. What he knew became dust. But as it did, he forced himself to fight the sensation for him to close his eyes. He clawed his way through the ruins of his dreams, refusing to be sucked in my death.

He refused to die. 

Somehow—he didn’t know how—he grasped a white ledge. It glowed, beckoning for keith to approach it. To touch it. 

The tips of his fingers barely grazed it when he was thrown back into his body, his consciousness gradually returning. 

He was numb all over.

But at least he could touch and talk to his Lance. The real Lance. 

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

Krolia had been searching all of earth—the entire galaxy—for a way to heal her son. She, a member of the Blade who faced numerous ruthless enemies and an entire space war, was breaking down from the stress.

If she could choose what battle to face, she would rather fight a thousand galra enemies than the potential loss of her child. She would rather feel the cut of a sword or spark of an energy orb than the mental waterfall of suffering from the potential of the hospital bed being empty.

She was determined. In said determination, she enlisted Allura’s help, knowing if anyone could harbor ancient knowledge, it is her.

They just had to find the right planet. 

Or the right ripple in space.

“Do you really believe Oriande has the correct plant?”

Allura had her arms crossed, looking straight ahead. But while her posture was tense, her words were strong. “Positive. I don’t want to give false hope, but I know in my heart they have the answer. I’m sure of it.”

“You’ll be on your own. I can’t get in there.”

“I’ve done it once. I can do it again.”

“And if they deny you?”

“They won’t. Even if they did, I would break down their door.” She sealed on her mask, her glowing marks locked away. “Open the hatch, Krolia. I will be back soon.”

Krolia pressed the buttons, watching Allura carefully exit. Before the door closed, Allura gave her a reassuring smile.

“Don’t worry, Krolia. You and your son aren’t alone anymore. I promise to bring him back to you.”

Krolia liked this Altean. 

It felt like a millennia before Allura returned. Krolia feared something had happened to the kind woman with pink marks, afraid she would have to deliver a morose message to her father figure.

But just as she was about to push the button to let her out and risk Oriande herself, the door flew open on its own to reveal an unscathed Allura. 

An allura with a light pink flower in hand, it’s petals decorated with sunshine orbs and it’s pollen a deep magenta. It’s roots were carefully removed from its home, no sign of wear and tear. Allura’s hands and face was covered in dirt, but smiled through the grime.

“It took some looking, but I found it. There was three left.”

“You have my thanks, princess.” Krolia bowed. “I am in your debt.”

Allura, no longer considering herself a princess, settled a hand on Krolia’s shoulder.

“There is no need for that with me. I am Keith’s friend, and a diplomat. I am not your superior, Krolia.”

She was right. She wasn’t her superior. But she was someone who was helping her son come back to her. To prevent him from entering the land of the dead. Allura does not understand how deep krolia’s appreciation lies. 

They arrived back at the hospital later in the day, Pidge’s new technology in tracking, speed, and performance proving to be her best work. They made their way into the room, the group completely conked out by Keith’s bedside. Allura had to sneak her way past Lance, his body taking up most room on his side and making it difficult for Allura to navigate. 

Krolia watched out for the doctors, ready to fight them in case they tried stopping her and Allura from their plans. 

Allura held the plant in one hand and touched the top of Keith’s head with the other, closing her eyes as she murmured in her altean tongue. Both her and the plant radiated a blue essence, it’s soft hue coursing from her to the unconscious boy. It was almost like a lullaby. 

A sound someone could sleep through.

A voice so welcoming, animals and species alike would sit down and listen until their eyes grew heavy. 

By the time Allura finished, the plant lost its glow. It’s color sapped dry. The remnant of it ever being alive was the single petal falling from the bulb of the flower. 

When Krolia and Allura return to check on his progress, she nearly collapsed in relief to see her son’s violet eyes brimming with life.

“Hey, mom.” He croaked, his throat raspy from being unused.

She smiled. “Welcome back, son.”

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

The rest of Keith’s friends are ecstatic he is no longer in a coma, spending most of the day catching up and giving keith many hugs. By nightfall, they left for home, saying they will visit him the next day when the doctors discharge him.

“Why can’t they let you out now?” Lance asks, the last to be asked to leave. “Your vitals are normal. Can’t you come home?”

“They have to make sure I am 100% okay. They don’t want me going home and then something bad happen.” Keith explains, squeezing Lance’s hand. “Go home and rest.”

Lance looks down at their hands, basking over it no longer being limp and unresponsive. 

“Maybe I can convince the nurse to let me stay. Be like, an alarm of sorts.”

“Lance, when was the last time you’ve slept in a bed? Did your skin care routine? Bathe?”

Lance upturns his nose. “Are you saying I STINK?”

