#mentors chapter

[josiadorstuff]

WIP Mentors Chapter sergeant, using as a Cadian Castellan proxy for my Imperial Guard. Now to figure out how to do the chapter insignia.

[guakamoleboi]

More Moonpaw! + Sunbeam

[ywpd-translations]

Ride 795: The peak of their limits!!

Pag 1

2: Isn't there anything I can do?

3: Listen to him

4: You don't have to say anything back, you can just nod

5: Just listen to his nonsense

6: Like always

8: To... Toudou-san

Pag 2

1: He'll arrive soon

2: In just a few minutes he'll pass on this road right before our eyes

4: There's no need to stay back

5: Right now, he's fighting

6: He's running against his rival for “the last kilometer”....

His muscles are aflame, he's wiping away his sweat, and his body is screaming

Pag 3

1: His limbs are numb because the blood isn't flowing until his extremities

His heart rate is at its limit, his body feels like it's in danger and is trying to stop moving

2: He's fighting against his own body that's trying to stop, and against his rival who's moving forward

It's the “peak of their limits”

3: The peak of... their limits

4: That's the fight he wanted

5: Watch him closely

Call out to him with me and he'll be happy

6: Don't worry

Racers recognize even the quietest voice

And then

Pag 4

1: they can turn them into power!!

Pag 5

1: Sooreeeee

2: 700m left until the mountain line!!

They're lined up!! They're neck and neck!!

So close!

Pag 6

1: 600m left!!

2: The race passes through the intersections with Mt. Hiko's trailhead!!

Goo Hakogaku!!

Don't lose, Chiba!!

They're neck and neck!!

Pag 7

1: Neither of them is stopping!!

Pag 9

2: So much sweat is falling on the road!!

3: They're passing through the last intersection and then will face the final gate

4: They're entering a narrow road!!

Pag 10

1: 500m left!!

2: They're still pedaling!!

Pag 11

1: Since earlier my fingers in my right shoes

2: keep getting cramps

3: The blood isn't reaching their tips

4: It's not, but

6: I'll keep turning my legs!!

7: I'll tighten up my shoes to reduce the pain!!

Pag 12

1: Mountain King tightened his shoe's dial!!

Woah he's serious!!

2: What does it mean!?

Biking shoes have a dial

3: During a long race, cyclists' feet get thinner, so they turn their shoes' dial up to tighten and secure their feet in preparation for the final dash

Wire

Depending on the direction you turn the dial, it tighten or become loose

4: In the scene of European races, it's something cyclists do a lot to prepare for the race before the finish line!!

5: Is Mountain Kind going to attack here!?

But right now it looked like he was trying to avoid the pain in his leg

Pag 13

1: This is bad!!

It's not just my fingers

My arms have lost feeling too when I'm dancing

3: But it's okay, it's just right

My legs are moving

4: And you're next to me!!

We're still fighting!!

Pag 14

1: If my arms won't move then I can just swing my bike from my shoulders!!

Pag 15

1: Manami attacked again!!

Amazing!

He's going!!

2: In the hardest section!!

He's leaving Mountain King behind using his dancing!!

Pag 16

1: He's opening a gap between himself and Sohoku's Mountain King!!

3: Mountain King is in a tough spot!!

4: He instinctively dropped his head!!

Pag 17

1: Try to have fun, Onoda

4: Races are hard

5: When your opponent accelerates in an unexpected moment, when the attack is stronger than you had imagined

6: Remember

Pag 18

1: You can't win a race without going through tough times

2: Teshma-san....

3: “Just before” means that there are many options

Like, will my opponent get exhausted? Could he make a mistake? You'll be thinking like that

4: Surprisingly, victory or defeat depend on these little things

Pag 19

1: Well, that's just my advice though

I actually always end up slowing down at critical moments, and so I lose

2: That's not true at all!! At this year's Inter High it was Teshima-san who won the mountain prize!! Thank you so much for that!!

I get it, I get it

3: Well, you're an earnest person and won two times already, so it's like I'm preaching to the choir

4: But there are times when you're weak

5: I've seen that many times too

9: During a race, when it's “just before”, just remember this

10: When there is both a hard road and an easy road

Pag 20

1: Don't hesitate to take the hard road!!

