#man. i was supposed to write down the thing where it falls so flat where it could draw a parallel between the ancient Illefarn

[wurdulac]

but you know what other game has very consistent politics. nwn2. where everyone was a libertarian and there was just so much jingoism.

[windser]

yet another drabble from my where the apple falls series pairing: caleb x reader 001 002 (not linear, just moments outside of the main story) a/n: i will use drabbles, to work on characterization and write scenes outside of the main story outline. for everyone's reference, this is a canon divergent. you'll notice some things from the man storyline but with some changes.

the golden light of late afternoon bathed your room, spilling across the bed and highlighting the half-packed suitcase in the center. the faint scent of lavender mingled with the crispness of freshly folded laundry as you moved about, tucking items into the suitcase with more precision than necessary. it was a distraction, a way to ignore the weight in your chest.

behind you, caleb sat on your bed, legs crossed and leaning comfortably against the headboard. his dark hair was slightly mussed, his shirt rumpled from lounging throughout your workload. he was flipping through a stack of old photos, his brow furrowing and softening with each memory brought to life. a glass of soda rested on your nightstand, the carbonation settled but still faintly fizzing.

“is this the famous apple soda recipe you’ve been working on?” caleb asked, gesturing to the glass with a lazy grin. “the one that’s supposed to be better than the store-bought stuff?”

you glanced over your shoulder, a smirk tugging at your lips. “it’s a work in progress. you like it so far?”

“it’s great,” he said, his voice too casual to be entirely convincing.

you narrowed your eyes, abandoning the shirt in your hands to face him fully. “liar. you haven’t even finished it.”

caleb held up his hands in mock surrender, a teasing grin spreading across his face. “caught me. it’s good, i promise. i’m just savoring it.”

“savoring it?” you echoed, crossing your arms. “it’s soda, caleb. not wine.”

he laughed, the sound warm and familiar, and picked up the glass. “fine, if you’re going to be like that…”

before you could stop him, he tipped the glass back and drained the entire thing in one go. his adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, the motion drawing your attention for a fleeting moment. when he finished, he set the empty glass down and made a face.

“what?” you asked, suddenly defensive. “too sweet? too flat? be honest.”

caleb clutched his stomach dramatically before letting out a loud, unapologetic burp.

you groaned, unimpressed. “very mature.”

he grinned, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “perfect. it’s perfect.”

“yeah, sure,” you muttered, rolling your eyes as you turned back to your packing. “you just ruined the moment.”

“come on,” he said, still grinning as he leaned back against the headboard. “i mean it. it’s good. you’re going to make me write you a thank-you card for that recipe.”

you snorted, folding another shirt. “we’ll see.”

his laughter faded into a contented hum as he watched you work, the moment settling into a comfortable silence. you felt his gaze lingering, but you didn’t look back. you didn’t have to. caleb had always been like this—watchful, present, a steady presence in your life.

“did you ever think about going to college in sky haven?” caleb asked suddenly, his voice quieter now. “they’ve got some great astronomy programs up there. you’d love it.”

you paused, his words catching you off guard. “sky haven?”

he shrugged, playing with the corner of a photo. “you’ve always loved the stars. wouldn’t it be cool to study them from the city flying beneath them ?”

you bit your lip, thinking back to the countless nights you’d spent stargazing together in the backyard. “it’s tempting,” you admitted, turning back to your packing. “but i like the school i picked. i want to spread my wings, you know? you got to, and now it’s my turn.”

caleb frowned slightly. “i wasn’t that far away.”

you caught the edge in his tone but chose not to acknowledge it. “you are in a floating city, caleb.”

“it’s not the same,” he muttered, his tone petulant.

“it is,” you insisted. “and it’s good for us to… grow.”

his brow furrowed, but he didn’t argue. instead, he leaned back against the headboard, watching you fold another shirt. “just promise not to grow up too fast, pip-squeak.”

you smiled at that, a warmth spreading in your chest. “i promise.”

for a while, the silence between you felt easy, the kind of quiet that came naturally after years of companionship. but then caleb broke it, his voice intentionally lighter this time.

“so… you’ve got everything packed then?” he asked, nodding toward your suitcase. “no stowaways? no secrets?”

you smirked, shooting him a look. “what are you getting at?”

“oh, nothing,” he said innocently, though his grin betrayed him. “just wondering if there’s anything you’ve been keeping from me. like… oh, i don’t know, boys.”

you laughed, shaking your head. “boys?”

“yeah. you know, the kind who hang around, pretending to care about your star charts just to get your attention.” he smirked, his tone teasing but his gaze sharp. “you haven’t been entertaining anyone while i’ve been gone, have you?”

“caleb,” you said, rolling your eyes. “don’t be ridiculous.”

“is that a yes?” he pressed, leaning forward slightly.

“it’s a ‘none of your business,’” you shot back, folding another shirt.

his grin widened, but there was a new edge to it. “come on. you can tell me. have you kissed anyone?”

you froze for half a second, caught off guard. “what?”

“you heard me,” he said, sitting up straighter now. “have you?”

your laugh came out awkward, an attempt to brush off the sudden shift in tone. “what kind of question is that?”

“a simple one,” he said, his voice calm but insistent. “yes or no?”

“why does it matter?” you asked, turning away to place a sweater in your suitcase. “it’s not a big deal.”

“it is to me,” he said quietly.

something in his tone made your stomach twist, and you tried to shake it off. “no, caleb,” you said, your voice light but firm. “i haven’t kissed anyone. happy?”

he didn’t respond, and when you glanced over your shoulder, you found him watching you with an intensity that made your skin prickle. before you could say anything, he stood, his movements slow and deliberate as he closed the distance between you.

“are you sure about that?” he asked, his voice low.

the air felt heavy, the warmth in the room suddenly stifling. you swallowed hard, forcing a laugh. “of course, i’m sure. why would i lie about that?”

he was close now, too close, his presence overwhelming as he reached out to gently grip your chin. “look at me.”

your heart pounded in your chest as you met his gaze, his dark eyes searching yours for something you couldn’t name. for a moment, you felt like you were frozen in place, the weight of his intensity pinning you there.

“i…” you hesitated, your thoughts a tangled mess. “fine. if it’ll get you to stop worrying…”

before you could second-guess yourself, you leaned forward and pressed a quick kiss to his lips. it was fleeting, almost clumsy, but it was enough to leave your heart racing. “there,” you said, stepping back and forcing a smile. “now you have nothing to worry about. virtue officially protected.”

caleb blinked, stunned for a moment. then a slow, crooked smile spread across his face, one that made your chest tighten. he reached out, ruffling your hair like he used to when you were kids. “pipsqueak,” he said, his voice warm with amusement. "think you're so smart."

your cheeks flushed, the old nickname seeming misplaced in the moment. “you have to stop calling me that.,” you muttered, swatting his hand away.

“you’ve outgrown a lot of things,” he said idly, his gaze lingering on you. “guess i’ll have to come up with something new.”

you turned back to your packing, your hands trembling slightly as you folded another shirt. behind you, caleb chuckled softly, the sound light but carrying a weight you couldn’t quite place.

the room settled into silence once more, but the air between you felt different now—heavier, charged with something unspoken. and as much as you tried to ignore it, you couldn’t shake the feeling that something between you had shifted, irreversibly.

[fallinallincurls]

can i possibly ask for an erik johnson blurb from prompt list #1 with prompt #16 which is “"he treats me well-" "okay good for you." "- but he isn't you."” I WOULD DIE 🥹🥹🥹

thank you for the request ah!! i had fun writing this one!

it wasn't supposed to be like this. you thought you were going to marry erik, move into his house in california, travel the world and start a family. but when it all came crashing down and those dreams turned to dust, only one person was there.

nathan.

you didn't expect to fall in love with him so quickly. especially not so soon after the heartbreak and misery that your relationship with erik had caused. and although there might've been a time where you would've felt guilty about dating his teammate right after, you don't feel that now. erik is across the country playing in buffalo and probably has no idea you're even with nate.

that is until the sabres come to denver to play the avs.

you know most of the guys are going out to dinner with erik the night before the game to catch up with an old friend. and despite nate's devotion to you, erik is still one of his closest friends. you decide to be friendly if you see him and luckily escape dropping nate off at the restaurant without seeing a glimpse of the tall blonde haired man you used to love.

you go out with some of the girls and get your mind off the raging emotions rolling through you and the millions of thoughts and memories that haven't died down since this morning. you feel confident you might not see him at all, but when you park the car outside the restaurant to wait for nate, your heart sinks.

outside, by himself, is no one else but erik.

you gather all your courage and take a deep breath as you step out of the car to approach him. there's no way he doesn't know about you and nate now so you decide the best thing to do is to clear the air. get some closure and finally move on.

before you can say anything, let alone an apology, erik starts speaking.

"nate told me. i had no idea. but i'm happy for you." although the words are supposed to be encouraging, erik's voice is flat and monotone giving away how he truly feels about the situation. the need to defend yourself arises, but so done a realization that you hadn't come to terms with until this very second.

"he treats me well-" you start before being abruptly cut off.

"okay good for you." erik says in a clipped tone. those familiar blue eyes that used to be full of adoration for you are now icy and cold.

"- but he isn't you."

erik is stunned for a moment, processing what you just admitted. that after everything, all the heartbreak and pain, you missed him. you still loved him even though you were with his friend. and knowing that nate could never compare gives erik a small dose of satisifaction.

"i still love you too. and miss you more than anything. but a lot has to happen if you want to give us another chance." erik states, a glimmer of hope in his gaze. and before you can respond, tell him that you want him back, that you would do anything to be his again, nate comes out onto the street with a beaming smile on his face.

"my two favorite people! ej, everyone is looking for you. and y/n, do you want to stay? it shouldn't be much longer."

just like that, the moment has passed. but you catch erik glancing back at you as a reminder of what just happened.

[fenrislorsrai]

A Matter of Life or Death/ Stairway to Heaven

Yet another movie I grabbed due to Good Omens. I just didn't get around to writing it up right away cause Things Happened and things could stop happening for a little bit, that would be cool.

RAF flyer Petrr Carter is trying to get back from bombing raid in WWII but the plane's on fire and his chute is gone. He had everyone else bail and is then riding the burning plane back close enough to let contact known what happened. Has a fairly extensive talk on radio with the American lady (June) manning the radio contact, some flirting. He finally does decide bailing with no chute is better than burning and jumps.

Hey wild, what's this, he wakes up somewhere??? This must be heaven. which looks suspiciously like a beach. He follows a black dog* along beach til he find a kid with some goats to talk to, who he tries to get to explain heaven to him and kid is basically WTF DUDE. Finally gets clued in, no you're not dead, somehow. He recognizes where that is from conversation last night and looks down beach and goes "hey, there's the June on her bicycle!" Has similar WTF how are you not dead conversation.

MEANWHILE IN HEAVEN... which is shot entirely in black and white while the rest of the movie is in color. It's got a very stark, semi-industrial, semi-greek temple kinda vibe going. They're supposed to count in everyone on paperwork and boy are a lot of people dying in this war. One of the guy's that died in the plane is waiting in the receiving area for Peter... who does not turn up. Uh oh. alarms start going off! things are not right with the files!

Oops, turned out the angel (or whatever) who was supposed to get him here missed him in the fog. Conductor 71 gets told to go fetch him anyway. I'm not sure why he has a job title rather than a name when most of the other dead people have names. anyway, he was a french aristocrat who got his had chopped off, therefore needs to wear a scarf.

He shows up to talk to Peter and freezes time while he tries to convince him to go with him. Peter has meanwhile been off on a date with June, having a picnic amongst a bunch of rhododendrons in full bloom.

Describing Conductor 71 later he not only has to describe the time stopped, this weird guy appeared, but he also had A SMELL

He smells like "the best thing in the world."

what does this fancy bitch smell like:

THE BEST SMELL IN THE WORLD. (and apparently strong enough to overpower rhododendrons, which are pretty strong)

THE BEST SMELL IN THE WORLD.... fried onions.

This comes up TWICE.

Okay, you're not wrong but on top smells, no normal person would be "ah yes, I would like a perfume or candle that smells like fried onions."

ANYWAY. that this fancy lad apparently has a smell to him makes the doctor that's been called in on this case of "how did you survive falling out of a plane" go "hmmm" at this hallucination. That's rather more serious than just you're having some kind of narcolepsy or dreaming or whatever, that is some kind brain problem.

INTERESTING bit here though is the doctor isn't just flat out denying that Peter is definitely experiencing something. He's defineitly having some kind of premonition of death after his falling out of a plane. He treats it as both a real symptom and something to be addressed. You need to tell me more about the hallucination AND you need to resist going to Heaven with it.

They don't quite resolve the "how are you alive after jumping out of a plane" but I think they may just have gone with "your recollection of things is probably a bit fucked up, you probably DID have a chute or find one later but your memory is fucked up right now".

Heaven apparently will have a trail to determine if Peter can continue to live due to bureaucratic fuck up, but there will be a trial. He needs to select an advocate.

So this goes on for a bit of is this just a hallucination or does he have a brain problem. The conductor shows up again and on one of the visits he stops time, he also takes a chess book. This is he manifestation of "this is real" (this is the same chess book Gabriel drops repeatedly when he gets the explanation of gravity) A chess master is suggested as advocate.

There's a literal giant moving stairway going to heaven as a set piece that turns up. Peter almsot follows the Conductor up it a couple times. It'll be back later again.

Meanwhile this has gotten much worse and Peter is scheduled for brain surgery. The ambulance that is supposed to come pick up Peter gets lost so Doctor Reeves goes to look for it... but gets hit by it. Hello, you're now in Heaven its all REAL

Conveniently, now that Reeves is also dead he can speak as advocate at Peter's trial in Heaven while he's getting brain surgery in the real world. There's a brief visit to earth and some time freezing to gather evidence that June actually loves Peter, which is the key thing that's relevant to appeal. That brief period of extra time changed both Peter and June's fate.

June also gets called in as a witness via dreams and swears she really loves Peter after only a few days. Is told the only way he can survive the surgery if she swaps places with him. DONE. okay, that's true love, we'll grant the life extension.

Happy ending.

---

*Up top I mention the black dog he follows specifically because black dogs sometimes show up as psychopomps, conductors of the dead. It was just a dog in this case, but color choice flt intentional with how slightly surreal scene felt.

This one had a lot less clear plot parallels with Good Omens. Most of the relevant parts were related to the actual design of things. The overall design of Heaven was clearly an influence on Gomens, but Life was a lot.... warmer. This was a Heaven also populated by humans. (Hell did not seem to exist at all) It's unclear if there's a god at all, just an afterlife of some sort but on largely shaped by humans and they make the rules and the exceptions.

But some of the overall appearance and the looking down at earth had a similar vibe to it. Just Gomens heaven is like someone first came in, cleaned out all the pesky humans, and then left a few scattered angels to occupy the vast empty spaces which had been intended to have people in them.

The chess book and the plot point of swapping places for each other to live is probably the most relevant part for Gomens.

The escalator to heaven you get in season 1. overall this is more just Design Vibes than the other two referenced items.

I have no idea what to make of the Angels Smells Like Fried Onions, but by god I am going to use it SOMEWHERE because it is too goddamned funny not too.

