#look i. may have committed to the bit a little too hard. i will admit that this may have gotten out of hand

[hiding-under-the-willow]

Juppet of a man

[amazinglyashy]

Hello! Could I make a request with Sylus where the reader/MC becomes really close with the twins (platonically). They’re always up to shenanigans together but Sylus doesn’t realize how come they are until he finds them in a cuddle pile sleeping ☺️ Maybe he’s irritated at first that the boys are cuddling his woman but I think his heart would warm knowing the people closest to him get along like that

This was so sweet, I loved receiving something for the twins, especially as someone who's so big on physical affection, and especially with my friends <33 Thank you, and I hope you enjoy!!

If it makes you smile-

Read on AO3

Pairings: Sylus x Reader, Luke and Kieran & Reader

Wordcount: 1,031

Sylus was more than aware that the twins could be childish.

More than aware.

And he knew they would oftentimes drag you into their shenanigans- no matter what said shenanigans were. It could be something on a grander scale, such as when you all… pranked, a local, low-ranking crime lord, unbeknownst to Sylus himself until long after the act had been committed. Rigged explosives of confetti and dynamite were what he had heard about, through the grapevine of Elysium. Other times it could be quite innocent, like when he had heard about the time the three of you had gone through his list of trustworthy informants and ding-dong ditched every single one of them, like going through a hitlist with so much less bloodlust.

He had needed to explain himself and his henchmen in order to rebuild so many relationships, and it was no surprise just how many of your little endeavors had left him with inconvenient little annoyances.

But when it was you involved, how could he ever be mad at you?

And that was quite similar to how he was feeling right now, staring down in the living room of the main safe house that he used as a base of operations, fire crackling behind him as it warmed the room from the hearth. Pure velvet couch cushions, silken pillows, and cheap arcade plushies were strewn everywhere like a middle school sleepover pillow fight had taken place in the comforts of his own home, rich designer furniture and décor be damned. There were even some fresh blankets that looked like they had been previously put into a position to create the roofing of a fort, long since torn down in the aftermath of a plush war.

And in the center of it all?

Three people, all draped across each other. Mixed in with all of the blankets, pillows, and plushies that already were scattered around the room- just how many had the three of you collected from around the house…?- Luke and Kieran were out cold, obviously more tired from the mission Sylus had given them the night before than they would have ever admitted to his face. Kieran's head was pressed up against the side of the couch, his chin touching his chest as his arms crossed over it, looking perfectly comfortable despite the severe angle his neck was bent at. His mask was nowhere to be seen, and Sylus wondered if it had been collateral damage in the hard-won battle.

Meanwhile, Luke was across his lap, a hand behind his head as his own mask hung half-off his face, his mouth wide open as he snored. He seemed to be a lot more comfortable than his twin- maybe a bit too comfortable, his other arm was wrapped around you, holding you against him even despite the small amount of drool coming from your mouth that was pooling along his shirt.

That wasn't anything that surprised Sylus, he had known you were tired when you had left for work early in the morning when he had just been heading to bed for a nap, and that was before your already long shift headed into overtime. He'd felt a bit guilty climbing under the warmth of the covers as he heard you rustling around the room and getting dressed, but there wasn't any way he could have helped it. And then he had been too busy to have dinner with you, so he had sent Luke and Kieran home to try and cheer you up, and make sure you had help with anything you may need with how exhausted you would be. He'd been zeroed in on getting his work done in order to come home shortly after them, but even still- it had gone longer than expected, and he was at the end of his rope with the idiots he had been dealing with by the time he was finally done.

He wasn't… expecting this outcome in front of him by the time he got home, per say. But it didn't catch him off guard. He'd long since known how much you loved the twins- they were a connection you'd never had before, and filled the void inside of you that Sylus himself couldn't even fill, being your romantic partner already. They were something familial and familiar, something you had sought after for year after year, and finally found in the two of them. He was happy to see that your day filled with overwork had turned into something fun and sweet, if the plushie causalities were anything to go off of.

Still, he couldn't help the little pang of jealously sneaking into the corners of his heart.

He didn't care for it, he found it unbecoming- especially with how much he knew about your lived experiences and the hardships you had dealt with- that you were still dealing with somehow, despite looking so careless as you did now among old Christmas blankets pulled out of storage for a fort that most children dreamt of, not adults. Not adults that went through so much pain-

At least, that's what most would think. Including himself, ages ago. Back before he had met you. Back when he didn't know that sometimes, growing meant going backward, and enjoying the experiences you missed out on or simply missed. Before he realized how much healing you were working through, fighting your own little battles that he didn't even see.

And while Sylus himself was your prince charming, the twins had taken up the mantle of knights in your story.

They helped you in ways he couldn't- were there for you when Sylus couldn't be- or shouldn't be, and that was okay. It could be a hard pill to swallow, realizing that there were some things he just wasn't equipped to help you with, but it went down so much easier knowing one thing.

The one thing was just how loved you were.

And if the twins could help you with anything you were going through, Sylus could handle seeing a few more destroyed pillow forts. A few more cuddle piles of tired limbs and drool.

Anything, as long as it made you smile.

[couldsewyouastitchandsavenine]

Sunshine [Joel Miller]

this is my entry to Summer Loving Challenge by @pedgito. Thank you so much for creating it and letting me be part of it. You're a star! Or shall I say, sunshine??

pairing: no outbreak joel miller x f!reader

wordcount: 1.7K

warnings: reader is she/her, sexual content/mild sexual themes (implied only), mild language, mentions of violence, overall safe to read.

prompt: ROADTRIP #2

She smiles too much, he thinks. 

And Joel ain’t too fond of folks who smile all the damn time. Reckons they must be hiding something behind those shiny white teeth. 

Thing is, he ain't even sure how Tommy managed to rope him into this foolishness. He’d stopped by his brother’s place for a cold one and somehow left having agreed to ferry his obnoxiously cheerful sidekick across the state to some new job she landed in Joel’s neck of the woods. Must have been the quiet begging in Tommy’s eyes that did it, he supposes. Joel may be a surly son of a bitch, but he ain’t heartless.

So here he is, with the sun barely up and her sitting pretty beside him. Sneakers-clad feet up on the dash like she owns the place, skirt of that yellow sundress riding up her tights.

Tommy’s friend. The motormouth. The endless goddamn ray of sunshine that Joel just knows is gonna make his jaw ache from clenching before they even cross county lines.

“Mind if I turn this thing on?” she breaks the silence, stretching a little to fiddle with the radio dials. 

He fucking does. He’d rather drive in silence. But just shrugs instead.

Figures out it’s not worth the argument.

And as expected, her taste in music is as saccharine as the rest of her, all twangy guitars and lyrics about truck beds and tan lines. When she starts humming along off-key, he has to work very hard not to grind his teeth to dust. 

It's going to be a long drive.

Joel sighs and glances over at her. Shifts a bit in his seat and admits, albeit grudgingly, that she's easy on the eyes. Has been ever since he's known her.

But the problem is, she’s just so… much. Never still for a minute, fingers tapping, foot bouncing, mouth running a mile a minute. He can practically feel all that restless energy buzzing under her skin, setting his own nerves alight. Makes him wonder if she even knows she's doing it, all them little twitches and squirms. If she's got any idea how it gets him all riled up without even trying. Joel ain't sure quite what to do with her.

And sweet Jesus can she talk. About this, about that. Everything and not a damn thing. About the weather and politics. The heat and some harvest festivals she’s helping throw. A whole slew of crappy dates, some dog she’s thinking of adopting. The gossip about people Joel barely knows and could care less about. So, he tunes most of it out, just grunts now and then so she thinks he's listening.

But at some point, whether because he’s getting bored or because of the heat, Joel catches himself actually paying attention. Learns she's a teacher, spending her days trying to cram knowledge into the heads of a pack of rowdy kids. 

"It's thankless work," she laughs, "but I guess somebody's gotta do it."

Joel thinks it's pretty admirable, choosing a job like that. Lord knows he's had his share of crap gigs. Brings to mind those long, hot days pouring concrete under that merciless Texas sun. The way heat would shimmer up off the fresh pavement and make him feel like he's in some kind of fever dream.

“Look, I didn’t expect you’d want to give me a ride,” she pipes up after a bit. “I appreciate it.”

"Mm," he grunts, committing to nothing.

“I mean it, Miller. I was really close to sticking out my thumb and hitching.”

Joel's hands tighten on the wheel at the thought. "That's a good way to get yourself murdered."

She cuts her eyes over at him. "How do I know you're not some kind of murderer?"

He snorts. "Do I look like a murderer to you?"

"I don't know. What's a murderer look like?"

"Not like me."

"Hm. That's exactly what a murderer would say, I reckon."

He shakes his head, more than a little annoyed now.

This damn woman.

When they pull over for gas and to stretch their legs, Joel finds himself watching her as she arches her back like a cat in the sun, that sundress pulling taut across her chest; the skirt riding up even higher. Makes him look away real quick.

“I’m going inside to pay,” she chirps. “Want anything? Coke maybe? A three-day old sandwich?”

Joel peers at her. Mutters, “Nah, I’m good.”

“Suit yourself, Grumpy.”

Grumpy. 

It's hardly the worst thing he's been called, but it chafes at him for some reason. For a second, he wonders what it would be like to be someone different. Someone who said yes to Cokes and gas-station sandwiches. To yellow dresses and sunshine smiles.

"You ever think about how weird it is that we can just go anywhere these days?" She starts in again before he even gets back on the road.

He squints over at her. "How do you mean?"

"I don't know. Cars and planes and those talking maps on phones. World's gotten real small. Used to be folks who didn't stray more than a few miles from where they were born. And now here we are, two random people rolling down the road in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere. Just 'cause we felt like it."

Joel's not sure he'd say he felt like it, exactly. But he gets her point. "I guess," he allows. "Makes you wonder what it musta been like. Back then."

"Doesn't it? No AC, no snacks, no radio to bicker over." She grins at him, teasing. "Though I suppose you would've done just fine without that last one, huh?"

He huffs, but there’s no real annoyance behind it. “They wouldn’t need a radio with you doing all the talking. Probably would've driven the whole wagon train up the wall with your yammering."

“You mean, I would’ve livened things up?”

"Livened," he repeats, dry as dust, and she laughs. It's a good one, Joel thinks. Bright and uninhibited in a way he hasn't heard often in this life.

Suddenly gets the strangest urge to reach out and touch her. Trail his knuckles down the line of her throat, feel the vibration of it under his fingers.

Wraps his hands around the wheel instead, wondering where the hell that came from. If she notices his odd moment, she doesn't let on. Just keeps rambling on about dysentery and fording rivers and how she definitely would've been the first to die of cholera. Joel lets those honeyed tones wash over him and tries not to dwell on the tight, hot feeling in his chest.

By the time they pull up at the little house Tommy helped her get settled in, it's pitch black out. He can just make out her face in the glow of the dome light, those big eyes soft and serious for once as she gathers up her bags.

"Thanks again for the lift," she says, real quiet. "I know I'm not exactly your favourite person to be stuck with."

"Wasn't so bad," he admits, and it's almost not a lie. "Glad I could help."

She hesitates with her hand on the door handle, worrying that plump bottom lip with her teeth. "I'd invite you in for a beer but I know you probably want to get home."

He does. He should. But maybe it's that little waver in her voice, the uncertain set of her shoulders. Maybe it's knowing that the second she steps out of this truck, the strange little bubble they've been floating in is going to pop. Things will snap back to how they've always been, her grating on his last nerve from a nice safe distance and him avoiding her as best he can.

And maybe he's just not quite ready for that.

"Well..." he drawls, "I reckon I could come in for a cold one."

The smile she gives him could put the sun to shame, all dimples and crinkly eyes. Makes that tugging feeling in his chest pull so sharp it steals his breath. 

He follows her up the porch steps and into the cosy hallway, his chest tight and his palms clammy like some nervous teenager. As she putters in the kitchen, fetching beers and clinking glasses, he stands in her living room and looks around at the organised clutter, the artfully arranged photographs, the bunches of wildflowers stuck in mason jars.

The whole place is so absolutely, utterly her it makes something behind his ribs ache fiercely.

When she comes back with two frosty beers, pressing one into his hand, they just stand there for a minute. Look at each other with the heavy weight of something hanging in the air between them. She takes a pull off her bottle, throat working as she swallows and it's more than he can take. The urge to put his mouth right there, to lick the sharp tang of hops right off her skin.

“So…,” she murmurs softly as she places her beer on the counter behind her and looks back at him. Her eyelashes flutter, and her gaze latches on his mouth. It’s a split of a second but Joel decides that he’s had enough. 

He sets his own bottle down carefully. Cradles her face in his rough hands and leans in slow, so slow, until he can taste her shaky breath. She meets him halfway, arms winding around his neck as she opens up for him, soft and sweet as summer rain. He tips his head to kiss her deeper and she mewls into his mouth, hands flexing against his shoulders, and Joel is lost. 

It doesn’t take long before they are stumbling back to her bedroom, all tangled up in each other. When he rids himself of his shirt and hovers above her, she is smiling, her fingers moving slowly to graze the warm skin of his back, and it’s so good Joel feels drunk on it. 

Later, after, with her curled up asleep on his chest, Joel stares up at the lazy spin of the ceiling fan. Marvels at the strange turns a life can take. How somebody can get under your skin until one day you wake up and realise you forgot how to breathe without them.

He runs his fingers through the wild tangle of her hair, feels her sigh contentedly against him. Lets himself imagine, just for a minute, that this could be his life. That he could have something this soft, this sweet, and keep it.

Joel blows out a long breath.

Drops a kiss to the top of her head and lets his eyes slip closed.

Maybe there's something to be said for all that sunshine after all.

[rawmeknockout]

Give me more CILF (Creator I'd like to fuck) writing! Please, I beg of you!

an assortment!

Rodimus is the young, hot, eager- to-please Captain that wants to spark you up soooo bad. There's just something so hot about the way you care so fiercely for your sparkling, it really gets his engine revving. He knows he's younger than you, but that doesn't make him any less of a mech! In fact, he's got all the energy and stamina a sire could need to look after any (potential) future sparklings you might have together. He's always looking to impress you, almost tripping over himself to prove he's the mech for you. Drift has heard enough of his delulu daydreams about how much he'd like to give you another. He's always been attracted to older mechs (hard not to be when your entire population is as long-lived as Cybertronians. He may be your boss, a headstrong and over-confident sort of guy, but he could be gentle if you wanted him to be! Let him show you!

Megatron is much quieter in his appreciation of you. It's not that the thought hasn't crossed his mind that you would look SO good carrying his sparkling, it's just that he's well aware how awful a decision that would be. Doesn't stop him from cranking his shaft to the idea. He's perfectly happy to look after the sparkling you already have when you need a break. Some might say he's the very last mech that should be in charge of looking after a sparkling, but he believes that some Autobots are far too self-sacrificing. Sure, he's now committed to the Autobots, but he still holds his personal belief that Cybertronians have value far greater than any self-perceived benefit to others. He will teach your sparkling that they exist first for themselves and for no other to take advantage of: be it a system or an individual. It just sort of helps that looking after your sparkling and ingratiating himself to them also puts him in closer proximity to you.

Ratchet won't ever admit it but the prospect of having a sparkling has always been so tempting for him. Of course, he was never in any position to have a sparkling of his own, first with his practice in Dead End and then the war, and now that he's quite a bit older the chances of that have gone down tremendously. In fact, he sees it as almost bordering on negligent to conceive one. But when he sees you with your sparkling his fantasies and daydreams of a domestic life come surging to the forefront of his processor. It's hard not to feel envy towards you, even if you're forced to care for your sparkling alone, but he tries to stamp out those feelings. You're not deserving of his resentment because he chose not to have bitlets. When he gets to know you better he feels all the worse for having been envious of you, and incredibly grateful that you would let him look after your sparkling. Even if the bitlet isn't his, Ratchet is attached to your offspring like no other and is always fussing after their (and your) care. If Drift notices a difference in Ratchet's demeanor, a certain wistfulness about him, he doesn't bring it up. He knows Ratchet would simply be reluctant to give himself what he wants, although Ratchet carrying the sparkling isn't the only option...

Whirl thinks it's hot. Okay, sure he thinks a lot of things are sexy that aren't supposed to be (that one time Brainstorm's optic was hanging from the socket, for example) but this one of normal! He insists. It's not everyday you meet a Cybertronian who has carried their own offspring. It's sort of an uncommon practice and definitely the most dangerous given the alternatives, but that's part of what makes it so sexy. Rung has informed him that is, actually, a little fucked up (not his words). Whirl would like to know what you looked like carrying. Not every carrier's frame will change drastically, in fact many don't if their armor is bulky enough, but maybe yours did. The fact your frame is so... powerful in a sense, resilient, and durable is kind of a turn on for him. But then again, Whirl gets heated if there's a gun pointed at him, so maybe it is fucked up. Your frame went through all the taxing processes of creating another Cybertronian, and you didn't die! What he wouldn't give to put your frame through it's paces again... Ultra Magnus has gently tried to convince you to get a restraining order against Whirl.

[cyberchronics]

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫..・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

veritas ratio + tutoring

★ subby ratio, rivals (?) to lovers, the rivalry is one sided, semi-public sex, face reveal, riding, marking ★

✩∘₊ ✩*✯☆⃟⃟⃟✯*✩₊∘✩

veritas isn't the type of man to let other's idiocy go unchecked, especially when he happens to recognize the person in question's untapped potential. that's how he ends up being your tutor.

where you had once been getting close to becoming a proper academic rival to him, the second semester had not been kind to you grade-wise. it was his responsibility to make sure you fixed this mess, he decided after seeing you bomb another quiz. after all, what was the point of being at the top of all his classes if there wasn't a little friendly competition here and there?

he'd be lying if he said that there weren't other motivations as to why he continued your sessions after the first despite the fact you showed considerable understanding of the concepts. there was a quality to you that made his mind fill with questions. were you just trying to impress him, or did you truly know more than you let on? did you always make that cute face when you're attempting to do math? why was he staring at you so intently?

perhaps you're a subject worthy of further observation.