2: Right now for a moment, I was thinking “why am I going now” and “when it's hard to breathe”!!

Pag 21

2: My chest hurts!!

3: My legs hurt!!

4: But still!!

6: I'll choose what to chase!!

Pag 22

1: Mountain King is accelerating and chasing!!

Aaaaaagh

4: Sangaku!!

5: I'm ready!!

[tennessoui]

“Kiaree is pregnant,” Obi-Wan says, as if Anakin is supposed to care about this woman and her baby. “If her name is drawn from the victor‘s pool, I will take her place.” “Like hell you will,” Anakin snarls. “There are other victors.”

“Magdeline is old,” Obi-Wan’s eyes cut away, fall to the space between their hands. Good, Anakin thinks viciously, he should find it hard to look at him. “She should not have to go back to Coruscant. Not ever again in her lifetime. If her name is drawn—” “Then you will let it be!” Anakin rounds the corners of the counter, unthinkingly fast. He clasps his hand around Obi-Wan’s shoulder, squeezing the fine fabric that Coruscant has dressed him in tightly. “Why would you volunteer for them, Obi-Wan? They have never volunteered for you.”

“The actions of others do not control my own, Anakin,” Obi-Wan snaps, pushing him away, freeing himself from his grasp. “I will volunteer to serve as master and mentor, as I am the most suitable to be victor—” Anakin grinds his teeth together, pushing himself back into Obi-Wan’s space, pinning him against the counter. “You would do that to me?” he asks, low, voice a dark growl in his throat. Obi-Wan has styled his hair carefully, slicked it back and trimmed his beard. Anakin touches the lines of his beard, ghosts over the glossy locks before shoving his fingers into it, messing up the tidy strands. “You would take yourself away from me, for months more?”

“The Games will last no more than a fortnight,” Obi-Wan murmurs, keeping his back straight, unwilling to melt into Anakin’s touch. “I will be back on Stewjoni soil before the leaves turn gold.”

“You will be parsecs away from me until the spring,” Anakin replies, and he gentles his hold, smooths over the mess of Obi-Wan’s bangs and slots himself up against him. Not fighting, not pushing. Pressing, coaxing. “Your body will be here, but your mind will not. Do not pretend as if you do not know what I am talking about.”

Obi-Wan’s mouth falls open, a flash of red as he wets his bottom lip and looks away. Of course he knows what Anakin means. The years that he must go to Coruscant, the years that he is made master of two children who are destined to die bloody and screaming, those years haunt him in his eyes. It is the price he pays as a victor—it is not just his Games that haunts him. It is every Game he has ever been made to watch, to participate in even from the sidelines.

And he may be willing to pay that price so that his other victors may live without it, but Anakin will not allow the same.

[lazysublimeengineer]

Isagi be like don't touch me and spout some bs

This panel is cold af

[kyberinfinitygems]

ANDI & BRUCE

Tag List (check my pinned to join!): @atomiclace @afarcry5fromstraight @imogenkol @captastra @truly-very-british @statichvm @meatgrinderminefield @elligatorrex @inafieldofdaisies @taciturntraveller @the-lastcall @roofgeese @spaceratprodigy @risingsh0t @teamhawkeye @shellibisshe @rainwingmarvel7 @socially-awkward-skeleton @carlosoliveiraa @chadillacboseman @practically-an-x-man @sorrythatwasmean @marvel-oc-hub @themaradwrites

[ladyhoneydarlinglove]

{one piece fic} blunt force comfort — robin & zoro

{previous chapters: nami | usopp | sanji | chopper } CONTENT WARNING: this chapter has depictions of self-harm, specifically cutting. it’s nothing graphic, but anyone who could be triggered by that might want to skip this one. i haven’t been part of the one piece fandom long enough to know if robin self-harming could be considered a controversial take, but based on my own experiences with severe to suicidal depression (including self-harm tendencies), i think it makes a lot of sense.