The other two items I watched/read:

The Crow Road- The NSFW Morse Code book. no, really. I Know Where I'm Going- You can't marry an institution and the thing that is Written.... isn't really.

[babacontainsmultitudes]

OH MY GOD btw idk if you saw my tags in my second rb of that post but im SO SORRY that it looked like i was telling you to "chill" for a second i would never say that, that's so dismissive 😭😭😭

tumblr hates me and hates when i talk in the tags of my mutuals' posts apparently

i thought ur post was very good & i was TRYING to express agreement and talk about my thoughts in the tags. so sorry if it seemed like i was trying to shut u down at first. godspeed o7

[In reference to this post]

LMAO Clay I shit you not I was in the middle of writing an ask to *you* saying, first of all, no worries at all about the fucky tumblr tags haha this is the hellsite and I read that tag as sarcasm anyways so dw dw lol I know you're not like that haha 🫂.

And second of all, that I was nodding very emphatically reading your tags yeah I'm also quite conflicted- increasingly so frankly, and I can relate to your description of being *so* sad from it that it kind of falls flat? As for like, whether I find it satisfying from a narrative standpoint or not, *honestly* as more time passes the more I can feel my own opinions going from positive to... Mixed? I agree that the Swifts deserved more time, period (absolutely) and that there was so much left unexplored... And that it would have felt more satisfying if we got more with them...

Hm. With the interaction as it was, I honestly think I would have liked it much more if it happened like, midway through the season? Giving Nicky enough time to step up and really prove himself to Taylor? Though of course we return then to the issue of that family not having enough time in general!

Conversely... I think I could have been happier with Taylor's decision happening at the end here and simultaneously been *less* uh absolutely heartbroken if it had been delivered differently like, tonally? I suppose I feel like... Combining all of their previous interactions prior over the course of the season, the complications surrounding Nicky's abandoment to begin with (listen could my man have sent a letter now and again abso-fucking-lutely but bro also had all his friends turn against him and was tortured by the FBI who he didn't want hurting his family like it's not so black and white at all), and maybe most of all the fact that Nicky genuinely *was* trying to be there for Taylor post-reuiniting in Hell... Combining all those things, it's not that I think Taylor is wrong to decide still that his dad wasn't there for him before so he doesn't want him now, as sad as that is I think it's still very understandable and certainly *interesting*, but the *cruelty* in how he delivered that blow is what came as a bit of a shocker to me and just doesn't feel good to me with. Well with all those other things I mentioned. Again, that's if we're keeping this interaction at the very end here, having Taylor chew out his dad the way he did way earlier could have been great.

IS. Is where I'm currently at with that I think? Yeah lol. Like there's more thoughts for sure but I would surely go on several tangents haha.

[paperbackribs]

A Tarnished Copper Boy (12)

Previous | Next | Ao3 Last chapter, Steve insisted on regular cuddles in bed, they celebrated Christmas in spring since Steve missed it in his last blip, and Eddie struggled with how important Steve has become to him.

Chapter 12: The Worm Ouroboros

Spring refuses to show any signs of colour, the grey skies invading well into the warming months and bringing with it a sticky warmth that leaves everyone uncomfortable.

Wayne grumbles that a little extra rain wouldn’t hurt even as he gripes that he doesn’t like the idea of the new mall opening: it’s going to take local business away from the town centre. He’s extra suspicious as to the nighttime work that’s happening in addition to the usual daytime scaffolding.

Steve continues to look restless at times, taking to staring out the trailer like a dog at the pet store window. It makes Eddie feel inexplicably guilty like he’s the one chaining Steve to the house. That his happiness at having Steve at his fingertips, available to him at all times, has morphed into some otherworldly power and like Hades to Steve’s Persephone he has abducted him to stay as his wife, doomed to be imprisoned in the underworld until spring comes. Eddie supposes in this analogy that spring is 1986, which means that Steve’s rebirth is still a long year away.

He's taken to reading from Eddie’s library, refusing to yet touch Lord of the Rings for the pure stubborn sake of all the times he’d told Dustin he’d never read it. But Eddie thinks that as Steve continues to look caged up and restless, that it’s only a matter of time. Otherwise, he dives into Eddie’s collection with the enthusiasm of a man looking for a distraction. A feeling that Eddie knows well.

He finishes one old novel during Spring Break, lounging back on the couch with a foot flat on the floor by Eddie’s hips. Hellfire has a day-long campaign planned and Eddie is cross-legged, his back to Steve while he looks down at his notes on the coffee table. Making sure everything is in narrative order and occasionally writing little additions as inspiration strikes.

Steve closes his book with a thoughtful sound, on its cover a long silver serpent eats its own tail against a backdrop of black and red. Eddie looks over, interested in how quickly Steve has flown through reading it. “You like it?”

Steve hums absently, “It’s okay, but I don’t understand how they travel from Earth to Mercury if this is a fantasy.”

“It’s the power of imagination, buttercup,” Eddie grins. Steve flips through the pages to the intricate map of the mountains in Demonland. “I like Lord Gro.”

Eddie turns more fully to Steve, intrigued.

Steve’s gaze turns inward and thoughtful, feeling out his words before he says them. “He’s complicated, right? He has a lot going for him — trusted by the king, a cool adventurer, courageous and skilled. But then he falls in love and betrays his allies. Just. The struggle as he decides what’s the right thing to do is interesting.”

He turns the book over to contemplate the cover with pursed lips, “The ending is a bummer though. I get wanting something so bad you wish for a redo but being bitter because no one sees you as heroes anymore, so you ask the gods to let you go back to the start of the war. Morons,” he concludes, scathingly succinct.

Eddie nods, excited because he had similar thoughts when reading it as well. “Yeah, and that’s the point of the title too, you know? The Worm Ouroboros — the snake that eats its tail. It represents an eternal cycle and so they end up where they started.”

Steve clicks his fingers at him, “That’s what you were talking about the time you didn’t want to make dinner. What’d you say?” Steve looks up while he thinks. “Life is a never-ending story of eating, shitting, and eating again. Life and birth or something?”

Eddie blushes, charmed that Steve had been listening closely enough to remember an off-the-cuff remark. “Life, death, and rebirth again, yeah.”

“You always have a choice, though,” Steve says musingly, still contemplating the stain in the shape of Australia on the ceiling. Eddie waits for him to explain but Steve remains silent. He calls his name and Steve blinks, looking down at Eddie on the floor.

“I mean, you could have refused to eat. Starve yourself and die and the cycle is broken. It’s shitty, but it’s still a choice.”

“Pumpkin,” Eddie says mock reprovingly, “That’s pretty fucking grim.”

“True though, dearest,” Steve challenges with a raised eyebrow, tone haughty.

“Okay,” Eddie admits, “True, yes. But I like living for the most part and you make a great carbonara, so why deny myself.”

Steve snorts, “You are obsessed with a little garlic and onion.”

Eddie can feel himself readying to pounce like a cat that’s sighted its prey. “But Stevie, it’s what you do with it!” He shrieks, pushing up on the balls of his feet to lunge over and tackle Steve.

The book goes flying to the floor with a thud and Steve lets out a big oof when Eddie knocks the breath out of him as he lands over his middle, he gleefully glares down at Steve, “Got you now!”

Steve breathlessly giggles as Eddie sticks his fingers into his sides and proceeds with the Munson Tickle Attack. Squirming under him, he bucks and Eddie nearly goes flying to the floor right after the book, but Steve hooks one leg behind him and flips him over to land heavily on his back. Eddie grunts and immediately rolls, trying to squirm out from under Steve to take back the upper hand. He nearly succeeds, but Steve suddenly sits heavily on Eddie’s lap, pinning his wrists above his head and stretching his torso to force Eddie down with his weight.

“Got you,” Steve breathlessly says, chest heaving from his exertion. Their noses nearly brushing, Steve’s eyes are close and intently trained on Eddie, the longer strands of his hair fall around them, creating a curtain, narrowing the world down to just the two of them.

Eddie licks his lips; they feel full and wanting under his tongue. “What’re you going to do about it,” he challenges.

He can feel himself growing hard underneath the soft meat of Steve’s ass and he grinds up just a fraction. Enough to tell himself that it’s barely noticeable. Steve’s eyes darken and his fingers tighten around Eddie’s wrists. He moans, eyes fluttering close. He wants Steve to push down harder, to squeeze harder. Anything to help relieve this ache growing in him, the compounding pressure building, threatening to crack across his body, distort and shake his frame apart.

Steve must hear Wayne approaching the front door before Eddie because his eyes widen in alarm and he quickly sits up, hand moving in front of his body before he flies to the end of the couch, a magazine suddenly open and in his lap. Eddie looks at him from the end of the couch, still splayed out and uncomprehending until he hears the key in the lock.

Steve looks over at his still stationary body and hisses his name.

ShitFuckDamn.

Eddie flees to the bathroom.

His back hitting the door behind him, Eddie tries to figure out what the fuck all that was. His thoughts however are reluctant to turn away from the memory of Steve’s eyes burning into his, to forget the enthralling weight of Steve forcing him down, making him submit under his hands and body.

Eddie bites against a moan and hurriedly unzips his jeans, forcing them down and under his balls. Spitting into his palm, he urgently strokes against his hard shaft and, if he were in his right mind, he might feel a sense of shame at how quickly it takes to get himself off. With one last dazzling twist of his wrist, he is shuddering, unravelling at the memory and scent of Steve that still lingers in his watering mouth.

He has just enough presence of mind to aim for the floor and thankfully manages not to splooge all over himself. Not when he has to walk back out there. Eddie curses again. He can’t go back out there. He can’t. He can’t look Steve in the eye after he nearly humped up onto him and then proceeded to whack it just a room away.

And what was Steve thinking? Was that just some wrestling that got out of control? Had Steve even felt half of what Eddie had out there? Christ, what if it had all been Eddie? He turns cold at the thought. Here he is already feeling like he’s Hades to Steve’s Persephone and he’s rubbing up on a guy who can’t even leave the house.

Though, flicking back to that look in Steve’s eyes he’s not sure: there had been an intensity about Steve that felt like it burned Eddie clean through to his soul. He’s a creative guy, but even he would struggle to imagine Steve looking at him so piercingly.

Eddie goes to run his hand down his face in frustration and only by sheer luck realises that he’s about to wipe his jizz over his nose. He recoils from his hand and smacks the back of his head against the door, grunting in pain.

“You okay in there?” Wayne calls out.

Eddie wants to die of mortification, just allow the floor to swallow him and cover back up again, preferably clean and with no evidence. “Fine,” he grits his teeth to call out, “Hit my elbow on the wall.”

“All right.”

The shuffling sound tells him that Wayne has walked away and Eddie decides that this is game time. He needs to strategize before he goes out there. Wayne will be in the living room as well as Steve. Eddie looks down at his watch cursing; it’s not exactly the end of the night but Wayne will be retiring soon and that means that Eddie’s looking down the barrel of walking into his room—that he shares with Steve—and getting into bed—that he shares with Steve and… what? Be the little spoon as usual?

Eddie swallows a hysterical giggle.

This is ridiculous, but he knows that he can’t face Steve right now. He can’t even think of meeting his eyes and seeing either pity or disgust. Jeff won’t mind if he crashes tonight; they can go over campaign ideas and Eddie can keep his mind off the feel of Steve’s ass on top of his dick.

He cleans up, staring himself down in the mirror as he washes his hands. “You’re not going to fuck this up, asshole. You’re going to go out there, not freak your friend out any further and give you both some space. You’ll see him tomorrow and apologise or never speak of it again, and everything will go back to normal.”

His reflection doesn’t look very convinced, so he flips it the bird before strolling out of the bathroom. He is cool, he is casual, he is not going to look like he just talked himself down from a freak-out.

Steve must have disappeared into the bedroom since Wayne sits alone on the couch, convincing Eddie even further that the best thing to do right now is to give them both some space.

He continues his very casual and cool stroll over to the coffee table where he sweeps up his notes; despite himself he blushes while bending further to grab the papers that had fallen to the floor during their wrestling.

Wayne is reading his newspaper and bears him no mind, but Eddie keeps his gaze firmly on his things as he gathers them into his arms. “I’m off, just going out to see one of the guys.”

Wayne finally looks up over the rim of his paper, an eyebrow raised. “It’s late.” Which is a weird observation because Wayne’s never given Eddie too much strife about bedtimes and the like.

“I’ll probably stay overnight,” Eddie says weakly. “You know, paint our nails, do our hair, decide on the best monster to skin for armour. Just the usual girl stuff.”

“Okay,” Wayne says simply with an undertone of judgment that Eddie has no hope of understanding. It’s just one extra element of stress he doesn’t need in that moment so he nods jerkily and backpaddles to the door. “I, uh, forgot to tell Steve, but I’m running really late. If you see him again, can you tell him?”

“Eddie…” Wayne starts in a warning tone, lowering his paper.

He turns and books it, the screen door slapping sharply shut as Eddie leaves the trailer behind him.

---

Jeff is sitting on the sofa in the basement of his house, hunched over his bass guitar. Judas Priests’ Victim of Changes drops from his fingertips as he practices the opening bassline. Steve could certainly be his whisky woman, Eddie reflects, woven through with bronze and gold, but it’s Eddie who’s trying to find his way again.

Looking up at Eddie’s heavy sigh, Jeff eyes him with an evaluating look, “Are you finally going to tell me why you’ve practically moved in? Not that you’re not welcome, but honestly, Eddie, you don’t even look like you want to be here.”

School starts again tomorrow and Eddie has camped out at Jeff’s for four long days. He hadn’t returned home the day after his inglorious flight, the Hellfire campaign was the day after, so it made sense, Eddie had reasoned, to stay over another evening, and then the game had been so successful that they’d run overtime, and Eddie had begged off from driving back late.

He had thankfully run into Catherine on that first day. She had been walking past the booth he sat at with Jeff and Randy in the diner and quickly called out to her. Explaining that he would be staying with a friend for a couple of nights he asked her to pass on the message to Wayne so he wouldn’t worry. He couldn’t bear the thought of calling and Steve answering the phone.

Catherine had regarded him reproachfully from her shorter height, making him feel about two feet tall, but hadn’t mentioned Steve in public as she had vowed. Likewise promising to pass on his message.

Now, he restlessly turns over the chunky silver ring on his thumb, trying to work up the courage to drive home. “I did something I’m not proud of and I’m sort of scared to go back,” Eddie admits.

Jeff’s practised strumming becomes more like noodling around as he contemplates Eddie’s words. “Is it something that needs people to calm down about? Like is there some guy waiting at the park ready to deck you?” He pauses before carefully saying, “It’s not Wayne, is it? Because we’ll work something out then.”

Eddie faintly smiles, thankful that Jeff has his back. He never would have anticipated as a ragged child that he’d have friends in his corner, willing to go to bat against an ominous father figure.

“No, never. And no, there’s no violence at the end of this tragic tale.” And there wouldn’t be. He knows this about Steve. His fear doesn’t stem from Steve turning on him because Eddie’s gay.

He may not be able to say the words yet — not even to Wayne, even though his uncle has always known. Hard not to after the way his father had left Eddie discarded like a rotten carcass on his front step. But when Eddie can finally say the words, he at least knows that he’ll still have a friend in Steve. But the complication of introducing sexuality beyond theory into their relationship is what leaves him grasping.