∘₊ ✧───────────────────✧₊∘

He really should've recognized that you were coming on to him earlier. Veritas had been so caught up in studying the little details that the big picture had entirely been missed. While you were asking him to meet you for a late session in the campus library, he was preoccupied with committing your voice to memory. A small grin grows on his face beneath the hard plaster of his stoic disguise as he hums agreement, firmly reminding you to be punctual before walking off.

It's barely been ten minutes since he started his review lecture before you start getting closer. He's able to ignore the small brushes at first, determined not to get so distracted he stumbles over his words. That fight is promptly forfeited as you rest a hand on his thigh, the other's fingers resting just below the edge of his less formal mask and making his explanation of concavity and periods die on his tongue.

"I... What do you think you're doing?" There's yet another internal struggle he faces as he reminds himself how inappropriate it would be to lean into your touch. Amber eyes drift over to peek at you through the golden feathers adorning his covering, being met with a cheeky smile. "May I?" It's shameful to admit how flustered you're making him feel from a simple action, a small noise escaping his lips before they gain a small pout. "...Fine."

A bit of anxiety bubbles up in his chest as you remove the golden owl from his face, fingers clenching ever so slightly to prepare himself for whatever you might say. When he's met with an entirely too giddy smile, he lets out a breath he wasn't aware he was holding. Your fingers cup his cheek, face beaming when he doesn't deny your affections. "You're prettier than I expected, Veritas... A face like this shouldn't stay hidden."

Admittedly, some of the night is a blur in his brain. He doesn't remember how you two started kissing, or why he was letting his hands wander along your body so tenderly. He doesn't know how it escalated to a make-out session where both of you were pulling at each other clothes. In fact, his memories only pick up to the way you expertly unwrap the condom you 'just so happened' to have in your bag and help him ease it on his already leaking cock.

You sat in his lap, kissing him all over as you lined the tip up with your equally ready entrance. He whines quietly as you slide down, nails scratching your back as you slowly impale yourself on his dick. He holds your waist tight when you bottom out, face against your chest in an effort to ground himself. "Veritas...?" When he looks up at you a teasing smile has adorned your face, your hand reaching back for the open textbook he was reading from earlier. "You don't mind, do you?"

If he was in any other headspace, he'd think the idea was ridiculous. Reviewing basic calculus in a (what he hopes is) empty library with someone riding him? What kind of shitty porno idea is that? And yet here he is, one hand holding the book and his other still holding you as he attempts to read. It's hard to focus, especially when the sound of skin against skin is combined with the moans you let out directly in his ears. It's embarrassing, struggling to say simple sentences on a page he's read front to back plenty of times.

Every time you stop bouncing on his cock, Veritas wants to cry. You'll pause when he messes up or stops reading, putting on the confused classmate act and showing him where to start. He's not even allowed to cum until the entire page has been read, but the task proves to be more and more difficult. You fuck yourself on him without a care, face buried in his shoulder to leave bright red bites and hickeys that glow against his pale skin. By the time he finishes reading, his whole upper half is covered in marks. He doesn't care, more focused on begging you to let him tip over the edge.

He gets his response when you pull him into a sloppy kiss, walls squeezing him tight as you make a mess and cause him to follow close behind. Heavy breathing fills the library as you slide the book out of his hand and let him slump over, his arms clambering to cling to you. You kiss his cheek, sweet and gentle before leaning up to whisper in his ear.

"So... when's our next tutoring session?"

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫..・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

a/n: crumbs for the hsr fans :3 based on this very loose concept I had of riding ratio while he tries to review a concept that was making me go insane

[godspeedviper]

How the Therapists Handle your Suspicions - Headcanons

𖤐 SFW || TW: mentions of psychiatric hospitalization

𖤐 Requested by @cthulhu-cat : Can I please get headcanons of the psychiatrists with someone who has distrust of mental health workers? (i.e. "If I'm honest, I might get committed." "They wouldn't understand." "They'd look down on me if I admitted this.")

Dr Jonathan Crane (Scarecrow)

It's the "hard" patients he likes the most. Jonathan Crane has always been up for a challenge, but what he really enjoys is the fear. He knows how to read fear in its many expressions; as standoffish behavior, as shyness, as body language and tone.

As soon as he identifies his patient's expression of fear he switches tactics. Watching him transform his entire demeanor in a matter of seconds only intensifies the fear and anxiety you feel sitting in front of him.

"Do you know what fear is, child?" It's his favorite question to ask. "A relinquishing of power. Fear is your mind telling your body to surrender. Now, are you gonna let me have all the decision making power over you, or are you going to give me something to work with?"

While his methods may be a bit harsh, they are ultimately effective. Over time he teaches you how to tackle that fear head on, how to use that emotional energy to your advantage, and ultimately how to see it in others. You're his best pupil, he tells you. He's very proud of the person you become when you bend fear to your will the same way he does.

Dr Hannibal Lecter (NBC)

Unlike Dr. Crane, Hannibal approaches apprehensive patients with a more gentle approach. He makes sure to give you a few sessions just to bond and get to know each other better before you opened up about why you're really here.

Sometimes he will offer you tea and make sessions feel more like a friendly invite. However, this doesn't mean he goes easy on you either. Hannibal seems to have bizarre skill that allows him to sense when you need some interrogation, and when you would otherwise shut down if pushed.

"Do they need to understand?" he questions you. "One does not need to understand someone in order to have sympathy for them. Anyone can see that you're suffering, so it's understandable to act up under such pressure. People can be more accepting than you initially believe."

He gives you the courage to explore vulnerability, and learn to let your guard down. Over time you come to think of him almost as a close friend. There's an inherent intimacy in Hannibal's office, he cultivates that feeling with ease.

Dr Harleen Quinzel (Harley Quinn)

There's Dr. Quinzel and then there's Harley. That is, there's Quinzel's professional side, and then her "quirky girl next door" side. As soon as she feels you holding back from her, she goes full Harley mode, talking to you like a concerned aunt.

She always does her best to make you feel safe, and you soon learn that her pristine office holds a lot of little surprises. Hidden among the filing cabinets and drawers is a cache of plushies and fidget toys.

"Would it be so bad if you were committed?" There is a sincere worry present in her eyes. "I will never purposely put you in harm's way, and I also want what's best for you. I work inpatient half the time so I'll be sure to watch you. I won't let anyone hurt you there, I promise."

You ultimately stick to just weekly visits in her office, but there is that sense of comfort knowing that if things ever got too bad, Harley would still be there on the inside to help you through the journey. You would be in safe hands.

Dr Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs)

"Are you afraid of me? Or afraid of what I do as a psychiatrist?" He seems to almost be amused by your initial apprehension. He gently pokes and prods with various questions trying to get a feel for you. At first you find it a bit cruel, but as you learn over time, Hannibal loves to make everything a bit of a game.

Two can definitely play at that game. Once you pick up on this playful tone, you start to make your own moves. Sometimes you purposefully held back, taking mental note of how many ways he will try to crack you open like a thief picking a lock.

You grow fond of these sessions and look forward to each one. He inspired that mischievous spark in you, and you enjoy trying to toy with him as much as he does you. He awakens a curiosity in you to see what you'll become when you allow yourself to trust.

"They will think we're in love." He teases. Sometimes you do wonder if you love him. Sometimes you think it's just a leap, and you're simply happy that his presence in your life has really made a difference. "I'm just projecting." You tell yourself, but the truth is you don't quite know.

ao3 || guidelines || WIPs || Ko-Fi

[popatochisssp]

Assuming this isn't something all of the boys find weird/creepy, what do they think about humans not dusting after dying and instead leaving their whole body behind? What are their thoughts on the fact that their human s/o is going to one day die and leave their dead body behind?

TW for death mention/discussion below:

I think for most, it’s not something they’d dwell on, filing it under one of those weird things humans just do, like have blood and organs, and use the bathroom.

They don’t do any of that, and it’s a little weird and maybe a little gross that their human s/o does but hey—they’re (literally) only human, and it’s normal for them, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Plus, not all humans want to just stay as the dead body, a lot do the cremation thing and then they’re ashes, and anything after that would be very similar and very familiar to monster dust and what tends to be done with it. Not so different, at least!

Broadly speaking, it might come up at some point and maybe they’d try to find out if their s/o has any particular preferences for what they want to happen to all the physical stuff they leave behind—body included—when they kick it, if they so happen to kick it before their skeletal beau and leave him in the position of handling that stuff…

But other than that, probably not something to think about overly much. The ideal is not having to worry about any of that for a good long while, after all!

There are maybe a few exceptions, though, who do have some kind of significant, stronger-than-typical opinion about the subject of humans (or their s/o in particular) leaving a corpse behind instead of dust…

Paps (Underswap Papyrus) isn’t a fan of the concept. He’s a little squeamish, generally unnerved by blood and severe injuries, and a lifeless, rotting, empty shell—especially of someone he cared about—is pretty morbid and upsetting. He definitely wants to think about it and deal with it as little as possible, so his s/o better not die too soon! And if they want him to go to a wake or funeral, they better be prepared for him to have to psych himself up to approach the casket of the deceased, or take a moment outside for a breather.

On the other hand, Mal (Swapfell Sans) is explicitly glad for the longevity of the human body. He doesn’t really care one way or the other for any other humans, but if he somehow manages to outlive his human, he thinks he’d very much appreciate that their body stuck around awhile after they left. He loves hard and digs in deep, and whatever extra time he can have for a private goodbye, to look at his s/o’s face and commit everything to memory before letting go…he’ll take it, gladly.

Slate (Horrortale Sans) is liable to dissociate around a dead body and risks the same just talking about it too much. He’s made dealt with plenty of corpses already and doesn’t want to have to deal with any more, it brings back a lot of guilt and bad memories… If—stars forbid—it ever has to be his s/o that he’s confronted with, he would just… try to hold it together and do whatever needed to be done to honor their wishes, on full autopilot if it came to that. He can have whatever breakdown he needs to have after ensuring everything they wanted for their remains has been done, they deserve that.

His brother, Papy (Horrortale Papyrus)…well, he tends to get panic attacks when humans die and their souls leave their bodies as just an empty husk. It’s a distressing concept for him that everything that makes a (human) person themselves can just…go like that, and then all they are is dead meat. …Meat which he has availed himself of in the past, and fed to others, and that was circumstantial and desperate but still very distressing to reconcile with any new occurrences. He’s giving himself a lot of immersion therapy with his choice of career, and maybe by the time his s/o passes on, he’ll be ready to cope with it…but who knows?

Aster (Gastertale Papyrus) may be a bit abashed to admit to it, but he’s not uninterested and finds it (somewhat morbidly) fascinating. The human body itself is fascinating with all its physicality and moving parts that keep everything functioning like an organic machine, and the body remaining behind even after death—for study or investigation or just as an idol of mourning—it’s…kind of cool? In fairness, though, he wouldn’t be able to muster up much of that opinion if it was his s/o’s body no longer occupied by the person he loved. Too personal, very different…

Spectr (Transcendtale Sans) is a soulless machine. He won’t age and may never die, but if he does, he might leave some sort of corpse behind himself…or maybe not, if enough magic has soaked into his metal bones to make them dissipate when the consciousness piloting them leaves. Still, he can’t really be sure, and the way humans die is a less foreign a concept to him since he’s considered that something similar could happen to him eventually. …He would rather it not happen to his s/o, though. (He’d never ask it of them, but he would want them to stay.)

PapAIrus (Transcendtale Papyrus) would have no trouble asking it of his s/o—they should stay! Just don’t die. Or, well, die, obviously, but stay anyway, like he did! He finds the concept of a body in general troublesome and limiting, so he’s pretty cavalier about humans leaving theirs behind when they die—can’t blame them in the slightest!—but he won’t be as cavalier about his human trying to shuffle off their mortal coil without a digital backup first. How are they supposed to be ‘together forever’ if one of them is trying to escape to some kind of unknowable Great Beyond?! Sheesh…

Kohl (Descendtale Sans) is…a bit of an asshole, most of the time but also when talking about human corpses. It’s one of his preferred off-color jokes to say that the dead ones are his favorite kind of humans since they’re quiet and don’t bother him… totally irreverent, but as far as his actions go, he’s actually considerably more respectful. He’s defensive and wary around most live humans because he knows what they’re capable of and the harm they can do, but there’s no danger in the empty shells they leave behind, just signs of personality and the life they once lived—laugh lines, tattoos, scars, painted nails… It cuts his venom a bit to see that, and to have the time he has with peoples’ bodies; to be entrusted (however peripherally) with sending them off to whatever final rest they’d chosen. …If his s/o decides to let him outlive them, he’d like to do the same for their shell.

And lastly, Bram (Descendtale Papyrus) is a slightly odd case. He has a bit of trouble conceptualizing the way non-magical beings die…which isn’t to say he doesn’t understand the concept of death, he’s got that down fine! But to die and not disappear into dust seems to him like something must still be there, some integral part of the being who’d inhabited the body left behind—a human residue, if you will! And as such, even if that person’s soul is gone and they’ll never move or breathe or speak or do anything else ever again, their remains should be treated as if they were still occupied, because a piece of them is still there and probably always will be. So when it’s his s/o’s time to go, he’ll see their body off to its new accommodations—the earth or a nice vase or whatever else they wanted—and then visit often to talk and hang out, like nothing had changed! …Almost.

[the-s1lly-corner]

can u do tadc cast (or probably just a few bc this prompt isn’t very creative) x a reader who looks like the player from animal crossing? ball hands,,, maybe weirdly good at crafting things,, gets stung by bees sometimes mayhaps. Maybe they speak animalese and nobody ever knows what they’re saying LMAO

TADC cast x reader whos like an animal crossing player!

depending on what time it is when i finish writing this, i think imma take a short break to stretch my legs and make something YAHOO!! hope you enjoy this anon!! this reminds me, i cleared out my island by making it totally flat... but i never actually... got to decorating it... huh.... commitment is scary, guys

CAINE:

i think as a funny haha gag thing, how funny would it be if he could actually understand you. like you cant talk, and the noise youre limited to is to your "emotes", but somehow someway for some reason, caine can understand you... genuinely impressed by your crafting and even sometimes asks you to make random things just to see if you can make it! expect some really odd and random requests! not at all phased that you can pick things up with your weird orb hands, hes used to the digital world and its weirdness... thinks...

POMNI:

hey at least theres someone the same height as her in this place...!/hj

tries hard to understand your funky emotes and body language but shes at a loss... i mean at least you can still pick stuff up and try to write, so at theres some method of commutating asides from simply trying to learn how to read you! though, she is a bit unnerved by your silence and how your face is mostly stagnant when you arent.... emoting.. a static smile can get a little unnerving when youre standing next to the person and understand thats its a real person.. you know?

a little confused on how you can just pull things out from thin air, but does admit that it can be useful... has probably tried to ask you to make an exit out of desperation because hey if anyone can make one it would be you so whats the harm in trying (my girl is losing it)

RAGATHA:

i think you guys bond over the crafting; since ragatha makes stuff too, like pillows and clothing and plushies and the like! sure you guys may not be making the exact same things, but you both create and thats enough to bring you two together! doesnt mind that you cant talk, in fact i think after the chaos of a day in the digital circus she embraces the calmness around you... scolds you for constantly being stung by bees, though... though she tries not to be too mean or harsh since its not like youre trying to get stung on purpose... but please just be careful... she worries about you, afterall!

honestly ragatha doesnt have individual fingers, so the fact you can function with balls hands doesnt phase her

JAX:

really touching on the fact you have an inventory that you can hide stuff in i think he would slide you things to hide for him; especially its hes going a "imma do something to someone as a prank then run and use you to hide the evidence" ... you know usual jax antics where he tries to get the reader to help him with his trickery. whether or not you actually aid him is totally up to you. probably makes fun of your short height and the fact youre always getting stung. probably points and laughs when he watches you run around while literally being chased by a swarm. promptly screams when you make a run towards him, thus bringing the bees to him. you have probably bopped him with your net after he says something particularly not-nice, me thinks... or maybe you just dont like him and youre constantly bopping him, i mean i do enjoy it when the reader doesnt like a character but you can easily ignore this little aside if you want this to be a friendship or romance!

KINGER:

OOOOO imagine you come with the basic ring/inventory of tools (net, shovel, watering can, fishing rod, ect) and you can just pull it out of no where.... oooooouuugh imagine taking your net out around him and (wordlessly) offering to go look for bugs with him,.. kind of panics when you get stung by the digital bees; probably helps you patch up... honestly i think given that kinger is all about bugs, i think its a safe bet he would know how to treat bites and stings... so hes your man if youre really bad about avoiding bees and the like! can see tropes that trope where like "whats that? little timmys stuck in the well?? (but thats not what you said/meant)" because youre like emoting and trying to direct his attention somewhere but he gets it. so totally wrong and commits to it before you can stop him. i just think thats funny

ZOOBLE:

thinks youre... odd. though... imagine you can change up your style and appearance by simple interacting with a mirror and wardrobe. i think they would think thats cool, that you can just... do that... zooble has to rip their body parts off (sounds way worse than it actually is, LMAO). probably gives you this look when you walk into the tent to show that once again, youve been attacked by a swarm of bees.... how do they always only sting your left eye...? is that just how your digital body shows the injury, or do they just... no nevermind, theyre just going to give out a sigh before taking you to caine or kinger for medicine. definitely gets onto you for constantly messing with the digital bees, though...

GANGLE:

honestly between all the characters i can easily see her being an animal crossing fan... and while she may not remember all of her old life, i like to think that subconsciously she would recognize you for what your digital body is intimidating... bonus if in the real world animal crossing was her comfort, so naturally, she instinctively finds comfort in you even if she cant totally pin point it... though, she has trouble understanding you outside of your emotes... but even then when you do an angry stamp or shed tears she cant quite pinpoint why youre upset... oooo please make her an art easel! i think that would be a great gift for her and she will be absolutely over the moon!