Keith chuckles. “No, I’m saying you look just as bad as me.”

“Unlike you, who has been sleeping for months. It’s amazing I didn’t have to slay a dragon and fight through treacherous thorns for you.”

“And you won’t have to.” He motions with his chin. “Go. Sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Lance doesn’t move. His grasp on keith only tightens.

“Lance.”

“Do you need to pee?”

“What?”

“You haven’t gone in awhile. Or eaten. Do you need me to get you food?”

“I—no I’m fine. I ate when you did.” 

“Only five bites!” Lance says.

Keith lets out a breath, leaning his head against the pillow and leveling Lance with a soft but worried look.

“I haven’t eaten real food in awhile, it’s going to take time for my system to go back to how it used to. Just like with walking. I promise, I’m okay.”

“You made a promise last time too.” Lance whispers. Yes, Keith remembers the moments before the mission. His chest compresses from it; pained he broke his word.

“What is this really about, Lance?” Keith asks. Lance turns his head away, avoiding eye contact. But Keith reaches out, brushing a thumb against the apples of his cheeks. It is warm. Kind. Not a ghost lingering for too long when Lance couldn’t sleep for a week. Lance thought he would never feel this again. 

“Talk to me.”

“It’s nothing...”

“You know, when you’re sad or upset, I noticed your jaw becomes more apparent. A crease develops on your brow, and you force a smile,” Keith comments, causing Lance to bite his lip. “You’re doing that now.”

“I guess that’s why you’re in the Blade. You’re annoyingly observant.”

“It’s a gift.”

Lance gives a small smile, kissing Keith’s palm.

“If I start talking, I won’t be able to stop.”

Keith stares at him. Debating what he should do. Should say. Hating to see him suffer, wondering if all going through Lance’s mind is nightmares and illusions. Dark “what if’s” that would keep him up at night, defying Keith’s desire for him to slumber soundly.

He guesses it wouldn’t hurt for him to ask the nurses to let him stay. He is part of his family.

Keith moves over to the side, patting the space.

“Okay. Talk as much as you want. We have all the time in the world.”

Keith thought he wasn’t going to fall asleep since he had been in a coma for so long.

Him and Lance dozed off in each other’s arms. 

[ineffably-good]

Good Omens Celebration Theme 1: In The Beginning

Hi all! It’s the first day of the month long Good Omens celebration and today’s theme is In The Beginning. I’m going to do my best to write a short fiction (1500 words or less) for as many of the daily prompts as I can -- here’s my initial entry. 

Go here to see the theme list! And tag your works with #goc2020 if you’re playing along too!

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In The Beginning

Summary: 1700 words, in which Aziraphale and a demon named Crawly find themselves thinking about each other after their initial meeting. 

Five days after the end of Eden, Aziraphale roused himself from sleep late at night not quite sure where he was. It returned to him slowly. He first realized that he was lying on a stone surface. Could be the wall, he thought. Then he noticed that there was light from a fire flickering on his closed eyelids.

He opened his eyes and remembered. He was in a cave. With a fire. And with a murmur of voices nearby. Ah, yes then, he thought. He was with the humans.

He probably shouldn’t be there. They needed a chance to thrive on their own, without constant angelic intervention. It was just so hard to see them, veritable children, not even two weeks old, cast out into the world all alone. After he’d closed up the hole in the wall, he’d found himself trailing after them. They’d had a day or two head start on him, but he found them easily enough. Not so hard to do, when they were literally the only humans on earth. All one had to do was close one’s eyes and concentrate on that distinctly human life force of equal parts love, worry, and pride. 

He’d arrived at their camp, taught them a few things about building a fire without the use of the flaming sword, showed them how to plant a seed, and offered a hand where he could. They listened, wide eyed, to everything he shared with them, and carefully began testing it all out. He was immensely proud of them.

Today, though, he would have to move out. Find his own shelter – nearby, of course, but not right on top of them. They needed a chance to try their wings, so to speak.

He sat up and stretched, and then struck out the front of the cave to have a look around at where he might go next. The humans had settled near a small river that formed a stand of vegetation in the midst of the desert, with a strong rock wall behind it that offered some shelter. With his excellent eyesight, he could see a suitable outcropping about a half hour’s walk to the west. He would try there. 

--

Crawly returned to Hell shortly after the apple fiasco, expecting trouble. There was always trouble in Hell. To his surprise, he made a rather triumphant return. News of his exploits had reached all corners of the place, and even the demons that most liked to torment him were suitably impressed.

The Serpent of Eden, they started to call him. He rather liked the sound of that.