“I maybe messed up a friendship.”

Jeff regards him with a shrewd eye, “Did you make out with them too? Cause you know that doesn’t automatically mean ruining things. They may just not be that into you.”

Eddie scowls, tempted to pull off his heavy ring and throw it at his friend. Miffed that even if Eddie can’t say the words, Jeff can voice part of them. Isn’t he the older more mature one? Technically by only a year, Eddie admits, but it should count for something.

Though it’s probably not very mature to refuse to speak to Steve at all. “No,” he sighs heavily, “And it may be that he didn’t even notice, which is good I guess.” Even if it makes him feel just as glum. A part of him wants to force the issue, to tell Steve how he feels because if there’s the slightest chance that he reciprocates Eddie’s feelings then surely, it’s worth the gamble.

But the risk is not only about Eddie’s unrequited desire for Steve, he knows this. He’s watched Steve pace and mutter and generally look lost at moments when he thinks he’s unobserved. Steve may appear just peachy keen on the surface, a veritable Donna Reed of managing the household, but at the back of his mind he’s always thinking about the ways he might be changing the timeline, risking his friends’ lives and so many more if their future battles go pear-shaped.

What are Eddie’s stupid, sad, wet feelings compared to the weight of Atlas holding up the sky?

He's probably making it worse, Eddie realises; Jeff raises his brows at his sudden grimace. Even if Steve hadn’t noticed his inappropriate reaction, Eddie still up and disappeared on him for a near week. He’s not so nearsighted as to think that Steve wouldn’t miss him. At the bare minimum, to feel lonely without the extra stimulation of Eddie’s sparkling wit and commentary during Bewitched.

Deciding to face the music, he wraps his long arms around Jeff in a bear hug of thanks before leaving. Jeff pats him on the back and assures him that it’ll all turn out for the better once he confronts whatever it is head-on. He knuckles Jeff’s head in response, asking when this junior of Hawkins High had become so wise, and Jeff sticks his leg out to trip him as he leaves in revenge.

The noon sun is weakly shining behind heavy clouds when his van rumbles to a stop outside the trailer. The humid clash of the coming warmth and the leftover rains of winter causes his dark curls to stick unpleasantly to the back of Eddie’s neck. He walks through the front door like a prisoner approaching the gallows, an inevitable drudge.

The grey shadows cast the empty living area into gloomy shadows; Wayne must be with Catherine, so Eddie heads to the bedroom where Steve will be. “Steve…” He starts as he walks into his erstwhile sanctuary, but the room is empty too.

Eddie backs up, turning to fling open the bathroom. Steve’s not there either. He spins and skids to a stop in front of his sweetheart and the calendar that hangs beside it; the last mark crossed out is on the day Eddie left.

Steve’s gone again.

Eddie’s knees give out and he sinks onto the edge of the bed, a sharp pain stabbing in his gut at his absolute cowardice. He never changes, does he? Always ready to run at the slightest sign of conflict and now Steve has been gone for days and Eddie hadn’t even known. Didn’t bother calling just in case he’d hear Steve’s voice and break down in confession like he knew he would. What a complete and utter asshole he is.

Eddie’s fists clench and unclench as his anger turns inward, becoming a deep sadness that spreads like a heavy weight from his chest. He falls on his back, feet still flat on the ground, embracing the increasing dullness of his mind and body.

Each time Steve leaves the sorrow that yawns within Eddie becomes larger, widening until it has become a pervasive grief. He knows that it’s likely that Steve will come back, but it’s hard to convince his heart of it. The weak vessel increasingly fractured at the what if.

What if this is the last time? What if Steve disappears into the void? Hell, what if they have this all wrong and Steve will fall back even further in time, back before Confederate and Union soldiers, back before armies marching across continents, until he tumbles into a green paradise populated by giant monsters and fragile butterflies?

Time moves slowly as Eddie contemplates his wrongdoings and his what ifs, slipping through his fingers like smooth sand. He blankly watches the shifting shadows as they creep across the ceiling until the bulb above him erupts into a sudden and violent golden light.

“What are you doing in the dark?”

Eddie bolts upright, whipping to face Steve who stands in the frame of the doorway. Leaning against the wood for support, his arms folded across his chest.

“You came back,” Eddie rasps, his voice scratchy from the weight of his emotions compounded by the time he had sat quiet and motionless in the room, grieving the loss of the boy standing across from him. He remembers that the calendar hasn’t been updated and hastens to assure Steve, “It’s only been four days.”

Steve scoffs, his stare hardening. “Yes, I know. I’ve been here, even if you haven’t.” Eddie recoils like he’s been slapped.

Steve had been here, even if here doesn’t mean the trailer. He rakes his eyes down Steve’s body, noting the light Van Halen shirt, and the flannel jacket wrapped around his hips, both perfect for a humid spring day. His feet are clad in the boots from 1986 that Eddie had cleaned, now flecked with dried mud at their base.

The sight feels incongruous: he hasn’t seen Steve in shoes, barely in socks, since the beginning of his second visit. Dirty and tired, leaving his clothes on the bathroom floor. Steve follows his gaze and scoffs again, the sound hard and full of derision. Propelling himself off the frame with a push of his hips, Steve pivots and strides out of the bedroom.

Eddie rolls off the bed, stumbling to follow after him. A spark of fear ripples through Eddie when he sees that Steve is already at the front door, followed by a wash of relief when he realises that he’s only toeing off his shoes.

“You went outside?”

Steve’s jaw clenches, “I needed to get out of here.”

“What about the timeline?” Eddie hisses, bent forward at the weight of his urgency. What has all of this been for if Steve is just going to go wandering about, talking to people and changing the future anyway?

A tendon in Steve’s cheek flexes and he breathes out slowly, “You don’t get to tell me what to do, Eddie. Not when you disappear for a week without so much as a goodbye.”

“More like four days,” Eddie mutters, but unable to refute his point.

Steve makes a frustrated, whistling sound akin to a kettle about to explode. “Sure,” he nearly shouts, making an angry gesture before stomping away. “Four days without so much as a goodbye.”

“So, is this going to be a habit now, you going out?” He knows how petulantly he is acting, but Steve is basically getting ready to leave Eddie. He can feel it in his bones. He may not have wanted to be his warden, but that doesn’t mean that Eddie hadn’t come to depend on Steve relying on him and the shelter he provides. The sanctuary of this house is pretty much all Eddie can offer and Steve may be rapidly coming to the point where he doesn’t need or want it.

Steve fixes an incredulous gaze on him as he deliberately steps back into Eddie’s space. “I can’t believe you, Eddie. You know what? Yes, it is. It’s going to become a habit. So incredibly routine you won’t even have to see me here anymore.”

“What about other people seeing you?” Eddie sharply asks.

He watches Steve’s eyes narrow at the low blow as he leans closer, words crackling with quiet anger. “I’ve been sticking to the woods and off the paths, and I can hear anyone coming from a mile away. I needed to get out of here. I can’t keep pacing the same path between the bedroom and the armchair anymore.” He pronounces each word precisely, “I just needed to fucking stretch my legs.”

Steve has just hit the fear that’s been simmering at the back of Eddie’s mind, banging it like a loud gong reverberating through his head. “Well, I’m so sorry, Steve, that the Munson trailer isn’t big enough for the Harrington heir.”

His face hardening, Steve warns Eddie, “Don’t you fucking dare.”

“No,” Eddie steps back, gesturing towards the front door with a mocking sneer that spreads in an ugly manner across his face. The beast within, which has been so docile in these peaceful weeks with Steve, uncoils to strike. “Poor little rich boy, slumming it up with the trailer trash of Forrest Hills. How have you been living with it, really?” He gives a polite golf clap. “Well done you.”

Steve’s fists are clenched, his face drawn sharply, and body so deliberately still that he looks like a wire drawn taut, too far stretched and ready to snap. Eddie lands his killing blow, “Go ahead, fuck up the timeline because you can’t handle the teeny tiny corners of the Munson abode anymore.”

The tight control that Steve had held onto with a strict grip finally breaks, Eddie can almost hear the pieces falling into a shattering explosion. “You know what, fuck you, Eddie,” he seethes. “When have I ever been anything but grateful to you for putting me up? You’re the one that has an issue with me being here so don’t you push your fucking insecurities onto me. I’m not the one who’s ashamed, you absolute fucking prick.”

Steve turns on the spot. Reaching down he swiftly scoops up his boots and, slamming the front door, he exits the trailer still clad in his socks, leaving only a deafening silence ringing through Eddie’s ears. Words like ashamed and insecurities stabbing at him, leaving him bleeding sluggish wounds like sutures savagely ripped from the depths of his flesh.

Eddie’s accusations run through his mind like a bucket of ice water dumped over his head, sobering and shaming. Hadn’t he just been mourning the loss of Steve, thinking that he had fallen through time again?

Yet he’d immediately jumped down Steve’s throat for doing the unexpected. Cruelly throwing his fears smack back into his face as a means for Eddie to push him away before Steve could do it first. To build up a wall to protect himself from his dread of seeing the back of Steve’s head, walking away from him for good.

The wall is falling on Eddie now, drowning him in hard plaster and unforgiving bricks, because he’s made Steve do the one thing he had feared: leave Eddie.

The realisation sends a jolt of panic through him, and he scrambles forward, clawing on his Reeboks and shooting out of the trailer. Steve has just reached the border of the woods and is about to disappear into their deep shadows.

“Steve!” Eddie yells, but he continues striding forward until the forest closes around him, veiling his departure.

Fear lends him wings and Eddie flies forward. Desperately running, he spots Steve and drives ahead those few extra steps to grab onto him, stopping him before he disappears forever. The fingers he has clasped around Steve’s wrists are as resolute as the maple trees that stand strong in their patch of the woods. A subtle scent surrounds them, the breeze carrying a hint of new life from the vibrant pinks and greens that bud the once stark branches.

“Steve,” Eddie pants again but he is standing rigid and refuses to look back, captured arm stretched behind him.

“Steve,” he repeats to stiff shoulders, “I’m sorry, that was fucked up of me. I know that you would never do anything to mess with the future. I know that it weighs heavily on you and that you’re always—always—thinking about the best thing to do, even if it means sitting still when you want to be out there saving people.”

Rigidity crumbling, Steve’s shoulders fall and his head hangs, but he remains silent, face turned away. Eddie continues to try and reach him, “And I’m sorry for leaving for so long, that was really messed up of me and I shouldn’t have done it.”

“Why did you?” Steve’s voice is tired.

The one thing Eddie can’t do, absolutely could never forgive himself for in this moment, is to make Steve feel estranged from the one refuge he has while adrift in time. He needs stability and friendship, not Eddie pouring all his confusing mix of emotions and desires onto him.

He answers with a half-truth and hopes that it’s enough: “I thought I had messed up our friendship the other night and I freaked out a little. And then I got all up in my head and kept running in the typical Eddie Munson way. I shouldn’t have,” he repeats, remorse thick in his throat.

“Friendship?” Steve asks quietly. The branches above them rustle, but no bird takes flight.

“Yeah, man,” Eddie tries to reassure him. “You know coming home to you is the best part of my day. I don’t ever want you to think you’re unwelcome. I came back and the place was empty, and I was gutted.” He hesitates before saying it, the truth almost too raw. “It’s not home unless you’re there.”

Steve remains still and silent for one pregnant pause, before nodding to himself like he’s come to a decision. He slowly turns to face Eddie, the tight wariness starting to soften. “I missed you,” he says plainly. “You’ll just give me that look if I try to say anything about you not being obliged to stay with me at home, but just let me know next time. I worry.”

Tracing the smudges under Steve’s eyes, finally seeing the lines etched into his face that he hadn’t allowed himself to initially find, Eddie suspects that in the usual Steve Harrington way that he is underselling his concern. He carefully steps forward, taking Steve into his embrace who hugs him back immediately, resting his head on Eddie’s shoulders.

“I won’t do it again,” Eddie promises.

If you liked anything, please consider leaving a comment over on Ao3 :-) It would make my day!

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[300iqprower]

thanks for the tl;dr. While I don't agree with all your opinions, I get where you're coming from. Highkey, if you don't mind, what do think of Urobuchi as a writer? I frankly can't stand the man's writings, not only in regards to his "DeCoNsTrUcTiOn" of the magical girl genre with Madoka, but also Fate/Zero and his work on Kamen Rider Gaim.

It's......really hard for me to not blame Urobutcher himself for how Madoka basically killed the entire magical girl genre by causing it to be flooded with edgy tryhard tortureporn.

Like from an objective and analytical standpoint, Madoka is an incredible and meticulously crafted story. ...but subjectively, i fucking hate it, and then on top of that also hate it for what it (again, indirectly) did the genre and really just mainstreem anime in general to a certain, albeit obviously much lesser, degree. I feel like that's an entirely different discussion though, and really it just boils down to a case of "it's good" and "I don't like it" are not mutually exclusive. That's my read anyways.

Fate/Zero i love when watched bit by bit but dont like as a coherent story for much the same subjective reasons I'm personally not a fan of Madoka. For all my negativity I don't actually like nihilistic or cruel stories. Fate/Zero is actually what made me realize that, being the first time I had to as aforementioned go "it's good....but I don't like it." I love pretty much everything that doesn't involve Kerry, which is an issue when the whole story revolves around Kerry.

It's by no means without some serious issues though. Urobutcher wrote Artoria as a completely different character and it causes some serious inconsistencies that had harmful long-term repercussions, the banquet scene is a great setup that as I've discussed before falls completely flat in retrospect because nothing talked about was delivered on, and characters like Abs Hassan and Kariya got beyond wasted, just to name some of my issues with Zero.

But unlike with a LOT of Nasu's writing, actually just FGO writing in general frankly, those flaws don't contradict the ethos of the story. They come across less as contradictions that the writer couldnt be asked to rectify, as much as they do human error and an inability to make everything perfectly coherent and loop back around to the an overarching point. None of the things i've mentioned really detract from the message Fate Zero wants to give. They detract from the quality and consistency of the storytelling, absolutely, but not from the intended purpose of that storytelling. That sort of thing is HUGELY different than something like FGO just making up alternate history to suit it's narrative despite said narrative supposedly being about unity through our shared real world history.

I suppose what it really comes down to is that I don't feel malice or narrow mindedness from Urobutcher's works the way I do from Nasu. Kirei is the best example of this - i'd go so far as to argue Kirei's character didn't have ANY of the depth people now attribute to it before Urobutcher got involved. That's not even a dig at Nasu, that's just how much Urobutcher clearly GETS the kind of character Kirei is [now] meant to be. Same goes for Gilles and Kerry, those are characters that were perfect for someone like Urobutcher to execute (in multiple senses).

Again, Urobutcher is not a flawless writer by any stretch, no one is, and his style is by no means for everyone, because no style SHOULD be universally appealing...but I feel like he very much gives a shit. I feel like whether its all the way back with Fate Zero or his relatively more recent return for Lostbelt 3, Urobutcher gave a shit and did everything with as much purpose as he could. On that ground alone, I'm willing to be a lot more sympathetic to the parts of his writing i don't like, since I can at least convince myself those things (be it intentional choices or simple mistakes) were done in good faith.