[lostparadise-mp3]

KAEYA !!! — silly headcanons.

okay i haven't played the kaeya hangout yet BUT now that more people are on the same page as kaeya stans are, i want to talk about him again (this is just an excuse to project on kaeya and to add more headcanons about him).

note: i also haven't played cariberto. i am indeed behind on the story. not sure if it could have something to do with my hcs but just in case, i get a little anxious whenever i post anything. note 2: i already played cariberto, i've caught up with the story, but i get anxious about posting anything anyway.

silent lover that also wants to be loud about his love for you - he wants to do both !! and over time, he achieves that !!! hugs and kisses behind closed doors, whispering sweet nothings, stolen glances, tangled hands under the table, letters left on your bedside (modern au or not doesn't matter, he would leave notes or letters either way), that's his way of silently loving.

he's a passionate but soft lover. he wants to scream and announce the world his love for you, and he does, somehow, by telling his loved ones about his new special one. long chatty nights, whether at home or the city streets, whether at a park or sitting on the sidewalk, just... talking with you, listening to your voice, to your thoughts, and also, being heard and seen.

gift giving, words of affirmation, quality time, in that order. he's probably got it all five. i believe with all my heart that letters gather the holy trinity: gift giving, words of affirmation, and acts of service. i really think that, in a relationship with kaeya, he would love giving and receiving letters. he loves doing gifts, and he loves to tell you the sweetest of things. he wants to be close both physically and emotionally, even if the latter is hard to achieve for him- or both of you. it is something he yearns no matter how much he doesn't want to admit it.

maybe he can be a bit too cheesy. old fashioned lover boy, am i right? flowers for every ocassion: month-versary, birthdays, casual dates, “i saw this tiny one growing on the sidewalk and it reminded me of you” flowers, you name it. you should start drying the flowers he gives you if you haven't already. press them in a book, he will grin and slightly blush if he ever finds those.

the type to give you his jacket when it's too cold, the type to take your hands in his trying to warm them up, even though his hands are colder and now you're both laughing because of the freezed hands. hey, at least he made you laugh.

he may not be interested in long-term relationships (i am a strong believer that he is tho, btw) but he sure is interested in commitment. he may not be the first one to fall, but he sure falls harder- and if you are the one to fall harder... well, he will try to surpass that. he believes that relationships are 60-40 and each party works —and perhaps compete— to be that 60. i think he must have fooled around in his late teens and early twenties, but now that he's older he just wants a warm love, someone who can joke around with him and also hold his hand with care.

he prefers tea over coffee. it's a made up fact i choose to believe now. and maybe, just maybe, he likes to look “tough” by drinking coffee more often than tea. of course, nothing beats a good cup of wine after a nice meal.

he's an emotional drunk. he gets flashbacks of the things he would never talk about- things he would rather bury deeper in his memory, he stares with lost gaze while holding his drink at the tavern. he never cries not even once, but he seems so quiet and gloomy. he plays it as cool as he can, pretending to be the bubbly drunk, the playful one.

he longs for a family, and he knows he's found one he can hold close and dearly, but of course, he fears losing another family. he fears getting too close so he hides certain things of himself. he dreams of marriage, and maybe, if you want, adopting a child (definitely adoption because he also is afraid of sharing the blood of “the sinners”), altough he fears fatherhood as well. he fears fucking up and he fears not being able to be there for his child and most specially, he fears messing up things with you and the child you two wanted to raise together. so those are dreams, just dreams. good dreams, even.

now, getting more specific (i already said this in my first batch of kaeya headcanons lol), a demirose/demian icon. demisexual demiromantic. i think he went trough the “bi/pan to aroace” pipeline (shotout to my aroace siblings that went trough something like this !! hope you can relate), though his experience got a bit different. sure, boy's demirose, and he holds little to no preference on who he gets attracted to after that bond forms, so he doesn't put a label on that. i like to think he knows what being demirose means but he doesn't use that label a lot neither. he likes to chill, you know?

he falls slowly and has a hard time opening up even though he so much desires to do so.

ah, being demirose doesn't stop him from finding people pretty, of course. he has a thing for long hair, but if he sees a girl with short hair? he finds that very attractive too. so, long hair and strong arms. getting a bit more suggestive maybe by saying he would adore his partner's body no matter what it looks like. whether you're tall or short, slim or chubby, no muscle or a lot of muscle, hip dips or big thighs, crooked nose or crooked teeth, moles, scars... oh, sunshine, are you listing flaws or his favorite things? he would love to snuggle against you once he's warmed up to you. that means, cuddling sessions from time to time. take a nap with him, be the big spoon and he will try to hide his flushed cheeks. he doesn't like to admit it often, but his heart melts when he is held. so... hold him thight, hold him close, whisper an “i love you” and he will give you the dumbest of smiles, all head over heels for you.

another thing i wrote before is that, if you're shorter than him, he would like to tease you for that in subtle ways. he would stretch his back when walking beside you. he tends to slouch when nobody sees him, but at the sight of you he straightens up immediately, almost like someone's poking him to do so.

he is contradictory. he wants to be close, to be vulnerable, to be open and honest, but he fears being rejected, he is uncomfortable with intimacy and vulnerability, he shuts himself when he feels like he got too close to you. how will be get what he wishes if he's like this? he would cry at night for that, but tears are not so easy to come out.

on a more optimistic note, he's a picky eater. he loves sweet things, and may be the type to add too much sugar and milk into his coffee to the point where it barely tastes like actual coffee. he enjoys noelle's pancakes.

he either is tone-deaf of has the most angelic voice, there's no in between. i find it more endearing if he's tone-deaf, so he prefers to hum under his breath soft lullabies. in a mordern setting, he would enjoy ballads and romantic lyrics. jazz as well, maybe. he is not too picky about music (contrary to his picky tastebuds).

and he may not be the best dancer, he lacks flow, but he sure can dance a slow waltz with you in his kitchen at three am because you're staying over and (you) felt like having a midnight snack. not necessarily a slow waltz, maybe he just wants to be close to you and pretend to dance, whatever he is doing, but he seems confident so... he at least earns that.

random addition after leaving this soak in my drafts for a month, lol: he has a very light (is the word tame?) scoliosis and the corset thingy he wears has that purpose. now, i know it's totally wrong because a backbrace covers the whole torso but i'm being delusional and self-indulgent. i have a mild, not that annoying scoliosis that have never been treated and i choose to project. with that being said: he rubs his shoulders in any way he can before bed because they get thight from work and his goddamn back :( and he can't reach his shoulderblades even though he can feel a knot there. what a shame... if he only had a lover willing to massage his rock ass hard back for him.

i want to spread the “kaeya owns ‘i can't take my eyes off you' by frank sinatra” agenda. i have to say i was enlightened by this edit. truly wonderful.

oops, i think i got too carried away for just “some silly headcanons”, i honestly don't know if it's a good format to post these, but i like to write like this. anyway, live laugh love kaeya.

english is not my first language, if i made some kind of mistake with my wording lmk !!

[sihakadan]

Arcane cast pining. That is all.

Fuck me, I'm going to die. It is either angsty or so deep it's gross with me. So much fluff lol. These are not established relationships with the reader, just if they were wanting it bad.

SFW, just some language

Have a request, looking for something, or have questions? Check out my master list

•🐀Silco

-Favoritism is a problem if he likes you. Jinx gets away with literal terrorism, just think of the war crimes you could commit and he'd just say it was your favorite holiday tradition.

-He gives you very subtle hints because he isn't sure if you feel the same way and doesn't want to make you uncomfortable

-You do, however, receive lots of flowers from a mysterious 'admirer'. They always seem to be delivered when you are in his office, working. "Ah, more flowers? This 'admirer' must be very smitten with you."

-You know he really likes you when he asks Jinx to not terrorize you or be rude towards you

•💣Jinx

-She makes you personal little drawings and your own little mascot, like her monkey

-Is a little touchier with you. If you are uncomfortable with that, she will request air hugs/ high fives often

-Names one of her grenades after you. Always draws a heart on it and it emits your favorite color smoke when it blows up

-Lets you hang out in her lair with her and touch her things. This is where she is the most vulnerable and only Silco and you are allowed in.

•⌛Ekko

-Is a bit oblivious at first that he may have feelings towards you

-Watches you a lot. Not in a creepy way, he is just fascinated by how you move, talk, act.

-Even if it pisses you off, he does not like to take you on missions or give you dangerous task. You know how to take care of yourself, but he has lost so many and if he lost you-

-Shows you his workspace and makes little gifts for you to keep on your windowsill.

•🦇Scar (bat guy from the Firelights)

-Since he doesn't really talk, actions and body language is how he communicates

-He is like Ekko and observes. If you catch him looking, he gives you a sweet smile and nod

-You get to hold and play with the baby more than anyone else in the Firelight base. It wrecks him because it is so cute watching you two together

-Brings you little gifts like pretty little rocks and shells, a book, things that interest him to share with you

•💪Vander

-He is pretty upfront about it, but he backs off a bit if you get embarrassed by the attention

-You never pay for your drinks, no matter how many times you try. He once gifted you back all the money you had given him for the drinks. Thought he was really clever about it.

-His eyes brighten around you, and he never stops smiling at you when you talk. Just hearing your voice makes him happy.

•🔥Finn

-You get spoiled. What kitten wants, kitten gets

-You get your own security detail, the best clothes, invited as his plus one to all the parties.

-He isn't ashamed to let you know his feelings, but how deep they are he will never share because he is too afraid someone will use you against him. He'd raze the undercity if you were ever hurt.

-Will actually share silent moments with you because they can be comfortable, but he is giving you the 'fuck me' eyes the whole time

•⚒️Jayce

-He tries to impress you a lot. It can be overwhelming, but he is just nervous that maybe you won't feel the same

-Flowers, candy, jewelry all the time. Will tell you they're from him but he won't tell you why he gave them to you. "I just think you deserve something for your hard work." (Viktor will literally bang his head on the desk because how can his friend be such an idiot?)

-Tells you about his dreams and hopes. It makes his heart swell when he sees how your eyes sparkle when he talks about making things better

-Viktor will throw a book at Jayce if he doesn't admit his feelings for you because, damn it, it is interfering with their work! (He also thinks you two were made for one another)

•📖Viktor

-Smooth with flirting, but if you flirt back, he won't know what to do. He isn't used to someone returning the interest.

-Asks you to get coffee with him daily on his breaks or the one he will take because Jayce demanded he move from his spot in the lab. Walks with you around campus if the weather permits. If not, you both sit in the lounge and talk about little things.

-Gives you lots of books and leaves notes in them for you, like which part was his favorite or what he thinks you would be interested in

-If he has to go to events, you are going with. You two stand back and laugh together about how everyone looks like they're walking with a stick up their ass.

•🖌️Mel

-Invites you to lots of places, to spend as much time as she can with you even while it is for work purposes

-Gets your favorite treats delivered to you.

-Straightens your clothes or hair while talking to you. It is a habit, and it is how she shows affection, but it can be taken as 'you look dreadful, let me fix you'. She means well by it.

-Shows you all her paintings and even teaches you a bit. Even if you are terrible at it, it is not the point, and she is happy to share a passion of hers with you.

•🚬Sevika

-You get silent conversations with her a lot. All she has to do is look at you and you know what it means. Not a word needs to be said.

-She is soft with you, but in a very romantic way. Brushing your cheek with her fingers, glaring at people who are getting too close, telling you that she will protect you

-She can't get you flowers but pays your tab at the bar. To her it is the same thing

-Teaches you cards so you both can gang up on the others and wipe them out of their money

[luluwquidprocrow]

sometimes a family is three orphans, their adopted daughter, one not-so-sad writer, and two triplets

frank, beatrice the second, the baudelaires, lemony, ernest, implied ernest/lemony

gen

3,598 words

In the grand tradition of all parents, the extended baudelaire family find themselves trying to pull a fast one. 

for @asouefanworkevent's woevember day 4, the hotel denouement! some rambling headcanon nonsense half-fic about post-canon family that i had great fun doing. my favorite thing in the whole world is post-canon babybea interacting with her absurd enormous family. i love them all so much.

okay. so bear with me here 

so i think most parents/guardians are at one point or another faced with Pulling The Ultimate Fast One on their children. this is related to Your Beloved Pet Died But We’re Telling You We Sent Them To Live On The Farm, but this version, in particular, is infinitely easier and harder. this one is The Switch. The Replacement. The Double. when the intrepid parent or guardian, under the cover of night, goes to the pet store to purchase The Exact Same Animal because the first animal had an untimely death. i will admit, this is the easiest with like, a goldfish, or something else small where you can usually get one that looks very similar. 

now, for babybea, it’s a pumpkin. 

so babybea (who is twelve at the time this story takes place), at the very end of september, carves a pumpkin, and she goes in with a VISION. she spends a couple hours on this pumpkin, carving an owl. It’s not, yknow, a realistic owl, but she adds a lot of tiny details, lots of lines for the feathers, and she carves a little mouse on the side too, and even gets the side of a tree in there, and the pumpkin carving kit the baudelaires purchased that year came with these little stick lights, to put in the owl eyes after carving, so it has orange eyes!! this is!!!! The neatest thing babybea has ever seen, and she is so thrilled with the results and very proud of this pumpkin. (for the record – violet carves a few pumpkins into a starry night with a moon, klaus carves monstera leaves, and. let’s be real. sunny bites a series of turnips into jack-o-lanterns.) (and then she stabs a couple white pumpkins into bigger jack-o-lanterns, for variety. all of them get different expressions!

sunny, arranging her carved vegetation on the baudelaire porch in order of emotion: perfect.) (no, i don’t know what order of emotion means. But sunny does.)

Then they all pile into violet’s car – pumpkin included!! – and drive almost an hour out of the city to the bildungsroman bed and breakfast. (frank and ernest decided, at this point in their lives, if they were going to commit to anything, it may as well be The Bit.) (it has a local reputation as a place with solid wifi, stellar bread, and great mattresses. The owners are considered minorly eccentric, mostly for the portrait they have in the lobby, of, just one of them. 

some impassioned yelp review: okay so the stay was great big recommend PLEASE try the bread but i cannot figure out the story behind the portrait in the lobby????? it's just one one of the owners?????? but I don't understand why bc they're twins and it's just ONE of them?????? and he's wearing this frog-patterned tie in the painting and when you see them like in person. neither of them wear the tie. what's the deal here 

the locals are sure it's not an ego thing, bc the owners don't seem to be self-centered or anything like that. In fact, if asked about the painting, both of them will say, “oh, that's a painting of my brother.” 

an additional yelp comment: I think. there's THREE of them  a third yelp comment: don't be silly, they're definitely twins.) 

frank and ernest have a very elaborate series of outdoor autumn decorations, with lots of pumpkins and mini gourds and hay bales over the front steps and corn stalks on all the porch posts, and babybea wants to not only show her uncles her hard work, but also put the pumpkin on their steps where everyone can see it!! 

(her uncles also include lemony, of course – I think he did live with the baudelaires for some time after reuniting babybea with them, but has recently moved into ernest's side of the private apartment at the back of the hotel. this was mildly distressing to babybea, who likes everyone she loves under the same roof, but she can't deny that lemony is very happy. and so is ernest. and now she can see all her uncles in the same place whenever she wants!! so the baudelaires tend to spend weekends at the bed and breakfast, because they also miss lemony. and they get to know frank and ernest better, which is very important to them, as people who are important to babybea, and to lemony, and, to the baudelaire's past.) (not to like, detract from the sentiment here, but i do need everyone to know that i imagine ernest spends like, 80% of his working hours just making out with lemony.) (okay maybe not 80%. ernest does legitimately get work done, it’s his hotel too. ………but like, a lot of time.) 

AND SO. the baudelaires arrive at the bed and breakfast, and frank and ernest and lemony are very proud of their niece's pumpkin. they take a lot of pictures. (re: my previous post-canon thoughts, frank has actually acquired a phone now, and does text. it is a flip phone.) babybea places it, very gently, on the third front step, and is so pleased. sunny steals two mini gourds while looking ernest dead in the eye. ernest approves. 

But october turns out to be unseasonably warm, and babybea’s pumpkin, while lovingly carved but now lacking the support an uncarved pumpkin has to keep itself A Pumpkin, does not take kindly to the weather, and babybea actually becomes very distressed at the smallest signs of rot beginning to form in her pumpkin, when it is only the second week of october. She doesn’t TELL anybody, because there’s not really much you can do about a pumpkin doing what a pumpkin does in warm weather, but she’s very upset. (almost uncharacteristically so. usually she’d say, oh, well that’s how it happens, and rather pleasantly move on, but lately, she’s been kind of. quieter than usual.) And frank, who spends a great deal of time at the front desk, closest to the pumpkins, becomes Concerned. 

now, in general, babybea’s family is like, pretty good at being realistic with her. She is of course an optimist, but still Aware of a great deal of the ways of the world, given her family, her upbringing, lemony’s books, her own adventures, everything. You can’t really shield this twelve year old from the ways of the world, even if that way of the world is, a rotting vegetable. All things have their time, and it cannot be stopped. Including seasons, and in-season foods. 

However. She put SO MUCH WORK into that pumpkin, and as the week goes by and the pumpkin starts to shrink in on itself, turning all of babybea’s work black from the inside out, those charming little glowstick eyes CAVING IN, and the baudelaire’s weekly weekend visit grows closer and closer, frank has been imagining her devastated reaction when she sees the pumpkin, and decides, He Must Pull The Fast One. he will re-carve the pumpkin, exactly as babybea carved it, replace the pumpkin, and no one will be the wiser. They get a little more time with the pumpkin, presumably at least until halloween, and his niece gets to see her beautiful handiwork as much as she likes. Maybe, you know, there is a little magic in the world after all, to make a pumpkin look so nice. 