“So, Crawly,” Beelzebub said, a rare smile on her face. “You managed to make the new humanzz betray their God and get kicked out of Eden all within the space of seven dayzz. Nice work.”

“It required a lot of intricate planning,” Crawly said. “Quite tricky.”

“I would imagine,” said Dagon. “How did you think of it, the apple?”

“Just came to me,” Crawly said, effecting an effortless shrug.

He received an official commendation and an official title upgrade. They even attempted a parade of dishonor, although, being Hell, it was a sad and paltry affair in which several factions broke out into open warfare and used the trombones to throttle and kill at least a quarter of each other’s members.

No more parades, the next missive from Lower Management said. Not ever.

 After things died down, Crawly found himself at loose ends. While it was pleasant to be looked up to, he had to admit that it was hard to find oneself trapped down below again after being up on Earth. He missed the fresh air. He missed trees. And he certainly had no true interest in fighting and tormenting other demons, which seemed to be all anyone ever got up to down here.

What plagued him the most, though, were unwelcome thoughts about the angel. He racked his memory trying to figure out if he’d gotten his name. The image of the angel’s face kept appearing to him, unbidden, at the most inconvenient times. Those blue eyes, and the way his forehead wrinkled in distress when he admitted he’d given the sword away. That wing, arched over him to protect him from rain. He had smiled at him.  

He wasn’t interested. It was just, he told himself, that the angel was clearly in over his head. Utterly unprepared for the job. He hoped that he wasn’t getting himself into too much trouble.

He should probably go check.

 --  

Aziraphale found his way to the outcropping he’d spotted and set about making himself a shelter of sorts. With a little trial and error and a few liberal applications of his powers, he was able to carve out a comfortable cave-like dwelling for himself, complete with a rudimentary reed door and a rather comfortable sleeping pallet. All in all, he was rather satisfied with his first attempt.

He would have to show it to the serpent, his brain whispered.

Aziraphale halted, hands on hips. “What?” he shouted at himself. “What in the name of the almighty was that about? I don’t think that’s a proper thing for us to be thinking at all.”

Us being, of course, him and his brain. When angel is one of only three human-shaped beings in the world, there aren’t many options for conversation. Talking to yourself was almost expected.

Why was he thinking about the demon? They’d had one conversation. Yes, it was a rather interesting conversation, but it meant nothing. They were on opposite sides. They were enemies.

It was just, he thought, that it was rather lonely being the sole observer here. The angels guarding the western, southern, and northern gates had all left immediately when Eden’s doors were shuttered. Most of them had never wanted to be down there to begin with. If God was forsaking the humans, they thought, so were they.

Aziraphale didn’t see it that way. He didn’t think God was forsaking the humans. He thought, perhaps, that God was turning them loose to see what they could become. He found himself thinking about the demon’s point about why the apple tree had been left right smack-dab in the middle of the garden, where anyone could reach it. It was almost as if it had been intended to happen. Whatever the intent, he intended to stick to his designated purpose. Safeguard the humans, he’d been told. That didn’t necessarily end because they left the cradle.

 A few weeks later, he loaded up a few of the fruits and berries he’d gathered, as well as a fish or two, and headed upstream to where Adam and Eve had made their camp. Just a quick checkin, he told himself. They were shyly happy to see him, thrilled with his gifts, and insisted that he stay for a meal.

He headed for home just as the sun was beginning to break below the clouds in its gradual descent.

 --

Crawly managed to use his newfound status to get the job assignment he wanted within just a few short weeks. Official emissary to humans, the paperwork said. Monitor until further notice. It was an indefinite assignment, open-ended. Most likely this was because no one really expected the humans to survive very long. It was a vast and dangerous world, full of animals and weather and terrors. Lucifer probably expected Crawly to observe them for a few months until they eventually starved or were eaten by bears, and then report back to Below for his next assignment.

Crawly didn’t think so. He had seen something in those fragile humans – a spark of hope and resilience  he hadn’t seen before. They had something that both angels and demons didn’t – they could see possibilities in even the smallest of things. He suspected that they had powers that the forces of darkness had no inkling of. Creation, begetting and destroying, facing down the darkness in ways they hadn’t imagined yet.

And he knew something that Hell did not. He knew, or at least suspected, that the angel was still among them. He’d already turned his back on his orders in a rather spectacular way. What was to stop him from refusing to return to Heaven all together? And if Heaven was going to have a representative guiding the humans, it was only fair that Hell had one as well.

And that representative was definitely going to be him.

 --

Aziraphale completed the walk back to his abode at a leisurely pace. After all, what was there to hurry for? There was no one to talk to there, and so no reason to rush. As a result, the sun was nearly down when he got home. He unburdened himself of the various rocks and pieces of wood he’d picked up along the way to shore up his fire, and then blinked when he realized that his cave was already illuminated, although not from the inside. Someone had made a fire outside the doorway, and there was a dark shape huddled near it.

