#me when i forget to post art i made like a week ago for the 537th time

[hexcitrine]

randomly looked at this account to update my age and holy shit it's been a while since i posted here..........i have a small pile of art i have yet to post but hbhbshdbshbd too lazy

[chknnuggs-the-eel]

little needle felted brugs!!! 🐛🐛🍰

[slowd1ving]

INAMORATA . *࿐ SUNDAY, MOZE NSFW

“Think of what it could have been, Think of all the suffering,  Nights of crying, wondering,  Tell me what awe you’re in?” Deception comes second-nature to incubi; twisting serpents lay dormant in their flesh. This is truth. It is also true that for a wayward incubus, it is particularly hard to disguise one's demonic nature in the presence of an angel and an irritatingly sharp human. You don't recommend it at all, actually. I MADE IT BEFORE MIDNIGHT!! halloween babyyy!!! anyways I promised to deliver a halloween fic and I did :3 this idea lowkey came to me in a dream and I think it's singlehandedly the freakiest shit i've ever written edit: see I knew I was rushing to post when I forgot art creds Moze drawing by @ma_mori74 and sunday is by @nai_pizx pairings: angel sunday, human moze + incubus m reader (+ some foxian jiaoqiu) warnings: nsfw, male reader, voyeurism, lowkey stalkerish moze, mentions of death/hell etc, religious imagery wc: 16.1k

HONKAI STAR RAIL MASTERLIST

MASTERLIST ・゜・NAVIGATION

. *࿐

Tinny music crackles in your earphones that knot haphazardly at your chest, almost in sync with the subdued spark from your lighter. The song isn’t particularly good (neither is the weather: a drizzle that always seems to drip from a perpetually ultramarine sky), but any shitty song would do to liven up the ambience of the smoking area in this particularly bleak corner of the campus. 

It’s blue, you note boredly. The smoke, that is, mingling with the vapour wisps of condensed breathing. There’s a certain meaning to be found in standing outside in subzero temperatures, finding peak entertainment in the clouds produced from your mouth as if you were some child. You just haven’t quite found it. Meaning, that is. 

You’re sure there’s one or two bad songs about it, if you scroll through the playlist enough. 

Inhale. Bitter menthol washes over your tongue–you’ve long gotten used to the flavour. Of course, the glaringly red car that slows down on the road in front of you also helps in forgetting to appreciate any new notes of the stick between your lips, but you digress. 

A window rolls down. The street-lamp glowing a frigid lazuline flickers precariously. You exhale, watching the smoke trace shapes over the bloody car—some boxy shape that could totally be used as a muscle car. These things happen simultaneously. These things also wash the murky taints of calculus from your mind and instil some form of amusement into your week. 

If you don’t count maintaining your cover at a human university as being thrilling enough to regale anyone with. 

Brusquely, a hand sticks out into the drizzle to wave at you—self-consciously, you wave back with a question clouding your mind. Though, it is almost immediately answered when street-lamp strains a bit more and you finally see the outline of an acquaintance you met while hauling boxes into your new dorm room at the beginning of the semester. 

A tentative alliance, more like, with the both of you sniffing something off about the other. 

“Yo, Jiaoqiu,” you greet back after he beckons you closer. His glasses are slipping off his face, and your hand itches to push them back up. 

Of course, it perhaps doesn’t hurt in establishing closeness by being guts deep in him just a week ago. 

“You’ll be there for the Film Fair, right?” he murmurs. You can’t possibly miss how his eyes flick to your lips briefly: how his pretty throat is wrapped tight with a scarf tonight to protect from both the boreal chill and prying eyes, how his glasses can’t seem to hide his incandescent gaze on the marks on your body, barely hidden by the loose shirt draped over you today. 

He was on the culinary course, he’d told you a week ago, but you could’ve figured out that much from the exquisite breakfast he’d cooked for you in the morning: one you didn’t need to eat. Instead, the sanguine flesh of berries had ended up being smeared on his skin alongside the mellow cream—you could’ve surmised his degree from the divine taste of his body, easily. That, in your opinion, had been your best meal for a good while yet. 

“You want me there?” You take another drag of your cigarette, watching him watch you. In his eagerness, your keen eyes pick up on the glamour disguising his fluffy ears starting to wane; and unbidden, a memory rises to mind of a night much like this. Those same ears, pressed flat to his head, with that lilt of his voice sounding far less confident. 

A friendship is forged with a good fuck, you wisely conclude. 

“Yeah, duh,” he breathes, and the vapour coming out of his mouth mingles with the smoke pouring from your own. 

Or two. 

“Send me the details,” you smile, a slanted one that mirrors your lax attitude. “You still have my number, right?”

Of course he does. 

“Yeah, I do,” he clears his throat, almost shaking himself out of a stupor that he never noticed he was in. There’s a tense dance occurring between both of you constantly, and unfortunately for him, he can never quite outpace you. It’s present in the regretful line of his mouth as he glances at the time on his phone, the lingering gaze that traces your being, and the downturned mirage of his ears—as if he forgets that you can see through his glamour. “I’ll see you.”

“See you,” you return, savouring the rich scent of energy that exudes from him—one he can never mask, for he cannot himself tell that it even exists. 

As the cherry-red Mustang—or whatever car it is—rolls away, you stroll back to the smoking area to appreciate the remnants of your cigarette: something you hadn’t been able to due to all the distractions, as you’d like to put it. 

But all is not well. 

Instead, you resume your road-and-cigarette-smoke watching only to discover another pair of eyes meeting your own from the shadows cast by the lamplight across the street. With the prussic overcast to the sky, you once more don’t recognise the figure afore you initially; until a car drives past and its glaring headlights reveal him for all but three seconds. 

Moze. 

You think you’ve seen him around Jiaoqiu several times—perhaps enough to rationalise that they are indeed friends, forged with something a bit more innocuous than a one-night stand. 

But regardless of how you stand tangentially with your mutual buddy (or fuck-buddy in your case), the common threads that bind you also included that as of this year, he is your roommate. And classmate, too, in perhaps one of the most obscure classes to ever be known to man. If you had less of a spine, you might’ve waved—but as it stands, the wintry chill between the two of you suits you just fine. If anything, the fact that he hasn’t beaten you up for sleeping with his friend leaves a positively amicable aftertaste in your mouth. 

Absent-mindedly, you stub the cigarette into the already-bleak wall, leaving a rather abstract trail of ash behind. His nose wrinkles in distaste, but you ignore it.  

Is it a sin for an incubus to be any more addicted to human creation? Wow. You really should’ve been a philosopher. 

Well, any more than it is being an abomination, you muse one final time, almost ruefully. 

Almost. 

. *࿐

This ill-fated relationship begins as it does ordinarily—by the two of you both taking an elective nobody else takes. 

Well, more accurately, it begins the morning you see a poster for the strangest night class you’d ever seen. 

Humans and their machinations. 

This is truly a special version of hell. 

Fragile wisps of breath condense in the autumn chill as you carefully read the poster pasted on the bulletin—formal black and white typeset, so painfully tasteless amongst the vibrant leaflets nestled around it. Though, the size eight lettering and bland format soon becomes the least of your irritations as your eyes wander down. 

“What a joke,” you scoff incredulously, a bit too invested in your human persona to truly grasp that you’re losing the plot. Just a bit.  

Really? ‘Identifying and Apprehending Olde Monsters in Our Midst’ was granted approval to be introduced as a new class, whereas the Cryptology course had been defunded and subsequently discontinued? The thought burns your mind, your soul, your very being. 

“How stupid,” you mutter, swiping open your phone. 

The irritation surges, until it gnaws and bites at the cartilage of your sternum in a desperate attempt to free itself from the confines of your chest. 

“Really, are they crazy?” you shake your head, typing your name right onto the form that finally materialises. 

You may be loyal to your Cryptology elective, but it’s not like it ultimately makes a difference. 

A class is a class, and your tenure in the human world relies on your ability to assimilate into this stupid place.

. *࿐

You lied earlier, by the way. The piddling number of students in ‘Identifying and Apprehending Olde Monsters in Our Midst’ is not two, but three. Your moody roommate (whom you barely saw yesterday), you (who, as an incubus, really shouldn’t be here) and the distinguished Sunday (who is also weirdly out of place but in the opposite way). Honestly, he probably knows this too—glancing at the way your clothes are never weather-appropriate and always tousled as though you were wrestling in bed for a nap (given your nature, you probably were doing some form of wrestling), whereas his own shirts and slacks are always immaculately pressed and ironed. He’s even got a damn overcoat for every day of the week, for fuck’s sake. Honestly, you’re half convinced the guy’s running some cult. 

Regardless of how mismatched the Professor’s three students are, the bigger problem is how awkward the lecture hall is when the damn chairs outnumber the students. You can barely concentrate on Professor Hopkins’ droning on selkie characteristics when you, Sunday and Moze are arranged artfully in an equidistant triangle from one another. Any more civil person would perhaps sit next to one of them to make the air a tad bit warmer, but you’re not even a person. 

You’re a demon. 

You think you can afford to be uncivil. 

Or at least, it’s the very bare minimum of rudeness you should maintain. You’ve suffered enough askance looks from both of them (which they never seem to level at each other) to comfortably assume that they have some sort of problem with you that they’ve formed a business partnership over. Shaking hands, all for the pursuit of disliking you more efficiently. 

During the next lecture on kelpies, it’s the same story. Even the damned coordinates of the triangle are the same, thus when you stride in a minute before the Professor, you make the creative decision to shift one chair to the left to ruin whatever coordination they’ve got going on. It doesn’t deign a glare, but you can feel the air grow even frostier. Amused, you stop paying attention to the information you could probably recite in your sleep, and instead decide to just people-watch the three sad individuals before you. 

There’s Professor Hopkins—perhaps one of the most insane people you’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting. He’s human through and through: reeking of such a scent that would put most madmen to shame. Alas, this madman is perhaps one of the most unrecognised in the realm of mortality—considering only three people are taking his class, and a solid third is the very thing he is lecturing the dangers of. You’ve met your fair share of people who believe in monsters, but you’re amazed every time you walk into the elective: both by his zealousness and by the fact this class even got approved. 

What a strange world the human world is. 

There’s Moze. Over to your far left, and one row up—the perfect place to observe the whole hall, but also the perfect place to look like a weirdo considering there are only three students and one stout little teacher yelling his wee lungs out at the front. You don’t actually know why he’s taking this class, considering his other class is something on forensics. Or something. You’re not exactly on amicable enough terms to interact with him, but you’d hoped that you had a somewhat sane roommate. 

It’s somewhat hard to hold onto that hope when he shoots you that look whenever Hopkins starts speaking. Actually, you can’t exactly see the look considering he’s behind you, but you can feel the white-hot stare pierce your back: rolling energy tainted with suspicion. 

Perhaps it was stupid to disguise yourself in an institute of higher learning where one would hope its students had an ounce of critical thinking. 

But you’re choosing to ignore his glare to protect your own peace. The only person who’d ever believe his deductions would be the madman lecturing now. Or not even him, since you’ve been such a model student—already knowing so much about these creatures of the night. 

Then there’s Sunday. You’ve perhaps had half an interaction with the man, earning a polite, utterly distant ‘thank you’ as you arrived before him for once and held the door open behind you. Impeccable manners, straight-A student, and perhaps the most confounding. Your suspicions of him running a cult are only confirmed when you overhear he also studies Theology. 

He’s polite. Very polite. A bit too polite, so much that it honestly creeps you out more than any eldritch stuck in hell does. Because, why be that courteous to someone if you’re not planning on sacrificing them? However, you’re half convinced that behind those eyes, he’s planning some elaborate exorcism that nobody apart from himself knows about. And maybe you now. 

It’s unnerving. 

Up close, the flow of his energy is human—too perfectly so. There’s never any malice, or anger, or even boredom that taints the low thrum running through his vessels. Yes, the base is undoubtedly mortal, but with none of the complexities that make up the average human experience. 

He regards you with a similar look to Moze’s—fixing you with a stare that appears to be figuring you out and picking you apart. A scrutiny that should fall under its very own brand of suspicion, one that makes the heat under flesh and sinew only increase—for you don’t think you’ll be able to predict his next move, not if you can’t ever read how he truly feels. 

Or maybe that is how he feels—and you don’t know if that’s more terrifying. 

Unfortunately, these three profiles suggest your lunastic of a professor is the safest to be around, since the ebb and flow of zealousness pretty much remains consistent for each lecture (seriously, they approved this guy?). He poses a far lesser danger to you (the one who took this elective for fun) than the two other students (who took this elective for nefarious purposes, you’re sure). And he actually likes you; despite him conservatively eyeing the attire you wear in subzero temperatures, you’re a pro at his essays! 

Alas, your propensity for avoiding your classmates has not worked out for you, you miserably conclude. 

. *࿐

You should’ve stuck with your regular dinner of passively absorbing peoples’ horny thoughts like some weird fucking sponge. 

You really should’ve, and now you’re cursing yourself as you morosely shovel what appears to be some inscrutable form of soggy college food past your stony lips. The food isn’t the problem, though any self-respecting college student would probably be wincing and picking at it rather than dispassionately taking bite after bite like you are. It’s a bit disheartening to know your cover could be blown from how you seem to truly appreciate the cooking, but in another life you’d argue your soullessness befits the statistics analysis you’re half-reading, half-doom scrolling past. 

But the differential equations aren’t the fucking problem either. 

The problem is the man sitting across from you. Or more accurately, across and one seat to the left, because apparently he’s gracious like that. 

You thought nothing of the flash of soft, dove-grey that you saw from your peripherals at first—nor the fluttering scarf that brushed ever so slightly by your bare shoulder. You were, after all, too preoccupied with clicking and unclicking your pen in irritation at the thick stack of paper by your tray. A bit too preoccupied, but you look up and suddenly you’ve got a cult member all up in your face with way too many slices of raspberry cheesecake on his plate. 

That’s what you notice at first, then you look up and it’s fucking Sunday of all people, resembling a word problem a bit too much with how many pieces are on his plate. 

You disguise your shock. You hope it’s successful, but judging by his soft cough of surprise, you don’t think you are. Mind racing, you turn back to your own plate and equations, connecting some dots far better than others (judging by the mindless scribbles on the sheet). Just to check, you observe his energy fluctuations a little longer—they’re still as incomprehensible as ever. 

Inordinate amount of food. Emotions you can’t read. A penchant for ignoring the finer points of human assimilation, such as staring at others a bit too fucking much. 

“Do you need something?” 

Quit staring.

Of course, you keep the quiet part quiet. 

You’re sitting opposite an angel, after all. 

Well, opposite and a seat away. 

When you finally look back up, his usually cold gaze is even colder—you wish you never said anything, even if it’s making your concentration in statistics flounder. With bated breath, you pray it’s simply because he doesn’t like you, not because he’s about to possibly exsanguinate you—then you laugh at yourself because you’re a demon, therefore no god will listen to your prayers. No matter how earnestly you try, nobody will hear your plea. 

No demon would knowingly provoke an angel like this, or at least you hope they wouldn’t. But you’re not most demons—you don’t actually want to be sent back down to hell. 

You hope that small fact erases whatever suspicions he has. 

“No,” he finally replies. His voice is strangely soothing, but you know that angels are never depicted as the temptation your kind are painted as. And as your eyes flick to your surroundings, you notice that some of the people sitting nearby are glaring daggers at you for even breathing in his presence. You half wonder if he’s recruited them into his cult already. “Professor Hopkins told me to notify you that we’ll have a group project briefing for the next lecture.”

“Right.” And he couldn’t send an email? And this was important enough to break your silence for? And this merits your staring? The words, though poignant, die down on your tongue, but you’re sure he can feel the vexation contributing to global warming, just a little. Angels are unable to discern the rich nuance of lust and love, but even a plant would wilt from the shockwaves bursting from your tension headache. “Message duly noted.”

He does not leave like you’d hoped. His fork instead cuts deep into the raspberry cheesecake, and you watch it bleed out on his plate. 

He’s no longer staring at you, but you know he is just as keenly aware of you as you are of him.

. *࿐

It’s not like you can avoid your damn roommate either, because that would probably raise more questions than you’re comfortable answering. 

You’re thankful Moze’s quiet, though that gratitude is somewhat abated by him in general. He’s too quiet, and in contrast anything you say will be far more incriminating. And while he stays in his room most of the time, you can’t help but notice he seems to hang around on the living room couch a little too often whenever you stumble home late at night: reeking of a perfume not your own with kiss-bitten lips and a satisfied smile on your face. Like some fat cat licking its chops after a particularly gratifying meal. 

Except you’re avaricious, and you come to the dorm often enough to recognise the pattern. 

Not tonight though. Devil forbid you whore yourself out on a respectable Sunday evening (it’s totally not because the angel named thusly will know somehow, spotting the faint shimmer of tattoos, horns and a tail materialising in a brief mirage). Somehow. 

On Sunday you rest. Or more accurately, you study from home—glasses carefully perched on your nose, pen substituting a cigarette as you teeth at it with canines a little too sharp to be comfortable. You can’t be expected to be biblical about it—for good measure, you crack open a bottle of red wine with it, drinking straight from the bottle as you stare down the thick pack of proofs that are due tomorrow morning. 

It’s not hard to imagine why so many humans in hell become overseers, rather than good, hard-working demons. 

Humans can simply be more evil and still convince themselves that this is for the better. 

It may be foolish to display your vices sprawled in the living room armchair, but you blame both the wine, the record player you brought, and the sensuous ambience you’ve carefully curated in the space. Is it a sin to do work in an environment that makes your heart pump just a beat faster?

Well, the seriousness of your crime is weighed against the salient fact of the matter: that you’re trying to avoid your roommate, not maximise your chances of encountering him. 

What a pickle.

You, like the hard-working demon you are, would prefer to not fail your degree and thus decide prudently to remain where you can wallow in both languor and academia. With cherry wine staining your lips, and the flicker of a warm cedarwood candle perched on the coffee table, it’s no wonder you’ve settled into a strange rhythm. Or maybe it’s something in the air, like the doleful sounds of old records you’ve collected throughout the years—ones you’ll always regretfully dismiss as replicas, but who knows?

What a pickle indeed. 

Tonight, the roles have switched. At around ten, you hear the almost-silent glide of keys in your lock, and you brace yourself for the maelstrom that Moze’s presence will inevitably bring. Like clockwork, you scrutinise the flow of energy that you can dimly feel—only to be completely blindsided when you feel a distinctly familiar one beside it. Two presences that are much too observant, but one that’s withdrawn and almost curling in on itself, whereas the other flows with ease. 

Brusquely, the door is shouldered open. You lock eyes with the Moze who prowls in, the Moze who is uncharacteristically gazing right back at you, the Moze who still for the life of him can’t soften that guarded expression that casts deep shadows onto his eyes. Then, despite yourself, your focus shifts to the one behind him—Jiaoqiu. 

The waves radiating from the Foxian seem to expand on seeing you, and almost immediately the taste feels warmer as you absorb it—a perfect consistency you know he’s feeling as an embarrassed prickle beneath his skin. Even if you weren’t an incubus, you could put two and two together from his slightly parted lips, the peony gently brushing over his features like watercolour, and his tentative steps into the dorm. 

He murmurs your name in surprise, and perhaps that’s the most conversation these walls have ever heard since you and Moze became roommates. 

“I didn’t know you and Moze were rooming together,” he begins with that soft cadence of his. Subconsciously, you sit a little straighter—keenly aware of him, after learning the signs of his body so well. 

But before you can reply, Moze answers for you—the most you’ve ever heard him speak. 

“Didn’t get round to telling you.” Each word is heavier than you can comprehend, tainted with a bluntness that suits him. It makes your gaze snap back to his face, and you swear the corner of his lip twitches upwards before he turns to you to talk. “Hope you don’t mind me having him over for a bit.”

“It’s fine. I like him,” you shrug, and the corner resumes its neutrality once more. Not like you see it—you’ve turned back to your work as if there isn’t a gnawing hunger slowly uncoiling under fragile dermis, as if you can’t smell every speck of desire and bashfulness slowly undulating within Jiaoqiu. You do like him, and not just as a meal. His tongue cuts sharp, beneath his fumbling, clumsy touches that seem so graceful when not encumbered by sheets. 

You just hope you won’t die of starvation before you wrap up the calculus. That would be an embarrassment for the ages. 

Alas, you don’t actually end up finishing your work. The sanguine liquid pooling into your mouth may not be enough to intoxicate you, but you can feel a pleasant warmth buzz through your veins. Of course, there’s warmth from that and warmth coming from sitting close to two heated bodies in a tipsy screening of some horror movie you’ve never seen. 

Calculus can wait another day. When Jiaoqiu stumbled from Moze’s room with a sweetness on his breath and a tight grip around your wrist, you gladly let yourself be rescued by the surprisingly strong Foxian. He led you right back in, and you were practically floored at how easily you just… stepped into the space, with Moze simply eyeing you rather than that cautious glare he so often wore. 

The Foxian pushed you into soft carpet, and you could feel Moze’s body tense up as your side collided with his own—the floor space was just about large enough for three guys to sit, but he made no move to move, thus you attributed it to the buzz he felt. 

It’s dark. 

It’s dark, and you’ve got your reticent classmate on one side of you, and the acquaintance-or-not on your other, practically curled up into your body with how he’s draped himself.

Naturally, you don’t end up paying attention to any of the movie—some flick you think you saw a century ago. Sure, the screams are totally realistic, but who can blame you for being distracted? You’ve got the object of your avoidance on one side, and then someone you think is deliberately pushing himself into your ‘hungry’ radar.

You would be quite partial to imploding, but unfortunately that is not a power you possess. 

But despite all your gripes, this is nice in its own, painfully ironic sort of way. 

. *࿐.

Of course you don’t end up stealing a kiss outside the building—Moze taking the opportunity to clean the bathroom obsessively while buzzing from the liquor, while you walk Jiaoqiu out. 

Of course you don’t mean to, but you’re drunkenly complaining of the professor for your statistics module, and he’s merely gazing. When the sun’s long gone to its slumber—and the only light available is the halo around your head from the flickering streetlamp—who can blame him for the way his eyes drink your pout in, the way he’s getting lost in the way you smell? Menthol cigarettes and something sweeter, something his nose picks up that could be caramel but could also thrum deep in your veins to intoxicate others. 

He cuts you off when it gets too much for him, right when you push your glasses up to continue to ramble comfortably. 

“—every lecture, I swear—mmph—” 

You swear up-and-down you weren’t planning this; you’re taken completely aback as he surges, pressing you up against the rough brick of the building. He’s warm, you think deliriously—with his hand cradling your cheek and his other nestled in the back of the loose pullover you’re wearing, you’re warmer than you’ve been in weeks. 

It’s not desperate, but you can feel the build-up of emotion behind it: taste the cherry on your breath, the tequila on his. Alcohol may have prompted this, but even a fool could savour the heavy yearning on his tongue. 

“Jiaoqiu,” you mumble, but he merely tilts your head, nipping at your slicked lips with an eagerness he only seems to display when it’s the witching hours. He’s shorter than you, yet tonight he’s the one caging you in an inescapable lock—so hungry, so avaricious and naturally, you oblige, raking your hands in his pink hair. 

You taste blood. You taste life as you feel his steady pulse against your body, lust as he groans and melts into your touch, desperation as he entwines his arms around you with the sole goal of pressing himself into you even further. 

You are equally insatiable, gradually feeling the vivid colours flow from his tongue onto your own. 

You are equally gluttonous, but your work isn’t going to finish itself and you’re quite a good demon, if you do say so yourself. 

You are equally voracious, and perhaps completely degenerate, yet still you wistfully and regretfully ease your lips from his—though your hands remain white-hot on his body. 

It’s enough energy to get through the rest of this day and then some. It’ll do. It has to do. 