Rating: T Notes: takes place somewhere between Skypiea and Water 7

{Read on Ao3}

~~~~~

There’s a strange physiology to the limbs summoned with Robin’s devil fruit powers. For all intents and purposes they function like extensions of her real body, complete with sensory feedback; temperature, texture, even pain—though the damage they take doesn’t transfer to her physically. But, for whatever reason, they don’t bleed the way that real limbs would.

Robin doesn’t remember exactly when she discovered this particular quirk that’s quite useful, in its own way. Good for things like sneaking and spying, keeping her from leaving any kind of physical trail behind. But the place that she makes the most use of it is alone, in the quiet and the dark, with a sharp knife and a heart full to bursting with pain.

See, Robin’s existence is defined by suffering. To live is to hurt, and there is no escape from it, not really. This is a fundamental truth of her world that Robin has known since she was only eight years old, watching Ohara burn for the crime of daring to seek out what others didn’t want them to know. 

The problem is, the pain she feels on a day-to-day basis is largely on the inside, where no one else can bear witness to its existence. A festering wound that only she can see, a toxic sludge born of all the tears, the anger, the screams that she can’t afford to let loose, lest it draw the attention of the World Government. And that pain will just keep building and building and building inside of her, until finally Robin can’t bear it any longer.

She read in a medical text once that when a boil becomes filled with pus, it needs to be lanced before infection sets in. So when all the pain and hurt inside her becomes too much to bear any longer, Robin will sit down, knife at the ready so she slice and slice and slice, until finally it feels like all the suffering of her existence has been made tangible.

Of course, if she tried to do that on her real body, she would have run out of space—and blood, for that matter—a long time ago. That’s where her powers come in handy; Robin can summon arm after arm, and no physical evidence will be left behind. No wounds, no blood. Just pain. Easy and clean.

She’s been doing it for years. No one else has ever known, though even if they did, Robin doubts they would have cared enough to try and stop her. It’s gotten to the point where she barely even thinks about it when the need arises, which is perhaps why Robin doesn’t take more precautions not to be caught the first time she does it onboard the Going Merry. She figures doing it in the storeroom in the middle of night when everyone else is asleep should be enough to ensure no one walks in on her, so it’s a bit of a surprise when Zoro does.

“Oh, Robin,” he says, standing in the doorway to the storeroom, holding a bottle of what Robin presumes is liquor. “What are you doing in… here…”

Robin watches as he blinks several times in rapid succession, clearly trying to process the scene in front of him, which is two blossomed limbs already cut to (bloodless) shreds sprouting from the floor, while Robin works on a third, her knife point still buried in its disembodied flesh. She doesn’t usually vanish them until she’s done, because she likes—or needs, maybe—to see the physical evidence of her handiwork. She supposes she could get rid of them now, though there doesn’t seem much point; from the bewildered frown she watches overtake his expression, Zoro’s probably already seen enough.

“What… are you doing?” he asks, an entirely uncharacteristic hesitation in his tone.

Robin smiles at him blandly, trying to be as disarming as possible. “Just a little ritual of mine,” she says lightly, like it’s nothing out of the ordinary.

“Oh.” Zoro blinks slowly. “What, uh… what… kind of ritual?”

Now it’s Robin’s turn to blink. She wasn’t actually expecting him to ask.

“Call it… a catharsis ritual,” Robin says after a moment, which is true enough.

Zoro’s frown deepens, taking on a slightly harder edge. “What kind of catharsis?”

Robin blinks again.

“I—” she begins, and suddenly her mind blanks, tripped up by the fact that Zoro is even asking. Before she can stop herself, Robin blurts out, “Pain.”

One of Zoro’s eyebrows shoots up almost comically high. “Pain?” he repeats, and there’s something in his tone that Robin hasn’t heard directed her way in a long, long time.

Concern.

Robin is suddenly, horribly, acutely aware of two things.

The first is how macabre this little ritual of hers must seem to the outside observer. The second is that despite their rough and tumble exteriors, the Straw Hat Pirates are all, at their cores, fundamentally kind people. The type of people who, when they see someone in distress, rush in to help, heedless of consequence. And Robin doesn’t want help, not for this. It’s her strange little habit, her burden of pain. Accepting help would just feel… wrong. 