(also, i think frank has. A shaky relationship with babybea, from his end. She loves him, as much as she loves everyone else in her family, and babybea herself would NEVER rank her uncles in order of how well she knows or admires them, but i, lulu vandelay, putting this together, have no qualms in saying she knows lemony the best, bc she has spent the most time with him, between trying to find him and both of them trying to find the baudelaires and all of them having lived together, and she’s rather deeply attached to him – ernest is very personable, and funny, so he’s easy to get along with – and she and frank both like tiny detail work, so they have things in common, but frank always seems very awkward around her. And he is. It’s bc he’s very nervous around her. Frank doesn’t think he’s good with kids. And he is usually acutely aware that in an ideal world, he isn’t the one she’d be spending her time with, that dewey would be so much better at all of this than he is. A better parent, a better brother, a better everything. Because dewey always was, to frank. but, dewey would probably want frank to do as much as he could for her, and would believe him absolutely capable of doing it, without a doubt. So he wants to be a proper uncle to her and THIS is his opportunity, he thinks. He so desperately wants to do something kind and considerate and important for her, like family is supposed to do for each other.) 

the thing about pumpkins, though, is that, for some reason, mid-october, THEY ALL DISAPPEAR. I’m serious, you ever try and find a good pumpkin even like a little over halfway through october? It can be hard. 

frank: i need your assistance. ernest: i’ve killed my quota for the month. frank: i – ernest, please.  ernest: alright, my apologies. What do you need?  frank: a pumpkin. lemony, from the kitchen: jarrahdale or red warty?  frank: no, i mean a carving pumpkin. 

The three of them take a good, long look at babybea’s pumpkin. Uncle Instincts Have Activated. They, very solemnly, bury the pumpkin in the back garden (lemony is the one who takes one for the team and removes the glowstick eyes from the depths of sad, sad pumpkin). And then embark on a mission. Please imagine the three of them packed into a mint green 1960 chevy corvette. Sunglasses optional. Who’s driving? That is up to you, my friend. Oh, google informs me it is cascade green. Imagine accordingly. (yes, no corvette has ever been made with more than two seats, but isn’t that just funnier? They really are packed in there. Lemony sits in the middle.) 

The hunt for the right pumpkin is long. Grueling! Kinda chilly! This is october!! Much comparison is made between potential pumpkins and the pictures they took of babybea’s pumpkin. Snacks are purchased. (lemony, who has recently been introduced to instagram, posts a picture of his pretzel. [ernest is out of focus in the corner, eating a chocolate ice cream cone.] [#pretzel.] 

sunbad: what is that lemonysnicket: I have purchased a pretzel sunbad: without me sunbad: you’re dead to me.) 

(it was actually not sunny who introduced lemony to instagram, although she was his first follower. It was klaus.) (klaus uses instagram mainly to never post anything ever, just to follow his favorite authors, so he wanted lemony to have an instagram, especially since he just moved out.) (klaus……..my heart………..) (oh, frank bought chex mix. he likes those gross rye bread pieces.) 

(don’t get me started on lemony with an instagram……….I think this is a hilarious but also heartwarming thought – this man who has avoided being photographed for years and years and years and YEARS (yes that much repetition was in fact necessary) is at a point in his life here he is not only comfortable of taking pictures of his life, but he is capable of doing it, he’s allowed!! It’s still probably mostly food and it’s so good!!!!!!!! and think of the amount of pictures he keeps just in his phone gallery, too!!! violet’s inventions and klaus’ library displays and sunny’s baking and babybea’s school projects and ernest’s record collection and frank’s breakfast spreads, and nature shots with lemony’s thumb in the corner, AAAAAAAAAAAA) (uh, anyway, these men are on a mission. back to the mission.) 

Eventually, they do find a comparable replacement pumpkin! Does it fit in the car? Lemony, by virtue of sitting in the middle, holds the pumpkin. 

They return to the bed and breakfast. Between the three of them, many different knives, and all of their photos, frank and ernest and lemony painstakingly recreate babybea’s pumpkin, down to the last, smallest detail. Including the little mouse and the side of the tree and the feathers and everything. (frank does do most of the work, because ernest and lemony very much see that this is important to him, but he doesn’t mind them helping, because, yknow. This is about family, and babybea is their family too.) (frank feels like he owes lemony a lot. for trying to set the record straight about their past. or as straight as one could try and set it, with what all of them did. for their niece. for making ernest happy.) (ernest deserves to be happy, with everything they put each other through. ernest thinks the same for frank, too.) 

(ugggggg if you told the three of them when they were so much younger that one day they’d stay up late recreating their niece’s perfect pumpkin masterpiece so she’s not upset about the passage of time………..) 

(who’s in charge of the bed and breakfast while all of this is happening?? 

ernest: mallory, you’re in charge. mallory, a twenty-two year old with a major in hotel management who runs the front desk when ernest and frank can’t: sounds like a plan. 

mallory has a deep respect for the denouements. meanwhile – 

mallory: so you’re lemony snicket. lemony: i am, yes. mallory: you don’t look like your photo. lemony: that’s my legal representative. he has a stamp.) 

meanwhile meanwhile – it is not necessarily about the pumpkin. 

For babybea’s part, she already firmly believes that there is some sort of magic in the world. Even at twelve. Especially at twelve!! Look, she knows it wasn’t magic that reunited her with her family, that it was her and lemony’s hard work, but she wound up with SO much more family than she expected, when she first contacted lemony. And like, that is what there’s magic in. this whole group of people who care about her and love her and want to spend time with her. Babybea thinks she has the best family in the whole entire world. (AND SHE’S RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!) 

But that is also babybea’s problem right now. She loves her family so much, and she loves having them, and it’s been a couple months but she is still not entirely comfortable with people she loves being so far away from her. Not now! Not when they’re all supposed to be in the same space, like they’re supposed to be!! And some kids at school have teased her, not so much about her puzzle-piece family but that she talks about her uncles so much. She’s just proud of her family and she loves them!! But middle schoolers are like, rude as fuck sometimes, okay. And they don’t even think they’re saying anything wrong, just offhand comments about how much she talks about them. They don’t even know anything about her parents, not really, but babybea starts to feel like, it’s the unspoken throughline in what they’re saying, why doesn’t she ever talk about them? Why only her uncles, her guardians? They’re her family, but – 

she feels almost guilty, that she goes through periods where she doesn’t even think of her parents at all, and periods where she can’t stop thinking about what they would look like and what they would be like, and that makes her feel like she doesn’t value the family she DOES have. So it’s not necessarily about the pumpkin starting to rot, what’s making her upset. It’s that, the pumpkin is another thing in a line of things babybea is Thinking about, things that aren’t Going the way she thought they were supposed to go. Her uncle moving out, missing somebody who was supposed to be there, her pumpkin not staying like it’s supposed to, she’s SUPPOSED to love her family but is she loving them right? Is she loving the right people right? Can you miss people you didn’t even know? And babybea has it very set in her head, the things she knows and is supposed to do – this is something she hasn’t quite worked on, but she’ll get to it eventually, she is still twelve – and they keep not happening like that. And now. Something else she worked really, really, really hard on, that isn’t going right either. 

So she spends the week a little gloomy about her pumpkin, and worrying the whole ride friday afternoon after school to the bildungsroman bed and breakfast. Violet and klaus and sunny are very aware of babybea’s mood, and try to cheer her up by asking her about what she’ll be for halloween, but babybea’s heart is not super into this conversation. (she has ideas about a big group costume where they’re all different local birds, but now she’s not even sure about that.) 

And then! She sees her pumpkin!! Glowy eyes and all!!!!! And, mysteriously, those little spots of rot she’d noticed the week before are gone, and, in fact, it looks a little sharper than it had before? And she didn’t think she’d cut the lid quite like that, but! That’s her pumpkin, exactly where it’s supposed to be!!! And it makes her feel just a little better. That’s good. That’s right. But she still can’t, entirely shake off all her previous feelings, about family. But. right now. Her pumpkin still looks very special. 

Later, babybea can’t sleep. So she sneaks out of bed and goes down to the lobby, and sits down on the floor in front of the front desk, and looks at the big painting on the wall, that ernest did of her father. 

This, of course, is where frank finds her. (because frank has never been very good at sleeping consistently, even when there’s nothing to worry about now, and he likes to walk through the hotel to make sure it’s secure.) 

(ernest would say something very clever, like, aha, with a raised eyebrow, but all frank says is – )

frank: hello, beatrice.  beatrice: oh!  beatrice: hello, uncle frank.  frank: may i sit down?  beatrice: yes, please. 

They spend a little while looking at the portrait.

beatrice: um –  beatrice: does it – 

What she wants to ask is, does it look very much like my father, which she then realizes is such a STUPID question if her father was a TRIPLET and she has a mirror image of him right in front of her, who acts like she thinks a father is supposed to act, so, but, it’s not like that doesn’t mean dewey didn’t look like dewey. Just because dewey looked like frank doesn’t mean he only looked like frank. And beatrice forgets, sometimes, that he would’ve just looked just like her uncles. But still! 

beatrice: i mean – the painting, is it – 

But she thinks it’s such a terrible thing to ask!! But frank knows EXACTLY what she means. 

(some time ago, when the hotel had just opened and ernest had just painted the portrait of dewey – 

ernest: i wanted it to look like him. And, it’s not like i, don’t know what he looks like. Looked like. I mean – that could just be me or you up there, couldn’t it. It doesn’t look like it’s him.  frank: no, it does.  frank, knowing exactly what he means and feeling like, he needs to make ernest Not look so abjectly miserable: you don’t look nearly as happy.  ernest, in tears, very amused and touched and still terribly upset: wow! 

The point being, god of course it looks like dewey. It couldn’t be anybody but dewey, even if dewey looks like other people. Dewey looks like himself, he looks like his family, he looks like beatrice, around the eyes. And family means lots of things. It means your guardians raising you, and your uncles raising you, and your father’s portrait on the wall and never knowing him at all, and loving so many people and being loved back by them, whether or not it’s Supposed to be a specific way, and sometimes it means missing somebody, sometimes it means missing different people, sometimes it means being sad for something you’re not sure if you should or could miss, sometimes it means not missing anyone at all, sometimes it means your uncle going to live with his definitely boyfriend even if they won’t say the words out loud who’s also your uncle just on the other side of your family and that doesn’t mean anyone’s going anywhere. Sometimes it means your pumpkin rotting, because things change. uh, does this make sense.) (admittedly, i put a lot of things in this.)

frank: yes, it looks very much like him.  frank: i think about him a lot.  beatrice: ......would he like my pumpkin? frank, without hesitation: absolutely. beatrice: do you like it? frank: i do.

of course babybea already knew that, but it's nice to hear. it's just. nice. it's not, like, everything? just like before. but beatrice is loved by a lot of people, and she loves them, too, and. she feels loved, right here, like she's supposed to, and that's what's Supposed to happen.

beatrice hugs him, and it's not the first time she's hugged frank, but it means more? frank hugs her back.

beatrice: thanks for fixing my pumpkin.  frank: i’m sure i don’t know what you mean, beatrice. 

beatrice hugs him again, and then goes back upstairs. frank looks a little longer at the portrait, and then goes to bed himself, and doesn't get back up until his alarm goes off.

[eleanorfenyxwrites]

The Man From Y.I.L.I.N.G.

Chapter 3: "A Rough Day All Around"

There's some research for this chapter as well that I'll post about in about half an hour after this like the last. Remember, if you want to see the footnotes integrated into the fic directly, that's how it's structured over on AO3 😌 (I worked very hard on formatting those and I'm very proud, can you tell?)

--//--

LANE CRAWFORD LUXURY DEPARTMENT STORE — HONG KONG

“I don’t understand.”

Jin Guangyao keeps a sigh tucked in his chest, but only because Lan Xichen has been nothing but extremely nice to him, even when he’d been under extreme stress and they’d both thought they’d never see each other again anyway. But this is also at least the fifth time he’s said he doesn’t understand just this afternoon alone, and Jin Guangyao’s patience for people (even very nice, extremely handsome people) is not as infinite as it seems.

“Which part?”

Lan Xichen looks up at him from where he’s been staring down at himself, dressed in new suit (without a single cardigan in sight, thank you very much) and standing on a little round platform in front of a three-paneled mirror to see himself from several angles. Around them a few shopgirls bustle to and fro finding ever-more pieces to bring for Lan Xichen to try on at Jin Guangyao’s direction, and for the past few hours he’s been trying not to feel any sort of particular way about the fact that Lan Xichen always thanks them softly with kind smiles (even though he also clearly wishes they would stop bringing him clothing he doesn’t seem to like).

“Ah…I realize I have been repeating myself, I apologize,” he demurs. Jin Guangyao raises an eyebrow (people never apologize, and certainly not to him). “It’s just that…the Jin have really decided to ally with the Wen? Openly?”

“For now, at least. Yes.”

“Mm.” Lan Xichen turns back to the mirror; in the left-hand reflection Jin Guangyao can see he looks…conflicted.

“It just doesn’t seem very likely, you must understand. And I must say I still don’t see exactly how I fit into all of this; my family has been involved in very little save rebuilding our home since just after the war.”

Jin Guangyao, who has definitely explained Lan Xichen’s role in all of this at least twice since he retrieved the man from Mo Xuanyu at the harbor this morning, leans back into his chair and crosses one leg over the other, the movement masking the little sigh he can no longer care about keeping contained.

“I know it seems unlikely, and I admit I was as surprised as you. However, that is what’s happened, which should give you an indication of just how important it is that we find your brother and stop the Yiling Laozu’s plans. As for how you fit into it — you say you haven’t seen him in years, but Lan Wangji is still your brother, and you’re our best hope of getting to him quickly, especially if he’s in danger. You’re also our best hope of speaking to your uncle, who is notoriously difficult to reach but has been seen in contact with the Jiang, who we think may have been secretly helping the Yiling Laozu in much more than just the capture of your brother. You’ll be able to help us find out for certain, and in doing so find your brother, get him to safety, and prevent the nuclear death of the planet. Everybody wins.”

Lan Xichen blinks at him a few times in the mirror, perhaps ever so slightly overwhelmed. To be fair, he supposes it’s not every day a former scholar turned music teacher is asked to commit espionage amongst his own family in order to prevent an all-out international nuclear war. It must be quite a bit to take in.

Lan Xichen blinks furiously as he tugs too hard at the lapels of the suit jacket Jin Guangyao had chosen for him as if he can’t get it to settle correctly on his (surprisingly) broad shoulders. “And when this is over?” he asks as he fusses. “Am I to hide again? I made a decent life for myself out of necessity in Yunping, but I have no interest in going back behind that Wall, not even for my own safety. Will you show me my family after so long only to force me away from them again after I’ve served your father’s purposes?”

For a moment, Jin Guangyao marvels at how similar he would have been to Lan Xichen if they’d only met a few years earlier. How much he would once have given (has given, is giving) in order to not have to be parted from his family, no matter the circumstances. He isn’t sure how happy it makes him any longer, but he’s in too deep now to be comfortable with thinking about that too hard.

“You’re the lynchpin in this whole plan,” Jin Guangyao says to cover his momentary (and throughly unwelcome) introspection. His eyes flicker over to Nie Mingjue just stepping into the luxurious private consultation area they’re currently occupying and he spares a thought to acknowledge, with a sense of foreboding, that this is most likely about to go downhill quicker than he can prevent it, but ultimately keeps his focus on the conversation at hand. “Without you, our hands would be tied. When this is over, you won’t have to go anywhere you don’t want to. I promise.”

“My man would never wear that.”

Jin Guangyao lets out another sigh, perfectly audible this time, and covers his eyes to allow himself a moment or two to lament his…partner’s (ugh) shattering lack of tact when Lan Xichen is clearly two seconds away from bolting right out the door to begin with.

“Your man?” Lan Xichen repeats, affronted. “A-Yao, what is he doing here?”

“As we were just discussing — we are working with the Wens.” Jin Guangyao dares to open his eyes to find Nie Mingjue standing too close to Lan Xichen (read: looming over him), eyes burning in that eerily intense way he seems to look at anybody and anything in his way. “More specifically Wen Ruohan’s pet giant, the Red Blade himself.”

Nie Mingjue ignores him in favor of looking Lan Xichen up and down in a way that makes the man’s ears turn bright red even as his expression twists up into deeper offense at being so clearly found wanting by the time Nie Mingjue’s gaze is once again on his face.

“And why did he call me his man?”

“Because I am now your fiancé.”

Jin Guangyao has a warning smile on his face that many marks have seen in their final moments on this earth, but Nie Mingjue just raises an eyebrow back at him in a silent challenge he obviously knows Jin Guangyao is in no position to rise to. Lan Xichen glances between the two of them sharply before he laughs a hollow sort of disbelieving thing and takes a step back, hands raised to shoulder height in surrender, or perhaps refusal.

“No. Absolutely not. No, no-no,” he says, still laughing, still smiling but seeming more…hysterical than any flavor of amused. He shrugs off the suit jacket Jin Guangyao had put him in and takes the (incredibly expensive) watch off his wrist with enough vigor that Jin Guangyao nearly winces for the sake of the leather wristband. He lets both of them drop unceremoniously to the floor, whips his tie off with a yank and the whisper-soft slither of silk against starched cotton to drop it on the unoccupied loveseat in the seating area Jin Guangyao has been lounging in — and heads straight for the door.

“Oh well done,” Jin Guangyao drawls as he stands from his velvet armchair and buttons his jacket on his way across the consultation area. “Stay here, I’ll bring him back.” He swats Nie Mingjue’s chest on his way past him to follow Lan Xichen’s path out to the street.