“I’ll see you at the Film Festival,” he murmurs, but the two of you know the encounter between you both will be sooner—a clandestine encounter between sheets, in fact. 

He’s walking home, so you watch him disappear into the night—and when his small figure is swallowed up in the void space between street lamps, you watch a little while longer. 

Unbeknownst to you, someone else has been watching this entire time too.

*࿐.

Film - demons, seduction, succubi and incubi, you scrawl in your notebook, already feeling a healthy dose of apprehension, amusement and mild horror at Professor Hopkins’ chosen group project. 

“...due a week from now. Since there are only three of you, why don’t you boys work together?” Clearly, he is impervious to the chill that still lingers between you and your fellow classmates—the triangle is still at its maximum area, and you don’t envision it changing any time soon. Horror upon horrors, he then adds something that makes you shiver in your seat. “I’ll play it as our department’s submission for the Film Festival.”

Once more, you wonder how the department was approved in the first place. 

Then, the thought slips your mind as you first lock eyes with Sunday, then Moze only a minute later. I’m screwed. You don’t think you’ve ever been on such a tightrope before: wildly cartwheeling your arms back-and-forth while dangling over a fatal precipice. You will not survive this—not the research on incubi, nor the actual group project. 

You can only pray your two intelligent classmates do not put two and two together for once. After all, you’re the mathematician out of this mismatched trio. Any semblance of hope you had at making it through the year is slowly dissipating. 

*࿐.

“…edit it documentary style. It’s professional, organised, and will suit the Professor’s tastes.” Sunday’s mellifluous voice washes over you as you sit in the campus library with your classmates, desperately trying to look engaged. 

It does not work. 

Sunday’s fountain pen wavers in the air and turns on you, and your heart jolts and skips past a few beats—it looks far too close to a weapon for your liking, and you would not trust an angel with a dagger for the life of you. Or without the dagger. He does not inch it closer, but it’s rather an unconscious mirroring of his thinking that betrays that he’s about to scold you for falling asleep. You’re thankful for the table that separates the two of you, but you fear wood can only do so much to counter flames of divine punishment. 

But before he can lecture you, Moze beats him to it. And for the record, you don’t know how he ended up sitting right next to you, and you’d like to complain. 

Leaning across his chair, he gets unnecessarily close to talk to you, and it’s not like whatever he’s saying is important. 

“Do you have anything to add—” and here his leg ghosts up against yours, but you don’t flinch. At least, you don’t think you do. “—or did you not get enough sleep last night?”

His voice is low—enough that there’s an undercurrent of tension without him even trying. You choose not to reply directly to him; instead, you look at Sunday once more, and you swear you feel a spike of irritation from the angel. But, surely not, right?

Mulling your words over, you carefully select a sequence that won’t land you a one-way ticket back to hell. There’s a certain trick to this, you see—and that’s crossing your fingers and thinking of an escape plan in the event you fail, or the shameless cowardly demon approach. It may not land you a spot among the Lieutenants, but it sure is better than being skewered by some angel. 

Especially one named Sunday. You disguise your grimace. 

“Uhh,” you wrack your brains, before settling on the first thing your mind falls upon—yesterday night, all cozied up with Jiaoqiu. Fuck. “A horror movie.”

You can feel Moze’s stare burn into dermis, sizzle a bit, then singe your very bones.

“That’s an— unconventional idea,” Sunday coughs, and you remind yourself that angels are way meaner than you’d expect. 

“If you think it’s ill-founded, then I would like to remind you our professor’s maturity doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll enjoy an orthodox style,” you argue, suddenly remembering that angels are also ill-suited for debates and ‘gotchas’, and also that incubi can honey their tongue to saccharine degree.

Fuck. You’ve really spent too much time in the human realm. 

Before Sunday can get a word in, you keep talking, desperate to look enthusiastic to discuss incubi and possibly give yourself away. “If it’s being entered into the Film Festival, a mockumentary or a horror film could be both informative and entertaining. Or even a silent film.”

“It’s succubi and incubi,” Moze mutters. “If there were more people I’d bet there’d be one group submitting porn.”

You stifle a cough, but you don’t think you did it well. 

“What, with Hopkins as the intended audience?” you glance at him, and see the traces of laughter on his mouth, and suddenly your own feels somewhat dry. Just a little. 

“Yeah, imagine,” he matches your airy tone—and the proximity forces your heart to lapse. Just a little. 

Sunday’s glare bores into both of you. “Can the two of you take this seriously? We are absolutely not doing that.”

If you ever forgot he was an angel, this is a poignant reminder. Should you squint, you think you can see a faint halo around his head, but that could also honestly just be the library light causing the incandescence. 

“Yes, which is why we should do horror or a mockumentary,” you interrupt. This is the only fight you’d ever attempt with an angel, and boy do you deserve a medal for it like the humans do. “The topic isn’t particularly… uh… safe for work, so horror would convey the right message that we investigate in each class, while still having space for detail. Think something like found footage horror films or something.”

“You raise a good point,” Sunday deliberates—if there was anything good to say about angels, it would be that they are gracious with their concessions. Some concessions. “Fine.”

Fine. 

Fine.

Fine. 

With glee, you save the moment to brag about when you next visit downstairs. I got an angel to agree with me. 

But simultaneously, you compose your face, knowing the next item on the agenda will inevitably be the very topic of the proposal. 

Suddenly, you no longer feel the glee of just a minute ago. 

Oh shit. 

*࿐.

The most abject misfortune in your long life, it should be duly noted, does not in fact occur that particular night. 

It occurs the next night. Perhaps it was too much to ask for when you pleaded for just this year: uninterrupted, normal, uninterrupted. It might’ve stemmed from you spamming omg on social media too much, but it’s not like you could realistically use any other alternative without getting flagged as suspicious. Call it a habit caused by humans, or whatever. 

Disregarding the blasphemy, the day starts normally, and gives you hope (ill-founded, you know).  Like all mornings, you begin with breakfast, a coffee and a cigarette outside—and a quick dose of Moze’s early-morning glare. As with all days, you ignore it—but there seems to be something underlying beneath its surface. Something deeper, as if he’s trying to figure you out; as though his eyes are meticulously stripping away your dermis with forensic precision, paring away sinew from your bones and finding the interweaved remnants of your blackened soul. 

It’s a Friday, with exactly one morning lecture on probability—then a project research session with Hostile and Hostiler in the comically empty lecture hall. 

Or Hostile and Slightly Less Hostile. 

Or even Awkward and then Tentative Teamwork. 

The bowl of cereal from this morning does nothing to suppress the ravenous feeling that’s slowly taking over your mind. It would be fine if you didn’t have a morning class, but alas nobody ever seems to hear your prayers as you sit through two hours of quite possibly the most onerous yammering you’ve ever heard—and you’ve heard the Avatar of Pride yap. 

Every day your hypothesis seems to be proved right—humans would do a fine job running hell. 

But no one will ever listen to the humble incubus, you muse as you sling your books onto your bed and pick up the folder you’ve compiled on incubi, succubi and demons of seduction. It’s detailed, but everything is neatly cited and completely untraceable to your brains specifically. If you rang up your friends and falsified a few sources along the way, who could possibly be able to tell?

Strewn within the sheets is some inaccurate information. If they correct you on it, it’s all well and good, but perhaps even better if they gain some misconceptions along the way. 

You don’t mind cheating a little in academia, if the subject is idiotic enough. 

And if your perfectly perfect human life stays intact because of it, you don’t mind being a little unethical with your information practices. 

Just a little. 

Irregardless of your questionable academic ethics, you’re beginning to feel light-headed by the early afternoon. Some would say it’s karma for defiling the sanctity of this fine learning establishment, but you know full well it was the measly kiss you’ve had as a proper meal—something insubstantial and far too light to count as a true dinner. Jiaoqiu was more of a snack, and already you’re reminiscing over the flavour of his lips. 

Really, you should be a gourmet. 

…It’s also becoming increasingly clear that your thoughts are veering substantially off-track, though who can blame you when your head is beginning to throb and your mouth is becoming more parched by the minute. 

You don’t think it’s ever been this bad before, but then again you’re one of the oldest of your species—your full maturation is only moons away. Or more. Or less. It’s hard to conceptualise the time of the underworld when you’re on the surface. 

Tonight, your skin will likely burn like molten rock, reshaping and rekindling you into a form better than yesterday’s. Hunger will only intensify the process, making it far more painful. And you are hungry, with a body practically screaming at you to absorb some emotion. Anger. Hatred. Misery. All of these are copious in this highly pressurised environment, but these are fleeting on your tongue—bitter and grainy and not worth the effort of satiating yourself with. 

The clock is only ticking forward. You can’t not make it to your project meeting—that would for sure rouse the angel’s suspicion, and you cannot afford that. Not tonight. Not any night, actually, if you can help it. 

You don’t want your time here to end.  

With each step towards the door, your ribcage feels like it’s about to swallow you whole—so insatiable it might’ve been easier for you to be labelled as an Avatar of Gluttony instead. Not a lot of sand remains in your hourglass, though you’re not stupid. 

There are contingencies for times like these.

Jiaoqiu has class, you wrack your brains. If there’s anyone…

It would probably be the Avatar of Lust who’d be able to help you—you think you’ve seen her several times around before, feeling the familiar ‘fingerprint’ of demons amidst a crowd of human energy. 

The walls are far too grey as you roam the halls. At some point, you think you start seeing the people you pass morph into a singular identity, filled with the same struggles, crises and misery as everyone else. 

It’s barely enough to sate the throbbing that beats in tandem with the seconds—a dull ache that only grows more poignant with time. If you tried, you could probably manually take your mind and crack it like a pomegranate to quell the pain, but alas you haven’t quite figured that one out yet. 

There. 

“Wow, you look a mess.” Bleary-eyed, you watch as the colours coalesce into a faint figure, but it may just be delirium. Her cold hands brush across your face and tilt it from side to side, and you hear her whistle lowly at the heat from your skin. 

You think you’re delirious. 

“Most definitely are,” the woman shrouded in purple replies. Can she read minds? “Poor little incubus, babbling his little heart out. So, what will it be? I can bring you the finest strains of human joy and wreckage, or I can send you straight back from whence you came for your metamorphosis. Pretty boy, I could even get you set up for the night with a few humans.”

Her words merge and plume into smoke in your brain.

“Got a meeting for a group project right now,” you slur. Your sluggish register of your surroundings makes it impossible to sense the faint, familiar energy so far off in the distance. It’s a soft dove-grey, and utterly neutral—so removed from the filth of the human realm that you’d stop and admire it any other day. “Could you make this go away for a bit? I’m screwed if I don’t.”

“Oh?” Lust bursts out in a too-loud peal of laughter, slamming her hand on the wall behind her to stabilise herself. You wish someone would do the same to your head. “I see. I’ve heard the rumours, but I didn’t think you’d be this deprived.”

She doesn’t make any sense, you note wonderingly, but strangely her giggles make you slightly more reassured. 

“I make all the sense,” Lust informs you. “What a rude little demon you are. But don’t worry—” 

Her nails dig into your skin, and you feel the air grow slightly colder, as if some equilibrium has finally been disrupted. Or maybe you’re stupid, and you’re finally succumbing to whatever this process will require. 

But she glances behind you, and brings your face closer to hers a brief second later. “—I just found somebody very interesting to help you out, and I barely need to do anything to help you.”

“What?” you mumble. The strange feeling you’re getting from the distance is growing stronger. Just a bit, but you don’t really think it matters. 

What truly matters is that your group project meeting is only twenty minutes away, and you’re barely holding on to the wisps of your sanity that still linger.

“You haven’t been very helpful,” you add, but then her eyes roll exasperatedly and Lust kisses you with all the weight of a butterfly. You don’t think you’ve ever kissed anyone this casually, as though it’s the absent-minded brush of powder across one’s nose, or the faint tap of blotting lipstick. She tastes like the rich last bite of cake, and she pulls away with the speed it typically gets eaten with. 

“Uh, thanks?” you mutter perplexedly, for the emotion of other demons simply doesn’t satiate incubi the same way other species’ do, but it is appreciated nonetheless. At least, it temporarily soothes the faint pounding of hands against your cranium like an Ibuprofen does a head-splitting migraine. She’s still close to your face, and you can see a self-satisfied smirk slowly unfolding under that maraschino gloss—all pink and conniving. 

Lust. What a strange woman she is.

“I think you’ll be fine,” she whispers one last time, before traces of bergamot and vanilla seep into the candy-tinged air. She really doesn’t make any sense, you drowsily reaffirm, but before you can ask her to elaborate on her cryptic message, something vice-like tightens around your wrist and wrenches you from Lust’s clutches. 

You’re being dragged, practically, by something attached to a soft pearl-hued glove. A hand. No, a person. No, an angel whom you were so careful to not touch—who is now gripping onto your arm as if you could possibly run away. 

It takes you precious few sand grains to realise the true gravity of the situation. 

Shit. Shit shit shit. To make matters worse, your lucid thoughts are limited to only one section of your brain—the rest are all struggling to keep up with his fast pace. 

“What’s wrong?” you ask the wall of grey before you, and for a brief moment you think you see the flash of a halo in the dim hallway. You think you can feel the impenetrably icy wall of his composure crack, just a little. 

But that’s impossible. 

Angels aren’t subjected to the sorrows of human experience. 

“Sunday.” You say his name for the first time, tainting the angel’s identity with a tongue that has been coated by filth and sweetened with the most saccharic honey. “Sunday.”

He casts a long look over his shoulder, one that reflects his usual disapproving stare. Without looking, he easily fits the key into the  ‘Identifying and Apprehending Olde Monsters in Our Midst’ lecture theatre, and you must remind yourself once more that this is the most simple of child’s play to a being like him. 

“It is time to work on our project, is it not?” 

Can he feel your fever? Can he feel the tense energy that you’re struggling to control?

Your eyes slip past him onto the clock, which still indicates a good ten minutes remain until the pencilled slot. “Almost. Moze’s not here, either.”

His grip tightens, minutely. “He’ll join us later. I’ve asked him to purchase some film and get a better camera from the Media department.”

Then, he lets you go abruptly as though burnt—you’re left clutching your folder and with a profoundly confused expression on your face. 

“Right,” you mention awkwardly, rubbing at your wrist and wincing at the painful feverish heat you’ve been emitting. There’s still that awful dry feeling in your mouth, but you’d rather keel over and die rather than give yourself away in front of an angel. “No time like the present, am I right?”

“That truly is the principle we should strive to embody.” Sunday’s voice grows muffled as he carefully rummages around in the cupboard at the front of the auditorium—you take the opportunity to both pat your back for diffusing the tension, and place your folder neatly on the large table that also loiters at the front. You’d normally take your seat at the back of the lecture hall, but tonight the eve grows dark and the only light is the harsh fluorescent one that shines from above and casts only the table in a clinical ambience. 

“We can start slightly earlier,” he murmurs, closer than you anticipated, standing right behind you as you sink into the swivel chair by your research. You fight back a scream at his sudden appearance—the unexpected pop-up of an angel never bodes well, after all. 

“That’s… not a problem,” you smile, ignoring the pounding headache that seems to have decided to make itself known once more. “Do you want to compare research first to make sure we’re on the same page?”

“Naturally.” His voice is slightly lower than it normally is, and you attribute it to the lull of the lecture hall and its secluded location within the building. Even on the most busy of days, you never actually see anyone walk past the glass windows that panel a strip in the door—you swallow nervously at the thought of being sequestered here with an angel. “Is it alright if I record the behind-the-scenes process of our progress?”

“Like to bolster the found footage feeling, or using it to bolster the mockumentary?” you probe, trying to conceptualise his earlier ramblings of sending Moze off for a better camera. He appears to notice the puzzling expression you sport.

“There was a rather grainy camera in the cupboard here. We should record with both to compare the texture,” he explains, and you accept it with relative ease. 

After all, angels can’t lie. “Alright.” 

He murmurs something under his breath, a low ‘perfect’ before he’s setting the camera up to capture both of you.

Perfect.

Perfect.

Perfect. 

The word lingers in your mind. You don’t quite know why.

*࿐.

“....incubi are thought to feed on the life force and emotions of their victims, and may also cause sleep paralysis. They are male demons who seduce their victims, particularly women, and have sexual intercourse with them,” Sunday pauses. You’re acutely aware of his knee brushed up against yours, how he monitors your face and notes between reading out whatever he’s written in neat, looping handwriting. 

He’s warm. He’s warm, but you’re scalding to the touch: feverish and more than somewhat delirious. Sunday’s words fade in and out like the two of you are underwater; you can only curse at Lust for misleading you, as help is nowhere in fucking sight. Instead, she’s doomed you to be stuck with an angel scrutinising every move you make. 

“That’s what I got too,” you mumble, shuffling your sheets to find the relevant information. Your glasses slip down your nose, but before you can push them up, a pale glove gently slides them up your face—and you startle. “Ah, thanks.”

“No problem,” he smiles, yet it doesn’t reach his pale eyes. “Did you get any more information?”

“Not that I can think of…” you trail off, mind going blank at the most critical time. “Sorry, I’m a bit under the weather tonight.”

“Don’t worry,” he chuckles, but there’s something that’s sharper than usual in the cloud of energy surrounding him. Something off in the angel masquerading as human, in the computer designed by the creator. “I’ve already got some ideas on how to portray these ideas in the film.”

There’s a slight sheen on your face—half nerves, half the fever that’s consuming mind and body at a ferocious pace. With glazed eyes, you can only nod. 

“Poor thing,” he hums, sympathetically distant in the way only angels can be. 

Something’s wrong. 

The cold back of a gloved hand touches your forehead tenderly, like if he were cradling the divine metal of his weapon. 

“Didn’t get enough emotions lately?” he asks condescendingly, and you freeze. 

“What?” you squint up at him through the lenses, still trying to play it off—but really, you’re attempting to process what he said. 

“I’m joking,” he smiles once more, but there’s something awfully false in the curl of his lips—something wrong and twisted in how his hand shifts to cradling your face in his palm. Still so gentle, but now with a terrifying sort of control that was not there a mere second ago. 

“Right,” you mumble, peering up at him with wide, hazy eyes. It’s no longer the fluorescent lighting that’s hurting your eyes—but rather the emergence of a halo behind his head that you force yourself not to react to. That would be a dead giveaway. 

You can barely breathe. No longer does oxygen circulate through your vessels—there is only the thick undercurrent of tension you swallow, only the suffocating grasp he has on you, both physically and mentally. 

Too close. He’s still smiling like nothing’s wrong, as though you aren’t a filthy demon and can still be forgiven if you merely clasp your hands like the humans do and confess your sins. 

Hell is filled with humans like these. 

“It must be so hard…” he breathes. A soft, gloved thumb strokes your cheek, feather light, but you barely feel it over the hummingbird thrum of your heart and mind beating in sync. Like trapped prey, you’re honed in to each and every move; and like trapped prey, you’re wondering why the executioner chooses to trace the path of the arrow over your body. 

Your tongue is leaden. 

There is nothing you can say to save yourself. 

“It must be so hard being a demon,” he purrs with that quiet, lenient tone of his. 

A feather brushes past your cheek; the angel’s wings have now unfurled.

An Archangel. 

You pray your end is quick. 

His hand moves up, and with demulcent grace, he thumbs the ridged edge of the horns that spiral from your head, ones that you didn’t even notice had appeared. 

Your mouth opens and closes, but embarrassingly the honeyed tongue you so valued has failed you with your neck on the line. 

“Now, now, you didn’t think you’d get away with it, did you?” he soothes, and you feel each and every ministration the Archangel delivers to the manifestations of your otherness on your head. 

This only feels more cruel—a disturbing mercy to grant a prisoner about to be executed. 

“I…” the sinner closes his mouth, already knowing it’s futile. 

“You,” Sunday repeats, tilting his head. The halo tilts with him—large, unblinking eyes interspersed with smaller ones, all honed in on you. They’ve all got the same psychedelic quality, and in any other life you may have been fascinated with how they gaze so earnestly at somebody’s soul. But not tonight. 

Tonight, they’re the eyes that will see through you and judge the very mettle intertwined with sinew and flesh and blood. 

“Please kill me quickly,” you murmur. Perhaps the Archangel will grant you a final mercy that’s never afforded to even the most pious of humans. The uncertainty of death is infinitely long—grain upon grain upon grain of sand. If your soul burns up in those divine flames angels so like to use on your kind, you’re not sure you’ll even regenerate back in hell. 

His hand pauses—it’s settled on top of your head now, brushing past the hair and merely resting upon it. He’s not looked away from you all this time: watching how your eyes grew wide with denial, with fear, and now how your eyelids lower with the weight of resignation. What a heavy burden, he may be thinking, but you wouldn’t know for it’s impossible to guess what an angel thinks, and an Archangel specifically. 

Your breath catches in your throat.

Slowly, experimentally, his gloved hand bows your head far enough that you’re forced off the chair and onto the ground with your knees scraping the frigid linoleum. Like this, you’re a sculpture of repentance: hands desperately clutching each other, lips open in what appears to be grief, and perhaps the anguish of the unknown that resides deeply in each pupil. Of course, if you were human that would be one thing, but on your head lie two jagged horns, sweeping the ground is a long tail, and inked across your arms and lower back are constant reminders of your sin.

You are an abomination masquerading as human, gazing up at the being who holds your lengthy life in his hands. 

There’s a painful sort of irony in this situation. 

You can’t even beg for your life. 

“Poor little lamb,” he repeats, with an empty sort of pity in his eyes. Empty, for what you’re finally feeling rolling off him in waves isn’t pity, nor sympathy, but something that makes you believe you’re truly hallucinating. Maybe the shock made you go mad. 

He leans down to examine you, and the wings that flutter—nestled in dove-grey hair—brush carefully over your face, with softness you still remain puzzled by, 

Bitterly, you smile at him—a wretched thing, tasting acerbic and of your birth on caustic brimstone. 

“There’s no point in dragging this out,” you mutter, too tired from the pain of your growth and the exhaustion of fear to prolong this any longer. 

There’s a sudden jolt of irritation in the tranquil waves emanating from the angel, and you’re starting to think that maybe that first emotion you felt from him wasn’t a hallucination. 

You glance up finally, and the expression on Sunday’s face is mired by shadow with a faint flush beneath it: like he’s the one besieged by a fever and not you. 

“I could help you, you know,” he breathes, and it’s then you’re able to finally put a name to the feeling clouding whatever the hell was going on with his energy waves. 

Lust. 

There’s also something so painfully ironic about this—the emotions you’re absorbing from an Archangel are enough to snap you out of your trance. In fact, their purity and abundance are hastening your transformation—he’s aiding you, and the very fact makes you quiet. 

“You won’t survive even if I don’t kill you, demon.” His gaze is cold, but he’s entrancing.

You focus your attention on his legs spread in the chair—the pressed and meticulously ironed grey slacks he wears in particular. They’re soft, wool-blend, worth several thousand easily. Imbued within each strand is the intrinsic scent of him: the bergamot, the vanilla, the faint vestiges of cake. But beneath that is a clean scent—not quite the fragrance of fresh laundry, but one that seems to perfume the air with sunlight. 

He’s an Archangel, you remind yourself.

“Go on,” he goads, voice all breathy. An Archangel far too used to authority, who’s currently cradling your life in glove-covered hands. 

“Sunday,” you murmur, trailing a finger along the neat crease in his slacks. While he stares down at you stonily, there are monumental cracks in his composure that you detect—the tensing of his thighs, and the sudden spike in vitality from your readings. “You really wanna make a mess of these?”

His face flushes a more delicate pink, yet to his credit the angel doesn’t waver at the implication.

“They can be cleaned, can they not?” He’s pristine. Without a doubt, you ruining the almost sacrosanct cleanliness of Archangel Sunday signals a shift far too corrupted. 