(Wouldn’t it?)

“It’s not… It isn’t a bad thing,” she says hastily, feeling entirely out of her element, which does not often happen to Nico Robin. “It’s sort of like, um…” 

She casts about frantically for a metaphor Zoro might understand that will satisfy him while also stopping him from pressing any further. “When you train really hard, your muscles get sore afterwards, right?” she says after a few terribly tense moments of silence. “It hurts, but doesn’t it also feel good because you know you’ve accomplished something?”

“… Right,” Zoro says slowly, clearly not buying it. “Except that when muscles are sore after a workout, it’s because you’ve been breaking them down so that they can become even stronger. This—” He gestures at the shredded arms in front of her “—just seems like you’re trying to hurt yourself.”

There’s something about the way Zoro says it. No hesitation, no doubt; just a simple, honest, brutal truth. It cuts right through to Robin’s core, and she finds that she can’t help but answer in kind.

“… I suppose I am, in a way.”

She thinks that might be the first time she’s ever said so out loud.

For a long moment, Zoro simply looks at her. There’s nothing particularly scrutinizing about it, and yet Robin still feels like she’s being flayed alive under his gaze. Then, after an interminably long silence, Zoro suddenly nods and says, “Okay.”

Robin blinks. “Okay?” she repeats, surprised.

“I mean, I don’t get it but…” Zoro shrugs before reaching up to rub at the back of his neck awkwardly. “This doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you quit doing just because someone tells you to. So if this is how you need to find ‘catharsis’ or whatever, I’m not gonna tell you to stop.”

That wasn’t what Robin was expecting him to say at all. On one hand it seems almost callous and uncaring, like Zoro’s trying to wash his hands of the whole thing. But on the other, she finds it… strangely reassuring. Like he’s acknowledging it’s a problem he knows he can’t fix, but he still wants her to know that he’s aware of it.

It feels… kind.

“… Thank you, Kenshi-san,” Robin says after a long, quiet moment. It doesn’t seem quite adequate enough, but she’s not sure that anything would.

Zoro nods again before he moves to leave the storeroom, but then pauses for a moment in the doorway before turning back around. 

“Hey, uh…” he says, reaching up to rub at the back of his neck again. “You know, if you ever want to try a different kind of catharsis, I could… teach you how to start lifting.” He coughs nervously before adding, “You can, um. You can get pretty sore. If you do it right.”

There’s a rising lump in Robin’s throat, and she has to swallow around it before she can respond.

“I’ll… keep that in mind.”

[reneesbooks]

9 lines 9 people

ok confession these games scare me bc tagging people still intimidates me but i'm being brave today here's some lines i wrote a while back from the dragons of kiltide. just fabin having a little teenage angst. also this is 9 (11 but shh the context!!) paragraphs bc i still don't know how to shut the fuck up. thank you @space-writes for the tag <3

the raedoran cycle

[Fabin] tilts his head, pressing his forehead to the window frame. “What are dreams like?” he asks quietly.

Emilia sits across from him, watching how his eyes stare through the window but see nothing. She thought he'd left that behind in the weeks and months after their parents were killed, thought the long silences were finally over. She tucks her arms against her sides. “They're...like memories. Only more vivid.”

His fingers close around the hilt of his sword. “What do you dream about?”

She rolls her shoulders. “Places I've never been. Things I've never seen.”

One of his hands presses against the glass. “Do you ever dream of...of humans?”

She studies him with a worried frown. “Is there something you want to talk about?”

He recoils, his expression twisting with anger before it closes off. “No. I'm fine. I don't have dreams.” He turns away from her. “Never mind.”

Emilia sighs. “I talked Muiris down. He doesn't want to kill you anymore.”

“Good for him.”

“You should apologize for breaking his foot.”

Fabin turns to face her again, his eyes wide. “I actually broke it?”

tagging @oh-no-another-idea @zmwrites @akindofmagictoo @writinglyra @k--havok @lyssa-ink @aether-wasteland-s @ink-flavored @avrablake to share 9 (or more or less or however many you feel like!) lines of writing <3

[raamitsu]

— Chapter 1

Do you think Megumi ever get to punch his step father after this?

[narugen]

spoilers for kn8 manga literally scroll past right now if ur not caught up

panels that changed my fucking life