His heart pounded in his chest. Was it one of the angels, come to drag him home? Was it another demon, here to smite him? He’d been led to believe that demons lived to smite angels after all.

“Hello?” he called. “Who’s there?”

A lanky shape unfolded itself from the fire and stood silhouetted against the darkening sky behind him.

“Hello, Angel,” said a familiar voice.

A rush of pleasure and a sense of what was almost relief rushed over Aziraphale as he stepped forward into the light.

“Hello, Demon,” he said. “How nice to see you again!”

It was the start, he thought, of something interesting. He had a hunch.

[loveandwarandmagick]

Rose-Colored Boy

yeah ,, i used a paramore song for my title ,,,, it’s cool we’re ignoring that

anyway this is my first fic n’ woW it took me almost the whole day to write this and i really hope you all enjoy it ! happy valentine’s day babes <3

summary: baz is in love and hates valentine’s day for this reason. intro the love of his life who ruins his plans to have a pity party with his aunt, with his own disaster on his hands. baz helps, like a lovesick fool

word count: 3,611 (lmao wow that’s a LOT)

   Valentine’s Day used to be Baz’s least favorite and most favorite holiday.

   Although classes weren’t ever canceled to celebrate the day, (that’d be an absolute nightmare with all the bloody couples at Watford), Baz remembers his father offering him the choice to stay home every year without fail. “Oh Basil,” he’d say, not laughing, but there was amusement in his tone, “It’s not like you’ll do anything important in your lessons anyways.” And they hadn’t, not in all the years that he’d missed. When he returned the next day, all the teachers remarked on how he’d missed out on making cards. As a child, he didn’t think to miss it, only relished in the break from making pink paper cards with the teachers and sealing the envelope with a charm that would unfold the card like origami. 

   Even if that break was spent being tugged along by his Aunt Fiona through the pink and red swarmed aisles of cheap candy and watching her shove multiple things in a cart at once.

    Then after his fifth year - the absolute worst year- when all he could do was figure out that his feelings for Snow were so much more intense than he thought, coming home on Valentine’s was basically an obligation. He wasn’t stupid enough to spend all day in classes with the great love of his life, who was also his worst enemy, and on top of that, his roommate. Watching him parade around with his new girlfriend, and by default due to her status, Baz’s second worst enemy, was not at all worth it. Not even to escape Fiona’s lovelorn quest to buy every single piece of Valentine’s Day paraphernalia in the supermarket.

     It wasn’t a sudden thing. Finding out that his feelings were just as intense as they used to be but on the opposite end of a spectrum was a slow thing to come. It was in December, perhaps. When the cold forced him inside earlier than usual and put Snow to sleep as soon as the sunset. He’d spend hours in bed staring at Snow, loathing everything he was. Everything he had; a gorgeous face, a future, a destiny. He’d had more friends than he could count on both hands, and Baz had only two. And besides friends, he’d had people who’d simply enjoyed being around him, who wanted to be in his life. Perhaps it was the magic, but maybe it was just him.

     He drove himself insane with the wanting until his thoughts had shifted to wanting Simon. Yes, Baz was undeniably jealous of everything he had, but it was also the boy. His sweet smile and his freckled face and that lovely voice. And though it may have not been a quick realization, as soon as he figured it out, it tormented him. Simon haunted his thoughts and his room, throwing glares and stammering arguments back at Baz, who’d started them. If only to hear him say his name again, to be addressed if only for a moment, by the boy he loved.

 Utterly in love, and oh, so hopeless.

   So he finds himself now, in their seventh year at Watford, packing his trunk for the ride to Fiona’s apartment, (she’s decided to stay in and wait for the day after to buy clearance candy.) Heaven knows who she’s been heartbroken over for the past seven years, but Baz doesn’t exactly feel entitled to ask. As someone who’s living through the definition of unrequited love though, he figures that he’ll leave early to surprise her. Maybe they’ll rent a rom-com. “Or maybe,” he can hear her say, “We can go out and make fun of the couples. For culture, of course.”

 He shakes the grin off his face at the thought, as his thoughts inevitably run back to Snow and his lovely relationship, still going two years later. There were times when Baz thought he had a chance. Times when Snow would stare at him from across the room, every room. When instead of arguing back, he’d only remain silent and turn over on his bed, facing the wall. Baz has only guessed that things had ended with Agatha, but they appeared fine the next day, hands clasped and polite smiles shared over breakfast. He’d know, he watched them constantly. To no avail, he should add.