You swallow, resting your hands right where each thigh is plush with muscle. He’s watching: every move carefully documented, every sin filed away, every blasphemy to be recited at the confessional. The first wrinkle in his clothes by your fingers marks the irreversible transgression you’re about to commit. The camera, too, silently records this clandestine affair.

(“Will your creator see this?” you want to ask.)

(More importantly: will he forgive you, Archangel Sunday?) 

You wet your lips, tasting the residual cherry gloss that lingers on the flesh. He keeps vigil: taking in how your tongue darts out, how you lower your head until your cheek is a mere breath away from his thigh.

He feels it, the hot air slowly being blown onto the muscle—as evidenced by the further hues decorating his energy. A twinge of impatience now taints the otherwise unsoiled intensity; it causes far more marvel in you than you would’ve thought. 

Every minute shift of hands against fabric is distinctly felt. You know this—you see it in his slacks growing a little tighter, in how his chest briefly stops its rise and fall. 

Sunday is no better at playing an angel than he is at playing man. 

Pointedly, you peer upwards as you let your mouth finally osculate the fabric. Once soft, grey and perfect, they are now stained and mired—an ever-tangible reminder of the decision of two non-humans in this lecture theatre. You hope the camera captures the small, strangled noise Sunday lets out—something halfway betwixt cough and splutter, approximating to a gasp. 

Kiss after kiss you press to his thighs, inching closer and closer to his half-hard dick: so agonisingly slowly you can hear his teeth grind in frustration. 

“Incubus,” he breathes in a horrified sort of fascination. “You’re doing this on purpose—ah—”

You easily cut him off, letting the heat from your mouth linger on his hardon as you gradually unzip his slacks: tooth by tooth, until the poor man practically shivers in his seat. No, you forget. Archangel. There’s an Archangel whom you’re scraping your knees for—whose undiluted energy is allowing for you to safely undergo your maturation. This situation is ludicrous—only spotted in the most sordid of underworld printings, and even then you’d be hard-pressed to find something as blasphemous as this. 

His fingers wrap tightly around your horn, and you suppress a groan at the frigid sensation. Maybe if you were a better man, you’d keep your composure and remain sluggish for him to get used to every new sensation. 

But you are neither better nor man, so you ignore the thought. Instead, you increase your pace, just as he so desperately wanted. Hooking his briefs down, you take a moment to appreciate his hiss as the cold air hits him, followed only by how pretty his dick looks in the fluorescent light: flushed the same delicate pink cast across his features, trimmed neatly and already a drop of pre is pressed against the very tip like pearls. 

“You’re evil,” he gasps as you experimentally twist your hand, and the length of flesh twitches. You smile. 

“You think?” You finally speak, gently circling the flushed head with your thumb. 

His amber eyes glare down at you like two suns, and that is perhaps the warmest you’ve ever seen him. Those boreal fingers practically fracture your horn as he squeezes, and you glare back. 

“Taking advantage of a defenceless demon,” you chide; every syllable is accompanied by the motion of your hand as it begins moving up, then back down again. Sunday bites down on his lip, clearly attempting to stifle the sounds that would no doubt emerge when you speed up. “How shameful, Archangel.”

“Mmh–” Sunday shuts his mouth, and the camera takes it all in: how you lower your mouth to the head, licking the salt from his skin and the pre, and how he squeezes those slacks around your shoulders—fuck. There’s heat crawling all under your skin like millions of fire ants. 

You move deeper, rocking yourself against the floor to quell the ache in your lower stomach: sucking and using your hands at the base to elicit more of those sounds from him. He tastes like rays of light on a cold winter morning: a clean energy you can’t help but swallow eagerly, ravenous for this stupid, misguided angel. Your hands roam his thighs, the smooth curve of his waist, and finally settle right where it begins curving into his plush ass: gripping the fat tightly as you continue taking him down your throat. 

“You were born for this, weren’t you,” he mutters, and you can hear his wings flutter and rustle at your ministrations. His low voice forces your eyes shut, but it’s not just that. Gazing at the long strings of precum that are leaking down is beginning to stir unbearable warmth in your chest, while your breathing is slowly becoming more laboured as you choke on his girth. If anything, you’re the one getting off on this: tightening the muscles in your thighs to keep feeling that dull ache in your gut. 

He notices. 

Of course he does; those hawkish eyes that shine from his face and from his halo are attuned to every little move you make, every little sigh that leaves your nose. 

“How shameful,” he mocks, echoing your previous words. Adjusting his leg, he presses a polished shoe against your bulge, and you moan around his dick. 

Fuck. 

He rocks the sole onto you, hard; you can’t help but grind up into the impeccable leather, already feeling a damp patch growing on the front of your pants. Each sensation is only exacerbated by the lack of airflow caused by his fat cock in your mouth—amplifying your senses to a dizzying, heady state. 

You’re gazing with teary eyes right up at him, and you swear he throbs in your mouth; but the thought leaves just as quickly when his hand comes to cradle the side of your face, wiping the salty liquid away with a gentle thumb and bringing it to his own lips to taste. 

“You want to get off too, huh?” he coos sympathetically: a pink tongue darting out to lick his thumb clean. In tandem, his foot presses even further down, and you can feel the frigid linoleum press up against you. 

“Ah,” you choke around his dick. No words dribble from your lips, but Sunday feels the plea regardless. Those gloved hands of his pull you off his length with a pop and retract just as quickly. He grabs your arms as if he were handling a ragdoll—sitting you up on the desk in front of him as though you only weighed that much—and you need to remind yourself that he is not human, he is something far superior in strength and agility. 

It’s also aptly demonstrated in how he handles the buckles of your pants: deftly and expertly opening each clasp with monstrous speed, before tugging on them until they pool on the auditorium floor. 

You shiver. 

“Go on,” he encourages. “Since you so clearly can’t focus, why not entertain me?”

Why not entertain me?

“What?” you mumble, but he levels you with a stare that feels far more sadistic than anything you’ve faced before. You’re not faced with a human, nor the warmth of your fellow demons—but rather a damn Archangel that’s making you feel more exposed than ever. 

“What?” He’s the picture of innocence, though he’s got his dick in his own hand now—keeping his hand slowly moving as he speaks, and your eyes hone in on the motion. You can’t help but focus on it, how it looks against the pearl-white glove, how it tasted in your mouth. “You’re desperate, aren’t you?”

His words and the crude tone behind them stir a coiling tension in your stomach; you can only stare at the sudden change. 

Angels, too, can be deceptive. 

“Go on,” he repeats, tilting his head. “Here’s your opportunity.”

Damn it.

Hesitantly, you pull down your boxers: exposing your cock that’s slowly been dribbling precum in your pants, exposing everything to the angel. Heat rises to your face, but his eyes on you also make the heat pool at your gut; you can’t help but slip a hand down your body to wrap around your dick, so desperate to be attended to. 

The effect is immediate. With a hand already slicked wet, the tight grip you have on yourself, and the voyeur who’s watching each and every one of your moves with his pairs of eyes, it’s apparent you won’t last long. You gaze at him, embarrassed, with a face sheened with sweat and eyes clouded with lust on your own.

“Sunday,” you bite out—the fist he’s making clenches ever so slightly, and you think his breath hitches. 

He reaches over for the camera, tilting it towards you and capturing each and every expression, every single moan you let out as you succumb to the soothing rhythm of getting yourself off. 

“Beautiful,” he murmurs, and you feel your abdomen tighten. “But you can hold on a little longer, right?”

Your eyes snap wide open as a slick, gloved finger trails the curve of your ass and around your hole; Sunday’s expression is of utmost concentration as he records each minute detail. 

“What—ngh,” you whine as he probes just the fingertip in; the glove has been dampened by his precum already, but still feels so powdery and dry as it slowly enters deeper. He’s cold, and his fingers are downright glacial; the sudden change in temperature has you tightening around the digit as your hand flies to steady yourself on his shirt. 

So close. 

You can feel his breathing fan across your face; it’s shallow and reeks of lust, the kind that’s always the most dangerous. 

“Keep going,” he hums, gradually pumping the finger in and out until it’s almost completely covered with the wet precum leaking from your tip and down your cock. The burn in your abdomen is indescribable—you can barely focus on the simple, mindless motion of up and down, when he’s so close like this, when he’s pressing another finger right in and stretching you out with ease that belies his inexperience. 

In. Out. In. Out. You can barely breathe with the pace that he’s setting, seeming to deliberately miss that particular spot inside you that would end this oh-so-quickly. 

The camera captures it all: the oozing, non-human precum that trails and coats his gloves, the careful scissoring motions he’s doing to ease you open, and the desperate heaves of your stomach as you fight off the tightening of your abdomen.

 “Sunday, please,” you moan, and you jolt as his fingers pull out and the same damp hand wraps around your tail to bring it to where he was just mere moments ago. Sluggishly, you barely register what’s going on until he opens his mouth—and his proximity makes his words reverberate and coalesce in your sternum, tightening your very chest. 

“I won’t do it all for you,” he croons, but he’s setting the camera on the desk next to you and adjusting his gloves once more. Your scaly tail is further pushed in, and the strange sensation forces your eyes back into your skull. What the fuck? The Archangel uses your own tail to get you off, and the conflicting sensation between your legs and inside you is hurtling you towards an orgasm you don’t think you’ll ever forget. 

But he’s not done.

His wet hands trace up your sides, bundling the shirt you’re wearing until it’s at your neck. “Open wide.”

Blearily, you do as you’re told; fabric is shoved into your mouth as he uses you to hold your own shirt up, while he appreciatively hums at the metal pierced through your nipples. Cold, slick hands massage your tits, and even with the thick wad of material in your mouth you can’t help but moan loudly. 

“So sensitive,” he mutters condescendingly. His thumbs brush rough circles against the pierced nipples, and involuntarily you feel your legs tighten around his waist. He’s callous with his motions; it’s slowly growing overwhelming for you, what with the tail stuck inside you, your hand still moving, and now his hands stimulating the tender skin around your chest. 

It’s not until you look down that you see his dick rubbing up against your own, and the sight almost makes you let go right there and then. 

“Mmph–” you groan as he lowers his head to your chest, rubbing one areola affectionately while his tongue swirls around the other. 

With the hand now freed up in place of his mouth, he presses both your dicks together tightly, just barely moving his hand for the minimal amount of friction.

You think that makes it worse. 

Tears leak from your eyes uncontrollably, and the tautness in your stomach feels as though it’ll claw out by itself if you don’t let go.

You move your tail just a whisper—it’s growing unbearable, just how overwhelming the rush of stimuli is. Sunday’s teeth graze your tit in such a way you desperately grit down on your shirt to not cum right there and then, but it’s growing impossibly hard when the motions of both his hands speed up: stroking you both in such a way that rubs precum everywhere and feels like fucking heaven.

You mewl as he bites down on the flesh, hard, leaving a throbbing mark as he laves his tongue right over it.  

“Please,” you babble incomprehensibly through the fabric. “Sunday.”

His gaze meets your despairing one. 

“Poor little thing,” he whispers, which only blows air over the saliva-slicked area and forces even more tears from your eyes. “Go on.”

He wrenches his hand particularly tightly, and you wail—a choked, garbled thing that comes right from the chest. Your back arches as your orgasm washes over you and blinds you for a brief moment: mind completely blank with only the purest form of pleasure hazing it, scalding robes of white staining your shirt, his shirt, and ending up on your face. 

“What a mess,” he murmurs, rocking his hand as the waves hit you with full force. 

“Ah—” you sob out as he continues through the waning ebb and flow: your legs twitch around him, and you’re sure he can feel the shallow, heaving breaths you’re taking to desperately cope with his continued movements. Your tail slips out from between your legs, and the sudden exit is followed by even more white dripping down your legs and onto the desk. 

“There, there,” he coos. “That wasn’t so hard, was it now?”

He peels off the ruined gloves and tosses them to the side, tenderly wiping away the tears that streak your face—you’re still reeling, still feeling the aftershocks of intense, mind-ruining pleasure. 

What the fuck?

He handles you like a proper lover—an absurd scene between lowly incubus and overmighty Archangel—settling his hands on your waist in something that could almost resemble an embrace. Some bastardised, corrupted version of one, anyway. 

He’s not your lover. 

He’s not even his own person.

You meet those deceptive eyes: as old as you, yet far more lonely. 

“Is it my turn now?” he asks, a smile curving on his face like it truly was nothing that you witnessed in his amber gaze. 

The Archangel, true to his inquiry, lulls in his movements: body freezing in both motion and temperature, while he tilts his head in a silent question. Do you want to continue?

The nature of an incubus is simple. Every act of consuming energy inevitably makes the incubus far more alluring, while it naturally replenishes whatever fatigue the demon has. 

In the case of consuming an Archangel’s energy…

Well. 

Suffice to say, it only fuels your libido. 

In response to his question, you wrap a scorching hand around his dick; now a furiously flushed red, with a desperately leaking tip that’s practically begging for attention.

“Not like that,” he says lowly, and it’s not until he’s lifting you with strong arms and sitting you on his spread thighs that you vaguely realise what he’s doing. “You’re nice and stretched out now, right?”

Those long fingers of his trace the slope and dip of your waist, rubbing small circles in wait of your response. 

This can’t be Sunday’s first time, you instead wonder; those piercing amber eyes of his make you feel the blushing violet instead. His heavy gaze burns where it lands: taunting and prickling your skin with a nervous fire that further kindles the one that revived in your stomach mere moments ago. 

“Need something?” He tilts his head, and the taunting smile stretching on his face brings up the words you spoke all those days ago. 

You scowl. “Shut up.”

“I think—” he trails off, lifting you partially out of your straddle with ease. Even as your mind goes blank, you feel each and every sensation that fires within your neurons. “—you have a problem with being honest with yourself.”

“Stick to your theology degree, angel,” you bite out, looping your arms around his neck to stabilise yourself and your racing heart. You quit breathing, momentarily. There’s something hard pressed onto the bottom of your thigh, imprinting stiffly and hotly into the flesh like some brand; naturally, you squeeze your eyes shut. Waiting. Anticipating Sunday’s movements, just as he anticipates yours.

“Which psychology is studied in,” he returns, goading you. He’s got his hand underneath you now, adjusting himself but still not pushing the engorged head in. Your frown deepens. “What, no please?”

“You can’t seriously be lecturing me about manners right—ah—”

Your sharp nails dig into the muscle of his trapezius as he cuts you off by stuffing the tip right in; he groans low in his throat at how damn tight you are, but also the feeling of poignant pain that’s beginning to sting across his shoulders. 

You think you can smell the faint coppery scent of blood, but you only half-feel bad. 

“You have a damn problem in not listening—hng–to others,” you pant. He’s tightened his grip on your ass, kneading and squeezing so tightly as he struggles to control his own breathing. The two of you linger in the lull for precious few moments; it seems time has capriciously stopped for the pair washed in fluorescent light, so desperately entwined yet ever at odds with each other. 

“And you think you’re any better?” he counters. If you were more lucid, you’d be able to properly understand the tension in his arms and how he leans fully back on the chair, letting those wings brush past your body and practically engulf the two of you. 

You shiver. 

“Yes,” you hiss indignantly. “I actually—fuck—

You paw uselessly at his chest as he slams you down, and your sore throat lets out a choked out wail at the sudden sensation of being filled to the hilt—stuffed so full you almost feel him in your throat. 

Each vein, each stupid ridge is vividly felt with every motion—his chest urgently rising and falling, your own spiralling into a sweat-slicked display of ecstasy, and his face. It contorts into the basest expression you’ve seen yet: flushed, mouth half-open, with a burning gaze honed right onto your own. 

He looks like sin itself.

Sunday’s losing his composure, fast (you are too).  

“Fuck—oh, shit, Sunday.” Imprecations cascade from your lips like waterfalls as the angel begins his movements, building up from a slow roll of his hips to accustom both of you to the sensation.

Like this, with his face mere inches away, you can’t help but stare a little at his face—honed in on his soft lips that wobble despite his struggle to keep his composure. 

You wonder what they taste like. 

Tea? Raspberries? Salt, like your own?

His lust-stricken gaze darkens somewhat as he appears to look over your shoulder briefly, but you’re too lost in the way he’s rocking himself into you to notice. But you do notice when his soft hand slides up your spine and cradles your nape. You do notice when he pulls you down so his breath mingles with yours–as he searches your eyes for any signs of discomfort and finds none. 

“The fuck are you planning?” you murmur, and this time he actually lets you finish speaking before he cuts you off. Except, this time, it differs from his usual modus operandi. One moment, you’re staring intently at the angel beneath you; the next, he’s capturing your open mouth with his, and the effect is instantaneous. You moan into his mouth upon tasting him: not quite placing the saccharic flavour, but he’s fucking divine.

He’s languorous with his motions—to any outsider, it would look like he’s done this a thousand times and still wishes to savour the rest, pulling you so you’re finally flush with his chest. 

You’ve never kissed an angel before. 

You may not even be alive right now. 

It’s only natural, then, that your eyes flutter shut and your head tilts to kiss him more deeply to relish in this final mercy. He’s biting at your lips, and the iron tang of blood combined with your dick rubbing against the soft material of his shirt begins the slow spiral into maddening pleasure. 

You cannot see. Your eyes are shut, thus the only semblance you have of the visual situation is the light shining through the blood vessels in your lids; not the way Sunday isn’t looking at you, but glaring at the door far behind you. 

Practically on cue, it opens, and you hear the clatter of wood against wood—someone stumbles in, then abruptly freezes in place. 

Eyes blown wide open, you attempt to pull away from Sunday, only to have his hand keep pressing firmly against your neck to keep you in place while his mouth begins exploring lower down your neck. 

The person behind you doesn’t leave like you expected. 

“Ignore him,” Sunday breathes against your neck, and it’s then you look to your left and see your roommate shrouded in the shadow not reached by the clinical lighting. He’s holding a camera and film, and clearly fell into the room—judging by his hand steadying himself on the desk, and from what you can see, the dishevelled look on his face. 

What you miss, concealed by the darkness, is the deep red flush that mires his face, and the straining hard-on against his pants. 

“What the fuck?” you attempt to sit up, but Sunday’s next words make you freeze in place just like Moze. “Moze?”

“Did you enjoy the show?”

The question is quiet, but Sunday’s soft voice makes it carry across the auditorium regardless—and despite its polite form, the cadence beneath it hides a frightening sort of irritation. No surprise like you might’ve thought, but exasperation. 

“What are you talking about?” you mutter, but it’s hard to concentrate on your roommate when Sunday’s busy thumbing your slit. 

“He’s been watching for the past few minutes. I was wondering when he’d reveal himself,” he sighs, less bothered than you would’ve thought—what with the horns coming from your head, and the wings and halo sprouting from his own body. 

Moze is human. 

He’s human, so you finally turn your eye to him and watch him make his way closer, until you can easily identify the most prominent emotion that radiates from his body. 

Lust. 

You swallow. Despite the new information, you’re not a mind reader. You can’t tell exactly what Moze is thinking as he sits just a few seats away, irritably tapping a finger against the camera he’s holding. 

“You’re early,” Sunday comments, making sure to sit up so Moze has a full view of how well you’re taking him—and the angel doesn’t miss how you tighten around him. 

“Did you plan this?” Moze’s voice enters the hall for the first time this evening, and Sunday definitely doesn’t miss how the low reverberations make you practically flutter against him. 

“So what if I did?” the angel replies boredly. “It’s not like you haven’t figured out who I am. And it’s not like you weren’t eagerly lapping up what was going here when you were watching us through the door.”

Moze stays silent, but you swear you can hear your roommate’s teeth grind as he shifts in place—and this time, his bulge is prominent in the blinding lights. The sight, though Moze doesn’t hear, makes you whimper quietly in Sunday’s ear; the angel’s eyes turn to you, each and every pair. 

“What a slut,” he murmurs, and you shiver at his tone: so crude, so mocking. “You just can’t stop, can you?”

You moan as he tightens his grip around your weeping cock and slowly begins circling a stiff nipple with his other hand. On your back, you can feel a burning stare, and the knowledge that Moze is getting off on this only makes you feel it deeper in your gut. 

“You’re lucky he’s all hard at the thought of someone watching,” Sunday coos, and through your hazy thoughts you barely work out if he’s talking to you or Moze. His thumbnail presses right onto the side of the head—which makes you almost fucking writhe—before you flop onto his shoulder in a daze. 

Sunday goes quiet as he focuses on moving; it seems he’s said all he’s needed to say to the man, and you really don’t mind having an extra energy source to draw such salient waves of lust from. With that being said, you take the opportunity to sit back up and gaze at Moze while Sunday’s moving his pelvis beneath you—only to find that he’s already staring at you.

He’s pretty like this, you realise, dazed. His pupils are almost completely blown out as he takes in every inch of you; there’s hardly any hints of opalescence left in those eyes. Deep cerise coats his cheeks, and he’s almost trembling as he keeps vigil of the scene afore him—with hands that desperately crack the arm rests, intensely avoiding his lower body. 

His breathing is in tandem with your own. Shallow. Fucked-out. 

Those pretty eyes of his flick up to meet your stare directly, and you tighten around Sunday; he’s hissing and digging his nails into your waist once more as he manoeuvres you. As if to distract you, he slams himself deeply in—and you fucking buckle as you sob out a moan, blearily watching while the man at your side picks up the camera he came late because of and looks through the viewfinder. 

“Perfect,” he breathes. 

The coil in your stomach tightens with each flash.

“Fuck,” you sob; the harsh tug of Sunday is gradually overwhelming you, and the quiet snap of each photo numbs your mind. You know Moze’s getting each shot in detail; his meticulous nature comes through in the way he murmurs ‘just like that’ and ‘beautiful’—syllables that only contribute to the heat you feel in your body, spreading effortlessly throughout your face. 

Any train of thought is cut off when the angel’s lips brush against the junction of your shoulder, and he bites. Sharp pain will undoubtedly be followed by a deeper bruise, but in that moment the ache makes the wave of pleasure increase twofold. 

“Sunday—ah,” you groan, knotting your hands in his grey locks. “Please.”

You don’t quite know, in the end, why you’re begging. 

You don’t, but when Sunday pulls back with his soft mouth stained red and a hazed look in his eyes, you think you’ve got it figured out.

Snap.

Blinding white goes off behind your eyelids as you slam your lips desperately into the Archangel’s. He tastes of iron, of an intrinsic saccharine flavour that nobody else could possibly replicate. 

Snap.

With each roll of his hips against yours, you feel him lazily pressing up against that spot inside you—inch by inch, building up on slow pleasure that trickles viscously through you like honey. 

Snap. 

You lock eyes with Moze, and the intense look he wears while he gazes at you feels like he’s parsing through the layers of dermis, sifting through the nerves and sinew, and finally exhuming your bones and tendons. It’s quickly driving you past the brink, everything about him is. His laboured breathing, the way his eyes remain honed on you despite the faint agony tainting his deep lust. 

Snap. 

“Right— there,” you choke out. Moze’s still staring, absorbing each minute detail: the sheen of sweat on your body, the way your torso and legs tremble as you attempt to keep it together, and perhaps most poignantly the expression on your face as you stare at him. 

Snap. 

“Perfect,” he repeats, and it’s this particular version that finally pushes you over that precipice. 

You sob out as your vision blurs, pawing uselessly at Sunday’s chest. His hands are firmly back on your hips, letting you rock the waves out—uncaring of the white ropes that ruin his shirt, or perhaps savouring them instead. Or perhaps he’s not paying attention. After all, you hear him swear for the first time since meeting him, and a mere moment later you feel spurts of heat leaking into you. 

He shudders. By the god you don’t pray to, this angel groans so sweetly as he comes—that fact alone has you twitching around him. 