Lan Xichen mercifully hasn’t gone far on those long legs of his, just down to the curb to stand with his hands on his hips as he stares down at his feet and takes a few deep, too-fast breaths. Jin Guangyao feels a slight pang of pity. He’s aware that this isn’t an easy task they’ve set for him, but he’s maybe grown a bit too used to doing what needs to be done, no matter the personal cost to himself. Lan Xichen’s perfectly understandable reactions are a decent reminder that what they do every day is…stressful, to say the least.

“Huan-ge,” he calls, hoping the use of the too-familiar nickname will help startle his companion out of his frustration. “I can explain.”

Lan Xichen looks up from his study of the pavement (or perhaps the designer shoes Jin Guangyao had selected for him) to stare him down instead, his gaze a desperate challenge, as if whatever Jin Guangyao says to soothe him will be the only thing that he can stand to hear.

“The engagement is just your cover. He’s an architect who’s been commissioned to design a new resort for Wen Ruohan’s favorites back in Qishan. Wen Ruohan has a fondness for old-world grandeur and would like to send your man in there to study the remaining traditional structures in Yiling for the project. Mingjue has also secured permission to bring along his fiancé —” Jin Guangyao gestures at Lan Xichen in a way that also encompasses the very nice suit Jin Guangyao is attempting to get him to accept “— and of course while everyone conveniently happens to be in the same area you would want to introduce him to your Uncle Qiren, who you haven’t seen in such a long time.”

Lan Xichen’s gaze doesn’t waver but it does…soften ever so slightly, though it’s clear he’s still not thrilled about any of this. Not that Jin Guangyao would expect him to be, either. It’s not like he’d be jumping at the chance to call Nie Mingjue his fiancé if their positions were reversed, no matter what it would net him in the end.

“And your cover? You’re coming as well, are you not?”

“Ah of course —— Meng Yao, arts and antiquities dealer,” Jin Guangyao replies with a sweeping gesture at himself and a pasted-on smile, though a tiny part of him is genuinely pleased that Lan Xichen sort of seems like he’s hoping Jin Guangyao will be tagging along. “The Jiang siblings have managed to establish one of the best collections in China in the years they’ve been busy rebuilding their fortune, and I’d like to take a look at it. They’re currently in Yiling paying a visit to some of their waterfront shipping and storage facilities, so I’ll be looking to get in contact with them there when they’re not so busy as they are in Yunmeng.”

Lan Xichen takes a deep breath in and looks away, glancing across the street to watch the rest of the world pass them by for a long moment before he meets Jin Guangyao’s eyes again.

“You are asking quite a lot of me,” he says quietly, achingly earnest. Jin Guangyao can count the number of people capable of softening his heart on one hand; he’s not entirely sure how he feels about Lan Xichen adding himself to the list so easily.

“It’ll be alright,” he reassures with a softness he hasn’t heard from himself in…quite some time. “You’ll do fine, I know it.”

Lan Xichen takes another deep breath in, flicks another quick glance at the rest of the street, and then he nods and gestures for Jin Guangyao to return inside ahead of him so he can hold the door. Jin Guangyao feels completely and utterly normal about even that small glimpse of chivalry being aimed at him, of all people.

The soft feeling lasts approximately forty-two seconds by his estimation, right until they make it back to the little private alcove to find Nie Mingjue surrounded by all three shopgirls assigned to help them, each of them holding out various pieces so clearly out of Lan Xichen’s comfort zone that Jin Guangyao wonders who the hell Nie Mingjue thinks he’s shopping for.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Jin Guangyao demands. No one looks intimidated by the ice in his voice, and normally that just wouldn’t do. Unfortunately, this is not exactly the sort of situation where he can justify pulling out a knife for an extra bit of intimidation, so he just bites the inside of his cheek and keeps his most dangerous smile in place with military precision.

Nie Mingjue doesn’t look up from the fitted qipao-inspired blouse he’s studying as he remarks, casually as you please, “Your taste is terrible, I’ll take over from here.”

“My taste is fine,” Jin Guangyao argues, ignoring the fact that if he has to argue it out loud that would typically imply the opposite. Nie Mingjue is just trying to irritate him, and damn him it’s working. “Who will ever believe that  a Lan has decided to experiment with pushing the boundaries of acceptable fashion? Especially Xichen, whose wardrobe consists entirely of standard issue trousers and cardigans?”

Nie Mingjue lays the shirt back down across one girl’s arms and turns to the next in line to pick up the matching trousers she’s holding, soft flowing things in pastel blue with a structured, fitted waist, strong front pleats that disappear into the soft fall of extra fabric just above the knee, and fashionably modern, geometric blocks of white over the deep hip pockets. It’s a jarring mix of old and new, and Jin Guangyao turns to gauge Lan Xichen’s reaction only to be dismayed to find him looking intrigued — a far cry from how uncomfortable he’d looked in Jin Guangyao’s choices.

Fucking bastard. (Nie Mingjue, not Lan Xichen.) (He’s already unfortunately endeared enough to Lan Xichen that he doesn’t actually want to think unkind things about him, which means it’s already far too late and Lan Xichen has no choice but to be added to the extremely short list of people Jin Guangyao would genuinely protect with his life.)

(Nie Mingjue is not on the list and is therefore free game to be the subject of whatever vitriol Jin Guangyao pleases.)

Nie Mingjue collects both the trousers and blouse to push them into Lan Xichen’s unresisting arms, his assessing gaze intense enough that Lan Xichen takes what looks like an automatic step back for a bit of space.

“Go put these on and come back, I’ll have accessories for you.”

Lan Xichen looks only mildly less put-out than before, but he does as he’s instructed and disappears into the curtained changing room without further complaint.

“What are you doing? I had everything handled,” Jin Guangyao grouses the moment they’re alone, snagging a string of pearls off a tray from the last girl’s arms to go over them with a critical eye, though he replaces the strand when he spots an imperfection in one just to the left of the center.

“You’re dressing him like an American.”

“And what’s so bad about that?” Jin Guangyao pins a smile in place and fixes Nie Mingjue with a look that he can only hope feels like he’s burning a hole through the man’s ridiculously thick skull.

Nie Mingjue looks down his nose at him like he’s a piece of gum on the sole of his Italian leather wingtips. “We are not American.”

“And that for some reason precludes a well-to-do, well-traveled ‘couple’ such as yourselves from dressing in the latest American fashions? Theirs is inspired by ours anyway!”

Nie Mingjue glares at him outright this time in the way his face always sort of looks, though Jin Guangyao will reluctantly acknowledge that he can read a hint of disdain in his general air of pissiness as well. How unfortunate, that he’s already reached the point of being able to translate the brute’s stupid face. Horrible, all of this is just the worst thing to happen to him — and he’s including the war and Italian prison in that list!

“The Americans copy the Europeans first and foremost, and not particularly well. Xichen should be dressed in the latest fashions here if he’s on my arm, I’ve never sold myself to the West and my partner should dress to reflect that. Besides — I can afford the best for my fiancé, he won’t need to be confined to your boring cheap suits with a disgustingly expensive watch to signal your ‘wealth’. Go do something else useless, I’ll dress him myself or else no one would ever believe we are engaged.”

Jin Guangyao, naturally, bristles at such a rude dismissal and soundly refuses to obey it. Nie Mingjue shoots him another dirty look, but then he’s too busy looking through the next round of accessories the shop attendants have brought them to make too much noise about Jin Guangyao sticking annoyingly close to his side to pass comment on whatever he damn well pleases, thank you very much.

“That doesn’t match,” he points out when Nie Mingjue has a leather belt stretched across his palms, examining the finish of it and the style of the buckle. (It’s at least an appropriately pale shade of tan, but he will not be acknowledging his lukewarm approval out loud, thank you very much.) Jin Guangyao sees a muscle in Nie Mingjue’s jaw jump and smirks to himself, adding a tally to his own column on the mental scoreboard he’s running.

“It does not have to match. It’s a complementary accessory and will match the others, not the entire outfit. Your dull monochromes look ridiculous and unimaginative, a wealthy creative’s fiancé would never be so…pedestrian.”

“Oh good lord,” Lan Xichen sighs. Jin Guangyao turns sharply to take a look at him and he will not admit that the qipao-inspired set is actually…lovely. Really lovely. How unfair. “You two are ridiculous, it’s a belt!”

“Clothes make or break a disguise, particularly where we’re going. It matters,” Nie Mingjue dismisses his protest with a wave of one enormous hand. He selects the belt, a set of leather suspenders, a watch, a necklace (not the flawed pearls), and a set of (admittedly tasteful) clip earrings from the tray held out to him by the shopgirl before he turns to put it all on Lan Xichen with brusque efficiency. If he sees the way Lan Xichen’s ears turn pink to be manhandled so casually he makes no acknowledgment of it (a good thing, considering how easily spooked Lan Xichen still seems to be).

“Where are we going, exactly? I know Yiling, but…where?” Lan Xichen asks as he fiddles with the unfamiliar weight of one of the earrings, very pointedly looking up and away from where Nie Mingjue has a hand half-in his trousers to button the suspenders to the inner lining of the waistband. Jin Guangyao wonders if it’s weird for him to be fighting a bitter battle against the urge to bite Nie Mingjue’s fingers clean off. Preferably while they’re still offending the sanctity of Lan Xichen’s narrow waist.

To distract himself from the uncomfortably vivid thought, he replies, “There is an extremely exclusive boating event being hosted by the Jiang siblings on the stretch of river between Yunmeng and Yiling, high society invitees only. Your uncle will have no choice but to attend considering his presence in Yiling isn’t a secret, so we must also go. We expect there will be no reason your uncle won’t invite you and your new fiancé as well once he’s made aware that you’re in the city.”

“My uncle has never been a man for social engagement no matter the pressures of others, particularly not those engagements that are a blatant excuse to get drunk in the middle of the day. What makes you so certain that he will break his decades-long habits to attend?”

“The little snake has good informants,” Nie Mingjue replies (it’s the first halfway-positive thing he’s said about the Jins, so of course it had to also be half-insult) and leans back to look Lan Xichen over again, now that he seems to be finished barreling right through any concept of boundaries or personal space. Jin Guangyao hates that Lan Xichen looks stunning, his already-slender waist made even trimmer by the deeply flared cut of his trousers, his broad shoulders somehow both softened and accentuated by the purely-decorative suspenders (there’s no way those trousers are sliding down when they’re that snug around his hips).

Nie Mingjue turns to look back at Jin Guangyao over his shoulder after a moment with an eyebrow raised as if to say, See? I fucking told you so. What he actually says is, “He looks better like this, even someone as tasteless as you must see it. I don’t think we’ll be needing you at all,” which is really just the same thing in a different flavor, the bastard.

Jin Guangyao fights back another urge to bite him and smiles instead.

“I’ll leave you to it, then. See you both in Yiling,” he says in parting with a half-bow and a step back towards the door. Lan Xichen looks briefly like he wants to say something, but Jin Guangyao turns on his heel to get out of there before he can. He’s got a flight to catch in his father’s private jet, and because Mo Xuanyu loves him, when Jin Guangyao arrives at the tarmac just off the harbor he’s greeted with a little bottle of the most expensive rice wine Jin Guangshan’s bottomless coffers can buy first, and a verbal greeting second.

“You look tired, Yao-ge,” Mo Xuanyu says as he gets settled in up in the cockpit and Jin Guangyao sinks gratefully into the buttery soft leather seat nearest the galley so they can chat over the ‘com.

“You always say that,” he reminds his brother. Jin Guangyao promptly decides to forgo propriety in favor of drinking a few sips of his wine straight from the bottle; it’s not as if Mo Xuanyu cares about propriety anyway, and they’re the only ones here.

“It’s true every time, too. Seatbelt, ge.”

Jin Guangyao does as he’s asked with a heavy sigh and another swig of his wine, barely registering the sound of Mo Xuanyu rattling off their call sign to air traffic control and requesting clearance for their chosen route back to the Mainland. He closes his eyes as Mo Xuanyu begins taxiing down the runway, the high roar of the engines a comforting background noise that lulls him to sleep before they’ve even taken off.

-... .-. . .- -.-

Nie Mingjue runs a critical eye over Lan Xichen one more time before he steps in closer to turn him in a slow circle with guiding hands around his waist, which the man submits to with a hint of reluctance. Nie Mingjue generously decides not to comment on the fact that he still looks a little..warm around the tips of his ears.

“Much better,” he says, and he means it. Jin Guangyao seems to have a typical Jin’s horrendous taste (the ‘it doesn’t matter what something looks like so long as it’s expensive’ kind of taste – Nie Mingjue strongly disagrees), but he was easy enough to get rid of, so at least Lan Xichen won’t look like a complete travesty. “Yes, I like this,” he adds once Lan Xichen is facing him again, clearly more comfortable in this outfit than the first, though he seems to be trying very hard to act like he’s not. “But it’s missing…” Nie Mingjue digs into his pocket for the diamond ring he’d picked up from a high-end jeweler down the street before he’d joined the others. He drops it into Lan Xichen’s palm, his fingers curled around the fine bones of his wrist easily overlapping each other, and he catches a flinch of defiance on Lan Xichen’s handsome face before he resigns himself to the inevitable.

“Now we are engaged,” he says for good measure, and he doesn’t miss the way Lan Xichen’s gaze flickers to the door for a split second before he looks up at him again, apparently at least willing to play along for now.

“Congratulations,” one of the shopgirls offers from where she’s waiting beside the dais in the middle of the paneled mirrors to see if they need anything else. Nie Mingjue is startled into smiling ever so slightly at her boldness as he turns to glance down at her, nearly two full heads shorter than him.

“Thank you,” he smirks as out of the corner of his eye he sees Lan Xichen slip the ring onto the third finger of his left hand.

... -.-. . -. . / -... .-. . .- -.-

监理处 LUXURY RESORT — YILING

There is, in Yiling, precisely one area where a Wen agent can reasonably be assured that they’re safe enough from attracting unwanted attention.

Or at least that was the case in the years before the Yiling Laozu decided to claim the city for his own.

The old Wen Supervisory Office — now turned luxury hotel and frequented mostly by Wens in name or allegiance — sits just beyond the fringes of the oldest district that has become the Yiling Laozu’s main stomping ground, though the entire city is naturally under his purview. No matter how many times Nie Mingjue tells Wen Ruohan that his last ‘stronghold’ in Yiling is no longer much of a haven, though, his boss never knows how to listen. These days Nie Mingjue tends to keep the reminder that he knows more than a thing or two about defense and battle lines behind his teeth in favor of avoiding punishment as he goes along with whatever stupid outdated scheme Wen Ruohan cooks up, considering he can fight his way out of any trouble easily enough anyway.

But being able to fight his own way out of trouble doesn’t help him feel any less protective of Lan Xichen at his side as they stride into the lobby of the resort, a porter carting their bags in behind them. All it takes is one sharp glance from a couple of hard-looking men (lounging like the apex predators they are in a plush seating area to the left of the doors) for him to loop an arm around Lan Xichen’s silk-clad waist to keep him close and make it clear to anyone watching that he’s not the easy target he may seem to be.

“Mingjue?” Lan Xichen asks, and at least he’s sensible enough to keep his voice down as they don’t break their stride across the lavishly decorated lobby. (Nie Mingjue remains convinced that it’s only thanks to the strength of both Wen Ruohan’s and the Yiling Laozu’s violent reputations that the place hasn’t been burnt to the ground by an angry mob yet in the name of Revolution.)

“Not here.”

Lan Xichen’s tendency to dig his heels in has apparently been left with his old clothes in the department store back in Hong Kong; he simply tucks himself closer with a stealthy glance around the lobby and lets himself be shepherded up to the check-in counter without a fuss.

The clerk they approach in the last spot at the end is one that Nie Mingjue knows from previous assignments, though he hadn’t heard that she’d been moved to Yiling. He supposes he’s not the only piece on Wen Ruohan’s chessboard, so he simply offers her a nod that she returns with a perfectly bland smile and, wisely, no use of his name while he begins checking them in, not with so many curious ears around.

“Welcome to the Supervisory Hotel, sir. You and your fiancé—” great, so everyone’s been briefed then. Nie Mingjue wishes he could roll his eyes without risking their cover “—have been put in suite 191 for your stay. Is there anything else we can do for you?”

“Our bags to our room and a breakfast order placed for the morning, early as you can: one of everything on the menu and a few pots of tea — jasmine, green, and black.”

“Yes sir. Enjoy your evening.”

Nie Mingjue offers another nod and Lan Xichen murmurs a smiling, “Thank you, guniang,” at his side, unfailingly polite in a way that sort of makes Nie Mingjue’s skin crawl, though he’s learning quickly that he’s just genuinely like that. He hadn’t known that people could be so purposefully polite without any ulterior motive, but here they are.

He hands Lan Xichen one room key and pockets his own while the porter sorts out their bags and steers Lan Xichen around to head back down the length of the lobby — and mere yards from the doors they pass Jin Guangyao just arriving, his gaze flicking to them briefly as they approach. Nie Mingjue, naturally, gives him no more attention that he would anyone else in this lobby, but he feels Lan Xichen perk up where he’s still tucked up against his side. 

It’s the only warning he gets before Lan Xichen says (thankfully quietly), “A-Yao?”

Jin Guangyao, for all that Nie Mingjue really wants nothing to do with him, is…alright fine, he’s good at what he does. He doesn’t even spare them a second glance as he saunters right past them into the lion’s den between the atrium and the check-in desk with his head held high, but Lan Xichen actually turns in his arms to watch him until Nie Mingjue jostles him a little more abruptly than necessary to get his attention back where it belongs.

Lan Xichen thankfully faces forward again and doesn’t say anything else, though he radiates displeasure at his side. His hope that the one-sided exchange was too quick to catch unwanted attention is quickly dashed; just as they reach the entryway Nie Mingjue feels more than sees the men who’d watched them enter stand up, and as he pushes through the glass-and-gold doors out into the evening air he resigns himself to the fact that Lan Xichen is apparently someone who’s going to make his job harder than it needs to be, that’s just all there is to it.