 So much for celebrating, he thought bitterly, biting his cheek as he shoved his last item carelessly into the trunk and closing the lid with a resounding thunk.

   Baz looks over at Snow’s empty bed, cursing his feelings and his thoughts and stupidly beautiful boys like Snow himself. He drops his head down onto the case, groaning at the dull pain in his head. Then again, a third thunk. Except, not from Baz slamming his suitcase shut, or from his dramatic, hopeless head drop on it either. This one is louder, coming from right outside their door. Before he can even spell the door open, the sound turns into incessant pounding, and suddenly the door swings open and in barrels Snow.

    Because Baz’s life is so gracious as to see him thinking of the bloody person who got him in this situation in the first place and to drop said angel right into his lap. Well, onto the floor in front of him. The love of his life is currently sprawled out on the rug, about two feet from Baz’s feet. He’s breathing hard, looking down at his hands like he’s shocked that they’re even there. Though it wouldn’t surprise Baz if they weren’t. (Snow’s shit at most spellwork.) He still won’t look up at him. Baz doesn’t even think that Snow knows he’s in the room, which wouldn’t make sense as he’s quite literally at his feet.

“Snow.”

Simon jerks his head up, blinking wildly up at Baz. Oh.

   He’s got tears in his eyes, which is alarming on its own. But there are little pink buds all over his face that look like - flowers? Whatever they are, he looks entirely unpleased with it. Baz could laugh because it’s truly a ridiculous sight, but seeing Snow cry sends him to his knees to marvel closer at his face. Truly, idiotically in love. Or maybe just idiotic.

   “I can’t imagine what sort of curse someone placed on you that would cause you to get such a terrible case of acne, Snow,” Baz sneers.

   Snow just makes a choked sort of sound and peers into Baz’s eyes, which makes him suck in a breath because Simon’s right there, and Baz is right here and completely hyperventilating. He focuses his eyes on a flower right between Snow’s blue eyes, noticing that the petals are the same color as the pink blush decorating his freckled face. The flowers are small, resembling tulips that haven’t bloomed yet.

  “Baz?” His voice is soft. Baz is pretty sure that he’s swooning. Dev once told him that his eyes gave away everything. “They tilt down at the corners when you’re into something,” he’d laughed, although they had been talking about lavender tea at the time.

  Crowley. Baz is sure he’s looking every bit of the mess that he feels, and still hasn’t responded to Simon, who’s staring at him intently. He probably should respond, instead of marveling. “What in the world did you do to your face?” He asks, which is a start. Perhaps a terrible one, because he really has no time to be wasted if he wants to make it before the traffic starts up, and he and Snow don’t exactly make a habit of sharing stories, so he’s not expecting much of anything except a sharp response.

   But Simon’s still sitting right in front of Baz, (so close that he can count just how many blooms are on his face - seven in total) and also Baz really doesn’t want to leave; he never wants to leave Simon. And then, surprisingly, he starts rambling. Not the standard routine of stammer, stutter, and pout that usually accompanies his constant arguing, but a full-on stream of words pouring off his tongue. 

  The blush gets darker every time he takes a breath. “Agatha spelled me. Some weird truth spell that wouldn’t work because it sounded too much like a compulsion spell. Then I had tried it and of course, it worked but she warned me about moderation in my tone because it was a very literal spell. And I told her that I knew that because of course, I did, but then I ended up covered in flowers and they keep popping up if I don’t tell the truth and I don’t even want to tell the truth but I don’t want to be a walking meadow by the time I get rid of it!”

  He breathes. Blushes harder. Damn him and his stupid flustered face. Even the flowers are changing colors to match the darkening of his cheeks.

“And of course Agatha just stares at me, saying ‘There you go Simon, even the romance is a disaster with you!’ Which is unbelievably rude in general, but on Valentine’s, it’s even worse and I really wish I’d stop telling you about this because I hate telling you about anything but I can’t find Penny-”

   A flower, a tiny pale pink one, pops up on his cheek. Both boys’ eyes go wide. The flower rapidly changes colors to match the other ones.

“Where’s the lie, Snow?”

“There’s no lie, I’m not sure why that happened, erm-”

Another flower sprouts from right above his eyebrow. His eyes squeeze shut.

   Baz’s chest flutters hopefully, idiotically. Because part of that statement, the part that matters and could’ve most definitely been false, is about hating Baz. Well, hating to talk to him. He’s not sure whether or not to take advantage of this, considering that Snow’s very distressed, and he just wants to make Snow feel better. Then again, he supposes he could do it while flustering him more, (flustering looks good on him.) Simon’s looking down now, having moved slightly away from Baz in his panic to backtrack on the statement. He’s playing with his hands.

“Snow.”