[flydotnet]

Bad Things Happen Bingo! The event where you send me requests according to this marvelous card! (Red cross is the completed prompt, character headshots are prompts I’ve already filled).

He's a child with the brain of an adult, the biggest moron you've ever seen!

I cannot get over the fact I somehow didn't write for Detectice Conan until this week. This franchise was my actual gateway into whump when I was 6 and my ass still didn't write any juicy stuff with it. I got back into DCMK back in 2017, have rewatched select episodes and/or movies of it (mostly the 1st and 2nd ones, which are both part of my formative whump experience lol) every year… but nope!

Actually, this prompt was supposed to be for IDOLiSH7, and I had the idea for it written down for two years; but let's be real, I was never going to write it, especially this late, and instead, I jumped onto the first other opportunity to get rid of this prompt.

That opportunity came in the form of Tekiro who, to my surprise, actually paid attenion to my stupid ramblings about my stupid bingo card for whomst knows what dark purposes, and handed me an idea on a silver platter: DCMK, Shinichi as Conan and Ran, post-falling-into-some-water-during-a-case. I was smitten with the idea and ran with so hard.

I think the final product did diverge from Tekiro's original idea, unfortunately. Ran was meant to play a much more proactive role in this, but instead, I ended up with mostly Shinichi doing what he does best: overthink absolutely everything and also simping for Ran while he's at it. The image of Conan buried in blankets was fun though!

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

Blanket Statements

Summary: Shinichi, buried underneath three and a half blankets, ponders upon the orb (his feelings on the situation and also how cool Ran is).

Fandom: Detective Conan Relationships: Shinichi/Ran

Word Count: 1.7K words

AO3 version available here.

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

Somewhere through the haze of fever, between two approximate tons of blankets covering from chin to toe, one statement rings through his mind: this is somewhat humiliating.

Well, Shinichi supposes being a genius sixteen-year-old stuck in a six-year-old’s body is embarrassing to begin with since nobody takes you seriously anymore (except, like, two cops, a fugitive from the criminal organisation who got you there in the first place and one jackass from Osaka who somehow guessed you were a genius sixteen-year-old stuck in a six-year-old’s body). Being treated like a child has certainly not stopped irking him, even if with time, the mask has started sticking with a little less discomfort to his face; but this is another humiliation altogether, even compared to what’s sadly become his daily life.

For all of the mishaps he’s had on cases and outside of his favourite activity in the whole world, Shinichi had never pictured himself buried in a pile of blankets, with just his face sticking out from there, in the Mouris’ flat of all places. Maybe Prof Akasa’s lab would’ve felt less shameful, since that man has seen him in states Shinichi can only hope to forget the memory of, but the Mouris’? Where Ran lives? Mortifying.

The way he ended up in this situation is a farce in itself – that much he knows from how Hattori mocked the hell out of him on the phone when he had to explain the context behind one of Ran and Kazuha’s conversations that stupid Osakan had caught word of. He wouldn’t have needed said Osakan’s opinion to think that, of course, but it only serves to corroborate what he already deducted.

It was just a run-of-the-mill criminal case in Beika: suspicious death near a river, three suspects without any alibi and possible motives all around, foul play clearly involved. Truth be told, it was almost insulting how easy it was for Shinichi to untangle the whole thing and straighten it into a single timeline to take everyone along for the side with Uncle’s cigarette-laden voice.

Or, well, it’d have been, if he hadn’t fallen straight into the cold waters below when trying to showcase something to Inspector Megure.

Instead, it very much had the opposite effect: not only did it then take Inspector Sato around fifteen minutes to deduce what he was trying to hint at, it also threw the whole situation for a loop because, for all of his athletic prowess, Shinichi had trouble swimming with the heavy winter gear Ran had dressed him up in and drowning became a possibility much too fast to his liking.

Ran did save him from the waters, at least, but not before he was thoroughly soaked and had to stew in his own juices for a little while. There was no hiding behind the bushes to pretend to be Sleeping Kogoro either, so it was a long, drawn-out time session of whodunnit – one Shinichi was very frustrated not to be participating in and very satisfied to leave.

If it had stopped at an uncomfortable half-hour spent watching not-that-sharp-witted detectives (and Inspector Sato) try putting together a puzzle that wasn’t that complicated because nobody had noticed the clue left by the riverbank, Shinichi wouldn’t be stewing in his frustration and pile of blankets. No, that’d have been too easy, and someone in the skies above has something against him, he’s certain of it.

It’s a cliché. It’s such a cliché and he’s certain hypothermia isn’t supposed to do that to you aside from, well, hypothermia – but Shinichi has fallen ill after a dip in the water and it pisses him off.

Yeah, okay, he’s caught what can honestly be called a nasty cold, but this doesn’t mean Ran isn’t going overkill with it. He loves her, he really does, including when she gets protective over him (even when she doesn’t know it, courtesy of his current form); but this really is too much.

Ran’s always been like that, though. Once she gets into caring mode, there’s nobody that can stop us. Not even a tsunami could, Shinichi is certain: if he, or her father, or Sonoko, or Kazuha was trapped in the midst of a deadly flood, a wall of water heading for all of them, Ran would swim back to them, put them to safety, and only then maybe think of saving herself. It’s nerve-wracking to be around her, sometimes, when you know she’ll absolutely destruct herself if it means saving someone.

Long reasoning short, it’s not surprising that she’d bury him under a bazillion blankets too much for a simple cold; so imagine one where his voice, usually so childish and disgustingly high-pitched for a teen (let alone impossible to take seriously, let’s be real there), has almost gone instinct on him and where he can spike a fever whenever his body feels like it’s not doing enough damage to the virus inside it. Delightful, really.

It’d be more delightful if it didn’t feel like being smothered in a thousand heavy blankets by the strongest arms in the world – but what can Shinichi say? That he doesn’t like the attention? That’d be a lie. He couldn’t even say that without breaking into a terribly tense smirk. That’s ridiculous.

Ridiculous, but also somewhat humiliating. And also, he’s dying from blanket overdose.

Time to do something about it, he supposes.

“Raaaaan,” he takes on his whiny little snotty brat voice (even if it sounds more scratched than Prof Akasa’s dust-covered records that he still uses, for some reason), “do I really need all those blankets?”

She turns around in half a second (Shinichi refuses to think for even a second this fever and the mucus in his brain are slowing his mind, he’s more than above that) and rushes in a swift run, hair flowing behind her and picking all of the daylight in the room.

“You’ll be cold if you take them off!” She replies without a single grain of reluctance. “And you need to be warm!”

“But… I’m way too hot, Raaaaan…”

Instead of getting at least one blanket off him, out of three (a meltingly comfortable plaid, a scratchy blanket Uncle keeps in his office for some reason and Ran’s favourite, he can tell by the fragrance, it’s very pleasing), she kneels in front of the couch with a worried frown that’s both endearing and infuriating.

“Let me see,” she tells him in that voice she always gives the Detective Boys, always gives Conan.

Maybe it’s because having a head cold is making him snappier, but he can’t jive with that tone as well as he usually does. Most days, he can just bypass the infantilization of it all to focus on what matters (Ran paying him her upmost attention and spending all her time with him).

Ran does what she tends to do when confronted with someone with too red of a cheek: she puts her left hand on her forehead, palm against skin, and the back of her right on someone else’s forehead. Strands of his hair, soaked with sweat, are clinging to the base of her fingers, but she doesn’t complain, doesn’t as much as frown in disgust or discomfort, not even slightly.

“Your fever’s gone down a little,” she concludes with a slightly less concerned voice and alleviated features, much to his own relief. “But we need to keep it in check!”

“I know, Ran, I knooooow.”

She gets back up and stares at the pile in front of her, tilting her head left to right and back to left, a pout on her lips.

“On second thought, if you’re feeling better, maybe we could take off a blanket… Do you feel too hot, Conan?”

He vigorously shakes his head to the point of dizzying himself. This would be embarrassing if he wasn’t too busy trying to get himself a little freer, and also, dealing with a stupid head cold that has turned everything about his sharp senses into nothing but meaningless mush.

“I see,” Ran muses, fingers dancing on her chin before she finally goes for the top blanket – the scratchy one Kogoro keeps in his office. “Is it better?”

He nods again and, to his pleasure, it’s both cooler on his overheated skin and bringing a smile to the girl he’s officially dating when not obligated to be in a six-year-old’s literal shoes.

“That’s good, then! Do you need anything else?”

Shinichi hesitates on that one. Ran’s pretty much been hovering him nonstop for two days, and it’s starting to show on her face. Not so deep down, he knows he doesn’t need much: he has water near him, there is no painkillers he can take for a couple more hours, his eyelids are drooping again and he’s, at the end of the day, a teenager used to living alone.

However, being Conan has a couple perks; most importantly, if he wants to be a needy brat who just has to have big sis Ran by his side during a boring Sunday while sick with a killer head cold, then he gets to be that brat all over again. Ran can barely say no to Conan, much more than she’d be with Shinichi, and there just have to be perks about his current situation. Moreover… Faded memories of frankly lonely days spent wasting away in bed or on the couch with barely any attention other than Prof Akasa’s have left him wanting for more, and if usually he can keep it at bay with a passion for crime mysteries, now, it’s a whole other story. A distraction is always welcome.

All in all, with a dashing uniform vote from all of his sides, Shinichi decides being whiny as Conan is the best use of his stupidly boring sick day.

“Can you stay with me?” He asks, sniffling, as miserable as the most cliché Victorian child possible.

As always, to his upmost happiness, Ran’s face softens and she gives him the sweetest smile as she comes to sit next to him.

“Of course I can do that, Conan,” she replies with words like honey. “Anything else?”

“No, that’s good enough.”

He lets his head droop on her shoulder and falls asleep right here and there.

He can think about this being humiliating or not when it doesn’t feel as fuzzy and warm to be bundled in so many blankets.

[chrismerle]

came up with a couple OCs on a whim, decided to use them for writing one shots/super short fiction. they are not going to be written or posted in any sort of chronological order or on any sort of schedule, and many of them will be inspired by prompts I find or am given. I don't describe what either of them look like in any detail in this ficlet, and I plan on doing that in another ficlet so I won't fully describe them here, but to help with your imagination: Ragnarok is basically Frankenstein's vaguely-reptilian centaur creature while Adam is, like, an anime-style dog man. Frankensteinian horror paired with Just Some Guy with dog ears slapped on top. anyway, this one is set pretty early in their story chronology, but not quite the BEGINNING. it's based loosely on the prompt 'I had to be brave or else I wouldn’t be the only one affected.' editing consists solely of me rereading it once while distracted by Youtube.

Adam hasn’t really spoken since they got back to Ragnarok’s flat. Ragnarok knows he can—he did a bit as Ragnarok pulled him out of his call, and he bit out a few words in the glimpses of Alabaster’s strange little show-and-tell Ragnarok managed to steal—but his words have all dried up for now.

Instead, he’s sitting on the floor, huddled in the corner. Ordinarily, Ragnarok might assume it’s because none of his furniture was chosen with bipedalism in mind, but not just now. Just now, he’s pretty sure Adam is just trying to pretend the world isn’t so big.

Ragnarok leaves him to it and putters around his daily routine, as if it had never been interrupted and as if that interruption isn’t watching him from the corner with eerie, wolf-like eyes. Ragnarok feels those eyes on him the entire evening.

Eventually, with the flat still smothered in silence, Ragnarok climbs onto the couch and falls asleep. It takes a bit longer than usual; falling asleep is a bit strange when he knows there’s someone else there, silent but staring. Even so, sleep does eventually creep over him, restless and uncomfortable though it is.

When he wakes up the next morning, Adam is still watching him.

“Why did you get me out?” Adam asks abruptly, the words pushed out in a rush the second Ragnarok shows any signs of life.

“G’morning to you, too,” Ragnarok grumbles, mentally beating back the urge to exclaim, ‘He speaks!’

“Someone had to,” he replies once it’s apparent Adam isn’t going to say anything else until he has an answer, “and it certainly wasn’t going to be Alabaster.”

“But no one actually had to, is the thing,” Adam says, and it turns out today he has all of the words. “I wasn’t hidden. He paraded me around in public; it was a key part of his advertising. Either it wasn’t illegal, or he was so sure he could hide any illegal aspects as to render them irrelevant.” He tips his head to the side, canine ears finally partially standing up from where they were hidden in his hair. “So, no, someone didn’t have to help.”

Adam doesn’t re-ask his question, but it’s still pretty obviously hovering in the air between them, hanging heavily enough that Ragnarok can’t justify ignoring it.

“Sometimes our decisions don’t just impact us,” Ragnarok reasons. “Once I knew you existed, any choice I made to not get involved would also necessarily involve you.” He shrugs and finally climbs down from the couch, four sets of talons settling on the carpet. “Sometimes you’ve gotta be brave because you don’t want the alternative on your conscience.”

Ragnarok waits for a moment, but Adam just regards him in skeptical silence, disbelieving but nevertheless all talked out. Ragnarok gets it, though. It was a lot when he first got out, too.

He heads into his tiny kitchen, leaving Adam still curled in the corner. Ragnarok supposes he’ll need to actually order some regular chairs finally.

[madame-ellunas-moonlit-readings]

May 5 - The Dead Travel Fast

Re Dracula/Dracula Daily

Wow. This one was a longer one. I didn't mind it. It was, again, a very good story. But after chapters just 4-7 minutes, 38 minutes was a touch blindsiding. 😂 Apparently it's because Jonathon wrote an entry long enough to be split into 2 chapters. At first I mistook it for 2 separate entries on the same day. But no, that wasn't the case. Woops. I'll be reacting/writing accordingly, thus the chapters.

I wound up reading the Dracula Daily email while listening to the podcast to better follow it. Until now i had been skimming it, but this was a real read along. I'm glad for the decision because I noticed some interesting differences.

I'll get to that in a bit, moving onto the story.

Chapter 1

Poor Jonathon is not off to a good start. The poor thing can't sleep at all and the scenery is looking jagged and indistinct. Again, very ominous. The days experience was so strange and awful he felt the need to note what his dinner had been so readers wouldn't think him a drunk. It sounded delicious, I was actually kind of jealous. He ate robber steak which is bits of bacon, onion and beef seasoned with red pepper and served as a kebab, paired with a wine called 'Golden Mediasch'. The story calls the kebab style 'cat's meat', which made for an interesting research dip. I'll leave some links down the bottom.

When the coach came it drew quite a crowd. They gawked and stared, making crosses and warding off the evil eye, yelling in various languages words like 'hell', 'witch' and something that was either 'were-wolf' or 'vampire'. My bet's on vampire but who knows, maybe it's both. Wouldn't recommend asking the Count after them though. I love Jon's polyglot dictionary. Seems very useful.

Jonathon's poet tongue made a comeback on the journey. His descriptions of the area are breathtaking (though I suppose I should be extending that praise to Stoker). It starts off with brighter scenery, orchards of apple, plum, pear and cherry (it didn't say they were orchards but I think they were), rolling green hills, grasses, woods and forests. Before gradually turning to darker tones, becoming, rugged, jagged, snowy, shadowy , grey and steep, with large groups of praying peasants. You can feel Jonathon's spirits rise and fall. I enjoyed it rather a bit, got completely absorbed in it.