He ignores the tingle at the back of his neck from their new hangers-on in favor of leading Lan Xichen down the front steps of the resort and across the street into the bustling warren of the city; hopefully the crowds will buy them some breathing room.

Yiling is a thriving city, in its own right. It lacks the polish and grandeur of Lanling or Qishan, the (former) steady industrial thrum of centuries of mining and smithcraft in Qinghe, or the hustle and bustle of the waterway trade in Yunmeng, but there’s still an undeniable spark to it, a life that hurries on around them in rhythms they don’t quite fit into as the outsiders that they are. Nie Mingjue releases Lan Xichen’s waist in favor of taking him by the hand to better navigate the narrow, crowded alleyways and streets bustling with evening activity on the way to their destination, and though Lan Xichen follows along willingly it only takes a few turns before he gives Nie Mingjue’s hand a curious little tug.

“Mingjue wait — where are we going?”

Nie Mingjue glances back at him just in time to tug him close to keep him from getting run over by a cyclist carting a massive basket overflowing with some crop he can’t identify in the low light. Lan Xichen stumbles ever so slightly and catches himself with both hands on Nie Mingjue’s chest as the cyclist passes them by with the low whizz of his narrow tires. When Nie Mingjue glances down at his hands with a pointed raise of one eyebrow Lan Xichen looks slightly abashed…but he doesn’t seem in a hurry to remove them, either. That’s fair enough, he supposes, considering he’d had his hands stuck under the waist of Lan Xichen’s trousers just a few hours ago. Turnabout’s fair play and all that.

Considering Lan Xichen seems content to stay where he is, Nie Mingjue does his level best to not be distracted by the way Lan Xichen is only a few inches shorter than him (a comfortable height for kissing, his traitorous mind notes) as he finally answers the man’s question. “We’re going where any architect visiting Yiling would go: to see the sights.” 

“Mn.” Lan Xichen glances around at the thoroughly unimpressive alleyway they’re standing in and gives Nie Mingjue a look that somehow manages to convey how little he thinks of these particular ‘sights’, but there’s a tiny hint of a smile hovering at the corner of his lips that Nie Mingjue has to put genuine effort into not returning. That’s..new.

“Not these sights. Other ones. Better ones.”

Lan Xichen hums again, definitely amused this time, and slides his hands ever so slightly up Nie Mingjue’s chest towards his shoulders. He can’t help but notice that Lan Xichen is actually smiling now, a gentle thing that somehow lights up his whole face.

Nie Mingjue reminds himself very forcefully that he doesn’t actually care if they have a nice time tonight; it’s not a date, it’s reconnaissance. Because they are on a mission and mere days ago Lan Xichen was his mark, not his..accomplice. For lack of a better word. (Lan Xichen’s hands [and his face and his waist and his general everything] are too distracting for him to think of anything better.)

“Mingjue?”

“Hm?”

“I believe if we wish to see anything worthwhile before it grows too late we may actually need to…keep walking.”

Nie Mingjue does not flush, his neck just suddenly gets a little warm under the high collar of his sweater. He steps back out of Lan Xichen’s too-close proximity and straightens out his ubiquitous leather jacket as if the other man’s light touch on his shoulders could be enough to ruck it up out of line. Lan Xichen’s hand is warm in his as he continues the way they’d been going, heading for the blaze of lights at the opposite end of the alley. His hand is unfairly pleasant to hold, and Nie Mingjue lets himself indulge in focusing mostly on that sensation of it for the length of time it takes them to get to the next street, where he actually has to pay attention in order to take a route that he hopes will buy them some extra time before their pursuers catch up to them.

The route takes them to a public garden just inside the gates of the oldest district of the city, tucked neatly between the main thoroughfare full of cyclists and a few honking cars and a tea house at the other end closing down for the evening. Lit with strand after strand of red-papered lanterns, the park is arranged pleasantly around a large pond in the center, large enough for an arched bridge to curve over it and reflect off the still water in a perfect mirror. The water is broken up in places by patches of nodding lotus flowers just beginning to sink back into the water for the night, their petals closed tightly.

“Ahh I see,” Lan Xichen hums as they come to a stop at the fence that borders the pedestrian path. At Nie Mingjue’s questioning glance he gestures towards the glinting reflections of warm lamplight and wooden beams in the water as he clarifies, with a smile, “The sights. This is lovely.”

Nie Mingjue’s criteria are more about finding safe public spaces where they can’t be easily cornered while they get some of the lay of the land of the Yiling Laozu’s territory, but that doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that will keep Lan Xichen happy enough to keep playing his part as well as he has been while they’ve been walking, so he just nods and looks back out at the water.

“Well, Mr Architect…” Lan Xichen begins with a sharp hint of teasing in his voice, well-hidden but dangerous all the same. “You seem like a..thorough man, I’m sure you’ve done your homework. Is there anything you can tell me about this place?”

Nie Mingjue, who knows fuck-all about architecture and has very little interest in learning, naturally replies, “Of course there is.” Lan Xichen looks up at him with bemused challenge in his eyes.

“Oh?” He releases Nie Mingjue’s hand to turn his back on the pond and lean elegantly against the fence, open and expectant. He gestures with both hands spread on either side of his hips and a tilt of his head. “Go on, then.”

Nie Mingjue breathes through a sudden memory of similar sensations of any potential story being wiped suddenly clean from his mind anytime A-Sang would plead for one at bedtime as a child. The association is unexpected, and extremely unwelcome in his current circumstances.

“The bridge was constructed in…1723.” Lan Xichen raises his eyebrows and smiles like he can tell Nie Mingjue is 100% pulling this out of his ass, but that’s not nearly enough to make him stop. “Credited to two Qishan Wen architects..actually built by a Qinghe Nie.” 

Lan Xichen’s smile turns openly indulgent, but Nie Mingjue is in too deep now to let him win. Lan Xichen pushes off the fence to start walking towards the bridge in question and Nie Mingjue follows a few paces behind as he continues. “Yes, a Qinghe Nie architect named…” Nie Mingjue scrambles to think of a name, but he’s never been good at this game and so he forces himself not to wince around the ache of his father’s memory as his clumsy tongue offers up, “Fengyi.”

At least there’s no hint of recognition in the relaxed slope of Lan Xichen’s shoulders as he wanders onto the bridge, long strides eating up the distance between the first few planks embedded in the footpath and the high center arch of it easily. Nie Mingjue stays at the bank of the pond, leaning against the first post of the bridge’s railing as he watches Lan Xichen reach the peak and begin to lean over further than Nie Mingjue is strictly comfortable with to look down into the water. He scrambles to think of the next thing to say; maybe if the story is interesting enough Lan Xichen will stop doing things that make his adrenaline spike. 

“And of course Fengyi had…a son…uh..Huaisang. A-Sang loved art and architecture so much he inspired his father to build beautiful things.” Fuck why is he thinking about A-Sang now?! It’s all Jin Guangyao’s fault for bringing him up as his trump card the other day in the cafe, he decides, and thus channels his anger and hurt in the appropriate direction. Lan Xichen turns his head to look over at him, his face expectant, from where he’s bent over and leaning out so far over the railing his heels have popped up off the surface of the bridge.

“Unfortunately he had to..send his son away in the middle of construction as Yiling wasn’t a safe place for someone like his son to be. After that, Nie Fengyi decided to build everything in the park exactly how his son would like, in his honor, so that Huaisang could visit and see everything that had been built just for him once Yiling was safe.”

“That’s quite a large project. The construction must have taken a long time,” Lan Xichen muses.

“Well, naturally Nie Fengyi was a talented architect, he could handle taking on so much work. Why do you say so?”

“Because there’s a plaque up here that says the bridge was finished in 1938.”

Ah.

Nie Mingjue is very glad of the distance between them and that the hazy glow of lantern light is the only thing illuminating him — his face is definitely red, but Lan Xichen doesn’t need to know that. He’s already gloating enough as it is considering his smirk is visible even from here.

“Well. As I said. Yiling was dangerous at the time, and there would have been…Fires. Yes. A fire that destroyed the original bridge a century after it was constructed, so it had to be rebuilt.”

“And the re-construction took another…hundred odd years or so?”

Nie Mingjue wracks his brain for another plausible explanation as he stalls with a short, “No–” that is promptly interrupted by the quiet evening shattering around the spitting rumble of a motorbike that pulls into the park.

“Evening, Big Red. Huan-ge,” Jin Guangyao greets when he’s ground to a stop mere inches from Nie Mingjue’s foot. Nie Mingjue glances sharply around at the park’s few other patrons to make sure none of them are paying them any undue amount of attention.

“You are not supposed to acknowledge us in public,” he snaps, eyes still scanning though he sees Jin Guangyao shrug and smirk at him in his peripherals.

“And you are already being followed.”

Nie Mingjue notes the way Lan Xichen’s head snaps towards them again, his posture straightening (thank god) and his expression slipping towards concern as he looks between them.

“I know. The two men from the lobby, both early-30’s, one in a leather jacket and one in a black suit. Which is why you should leave.”

Lan Xichen comes down from the bridge again to drift close enough to hear them properly, arms crossed over his chest as he glances surreptitiously at their immediate surroundings.

“They went the long way around to the other side of the park when you came in. I imagine they’ll be waiting for you when you leave,” Jin Guangyao tells them, still arrogant as all Jins are as he leans on his motorbike and acts like he isn’t actively making the situation worse simply by being here.

Nie Mingjue stops his scanning to glare at Jin Guangyao instead, his jaw tensing with a click as his fingers start to twinge, the precursor to the shaking that will start any moment.

“I’ll handle them.”

“‘Handle’,” Jin Guangyao muses, sounding bored. A moment later he turns a saccharine smile on Nie Mingjue, tight enough that those damn dimples of his pop deep shadows in his cheeks. “By ‘handle’ I’m assuming you mean in the ‘I’m a completely normal architect showing his fiancé around town, please god don’t hurt me’ way. Because that’s what you are, and naturally you’ll be scared, and it’s in your best interests to act like it?”

“‘Scared’?” Nie Mingjue nearly spits back. A man from Qinghe is not scared of a couple of goons who think they can pull one over on him. Especially not when that man has been Wen Ruohan’s unwilling right hand for almost half his life, with every ounce of violence the honor entails.

Lan Xichen’s mellow voice is enough to snap him back from the lapping edge of his rage when he steps a touch closer and asks, “What exactly is going on?”

Jin Guangyao’s haughty expression smooths out into something noticeably softer even in the low lantern-light when his eyes flicker over to Lan Xichen. Nie Mingjue breathes through the familiar anger coursing through him that clouds his ability to think as clearly as he needs to while Jin Guangyao explains. “You’re being tested. Someone” — his tone and raised eyebrow implies they all know who — “wants to make sure your fiancé here is really an architect, and not a highly trained secret agent. A trained secret agent like Wen Ruohan’s precious Red Blade, for instance.”

Nie Mingjue gnashes his teeth around the blatant disregard for discretion and takes a step away from Lan Xichen’s side to better loom over Jin Guangyao on his stupid fucking motorbike, sitting there calm and collected like he isn’t actively putting everything they’re working on in jeopardy.

“I said I’ll handle it!”

“I think you should do as he says, Mingjue,” Lan Xichen murmurs as he lays a lightly restraining hand on his arm.

Jin Guangyao gives Nie Mingjue a scathing up-and-down glance, lingering a moment too long on his trembling fist at his side, before he shrugs and starts the bike up again with a splutter of the engine that settles into a rumbling purr.

“Alright then, off you go. Just remember — try to take it like a good boy,” he smirks with a fucking wink. Nie Mingjue is going to throttle him, no alliance with the Jin is worth this indignity, nuclear death of everyone on the planet be damned.

“This is not the Nie way,” he snaps for good measure, but all he gets for it is Lan Xichen’s hand slipping into his to squeeze it tightly in silent reproach and Jin Guangyao offering another dimpled smile before he zips away into the night, out of the park and onto the street to disappear quickly in the bustling evening traffic. Nie Mingjue watches him go for a long moment before he turns and stalks off towards the other side of the park, his ‘fiancé’ in tow. Lan Xichen wisely stays silent as they continue on their way, all hints of teasing gone.

He stays close to Nie Mingjue’s side as they cross through the park and exit on the other side, deeper now in the oldest part of the city and surrounded on all sides by tall, narrow buildings casting deep shadows, everything seeming to have been designed specifically to lean in over the street to better block out the sallow glow of the only nearby street lamps…all the way at the next junction some two blocks away.

Nie Mingjue slows his steps and reaches down to slide Lan Xichen’s hand up from where it’s tangled with his to tuck it in the crook of his elbow instead so that he’s free to ball that hand up into a fist against his sternum, making sure they look like any regular couple out for a stroll. It’s not ideal, but his body can’t help but prepare for the fight he knows he could win upon spotting a couple shadowed figures waiting for them tucked just inside an alley between two shops, dark and closed up for the night. Lan Xichen’s grip hardens on his arm, but Nie Mingjue has no intention of letting him get hurt, even should he have no choice but to let things escalate.

Adrenaline courses through him at the idea of getting to bash a couple heads in after the last few days he’s had as he leads Lan Xichen down the street, his gaze trained straight ahead like he can’t tell they’ve just passed right by their tail.

“Hey, nice shoes,” one of them calls out, oily slick from the shadows and punctuated with a little giggle that raises the hair on the back of his neck. 

Nie Mingjue doesn’t break stride as he replies with a brusque, “Thank you,” and gives Lan Xichen’s hand on his elbow a reassuring squeeze.

They’ve just made it past the porch the second man is lounging on when he adds, gruffer than his companion, “Maybe you should give those to me, ah?”

Nie Mingjue — ignoring the way Lan Xichen’s restraining grip on his arm is now tight enough that his hand is starting to tingle from the lack of blood flow to it — slows to a stop to lean back far enough around Lan Xichen to look down his nose at the second man’s dangling legs. He slaps a smirk on his lips and makes sure the innuendo is crystal clear when he replies, “I think your feet are..a little too small.”

He lets Lan Xichen coax him a few steps forward again with surreptitious tugs on his arm, but they’ve only gone that far before the first man speaks up again, closer behind them than he’d been before.

“Give me some cash for dinner, then? Looks like you’ve got plenty of it to spare.”

Nie Mingjue breaks Lan Xichen’s grip and they turn in unison to face him. He clenches his newly freed hand down by his hip, but Lan Xichen is already there, grabbing his arm again and putting the hand not crushing his elbow on his chest to get his attention.

“Darling.” Something about that low, tense murmur snaps Nie Mingjue’s full attention to him, where he finds Lan Xichen far too close and looking up at him with clear censure in his eyes. Do what we discussed, his gaze seems to warn as he adds, “Give him enough for dinner, hm?”

Nie Mingjue could lay these two idiots out flat in less time than it takes to pull his wallet out, but for Lan Xichen’s sake (and Lan Xichen’s sake alone, he doesn’t care what Jin Guangyao thinks he should do) he does the latter. He fishes his wallet from his pocket to pull a handful of notes free, the paper crinkling in his grasp (the smiles of the workers on the front of the bills feel like they’re mocking him) as he passes them to the oily one in the leather jacket. The man takes the cash with a grin wide enough it looks near manic — and reaches across Lan Xichen to slip Nie Mingjue’s entire wallet free from his hand as well.

Lan Xichen’s hand on his chest is the only thing that keeps him from snapping a fist across the space between them to knock the guy out cold for daring to push his luck like this.

“Enjoy your dinner,” he says instead with a tight, threatening smile. Lan Xichen gives his chest a little pat before they turn back around to continue on their way —

But the one in the suit is blocking their path with an ugly smirk on his lips, and Nie Mingjue’s senses shift abruptly into high alert before he’s even consciously noted the clean metal ssnik of a well-oiled blade flicking open behind them. He wraps his arm around Lan Xichen’s waist to shield his more vulnerable organs, his grip steady as they look over their shoulders in sync to gauge the threat.

“Nice watch,” Leather Jacket smirks, twirling his long glinting knife between clever fingers.

No.

No no no! This is fucking insane, Nie Mingjue is not giving his father’s watch to a miserable little cretin he could snap in half like a toothpick! Any Nie (or Wen) knows how to fight, he isn’t special or even unusual; it wouldn’t be noteworthy at all if he landed these two in the hospital for accosting him and his fiancé after dark!

“Ge,” Lan Xichen breathes, another warning, more urgent this time (though he’s pretty sure it’ll sound like fear to their attackers). This is getting more ridiculous by the second — they could already be on their way without the need for any tension at all if Jin Guangyao had just agreed to let Nie Mingjue handle this. “Give him the watch.”

“The ring, too.”

“I beg your pardon?” Lan Xichen asks, sounding so affronted all the sudden that Nie Mingjue wonders if he might end up throwing a punch instead.

Leather Jacket shrugs and uses the knife to point at Lan Xichen’s left hand resting over Nie Mingjue’s curled around his waist. “It’s a nice rock. I want it.”

“Hm.” Lan Xichen releases him long enough to work the diamond off his finger with an indignant huff, and Nie Mingjue doesn’t miss the way Leather Jacket’s hand wraps far too familiarly around Lan Xichen’s graceful fingers when he takes the ring from him, the leer on his face distinctly predatory. Assessing. 

“The watch,” Black Suit reminds him, as if Nie Mingjue could have forgotten in the last thirty seconds.

“The watch!” Leather Jacket snaps — and slaps him across the face.

There is a ringing in his ears, loud enough to drown out everything else in the world. He blinks against it and tries to center himself with a desperation born entirely out of needing to remain present for Lan Xichen’s sake, but the ringing has absolutely nothing to do with the force of the slap and everything to do with the memories rising to the front of his mind too sharp, too loud.

A moment after he’s dragged his thoughts back to the present, Black Suit reaches out to strike him across the other cheek, snapping his head back towards Leather Jacket. His vision dims with the force of his heartbeat thundering in his ears, fury doing its best to work its way past his self-control.

“Mingjue.” Lan Xichen’s sharp call cuts through the ringing in his head. “Give him the watch.”