More. 

He still hasn’t softened, but that isn’t enough. 

By chance, or maybe the best timing of your life, your eyes land on your roommate again—his eyes, too, meet yours through the screen on the camera. 

Snap. 

“Moze,” you whine, and the camera ceases in its photo-taking and filming. Well, except for an image of you looking so sweetly at him as you call his name out. 

“What?” your laconic roommate murmurs, standing and casting his shadow over the two of you. 

What a joke this is: a human watching an entangled demon and angel, and being completely captivated by it. There’s a buzz in his veins tonight—some from an awe-ful sort of fear at having his conjectures confirmed—but most of it is from the object of his desire finally within his grasp. An insufferable idiot, he may add, but one he cannot help but be captivated by. 

Maybe he’s the fool, reaching for the moon, but tonight he no longer feels so foolish. 

Your clawed hand fists his shirt, and he swallows: stone-still, watching with bated breath for your next move. 

What will you do?

He gets his answer when you drag him down: tasting of blood and that inexplicable caramel sensation you always seem to carry. Your tongue is hot against his—impatient enough to keep your mouth open, but he is too. His hands, cold from the biting wind and the frigid irritation he’s been building within, fly to cradle your face. 

Moze has enough sense to memorise this feeling of your lips on his, moaning and twining a lazy hand around his neck.

He thinks he feels a particular angel glaring at him, but it's none of his business, really. 

“He’s not enough?” he mocks when you pull back, poignantly aware of the front of his pants ever-so-slightly brushing against you—how he fucking bites down on any sound attempting to escape his mouth. 

“Don’t you want me to help you out?” you slur your words, clearly dazed from getting fucked by his stupid classmate. Yes, he wants to say, but he feels like some damned second place prize. Your hand brushes his crotch, and he bites his lip—hard—until the skin breaks and warm blood runs down his lips. 

“Shit,” he hisses. Moze’s self-control is normally iron-hard, but it’s been so incessantly worn down today by two certain idiots that he can’t help but let the damned thing snap. Within moments, his hand is deep in your hair, tugging as he nips at the flush of your lips—letting copper entangle you two together in something he hopes can twist your fates together forever, even if he ends up in hell for it. 

“Ah—Moze,” you groan, and it really doesn’t help his situation: dick pressed against your side, painfully hard due to a combination of factors that all have you (in bold, capital letters) written all over them.

He can’t help it. He really can’t. 

He can’t help it when you pump him from base to shaft with hands far warmer than his—he can’t help stealing your lips away from the angel you’re still fucking riding. He can’t help it, either, when you gaze at him like that—he just has to press his tip against your ass. You’ve been complaining about it not being enough, haven’t you? What’s the problem?

There’s a mutual agreement between human and heavens for just this night. That being, to make you spiral into a mess.

Thus, Moze doesn’t baulk at the thought of sharing this night—not when you’re sinking down on both of them, not when the added tightness makes his head black out for a moment. Fuck. 

That’s all his brain is clinging to. 

How fucking good you feel—how warm your back feels pressed to his chest. He’s desperately trying not to bust, doing so by biting over the mark in the juncture that damned angel left. If you ever think of the man in front of you, you need to think of him too. 

This is far better than any stupid porno—astronomically so than fisting his cock and imagining you in his hand’s place.

Moze buries his face in your shoulder, letting his hands roam around your body—supple skin that yields beneath his greedy fingers. His hands find your nipples, rolling and twisting the peaks to hear you let out sounds far louder than what he’s heard so far. That little fact makes him smile despite himself. 

On the other side, Sunday’s grown accustomed to how your breath hitches when his finger scrapes past a particular vein on your weeping cock, how your pupils dilate just a little more when he squeezes particularly tightly. No, he’s grown accustomed to you—all the small tells of your body. It’s why he endures the arrogant human across from him, for all humans deserve grace. 

They do not know better. 

It’s just for tonight, he rationalises. If he wants to successfully remain undercover to achieve the goal of his operative, he must not do anything to draw attention. That’s why he’s helped you out, nothing else. 

Angels cannot lie to others. 

It doesn’t mean they cannot lie to themselves. 

Despite Sunday’s heart that skips a beat whenever you look his way and all you see is him, he doesn’t acknowledge the racing thrum of the organ. In fact, as he’s sucking and licking marks into your skin as a reminder of this—of your sin—he reminds himself that he’s doing you a favour. 

He’s doing the rest of the pitiful humans a favour as well. The more he takes up your attention, the less time you have to seduce them. 

Actually, this is probably the most rational solution for getting one of the oldest incubi under control. 

Good job, Sunday.

A plethora of broken imprecations are forced out of your mouth as they slam into you—when one slips out half-way, the other nails your prostate, over and over and over. You don’t think you’ve ever felt so full—not by any other demon, and certainly not by any human.

This counts for your mind too—stretched tight by what seems to be an eternity of satiation, and perhaps on the verge of breaking. You’ve forgotten the name of your project, the class you’re in, and why you’re here in the first place; and these broken trains of thought are interspersed with the quiet flash of the camera as it captures your fucked-out state. 

“Please.”

It seems to be a permanent fixture on your lips, though you still don’t know what you’re asking for. No, you do know—more.

More, as streaks of white stain your thighs and drip onto the cold linoleum floor. More, as your lips bleed from the number of times you’ve been kissed, and kissed them yourself. More, as you wind up on the outskirts between consciousness and unconsciousness. 

You’re barely lucid—having gone through a metamorphosis safely—but they seem to be more insatiable than you are. The energy store that pulses behind your heart has never experienced such satiation; in your drowsy state all you can focus on is the drunk high you’re getting off this. 

It’s well into the night now, and perhaps the only thing that fully snaps you back into consciousness is the feeling of something wet laving away the mess between your legs—Moze. His tongue is warm as he clears the salt and white globs from your thighs, and when he sees those eyes of yours finally focus on him, he leaves a chaste kiss pressed against the side of your leg: continuing while you drowsily stroke the strands from his sweat-slicked forehead. 

Only then are you aware of the warmth at your back: the angel behind you holds you fast to his chest with wings that envelope the two of you in a damn cocoon. 

And finally, beside you and displayed on the laptop on the desk, is a video file paused with the name across the title bar: 

The Catching of the Incubus. 

*********

There has long existed a pact between a certain human boy and a pink-haired Foxian. Well, it’s not truly a pact, but more like a casual agreement that’s never been broken: the exchange of emergency keys, for the two trust the other will have his back. 

It’s used today, when Jiaoqiu’s looking for the culinary textbook he left the last time he came around, a mere week ago. He may have been frustrated with himself for it, but there’s something about coming to Moze’s dorm that he looks forward to each time—and if he said the incubus that lives in the room opposite the reticent man’s, he wouldn’t be lying. 

In any case, nobody’s home. 

Jiaoqiu quietly slips his shoes off, checking first the living room. Nothing. Your room? Also nothing, though he lingers a little longer and takes in the burnt caramel scent that pervades the space—one that’s only gotten stronger, it seems. 

Moze’s room it is. 

The first thing he sees is the thick book, neatly aligned on Moze’s dresser with a meticulous pile of forensic texts. The next is two cameras, tucked away on the shelf behind it. They’re just sitting there innocuously, but Jiaoqiu’s curiosity is piqued. The man seemingly never takes interest in things other than crime scenes and keeping everything tidy, so the Foxian carefully picks up one and turns it on. 

These Succubi Suck, the file reads, and he’s immediately hit in the face with unedited footage of what appears to be the most slapdash mockumentary he’s ever seen—clips and retakes and bloopers in a long reel that he skips through amusedly, gazing at your face a little too long when you’re speaking. 

This is their film submission? He whistles lowly, impressed by the quality despite only having three people in your class. 

He’s about to turn it off, when he spots the only other file that remains in the camera, something something incubus. 

Just like before, he presses the fast forward button—

The Foxian’s face suddenly heats up, and he presses a hand to the lower half of his face. 

Oh.

Oh.

*࿐.

[sonotpattismith]

pretty little things (kento nanami x reader)

word count: 10.3k inspired by: as the world caves in by matt maltese warnings: slight angst, fluff, me missing Haibara Yu like a mf summary: when nanami faces near death at the hands of his cruel reality, he's reminded of the graveness of simplicity at the hands of a friendly bookstore owner, who is struggling to find meaning in her own mundaneness. a/n: okay format switch up? LMK if you guys prefer this post format better! Also if it wasn't apparent in the tooth-rotting fluff- I LOVE NANAMI KENTO. That's all. I hope you all enjoy 🫶🏻🥹

Learning how not to ask questions was an art. 

Having worked in a bookstore that shelved such a wide array of genres for a few years— there were many questions that constantly littered your mind as character after character came and went from your quaint little shop. They all varied in age, gender, ethnicity, and their choice in literature offered that much more variety. You watched countless titles being laid against your checkout counter. Macbeth, Twilight, Baking for Dummies, A Happy Life in an Open Relationship, The CBT Workbook for Perfectionism, Why Can’t I Let You Go— all the covers that your neatly manicured nails skimmed over each hour told a story. 

Sometimes, as you peered up at the customer attached to the novel, you painted a picture of their story in your ever wondering mind. This evening, it was an elderly woman, her silvery hair pushed back with soft pink clips and a sage green frock clinging delicately to her slumped shoulders. Window to Widow, the bolded letter across the cover told her story for you. No matter how much you felt compelled to question, aching to ask her how she was doing— people came to the bookstore to find something in the world that they were missing from themselves. 

You, on the other hand, were only there to observe with a welcoming smile. Never judging, never questioning, never helping. They were here to help themselves, after all. 

So, you smiled warmly at the somber woman and rang up her total. Turning back to your side counter with her book in hand, you wrapped it delicately with twine, pressing your pointer finger in the middle of it to tie a quaint bow with the tool. Your lips twitched melancholily as you picked a small bundle of forget-me-nots from the cardboard box beside the register and carefully tucked it into the twine. 

You had gotten very skilled at not asking any questions. 

Sighing at the computer screen before you, your mind was flooded with uncertainty as you skimmed through the countless college programs emailed to you by the advisor you’d spoken with weeks prior. She told you that, following your meeting, these seemed like the best fit for what you wanted to pursue. As you clicked into each one and read more into them, you couldn’t help but look around at the solace of a corner bookstore you’d built up from the ground just three years ago. 

It wasn’t enough, you always thought when you heard about the countless deaths and tragedies that were befalling the city around you. After all, there were people on the frontlines, people making a difference, and you felt inferior as you selected your week’s display line up and decorated it just pretty enough to catch passer byer’s attention. You loved it with your whole heart, but was it enough?

“Excuse me,” A firm voice called out from behind you as the soft melody of the door chime sounded. Turning your head, you were met by the guarded gaze of a tall, suited man. His blonde hair sat almost perfectly on his head, save for the stray strands that fluttered across his forehead. The hollows of his cheeks made way for his carefully carved face and jawline, and the sight of him had your brows raising just a hair. “Do you happen to have a section for cook books?”

Despite his question being directed at you, he was already looking around the small store with a hand on his hip. The yellow tint of his glasses shone as the setting sun hit them from the window, revealing a glimpse of his narrowed eyes. Taking in his seemingly strong physique, his serious expression, and well pressed suit and tie, his question surprised you. A cookbook?

Shoving your questions to the back of your head as you always did, you smiled softly at him in greeting. Stepping down from the small footstool you’d been balancing on, you walked toward the far right aisle of the store, nodding for him to follow along with you. You heard his steady footsteps behind you as you stopped in front of your small selection of cookbooks. A timid smile lit graced your features as you waved your hands in presentation, watching as he nodded at the selection. 

“Um… is there anything specific that I can help you find?” You cringed at your question, beacause, in reality, there weren’t that many cookbooks to choose from, so you were sure the more than competent looking man did not need your help. Still, you couldn’t help but want to linger— he was the most handsome customer that had graced your store in a minute, after all. 

“No, that’s quite alright. Thank you.” The man didn’t even look at you as he dismissed your help, already peering curiously at the baking section. 

“Right,” You muttered pathetically, turning on your heel to give him some space to browse. “Well, let me know if you need anything!”

It was only a few minutes later, as you continued busying yourself with the finishing touches of the display table, that you heard him politely clear his throat behind you. Catching yourself before you slipped off the footstool, you nodded bashfully before placing yourself behind the register. The man set a hardcover down on the counter in front of you. Peering down, you smiled gently. The Bread Bible. Something about the mental image of this beefy, solemn man carefully following cookbook directions to make bread tickled a part of your brain that had you suppressing an amused expression. 

As he handed you his credit card, he took a chance to look around the small store thoughtfully. 

“Is this a new business? I frequent the café next door, but I don’t think I’ve ever noticed this being here.” You were surprised when he initiated the conversation, as you had already gotten the impression that he wanted to be in and out of here without being bothered. “I usually go to the bookstore down the street, but it seems they’ve closed for renovations.”

“Oh! No, I actually opened about three years ago.” You flushed, suddenly very aware of the fact that your little store was by no means attention grabbing from the outside. Glancing at the front windows, you made a mental note to search around for some plants or lights that might make it stand out more. 

He hummed in acknowledgement. 

“So, you like the café next door—” You squinted down at the card in your hands before smiling up at him and returning it. Grabbing the book from the counter, you made quick work to begin wrapping it up neatly. “Nanami-san? You should try their daifuku if you haven’t already. It’s to die for.”

Nanami’s head turned at the sound of his name.

“Daifuku, hm? I’ll have to try it the next time I go.” With curious eyes, he watched as you cut a string of twine and began wrapping his book. “There’s no need for that. It’s only for me.” 

Glancing up at him with a smile, you shook your head in dismissal before plucking a few flower’s from your stash to place into the knot. 

“I do it for all the books I sell.” You explained fondly, handing the beautifully presented book to him. His fingers brushed yours as he grabbed it, staring intently down at the soft, blue flowers that graced the cover. “Everyone needs a little reminder of the pretty things in life, right?”

For the first time since coming into the store, Nanami actually glanced up at you with the intent of seeing you. You wore delicate, linen overalls over your thin, long-sleeved white top. The loose strands of hair falling from your bun framed your kind face, making the corners of his lips twist up, just barely noticeably. Your smile was soft, kind— a reminder of the pretty things in this life. 

“I suppose so.” Nanami quipped under his breath, bowing slightly in thanks before exiting your little, corner bookstore. 

That cookbook didn’t get touched for the weeks that followed. It was sat beside the pile of other books he’d bought, always telling himself he’d make some time for himself to wind down and read them. Still, each time he stumbled home from work, his muscles aching and his eyes burning, all he could find the energy to do was shower and fall into his cold bed. After all, if he didn’t sleep when he had the chance, when would he?

Despite the dust collecting on the cover, those forget-me-nots always caught his attention from the corner of his eye. After a few days, they began wilting, but the reminder of them still rang clear each time he walked through the front door of his lonesome apartment and came face to face with the untouched, delicately wrapped and decorated book. 

It seemed as though each day, his missions became more strenuous, and with each mission, his lips seemed to brush that much closer with the kiss of death. Though his past had brought him face to face with such tragedies before, it felt as though the added risk to his mortality was being brought to his attention more often. So, the more he put off his books, or learning new hobbies, or forming any sort of real connection outside of his work, the higher the stakes were drawn. 

As he awaited his coffee that day though, just as he did every other morning, the rigidity of his routine was so much so that he didn’t even notice how he didn’t have to check the total before swiping his card— already knowing it by heart. The packaged pastry was warm against his cool hands as his eyes drifted over the display case, and he had the strangest feeling that he’d forgotten something. It wasn’t in his robotic list of motions though, so he left the café without a second glance. 

Nanami was on his way to work when his routine was interrupted. Well, not interrupted, but perhaps distracted was a better word. The quaint bookstore he’d discovered just two weeks ago came into his line of sight as it always did on his way to work. Though he sometimes cast a sidelong glance into the window, he had yet to stop in again. This morning though, you were outside. 

Your arms were outstretched above you, a set of fairy lights hanging from your fingers as you tried your best to loop them through the hooks above the door. The decorations you had ordered for the front of the shop had finally come in, and you were desperate for anything that would draw a little more attention to your hole in the wall of a shop. Hopping up a bit with a grunt, you pursed your lips in frustration as you missed your target again. 

“Would you like some help?” 

You whipped your head around mid-jump at the familiar, solemn voice. Sure enough, the mysterious Nanami himself stood behind you, coffee in one hand and packaged croissant in the other. Just as he was the first time you saw him, his suit was pristinely pressed, and it made you wonder what kind of big shot job he must have. 

“Nanami-san!” You muttered in surprise. A flush quickly found its way to your cheeks, embarrassed to have revealed that you’d remembered the man’s name that you’d swiped from his credit card. He didn’t seem phased though, shifting his croissant into the same hand occupied by his coffee and taking the string of lights from your hands. Reaching up with an ease that made your previous hopping look quite pathetic, he carefully looped the fairy lights in and adjusted them to frame the door nicely. 

“Is this how you wanted them?” 

Too caught up in your blatant staring at his casual display of masculinity, you hadn’t noticed that he finished. Snapping from your haze, you took a step back to inspect his handiwork. With an excited smile, you pressed the button on the remote in your pocket, watching the tiny bulbs light up the entryway. 

“What d’ya think?” You asked, not tearing your eyes away from the door.

Frankly, Nanami thought the lights were barely noticeable in the daylight, but you seemed so elated by the delicate change. So, he simply hummed in acknowledgment. Casting a shy look his way at the sound of his unenthusiastic reaction, you squatted down to grab the box of flowers at your feet.

“Thank you for your help. I didn’t really feel like dragging the ladder out here.” Grunting softly with the effort of the weighted box, you were surprised when he slid his arm right under it and relieved you of it, nodding for you to get the door. 

The sorcerer took in the sight of the various, opened books that littered your back counter as he set the box down. From the looks of it, they all appeared to be exam preps. You blew your hair from your face and followed his gaze to the aftermath of your anxiety induced study session. 

“Sorry, it’s a bit of a mess in here.” You chuckled nervously, frantically moving to mark your pages and stack your books neatly beside the checkout. “I have my entrance exams in a week, so I’ve been cramming when I can.” 

“Entrance exams?” 

“Um… yeah! I’ve been thinking about going back to school.”

“Something related to business management, I presume?” His question made you look down apprehensively. Chewing on your bottom lip, you began absentmindedly picking debris, spare flower petals, and leaves from the counter. 

“No, actually. I’ve been hoping to get into something more… meaningful?”

This made Nanami pause, tearing his gaze from the display case to face you. He wasn’t sure why he was lingering, but something about your sweet-tempered voice, and its nature to say whatever came to mind— it grounded him outside of his usual routine. It, of course, didn’t hurt that the owner of the nice, little bookshop just in the perimeter of his daily walk was so prepossessing. The sorcerer tilted his head with a furrowed brow. 

“I’m assuming by that, you mean you think that what you do here isn’t meaningful…” His shielded eyes drifted down to the name tag pinned onto your sweater. The way your name rolled off his tongue, in combination with his gentle, lecturing tone, flustered you a bit. The man wasn’t harsh, or judgemental, or mean. No, his words were curious and calculated, as if truly trying to understand such a notion. 

“I don’t know.” You squeaked out, feeling small under his dominant gaze. It had you wondering how intimidating he was without those damned glasses shielding his eyes. “I mean, is it really, in the grand scheme of things? I feel like people are dropping dead left and right. Probably be more useful as like… a nurse or something, y’know?”

Nanami hummed, shifting his weight from one foot to the other purposefully. Still, he gave you no solace from that smoldering, contemplative stare. You tried your best to take it head on, refusing to shy away from his determined eyes. 

“There was a time that I felt the same way, but what I was doing was truly not meaningful. People come into bookstores to get away from the grand scheme of things. I believe an escape is just as meaningful as tackling these problems head on, wouldn’t you agree?” His question wasn’t as rhetorical as his tone made it out to be, because he was staring down at you expectantly, awaiting confirmation that what he was saying was penetrating. You nodded dumbly. “It’s just as you put it… remembering the pretty things in life?”

If he kept talking, you were going to fall to your knees in the middle of this damned store. With flushed cheeks, you attempted to collect yourself. You cleared your throat and smoothed down the soft, cotton of your sweater as a customer walked in. Finally, Nanami’s eyes drifted to the entrance, allowing you a chance to breathe. With the newfound clarity, you noticed the coffee and pastry in his hand. 

“Speaking of,” You chimed in, grateful to get the topic off of you and your pathetic little existential crisis. His blond hair swayed as he turned to regard you once again. “Did you try that daifuku I told you about?”

It was like a bell had suddenly tolled in his mind, and he mentally cursed himself for having forgotten to pick one up, given he had been in and out of that café at least six times since you’d told him about the damned pastry. Pursing his lips, the blond looked down at his croissant. 

“No, it must have slipped my mind.” 

“Busy working man, I assume?” You teased, taking another once over at his suit and strangely patterned tie. Nanami hummed in a sort of regretful agreement. “What do you do anyway? You said you found your old work meaningless.”

For the first time since meeting him, a small, amused smile tugged at the corners of his lips. He bowed politely to you before making his way out of the bookstore. 

“Have a nice day.” Nanami offered calmly over his shoulder, and you were once again left melting at the sound of your name falling from his lips. 

The sorcerer heard you call out a meek goodbye behind him, and it made him forget that, for the first time in years, he was late to work. 

Kento Nanami stopped by the shop more often after that. Certainly not as often as you would have liked, but he was swiping his card for a singular, new book at least once a week now. He would ask you how your studies were going, and you lied and said that they were good, too embarrassed to tell him that you’d canceled your entrance exams in a panic following his impromptu pep-talk. It wasn’t that you fully scrapped the idea, but his finding meaning in your seemingly mundane little career gave you pause. Maybe you just needed more time to think about it. 

Each time he stopped by, there were new decorations out front. From the fairy lights he’d hung still lit up at the door, to the potted plants that dangled from the overhang, down to the charming welcome mat that you’d placed by the door. His usual bookstore finished construction a week prior, but it didn’t seem as appealing to him anymore. 

His selection of books ranged drastically, to the point that you wondered if he was purposefully doing it to throw you off. The more rational part of you said that he didn’t seem the type to care enough about what picture he was painting with his literature choices. From thin books on mixology, to informational books about stain removing, and self-help books about time management— you could never get a proper read on Kento Nanami. Still, you bit back your questions and tied them all up with a different flower each week. 

The sorcerer’s pile of untouched books grew and grew as the weeks passed, taking up his coffee table with a haunting energy. Ever since Sukuna’s vessel had sprung up, work was consuming him more than usual. Despite his hectic schedule, his aching muscles, and his survival mentality as he floated through life, the wilting flowers in his collection of books always grounded him back to his quiet apartment. 

It wasn’t until a particularly perilous mission that he wished he had made the time to read at least one of those books. His cheek rubbed against the cool, gravelly cement, and he could feel the warmth of his own blood, spilled and pooling around him. At the very least, the special grade was sliced into desolate pieces and scattered around him. As he attempted a deep breath, trying to gather his energy to grab his phone and call for help, Nanami realized all he could manage were short, shallow breaths, and even they felt as though they were piercing holes in his lungs.

Crimson pooled his vision, and his lids snapped shut as the puddle of viscous liquid invaded the corner of his eye. With shaking hands, he reached into his pocket to press the emergency button on the side of his phone twice, sending out an alert for help. Maybe they’d come in time. His hand fell limply to his side, and he shifted carefully onto his back, choking out desperately from the effort. 

The blood beneath him soaked into his shirt and clung to his hair. He knew he was losing too much, it was evident in the way his vision began to blur, and his head began to spin in a haze. 