The scenery and explanations given for the conditions on the roads really show the movement from Winter into Spring. I mean, I know I should've gotten that from the date alone, but I'm from the Southern Hemisphere, be nice. Jonathon continues to make for good source of information. I had no idea the roads in the Carpathians were kept poorly to avoid dangerous misunderstandings and conflict with the Turks. How interesting.

Props to the coachman. He tried to break the tensions with a joke that fell a bit flat. A poor attempt is still an attempt. Though his neck-breaking rush seems to be spooking Jonathon too much for anything from him to work, The other passengers getting worked up isn't helping either. The podcast did this well. Their urging voices really amped up the tension. It did take me by surprise that the rush was an attempt to keep Jonathon from heading to the Count. Again. Props to the man. But unfortunately he was busted.

See, here was where I noticed the difference between Dracula Daily (email) and Re Dracula (podcast). The dialogue for when the driver of the Count's calèche confronted the coachmen are different.

Re Dracula

That is why, I suppose, you wished him to go on to Bukovina.

Dracula Daily

"That is why, I suppose, you wished him to go on to Bukovina. You cannot deceive me, my friend; I know too much, and my horses are swift."

The podcast skipped a bit. I can't tell if it was an accident or not. It didn't harm the story, I doubt I'd have noticed at all if I wasn't reading along, but it was different.

Speaking of the calèche, it's mentioned quite a bit so here's what that looks like.

They're sure upping the creep factor of the driver, going on about his gleaming smile, very bright reddish eyes, sharp teeth and the like. Jonathon is definitely regretting his life choices and I agree. Should've listened to your instincts.

The travel just gets creepier and creepier. First they go round and round in a loop along their road while just going forwards. Barrier magic, anyone? Wards perhaps? Then blue fires that seem like wisps and howling spooked dogs that eventually gets taken over by wolves (definitely werewolves). Good luck escaping, Jonathon. I think your paths are closed. But hey, fright of your aside, at least you've made it to the castle, worn and ruined as it looks.

Chapter 2

Poor Jonathon's hindbrain seems to be kicking into action, noticing an odd strength in his driver, an iffy and nightmarish feeling about the place, flames that don't follow known logic and the Count, odd in both appearance and behaviour. But I finally know why he's there in the first place! He's a solicitor! There for business on the purchasing of an estate in London. Not a good sign in regards to Dracula's motives, but still!

Aww, so sweet. Mina seems to be a supportive woman if she's been lecturing him on his view of himself.

It's funny how his concerns were forgotten entirely once food was on the mind. I feel you. It's a bit worrisome, but I feel you. They came back pretty quick when the Count touched him. No Jon. You're not sick and the Count's breath isn't that bad. You're nauseous because your instincts are telling to pack your bags and be on your way. Best listen to them, if you can.

He's not in for a good day tomorrow. Not if he's spent the night letting his mind spin in fear for his life and soul. Good luck.

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

It was an interesting chapter, a very good one. They're certainly headed deep into building the setting. I'm looking forward to seeing how Jonathon Harker's (and how did I only just pick up his surname just now?) first day of work goes.

The promised links on Cat Meat Sellers

[twilightknight17]

This time on P3R: lots and lots of Tartarus, and hanging with my bros.

Spent a bunch of time in Tartarus, one because I was trying to get more money/personas, and two because I thought the border floor was closer than it was. X’D I ended up having to go home because everyone was out of SP.

I’m level 68, which is not nice, and one level too low to fuse Loki, sadly. And somehow, I don’t feel overleveled in the slightest. Which… doesn’t seem to bode well for the inevitable marathon final boss. XDDDD

Anyway, now that I’ve come back, time to… oh, wait. Exams are this week, so no one will hang out with me except my rival track bro, and Mitsuru. Which seems weird, since Mitsuru STILL won’t hang out with me because I’m not a genius. But if I was… she’d hang out with me instead of study?

Akihiko wants to spend the evening together, though, so that’s cool. He takes me on a workout run, and Minato keeps up admirably! That roving band of delinquents who want to fight him turns up again, though.

Seriously, there’s more dudes every time this happens.

Akihiko’s prepared to fight, though, and tells Minato to stay back. But…

Admittedly, I’m not a Japanese high school student. I’m not an expert. But these guys seriously think that just because he’s on the boxing team, he’ll get in trouble for defending himself against like… twenty guys? “Oh, someone with your training shouldn’t fight an amateur”, so what, he’s just supposed to let people with no training beat him up without protecting himself?

Also, fucking pathetic of these morons to only come after him if they think he can’t/won’t hit back. Cowards. Dipshits. Fall down the shrine stairs on your way home.

Don’t worry, Senpai! I could!

These guys made a fatal mistake, though. They mentioned that they know where we live, and that there’s girls and a kid living there too. And you threaten our stupid little team family, you are toast.

Got it! But aw, man. That means I can’t just yank out a sword and start swinging.

I guess it’s fine, though, because we laid them out flat.

I’m delighted by the fact that we just left them everywhere.

We head home after telling them to not fuck with us anymore, and head to Akihiko’s room, where he admits that he’s made a decision about Nyx. He wants to fight, no matter what the outcome is.

That’s in line with Yukari and Mitsuru, who also want to fight. Very proud of my team here.

Now we’re off to spend some time with Kamiki, because Maya isn’t ready to rank up again. Kamiki makes me uncomfortable, but that’s a me thing, not a Minato thing, so we’re off to listen to him talk about the story he’s writing. The one that probably is not good for children, but is good catharsis for him.

The one about the pink alligator, shunned by others, who makes friends with a bird.

Today he picks up where he left off and tells us about how the pink alligator has a friend now, but still can’t hunt because of his color. So he’s getting more and more hungry. And then he accidentally eats the bird. And the bird dies. So he decides to just starve.

Dude. WARN someone before you just drop a story like that on them. He asks what we think, and dude, that’s fucking dark.

My guy, holy shit. I believe in your writing, but maybe tone it down just a smidge. I forget if he wanted this to be a picture book or what, but if so, you’re gonna traumatize the kiddos.

Fucking hell. Let’s go take exams.

Oh god I had to guess on that one but I got it!

And then missed the Roman mythology one. Who even am I.

And my academics are STILL not maxed despite all the study sessions!

To take my mind off of my shit academics, we’re gonna go hang out with Junpei.

You already apologized, but this is nice of you. And.. it’s okay.

Junpei admits that he was scared and angry and unjustifiably took his anger out on Minato.

If you say “Ryoji” I’m gonna leave.

But no, he means himself. He talks about how when he was visiting Chidori in the hospital, he accidentally brushed off her question about his future plans, and upset her. Seeing all of SEES apparently just talking about the potential death of everything like it was just another mission made him realize how scared Chidori must have been, and how bad it felt to have someone not notice that.

But he gets now that we’re all scared, we’re just dealing with it different ways. And says that while Minato has always made decisions for the rest of the team, now he should make a decision for himself.

Even if the rest of SEES wants something else.

I love Junpei a whole lot. He’s actually so good, and anyone who says otherwise is wrong and I will fight them.

Time is passing faster than it feels like it should. But not as fast as November flew by.

Yeah. We’ll have a nice Christmas together.

...nevermind, I’m sending you, specifically, to Tartarus.

Because he loves humanity and me! Oh my god. In hindsight, a better punishment is BANNING you from Tartarus. No training until you stop being like this. X’’’’D

I do wonder what Christmas will have to offer, at least...

[sampirism]

ok this has been in my drafts long enough lets set this bird free

FF16 critical, FF16 spoilers, obligatory "I didn't hate the game" disclaimer

I don't write often, especially critical writing, but I can't contain my feelings. Part 1 of ??? with this post focusing on Jill. any character related to my favorite summon deserves better (we stan shiva ... we live laugh love shiva... though ffx is still my fav design by far !! <3)

I can't tell if she falls flat and has little to no personality, or if she gets so little screen time and is largely overshadowed by other characters... but I'm having trouble coming up with words to describe her other than "polite"! We see real anger in her maybe twice? It's maybe not great if I can describe minor characters' personalities in more words.

Being enslaved and abused for 13 years, you'd think she would be. um. Less well-adjusted as she is? and I'm not saying that because I believe everyone processes trauma in the same way (they don't), but because when you actually go to the Iron Kingdom, she gives you a speech on how she "stopped feeling things" in order to process what she was forced to do. But we only see how her enslavement affected her once, really, and it's her rage in speaking to the leader of the Iron Kingdom or whoever he was. I felt like there was fundamentally no difference between the personalities of child!Jill and adult!Jill, when thirteen years of slavery and forced killing maybe seems like it would have an impact on someone.

At least she gets to kill her main abuser herself. At the rate her and Benedikta had been treated by the writing, I fully expected Clive to do it for her!

Ultimately, I feel any possible personality was thrown in the garbage because she is LOVE INTEREST. She is... sanitized. Jill is here to Support Clive. She must be NICE. She can wield a sword and magic (literally a Shiva dominant), but never as effectively as any of the males! We save this girl THREE. TIMES. Once, at the beginning, when we're there to kill her but oops we actually know her so we're going to grab her instead-- that's fine. Second, when somehow the world's Biggest Man sneaks up on her and has a knife to her throat? It seems cheap and I think we could have gotten to killing Kupka without throwing Jill into the Damsel in Distress role again.

When we're fighting Bahamut, Clive and Joshua turn into their respective Eikons... and what the fuck is Jill doing? Is she just standing there watching with Anabella? You're Shiva, girl, are you just enjoying the show? From a narrative standpoint, it's supposed to be about Clive and Joshua reuniting as brothers and doing their Steven Universe Fusion so fine okay whatever but it is hilarious to think she is just STANDING THERE. At least she expresses anger at Anabella and threatens her with a weapon. At least.

She does PROTECT Clive, twice, as Shiva. Once in the Iron Kingdom, to stop Lava from Lava-ing, and when she gets kidnapped for the Third Time, creating an ice wall to stop Odin from chasing Clive. It cuts to black and I'm not upset that she lost to Odin because he's megastrong ATP, but because this is now the third time we have to rescue this girl.

Bro. There's this one scene in the penultimate main quest chapter where enemies basically are dying in one swoop to each person, turning into aether, and I was so in tune to the way these characters were being written that I clocked this very easily. But Jill. JILL STOPS AN ENEMY WITH HER RAPIER, BUT IT NOTABLY DOESN'T DIE. IT FALLS DOWN BUT GETS BACK UP TO BE STABBED BY CLIVE A MINUTE LATER. JILL???

Despite being a Dominant of Shiva, I feel like we are just constantly reminded of how she is not as strong or powerful as the rest of the male cast. And inevitably, because this is the core gameplay mechanic, she gives up part of her power to empower Clive. I can sort of take solace in the fact that she wasn't fridged for it? But the whole scene where she gives it to him, I don't even know if either character completely understood why they felt he needed her Eikon???

I would perhaps be less irritated about this if Jill had any perceivable personality flaws, or if she was more visibly angry/upset at the literal god awful miserable world they live in. At least.... she didn't die! I GUESS

[simplyotometrash]

Bud yk how MC can summon the demons no matter where they r? What if MC went back into the human world but ran into some trouble with burglars or gangs and summoned one of the brothers.

But heres the catch. MC has the ability to summon them no matter where he was or doing atm (like when MC summoned Asmo in the dungeon/underground labyrinth) so imagine MC is about to get jumped while walking home and summoned Lucifer but he’s getting ready for bed/trying to prune his feathers. Ya’ll imagine the gang members just seeing a half naked peacock-man appear outta nowhere with a tooth brush in hand and toothpaste in his mouth😂.

TLDR: half naked Lucifer beats some ass with a tooth brush.

Okay so I'm only writing Lucifer for this but please let me know if I should write the others! This was so funny!

Lucifer x Gender-Neutral MC

Genre: Comedy

Warnings: MC is about to get robbed when they summon Lucifer

Summoning Him at the Wrong Time (for him)

You were getting adjusted to living life in the human world again. It wasn't easy, though. You were so used to the Devildom after living there for an entire year. The worst thing was having to readjust to sunlight. The Devildom's perpetual night with varying degrees of darkness made sunlight a bit harsh on the skin and eyes.

You didn't mind it. It was hard to get used to again but it felt good to be back. There were so many things you had missed while you were away. It wasn't as if you would never see the brothers again. You had pacts with them and you were certain you'd see them again in the future. You could help with Diavolo's plan to bring the three worlds together.

The hardest adjustment was not being able to see your boyfriend whenever you wanted. Lucifer had told you not to summon him willy-nilly as he had lots to do. You understood that. He often would be the one to call you so you could catch up. You even agreed that you could summon him once a month just to be able to see each other in person.

There was one other thing you found you hated about being home. You weren't safe walking at night anymore. In the Devildom you had gotten to where you could walk alone whenever you wanted. Demons didn't often bother you because you were Diavolo's guest to the Devildom and they knew better. Humans...well, humans were often cruel for the sake of it.

You were on your way home one evening. You had run a lot of errands that day and grabbed a few snacks at the convenience store on your way home. It was already getting dark, so a lot of the more unsavory type of people were beginning to lurk about confidently. This, unfortunately, made you a target.

You knew you were being followed and that you couldn't just go straight home. So you started walking around the block. The plan was to try and lose them or get to a store to call the police. That didn't quite work so well. Not when you made a wrong turn in a panic and ended up boxed into an alleyway.

"Now, give us everything you've got and we might let you off easy," the man you assumed to be the leader said, brandishing a switchblade in hand.

Lucifer, I need help! You thought, eyes trained on the men in front of you.

What came next was not quite what you were expecting.

Lucifer did appear in front of you as you had hoped, but he was in his demon form and only wearing his pajama pants. He had one of his tools to help him preen the feathers of his wings in hand. He looked down at you and then at the men.

"W-w-what's going on!?" One of the men stumbled backward, falling flat on his ass against the pavement. The others were shaking, clearly unable to comprehend what just happened.

"I believe that I should be the one asking that, not you, pathetic human," he said coldly. He looked back at you and his face softened slightly. "What's going on here? Is this what it looks like?"

"I was on my way home and these thugs tried to rob me," you explained hurriedly. A couple of the thugs had taken off but most were still standing there, dumbfounded.

"I see. Then I suppose I have no choice."

"W-wait! D-d-don't hurt us, demon!" That comment elicited a chuckle from Lucifer's throat.

He didn't even hesitate to backhand the first man who had the nerve to rush at him. You almost felt sorry for the guy as he went flying and hit the pavement. A few others actually tried to fight with your boyfriend, though they were easily fended off while he casually stretched his wings. The leader, however, had steeled himself and rushed at Lucifer with his knife in hand.

"That was a mistake," Lucifer snarled, his own hand wrapped around the wrist of the leader. You heard bones crunching and then a loud scream before he let go.

That left only the two of you.

"My, my the human world isn't as safe as I thought it would be. You humans really haven't changed much." He gently took your hand and brought it to his lips.

"Yeah, well, humans suck. Is it wrong that I prefer the company of demons?" You couldn't hide the chuckle that you gave at your own comment. "Wanna come back to my place? I can make us dinner, if you're hungry at least."

Lucifer shifted into his "human" form and nodded. "I would like that, yes."