i think what really hit me the most was narumi’s reaction to kikoru’s tears like you’ve to remember she’s still just 16 years old and has lost BOTH parents. both while fighting kaiju.

even though it wasn’t established in the main manga i have to wonder if he saw himself just a little seeing her break down like that given he also lost his parents in a kaiju attack

and it’s just their shared similarity of wanting (needing) to meet isao’s expectations - kikoru because she was raised to do so as his daughter (and after hikari died he had to be the one to harden his heart and toughen her up) and narumi because isao gave him a chance

their mentor/mentee relationship really makes me happy tbh and i think it’s developed really well i hope we get a second season just so i can see it animated 🥹 they mean a lot to me and with isao gone i think they do mean a lot or each other too

i also think it’s crazy how the words isao said to narumi is what he tells kikoru now… kaiju no8 really is about the full cycles and parallels and taking your chances </3

[amelikos]

Anyone has any ideas or interpretations of that one Friede scene in the current opening (at 1:20 here) and what it could mean in terms of future events and for the character?

[fishareglorious]

[onceinawhilemoon]

I fuck up so badly i cause a literal political unrest in cordona and probably nullify years of his hardwork in keeping the peace and he still offers me another chance??????? please

[tennessoui]

new wip wednesday

i wanted to get the first chapter of this done as an early bday present to me because ive been talking about this fic for foreverrrrr but its not gonna happen because im bad at measuring time and effort 😮‍💨 but look! hunger games au fic!

Anakin pushes his face into his neck, letting his lips press against his pulse for a moment. 

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan murmurs, recognition and warning rolled into one tone. 

But Anakin wouldn’t be who he is if he allowed the man in his arms to so easily twist away. He wouldn’t even be here now, pressed up against him with the scent of saltwater and lilacs and leather filling his nose, if he let one warning word distract him from his goal.

So instead he pushes further, wraps his hands around Obi-Wan’s hips and takes the skin beneath his lips between his teeth. The soft fabric of their pants brush together, so loud in the stillness of the kitchen that it’s deafening—that it’s almost loud enough to drown out the catch in Obi-Wan’s breathing.

But Anakin has trained himself over the past five years to listen for all the small ways that Obi-Wan Kenobi capitulates, so he hears his sigh, feels the slump of his shoulders against his own as his head sways forward and then back.

Anakin takes his time worrying a bitemark into his neck, just at the edge of his beard. On the holos that will film Obi-Wan’s face today, it’ll look like a shadow. 

But Anakin will know. Obi-Wan will know. 

“Anakin,” his lover murmurs, and Anakin’s hand moves from his waist up to stroke down his arm, corded with tense muscle. Fisherman’s muscle. Victor’s muscle too.

Not today, he means. It’s obvious in every line of his body. It’s obvious in the fact that he left the bed so early in the morning when neither of them must work. It’s obvious in the distance in his eyes, the frown across his lips.

Today is not a day where Obi-Wan will accept pleasure from anyone’s lips or hands, undeserving as he feels to be on the receiving end of such a kindness.

Anakin’s left hand falls to cover Obi-Wan’s, tangling their fingers together. His are rougher than Obi-Wan’s, working man’s hands now that he is twenty-one and a man of the sea like most are on Stewjon. The rough drag of his calluses over the hairy knuckles of Obi-Wan’s hand makes Anakin swallow a smile. Victors of the Hunger Games are forbidden from working laborious jobs. They’re meant to languish away in their Coruscanti-funded manors, with idle minds and idle hands, picking at paints or design stencils or any number of different government approved hobbies

Obi-Wan Kenobi is not made to be idle. He has no patience for painting or sewing, for cooking or jewelry design. Luckily for him, Stewjon is the fourth planet from Coruscant, on the edge of the inner rim, and it’s rather small, rather ordinary. In the colder months, during the few months of the star year where the galaxy is not forced to care about the Hunger Games and its Victors, he can slip away to the ocean. Fish and sail like he was born to do, Stewjoni through and through.

But Anakin is out on those choppy seas year-round now that he’s four years finished with his compulsory education. His hands are rougher than Obi-Wan’s and they always will be.