  “Pitch,” he says back. Indignantly, like he has the right to be upset while Baz is fighting every urge in his body screaming at him to hold those nervous fingers in his own hand, to calm him down and help him get rid of this spell.

Traffic is going to be hell when he leaves.

“Simon. Are you alright?” “Not at all.” And then, “You called me Simon?”

Baz frowns at him. “Is there a problem? Would you like me to address you as Snow?”

“Well yeah, it feels natural. I’m used to it,” he murmurs, looking back up at Baz. And then: not one, but two flowers.

   He breathes in sharply and mutters something under his breath. Okay, it’s not natural! I’m used to it but still-” A flower. On his chin. Snow looks like he’s about to burst into tears. 

“I like it when you call me Simon,” he says, gently. 

   No flower, but one of the ones on his forehead unfurls just a tiny bit when he says this. Baz is preoccupied with pretending that knowing this as the truth doesn’t make his breathing halt in his chest a bit, so he doesn’t exactly notice it when Simon shifts closer. Or how he can literally feel his eyes softening, his face nearly smiling, his head shifting just a bit closer to Simon’s own. The traitorous, hopeful, body of his has a mind of its own.

 “Oh Merlin, please help me,” he says, worrying his lip between his teeth. Baz thinks that he’d like to do so too. 

   He’s deliberate with his words, careful. This moment feels like glass, it’s too delicate to be shattered by carelessness. This is Snow being vulnerable. This is Baz loving it, loving him. “Simon,” he starts, “one of your flowers is bigger than the other.” Simon sniffs hard, and Baz thinks that maybe that made things worse, so he rushes along with his theory, (which is completely selfish and hopeful.) “No, it’s not bad, I don’t think. What spell did you cast?”

  He shakes his head, brow creasing further, “I can’t remember, something “pink colored-” he trails off. Baz shakes his head back, mirroring Simon and laughing softly to himself. He’s never heard anything like that, but flowers have to bloom before they’re picked. And when Simon told the truth, the flower opened up slightly- “Try telling the truth. Just true statements, things of that like.”

   For someone who is on the verge of tears, Snow deadpans excellently at his suggestion. “Oh come off it, just try it.” He sighs, shifting away again while Baz screams (in his head) at the distance between them. “I am in this room with Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch.”

    No flower shifts, nor does a new one appear. Baz glances down at his watch and figures that he’s really going to be stuck in traffic for a while. If he ever even leaves, (although no one could pay him to leave right now. He supposes that Fiona can wait another day for their pity party.)

  “Agatha mentioned that it was romantic, but I can’t think of any way that an anti-lie spell could help us in the romance department. We both knew that our relationship needed help anyway,” he mutters, and the flower on his cheek opens up about halfway. Simon’s eyes go wide as he sniffs again, harder this time like he’s crying. Baz tries to ignore the way his chest turns into a vacuum, sucking up all the air in the room at hearing Simon say this, at the tulip bursting open on his cheek. He tries to and fails miserably.

  His voice cracks as he starts, excited and bubbly and every bit as nervous as he feels, “Simon, say the truth. Just say what’s on your mind - I think that’s what it is!” He’s nodding rapidly and Snow’s doing it too, and the pair of them look like two deranged bobble-heads but this is working and Baz can’t lie and say that he’s not excited to help too. “Holy crap, Penny’s going to flip when I tell her about this!”

   One pink tulip starts to shift, and Simon’s eyes are shining. He’s beaming, so relieved that he’s laughing and falling forward. Closer to Baz. So close that his curls are falling onto Baz’s chest and Baz has to stop himself from touching him. (He could, he wants to.)

“I’ve never been so relieved in my life!”

“Agatha breaking things off with me felt better than being in our relationship did.”

“Valentine’s Day sucks anyway!”

  One by one, the petals unfurl, giving way to huge roses. So, not tulips then. Simon’s stopped laughing since then, but his eyes are still shining. All that’s left is the rose on his shoulder; the rest fell off as soon as they bloomed fully. Baz’s heart is beating erratically in his chest, mostly about everything he said about Agatha. The only thing running through his head is “breaking things off with me,” on repeat.

  “There’s one left,” he remarks.  Quietly, and once he feels like he can speak without squeaking. So that Simon doesn’t remember that they hate each other. So that Baz can entertain his heart, just a bit. “I said everything that’s been on my mind since the morning, I can’t imagine how I could get rid of it.”

A spot where an old flower just fell from starts to grow red and Simon frowns.

   Baz raises an eyebrow. “I’d be careful there Snow, you don’t want another case on your hands.”