The sorcerer thought about the pile of books in his apartment. He thought about each time he stumbled home and not once felt that he had it in him to do something for himself. The reminder that each time he could have indulged, the rigidity of his mindless routine kept him from doing anything of the sort— it haunted him as his consciousness began to wane. 

His fading mind wandered over every abandoned book, to the wilting flowers that accompanied each one of them. Your words rang in his mind as if a distant echo. 

Everyone needs a little reminder of the pretty things in life, right?

Despite himself, and how close his knuckles were brushing against death’s door, Nanami smiled, his split lip leaking with blood that stained his pearly teeth. Even in this mangled, godless tomb he’d found himself lying in— even with the demolished, irreverent figure that had desecrated his body so carelessly— even with the deplorable state his body would be leaving this world— you were there in the back of his soul to remind him, because you were the prettiest thing he could possibly think to remember in his final moments. 

It was the first week that had gone by in some time that Kento Nanami hadn’t stopped by your shop. Though it might have been silly, you began to expect him each week— either early in the morning before his shift, or late in the afternoon when he had a certain gruffness in his tone that gave way to the lingering effects of his day. You would never be able to tell by the look on his face though. It was ever neutral; never a frown and even rarer a smile. 

When the second week passed, you figured he’d simply gone back to his routine of going to the larger, more commercial bookstore that had reopened down the street. They had a wider selection, after all, and he said himself that he’d only stopped by your store due to their closure. 

In a haze of high-school type infatuation, you had told your friend about the guarded man that had been frequenting the store. She had a job at the local clinic, however she often came by to help you out around the store on the rare instances it was too busy for one body alone to keep up with the influx of customers. Each time she’d come in for a makeshift shift, you always silently hoped he’d stop by so she could at least put a face to the name. 

He never did though, and, with his now two week absence, you were coming to terms with the fact that she likely never would see him. You smiled wistfully at the thought as you watched her show a customer to the cookbooks. It was likely that you’d allowed your imagination to take you too far, and Nanami was, as simply as he put it, browsing your selection until the other shop reopened.

You couldn’t discount the hope he’d instilled in you though that the work you were doing did mean something to someone. Even someone as consumed by the hustle and bustle of the city as Nanami seemed to be made the time to stop by your shop with the intent of escaping, and it had been so important to you each time you heard his polite, reserved greeting filling the air around you. 

“Excuse me,” You were snapped from your dissociative haze by the customer in front of you. Lost in your thoughts, you didn’t realize that you’d failed to greet them before you began mindlessly scanning their books. Looking up in surprise, you smiled apologetically to the man in front of you. “Where’s that pretty little head of yours, huh?” 

Your smile faltered for a moment at his borderline creepy question, but you shrugged it off nonetheless and began packaging his books up. 

“Did you find everything you were looking for?” You questioned politely, haphazardly measuring the twine you were rolling out before slicing through it. 

“Well…” The man sighed dramatically, leaning against the counter. You knew then that you shouldn’t have asked, and, with an internal sigh, you knew you’d spend at least the next ten minutes suffering for your fatal mistake. “I was hoping to get the nice cashier’s attention, but it looks like she’s otherwise preoccupied.” 

Not looking up at him as you continued packaging his books, you resisted the urge to correct his cashier comment to owner, figuring the less he knew— the better. Having picked out about five books, he had the time to go on a long winded rant about how decent courtesy was a thing of the past, and women just aren’t as nice as they used to be but that he was sure you seem different from all the rest. The irritation was rising in your chest, but you swallowed it down as you placed the finishing touches on each of his books. 

“Have a nice day, sir.” You smiled meekly at him as you slid his nicely presented books toward him. He stared dumbly at you for a moment, blinking a few times before offering a sly smile. 

“And I don’t suppose your number is written in any of those right?” 

With a blush that was more so from irritation than anything else, you began cleaning your workstation, once again choosing to ignore him. You never were good at putting your foot down in such awkward situations. An anxious gulp forced its way down your throat when you heard him hum in question. 

“C’mon, I see that blush—”

“Is it time for your break yet, my love?” 

Your head shot up at the sound of another voice cutting off the sleeze’s comment, and your eyes met those of a taller man looming calmly beside your lingering customer. They were calculated, focused on you while seemingly ever-aware of the lurking presence beside him, hazel irises glistening from the sun shining through the windows. 

It took you almost a full minute to realize it was Kento Nanami standing before you. You had never seen him without those goggle-like glasses always attached to his nose, and he wasn’t in his usual suit. Instead, he donned a cream colored, knit sweater that paired well with his neatly fitted, dark jeans. You couldn’t tell what caught you more off guard, seeing how striking his eyes were for the very first time, or how different he appeared in such casual clothing. 

Clutched in his hand was a bouquet of white roses, light-blue forget-me-nots sprinkled throughout the arrangement. 

“My love?” The questioning call of his voice, paired with the intense eye contact he was maintaining told you that he indeed was directing that term of endearment toward you. He cast a quick, sidelong glance to the man beside him, and you quickly caught on, nodding softly.

“Um, yes. I was just wrapping up with this customer.” You hinted, pushing the stack of books closer to the dumbfounded man for good measure. “Have a nice day, sir.” 

Not allowing him to respond, Nanami stepped forward to take his spot at the counter, leaving the man to begrudgingly pick up his books and take his leave. Your eyes followed him out, and you couldn’t help the dramatic sigh of relief that heaved out your chest as the door closed behind him. 

“I apologize if I overstepped, but it appeared as though he wasn’t taking the hint.” 

Looking back over at your knight-in-cashmere-sweater, you smiled gratefully at him. Nanami’s lips twitched up ever so slightly at the sight. 

“I didn’t even recognize you.” You admitted bashfully, looking behind him to assure there were no other customers waiting. Focusing your gaze on him once again, you couldn’t help but feel relieved that he had finally returned. “Those flowers are beautiful, by the way. Special occasion?” 

He hummed, looking down curiously at his attire before meeting your gaze once again. 

“Oh, they’re for you, actually.” 

This made your finger’s soft drumming against the counter pause, assessing the sincere expression on his face. You gave the store a quick once over.

“I think he left already, Nanami-san.” You laughed softly, trying to quiet the butterflies in your stomach at the idea that he had actually come in to bring you flowers. His thin, blond brows furrowed a fraction at your comment, and he shook his head. 

“No, I brought these for you. Also— please call me Kento.” He clarified, watching the way the blood rushed to your cheeks as your eyes ran flusteredly over the bouquet he was handing your way. “I apologize for not having come by recently, I got into quite the accident at work, but I’m feeling better now and would like to take you out. If you’d like, of course.” 

Your fingers wrapped hesitantly over the bouquet. Leaning forward, you gently breathed in the delicate scent emanating from the flowers. It was mixing with Kento’s cologne, wafting into your senses in an intoxicating mix. He watched pensively— the way you tried to bite back your smile, but soon enough your teeth were shining brightly at him, cheeks ablaze in a manner that made you appear absolutely radiant. The sight clenched at his bandaged chest, and he wasn’t sure if the burning was coming from his steadily healing ribs or the erratic beat of his heart. 

Despite what his rapid blood loss and slipping consciousness had led him to believe that night, help did come in time for him. They cut it incredibly close, but still, when he pried his eyes open the next day, his heart was still beating and his flesh was still warm. He spent a few days in the hospital, Gojo and a few of the students stopping by to see him once they were informed that he’d woken up. 

The warm welcome back into the land of the living was kind enough, even if he had to beg them to quiet down at least four times during their half-hour visit. When he returned to his apartment a few days later, each step seemed to take every last bit of energy from his already worn out body. The door opened with a creek, and he was enveloped in silence. 

Nanami usually welcomed the blissful peace with open arms, already worn out from the atrocious ways fate had played with him for one day. That night though, it only reminded him of how close he was to dying alone. 

So, he stood before you, gazing upon the very smile that had flashed in his mind when he believed himself on the brink of death. Flowers were clutched firmly in his fingers, a reminder of the way you planted the seed of meaning back into his life— of something more than his thus far wasteful nature of crawling through his days had provided.

 Kento smiled at you, pounding the final nail in the coffin that held any semblance of dignity you hoped to hold onto when you saw him next. 

It was criminal, you thought, how perfect one man could look— how easily he could render you a stuttering mess with just a flash of his golden smile. 

“I hope your silence isn’t my cue to take a hint as well.” His honeyed voice quipped, and you could swear there was the faintest hint of amusement in his tone. 

“No! I mean— I’d really like that.” You attempted to save face for your flustered state, but you were sure even he could see right through it. “Thank you… for the flowers, Kento.” 

Even his name falling from your lips sounded so blissfully intimate in his ears. 

“Shall we go then?” 

“Oh— now?” You squeaked, checking the time to see it was still only noon, and the shop didn’t close for another few hours. “I don’t close here until—”

“She can take a break!” Your friend suddenly chimed in, having been pretending to stock the shelves (she had been pulling and placing the same book from its shelf for five minutes now). You looked up at her in shock, watching Nanami turn and bow to her in greeting from the corner of your eye. She gave you a pleading look, as if she was the one being pulled from her shift midday by the six feet of pure gentleman that had just graced your store. “The rush has died down. I can hold down the fort for an hour.”

You made a mental note to bring her back something sweet from the café Kento was steering you toward, a guiding hand resting respectfully on the small of your back. Even with the well-mannered placement of his palm, the feeling of his touch at all was turning your brain to mush. 

It seemed to all be rushing to you now, as you looked up at him. He was speaking calmly with the woman at the register of the café, and you finally caught onto the almost faded, yellowing bruise on the right side of his face. It lined his sharply defined cheekbone, a tiny scar on the edge that made you wonder how bad it had looked two weeks ago. 

What kind of accident had he been in that made him rush to take you on a date with such fervor as soon as he was well enough to leave the house? Better yet, what line of work was he in that put him in such positions? It was all simmering in your mind, growing hotter as you recalled his dodgy answers when you would ask what he did for work. 

Kento called your name, the sound slowly pushing its way into your consciousness as you snapped from your haze. He was looking down at you in question. 

“What would you like to drink?” The tone of his voice let you know that this wasn’t the first time he’d asked you. Tearing your gaze from his, you gave your coffee order to the barista before nodding in thanks. “Something on your mind?”

You couldn’t help but notice how casually he’d crossed over this boundary with you. Just minutes ago, he was Nanami, your guarded, regular customer who had a knack for entrapping you in never ending daydreams of domesticity and dominating glances. Now though, in a matter of minutes, he had turned into Kento, your date who was paying for your coffee and pulling your chair out for you— asking you about what was on your mind, blissfully unaware of the fact that it was him. 

His hazel eyes gazed down at you curiously as he placed an ivory plate in front of you before taking the seat across from yours. Glancing down at the dish, a small smile tugged at your lips. You must not have heard him order in your haze. 

“Daifuku?” You grinned teasingly at him. He hummed in amusement, looking down at his own, matching pastry.

“If I remember correctly, you said they were to die for.” 

“Yeah, like two months ago.” You laughed, blowing softly on your steaming cappuccino. 

“Oh, has the title expired? I can take yours too, if you’ve changed your mind.” He was hiding a tickled smirk as he reached over to grab your plate. You swatted his hand away with a blush, taken aback by his subtly playful nature that had since been concealed behind pressed suits and tinted lenses. With a knowing hum, he looked down at his own plate. “Truthfully, I had been so caught up with work that I had forgotten all about it.” 

“That secretive job of yours, huh?” You quipped softly and took a small bite of the chewy sweet, biting back a contented sigh upon the realization that he’d somehow guessed your favorite filling. It was a beat longer before you spoke again, afraid if you pushed it too much, he’d be too quick to throw out another guarded excuse. “Ever the mystery, Kento.” 

At the sound of his name, he peered back up at you. You were glad your mouth was occupied by your warm cup now, convinced you would have drooled at the sight of his smoldering gaze. 

“I don’t mean to be so… mysterious.” He admitted as he straightened his posture against the café chair. “The truth is, I can’t disclose much about my work. The nature of it is… sensitive. I hope you can understand.” 

Your eyes drifted over the bruise on his face, and you thought back to how badly he must have been hurt to have gone MIA for two weeks. Kento was watching you so earnestly though, a glimmer of hope in his usually stoic eyes. 

Against your better judgment, your ‘no questions’ policy began influencing an area of your life it definitely should not be touching. The sincerity in his explanation though, paired with his calm and collected demeanor, had all common sense evading you. You raised a brow at him, a breathy laugh slipping past your lips. His head cocked ever so slightly at the noise.

“Funny you should say that, I was like convinced you were yakuza for a while.” You attempted to lighten the mood of the heavy topic at hand— one he didn’t seem ready to explore yet. The serious expression on his face made your laugh falter for a moment, and with a quirk of his thin brow your smile disappeared all together. Your stomach fell uneasily.

Oh fuck.

 “Oh, um, I… uh—”

“That was my attempt at a joke, I’m sorry.” Nanami’s tense expression finally broke, a genuine smile splitting across his cheeks at the fear on your face. It did make him wonder though, how you would react to his actual profession. “I assure you I’m not in a gang, though I’m not sure if I should be flattered or not that you think I’d fit the description.” 

Jesus, this man was going to make you hurl. 

“Yeah, big, buff, and quiet with your strawberry daifuku— so scary, Ken.” 

He tried not to feel too proud at your description of his physique, hiding his smirk with a first bite of the dessert in question. A contented hum rumbled in his chest, and you found your lips parting as you watched his face melt in pleasure at something so simple. You didn’t have time to conceal your stare before his eyes opened once again. 

Nanami wasn’t sure how he had been blinded for so long at how pleasurable life could be. It had been just beyond his reach, yet it took his near death for him to snap from his ambivalence. The confection he’d glazed his eyes over for years in this little shop, the bewitching girl he’d strolled right past, the ease of connecting with another soul; it was intoxicating how the promise of lighter days filled his senses, lit him ablaze. Looking back at your innocently charmed expression, he couldn’t believe he had almost left this cruel existence behind without ever having been on the receiving end of it. 

The sorcerer’s weekly visits to your shop promptly resumed. This time though, he always came bearing gifts; whether it be a hot coffee (having already memorized your order from that first time he heard it), an accompanying pastry, or a fresh set of flowers when he knew your previous ones were beginning to wilt. 

Maybe it was overbearing for so early on in your relationship, though he wasn’t even sure he could call it that yet, but he couldn’t help himself. Watching the way your eyes would light up, how your cheeks would flush, and, in recent development, you would lean across the counter to press an appreciative kiss to his clean-shaven cheek— Kento would buy the world for you if it meant he’d have the chance to see such joy one more time. 

Much to his surprise and relief, you didn’t bring up the elusive topic of his career again, save for when you’d ask him how his day was going. There were times, so many times, that you had come close. Each time he’d show up with a new, what would have been a inconspicuous had they not been so damn frequent, bruise or cut on his face or arms, the question lingered in the back of your throat. When he’d help you move things around the store, and you watched him lift the still stocked display table with an ease you’d never seen before, even for someone with his impressive build, you bit back your interrogation. 

A seed had been planted in your mind though— so tiny you weren’t sure if you were deranged for even having the fleeting thought of it. 

Nanami had stopped by the shop one evening when you were stocking the shelves, eye level with the top shelf you were working on as you balanced on your trusty footstool. Your headphones were pressed snuggly against your ears, your soft music occupying any spare space in your mind. A pair of gentle hands settled over your waist, ripping a gasp from your chest as you jolted back. The grip around you tightened as you fell into a warm chest, one arm wrapping around your middle as the other moved to pull the headphones down around your neck. 

“Perhaps the noise canceling headphones aren’t the wisest choice when you leave the store unlocked.” Kento’s buttery voice flooded your senses and calmed the fight or flight response his unexpected appearance had triggered. You turned to glare half-heartedly at him as he set you back down on your feet. 

“Well, I left it open for you.” You mumbled sheepishly, adjusting the headphones around your neck and nudging your shoulder into his firm chest. As you turned to look up at the box you’d left behind, you missed the way he smiled softly at your comment. 

“I’d be far more flattered if you would protect yourself from intruders for me, but I appreciate the thought.”  Kento quipped, reaching up to grab the abandoned box from the top shelf just as you stepped up on the stool to grab it. You stepped back down with a shy smile. “I’ll be leaving town this weekend for work.”

“Oh,” You acknowledged quietly, unsure of where he was taking this conversation. Twisting the hem of your sweater awkwardly between your fingers, you chewed on your bottom lip. “Well… I’ll miss you coming to scare the shit out of me when I’m closing?”

“That’s sweet, darling, but I was telling you because I’d like to have you over for dinner before I go.” The sorcerer mused, using his spare hand to brush a loose strand of hair behind your ear.

You weren’t sure if your sudden onslaught of nerves and flushed skin was due to the nickname he’d given you, or the thought of going over to his house for the first time. Attempting to stop where your racing thoughts seemed to be wandering to, you began to absentmindedly grab books from the box clutched in his grasp to finish shelving them. He peered into the box before grabbing one and finding its rightful place, hoping to help you in being able to close and get home earlier. 

“You sound like you’re about to go to war or something.” You joked hesitantly, but, honestly, the implications of his offer had your pestering curiosity peaking once again. “How long will you be gone?”

“It should only be a day or two.” His attempt at reassurance only served to concern you more though. Maybe, if he said he would be gone for a week or more, you would have understood his supposed urgency in getting one last date in before his trip. With him only being gone two days though? You realized that perhaps something more dire was at play here. Sensing your contemplative state, he halted his stocking and leaned against the shelf to look down at you. “It’s just that— my work is…” Kento’s voice trailed, unsure of where he was going with his explanation. 

“I’d love to come for dinner, Ken.” You reassured with a gentle smile. The furrow in his brows, the hope in his eyes, the apprehension in his tone— it told you all you needed to know, and you heard it loud and clear. 

It had been a while since Nanami had the chance to delve into one of his old hobbies. Cooking was one that used to be his favorite, something he indulged in before his schedule became so unpredictable and his missions turned more crucial— before he had lost himself to the cruelty of the reality he’d chosen for the sake of a meaningful existence. There was something different about this time though, he thought as his knife sliced expertly through his selected root vegetables. Perhaps it was the knowledge that, once the small, black timer on his counter went off, alerting him that his veggies were done boiling, that he’d be one step closer to setting a plate down before you. 

The sorcerer glanced back at his modest dining table, already set up with two plates and utensils, taking a deep breath before wiping his hands and checking the time on his watch. It was already five minutes past the time he’d told you to come by, but he figured closing was simply taking longer than expected. After fifteen minutes though, he found himself frowning over the boiling pot, stepping away to check his phone in case you’d attempted to reach out to him regarding your delay. With nothing to show for, his mind began to race a bit. 

You did have a tendency, Nanami had come to understand, of leaving the shop unlocked as you closed. This wouldn’t be so bad would it not be for those damned, clunky headphones you insisted on wearing each time, blocking out any noise possible danger would alert you with. Without much thought of how irrational he may appear, he found himself swiping through to find your contact and hitting ‘call’. It went straight to voicemail. 

Yeah, he thought as he abruptly shut off the stove and tossed the towel from his shoulder, fuck the radishes. 

Kento had all but ripped the door of his apartment open, barging down the hallway with terrifying calculation as images of you unconscious in the quaint aisles of your shelves flashed through his panicked mind, when he ran straight into you. Instantly recognizing your startled gasp, his hands reached out to steady you as you stumbled back in surprise. 

“Kento, I’m so sorry!” You babbled, brushing your wet hair from your face in a frantic attempt to appear put together, when you knew deep down you were anything but. The man before you was staring down at you with a relieved expression, but it faded as quickly as it came as he took in your appearance. 

You were practically soaked, mascara running mortifyingly down your eyes and onto your flushed cheeks. The delicate, ivory sundress you wore was clinging against your wet skin, and Nanami forced himself to respectfully avert his eyes from what the now see-through fabric was revealing. There was a wine bottle clutched desperately between your fingers as you waved your hands in explanation. “I know I’m late, I wanted to bring you some wine, but the store was short staffed so the line was abysmal. Then the train got delayed, and it started to rain, and my phone died. I’m sorry I look a me—”

The baffled man stepped forward, clutching your jaw between his calloused hands to lift your gaze to meet his. Despite your dishevled appearance, smeared makeup, and frigid clothes, all Nanami could think about was how relieved he was to see you well. Additionally, as you rattled off all the ways in which your night hadn’t gone as planned, the only thoughts in his mind were how grateful he was that these silly, insignificant little hiccups were the extent of your day to day battles. 

It was so like him, so ingrained in his very being to expect the worst. The truth was though, not everybody’s life was on the line everyday. Not everybody drifted through life in survival mode as he had grown accustomed to doing. Some people missed the train and got caught in the rain, and his heart was so full with the notion that you were one of those people with such domestic struggles. On the other side of it all as well, you braved through them to come see him, and he didn’t think he could ever find you more beautiful than he did in that moment. 

He exhaled with softly drawn brows, allowing his hazel eyes to appreciate each streak the rain left on your delicate features before leaning down to kiss you. Your lips were frigid against his, and you leaned into his warmth, the shame of soaking through his neatly ironed dress shirt with your rain soaked body flying out your head as he wrapped his arm around your shivering form in an attempt to draw out all chilliness that dared disturb you. The hand that gripped your jaw slid down and around your neck to tangle into your nape, tugging you closer.

You pulled away for a breath, but Kento chased your lips with determination, quickly capturing them once again. His fingers pressed firmly into your nape as if to stop you from escaping him so prematurely again. Accepting your fate with a graceful willingness, you reached up with your free hand to grip at his shoulder in an attempt to pull yourself up and closer to him. It wasn’t until a shiver ran down your spine, though you weren’t sure if it was due to your soaked clothes or the desperation he was pouring into the unexpected kiss, that the gentleman in Nanami tugged him from his primal desires. 

Pulling back with a heave, the sorcerer took a moment to compose himself, eyes drifting over your shivering figure. He ran a hand down his jaw, pretending not to notice the way you panted softly as you stared up at him with those wide, glistening eyes that made him rethink his restraint. 

“It… the wine I brought isn’t that nice, you know.”

As Kento shut the apartment door behind him, he couldn’t help but feel the smallest bit awkward for the way he came onto you so suddenly, though something about the glowing smile you were attempting to conceal told him you didn’t mind as much as he did. You looked up from your search around his tidy apartment when he cleared his throat. It was evident in his face how he’d caught himself off-guard, barely able to look you in the eye. You bit your lip to hide your amusement. 

“You must be freezing. I’ll grab you some dry clothes.”

You opened your mouth to stop him, but he had already disappeared into the hallway. Now by yourself in his space, you took the chance to unabashedly look around. It was just as you expected his apartment would look like; warm, pristinely kept, and it held an air, just like him, that something deeper was hidden within the cream colored walls. A warm smile fell on your lips at the spread he’d prepared, and you placed the wine bottle on the counter to continue your search. Just as your eyes drifted to the stack of books on the coffee table, the man returned, a small stack of clothes in one hand and a towel in the other. 

“Please feel free to dry up in the restroom. Take your time, I’m just finishing up dinner.” He offered as he placed the soft articles into your arms. With flushed cheeks, you took note of the sweatpants and sweater he’d picked out for you. 

“No, really, I’ll be fine. You made everything so nice, I would hate to be in pajamas.” You shook your head bashfully, nudging the items back into his hands. 

“And I would hate for you to get sick sitting in wet clothes all night.” He countered with a playful shove of his clothes back into your chest. 

“I am not having dinner in sweatpants when you’re in a suit, Kento.” Another shove back at him. This time, he tilted his head, his lips pursed in mock frustration, but you could see the playfully challenging glint in his hazel eyes. Straightening his posture, the blond accepted the clothes you shoved his way this time. 