You two walked back to your place together, talking about your days as if nothing had even happened.

[slavghoul]

Interview from Sweden Rock 2-2022

“It's going downhill," says Tobias Forge. On their fifth album, Ghost contemplates the cyclical decay of a civilization. The musical references range from the Cardigans to Seance...

Ghost's fifth album Impera was produced by Klas Åhlund, who also produced the third album Meliora from 2015.

- When we did our last gig in Mexico in March 2020, I was supposed to start making an album shortly afterwards, in about six months, says Tobias Forge. I had rented a room with my engineer to write for two months and then we were going into the studio. The album was supposed to come out that autumn or spring of 2021. But as the state of the world began to crystallise, the writing process became more and more drawn out. There was no longer a hard deadline and you could be working three days a week instead of five and so on. By the time 2020 became 2021, it had become increasingly unclear how we would record the album. Ghost's American record label is keen on American involvement, or at least Anglo-Saxon. I had promised them that we would record with an American producer. Towards the spring it became clear that this would not be possible, due to the entry ban. So the intended producer could not come here. By then we had booked the Atlantis studio in Stockholm and everything else was ready to go. In the meantime, I hung out privately with Klas, who told me that his latest project had gone down the drain. "Well, damn, so you have time. How would you feel about making a new album? In two weeks." You could say that it didn't turn out at all as I had originally planned. It turned out great, but really quite different, so the pandemic had a certain impact on how "Impera" came about.

Ghost is one of the few European rock or metal bands of today that has made it in the US. Why is it important for the label that you use an American producer?

- They don't like at all that I sit and work, as they say, locally, with local talent, haha! They think it's important that the music has an American touch. Many Scandinavian rock bands have also passed the ears of American companies and fallen short of the target because of something like their English pronunciation. Things that we don't think matter here. But they say "you sing in Swenglish". Abba were okay, because the songs were so good and they were so good looking and sang so damn well that it didn't matter.

Apparently Ghost also passed. But did you still have to work extra on this when you put vocals on the records after the breakthrough?

- I speak English quite often and have tried to work off my Swedish accent. But it sucks when certain things I've picked up when writing lyrics turn out not to work. In true old death metal tradition, I may have sat down with dictionaries and books and found cool words. You put a word like that in a lyric, thinking it rhymes with another word. For example, when we did  Infestissumam with American producer Nick Raskulinecz, he reacted immediately to such things: "What's that word you're singing there? Oh, no, it's pronounced like this..." And it doesn't rhyme like that anymore. But as much as I try to master English, I have every respect for it being my second language. And I don't want to fall flat on my face when it comes to simple things like pronouncing things correctly. That would be unnecessary. Another example of how piss-poorly sensitive it is: the chorus of the song "He is" from "Meliora" contains the word "force". And my pronunciation of that word was the only thing our American A&R man asked us to change. Because he thought that what I was singing was "fours". In writing now, as you read it here, you can't hear the nuance differences. It hadn't even occurred to me, but to him it was like tomato and tomato.

Speaking of viability on the other side of the Atlantic: could Impera be the first Ghost album where Satan or Lucifer are not mentioned by name, or did I hear wrong during the preview?

- There are plenty of references: Call Me Little Sunshine is total Satan, for example. The absence of those words does not mean the absence of a diabolical presence. But if we had put the word Satan on this record, I think it would still be less provoking to the US audience than these songs already are. Though the audience that should really be taking notice of things said in the songs probably doesn't understand that the album exists. And if they were to read the lyrics, they still wouldn't get what I mean. It would go completely over their heads.

You have mentioned Timothy Parsons' book The Rule of Empires as a source of inspiration for Impera. The book's subtitle is "Those who built them, those who endured them and why they always fall".

- In terms of inspiration, it was initially very much a question of judging the book by its cover. I saw it in a bookshop and somehow realised what it should be about. That's exactly what it said on the back. There is always a cyclical nature to how empires are formed and why they are eventually doomed to fall. This was 2014 and even then and there I knew I was going to make an album about this. Someday. This is the album, loosely dealing with the idea of an empire in decline.

I guess the theme is at least partly contemporary.

- Yes, another important source of inspiration has been the news flow of the last five years. Although not so much the pandemic. While I would like to think that our ability to survive in the West is superior to our willingness to destroy it, there is much evidence that it is cracking at the seams. And that it's happening very quickly now. It's hard not to notice. There has always been a certain amount of reality in Ghost's lyrics, perhaps masked in some form of horror rock garb. And a lot of old themes have made themselves apparent. Where just a few years ago I declared Western religious extremism passé, it is definitely not so today. Throughout our career we've been able to tour the US with very little backlash, in the classic rock'n'roll sense, without many protest demonstrations outside venues. I'm not saying that would happen today, but it's definitely a different world we live in. In just a few years it has changed for the definite worse, via  some kind of an astonishing time machine. Five years ago I thought the Islamic State was alone in being able to throw the world back to the Middle Ages, but now there is another time machine that has turned the clock back maybe 50-80 years. If we go back to the book just mentioned as an example of how to explain it this is one of the natural stages of the end of empires and eras.

In what do you see this second time machine?

- In the West, we live in an idea that we are secular and stand for freedom and liberty. In every way we beat our chests, living in a post-Enlightenment age where science is valued more than religiosity. In all parts of the world, they don't, in some places the earth is still flat, which defines the difference between the West and the East in very general terms. But today there are strong currents even in the West that, while rejecting Eastern thinking, stand for a return to a flat earth. In many respects.

Who do you have in mind?

- They're a bit tricky to spot, because they're not necessarily a group of people with a single opinion. Although this album doesn't deal with the pandemic, the pandemic has produced some good examples. If we take vaccination, a crappy subject but as an example of the cluster between black and white. One line in the middle, four different groupings. One extreme doesn't want to vaccinate and thinks it's all a fabrication. On the other side is the one who wants to vaccinate and does not believe that the pandemic or the vaccine is a hoax. Then there is the grey area in the middle, who may or may not consider vaccination but believe either way. There are a lot of grey areas that are not just right and left. This creates a new kind of shakiness, as it is no longer so easy to pinpoint which side is evil and which is good. You begin to notice that even within your own ranks it is not clear where you stand. It is a sign of dissension and a cracking of the fabric. People and groups are breaking away. Another example is the number of American families that are suffering because members have gone head first into the world of conspiracy theories, with Qanon and such. It's not as simple as saying their whole family is an old Ku Klux Klan branch. Maybe someone in the family happened to become unemployed two years ago and has been susceptible to these kinds of currents. Soon that person has been drawn into the sectarian, almost self-destructive mechanism that has certainly been evident in America because it has a name there. But similar movements exist in Europe, even in Sweden. You can see that people have woken up, in a way that perhaps wasn't important before. Now everyone has got an opinion, which is for or against or in the grey area, but it's come to the fore in a way that I think is perhaps not good. I'm not saying what's right or wrong. But this is an example of how the empire that we have always known can potentially have a built-in self-destruct mechanism. As we see in action right now.

One song on Impera is called Twenties.

- The merry twenties but in the future tense, which can be interpreted however you like. Perhaps it's not the historical happy 20s that is meant, but the future. And the voice in the song foreshadows a subsequent 30s, in the bad way. If we say that Twenties is written from the perspective of a demagogic, diabolical figure, it's not the redhead down in the underworld, but the redhead above ground that we're talking about.

Griftwood is also an interesting title, among several others.

- It asks how low one is willing to sink to implement what in American politics is called "the grift". The grift, where you suck money out of voters by beating into them that you are doing things for their benefit and for some kind of ideology. When in the end it's all about making a fool of yourself, at any cost. You can vote against abortion, or whatever the fuck, just to fuck with it.

Zooming out to the album's over-grabbing theme again: what other signs can we see that we're on our way out?

- When you build a city in Sim City, you eventually finish and then it falls apart. Then you move on to the next project. Especially in our secular Western society, we aspire to eradicate all diseases and create a perfectly functioning society. Where everyone is rich. Finally, we have reached such a thing. Here in Sweden we have a completely different welfare than others, although there are of course economic differences between people. You don't have to go far in Europe before your houses get a bit cold, the roads are bloody potholed and so on. In our country, almost everything works. Almost. We have it extremely good. It's easy to see how the West has reached a dead end. It's hard to see how it can end up in the utopian where everything just turns out fine, without some kind of collapse. One gets the impression that it leads to only one thing: a complete collapse and then you have to start all over again. For myself, it's dizzying, because I read too much into the doom of it all. Shit, just to start making vinyl records again there are so many devices they have to fix. I and many others like me are the perfect victims of our times. I’m so trapped by all the things I need to numb my fears and problems. Everything in my life is about diversion, just like for most people reading this. We fill our lives with experiences. And there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s what you do. In the old days you hunted all day, then you played games, banged someone and killed someone. But everything we do now is based on electricity, gadgets and making it work. And someone else doing the job that we should be doing, so we have the time to sit and listen to Beherit instead.

After a pompous, emotional overture, Impera breaks loose with Kaisarion, whose lyrics symbolically link to some just-mentioned signs of the times.

- In the third century, Christianity was still at an underground level and was considered more of a cult. Partly made up of extremists - there was a reason why in 325, at the first Council of Nicaea, the bishops had to sit down and think about how the hell they were going to keep track of those people. There had to be a book to regulate things and so Christianity came into being. Of course, that didn't lead to everything calming down overnight. Kaisarion refers to the building where Hypatia of Alexandria was murdered. She had very early scientific input. In Alexandria there was a militant Christian movement that didn't like the idea of a female pagan teacher. They decided to kill her in a very nasty way. Ten to one they stripped her naked, raped her, stoned her to death, tore her to pieces and the whole thing. This may serve as a symbol of how a bunch of fucking morons are attacking science, femininity and what they don't understand. And destroys it, in a sacred building. At the same time, the song is quite upbeat and should give the feeling of burning down something old to build something new.

In a way it evokes Stand by Him from Opus Eponymous.

- In modern times, until recently, we have been very keen that accusations against people must have a certain level of effectiveness. We look back with disgust on witchcraft accusations as something that belongs to the unenlightened world. People were stupid and out of touch. But today we are basically back in the same demand for testimony as it was then. It is enough for someone to say that he or she is such and such, and we stone the person. It is that knowledge that is so terrible today. To notice that we haven't really come very far. Look at the United States, where you're really back in the early 20th century, politically speaking. Once upon a time, the Ku Klux Klan marched through Washington by the thousands. Just a few days ago, basically the same thing happened. They were certainly not wearing Ku Klux Klan costumes but it was clear what they stood for. Throughout the history of pop culture, we've talked about the '60s and everything that's changed. Abortion laws and all the things we've taken for granted. Now suddenly it's not so obvious that you should have those opportunities. Pure regression.

Kaisarion surprises in the opening with a high-pitched hard-rock scream a’la 80s.

- Well, we simply asked ourselves "what is needed here?" and tried some things out. And it turned out to work. There are many stylistic touches on this album that you can laugh at that we used. For example it’s the first album where we have double bass drums. On the first album we had a Guns N' Roses drum kit: bass drum, snare and a tom drum and would try to build all the songs around that. On Impera I also used a whammy bar on the guitar for the first time. Classic hard rock attributes as well.

Kaisarion is also one of two songs co-written with former Kent frontman Joakim Berg.

- Yes. I don't know what relationship he had with Ghost before we met. It wasn't that we ran into each other, but it was a hook I threw out through record companies. I have an incredible respect for him, his song writing and past. Our inspirations and genres may not be that different, but when you meet, get to know each other and write together, you're very keen to come up with good stuff. That's also one of the fun things about collaborating with others: you put in effort in a way that you might not have otherwise. When we started writing, I didn't have a vision of how the record would start beyond the intro. There was no opening song, but I had a riff and told Jocke that one of the things I wanted to accomplish on this record was to do more songs in the major key. Because that's hard. For me, it's very intuitive to write in a minor key. It bothers me a little bit, because you can write very sad and emotional songs in major key as well. Jocke also comes from a very minor world, but has written a lot of nice things in major. When I introduced the first riff, it was in a beat more reminiscent of Can't Stop This Thing We Started by Bryan Adams. Or Steamrock Fever by the Scorpions - I'd had an idea for a long time that I wanted to do a song in that style. Jocke thought it sounded cool and we did a first demo in a day. But when I listened to it afterwards, I thought it sounded way too cheesy. At the same time I could think "if he who has written so many damn good songs thinks it's good...". It can be like that with collaborations. But I said to Martin Eriksson Sandmark, who is the sound engineer I've had with me throughout the demo, that we would do a straight, up-speed version of the song, completely emotionally. Like a bad cover. An hour later we had a completely different song, a real blast. I played the new version for Jocke and in that version he wanted more of certain things and stuff.

In recent years, songwriting collaborations have been quite abundant on Ghost's albums. Impera continues on this path and features Jocke Berg, Peter Svensson (Cardigans), Max Grahn and the pair Vincent Pontare and Salem Al Fakir, who also contributed to the previous album Prequelle.

- I'm not saying that I would never want to go back to the way of working like on Opus Eponymous where I wrote everything myself. It's also fun and in all cases where I've collaborated with someone, it would have been four minutes of sound if I'd done it myself as well. Sometimes I do it well myself, but I can also go back to old songs and hear that they are sloppily thought out. That I was in a hurry or something. I also have a very different experience of working with others today than I did then. Of how others have coached me. Because that's how it's often been worked out, especially since I've usually chosen to work with people I've looked up to myself. When I work with someone like Peter Svensson, who has written a record like Cardigans "Gran Turismo", I want to write something that will impress him. When you're doing something in front of someone you have a lot of respect for and know has every intention of making the song good and doesn't just have something to say for the sake of it... That's a bit different from my experience of doing things with people you have a bond with, who just contradict you for the sake of it. Who want to push something in just for the sake of having done something. It doesn't always feel good and that's why a lot of bands fight. If you're just going to quota in ideas, it doesn't feel fun.

What is the usual approach when you write with someone?

- Generally speaking, collaborations usually involve me coming up with loose ideas first. Some may be recorded and formulated quite far. Others may be a riff that I consider verse, an upbeat and then it's over. Such ideas are, in my world, the equivalent of what in botany is called cuttings. You have a small plant and then you can transplant it and it becomes a tree. All the time I'm collecting a lot of cuttings, waiting. And I know that if you take that one and water it, it will become a yucca palm. It's very inspiring to take a cutting like that to one of the people I'm writing with. I often bring and show two ideas and let Pontare and Fakir, for example, choose which one tickles more. And as soon as you get someone's input on a song, it's like you creatively open the gates too. And just because I'm sitting here commenting on major world events, it's not like I'm constantly tickling myself with the fact that I always have such a damn good perspective. It's really not like that and especially not when it comes to my own creations. "Dance Macabre" from the last album was originally meant to be something completely different. During weaker periods of my life, I've thought a lot about writing songs for other artists. Like a lot of songwriters do. Recording your own rock songs can bring in some value, but if you write for a really big artist, we're talking about a completely different income. So when I brought that idea to Vincent and Salim, it was with the intention of doing something that wasn't for Ghost. Something that I thought could be a fucking fat disco song.

It's not that hard to imagine with Dance Macabre.