It takes a few tries to get his shaking fingers to close around the tongue of the wristband threaded through itself, but he eventually manages it and holds his one and only sentimental possession out to Leather Jacket, who snatches it away with another toothy grin before he hawks up a quick glob of spit that lands right where Nie Mingjue’s cheek is still smarting from the first blow.

Nie Mingjue punches him in the throat, his hand a blur as he closes the distance between them with virtually no sense of satisfaction.

“Mingjue!!” Lan Xichen yelps as he hurries to step in front of him, both hands on his chest again as Black Suit hurries around them to tug his buddy up off the ground and away from where Nie Mingjue is seething, the edges of his vision turning a hazy red with the strength of it. “Calm down! That’s enough.”

He can’t take his eyes off his father’s watch in Leather Jacket’s half-gloved hand as the pair make their escape back down the alley and disappear from sight. His stomach twists with the piece of himself that he just allowed to be torn away. His hands are too hard, too bruising on Lan Xichen’s hips as he just barely manages not to shove the man out of his way to give chase. It takes a few long moments, he’s not exactly sure how long, before he becomes aware of another set of footsteps approaching them at a leisurely pace from an alleyway between two buildings.

“You’re not very good at this whole ‘subtlety’ thing, are you?” Jin Guangyao drawls from the shadows.

“A-Yao,” Lan Xichen cautions but Nie Mingjue is already rounding on his new target, eyes flashing as he stalks forward.

“That man just stole my father’s watch.” It’s not enough, it doesn’t even begin to cover the cavern yawning suddenly in his chest, but Nie Mingjue isn’t the most eloquent man even at the best of times, which this is certainly not.

“Yes, I saw. And aren’t you supposed to be an architect?”

“Yes, and a Wen architect would fight back! A Wen agent would kill them! But do I need to remind you that I am neither?!”

“Yes yes, you’re a Nie, I know, we’ve been over this already,” Jin Guangyao waves his anger away with a flick of his wrist, though as keyed up as he is Nie Mingjue can’t help but notice with a hunter’s eye that he drifts a few steps out of his range in Lan Xichen’s direction, where the man has stepped away to sit on the steps of the nearest shop to put his head down on his knees and breathe. “You’re still not exactly known for your even temper, whether you’re Wen or Nie or whatever. Forgive me for being surprised that you seem to have actually thought this through.”

Nie Mingjue wouldn’t be surprised if the pop in his jaw is actually cracking enamel with the force of how hard he’s clenching his teeth to keep his voice down as he spits, “Let’s finish what we started —”

“Don’t!” Lan Xichen’s aggravated bark catches both of their attentions; Nie Mingjue darts another glance his way to find he’s sat up and is now glaring at both of them; it sits strangely on his face. He stands after a moment to stomp closer, clearly at his limit for the second time today. “I was under the impression that you two are supposed to be protecting me, so why am I the one who has to get in the middle and play mediator?”

This close Nie Mingjue can see something else lurking under his irritation but he’s not exactly in a position to suss out what it may be, nor do they have the time for him to try. Instead, he takes a deep breath to try to force his anger back down where it can’t hurt anything. As satisfying as it would likely be, laying Jin Guangyao out flat with a few solid punches won’t help anything now, and he doesn’t want to hurt Lan Xichen, which leaves him without a target to take it out on anyway. Better to let it simmer instead until he can unleash it at just the right moment.

“If you both cannot begin acting like you know what you’re meant to be doing here, I’m leaving. You said it yourself this morning that this plan won’t work without me — act like it.”

Nie Mingjue is left blinking in the wake of his scolding, nonplussed, and when he glances down at Jin Guangyao he finds the other man looks equally as gobsmacked.

“Is it weird that I like him angry?” Jin Guangyao mutters out of the corner of his mouth. Lan Xichen visibly collects himself with a tug on the leather suspenders Nie Mingjue had put on him and a hitch of his trousers to re-settle them after his little breathing exercise on the stoop.

“Don’t talk to me,” Nie Mingjue mutters back before he stalks forward to snag Lan Xichen’s hand and lead him back to the hotel. They’ve had a long day and, as he’d expected, Lan Xichen allows himself to be towed along without complaint.

If Jin Guangyao knows what’s good for him, he’ll take a different route back to his own room and leave them alone for the rest of the night, at the very least.

[tokito-dulya20]

what the hashira think of ilona and what ilona thinks of the hashira

(also drew ilona in kny manga style)

what the hashira think of ilona:

Gyomei- "She is a kind, young soul and I do respect her. As she has worked hard to be at her level now. She is smart and quick to think on her feet when there is trouble. She is a nice person despite her age."

Tengen- "That half-demon hashira? I heard she's a strong girl but her appearance is what gets me.. I mean who wouldn't wanna spend all day admiring her skills. It's very impressive."

Giyuu- "She's a sweet person. She's kind and has a good smile. A little too naive."

Obanai- "Ilona? The only thing I think of her is that she is the strangest hashira. I don't know how she even passed the Final Selection with her skills. I thought Shinobu Kocho was the strangest out of the hashira. She's way too quiet. Ilona might be strong, but there's something strange about her."

Sanemi- "She's a strong and competent individual. Although she is quiet, her presence is comforting."

Kyojuro- "She is kind and gentle but can become fierce if she ever has to protect someone. An extraordinary hashira with a lot of potential. "

Mitsuri- "She is a strong girl. She may come off as shy, but she is a very sweet soul. The fact that she is a hashira is already astonishing. Also I am really impressed by her strength. Her cold side is a bit scary, but I have to admit, she looks adorable!! Her eyes are very sparkly!!

Shinobu- "I think she's a good person, but I'm quite suspicious of her because she always calm. Despite her shy demeanor, she is quite reliable since I trained her little sister I never knew she had."

Muichiro- "She's like a snow leopard. Considering her abilities, she can move quickly and quietly as far as I know. She can adapt to a variety of situations like a predator to its prey."

what ilona thinks of the hashira:

Ilona (Gyomei)- "Gyomei is like a father figure to me, despite him being blind. I'm half deaf and I would understand that."

Ilona (Tengen)- "I hate that dumb bitch. i remember one time he called me "babygirl" when he gave me a tissue for my nosebleed. Every time I hear him call me that, I wanna just beat his ass and curse him out in Ukrainian"

Ilona (Giyuu)- "I would say he's like my older brother, David. He keeps to himself. But I would be Giyuu's therapist friend if he needs anything."

Ilona (Obanai)- "I feel like he looks like someone who committed a crime with no remorse with that look on his face. But he his a chill guy in general.

Ilona (Sanemi)- "The non-eyebrowed bitch... I would feel like I wanna burn his house, but his little brother Genya is a nice person but I would respect Sanemi despite him acting so bitchy."

Ilona (Kyojuro)- "He is loud. When I heard he was basically deaf, I decided to feel sympathetic since I was deaf when I was 4 years old. So I understand what he's going through."

Ilona (Mitsuri)- "She's like someone who has ADHD. A very hyper personality when she rants about Obanai. But I love how her hair looks unique."

Ilona (Shinobu)- "She is like my oldest sister, Irina. My sister knows about medical stuff. She is a good doctor not gonna lie. Shinobu is a nice woman despite the one time I think she was younger than me because she is short. Don't worry I'm shorter than my 2 younger siblings."

Ilona (Muichiro)- "To be honest, I love that guy. He might have memory loss but I would say the same thing for myself since I have anxiety and I forget within anything within a few seconds."

[soft-jihoonie]

I Hated You But I Want You - Chapter 2

Pairing: Chanyeol x f!reader

Genre: University AU - enemies to lovers

Warnings: none currently, may change throughout the series

Words: 927

A/N: As always, if you like the fic please like, reblog or reply! I’d love to know what you think

| 1 | 2 |

Chanyeol has sent you way too many flirty texts since you gave him your number 3 days ago, and you have to admit you’re sort of impressed by his commitment as you haven’t responded to a single one.

It’s getting annoying now though as you’re trying to focus on studying in the library, your phone vibrating consistently because Chanyeol is apparently only capable of sending a couple of words per message instead of full sentences.

You shoot an apologetic look to your table mates and pick up your phone, only to realise Chanyeol is actually calling you. You quietly ask someone to look after your things and then head out the library with your phone.

As you step outside you answer your phone, saying “What Chanyeol?”

His voice carries through the phone loudly enough you have to pull it away from your ear. Chanyeol sounds excitable when he says “Let’s meet up”

Your voice doesn’t hold the same enthusiasm, “Why?”

You can almost see the pout on his face when he responds, “Does there need to be a reason?”

You sigh, running a hand through your hair as you say, “Look, unless you wanna talk about our project, I gotta go. I’m studying and I left my stuff in the library.”

You mentally curse yourself as he says, “You’re in the library? I’ll come meet you, I’m in the cafeteria.”

“Chanyeol if you’re just coming to bug me then please don’t bother”

“We’ll work on our project I promise.”

You huff out a “fine” before hanging up and returning to the library.

Chanyeol’s promise was a lie and you should have known it would be.

You’ve exasperatedly spent the last 20 minutes trying to get him to focus on the project but he’s way too distracted. His newest distraction is a pretty girl who’s walked into the library, browsing books in the science section.

You click your fingers in front of Chanyeol’s face and snap out, “God, could you stop checking out other girls and focus!”

Chanyeol turns his attention back to you, a smirk on his face as he says, “Jealous?”

“Could you just pay attention to the project for once? I stopped studying for my exam because you promised to focus!”

Chanyeol surprisingly looks a little sheepish, “I didn’t realise you have an exam, when is it?”

“In 2 days, and I’m really not prepared.”

Chanyeol wrings his hands nervously and asks, “Do you want help studying?”

Your jaw drops open in shock and you say, “You want to help me study? You wouldn’t even focus on our project.”

Chanyeol shrugs, an apologetic look on his face, “Well this is definitely more urgent so can I at least like help by quizzing you?”

There’s nothing exactly left to lose by saying yes you decide, so you nod and pull up a practice exam on your laptop. You pass your laptop to Chanyeol and the seriousness on his face is definitely not what you’re used to.

You spend the next hour running through practice exams with Chanyeol, and he surprisingly manages to stay serious the whole time.

Chanyeol asks you a question and your mind blanks, you can’t for the life of you remember the answer.

You’re visibly getting frustrated at your inability to remember the answer, and it surprises you when Chanyeol’s hand reaches out to squeeze yours reassuringly.

Despite your dislike for him, you feel yourself relax at the feeling, especially when he says, “Hey, it’s okay if you don’t remember, it just means you know to study more in this specific area!”

You nod, taking a deep breath before responding, “You’re right, let’s move on.”

Chanyeol nods, his hand lingering for a bit longer before he finally lets go and goes back to scrolling through your laptop. You ignore the slight sadness you get when he lets go, putting it down to the fact you’re just stressed.

By the time it hits evening, you’ve studied hard to the point where you’re feeling much more confident, and Chanyeol stayed focused the whole time.

You stretch your arms up as Chanyeol slides your closed laptop towards you, not noticing how his gaze runs over your body. Turning to him as your arms flop back down, you say, “Uh, thank you for today, it was really helpful.”

Chanyeol shrugs, picking up his backpack and responding, “It’s no biggie, I’m sure you’ll smash your exam now.”

A little smile appears on your lips as you pack away your things and you’re about to respond when you realise Chanyeol is no longer looking at you. Following his gaze, you see he’s found the girl from earlier again.

He doesn’t look back at you as he stands and says, “Gotta go, see you in class.”

It’s definitely not sadness you feel as you watch him approach the girl, her grinning up at him and touching his hand on the table. The bitterness is just because you dislike his behaviour towards girls, right?

Shaking your head to rid it of any thoughts, you pick up your bag and head out of the library to go home. What Chanyeol does with other women is none of your business, all you need to focus on is your exam and your project with Chanyeol.

Your project that he somehow yet again managed to avoid working on with you. It’s hard to be mad though, he spent hours helping you study. Chanyeol feels so hot and cold, helpful one moment and disregarding you the next.

No wonder everyone complains about working with him.

[spacegoathours]

Hello! I'm a bit of a new follower of yours, but I've fallen in love with your account: the art, the ocs, speculation, and the friendly asks/responses! I'm an Invader Zim lover, of course, but I only really know the show (a little) and the movie (I have a poster!). I've never even seen the comics.

Anyway, would you like to use this ask to infodump a bit about the stuff that you can't exactly find in the movie/show? I'm a bit foggy about things like Vort and stuff!

I suppose I could google it, and spend a couple hours on old wiki pages, but I feel like this is a more fun way to learn (and interact with the fandom), hopefully for both of us!

Thanks! :) (And hopefully this hasn't been asked yet, haha. I won't be hurt if you leave this ask in the inbox! I know running accounts can be a bit exhausting!)

hello!! this is so sweet, thank you! i’m glad you’re enjoying my blog, i pour a lot of love into it. :)

gotta admit tho, i haven’t read the comics either!! read a few but never committed to finishing them all…someday!!! though my understanding is that there isn’t a spectacular amount of lore in them, they kinda do their own thing, but i don’t want to speak without knowing for sure. there might be PAK lore in there? and Zib came out of the comics, which is a fairly popular character in the fandom. (I might have this wrong because I haven’t read but…Zib is the result of Dib winning in one of many timelines, Zim’s PAK attaches to the back of his head and he goes insane…?)

UGH I COULD TALK ABOUT VORT FOREVER AND NEVER GET BORED!! the Irken/Vortian alliance is fascinating, and canonically we only get bits and pieces that the fandom has taken and ran with. we know that at some point they were allied, and that the building/planning of the Massive (Irken Armada flagship) occurred on Vort. we know that Vort was marked for conquest in Operation Impending Doom II and was successful taken over by Invader Larb. we know that it’s now a military research prison and that the Vortians were enslaved.

what we DON’T know but can assume: the alliance ended because the Vortians were blamed for Tallest Miyuki’s death - being eaten by an energy-consuming blob made by Zim. this is hard to determine because i mean. a bunch of people were there. Zim was boasting about it. bruh. but Irkens are dumb, actually everyone is dumb in this show. but we all have brainrot here and we take things too far and we love it. anyway. we don’t get to see a lot of Vortians so how many are enslaved? how many died in the organic sweep? how did Lard Nar escape and start the Resisty (speculation from Frycook explains some technology that helped some Vortians escape prison but again that’s assumption)? what does Vort even look like? we may have gotten more had the series not been cancelled before shit got real but!!! alas…..

not knowing the exact extent of your current IZ knowledge, I might have just spoken in a totally different language LOL. but thank you for letting me infodump!! my brain doesn’t work well for remembering details or speculating very deep, so I often end up repeating myself, but it’s fun nonetheless. I appreciate you 💜✨

[inventors-fair]

Named Common Contest: Range of Playables

I have yet another confession; feels like I’ve been doing a lot of those these days. Maybe it was the fact that I’ve been doing a lot of work outside the Fair, or the fact that I’ve been really Magic’d out with fatigue and whatnot, but I came up with this contest more as a cool idea for the future and less about something I was personally interested in/something I’d build myself. We get a lot more entries on average, and hoo boy, commentary’s still a lot of work for a Saturday, but with this, I felt really backed into a corner. How am I supposed to write about this?

With fun. From the perspective of fun. That’s what makes the most sense. Am I going to apply my normal sensibilities? Yes, but designing for new players and kids and weird people is something that I’m drawn to, because I’m often surrounded by new players, kids, etc. So maybe this is a root return. But y’all don’t need to hear that. You want the goods. It’s nice to see your work appreciated and talked about. That’s...why this whole thing exists, heh.

BY THE WAY: Very important to note. If your card doesn’t meet the qualifications for the contest, in the future, it may not be considered at all. Please, please read what the contest is looking for. Carefully.

Judge Picks are cards that I want to showcase for some reason or other, cards that I like personally or that have good design sensibilities. Let’s see.

@10001gecs​ — Paul Bunyan, Forest Feller

As many Fair veterans know, I am not a man who is beholden to shenanigans. Shenanigans include outside/non-Magic IPs in otherwise serious contests. However, I hate to admit it, but this card’s really well-made. I feel that there were a lot of well-designed green cards this week? I’m worried about bias, but I always am—thought not as much as your opponents should be worried about getting smacked in the face with Giants.

All the same, let’s get some parts out of the way. For one, a legendary name without the legendary supertype on an effect that definitely needs to be legendary? That’s a bit of an issue. While I like the Giant archetypes, too, the fact that Giant Ox is a vehicle-based card and this card has nothing mechanically to do with that is a bit of a misstep to me. I would suggest taking a step back and considering what your card actually does versus what it might be sensible in some ways to do. Yes, Giant ____ is the meme, but how can you use that in other ways?

~

@bergdg​ — Krenko and Mizzix

They’re gonna kiss! ... Anyway. What they’re actually going to do is be pretty okay. I like the overall fun factor that you’re going for. It does feel super weird that this card only has one of their colors when all the other team-ups are, well, teamed up. Still, concept is neat. Krenko’s Command is one of those cards that my kids like so I’m very familiar with the attachment, heh.

The fact that “the exiled card” can potentially refer to other cards besides Krenko’s Command is problematic in execution, considering other spells/abilities that could exile cards. Additionally... Well, I don’t feel the team-up, honestly. It’s not particularly resonant with either one of their normal abilities and it’s not particularly strong either. Honestly, I think if you wanted to commit to the team-up, this wasn’t the contest for it; a new Krenko might have been a better option overall.

EDIT: I’m actually wrong about that exiling part! Florence pointed out that 607.2A takes care of that. Who’da thunk!

~

@ct-mayor​ — Nit, Restorer of the Old Ways

I’ll admit, even though I’m kind of a fan of Hieroglyphic Illumination myself, I haven’t considered it a popular or resonant enough card for someone to be a fan of it. Still, it makes sense, and this card’s not bad! The name “Nit” isn’t, uh, quite resonant with me in the same way? Considering the English word, it’s a little odd. But overall flavor-wise, that studious aspect comes across.