Anakin likes it. Likes the way Obi-Wan’s softness contrasts against his own rougher places. Likes that he can sneak away from Obi-Wan’s manor in the blue of the pre-dawn light, first to the sea and then to the market, and Obi-Wan will be there when he gets back. Likes that when he leaves, his lover is curled up asleep in their bed. And when he returns with the fattest fish from his haul, Anakin can cook it for him too. 

He likes that he is the only thing Obi-Wan needs. He provides. He cooks for him. He feeds him. He touches him with his rough hands, to dirty him and then to clean him up. Everything that Obi-Wan needs, Anakin is the person to give it to him.

He supposes he has Coruscant to thank for that.

He’s not stupid enough to say that—ever, but especially today. Especially on the day of the Reaping. 

[lazysublimeengineer]

Loki rizzing up Rin with his tongue in front of Isagi is not on my bingo card of canon events but I wholeheartedly welcome it.

Isagi this is what happens when you don't take care of a bad bitch like Rin

[drabbles-of-writing]

Pretending Not to See Your Ghost

AO3

Chapters: 1, 2

Summary: Darius has begun to notice a  few...𝘴𝘪𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴 between Hunter and his old mentor. From  appearance, to speech, to the smallest of characteristics, he always  swears he'll blink, and his mentor will be standing right where Hunter  once was, as though nothing had ever changed.

But he's sure it's only a coincidence.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Penstagram, unfortunately, had become more of an eyesore than it used to be.

The Emperor clearly had no understanding of technology, and it became evident to many Coven members that places like Penstagram were practically free-range to do pretty much whatever they wanted. Of course, plenty still used it to find the locations of wild witches, but for quick communications or revealing faces, barely anyone batted an eye. There would be no punishments for it.

Darius tried to use Penstagram for normal things. Occasional pictures, deleting DMs he very much did not want to see, passively aggressively shit-talking his coworkers, and shooting a few quick, non-incriminating messages between himself, Eberwolf, and Raine when needed be.

And then there was Hunter’s account.

He’d only followed it to keep an eye on him. He knew the intricacies of what was and wasn’t allowed on Penstagram, but Hunter might not have. He found it ludicrous to suggest the kid would blurt Coven secrets on his account, but he was still paranoid. The boy thought sunlight was optional on functional growth, he didn’t know what else he’d assumed about life.

Much to his increasing migraine, most of Hunter’s posts were about Flapjack. His profile picture was of his own face, covering only one of his scars, in his Golden Guard attire.

Darius had nearly gotten a heart attack before he saw just how many people assumed Hunter was a fake account. Or some otherwise young child dressing up to pretend as the Golden Guard. He suspected the fact that most of Hunter’s posts were blurry disasters (that, to his credit, did exclude anything else that could be directly linked back to him or the Coven) did quite a bit to aid in this doubt.

No one would find his account on accident, it was far too obscure, and never tagged properly. Darius still monitored it, of course, but he was a little more at ease, figuring they were all in the clear. Even if he wanted to take the boy by the shoulders and plead him to be at least semi-functional with technology.

Then, as though Hunter had sensed Darius staring in dismay at his most recent failure of a post, the boy himself poked his head in through his office door.

“Uh, Darius?” Hunter asked, unsure, and Darius jerked his head up. 

He tried not to feel that old ping of nervousness when Hunter was slipping off his mask before he was fully in the office. Everyone knew Hunter’s face in the Coven, this was a normal, good thing. This was not something he had to be wary about others seeing.

“Don’t you have work to be doing?” Darius raised a brow, though he did set his scroll down. 

“Uh, well, y-yes, I was just doing that!” Hunter said quickly, and when Darius glanced down, he saw him holding his scroll up to his chest, walking over to his desk. “But then I started getting some messages, and I just wanted to…I wanted to see if these would be of interest?”

Darius, brow still raised, held out his hand. Hunter willingly handed it over without a second thought, Titan below this kid really needed to learn how to be a teenager, and Darius took a look at whatever he was talking about.

It was a DM, with what looked like a conversation between two hex-bots. Darius raised a brow, scrolling up—nope, that was Hunter’s texting. Good grief, it was atrocious.

The other one was a bot, at least. A very obvious one, in fact.