   Simon raises one back. Baz breathes in and out, like someone who didn’t just have a mild heart attack. Baz tries to sound steady as he speaks, “I’m sure you’re meant to say everything on your mind. So out with it.”

   “I don’t think I can uh,” Simon starts, every bit the stuttering mess that he is. “It’s just weird? Like, I don’t think that I could say something that wouldn’t change things in like, a really, uh, weird way?” He flushes again, the rose on his shoulder beginning to quiver the slightest bit. Baz nods encouragingly at him, scooting closer so that their knees are touching. “That’s fine Simon, I just need you to say it. Not that it isn’t lovely to watch you suffer at the hands of your own mistakes.”

   At this, Simon’s head snaps up and he scowls at Baz, who is fighting back his own soft smile. There’s some feeling in the air, something like tension. When Simon’s hand comes up, Baz thinks that he’s about to get punched, but very slowly. And then Simon tilts his head to the side and lets his fingers wrap around a loose piece of hair framing Baz’s face.

   Fuck being punched, this is being hit by a car. Baz’s heart is slamming against his chest and surely he’s making the most idiotic face but none of that matters because Simon Snow is practically playing with his hair and Baz Pitch is dying slowly. He looks down, dropping his hand. “When I got closer to you, I did it on purpose. I felt like I needed to thank you for helping me out.”

“Just now, I grabbed your hair because I’ve never noticed it until just this moment and I really wanted to touch it.”

Baz is currently thanking every single possible entity that he didn’t leave sooner.

    “One time I read a book and one of the quotes was about thinking something and finding it very hard to unthink. That quote crossed my mind for whatever reason and then I thought about how much I really didn’t hate you at this moment. And well...”

     He shrugs, looking up at Baz who is very, very aware that their lips are too close together, closer than before Simon started talking. Simon’s eyes are shining blue, and his face is all spotted red from where the flowers fell out, and his eyebrows are honestly shaped quite terribly, but Baz has never been more in love and he thinks he might kiss him. It might be worth it, even if Simon pushed him away and cursed him horribly for it. But he did say all that. 

    “Look, I kinda really want to kiss you? So I’m going to do that if that’s alright with you?”

     Simon’s leaning in and Baz is really trying to not hyperventilate and suddenly, the rose on his shoulder puffs out, scattering rose petals all over Baz, who is trying very hard not to cry as Simon collapses into giggles next to him. “Oh the look on your face, Baz! You looked like I’d shot you or something,” he laughs, dragging a hand through his curls as he brushes rose petals from his shirt.

    “Yeah well Snow, excuse me for being surprised that you would take your pranks to a romantic level,” he sighs, standing up and stepping over Simon, who’s stopped laughing abruptly and is scrambling up to his feet.

      “Hey, no wait, you git!” He’s reaching out to Baz, who is gathering his trunk faster than he’s ever done anything and is really hoping to get out of the door before he starts crying, like the moron he is. The absolute fool that he’s always been, to love Simon and to have hope in the first place. “Baz can you wait?”

   “No, I can not,” he hisses back, wanting nothing more than to kiss this ridiculous boy and never see him again. Simon throws his hands up, going over to him and taking him by the shoulders and Baz lets him because he’s weak and hope is a thing very alive in his chest. “Snow,” he says.

    “I already told you that I preferred you call me Simon,” he frowns, letting go of Baz but stepping closer all the same.

“Snow-”

    “Simon,” he says again, touching his forehead to Baz’s. It only works because he’s on his tip-toes. It works because Baz has stepped closer too. He opens his mouth, fully planning to never say the name “Simon,” again, but said boy cuts him off once again. “Don’t say anything,” he whispers, inching so close that their lips are brushing with every word that he speaks and god, Baz is absolutely hopeless, “Unless it’s my name,” he finishes, finally pressing their lips together.

    Simon’s hands are in his hair and he’s smiling, Baz can feel it, so he pulls away gently. “Simon,” he says, smiling. He kisses him again, harder this time until Simon starts giggling.

   “We don’t have to talk about it right now,” he says, feeling every bit like the lovesick fool he is.

   “Okay,” Simon says back, biting his lip. Biting back another sunshine grin.

Baz glances down at his trunk, still leaning on the wall. So does Simon.

  “Are you going somewhere? I wouldn’t have minded it so much when I thought you hated me, but in light of recent events, I think that maybe you could be my valentine?”

To: Fiona

i’ve got plans this v-day, Fi. i take it you’ll manage without me?

From: Fiona

was just about to cancel on you for my date tonight. have fun without me, alright?