“Win the game” effects are a hard balance. I think cycling into a four-of with this card and then just recasting your illuminations is pretty rough to go up against, but it’s not out of the question. The fact that it’s all centered around a single card with no other interaction if you don’t have them makes it feel a little too specific even for this contest. If you don’t have any of that specific card, what’s the point? Yes, there’s build-around-ness, but no card exists in a vacuum. Consider how your card needs to interact with the greater formats in which it would be played.

~

@deg99​ — Invigorating Geomancer (JUDGE PICK)

This card is inviting infinite loops. How? ... Wait, gimme a second. ... Okay, well, Sakura-Tribe Scout, two Retreat to Coralhelms, Zuran Orb, and Junktroller can get you infinite life, but maybe I’m overthinking the loop. The point is: this one is actually really good. Lava Dart, IMO, isn’t too powerful for standard, and burn needs all the help that it can get at this point. I’m not quite certain what “Invigorating” is going for here? The mood’s a little odd, but the point is, this card can be crazy powerful with the right build. Frankly, I’m imagining this in Pioneer with some weird Jund decks, and it’s hecka fun.

It’s specific without being too powerful, although that loop, with land sacrificing, could mean awful things for other formats. The ability to just loop your Mountains is...crazy good. REALLY good. I think just about any mono-red deck with Armageddony effects will go nuts for this. Wow, actually, can you imagine? Old red “destroy all lands” cards are basically negated. That’s silly and ridiculous. I love it; it won’t impact the formats in which it would be played normally. Limited might mean more land sacrifice cards, or just permanent sacrifice, which is interesting to me... I wonder what other mechanics we might see!

~

@demimonde-semigoddess​ — Stillborn Demon

I’m a huge fan of visceral reactions. The term “Stillborn” to describe anything in Magic evokes a truly awful feeling for me. There are some descriptors that extend beyond the realm of natural human encounters, but the grotesquery of that concept here is...genuinely off-putting. Any other name would have been preferable. Within reason.

Card-wise, it’s certainly fine, and I suppose people are still making Shadowborn Apostle decks (although I’ve never actually played against them? Weird. They’re still kinda pricey.) here and there. The issue comes from the fact that, well, do you want to be sacrificing your Apostles, really? The Apostles are utilized to tutor demons, not to be fodder. If THIS is the demon that you’re looking for, well, you might be in limited, which is vaguely understandable, but constructed? It feels antithetical. As a card normally, it’s perfectly serviceable as an uncommon flying beater, nothing wrong with that.

~

@dimestoretajic​ — Kenji, Sokenzan Artist

I double-checked to make sure that Iron Apprentice was the card I thought, and wow, there you go! Kenji’s part of the sacrifice crew, and that archetype could be really nasty on Kamigawa. Maybe we’ll see him in another world. I like the fact that I can kind of picture this guy, an artist with all his little robots, shaping them to hone his skill. Maybe he’s a blade artisan of sorts! It would explain the first strike and the general warrior feel to him.

Sacrificing artifacts is great. The bonuses from the creatures and the huge bonuses from Iron Apprentice are even bigger. I feel that you may have boxed yourself in a little with them. Getting bigger is nice, but is there anything more? This card feels a tiny bit underwhelming without that direction. But, it’s okay to just call a card a bomb as it goes. I wish he felt a little more legendary and I wish that we could see more of his artistry. Still, someone could make the Sokenzan-Forge deck if they like him enough, right? I suppose that’s the point of this whole contest, heh.

~

@greensunzenith​ — Shadowborn Gravecaller

I feel that this card is close and that you’ve got some good things going for you. Shadowborn Apostle was NOT the right choice for this card. This isn’t going to be the last time I go over this, as y’all have seen, but Shadowborn Apostle fulfills a very specific deckbuilding archetype. Adding additional cards that aren’t apostles or demons is just going to make the deck worse and the math checks out on this. How many of this card would you want? What would you put into the deck?

Most importantly: would adding this card genuinely be any better than adding in another Shadowborn Apostle? Frankly, I don’t think so. Whatever they’re doing, the statistics are against you. Maybe in a Commander deck? In limited, that first ability is phenomenal, don’t get me wrong. But with all the other aspects, knowing what the deck wants to go for, I don’t feel that it’s the right choice for the Apostles.

~

@hypexion​ — Amp-Amp, Shock Jock (JUDGE PICK)

I hatelove this card. I have NO idea how to feel about it. A single splice card in standard isn’t out of the question if we have those other weird one-offs, the cyclings and flashbacks. But like, I know for a fact that this card’s probably not going to herald the return of a weird mechanic that I’ve still had trouble explaining to the kids. And yet, and yet! It’s just so fun and quite well-executed. Having a deck built around this card would be quite weird. What’re you gonna do? For five mana, I’m gonna Mystic Speculation/Shock every turn. What a twist.

Genuinely, I don’t think this card’s right for a standard environment, but I do want to commend it for pushing this contest to the absolute limit without going out of the bounds of realism. It’s phenomenally designed and equally silly. There’s all the radical complexity of Kamigawa with the silliness of the Akki and the thoughtfulness of how to design strange cards. I’m really happy that you submitted this.

~

@i-am-the-one-who-wololoes​ — Necroprankster

Contrary to the Shock above, there’s no way in hell that Exhume is coming back to standard. It’s one of the most powerful reanimation spells ever printed, and at common, it wouldn’t see the light of day. As a rare? Perhaps. This card could have gone with Unearth (the card) and I would have been far more receptive to it; after all, this card’s three mana, Unearth can see it, you can kinda chain them together, yadda yadda.

Aside from THAT little piece, though, I think this card’s actually really good! The concept of choices and control and potential unearthing (heh) is really neat. It’s an uncommon that cares about relevant commons in an archetype that matters, it’s small but powerful, it doesn’t overstay its welcome with its ETB, and I really like the name. There’s that modern-Grimm feel to it that was a little more popular in the 00’s but hell, I like it all the same, you know? I’ll be honest, between the name and flavor text, I almost don’t need art direction. Not bad, captain.

~

@just--a--penguin — Foolhardy Excavator

I kind of want to know your thought process behind bringing back a bulk common from Onslaught into a standard-legal contest. I want to say firstly: I can see how this card would be incredibly good in, like, a limited format where there’s morph/manifest and there needs to be hate for it. That much I get. And you know what, I’m gonna pause my own tirade, because in terms of creative expressions, I can see the implications of new environments with new mechanics and old cards, and that’s fine. That’s another part of this whole contest I’m learning to appreciate.

Couple important things: For one, the first ability needs to shuffle, which you might’ve just forgotten, and that’s fine. For two, “foolhardy” probably isn’t the best term here. Look at the second ability you’ve made. This excavator, whoever they are, is here to deal damage. Maybe they’re foolhardy to us, but who are they in the grand scheme of things? They’re forceful, blunt, barbaric, and there aren’t any consequences befalling them. Adjective choice matters for polish. I feel that this card could be pretty fun until you turn-four break open their 8-drop beast. Whoops.

~

@lich-of-the-golgari​ — Venser’s Last Will

Firstly, this contest specified that the card to which you were referencing was supposed to be a common. Please ensure that you read all the contest requirements carefully. In the future, submissions that don’t follow Fair criteria may be ineligible.

From a story perspective, I’m struggling to find the sense of this card. Venser didn’t have a will, nor did he know he was going to perish on Mirrodin. The “last of his legacy” was the spark he gave to Karn, arguable. Mechanically, the wording is missing the shuffle clause, and the replacement effect should be “once each turn” and also be a trigger of sorts; how is this restriction checked without a “may” clause? The bottom line is that this card does not encourage the kind of cohesive deckbuilding we were looking for with this contest. 

~

@little-red-rabbit​ — Squadron Falconer

Everyone loves Squadron Hawk! Except my kids when I play against them, but that’s a whole other story. The point is, Squadron Hawk is great and I think the name you chose is awesome. There are a couple small mechanical things we’ll go for afterwards, but just to close out the good things, I think the idea of this guy being...carried? By the hawks? It makes mechanical sense, even if it is a touch silly, heh. I really like the way he forces an answer to the hawks. It does feel slightly redundant since the hawks can already search for themselves; perhaps consider a benefit to the birds as opposed to the falconer themself?

The first ability needs a shuffle clause, which is always important when you’re searching. The second ability has, er, some extra words that might have been left over? I believe it should be worded “As long as you control two or more creatures named Squadron Hawk, Squadron Falconer has flying.” There we go. 

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@nine-effing-hells​ — Igniter of Horizons

Great balls o’ fire. Can cards...DO that? “...if it was put onto” etc.? I honestly don’t know the precedent. This card seems kind of fun, actually, and I wonder what the design space for cards like that it. Like a card that has an effect if it was milled by card X or whatever, exile it from your graveyard, big buff. Maybe. Anyway, dragons though! I think that Dragon’s Approach is versatile enough to be reprinted basically everywhere. I know that I have a kid whose M.O. is dragons, and he’d love to see this card. To be fair, he’d love to see any dragon. I suppose that if you’re going to build the deck casually, this is the card you’d be going for, right? There aren’t too many other cards you’d really want if you’re that dead-set.

I’m not going to check the wording on your card there. I assume that the shift from the targets to “permanents and/or players” checks out. Trample is a fun one there. As a body by itself, the card is good, and as a Dragon’s Approach payoff, it’s also pretty fun. I’m a little curious about the name? Not sure what you’re going for there, but it’s really cool, actually. Maybe there’s an explanation I missed, maybe not. Point is, card’s decent, does what it says. Is it any better than a better dragon like, I’unno, Ancient Copper? Obviously not but we don’t talk about that. It cares about what it wants to care about. Ooh, maybe if there was one for each archetype...

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@noodlegirl-googlyeyes — Counterspellatog

So we did talk in the workshop about the potential for cards that cared about your opponents’ cards instead of your own, and I was iffy about the idea because this contest was more about the deckbuilding fun than, like, pure hate/interaction. Seeing this card, I still don’t know how to feel; I WANT to feel a little more justified, because wow, Atogs are a nuisance, but maybe not. Then I think about how this card’s implying that Counterspell will be in standard and I feel a little less iffy about my position. The fact is that, until the tides change immensely, Counterspell’s just not coming back to standard, and that’s what that’s.

I think the name’s just past the edge of silly, too, but it doesn’t make it not fun to say. I also do want to note that if you just have effects that put counters on things, this card works just fine. Still, it’s...a sideboard card at most and awkward most often. Just not quite the kind of thing we were thinking about for this contest. What a throwback, though. Through this contest we really get to see the personality of players and the ways in which they express what they think is cool. This is no exception.

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@railway-covidae — Persistent Farmer (JUDGE PICK)

This card technically isn’t eligible because it’s a common itself and you were supposed to be designing for uncommon and up, but that’s an easy mistake to make and/or an easy fix. Sometimes there’s grace. For this farmer, there’s none. Let’s get two small templating things out of the way first. With the mana ability, milling should be part of the cost. Maybe it was intentional that it wasn’t, but Millikin implies otherwise as to how it should be. With the return ability, I think it needs to target? There’s no reason why it shouldn’t and it’s important that it does for stack reasons and whatever.

But the rest of this card’s really, REALLY cool. This peasant is a menace. He’s a mana dork (definitely not common) where you can build around that graveyard theme... Hey, haven’t we been here before, but differently? NGL, it’s funny to me that there were two Innistradian cards based around the G/B graveyard-filling archetype that I really liked this week despite only having played that in limited once. Anyway, casual players who like filling the yard will absolutely love this card. Mulch is fun, the grossness is just creepy enough not to be directly off-putting unless you’re crazy squeamish, and I’m glad Mulch got some love. Very fun.

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@real-aspen-hours​ — Wastes Tender

Sorry, didn’t quite have the time to mock this one up. Anyway, this card’s missing ooooone small thing. Do you remember what it is? .... Time’s up! That’s right, the Eldrazi with colored symbols in their costs need (and I say “need,” I mean that in the metaphysical sense more than rules) the ability Devoid to make ‘em colorless. Womp. That said, this card’s awesome as a ramp spell. I think that the Wastes players will like that. Wastes was a great archetype! Very strange environment, ngl, but all the same.

This card is definitely from a different era, but if Arboreal Grazer can have its day, then so can the Wastes Tender. I mean, I would have liked a slightly less Waste-y name and you could drop the “far” from the flavor text, but the mood you’re going for is actually super cool. Indeed, a “perversion of growth” comes across in both the mechanics and the card’s overall feel; from the wastes grow more nothing, more horror, the Scions of tomorrow. Not bad, not bad.

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@reaperfromtheabyss​ — Commando Consecrator

Of all the cards to pick for this contest, I genuinely did not expect Cathar Commando to be among them. Honestly, I really like how this card plays as a rare! Even if you don’t have the other Commandos (and if you’re P1P1 going for this, you’re gonna get some), returning a small creature is just as awesome. Humans, sacrifice, and spirits alike will enjoy that ETB, and it’s an on-curve beater at the very least. Cathar Commando, though, huh.

The only question is flavor weirdness. Sort of. How do angels on Innistrad go about their tactics? The Commando is depicted as being borderline dishonorable, or at least a little gruesome when it comes to executing her prey. Why would they want to be consecrated? Or need to, either. Perhaps it’s a small blessing, that it’s a gift because the angels are returning them. No matter. The point is, I suppose, that Angels and Soldiers have that kind of relationship, and that’s okay. Gotta say, I’m a fan of Commando as a card. Flashing in a first-striker and maybe getting it back with another Consecrator later is pretty good! Pretty decent stuff. I think that whether or not someone’s going to build a deck is a little up in the air, but for limited, this card’s pretty great.

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@snugz​ — Eager Whelp

Ey, another Dragon’s Approach card. This one is definitely a little different, but I think it’s still pretty good. The expectations of the body-to-cost ratio is fine, and having a phoenix-like body swinging in is pretty great. If you search for this card using the Approaches, you’ll have an 8/2 flying hasty dragon! That’s pretty good, if a little weak for its cost. If you don’t get any DA’s in limited, then you’re kind of out of luck, but then it raises the question of how many dragons-to-Approaches are you running for cards like this to be worth it.

If you really want to go balls to the wall in standard, then I can see this card being pretty good even if the toughness leaves a lot to be desired. You know, I should be thinking of Arena, too, even though the mere notion fills me with...shuddering. I kid, though, I kid; I guess there’s the question of whether or not that easy casual environment would be down to get these sorts of cards. Maybe it’s a little late to be thinking of that crucible, but regardless. I would feel bad if my awesome dragon ended up getting Shock’d to death by the goblins deck after all the setup I had put into it, but the feeling is certainly solid.

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@squeezyboi — Spell Piercer

So...yeah, unfortunately, this card’s not eligible either. I really should have checked some of these beforehand. Again, the actual, physical, other card had to be named and referenced, not just alluded to by the name. Card’s basically fine, maybe two mana, “its” not “it’s.” But I can’t give further critique in the same vein. The workshop’s here in Discord to ensure you’re on the right path, and double-check the contest requirements.

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@stareyedesper​ — Bloodthirsty Sadist

That’s certainty a card name. I think that there’s something to be said for the sadism of vampires on Innistrad or otherwise, and it makes sense here. Dead Weight was an awesome card and I know its got some awesome limited hype around it. This card does indeed feel like it was made for limited, or for friends to build specific decks against each other. But getting an on-color aura’s still important, yeah? Flavor’s pretty good, and from a balance perspective, it’s really specific but I still feel the mana cost could be upped or the toughness could be ticked down just by one, perhaps. It’s way strong in the right matchup.

The wording feels a little off. Let me see... “When ~ enters the battlefield, search your library or graveyard for a card named Dead Weight, reveal it, then shuffle. If an opponent controls a Human, you may attach that card to that Human. Otherwise, put it into your hand.” The term “add it to your hand” is erroneous, and “Human” needs to be capitalized at all times. There are a couple mechanical differences with targeting, but you can take it or leave it.

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 @wolkemesser​ — Vincent, Pit Gourmand (JUDGE PICK)

Every week. Every week, I’m either picking apart wording like I’m getting cat hair off a black dress with your cards, or I’m astounded by the new weirdness you’ve presented and there’s so much to talk about. Well! I’m not gonna look a gift demon in the mouth. This card is awesome. This is the PAYOFF for all those Shadowborn Apostles, the demon for which one searches, and following that, the rest of the deck is indeed full of Shadowborns ready to be eaten, which helps in deck construction. Yes! That’s the way to do it.

I’m almost positive the last replacement should only look at spells and abilities your opponents control, but that’s not too bad, all things considered, and the control deck that you can run with this is nasty if gone unanswered. Everyone sacrifice things! I’m just gonna throw an old piece of meat away. Jeez... I want to say that this card feels too weird to really be viable, and that’s what my brain says, but as a design exercise, hell, we’ve seen weirder, and who knows! Maybe I’m overreacting. I probably am. Fantastic job with a staggeringly powerful creature. This is how to do Shadowborn right.

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@yd12k​ — Gnawbone, the Infestation

I’m not sure what to make of this second ability. The deathtouch is fine, and I like the last ability. Here’s the thing, though: cascade is absolutely useless. The reason is that every card in your deck, with Relentless Rats, is gonna want to be Relentless Rats. So what are you going to cascade into? What’s the standard format where Relentless Rats, this Kamigawa legend, and the ability cascade are all going to be together?

This card seems like it could be fun on the surface but ultimately the elements all clash with one another in a way that’s either mechanically disruptive or flavorfully not-quite-meshed. Relentless Rats (which, FWIW, was only common for one set, and for good reason in my opinion) was a brave choice and I understand the desire to make that cool stuff happen. This isn’t the card you want to go for with it, I don’t think.

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Phew. Tune in next week. Bring a friend. @abelzumi​