LIke.fabriCS? to muhc woRk ? CLICK HERE!

Hunter seemed to have been trying to respond to the bot, interrogating it about details. To which it fell apart into incoherent, insane texts.

“Hunter, this is a scam.” He deadpanned, though he supposed he could only be so exasperated. The kid had no phone, of course he didn’t know about people trying to hex scrolls.

“Gus said that, too.” Hunter frowned, ears pressing back. “He told me not to click a link?” He added, frowning, face scrunched up. 

“The underlined words. Of which he is correct.” Darius said, deciding not to ask who that was as he handed the phone back. “You’d get hexed.”

“Are you sure?” Hunter sounded truly disappointed, looking down at his scroll screen. “I thought more fabrics would be nice, ‘cause you have your own…”

“I have money to get more, just borrow mine.” Darius sighed, pressing his fingers to his forehead. He tried not to feel too twisted up when Hunter looked at him with pure shock. “In the future, just don’t talk to any messages you get that aren’t from your friends.”

“But how could I get hexed through some…underlined words?” Hunter squinted at his scroll, holding his phone up to his face.

“It’s a link, Hunter.”

“Like a chain?”

“Titan’s sake,” Darius groaned, dropping his face into his hand, “it’s like teaching an old man.”

“I’m not old!”

(“You’re such an old man.” Darius snickered, looking from the crystal ball to the face smooshed up against it.

“Hey!” Jasper barked, finally tearing away from it to send a pouting glare, of which Darius could only barely restrain a laugh. “I’m not old! I’m practically your age!”

“Oh, so now you’re my age?” Darius scoffed, rolling his eyes and leaning back, smug. “Is that why you hate being called ‘sir?’”

“I’m as spry as a fox-spitter, I’ll have you know.” Jasper huffed, placing a proud hand to his chest. “These crystal thingies are just needlessly complicated.”

“It’s only kind-of new tech.”

“It’s confusing, is what it is. I’m convinced you’re just messing with me.”)

“Figure of speech,” Darius waved it off, sure his mouth was pulling at an uncomfortable angle, “just be more careful in the future. Titan’s sake, you don’t need to fret about getting your own things.” He rolled his eyes. “I have more than enough to share. I already gave you a scroll.”

“Well…yeah.” Hunter hunched his shoulders a tad, looking from his scroll to Darius. “I-I just…you already got me the scroll, so…you’ve gotten me enough.”

“I’ll say when I’ve gotten you enough. This is not even close to the limit.” Darius said, firmly, if only because it made him feel…odd. This didn’t sound the least bit like a spoiled brat. “Now, scurry back to that important work you were having with your friends on Penstagram.”

“Acquaintances.” Hunter reminded, more of a grumble, than anything, neatly tucking his scroll underneath his cloak and into a pocket.

“No, they’re not. Run along.” Darius waved his hand, going back to pretending he was working on his own papers. “I’m sure teenagers like you have much to talk about.”

“I’m…working on that.” Hunter hummed, frowned so thoughtfully like he was solving some secret that it had Darius snorting, watching him turn away and pull his mask back down again.

Hunter’s fingers lingered, he noticed, over the nose. The tips scraping down slightly, pausing as though thinking something over. It was so painfully familiar he half expected to see a tangle of uncombed, wild hair when Hunter turned back to him.

But it was only his normal, somewhat-combed hair. Of course it was.

“Um, thank you.” Hunter mumbled, nodding jerkily. “For-for the assistance.”

“Happy to help.” Darius said, and if anyone said he sounded softer, they were a liar. “You can continue checking-in sometime in the future.”

It sort of slipped out. Not that he didn’t mean it, but he hadn’t really thought about saying it. The words were simply out there before he could think much. Though, he couldn’t really find himself regretting it when Hunter perked up, just the tiniest bit more interested.

Perhaps that should’ve been harder to tell, with his movements so subtle and face covered. But Darius liked to think himself an expert in such mannerisms.

“Thank you.” Hunter repeated, sounding suspiciously genuine, bringing his hood up. His small strand of hair still hung free, uncovered as he pulled open Darius’s door.

It looked a lot like Jasper’s, he noticed. There was always that one strand of hair poking free, refusing to obey the chaos of the rest of his mane. Hanging right in front of his face, bothering him to hell and back.

Then, Hunter was out the door, and Darius was alone in his office.

He shook off the weight on his chest, though it lingered like fog, and reshuffled his papers.

Perhaps he should do some real work.