To: Fiona

will do

From: Unknown Number

Would you please let Simon know that the spell is called “Rose-Colored Boy,” and that it’s for confessing since he let his phone die so carelessly and asked me to help? Thx - Penelope Bunce

To: bunce

i’m not going to ask how you got my number, bunce. will lend him my charger 

[thatwriterwiththeblock]

so my gf @redhead7675 has been keeping up a list of weird shit i’ve said for a while now and i figured i may as well share the most updated version of this list she just sent me

I'm just clumsy not scary

I predict that pugs will rain from the ground

My phone was too slow for your wrath

Trisha: Why is there a bowl of popcorn in the fridge?

Lexi: It seemed like a good idea at the time

I have a trembling love for humanity as it stands

The heaven kinda broke

Sleep like the dead until somebody performs a sacrificial ritual

You’ll swear in frustration after accidentally swearing when trying not to swear

I don't make soul deals for chips

I'm standing on my eye

Excuse me sir, you don't know my life I'll eat donuts whenever I want

Oh yeah lil my dean voice I just go all alpha male bamf whenever I get nervous and voraciously flirt with the object of my terror

Again no I'm not talking about drugs I'm talking about gummy bears

More power to the kid then they play their cards right they can build a castle founded on the fallen forms of jerks with bloody noses

Wait was that a stripper joke

I’m eating pizza rolls like a trash compactor

I hope my death has nothing to do with the sound of crinkling aluminium foil

Physics and space time just break like crumbly bread

it is like painting a broken down foreclosure and hoping that it doesn't look about to collapse

we are either going to die as a race or be pinned with so many rules to keep us from hurting each other that we hurt each other in protest

We as humans have the greatest capacities for kindness, but also the greatest capacities for violence.

Onions would have made me angry

Oh god psychic tall elf

If you haven't noticed y'all are like corralling a SWARM OF POISONOUS LACKADAISY BUTTERFLIES

Decide pls are we the hookup generation that forgot how to date or the generation that kills overpopulation

A slight discoloration of the darkness that spoke to me

Jelly beans don't really have a tug and pull in gender if you know what I mean

She's got ultra intimidating eye makeup and heeled boots on and she looks like a marble statue that may stab me

Be calm u did good your pot just decided to be contrary and go through an irreversible rebellious phase

Blah blah blah the world is ashes But whatever guys it's been ashes for ages Put on those rose colored glasses

Come on I'm gonna freak out if it screams at me I'm just trying to watch a peaceful video about sadness

My literal worst nightmare is-- the sun's gone out, the seas have risen, and on what little land is left: velociraptors.

What part of jazz includes knives of death

Oh hey, there's that old animatronic lady who screams in tongues.

I mean the people coming by me might've been garbage. But they weren't garage doors

Crows are not omens of death they're just sweethearts that want peanuts

Is the side note the screaming cicadas or is the side note still coming

C'mon give me 5 seconds for my snappy reply before you pull the rug out from under my wit

Pile of disgruntled bird

For such a brilliant manga/anime it's so weird that little grape exists

I won't necessarily get arrested for breaking legs

I'm always looking for more murders

I'll be interested in serial killers until the day one murders me

You could literally learn anything but no you gotta get drugged and learn how to fling black fire with the snake man

How solid is congealed blood?

You couldn't pay me to eat a cube of congealed blood unless it was human blood

Hetero bullshit continues to be bullshit

That doesn't solve your problem, you'd still be dead if you were God

Hats off to the gay penguins, they got their shit figured out

i know we're talking about fake serial killers but is this what its like to talk to karkat

jigsaw probs felt the breeze of that multiversal hellscreech of rage

Yank him by the hair out of her boobs

CAn you stop with the diCks

Yes, he committed suicide and became a boner

This is not the economy to put a changeling in

Tbh if a short person ever comes running to stab me in the neck full speed on a pair of stilts I'll scream so loud it'll shake the Eiffel Tower that sounds terrifying

So please shut up before I eat your eyes with tongs

*distressed* DON'T DIE YOU'RE NOT MY MIXER

He's not a businessman he's a crook with a tie

What? Why does the mafia care about christmas

Welp this is my end, onion to the face

I mean fair crops don't have dying screams

8 foot tall namaste fake nirvana giant

My dude. My mate. My main anonymous stranger. I am the Ace. I am not thieving from Myself

YOU decided to go to war, but your horse didn't

life update i've discovered cactus themed bedspreads

no offense to heterosexuals but they're all morons

they'd pop my head off like a bottlecap if they so felt the fancy

I know what purgatory is and it's getting hungry and losing your appetite as soon as you get up to find food over and over again

day 7 without a hat: losing my mind. contemplating shearing my bangs out of frustration. the wind is my enemy. just checked amazon and IT IS JAN 11 WHY CAN'T YOU BE CLOSE

Once you start doing the homo, it's hard to stop