“Oh, is that what this is about?” He challenged before nodding softly to himself. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment then.” Confusion crept up in you as you watched him walk back down the hallway without another word, shutting the door of what you presumed was his bedroom behind him. You sat, slightly dumbfounded, on one of the dining chairs and cringed at the feeling of your cold, wet dress pressing against your thighs. 

It was only moments later that he reemerged. Abandoned were his previous, light blue button down and khaki slacks, and in their place were a simple, white tshirt and plaid pajama pants. You felt your heart race a bit at the casualness of it all, how at ease he looked with his once neatly placed hair ruffled from the swiftness he had yanked the cotton shirt over his head. Biting at the inside of your cheek in any attempt to control your facial expressions, you watched his biceps flex as he handed you the previous stack of clothes with finality. 

“No excuses now, hm?” 

So, you and Kento sat at his formally set dining table that night and sipped at your wine glasses in your— well— his pajamas. The change of scenery helped ease some of the expectations for your date to go a certain way, setting a domestic tranquility over the evening as he watched you with his knuckles pressed against his cheek. Your face appeared fresher than he’d ever seen it, likely due to the fact that you had had no choice but to wash your ruined makeup off of your face while freshening up in his bathroom. It made his heart soar, as he imagined this is just how you appeared in your own space— comfortable, vulnerable, and beared truly to the world. It allowed him to see every freckle and blemish, every blush more clearly. 

Maybe that’s why he couldn’t help himself as he moved to grab your plate to place in the sink, leaning down and pressing a lingering kiss to your awaiting lips as you tilted your head up to him expectantly. You already had pinpointed that look in his eyes. Under your breath, you thanked him for dinner as he pulled away slowly, your noses brushing together softly. For a moment, Nanami thought as he peered over his shoulder from his place in front of the sink, it felt as though you always had a place right there at his dining table, with his sweatpants rolled up at your ankles and his sweater swallowing you so warmly. He tried to think of anything else, because the thought of you taking up residence so comfortably in his space was exciting him way too quickly for a first home visit. The sorcerer cleared his throat. 

“Oh, I had almost forgotten,” He began, placing the last, scrubbed plate onto the drying rack. You didn’t pretend to not be staring when he turned to face you again, leaning so delectably against the counter behind him. “Have you heard back about your applications?”

“My applications?” You questioned with furrowed brows, fingers rubbing pensively against your nearly empty wine glass. In an instant, though, you recalled one of the first conversations you had had with him, the one that planted that seed of intrigue in your mind in the first place. Your eyes fluttered down to the red liquid sloshing around the bottom of your glass. “Oh right. Well, can I be honest?”

Nanami only hummed in response, crossing his arms over his broad chest. 

“I never actually went through with my entrance exams. I… had a change of heart, I guess.”

“A change of heart, huh?” He repeated thoughtfully, regarding you with a curious gaze. You only nodded curtly, feeling small under his studious eyes. “What changed?”

Kento had pushed off of the counter to walk closer to you and lean instead on the table in front of you. You swallowed thickly at the sudden proximity. Setting your glass down beside him, you looked down at your laps, fingers twisting in the soft cotton of his grey sweatpants. 

“I thought about what you said.” You confessed quietly. Peering up at him through your lashes, you didn’t miss the way his features contorted in perplexity. “You know, about how having an escape is just as important as getting your hands dirty. I… didn’t want to give it all up, but I couldn’t live with the guilt of not playing some sort of role in helping. You coming in every week… it made me realize that I was— y’know, in my own way.”

It felt as though all the resolve he’d built up over the years, trying to protect himself from caring too much again, it had all been for not. Here you were, an angel put down the middle of his path of unrighteousness, gracing him with your kindness, your humility and gentleness, yet you had the nerve to spill such fantasy from your plush lips that he had been the one to show you the path of meaning. 

Kento’s hands worked mindlessly to pull you up by your gentle hands so that you stood between his thighs. He wrapped an arm around your shoulders, allowing his other hand to find purchase on the back of your head as he pulled you into him. 

One day, he thought to himself as you wrapped your startled arms around his chest, perhaps he’d tell you of the horrors that had led him to where he was today. Maybe over coffee and daifuku, he’d tell you of the boy who couldn’t save his best friend and cursed the world because of it. You’d smile and ask the blond about him—  what he was like and all the memories he’d kept buried in his imprisoned mind for so long. Kento would tell you he was just like you; tender-hearted and with the willingness to save the world—  existing in the same reality he had deemed fatuous and yet still holding that love for others that poured out with each wide lipped smile. 

For now though, Nanami wanted you to remain just as you were; only plagued by long grocery store lines and dodgy weather. The sorcerer wanted you to continue to find meaning in your books and your flowers, even if just for a little longer. 

“I’m glad.” Kento murmured against your damp hair, pressing a chaste kiss to your temple before releasing you from his firm grip. “The world needs you as you are now. No need to change anything.”

And there it was— that innocently animated smile gleaming up at him as if there was no wrong in the world. He smiled back at you, and you must have seen the misty haze in his eyes. 

“What’s that look for?” You questioned in amusement, tugging at the sleeves of his tshirt absentmindedly. He shook his head, reaching up to brush your hair behind your ears. 

“You just remind me of someone, is all.” 

The two of you silently agreed that you weren’t ready to part ways just yet, evident in the way you lingered too long on otherwise pointless conversations, and how neither dared look toward the front door. You had confronted him about all his books that were still wrapped up and stacked neatly on his coffee table, teasing him about how the escapism qualities he spoke so highly of wouldn’t work if he never actually opened them up. Kento allowed you to rummage through them, recounting each memory you had of wrapping up each respective cover. 

He watched with soft eyes as you laid back between his legs on the couch, one of his abandoned books laid snuggly in your lap as you read it to him, claiming if he wouldn’t make the time to read them that you’d do it for him. Your head rose and fell in tandem with his breaths as he laid underneath you, allowing your honeyed voice to fill his senses and breathe more life into his quaint apartment than he’d ever felt in the years he’d resided in it. 

You tilted your head back to look at him as the hand that wasn’t occupying your raised thigh came down to brush along the swells of your cheeks. A dazzling, bashful smile flashed his way as you raised a knowing brow at him. 

“Are you even listening to me, Ken?” You laughed, feeling dizzy with the way he gazed at you as if you’d hung the stars in the sky. He immediately shook his head, and you laughed breathlessly at his bluntness. Leaning down, he pressed a longing kiss against your lips, his nose brushing against your chin as you tilted up to meet the motion eagerly. His fingers tightened around your thigh, and he allowed them to drift up just a fraction before he stopped himself. 

“I was busy reminding myself of the pretty things in my life, darling.”

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Why I like Dogday x Bobby Bearhug

Working off of my last Crittertember post, posting the shipping manifesto for the four of you who are just dying to know, lol.

Part 1 of Post: Here. Just a lot of pictures.

I guess I should start with how I started liking the ship in the first place. As best as I can remember it started with a mildly intense obsession with the Smiling Critters after seeing them in Poppy Playtime Chapter 3. Their carboard soundboards specifically intrigued me. As a fandom we really had ziltch to work with so maybe I was hyper-analyzing their phrases to see if anything could be gleamed from them.

There isn't much unless we are meant to believe Picky is literally a cannibal. I don't think so? I think the voice lines have been corrupted by the metric ton of death that happened within the factory. Be it as it may, what little we fanon-ize about the critters, a lot of it is probably coming from those soundboards.

A post about this already exists on tumblr but at some random point I thought, "Weird Bobby Bearhug and Dogday's cut outs sound like they are talking to one another." Not sure how my brain jumped to that conclusion but it did. As seen in this post with some old oogly art I drew.

And then @meowcola made my dream come true by editing the two voices together. Yhaass! For this I am forever grateful to my fellow shipper.

I don't think any of the other critter's voice lines bounce off of each other as well as these two do (admittedly with slight editing), or even at all. But Bobby and Dogday's cutouts almost seem to have a conversation that don't work played against any of the others. Dogday trying to push someone away that he cares for and Bobby desperately trying to stay with someone she cares for.

Dogday's fall is he cares too much.

Bobby's fall is she doesn't care enough. For herself.

Obviously they are talking to the player actually but my fanon ship brain interpreted it differently. I guess from there, albeit a doomed one, I shipped this ship fairly hard.

The rest of this rambling essay under the cut:

Why I think they work:

Dogday and Bobby’s relationship is mostly about balance. While Dogday’s the brave and daring leader of the group (except when there's a thunderstorm—he tries), Bobby’s the physically strong yet practical one. She’s a total powerhouse,(literal mama bear energy) ready to protect when needed, but only as a last resort. Dogday loves how protective she is, and Bobby really appreciates his loyalty, especially since it helps with her self-worth issues.

One of Bobby’s biggest insecurities is that she believes she’s annoying to her friends. Even though it’s clear she’s not, in the back of her mind, she constantly second-guesses her actions. She’ll wonder if hugging someone is the right move in the moment or if she’s overstepping. Dogday, on the other hand, is someone who thrives on affection and would never get tired of Bobby’s hugs, making him the perfect counter to her uncertainty.

Both of them would share a strong sense of humor, which helps them face life’s challenges with optimism. Dogday is especially good at this.  They know how to lighten the mood and bring joy to each other’s lives, even when the weight of everything starts to creep in.

Bobby’s also got a knack for stepping in when Dogday forgets to take care of himself. She’s nurturing, and in return, Dogday reminds her she’s worth it, which she sometimes forgets. Though Bobby’s not Dogday’s second-in-command (that’s usually Bubba Bubbaphant), she’s the one Dogday confides in emotionally when leadership wears him down.

Over time, Bobby finds herself leaning on Dogday, too, sharing her deepest insecurities and struggles with him.

What really makes them work is how much everyone trusts Bobby. She’s the keeper of everyone’s secrets because they just naturally open up to her. And eventually, Dogday becomes her rock, giving them this deep emotional connection where they’re both vulnerable and open with each other.

Bobby’s practicality also helps balance out Dogday’s crazier ideas. She rarely says “no” outright, but she’s good at restructuring them to make things safer or less chaotic. If safety’s not the issue, then they’re often the ones mediating when their friends have disagreements. They’ve both learned the importance of compromise and work together to bring peace to any tense situation.

I feel like their brief character descriptions show how good they would both be at this.

They’re known as the “mom and dad” of the group, always looking out for everyone’s physical and emotional well-being.

It’s funny how differently they approach things, like planning events—Dogday’s spontaneous energy versus Bobby’s structured organization—but they still make a great team.

In public, they’ve got this super cute Barbie/Ken - Mickey&Minnie vibe, showing their love for each other without hesitation. It’s strong, proud, and they never shy away from letting everyone know how much they mean to each other!

Character flaws/dark side of the ship:

At their darkest, Bobby and Dogday have some pretty complex flaws. Bobby, when she’s at her worst, can be manipulative. She’s got this way of playing on people’s emotions, sometimes twisting things to suit her needs, all while wearing a caring face. It’s like she knows people trust her and she uses that to her advantage, especially if she’s feeling insecure or threatened.

On the flip side, Dogday’s biggest weakness is his fear of hurting others. He’ll go to great lengths to avoid conflict, even if it means letting himself be hurt. He’s so afraid of causing pain or upsetting someone that he’ll bottle up his own feelings or allow himself to be taken advantage of.

This combination can be dangerous when their issues align, with Bobby’s manipulation and Dogday’s passive acceptance creating a pretty toxic dynamic in their worst moments. Thankfully this outcome is incredibly hard for me to see happening. It is still a possibility though.

(In some messed up but interesting fanfiction)

Other Stuff:

On the wiki I saw something incredibly minute but decided to go ahead and make something of it.  There is the idea, at least, that Dogday is named after “Dogstar” aka Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. If you think about Dogday being associated with Sirius, the Dog Star, and Bobby representing Ursa Major aka The Big Dipper, in my mind it symbolizes how their relationship works.

Sirius is the brightest star, leading the way, just like Dogday, who's bold, full of energy, and always guiding others. Bobby, on the other hand, is like Ursa Major—steady, reliable, and always there to support.

Their relationship reflects that balance: Dogday’s light and leadership are complemented by Bobby’s protective, grounding nature. Together, they’re like two guiding forces—he lights the way, and she provides the strength and stability needed to stay on course.

It’s almost like he can shine brighter because he knows she’s there, holding things together.

And for Bobby, Dogday is the spark that keeps her moving forward, even when she feels uncertain.

It’s also cool how Ursa Major is used for navigation, like Bobby helps Dogday find his way emotionally. Meanwhile, Sirius has been a marker of important times like the "dog days" of summer or the flooding of the Nile river, (The flooding of the Nile is celebrated btw, it's a good thing) just as Dogday marks big changes in Bobby’s life.

They balance each other out like the constellations they represent: one a guiding light, the other a steady, protective force in the background.

I think about the cardboard cutout order. Bobby and Dogday are among the last supposedly, holding out even longer than the athletic Hoppy. I interpret that to mean Bobby on her own has a strong will and some amount of bravery.

Not to throw shade at the others who fell before, as it could have all come down to bad luck.(or bad platforming skills--burn.)  But I bring the “possible” death order up as some might say Bobby’s sweet and caring nature means she is weak or useless. I don’t think so.

This is also why I characterize Bobby as sort of a lady-like yet cute bruiser. Dogday is brave but not the strongest critter by far.  Dogday is  Zelda and Bobby is Link lol.  Bobby Bearhug is his knight in fluffy armor, and Dogday is Bobby’s warm home.

There is a tragedy to this. If Bobby was one of the last two  with Dogday in the game. (Going by the order the cardboard cutouts are seen.) I imagine she was doing her best to support him, only for Dogday to abandon Bobby near the end. As the leader, Dogday did what he thought was best and it broke her, ultimately ending them both.

How the relationship Helps them grow:

Not wanting to end this on a down note I’ll speak a bit more on how the relationship enhances both of them.

Bobby’s practical, more thoughtful approach doesn’t just temper Dogday’s adventurous spirit as what may be expected from a dynamic like this. In fact it enhances his daring. 

Yes, it'll ease him off riskier behavior but it enables him to be a more successful leader with her providing safety nets and or foundations for him to be confident. It's not just him willing confidence from within, there's another external pillar to  bolster his confidence. That pillar being her secret knowledge of their friends. While Bobby won't be spilling secrets, she'd certainly know how to guide Dogday in the right direction when it comes to helping the others.

She helps ensure that his ideas are successful and safe, so he'll not only be able to focus his energy on particulars but he'll have the confidence to be the best leader he can be, knowing he won't just come crashing down to earth.  

In turn Dogday's boundless energy, brings joy and spontaneity to Bobby’s more grounded maybe reserved, structured world.  Though she is strong she likely tends to fall back to what's familiar, to what's safe. There is strength in the familiar in the sense of you know for sure you are strong here, but out there things may be more uncertain. 

Out there you can feel weak. At least that's the perception for some with issues of self worth. But now with his energy, his enthusiasm, his optimism, and his light, she'll have the freedom to step out of her usual comfort zones and perhaps be more than she may have imagined. 

Sooo yeah. This ship is not bad. Nor is it boring. I'll never understand how this sentiment came about. Opposites attract isn't the only way a relationship can be interesting. Okay people?

 And that is all that I have to say! Thanks for listening to my CritterTalk.

[abacus-jpg]

Anyone else not understand why people are moving to cara. Like I understand it’s because ai and shit,, but like. What confuses me is as long as your art is on the internet, aslong as you chose to post your art online anywhere, doesn’t matter where, it is prone to being stolen by ai. To me ai is nothing more then when people trace your art and call it their own. Ofc I don’t want people to do it, but ultimately that will not stop them. I do have a cara account, I was the first to claim abacus. When I tried posting there a few times I’ve been met with an error message, alongside that the app is really buggy and slow. I don’t see why people feel the need to come up with new apps to post art on when you could just use tumblr, but then the argument with tumblr is that there’s no engagement. But if we all flock to tumblr like people are flocking to cara then I don’t see why engagement would be such a big issue. Even then, if engagement is your main concern with your art I feel like you should reevaluate why you are pursuing art in the first place. I had this struggle ages ago where I didn’t feel my art was worth anything because I couldn’t cap 10 likes. But I realized, my art is for me. I’m the one that should be enjoying it, and my reason for posting now is for other people to enjoy it, so if they don’t,, I really don’t care all the much. I understand it is really detouring to post ocs and to have zero engagement, but that’s just the way art is. Unless you are producing fanart consistently of shit that is made into content farms, I really don’t see how you can garner a following just doing ocs. That’s why, doing art for your own sake is more important than trying to please everyone. I can guarantee there’s atleast one stranger on the internet that will fw your stuff the way you want. And the more you post, the more the number will grow. Most of the time it’s gradual, but one goes to two, two goes to three. And maybe you’ll only get one or two. But the important thing is, there’s someone. If you feel like you have no one, remember your art is for yourself. You’ll always have one, even if that is yourself. This might all seem contradictive. But trust, only you matter when it comes to your own artwork.

This “speech”, if you can call it that, isn’t to deter people from drawing and posting their ocs. This is just to say, engagement shouldn’t matter. As long as you’re happy, that’s all the matters. Post and draw what you want aslong as it’s not straight ripping from someone else. Idc.

This whole thing was supposed to be abt Cara but it turned into a uhh,, Ted talk of sorts. I’m not saying people shouldn’t use cara, if it works for them then by all means go for it. But personally I will not be making it my main form of social media. In my opinion, it’ll be like that other art app people were using for a week before they forgot abt it, I forget the name of it but I remember the interface was a light pink, similar to Instagram,, but somehow worse.

IM GONNA SPECIFY THAT I DONT CONDONE AI STEALING PEOPLES ART EITHER,, just putting that out there because some people have a way of misunderstanding or misinterpretating things. Which is okay!! Because some people genuinely get confused and that’s alright. But like please don’t use so first handedly. With that being said, I’m just a nobody on the internet so why would you listen to me,, you won’t. But i uhh,, am gonna put that there anyways

Thanks if you read allat,, idk why you would but that’s anyways I guess😭😭😭

[jrob64]

Hook's First Trick or Treat (Reposted with new art!)

A CS Canon Compliant Story for CS Spooky Season/Autumnal Bingo

I'm jumping on the hayride wagon and giving you my first offering for Spooky Season/Autumnal Bingo, the brainchild of @hollyethecurious. Everyone owes her a big thank you for inspiring a fair few people to write some warm, seasonal tales and art for our favorite show and couple. Everything posted for the event can be found in this collection on Ao3.

I also owe thanks to @kmomof4 for checking over this story.

**Extra special thanks to @motherkatereloyshipper for the spectacular manips of Henry, Emma & Killian in their costumes!**

Summary: Hook has his first experience Trick or Treating in Storybrooke.

Rating: T

Words: 2542

Can also be read on Ao3 and ffn

*********

“Are you going trick or treating with us next Saturday, Hook?” Henry asked.

Killian looked up at the boy from where he sat on the sofa beside Emma. The three of them had just finished watching The Nightmare Before Christmas together at the loft, sharing a huge bowl of popcorn and sipping mugs of warm apple cider. Hook hadn’t been impressed with the drink until he enhanced it with rum.

The whole town was enjoying the peace which came with the banishment of Gold at the town line three weeks ago. Mary Margaret, David and baby Neal were currently on a weekend away at a small cabin in the woods, allowing Emma to have the loft to herself for a few days. She and Henry immediately invited Killian over for a movie marathon on Friday night, culminating with the Tim Burton classic.

“Do you mean there is such a thing as trick or treat, such as in the movie?”

“Yeah, but in Storybrooke, we never had it until after the curse broke,” Henry explained.

“Why is it called ‘trick or treat'?” Killian inquired.

Emma reached over and linked her hand with his. “Back when it started, if a child knocked on a person’s door and they didn’t give them a treat, the child played a trick on them. These days, it’s just kids dressing up in costumes and going door to door, asking for candy. It doesn’t really involve tricks any more.”

“So it’s a children’s holiday?”

“Not necessarily. Anybody can dress up, but usually only the kids get candy.”

“Last year, Dr. Hopper dressed as Paul Bunyan and had Pongo dressed as Babe, the big blue ox. They sat outside his house and passed out candy,” Henry explained. “Grandma and Grandpa were Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Remember, Mom?”

“How could I forget? Dad kept talking in that squeaky voice the whole evening, which made Mom giggle. It was cute at first, but got annoying before long.”

“They won cutest costumes at the Halloween party, though.”

“There’s a party, too?” Killian asked.

“Just a get together at Granny’s after trick or treating wraps up,” Emma said. “Granny gives out prizes for cutest, scariest, most original, and best group costume. She makes popcorn balls and caramel apples and has the diner very elaborately decorated for Halloween.”

“So will you go with us?” Henry asked again.

“Aye, it sounds like fun.”

“Awesome!” Henry exclaimed. “Are you going to dress up?”

“He can dress as a modern man, since he already spent hundreds of years dressed as a pirate,” Emma smirked.

“Perhaps your father will allow me to borrow some of his Prince Charming garb,” Killian teased.

“You looking like my father would give me nightmares,” Emma said, wryly.

Hook and Henry laughed. “What will you be wearing?” Hook asked the boy.

“I’m gonna be Legolas, from Lord of the Rings. Wanna see my costume?”

“Of course.”

Henry dashed over to the stairs and bounded up them, two at a time.

“Will you be dressing up, Swan?”

“Yeah, but I haven’t figured out what to wear yet.”

He leaned over and nuzzled his nose behind her ear, then murmured, “Pity you didn’t bring that wench dress home with you when we returned from the past.”

Emma shivered involuntarily. “I’m not sure that would have been appropriate to wear around my son.”

“You could always wear it when it’s just the two of us.”

“Those moments are few and far…”

“Here it is!” Henry shouted, jumping down the last three steps with the costume in his arms.

“The kid is proving my point,” Emma whispered.

Killian chuckled before turning his attention to Henry, who was holding up the costume. “Grandma is going to let me borrow her bow and quiver of arrows, and Ruby loaned me a long, blonde wig,” he said proudly.

Killian got up and walked over, using his hand and hook to stretch out the cloak and get a better look. “It’s quite handsome, lad.”

“Thanks! Granny made it for me. She might be able to make you something before next Saturday. She made this in one day.”

“I’ll put some thought into it,” Killian promised.

“Hey! Maybe you could be Aragorn and Mom could be Arwen. Wouldn’t that be cool?”

“Very, um…cool,” Killian agreed, unused to using the jargon, but pleased that Henry wanted to include him in his costume plans.

“Orrrr,” Henry said with a mischievous grin, “maybe Hook should be Legolas, since he already has the elf ears.”

Emma laughed, while Killian rolled his eyes.

They continued to discuss their costumes until Emma declared it was time for Henry to go to bed. After he went upstairs, Emma and Killian remained on the sofa, talking quietly and kissing. When they were sure Henry was sound asleep, they took advantage of Emma’s parents being absent from the loft.

*********

“Mom, are you ready yet?” Henry called. “All the good candy is going to be gone if we don’t leave pretty soon!”

Emma emerged from the bathroom, placing a large hoop earring into her lobe. “Calm down, kid. Trick or treating doesn’t even start for…” she checked the clock on the wall in the kitchen, “ten minutes.”

“Is Killian coming here or are we meeting him at the boarding…”

He was interrupted by a knock on the door. “Guess that answers your question,” she said, grinning at her son as she moved to open the door.

When she did, she was momentarily taken aback at the figure on the other side. Killian was dressed as the sexy ranger Aragorn head to toe, complete with crown, sword and chainmail armor.

“Wow!” Emma exclaimed. “You look amazing! Where did you find everything for that costume?”