- Exactly. And so I thought we could give it to some other artist, but they thought you could hear straight away that it was a Ghost song, which in my world it wasn't. We agreed to spend half the day trying to make it a Ghost song and if it didn't turn out well, make it a David Guetta song instead. It became a Ghost song and that's a typical case where you as a songwriter don't understand what you're doing.

Hunter’s Moon, Ghost's contribution to the film Halloween Kills that came out last autumn, stands out thematically on Impera.

- I wrote Hunter’s Moon together with Max Grahn who was Oscar nominated last year for Husavik, a great song that is featured in the film Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. Hunter’s Moon  was actually written before Husavik. I remember he had it going at the time. The first song Max and I wrote together was Call Me Little Sunshine. Somewhere around then I was asked to do a song for the new Halloween movie. At that time I already had the main loop and the chorus, whose inspiration originally comes from a very simple, local old Linköping source: Seance’s song 13th Moon from their second album Saltrubbed Eyes.

Ah, lovely reference.

- That album is a masterpiece. People probably perceive it as more modern than it is because of its dry production. It's full of Possessed and Dark Angel vibes and cool nods to old stuff, which many people don't think about. Anyway, in the chorus of 13th Moon there is an echo of the song that I think is so damn cool. Though their echo is on fourths, ours on triplets. So with this cutting I came to Max. Ghost's album, at least visually, likes to be set in an era.

Where are we on Impera?

- What I've disguised the theme in is Victorian industrialism, i.e. the 19th century. London and British imperialism are what I mainly associate with that era. Besides being cool, the industrialism of that era has several points of contact with our time. One of them is the problem that a lot of people have become redundant, due to the choice to produce things with the help of machines. That problem, some 130 years ago, was identical to what we see today. And when people have nothing better to do, they sit down and start thinking about other things. And unfortunately, that is to be seen as negative. For the average person, it's not good to be detached and not feel a sense of connection. And in its absence, you can find a new context in the Nordic Resistance, some suburban gangster group or, if you don't want to socialise that way, maybe Qanon. These are the same mechanisms that pull people in these directions. And it's a result of, among other things, people becoming redundant. Of many other factors as well, but that's one of the cornerstones.

On Meliora I think you highlighted another one of them: what grows in the absence of a great faith in God.

- It's such a big concept, all sitting together, and the lines are blurred. Many of the enlightened ideas of hundreds of years ago were about man's desire to evolve and not be a machine or a slave. How to take a step away from God or have a different relationship with God. These were almost utopian ideas, even when they were thought by such a small fraction of the world. In today's social media society, where everyone almost has an enlightenment machine in their pocket, I think it can be very difficult for the little person to know their role in a world that is apparently endless smorgasbord of possibilities. Though it is unclear who it is that has the possibilities. It used to be much simpler: if you had money and came from a rich family, you had opportunities. If not, you didn't. You didn't spend a lot of time thinking about how to make that class journey, because it probably couldn't be done. That in itself was tragic, of course. But I don't know if the opposite, as we see now, is not also a tragedy. An awful lot of people consider themselves to be... I don't know if we have a good term for it in Swedish. But in American-English they talk about "misplaced millionaires". You're the one who should have something, who really was born to do something else. That feeling has grown so strong in such a large part of civilization. You can't imagine deviating from the feeling that you really should have done something else. Now, of course, we're in a forum where we're both doing music and creating content for a magazine that's all about escapism.

I just made that connection myself.

- This is a driving force that has driven everyone who has ever contributed to Sweden Rock Magazine. All with the feeling of being out of place. But to sound a little careless and maybe phrase myself a little sloppily: to go from aesthetes wanting to rock the world and having done so with varying results to every single person, whether they're interested in something in particular, feeling that they're a bureaucrat who's got it wrong... I think that development is very damaging to the little person. To feel all the time that you are not where you should be. But this is a result of being constantly exposed to these amazing life stories and stories of class journeys that so many people are doing. And they're probably not looking at musicians, they're looking at influencers or app makers in particular. In the latter case, the narrative is always something like somebody came from a very ordinary background, played a lot of video games or was technologically inclined and was into computers. And then one day that person came up with an idea pretty damn fast, packaged it and sold it for half a billion. That's how you do it.

Everyone can succeed.

- Yes, you start with nothing and it becomes everything. The ideas themselves are often very simple, if technologically advanced. But you come up with a feature, which often knocks out a team. Take the Pirate Bay, but a slightly more modern example would have been Uber. You come up with a product that is hammered in like a wedge, between a large consumer group and a guild. And then you kill that guild. It's all disguised as being for the good of the world. It's cheaper and has some kind of humanism behind it. Until the day Uber says they're going to partner with Tesla and use self-driving, driverless cars. What a joke, what a spit in the face of the world. And of course the cars won't be made by humans either, but by robots. How fucking cynical. This chain of development permeates everything, but the little man doesn't think that far ahead. People don't give a shit about that. But if you read about Uber's creator in Forbes, of course that's also one of those stories. An idea that someone coughed up in the back of a taxi one day. Well, it was so easy to come up with an idea to make as much money as possible. This is put in relation to what you don't have. And here you have created a completely unnecessary anxiety and sense of inferiority. I think it's devastating for humanity to constantly compare ourselves to these brutally successful people, who seemingly haven't had to do anything to get where they are.

Speaking of Ghost as a mirror of our times, it was funny how 2018's Prequelle with its poetic death mood preceded the covid pandemic by a year. Plus, you managed to time the end of the tour to just a day before the restrictions kicked in, at least in Sweden. This could have looked really good if Ghost had stayed "in character" from the beginning (read: belonging to a worldwide satanic cult with ramifications in all camps, among power holders and so on).

- Yes. It was a coincidence, of course. But I'm not alone in being early to the ball. I, like many others, have consumed a lot of entertainment and media over the past year. Including a video game called The Last of Us. It's really awful and probably the best thing I've played. It's set 30-40 years from now, after the air has gone out of civilization in 2013. A contagion spread and wiped everything out. In the game, the clock has stopped at 2013 and nothing works. I am a child of, maybe not today but yesterday. I find that I get scared of the dark when I play such a game and think of doom, which may not be a burning inferno but that the world as we know it would not exist. The idea that there would be no electricity, for example; all my interests are based on it existing. I'm not really an 1800-person - it's all about pop culture, rock’n’roll, movies, metal... Anything that just exists today. Books come to mind, but they've often reached me through moving media. Most of my intellectual base, to the extent that I have one, I've acquired via references from there. I've never read "The Iliad" as well...

Many who claim they have read it actually at most tried.

- Yes, it is unreadable. But a great story, as I know because I've seen the movie adaptations. Anyway, being an inner-city kid in every sense of the word, I'm afraid of getting dirty. I shower and can't really handle the wilderness and all that stuff that you really feel you should be closer to. Its origins, completely animal. We're flawed. This also connects back to what Impera is about, apropos of feeling out of place and wrong. Somewhere you have a primordial man inside of you that craves to get out.

/Original text by Richard Lagergren.

[queenxxxsupreme]

Defender, Protector, Keeper (Arthur Morgan x f!reader)

A/N: This is one of those things I write that should have a first part but.... It doesn’t.... I do plan on making more within this little.... world??? With this mom!reader and her son Ben. So sorry for this mess. 

Word Count: 2.5k

Warnings: violence, nothing out of canon, Micah is mean to children, mute child (is that a warning?) fluff, Arthur being a father figureish thing, soft Arthur, I don’t know what else to tag, blood? it’s all canon to the game

Summary: Arthur steps in to help you with your son after a run in with Micah.

***

“Miss Y/L/N! Miss Y/L/N!”

You moved out of the tent upon hearing Mrs. Grimshaw calling your name. 

“Right here, Mrs. Grimshaw.” 

“There you are. Where is that boy of yours?” She looked around as if trying to peek into the tent. I’ve got a little chore for him and Jack.”

“He was just in here helping me with laundry, but he wouldn’t mind giving you a hand.” You turned to go into the tent. “Ben? Mrs. Grimshaw needs your help.”

Ben, your five-year-old son, put the clothing in his hand down and looked at you. 

“Come on with me, Ben. I’ve already got Jack over by the woods.” Susan gestured for him to follow her.

“What are the boys going to do?” You asked her. 

“Help Lenny and Sean pick some firewood. The little fellas ain’t gonna pick nothin’ but some small kindling. The fellas– Well, Lenny won’t let the boys hurt themselves.”

You fought the urge to volunteer to follow your son. It was just little kindling sticks and twigs. It wasn’t like they were going to chop down entire trees.

Susan, sensing your hesitation, stopped just at the edge of your tent.

“They aren’t going far into the woods at all, Y/N. Charles and Bill are on guard duty and Sean and Lenny are going to be with them. Nothin’s gonna happen to those boys.” She assured you.

You nodded your head, reaching down to run your fingers over Ben’s hair. 

“Go on and help Mrs. Grimshaw, Ben.”

He silently followed alongside her. 

You continued to fold laundry until it was finished. Once that was complete, you decided to go out and see if there was anything else around camp you could help with. 

It seemed to be a rather mellow evening. No one was out doing any jobs nor was anyone talking about any jobs, which was a rarity. In the three months that you had been staying with the Van Der Linde Gang, you had quickly realized their lifestyle was fast paced and there was almost always something to do. 

You made your way over towards the tent the girls in camp stayed in. 

“Hi, Y/N.” Tilly greeted you first. She was reading a book.

“Hey, Y/N!” Mary-Beth was also reading. Karen sat on a chair next to the two singing. “You wanna sit with us for a bit? You’ve been working hard all day.”

“That’s okay, Mary-Beth. I think I should go see if Ben is doing okay with Sean and Lenny.” You looked around towards the woods.

“What’s he doing with those two fools?” Tilly put her book down in her lap. 

“Mrs. Grimshaw had him and Jack helping them with firewood.”

“Last I saw, Lenny and Sean were sitting over by the fire.”

A knot began to form in your stomach. Why hadn’t your son returned to you?

You moved to search for Lenny and Sean, but they proved to be easy to find. They were sitting at a fire with a few other gang members. 

“Excuse me, gentlemen.” You cut off Sean. “Where is Ben at?”

“Hi, Miss Y/L/N.” Lenny gave you a charming smile. “Ben and Jack went over towards John and Abigail’s tent. Jack said they were going to play.”

“Thank you, Mr. Summers.” 

***

You did indeed find your son at John and Abigail’s tent. He sat outside of it with Jack. Jack was talking about some sort of story that Hosea had told him about a bear while your little Benny just kept playing with his half of the deck of cards. 

“Y/N.”

You looked up to Abigail. 

“Hi, Abigail.”

“I hope you don’t mind that Jack brought Ben over. I know Susan had them working earlier.”

“I don’t mind.” You shook your head, smiling. You crossed your arms as you watched Ben. Jack didn’t seem to care that Ben was silent and wasn’t responding to him. Jack had learned since you both arrived at camp that talking wasn’t something Ben did, so he usually did all of the talking for Jack. You were thankful for this. In the beginning, you weren’t sure how young Jack would react to your quiet son. 

“Do you want to sit down and have a cup of coffee with me?” Abigail asked. “I don’t usually get much down time, but neither do you. You’re always running around.”

“Have to keep busy, you know.” You chuckled a little. “Coffee sounds nice.”

The both of you got your drinks and then sat down at a table not too far from the boys. 

“They grow like weeds.” She thought out loud, shaking her head softly. “I’m gonna have to get Jack some new clothes soon. He’s about to be too big for nearly all the pants he’s got. Maybe Ben could fit into what Jack can’t wear. Ben is a little thing. That way you don’t have to go out and waste money. I mean, the clothes aren’t perfect. Jack has needed them patched more than once. But they work.”

“That’s very kind of you, Abigail. Thank you.”

She gave you a smile.

“Momma! Momma!” Jack called as he ran over to Abigail. 

Ben rushed up to you, a smile on his lips. His hair fell into his face and he tried to wipe it out of his eyes but he didn’t do too good of a job.

“Hi, love.” You smiled down at him, brushing your fingers through his hair. “Are you having fun?”

He nodded, looking over to Jack. 

“Momma, can we go give Sean his cards back?”

“Where is Sean at?” Abigail asked, looking around the camp. 

“He’s just on the other side of camp at one of the other fires.” You told her, recalling where you had seen him earlier.  

“If Miss Y/L/N says that Ben can go, then yes. You can. But you have to ask her.”

Ben tugged on your skirt as if to ask you.

“Miss Y/L/N! Can we take Sean his cards?” Jack waved the stack of cards around.

“I don’t see why not.”

“I’ll race you over there!” 

You watched as Jack took off first with Ben just behind him. 

“I’m glad Jack finally has someone to play with and keep him company.” Abigail smiled. 

“They get along so well.” You nodded. “I was a little…. worried at first, if I’m honest.”

“Oh really?”

“Just because…. Well, sometimes it’s hard for Ben.”

Abigail nodded her head understandingly. 

“He’s a sweet boy, Y/N. You raised him well.”

“Thank you-,”

“You dumb little rat! Watch where you’re going next time!”

You stood up upon hearing the sound of shouting. Feeling the urge to find out what had happened, you ventured across camp until you found your son and Micah Bell. Micah had a hold of Ben’s arm and was holding him at an awkward angle. 

“When someone speaks to you, little boy, you’re supposed to answer them!”

“Micah!” You raised your voice. 

Micah turned his head to look at you but didn’t let your son’s arm go. 

Anger bubbled in your veins. 

“Ah, the whore. Maybe someone better teach this boy manners before he ends up worse than his ma.”

You pushed against Micah’s chest. Ben was crying at this point, trying to grab onto your skirt anywhere he could but Micah was finding amusement in pulling the boy away from you. 

“Micah! Get your hands off of that boy!” Abigail shouted. 

The next few moments happened all too quickly for you to know what exactly happened. But Micah released Ben and he fell backwards to the ground. Your hand flew up to smack him and you landed a nice hit on his cheek, but he was quicker than you and far more skilled in fighting so the backhand to your cheek came out of seemingly nowhere. 

You took a few steps back to keep from falling flat on your ass. You ended up hitting something solid. A hand found your side and another your arm. 

It was Arthur Morgan. He only took a couple seconds to make sure you were steady on your feet before moving around you to deliver two punches to Micah. The nasty man fell back as blood began to pour out of his nose. 

“Y/N, are you okay?” Abigail rushed to one side of you and Mary-Beth came to the other. 

You didn’t answer them. You only pushed them away to get to your son. 

Tears streamed down his cheeks as he sat in the dirt where he had fallen. 

There was a hand on your wrist that stopped you just before you could get to him. 

Arthur turned you back around to face him. You pulled against him, wanting desperately to get to your son.

“You’ve got blood on ya, pumpkin.” He murmured quietly, using his thumb to wipe away the little bit of blood from your busted lip. “He don’t need to see that.”

“Th-Thank you.” You whispered. 

“Can I pick him up? Move him somewhere else for you?”

You nodded. 

Arthur let you go and moved towards Ben. 

“Come here, Benny. You alright?”

Ben nodded his head, shyly tucking his face into Arthur’s neck.

Arthur took him to a table and sat him down on it, then pulled out a chair for you. But you couldn’t sit down just yet. You had to make sure he was okay. 