Killian didn’t answer for several seconds, his eyes roaming up and down Emma’s green gown with silver accents. It was nearly an exact replica of Arwen’s in the coronation scene from Return of the King. Marco had even fashioned the silver crown, which sat atop the black wig she wore.

“Swan, you look…words fail me,” he managed to say, obviously gobsmacked.

“Yeah, yeah, we all look great,” Henry grumbled. “Can we go now?”

Killian entered the loft and offered his arm to Emma. “Shall we, milady?”

They trekked down the steps, being careful not to trip over their long cloaks.

“Seriously, where did you find all of that stuff?” Emma asked again, once they were outside.

“Belle let me look through Gold’s shop. I found most of it in there,” Killian said, holding his arm out to examine the chainmail. “Lady Lucas did create the cloak for me, though.”

“Well, it turned out fantastic. I’ve always had a bit of a crush on Aragorn and seeing you dressed like him is…” She pinched her fingers together, brought them to her lips, kissed them, then flicked her wrist and spread her fingers apart as if she was throwing the kiss into the air.

“What exactly does that gesture mean?” he asked.

“Chef’s kiss. It means it’s perfect and I love it.”

“Ah, I see. I’m very happy you approve. Meanwhile, your costume is absolutely magnificent. Did Granny make it?”

“This is actually one of my mother’s capes and a gown she brought from the Enchanted Forest. Granny altered it and added the silver embellishments. It turned out pretty good.”

“‘Pretty good’ is a vast understatement, Love. It truly enhances your beauty. I hope you will wear it again once this trick or treating is over.”

Emma laughed. “Storybrooke doesn’t really have a place where I can wear this type of gown.”

Killian leaned in to whisper in her ear. “It looks lovely on you, but it would also look lovely on my bedroom floor.”

“You know that hasn’t worked out well for us in the past because of Granny’s werewolf hearing.”

“Hmmm. I guess we’ll just have to come up with a way to keep you quiet while you’re in the throes of passion, Love.”

“I’m not the only one who makes noise. If you recall, you’re the one who…”

“Would you two stop being all lovey-dovey and come on?” Henry called over his shoulder.

Emma and Killian exchanged amused glances and increased their pace.

They soon began seeing other costumed townspeople walking up and down the sidewalks. Children were racing up on porches, knocking and shrieking “Trick or treat!” as soon as the doors opened.

Henry joined the fray while Emma and Killian remained on the sidewalk, heads swiveling to take in all of the colorful, creative costumes on both the children and their parents. As they moved closer to the center of town, Emma noticed Killian had become rather quiet. While earlier, he was making astute and amusing observations about the costumes, now he barely spoke a word. She also noted the puzzled and somewhat sad expression he wore.

By the time they reached the clock tower, Emma was beginning to worry about her boyfriend. He didn’t seem to be having any fun and she had to practically drag him along from one place to another. Even seeing Archie dressed as Woody, the cowboy from the Toy Story movies, with Pongo in a Slinky Dog costume didn’t cheer him up.

Henry was oblivious to Hook’s discomfort, too busy sprinting from house to house and business to business with his bulging treat bag. When he ran up to them and breathlessly asked if he could finish trick or treating with his friends and join them at Granny’s later, Emma readily agreed. She was eager to go somewhere private and talk to Killian, hopefully finding out what was bothering him.

Grabbing his hand, she pulled him into a nearby alley. Fully aware that asking him if he was alright would lead to him insisting he was fine, she cut to the chase. “Hey, Killian, tell me what’s wrong. And don’t say nothing, because I can read you like an open book, too.”

He sighed heavily and looked down, studying his boots for several seconds. Then he raised his head and used his hook to gesture toward the street. “What do you see out there, Swan?”

Emma kept her eyes on him for another moment or two before turning to look at the chaotic scene. “I see a bunch of kids dressed in costumes, running around like maniacs, chasing a week-long sugar high. I also see silly-looking adults who dressed up just to please their kids.”

“Do you know what I see?”

“You don’t see the same thing?”

“Aye, but it seems many people, young and old, are dressed as pirates.”

“Yeah, pirates are always a popular costume choice for Halloween. You should take that as a compliment. You know what they say - imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

“Look closer, Swan. The majority of them have a plastic hook over their hand.”

Emma turned to face him. “That bothers you?” she asked softly.

He gave a slight shrug. “Wouldn’t it bother you if people made fun of your…disability?”

Emma felt like kicking herself. Why had she failed to recognize the possibility that he would interpret the costume accessory to be a source of mockery?

“Oh, Killian,” she said. “I don’t think they’re making fun of you. It’s just that you’re one of the only pirates they know and you have a hook. I saw a couple of them with red knit hats like Smee’s.”

“A hat is quite different from my hook. I wear it out of necessity. I find it insulting that they would treat it as a source of amusement.”

Emma saw the same hurt in Killian’s eyes that she had seen on a few occasions when he felt inadequate because he lacked a hand. She reached up to cup his face, brushing her thumbs over his cheekbones. “Do you remember when we went out on our first date? When you made that deal with Gold to give you your hand back?”

“Of course. I felt like a whole man for the first time in centuries.”

“When you gave me that rose, I didn’t even realize you were using your hand until my mother brought it to my attention.”

“That only proves you weren’t being very observant,” he grumbled.

“No, it shows that it doesn’t matter to me whether you have a hook or a hand. I see you for the person you are - the sweet, thoughtful, protective, devilishly handsome man who won my heart.” She pushed up to her toes and kissed him, then murmured against his lips, “Besides, you’re very proficient with that hook in certain…intimate situations.”

A grin spread across his face. “You do seem to enjoy me wearing it on those occasions.”

“Mmhmm, and I don’t consider it a disability because you’ve definitely proven you have a lot of ability to use it for very enjoyable purposes.”

Killian ran his nose along the slope of her throat. “Perhaps I’ll show you just how proficient I am with it later tonight.”

Emma bit her bottom lip. “I have been practicing a silencing spell that would soundproof your room. Do you, uh…would you like for me to try it tonight?”

“Aye, Love,” he murmured, nibbling on her earlobe.

“What if it…doesn’t work?” she gasped.

“Well, then, I suppose I’ll have to turn my charm on Lady Lucas to encourage her to ignore what she hears.”

Emma’s giggle was cut short by Henry asking, “Are you guys coming to the party? I want to win best group costume.”

They hadn’t heard him approach and both jumped slightly. Emma’s face reddened immediately and Hook took pleasure in seeing the color spread as far down as the widely scooped neck of her gown.

“We’ll be right there, lad. Just give us a minute to finish our…discussion.”

Henry rolled his eyes. “I’m not stupid. I know you guys came in here to make out. Stop being gross and come on.” He turned on his heel and headed toward the diner.

Emma looked at Killian with a mischievous grin. “My dad’s right - it’s quite satisfying to be able to embarrass my kid. But we better go. If we miss Granny giving out the prizes, he’s never gonna forgive us.”

Killian grimaced slightly. “I’ll be along in a minute. I just need to…”

Understanding suddenly dawned on Emma. She glanced down, then back up, amusement dancing in her eyes. “Yeah, you’re right. I guess it wouldn’t do for Aragorn to win best costume while sporting a very prominent bulge in his trousers!”

*********

They made it to the judging in time and unanimously won the award for best group costume. Once the party wound down, Emma said goodnight to Henry and watched him leave with Regina, gripping his huge bag of candy and the trophy. Then she and Killian covertly left the diner to slip off to his room in the boarding house.

Emma performed the silencing spell to perfection, despite her pirate trying to distract her in the most pleasurable of ways. And Killian was correct - Emma’s dress did look fetching on his bedroom floor, but not as fetching as the woman who had worn it, writhing and moaning beneath him as he showed her new tricks with his hook.

Afterwards, they agreed their lovemaking was the best treat of the day.

*********

Thank you for reading! Happy Autumn!

@qualitycoffeethings @grimmswan @cs-rylie @wyntereyez @kmomof4

@hookedmom @ultraluckycatnd @paradiselady19 @xarandomdreamx @motherkatereloyshipper

@lfh1226-linda @pawshapedheart @vampcoffeegyrl23 @tiganasummertree @bluewildcatfanatic

@eleveneitherway @elfiola @kday426 @julieenchanted-swans @gingerchangeling

@andiirivera @djlbg @jonesfandomfanatic @snowbellewells @anmylica

@booksteaandtoomuchtv @cocohook38 @ilovemesomekillianjones @zaharadessert @lyssapup27

@undercaffinatednightmare @winterbaby89 @jennjenn615 @xsajx @jackieorioncat

@teamhook @soniccat @jarienn972 @softkilly @kymbersmith-90

@apiratewhopines @hollyethecurious @laianely @resident-of-storybrooke @exhaustedpirate

@caught-in-the-filter @stahlop @veryverynotgoodwrites @darkshadow7 @fleurdepetite

@whimsicallyenchantedrose @earanemith @superchocovian @idristardis @captainswan-kellie

@beckettj @killihan-jones

[mrprettywhenhecries]

sneak peak of my baron/reader meet cute

*takes place post movie, slight spoilers*

“Oh, before I forget!” your mother exclaimed, turning her chair toward you.  

“What?” you asked, a little taken aback by the excitement on her face.

“You know the lady from across the hall?”

“Uhm, yeah, Ms. Eda, right?  She’s a sweet lady,” you replied, frowning a little in confusion, wondering why she was asking you about that.

“You know she has a son, right?  Oh, I can’t remember his name,” she said, snapping her fingers as if that would help her remember.

“Oh no.  No, no nonono,” you exclaimed, cutting her off before she could continue her thought.

“What?  No, listen!  He refilled my bird feeder the other day,” she said, gesturing to the window.  “He’s a sweet boy,” she insisted, raising her eyebrows at you.

“Mom!” you exclaimed, huffing a wry laugh, your hand coming up to cover your face in embarrassment.  “Stop trying to set me up with your hall mate’s son!” you exclaimed, feeling your face warm.

“Why not?  You’re single, as far as I know, he’s single, and you know he cut his hair?  He’s actually very handsome–”

“I don’t care how cute he is, I’m not gunna hit on Eda’s son just because I’m single,” you exclaimed, barely registering the sound of a door shutting in the hall.

“That’s a shame.”

The amused voice behind you nearly made you leap out of your skin and you gave a sharp yelp as you spun around, only to find the very man you’d been talking about standing in the doorway, a lopsided grin tugging at his lips.

If your face was warm before, it was practically on fire now and you wanted to crawl under a rock and never come out.

However, you couldn’t help but notice that your mother was right—he was rather handsome.  His dark chestnut hair was shorter now, though not short by any means, with an artful unruliness to it that looked almost effortless.  His dark brown eyes practically danced when the mid-morning light shining through the southern facing window hit them just right, turning them almost golden with the faintest hint of green around the edges.

He looked well groomed, a smart leather jacket hung open over his blue button down tucked into his dark trousers, a far cry from his appearance the last time you’d seen him a couple weeks ago, his hair hanging down to his shoulders and in need of a good brush.

“Didn’t mean to startle ya, sorry ‘bout that,” he chuckled, his grin turning apologetic, while a soft flush crept across his face as his eyes met yours.  His voice was warm, like melted butter, with only the barest hint of a drawl to it, but it made your heart skip a beat just the same.

Quickly trying to compose yourself, you cleared your throat, trying to work moisture back into your mouth.

“No, I… I forgot I’d left the door open,” you spluttered.

“Well, hullo there,” your mom greeted, interrupting you and waving him closer.  “C’mon in, come closer so I can get a proper look at you,” she said and Eda’s son shared a grin with you before stepping into the room and letting your mom take his hands.

“Now what is your name again, darlin’?” she asked and he shifted his weight from foot to foot, his brows furrowing for a moment, as if thinking.

“You can call me Baron,” he answered with a nod, holding her gaze and she seemed pleased.

“Baron,” she repeated, as if savouring the name before her eyes flicked to you.  “This is my daughter—“ she introduced, telling him your name as well.

Baron grinned, his eyes finding yours.  “It’s good to finally have a name to put with a face,” he murmured, ducking his head to listen as your mom whispered something in his ear.  He huffed a soft laugh, a slightly bewildered smile playing at his lips as he straightened, and you frowned slightly, wondering what exactly she’d said.

“Mama?” you questioned, suspicion leeching in, only growing when she merely smiled at you like the cat that got the cream, and eased herself back into her chair, a mischievous glint to her eye.

“What’d she say to you?” you asked, turning back to Baron who still wore a bemused grin.

“She said, I’d be a fool if I didn’t ask you to get a drink with me.”

Your mouth fell open, embarrassment washing over you and you looked from Baron to your mom and back, horrified.  “Oh my God,” you groaned, at a loss for words, hoping she hadn’t made him too uncomfortable, but Baron shrugged, amusement dancing in his brown eyes.

“I’ve been called worse before, but my mama certainly didn’t raise herself a fool,” he chuckled, his gaze lingering on your face.  “So, what d’ya say?  Wanna grab a coffee?” he asked, nodding toward the door, a hopeful look crossing his face and you blinked, taken aback.

“Uhm, I–”

“Well, go on then,” your mom urged and you gave a small jump, almost having forgotten she was there.  “If you don’t go, I will.”

[enigmatist17]

Kind of a sequel to this post based off AU art done by @chiliger

-------

"...nearly made him jump 20 feet into the air. He was not amused."

The laughter that filled the air was loud enough to cover the snort of amusement that Cody let out as he sipped his drink.

"I hope you got a vid of that, Kenobi never gets scared as far as I know." Wolffe sat forward with a grin, his elongated canines startling some nearby natborns that were passing by 79's. It wasn't often a lot of the commanders were on Coruscant at the same time, and in honor they were gifted the expansive table that overlooked the street and hyperlane outside the bar.

"Oh yea, copied it the second he stalked off to his quarters." Cody chuckled, sitting back with a crack of his neck.

"So, he still talk to you like a nervous shiny when he sees your teeth?" Bly smirked, stealing the last of the bar food that Fox had ordered some time ago.

"Not as much, but if he thinks I don't feel the way he watches me all the time, he's mistaken."

"So...are you going to take your shot?" Fox took a swig of his drink, quite firmly in the drunk-but-not-overly-so department. "Because if not..."

"Don't..." Cody growled, and bares his teeth at Fox as the others giggle and laugh at the display.

"Please, Foxy here has his own prey." Rex snickered from his corner of the table, using Ponds as a support to stay upright. He may or may not have had more than a few drinks, and may or may not be finding this entire situation hilarious. "More than one I've heard too?" Rex is sent into some proper laughter when Fox's much louder growl and bared teeth silences a few nearby tables, officers and various troopers freezing as they seemingly await some sort of standoff before realizing it had nothing to do to them. A quick glanced shows that Fox is focused on someone at his table and not on any of them, and slowly conversation resumes save the occasional look their way.

It was never wise to be around a higher ranked officer when they're facing off over someone they had feelings for.

"Careful Rex, might end up arrested until you're sober." Bly snickered, and Fox snorts in amusement as he relaxes back into his seat.

"I am just Fox right now, and I am going to keep drinking until I forget what the GAR is." Fox waved for a fresh round, Cody patting his shoulder with a nod.

"Then let's keep the stories coming eh? Maybe scare some of the others again. Should get you plenty drunk eh?"

Fox grinned, and raised his glass with a hum.

By the end of the night they're the last ones in 79's, so drunk and unaware the music had died down and people had left they failed to see a group of amused men sitting at the main bar.

"How much longer do you think it'll take?" Anakin Skywalker grinned, sipping a water as he watched the commanders burst into laughter about something.

"A few minutes, Ponds appears to be slowly falling asleep." Plo Koon hummed, using the bar as a seat in his meditation pose.

"I do hope so." Obi-Wan Kenobi was trying very hard not to blush as he listened to Cody talk about an encounter they had shared a few weeks ago. Mace Windu was staring at him, and he was going to be damned if he let the man have a single inch of blackmail material via his reaction.

"What, all the glittering teeth over there setting you off?" Anakin snorted into his drink, jumping out of the way when a bar stool is thrown in his direction. The noise attracted the attention of the drunken crew, who finally seemed to realize that there were Jetti in a very empty bar, and attempt to stand at attention.

Instead, Bly and Wolffe trip over their own feet, and without Fox and Rex grabbing them, they would have fallen flat on their faces.

"At ease, at ease." Plo chuckled, moving to stand as the group stumble their way down towards the bar. "We thought you may want some assistance, you all are quite inebriated."

"That means drunk." Bly snickered, and everyone but Wolffe starts giggling as their Jetti watch on with some soft chuckles among them.

"Come, you can stay in the Temple tonight, it's much closer than your barracks." Windu waved his hand to start turning off the last of the lighting the owners had left on, Plo and Anakin becoming some support for the drunk men to remain upright. Cody suspiciously was the closest to Obi-Wan, hugging the man from behind and all but melding them together.

"Hello sir." Obi-Wan is very aware that Cody is dragging his feet, the others already out the door by the time the two of them had made it even halfway across the room. "Didn't see you waiting for us."

"It's quite alright." Obi-Wan coughed, nearly jumping again when Cody presses his face against his neck. "Cody?"

"Mhm?"

"May I ask why you're uh, so close to my neck?" Obi-Wan bites his tongue when he feels Cody hum, the noise rumbling in his chest.

"No reason." The clone purred, and mumbles something Obi-Wan can't catch.

"Come, there should be a vehicle for us to use." Obi-Wan knows the others have already gone, and is grateful that Mace in particular isn't there to tease him. He goes to say something else, but whatever words that were forming in his mind are suddenly scattered when Cody presses a kiss to his neck. The man is letting his canines purposefully drag as he kisses a trail along Obi-Wan's shoulder, pushing away thoughts of wanting to do more as he finally pulls away from his flustered general.

"Coming general?" The drunken man grinned, stepping around so he could get a look at the wide-eyed Jetti.

"....you are an absolute bastard." Obi-Wan's voice is strained as the two finally leave the bar, Obi-Wan locking the door as Cody stumbles to the nearby speeder. "Passenger seat Comm-dear."

Now it was his turn to see the way Cody looked back, reminding him of a fresh-faced solider the way he stumbles into the passenger side of the speeder.

Obi-Wan is grinning the entire ride to the Temple, and Cody has his face in his hands at being the one to be an embarrassed mess upon their arrival.

Oh well, there's always next time.

[amethystfairy1]

Hi Amethyst! It's been a hot minute since I sent an ask in, but I have been reading both fics every day (still obsessed lmao) (also I name changed btw, used to be ElenaLoo)

Anyways, I had written a whole ask waxing eloquent on all the wonderful things going on in ttsbc, but I accidentally shut off my computer partway through and frankly I can't be bothered to write it all out again lmao. Just. It's beautiful (wow isnt that so meaningful and deep? im sure you're feeling very complimented rn)

The REAL thing I wanted to talk about was Traveling thieves (which is by far my favorite fanfic of ALL TIME), and all the amazingness in ttsbc made me forget it even existed for the past few weeks. But the other day I was just like "oh yeah. Traveling thieves." and then i reread the whole thing. whoopsies.

Ummm anywyas there's so many thoughts in my head about all the little guys, but recently I've been on an Imp and Skizz obsession (just scroll on my page for .2 seconds and you'll see) and YOU. You left them on a CLIFFHANGER. >:((( (not actually mad btw). I just. so excited for them. They're out alone in the woods right now and Skizz is going to have the perfect opportunity to kill Impulse and get away and I just am falling apart thinking about them. (I drew them to cope lol, posted on my blog but also later here so that I can talk about it more). I can see this playing out a few ways. Obviously Skizz isn't actually going to kill Impulse, so he's either going to 1) make up some excuse as to why he can't do it right then, but still plans to do it eventually, or 2) he does it. but he doesn't. Skizz attacks Impulse when he's not expecting it, there's a scuffle, and Skizz comes out on top---BUT THEN HE CAN"T FINISH IT!!! and it's a whole thing where even tho skizz tried to kill him, imp is still so understanding and skizz cries and impulse just freaking gives him a hug and

sigh

Whatever you do will be beautiful, I'm sure. I think you mentioned you're switching to tt after this fic, so crossing my fingers it's imp and skizz. (Though, would also be very happy with Martyn and Ren :P) (or anything really i just love tt)

Anyways, I had the art on my blog but I'm also putting it here so i can say things about it to you

Mostly I'm just very proud of their expressions, with Impulse being all concerned glancing over at Skizz, meanwhile Skizz is completely deadpan staring forwards, also looking very tired bc he needs a break from this universe. Also I switched up my Impulse design a lil bit from last time (if u even remember that lol it was months ago now). you would think, just looking at them, that Impulse took way longer to design, but nope, I was messing around with Skizz for at least double the time, trying to figure out how to have him facing forward whilst still showing some of the scars on his back. I gave up eventually xD (all that means is that im gonna have to draw him again later, from different angles)

actually that made me remember a question I had: are you planning to ship Imp and Skizz? Ik you said Zed and Tango are going to be a thing far in the future, but... skizzpulse? plzzzz plz pretty please haha im not obsessed

aaaaaand that reminds me of another question, is skizz going to be in ttsbc? (pretty please also same question as tt, if he was in ttsbc, are him and impulse together? Im addicted to them all i care about these days is some good imp and skizz shipfics, and you're such a fantastic writer, both with plot and the vibes of the words themselves. u could write such good imp and skizz. just imagine the possibilites! (am i selling it?))

aaaaaanyways. im gonna go reread the old tt skizz fics because theyre delicious and painful, like eating knives. u have a good day :))

HIIIIIII

I ADORE THIS ART SO MUCH! I gave you all my rambles on the reblog but it's SOOOOO COOL!

I'm sad the waxing eloquent about TTSBC is gone 😭 but that's ok!

I'm so glad you're enjoying TT and all the drama going on in there! Imp and Skizz are definitely having a time and a half with all of this nonsense going on...I love all your theories! I won't confirm or deny anything of course, but I'm so happy you're excited for them!

I will not be shipping Imp and Skizz, sorry! I just personally don't ship them, so they're gonna remain platonic...I mean, in TT who knows what the hell they're doing to be fair 😆 but yeah, Zedango is going to be a thing in the distant future, but no Skizzpulse! Sorry!

Skizz is not in TTSBC at the moment, that doesn't mean he never will be! Just haven't found a spot for him yet...and no, he also would not be with Impulse, I'm so sorry I just don't ship them personally! I think it's a very cute ship tho!

Enjoy rereading the TT Skizz fics!!! Thank you again for the gorgeous art!!!! I love it!!! 💖

[ppenguinpperson]

cardiomyocytes and connective tissue @nopanamaman

I’ve wanted to do a fic like this for some time now, a ‘thank you’ letter to PAFL and its community of sorts. I’m happy I finally got around to writing it:) 

I wasn’t sure whether I should do this or not, but, hey! It might make someone feel a bit better!! Or, reading the fic will. That’s enough reason, I think, and you don’t have to read this, of course, no matter who you are.

First of all, I want to talk about PAFL a bit.

The first PAFL song I listened to was PiP. I saw its thumbnail when listening to some other music youtube, and so, I listened to it. Oh boy am I glad I did:) I remember thinking how cool it is that someone's making songs for their OCs and that people are interested in them. I could see so much love for the characters in it. I was so happy when I discovered there were more songs like that!! This was around when Comfort Zone had first come out, a week or two after at most. That was two years ago. I’ve been obsessed ever since.

I love PAFL. I genuinely love that songs haven’t been coming out much lately. Like, there’s media that comes out weekly and sucks shit. I’m glad Ferry is taking their time with this!!! Even if all we get each year is one song, that’s cool, because the community is wonderful and we also get doodles and art and now patreon stuff.. yippee yay… !!! And even if we didn’t. who the fuck caressss!!!!! I love coming up with AUs and OCs and theorizing with my friends!!! the time between songs gives us time to do all that:)

The characters are so charming. Every member of the cast has been a fave of mine at some point or another. They’re all so, real! I love them! I love how they fuck up and I love how they get fucked over and I love how they get exploded and killed and shot and hugged and saved and helped!!! They’re human… might not make sense, but i rlly do like them…

It’s so neat looking back at older songs and seeing how stuff’s changed. The art style, the music, it’s all so nice to look back on. Even if I wasn’t there for it.

And don’t even get me started on the worldbuilding..  Everyone say thank you to Boris Strugackij and Arkadij Strugackij for making roadside picnic and inspiring Ferry to make this… so lovely and neat. wonderful. I have not read it myself, but I might, just to be able to make my own pafl OCs more swagger..

So. This fic.

I can’t mention two years ago without at least mentioning my depression.

I can’t remember most of last year, speaking truthfully. Parts of 2021 are also fuzzy. Depression and anxiety are terrible, would not recommend. This feels cheesy to say, but it does get better!!! Slowly, unsteadily, it gets better!!! I don’t mean for this part of the post to be a ‘feel bad for me’ thing at all. Do not. I am safe and healthy now and I couldn’t be happier to be here right now.

Is life good now?? Sorta, but what matters to me right now is, I’m happy!!! It feels so surreal. I never thought I’d be like this. A part of me wants to be angry, to get depressed again about how I could have been happy all this time. But I won’t!!! Because then I’d spiral and forget another year, and, I don’t want that!

Which is so cool!!! I can like, fucking, do stuff now!! I can throw away the bad thoughts, embrace the good ones, encourage myself!!! I do things!!! I go outside and goddd dude that’s so good!! I go outside!!!

I’m doing stuff! I’m drawing, writing, cleaning my room, taking care of myself!!! If I didn’t stay alive to enjoy these small joys, what am I even here for?? 

And I’m alive!!! I’m here!!! I made it, I’m here, writing this on 10th november, 2023, and I’m ALIVE!!!! How cool is that??? 

And yea, the world is shitty, it sucks ass, but, my friends don’t!!!:3 and that’s more than enough for me… SHOUT OUT TO MY FRIENDS!!! I LOVE YOU DUDES!!!

Moving on:

It doesn’t feel right to say that I’m here now only to PAFL. But, what I can say is that it’s been a wonderful crutch for me!! It’s been something to focus on, something silly, but also something I can relate to, and something that inspires me to make my own stuff! I’d most likely still be here, were it not for these silly songs.. but, not sure I’d be as alive as I am now! Unsure if my heart would feel right in my chest! And I wouldn’t have met my amazing friends!!!! Everyone here is so nice.

Dima may be a bit OOC in this fic, and that's because! This fic is based on my own experiences, which, i don’t think is bad…

I could talk here forever about how it gets better. Butttt to be quite honest I don’t wanna lol. I just wanna say, Thank you! to Parties are for Losers, for being cool. 

(Though I also wanna say, don’t put Ferry on a pedestal, they’re human, we all make mistakes, all that stuff.)

Ok time to go back to my manly Sergei ways and never talk about emotions ever again. or as anya would say: FUCK IT WE BALL!!!!!

[kalivasquezart]

Just wanted to say that I absolutely love your au about the Pioneer. Its so well thought out and just overall amazing and oh boy dont even get me started on your art— absolutely beautiful💖💕

I also am working on an au based off of Artis pups and when I found you I was like 🫢🫵 Very similar ideas 👀👀👀Also Hunter as Pioneer’s mentor is SUCH A COOL CONCEPT— Like like cause Hunters my favorite scug and the fact that you included him in your au and as Marbles’ mentor is just *squeals* but it also makes a lot of sense considering he comes a little bit after Arti and is one of the few scugs who can encounter pups in their campaign. I also wanted to ask if its okay with you if I use that idea/concept in my own au 👉👈

I was also thinking about Pioneer’s brother— Ik you said that you hc him as being dead, like officially, but I thought it would be interesting if he was still alive. I personally was inspired to let him live in my au simply because of some official art of Gorum (specifically his endings art especially the food quest one where he has a suspiciously familiar green slugpup). I was thinking something like what happened to Surv and Monk (the one-way pipe considering the fact that he kind of began to drift to the right as he sank) happened to him and Gorum found him. Idk these are just ideas Im using for my own au but thought I would share.

I just realized this is super long sorry HANDNAND I am insane and write too much

ahhhh thank you for the kind words skek YOU FLATTER ME~

[there are rain world spoilers regarding artificer's capaign below, be warned]

while my current headcanon is that the green pup died, i've been thinking very hard about it for the last week or so, and IMO there's a high chance i will retcon that. if the pipe thing is canon to Surv/Monk campaigns then i'm even more eager to adopt that idea. my only real hold-up about the pup was that we clearly see it drown in Arti's dream (the same flashing aura behaviour when you swim underwater), and if he really did drown then the only way to bring him back to life would be through karmic rebirth "last checkpoint save" kind of thing… which feels a bit cheap? a little too simple for me. i'm heavily biased here, because a while ago i read an interesting lore post of someone trying to explain why Arti's pups wouldn't "respawn" if they were killed, while Arti did. in short, the pups were too young to be bound by karma and so when they died, they died for good (reincarnated as a different creature, maybe) - but Artificer being an adult and already having experienced the urges before, was brought back. if i can, i will try to find that post again, and link it here.

ANYWAY yeah, personal AUs don't have to strictly comform to the game's canon, i keep forgetting about that. hell, i've seen people revive scav king or, i dunno, SOS from the dead, and they made it work.

speaking of my AU again, i may also have headcanon'd Arti's mate as a semi-aquatic scug (less freaky than riv tho), and so Bryn/green pup would have inherited some of those genes, making him more likely to survive the drowning. so yeah, i think i like the storytelling potential of keeping the pup alive, althought i'd have to sit down and do a proper brainstorming on what that means… when Arti and Marbles eventually reunite with their long lost other half of the family.

by the way, if you (or anyone else reading this post) wants to use my ideas in their own AU then i'm okay with that! no need to credit or anything. many people come up with similar concepts anyway, it'd be silly to try and police them on it.

[bigdumbbambieyes]

so, i've been inspired by @intothedysphoria and wanted to write my own little positivity post for the people that i've connected with through this fandom!! 🤍

to start off, @intothedysphoria, thank you so much for being the shining light that you are in this fandom. it can be a dark place at times and your efforts towards being a positive person (even when it's hard for you) is truly admirable!

my bub, my best friend, @hephaestn!! I'll never forget the day I decided to DM you and be the annoying little shit that I am and our friendship was born!! you bring me so much joy on a daily basis and I know I can count on you to cheer me up when I need it, be a rational voice when I'm being a mean girl kfkjng and being such a talented writer that makes me feel the most incredible things!

god's funniest little clown @martianclown, you are my circus peanut and i adore you and our conversations so much! you are incredibly talented at what you do and you deserve only the best in life, thank you for allowing me to be your friend!

my sweet @akioukun, you are like the sun with the way I can turn to you and you immediately warm me and make me smile. your talent and musing are unmatched and you are such a delight, I admire you greatly and appreciate you sm!

the best co-captain around, @thatgirlwithasquid, thank you for always being you and for giving me the best cunningway content I could ever ask for, you have inspired me in so many ways and I appreciate your friendship w me!

my fellow Canadian, @chrisbitchtree, thank you for being the world's best beta reader and such an amazing person, I appreciate you more than you know! your writing is so sweet and I admire it and you so much, you've put a smile on my face when I've needed it!

@starkstruck27 you have sent me numerous asks saying the sweetest things, you continue to make my day whenever you do - you are so incredibly sweet and I appreciate you so much!

my hilarious moot @harringroveera, you have made me laugh with your memes time and time again, and you've inspired some of my writing with them, too!! I can always count on you to put a smile on my face, so I thank you so much for that.

the equally hilarious @shieldofiron, your memes and posts have delighted me for a very long time and I really appreciate you for that - I also deeply admire how you write such quality fics so quickly, I am truly in awe of you and your talent. I also must personally thank you for getting me into munver lol!

@dragonflylady77, you have always been so supportive of me from the beginning and I must thank you a million times over! you always have something nice to say about everyone and I truly believe that without you, this community wouldn't be the same.

the talented @adelacreations, you are such a generous and passionate person, I admire you and your art and your writing!! your creativity is also something I very much admire, please keep being your lovely self!

@spaceofentropy thank you for always saying such kind things about my writing, you are so lovely and I adore you so much!! I still remember that time I was feeling really down and you cheered me up, I hold that moment close to my heart.

hi @discodeviant you are so incredibly talented and I still adore the prom ficlet you wrote for me all those weeks (months?) ago!! your writing is beautiful and I admire it and you sm, thank you for sharing it with us all!

@weird-an I continue to be in awe of your writing and I remember being 'new' to the fandom last year and just...having my jaw be on the floor every time I read one of your ficlets! I admire you greatly and hope that you continue to write forever and ever!

sweet @grey-sides, I know we don't talk much but when we do, I always enjoy it! your writing is phenomenal and I remember you were one of the first writers I came across when I really became active in the fandom last year! I adore you and your writing, please never stop making what makes you happy!

@femmebilly, hi honey, I miss you!! You are one of the first friends I made in this fandom and I still have such a soft spot for you! You've always been so supportive of me and everyone in this fandom and without you, it would be a darker place. Thank you for being my lovely friend.

@deedoop you will forever and always make me laugh with your posts and I've told you this many times but I simply MUST tell you again, lovely!! give Billy's jar a kiss for me and take one for yourself, too! thank you for being such an amazing person!

my darling @valsyngur, my Steve!! this must be so random for you lol but I just wanted to tell you that I really adore you very much and what we're creating together, and I admire the art you create! you are such a sweetheart and I'm glad to call you my friend!

the sweetest @applewillowstone, thank you for inviting me to your server and for being so kind! you are incredibly talented in so many ways and I am in awe of you!! thank you for sharing your talent with us!

@destroya2005, you have picked me up with your words far too many times and I am in debt to you because of it (in the best way)! you are too sweet and you are so loving, thank you so much for being you!

@passivenovember, whenever you reblog one of my posts, you ALWAYS make me laugh and it's such a small thing but it truly makes my day! Your writing is also incredible and I just wanted to appreciate you in this post!

the lovely @oopsiedaisiesbaby, your writing is amazing and I love our mutual love for Lana!! you always leave the most lovely comments on my fics and posts and I appreciate you so, so much!

@ratbastardbilly, hello, I don't believe we've ever spoken but I just need you to know that your art holds a special place in my heart! you are so incredibly talented and I admire you greatly!

my sweet @simplydes, I am so happy that we've become friends!! You are so insanely talented and I love that I can just message you with whatever crazy little musing or hc I have about our boys and you return that energy! Your art is some of the most lovely I've ever seen and speaks to me on another level, thank you so much for sharing it with us!

my newest friend @hellfirefucker, you are such a little gremlin and I adore you so!! Your talent is so clear and you only get better and better with each piece! Thank you for picking me, choosing me, loving me (lol), I admire your talent and you always make me laugh whenever we chat!! thank you thank you so much!

@robthegoodfellow thank you for being such a delight to talk to!! I will forever fondly remember our Yellowjackets discussions after every ep nkjfgnj I can't wait for S3 so we can do it all again! Thank you for being such a lovely person!

@ihni, your art and writing is some of the first I'd seen when I first started posting hg and I want to thank you for continuously putting a smile on my face with it!! you are very lovely and I admire you!

@wickedlydevious, you took me in like a stray kitten once and have been lovely ever since!! lol I know we don't speak much but when we do, you are always so lovely!! thank you for making my fandom experience so much better!

there are also dozens upon dozens of artists and writers and just people that are so amazing and have impacted me in the best of ways so I will tag them here! Please know that I adore what you create and am in constant awe of you (in fact, maybe a little intimidated 😳) @thediktatortot, @metalscoops, @wrecked-fuse, @billyharringson, @callieb, @dreaminginpencil, @kallisto-k, @makeadealwithdean, @whenyouwishuponastar7, @suspiciouslackofclowns, @aggressiveviking, @writer-in-theory, @lilkiwiboi42, @billysbuttcheeks (idk why it won't let me tag you!), @lemonhitsu, @saberghatz, @thewaywardkees

I also want to give a heartfelt thank you to every single person who has either liked or reblogged my posts or took the time to say something nice to me or my writing because I am just a girl who is writing about what makes her happy and if my writing makes you feel even just a little spark of something, I know I've done good!! Thank you thank you thank you!!

Bambi 🤍

[choicesficwriterscreations]

December Creator of the Month: Oh-So-Youre-a-Nerd

Each month, CFWC highlights one of our talented fanfic writers or artists, and this month’s creator of the month is @oh-so-youre-a-nerd . We're very excited because Ascindio is our very first artist to be highlighted! We hope you will enjoy learning more about them and their work below! The writer is selected at random. More info can be found on the navigation page.

Quick Links:

Tumblr Blog Instagram

How do you want to be known on Tumblr? 

Ascindio 

More below...

1- When did you start playing Choices? What was the first book you played? 

I started playing in 2016, I can't remember if I read Endless Summer or Rules of Engagement first, but I ended up deleting the app after like 2 weeks cause I couldn't stop buying diamonds 😅🤦

I re-downloaded it about, ohh idk 2 years ago?

2- When and why did you join Choices fandom?

I joined the Fandom specifically on Tumblr and specifically for It Lives Within, which happened to come out right after I read the first two books 

3- How did you pick your blog name? 

I always try to seem cool and mysterious when I meet people irl, and then as soon as I open my mouth, I ruin it with some niche trivia or something, and they say,  “Oh, so you're a nerd.” 😂 Can't tell you how many times this exact phrase has been uttered to me. 

4- Pull up the first post in your archive, and tell us about it!  

This is the first Choices related post I made 😂 I was just thinking about the concept of what if characters make terrible decisions cause they're controlled by a player who is out of diamonds lol I was going to do a whole series of them (next was going to be lotr “fly on eagles to mordor?” *30 diamonds* or “simply walk”) but got lazy lol

5- Do you write fanfiction, create fan art, or are you one of those really gifted people who do both? 

Only art. God, I  WISH  I wrote too. I've thought about trying cause I have so many ideas floating around in my head, but at the end of the day, I'd rather spend my free time drawing. 

6- How long have you been creating for Choices and for any other fandoms?

For Choices, since early 2022

For other fandoms, since well, forever, but I only started posting around 2017/18

7- What is your favorite Choices book, and what is your favorite Choices book to create for?

Favorite Choices book is probably It Lives in the Woods. All of the characters were so interesting, I never got bored reading it, and it had an incredible twist that made sense but I still didn't see coming. 

Favorite to create for is probably Blades of Light and Shadow though because I am such a sucker for the fantasy aesthetic.

8- Share your first Choices fanfic or fan art that you posted with us. Do you still like it, or would you change it if you were creating it today?.

This isn't the first Choices art I made, but it IS the first I actually shared

And honestly, I DO still like it because I still remember the way I felt absolutely POSSESSED while drawing it (I hadn't drawn anything for *months*). I would definitely change the background, though. Those trees look like shit, and they're not even the correct type for the kind of forest they're in. 

9- What is your favorite piece of fiction or art that you created? 

My favorite Choices art I've done is probably this piece. 

10- Do you have a fic/art that you didn’t expect to be well received, but it was? What about one you expected to do well but found it could use a little more love?

I definitely didn't expect this one to do well at all as it was so hastily drawn

And I was sad this piece didn't get more love, it was such a dope scene and I was so excited about how the sword turned out

11- If you could only draw one style or type of art for the rest of your life, what would it be and why? 

I'm not sure if I'm interpreting the question right, but if I had to pick like a specific type of art, it would be digital, and I would want to do fan art. I have a hard time painting anything that I don't already have a deep connection with (so original art with no story behind it is usually a chore for me), and digital art is just so incredibly convenient and not messy and so so versatile. 

12 - Do you ever recognize yourself in any of your MCs or in your writing?

Because I use fiction as a way to safely process trauma/ grief/ other big emotions, each MC I make has a small part of me, whichever part I feel the need to explore at the time.

There's an amazing quote by Patrick Rothfuss that I feel explains it perfectly. 

It's from Wise Man's Fear

“These folk knew all about death. They killed their own livestock. They died from fevers, falls, or broken bones gone sour. Death was like an unpleasant neighbor. You didn’t talk about him for fear he might hear you and decide to pay a visit.

Except for stories, of course. Tales of poisoned kings and duels and old wars were fine. They dressed death in foreign clothes and sent him far from your door. A chimney fire or the croup cough were terrifying. But Gibea’s trial or the siege of Enfast, those were different. They were like prayers, like charms muttered late at night when you were walking alone in the dark. Stories were like ha’penny amulets you bought from a peddler, just in case.”

13 - What element of writing/art do you struggle with most?

I have a very difficult time making the poses seem natural and flowing. My all time favorite art is Baroque/Renaissance style and how fluid the poses are, how soft the skin looks, how delicately it's all done. Obviously, I will always have my own style, but those are things that I so want to incorporate but never seem to get quite right, and it drives me crazy 😂

14 - Do you have any neglected work you really want to finish?

Not really. I mean, I have a ton of unfinished work, but as soon as the window of inspiration passes, I just can't get myself to care enough about it to finish it (insert Jake the Dog, “now it's gone, and I don't care about it anymore!” )

15 - If someone you know in real life (who isn’t involved in fandoms) asked to see your work, would you let them? If yes, what would you show them first? 

I would, and have.  I typically show them whatever most rendered recent picture from my Instagram because I don't post any nsfw there and usually try to post only my prettier work for this specific reason haha. (As opposed to here, I post everything here, ain't NO ONE from real life invited to see my tumblr 😂)

16 - Are there any writers (published authors and/or fanfic writers) who influenced your writing or art? Are there any artists that influence you?

Writers: Brandon Sanderson, for sure. He's the reason I got back into art back in 2017 ish. His stories are just so emotional they push me to create. Same with @saibug1022, there is always at least one scene from every story he shares that I desperately want to draw to try to capture the emotions. 

Artists: God, sooo many, here are just like my top 3 favorites and their instagrams.

Audra Auclair

Obsessed with her unique style, and specifically the way she draws eyelids and noses

f3lc4t

The way they draw those dripping, glowing wisps. I stare at their pieces for hours (no lie) trying to dissect them stroke by stroke to figure out how they do it.

Miho Hirano

Their art has a delicate whimsy-ness I would SELL MY SOUL to achieve 

17- Which one of your creations would you like to see a fiction written about? 

JC, this is the shit I DREAM of.

Definitely this one. 

So this is love.

This little comic means a lot to me. 

18- Do you write original fiction or create non-fandom art? 

Very rarely, but I do, every so often. This is my favorite original piece.

20-  What other hobbies do you have?

Gaming, singing, walking through the Cemetary with my wee daughter, reading, that's about it 🤷

21 - What’s your favorite emoji? 

🙇

22: BONUS - tell us anything you’d like (if you want to).

I really wanted to say that I don't believe in “good” art and “bad” art (just ethical vs non-ethical). That being said, I know what it's like to hate your art, like soooo intimately. If you ever are feeling shit about your art, you can ABSOLUTELY message me (I don't care if we're mutuals or not, I don't care if we've never interacted before) and just say, “I am feeling shit about my art” and I will go through your art and tell you every specific thing I love about it and why it's wonderful. I am not joking; I am so so serious rn. 💗💗💗💗 

[sl33pyycl0ud]

[It's the inability to make the faces for me-]

The link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45640075

I just wanted to share my fave polyam ship, cuz i stumbled into a fanfic 'bout Alejandro x Graves x Rudy and I adore it so much that I just have to draw it. 💙^^^

[and it is also for an art contest in discord, the creator is super sweet and posts on tiktok about cod and they made some pretty cute beans au's check it out]

[their name was @yaboiprog on tiktok]

Don't forget to give the ao3 author some love, 💙💙💙^^

[so..something weird happened, you know when the brain sometimes connects the past to what you're doing? Like when you eat cotton candy and you remember a good memory n you feel the good feelin and all.. so...sometimes the brain could also connect something bad to something that is completely harmless.. that, happened to me [i didn't even think it would happened but it did- guess live really want go see me fall ha] To start it all off, a few weeks ago i was sick, so sick that I never expect I could be that sick , and everytime I tried to draw , I can't cuz my brain was foggy and I was delirious, but thankfully i'm okay now, but [here comes the unbelievable part, to me] , everytime i wanted to draw something , my brain just automatically remembering my time when i was sick and I suddenly felt nauseous and physically wanted to throw up. Like- wtf- this comic was the only thing that i could manage to draw but I literally have to do some breathing exercise through it.]

[so now you know 'bout my problem here and I promise I'm trying my best right now and doin some doodle and stuff but i just wanted to say something [cuz I don't want my fren to think I'm ded]]

[just half ded]

[hotfuss]

Little big rant ahead:

I joined the fandom with the start of ww era after the previous i was in turned into a literal dumpster on fire. And while it was clear in hindsight that the golden era of the tk fandom was around 2012-2014 (maybe it can be stretched to 2015), ww era wasn't bad either. Yeah the majority of the old guard/bfn was inactive or waning their presence a lot and basically disappeared the moment the ww tour ended we still had:

- gif/edit/moodboard makers

- art makers (not a lot but a few at least!!!)

- people posting pics from other social media. Either band photos or encounters with fans. Like people were ''fighting'' to be the first to repost the band insta pics!!

- people who weren't content creators but that at least they reblogged with funny tags. No, i didn't mind seeing the same pic of brandon 7 times during my catch up scrolling if 4 of them put some kind of tags to read in them (funny/horny/roasting him), that was the enrichment!!

Then the tour ended and fandom activity shrunk to 1/10 of what it used to be. Ressurrected briefly for their appearance at glasto 2019.

Lol thais liked a post about me complaining about not wanting to post 2 gifsets i made bc the fandom was too dead and i didn't want to waste them. It's dated 3 years ago!!!

Then 2020 happened. The pandemic, their social media silence on the blm protests (the bar was literally on the floor... we only wanted a social media post giving support!!!! How come the bootlickers were all up brandon's ass about how difficult it was to rewrite a whole verse of land of the free to play on tv in 2 weeks but posting a black pic on insta tagged blm was too hard??? HOW?), the horrific situation of the roadie hazing happened in the past that resurfaced... like i don't blame anyone who didn't want to engage with the band afterwards (bc they are some good reasons!! I will never forget how they let us down! And while the hazing wasn't perpetrated by the band members it was still such a horrible situation that shouldn't have happened!)

But this was a complete mass extinction here on tumblr. Of all the fandom communities this seems the only one that died like this.

We are currently left with

- 3,5 gif makers

- maybe 2 art makers if i include myself

- maybe 2 people posting pics including myself

No consistent edit/moodboards/meme makers no consistent reposting of official pics from their socials. The like/reblog ratio on posts is 3:1 on good days and close to 4:1 or 5:1 on bad days. I wake to notes (when i get any) that are 80-90% likes. Most of the rare reblogs don't have any kind of commentary at all.

I could easily run my queue for 7-10 days just with posts i could find on my dash, almost zero effort bc i was fed content on my dash. Nowadays i need to spend hours on blogs/my drafts/my bookmarks to put something together, only for likes. It gets tiring easily with a soul and energy sucking job to do to survive only to barely get any reward (reblogs with tags to read). This community will never recover on people who refuse to use the reblog button

It's even harder to compare this fandom to the mcr one, yeah it's a quite unique situation bc having such a thriving fandom despite the band being broken up most of tumblr's life is INSANE but you can't help getting angry/sad at why did they survive but not us? I can reblog so much fanart on my sideblog!! People posting pics!! Many archivial blogs!! The gifsets!! It just feels so unfair!