Your hands cupped his face and tilted his head up so you could check him over for any marks. 

“Are you okay, love? Does anything hurt?”

He held up his hands to you, showing that his palms were scraped up and bleeding a little. He sniffled, his bottom lip quivering. 

“I’ll get somethin’ to clean those up, Y/N.” Mary-Beth spoke, moving towards Strauss’s wagon.

Upon seeing the scratches and bleeding scrapes from Ben falling back and catching himself on his hands, anger welled up inside of Arthur. 

He turned and started to make his way towards Micah. 

“Arthur! Arthur Morgan!” Abigail called after him, but she couldn’t stop him herself. “John! Mr. Smith! Please!”

You couldn’t pay attention to what was happening with Arthur right now. Ben was important and took priority. 

You brushed his hair back and sat down in front of him. 

“I’m so sorry you got hurt, love.” You leaned forward to kiss his cheek. 

He wrapped his arms around your neck, careful not to touch you with his injured hands, and then slid down into your lap. 

A few moments later, Mary-Beth returned with a bowl of water and a few rags. Tilly was with her too, helping to carry bandages. 

“Are you alright, Benji?” Tilly asked. He nodded his head without lifting it from your chest. “He didn’t get too hurt by that nasty Micah, did he?”

“Think it just spooked him more than anything.” You answered her. “Thank you, girls.”

The items were placed on the table and then they left. 

“Ben, I need you to sit on the table so I can reach you, love.”

He shook his head. 

“We’ve got to get these scratches cleaned up, okay? We don’t want them to get yucky.”

A hand found your shoulder. You looked to see Arthur moving around your chair. 

“Lemme give ya some help. That way Benny can stay on your lap where he’s comfortable.”

You nodded your head, giving him a little smile as a thank you. 

“Hey, Benny? Can I see your hands?”

Benny shifted around on your lap so that he could easily face Arthur. He gave Arthur one hand. 

“This might sting just a bit, but I promise it’ll be over soon.” 

Arthur got a rag wet and began to clean the dirt and little bit of blood from Ben’s small palm. 

“You’re a strong fella, Benny. You know that?”

Ben sniffled. 

“I heard you helped Sean and Lenny with getting firewood. Did you carry all the big logs by yourself?”

A little grin tugged at your son’s lips. He shook his head. 

Once he was cleaned up and Arthur had carefully wrapped up his hands, Ben looked around for Jack. He was with Hosea. The two weren’t very far away at all. Ben shimmied down from your lap but stayed by you. His eyes were focused on Jack. He wanted to go play with his friend. 

“You can go on, love.” You told him. He flashed you a little toothy smile before taking off in the direction of Hosea and Jack. 

Arthur stayed on his knees beside you for a few moments, watching Ben go. He let out a breath through his nose and shook his head. 

“That bastard is lucky I don’t put a bullet in him.” He rose to his feet, shaking his head. 

“Ben is okay, Arthur.” You turned your head to look at him. “He just…. He was just shaken up a bit. But he’s okay.”

“He hit you too. No man should ever treat a lady like that.” 

You admired his words, the way he viewed things. 

A little smile came to your lips and you watched him sit down next to you. 

“Well, Mr. Morgan. Not everyone has the same ideals as you.”

Arthur shook his head, fingers curling into a fist. He was still worked up over the situation. 

“It’ll be okay, Arthur.” You reached over to place your hand on his. “I can take a hit just fine. But I do appreciate you stepping in. It was really kind of you to help clean up Ben.”

He became a bit sheepish at your words, tipping his head down so you couldn’t see his eyes completely thanks to the brim of his hat. He cleared his throat. 

“Just-Just hate seein’ the little guy cry is all.”

You smiled a bit and gave his hand a squeeze before moving away from the table he sat at. 

Arthur watched you leave, then turned his head to watch the two youngest members of the gang with Hosea. Hosea was telling a story while Jack and Ben listened. 

Arthur turned his head back to see where you had gone off to. You were standing with Abigail near Pearson’s tent. Abigail said something that caused you to look at Arthur, a smile pulling at your lips then you looked back at her, shaking your head and bringing your hand up to cover your mouth. It was a poor attempt to hide a giggle. 

Arthur fixed the hat on his head and decided to go towards his horse. 

“When are you gonna tell her?” Charles spoke from his horse. He was messing with a strap of Taima’s saddle. 

“Tell her what?”

Charles rolled his eyes and shook his head. 

“I’m not oblivious to it, Arthur. I don’t think any of us in camp are.”

“To what?”

“That you fancy her.”

Arthur mounted his horse, shifting around in the saddle a bit.

“I don’t know what you are talking about, Mr. Smith.” He adjusted his hat. 

“Yeah, I’m sure you don’t.”

“You wanna come with me? Or keep standing there goin’ on about it?”

Taglist: @winterwolf @lauramb7 @caraqas @bluscryn @krenee1drful @zodiacaldust @nonodino @cal-lifornication @thefirelordm @sargeantsea @sokkasdarling @thecollection @mayday1284 @kashasenpai @misskrql @brooke-supernatural16 @lassiee @hocdolliday @micahs-bird 

If your name is in italics, it wouldn’t let me tag you :(

[miyacreampie]

Lenny sensei's night class has begun!~♡

“Senpai~♡”

synopsis 💭;; Tanaka gets jealous bc some bitch talking to his man.

note 🖋️;; IT TOOK A WHOLE FUCKIN WEEK TO WRITE THIS. WHY DOES WORK ALWAYS PREVENT ME FROM DOING THE THINGS I LIKE? WHAT THE ACTUAL FU- by the way, ‘Isayama Misaki’ is based off of some asswipe I used to know- also, I ran out of ideas at the end, so it kinda cuts of lf at the good part. I apologize to the anon that requested this.

Requested by anon ♡

Male pronouns used

Tanaka wasn't a jealous man. Or at least he'd like to think so.

(Y/n) was pretty popular around campus, so it wasn't a surprise to see a few fangirls here or there. It kinda reminded him of Oikawa—except (Y/n) didn't exactly pay his fangirls any attention. (And he didn't have an ass as flat as printer paper.) But did that stop them from trying to get into his pants? No.

In all honesty, Ryu felt lucky that he had someone like (Y/n) as a boyfriend, although he didn't like the fangirls—who paid him no mind whenever they were together. It annoyed him that they kept surrounding (Y/n) who clearly wanted nothing to do with them, begging him for dates, one night stands, anything.

To say that Tanaka was mildly uncomfortable was an understatement.

🌇🌇

Today was a bit different. Instead of a crowd of women rushing towards (Y/n), it was just one—; Misaki Isayama. The woman (almost) every guy considered perfect. This was...manageable, but what did she want? Well—at least it was only one girl. He had only woken up a little over an hour ago, and wasn't exactly ready for his simps just yet.

“(L/n)-chan, can you help me study for the science exam that's coming up?”

“Just because you're my upperclassman, doesn't mean you can call me that.” (Y/n) said quietly, rubbing his eyes, then yawning. “I'm on my way to the lecture hall though, so maybe after that? I should be fully awake by then..”

Misaki smiled and nodded her head. “It's a date!”

“No. No it's not.”

🏙️🏙️

Tanaka let (Y/n) lean on him during the lecture. That turned into one sided cuddling from the sleepy man. Ryu thought it was cute how (Y/n) always clung to him when he was sleepy. He was a little sad when (Y/n) fully awoke, and let him go, but it was for the best.

“Oh, Ryu-san. I'm tutoring the rumored ‘perfect woman’, and it's gonna be awkward with just the two of us, so can y—”

“You headin to the library? I was on my way there anyway. I'll join ya.”

The (h/c) haired man nodded, and they both walked all the way to the other side of the schoolyard to the library building. Tanaka even held (Y/n)'s hand to flex on the girls they passed by. Some of the girls were noticeably annoyed or a little angry, which pleased him.

When they finally arrived, Misaki was standing by the door. Upon seeing Ryu, she scowled. But it was only for a second.

“Ah, (L/n)-kun..who's this?”

(Y/n) smiled, oblivious to Misaki and Tanaka glaring at each other. Needless to say, the intense atmosphere went right over his head. “This is my boyfriend..Tanaka. He'll be joining us if that's okay.”

“‘Perfect woman’ my ass..the only ‘perfect woman’ I know is Kiyoko-san.” Tanaka mumbled under his breath. (Y/n) may not have known, but Misaki and Tanaka were always competitive with each other. Other times he wouldn't have cared, but now that (Y/n) is what he's fighting for, he wasn't gonna back down.

“Oh, it's fine.” Misaki said through gritted teeth.

🏙️🏙️

Isayama and Tanaka were left sitting at a table alone, while (Y/n) searched for the science books. They sat in complete silence, but it was almost as if you could hear their thoughts—mentally arguing with one another.

(Y/n) returned with three books, seating himself between Isayama and Ryu. “Okay! Let's get started!”

***

As (Y/n) went on explaining the laws of physics (because Tetsurou used to tutor him), Misaki and Tanaka continued their epic staring battle. The battle ended once they noticed that (Y/n) had stopped talking. He was chewing his tongue in thought, trying to figure out how to pronounce a word.

Misaki didn't notice, but (Y/n) had gone from physics, to microbiology. In less than five minutes.

“Something wrong?”

“How do you say this word again..?” The (e/c) eyed man pointed to a bolded word in the textbook, leaning back a bit so the other two could see.

A suffocating silence reigned over the three of them, but only for about three seconds.

Isayama squinted a bit before she spoke. “Endothelial?”

“Oh yeah. Thanks, senpai.”

Isayama smiled smugly at Ryuunosuke. The said man had a visible tick mark (💢) on the side of his head, symbolizing his annoyance. Tanaka only wanted (Y/n) to call him ‘senpai’—even if they were the same age (if not, then (Y/n) might be older). It made him feel like he was a dependable upperclassman, maybe even a bit turned on in certain situations. But hearing (Y/n) call someone else senpai..made him a little sad.

His thoughts were interrupted by his phone vibrating. As Tanaka reached into his pocket to get his phone, he caught (Y/n) putting his own phone in his jacket pocket. Tanaka turned on his phone to see a message from (Y/n) in his recent notifications.

Pretty boy💖: Go to the bathroom. I'll join you later.

Although he was a bit confused, he got up from his chair. “‘M gonna go take a leak.” Ryu said as he started to make his way towards the men's restroom.

Almost five minutes pass before (Y/n) goes into the bathroom after Tanaka, telling Misaki that he was checking on him. As soon as (Y/n) had passed the first bathroom stall, he was yanked into the second one, the door locking almost immediately after it shut behind him. He wasn't given any time to react before he felt a familiar pair of soft lips violently smash against his own. (Not violent enough to make his mouth bleed or anything. Chill.)

A heated battle for dominance arose between the two, (Y/n) quickly taking the lead as he gently bit Ryu's lip.

They didn't want this to end, but eventually Tanaka had to break the kiss because he couldn't breathe. He stood there, breathless in his boyfriend's arms, not wanting (Y/n) to let go.

“Ryuunosuke..” Tanaka flinched upon his first name being said—even though (Y/n) said it many times before. His reaction brought a smile to (Y/n)'s face. “I love you~..” He said, drawing out the three words in a sing-song voice.

Ryu felt his legs getting weak, and held onto (Y/n) for dear life. (Somewhat out of fear that he might fall.) He wasn't actually feeling like this because of three words...right? “Babe..am I supposed to be kinda horny right now?” It was a bit of a strange question, but hey, it never hurts to ask.

(Y/n) chuckled. “Well, yeah. I might have to carry you out of here once we're done.” His warm smile from earlier didn't falter as he spoke.

‘How can he say something like that so casually? If I say something like that, I'd get d–’ Ryu's thoughts were snapped away when he felt his chest touch the stall divider and his pants being pulled down. He let out a soft moan as (Y/n) stroked him through his boxers.

🏙️

‘What the hell is taking them so long?!’ Isayama got up from where she sat, and went to the men's bathroom. There wasn't anyone around, so no one would see her going in. She opened the first stall's door. ‘If they ditched me, I swear to go–’

“W-Wait, (Y/n)!~ Haa!~♡”

“Geez senpai, you're so wet inside~..♡”

Misaki froze. She couldn't be sure that it was (Y/n) and Tanaka in there—but those were definitely Tanaka's pants hanging over the second stall's door. Now she felt more..curious than angry. Isayama slipped into the first stall, carefully and quietly closing the door behind her, and slowly locking it so it didn't make noise.

Ryu tried to keep his breathing steady as (Y/n) fucked him with his fingers—even though that did absolutely nothing to help his current situation. Hell, he couldn't even process words anymore. The only actual word he could say was his boyfriend's name. He eventually remembered how to speak after about two minutes of being finger-fucked.

He wanted to sound more demanding, but his voice came out more whiny than what he'd have liked it to. “Fuck me already..ya fuckin– Hng!~” It may have been that he couldn't process it, or that (Y/n) had moved at the speed of sound, but Tanaka wasn't able to register how fast (Y/n) pulled his fingers out, and shoved his cock into his still tight hole. He wanted to say something, but all that came out was a choked whine.

“You were saying?~♡” (Y/n) asked, though it sounded more like a demand than a question.

Tanaka wasn't given a chance to answer due to (Y/n) ruthlessly fucking the poor man senseless. His loud whines and moans echoed throughout the bathroom, much to (Y/n)'s pleasure. He wanted everyone to know that he was a taken man. He wanted everyone on campus to hear Ryuunosuke's pleasurable cries.

Hearing the two men fucking in the next stall turned Isayama on to no end. (Even though it was more of (Y/n)'s voice that made her wet.) But she resisted touching herself because she wouldn't be able to forgive herself if she masturbated to her rival getting fucked. (A kinda stupid reason, but okay.)

“Fu–fuck, (Y/n)!~ So good..it feels so good!~” Ryu babbled, the words almost incoherent as he attempted to push back against his boyfriend's cock. “More!~ Give me more!~♡” He begged, voice broken and choking on his own breath.

The (e/c) eyed man didn't say a word. As his senpai had politely asked of him, (Y/n) drove his cock so deep into Tanaka that the said man let out the loudest drawn out moan (Y/n) had ever heard from him. If it weren't for the cum spewing from the teary eyed man, (Y/n) would've thought he had hurt his lover. He wasn't entirely sure until he felt Ryu continue to push back against him, desperate for more friction.

“Aww..you're so cute when you act like a bitch in heat, senpai~..♡”

He only got a choked whine in response.

“I'm pretty close anyway..do you want it inside?~♡” (Y/n) asked, pulling the shaky man up to his chest. Again, only a whine. (Y/n) parted Ryu's lips with his fingers, those fingers soon being coated in saliva. “Use your words~..”

Finally, Tanaka spoke, despite his unintentional dry heaving. “Fuck me- please~..”

“As you wish~♡” (Y/n) almost whispered, gripping Tanaka's cock firmly, earning another broken moan from the said man. “You're the only person I'd fuck like this, you know that, right?” He said, as he rubbed the shorter man's stomach.

“Y-Yeah..that makes me happy~..”

Lmao this was like- 80% highschool drama (in a college setting), and the remaining 20% being me getting horny for no reason. Also, I'm aware this made no sense. None of the stuff I write makes sense. :)

The class session is now over!~♡