#mer!clover

[renabe4life]

Qrow as will be depicted in my fair game fic, Ebb.

click the read more for a surprise feesh reaction >w>

[gamingmint]

Fair game week 2024 Day 3: Sky/Sea | Mythology

Based on @renabe4life Mer!Clover au that I may have a mild obsession with.

[whatacartouchebag]

Fingers unthreaded languidly from behind a dark head of hair and he made to sit upright when something lashed firmly about his ankle. Cold and tight, it wrenched the startled gasp from him and he jerked his leg hastily up, scrambling further back onto the dock and spraying water about him in a flail as he landed hard on his elbows.

For half a heartbeat lodged in his throat, he feared some furious octopus had found him.

Upon hearing a short burst of familiar laughter from the water, he knew it was worse.

~~~

Dohoho time for a sneaky lil birthday treat for my favourite lil bean ♥

A fun lil piece to write, based on @renabe4life​ amazing Mer!Clover AU. Enjoyed the hell out of writing these two disasters interacting with one another, and doubly glad my brainmeats let me finish it on time, too.

But wehh, happy birthday you wonderful muffin you! Just thought you should know, heh ♥

[01432853]

Honey & Clover ハチミツとクローバー (2006) dir. Masahiro Takata

[koneko-pi]

*Casually whistles*

It was done real quick, but it had to be done U3U the kindess must be returned

@thoughtfullyrainynightmare

[mangetsuame]

Guess who just full-on wrote a fic at midnight (If you said me you're correccct!!!)

It's Magluck, and i cant be bothered to put anything else right now as it is currently 2:20 AM

[thoughtfullyrainynightmare]

Character asks

26: what do you like the most about Fue's relationship with his siblings

MORE FUE

26. (Freebie question)

Okay, so this one is something, for which it's difficult to give a concise answer. Quite simply because, well, short answer would be "the fact that they encourage each other", but I don't think that would really depict his relationship with either of them.

The thing is that with Mereo, it's almost a competition. Which is interesting, because they don't, really at least, have the same goal. I mean, they both want to get stronger, but their goals beyond that seem very different. Actually, I'm not sure if Mereo actually has a goal beyond "get stronger, find the next baddest bitch in the Strong Magic Region and destroy it, become the baddest bitch yourself", while Fue has the goal of "becoming the next WK". Though, I would argue that there are underlying reasons why Fue would wish to be the WK and Mereo doesn't, and that reason would be to keep people safe. They're both on a quest to find strength, so that they might protect. But their relationship does have rivalry-esque themes to them, especially on Mereo's part where she's determined to stay ahead of the curve "as that fool's older sister, I will take you down!!" Statements such as that, where she feels the need to do something as an older sister, or to do something, because if she went down there and then, she'd never hear the end of it, imply that she has the very prominent need of keeping those close to her safe. They also drive each other to be better through this, and that's something that I love about them. So, they would always be there to help and to protect the other, but they also drive each other to be better. With Leo, well, I've had a few conversations with different people about Fue and Leo's relationship, and while everyone seems to agree that Fue has the best of intentions when it comes to Leo's training and helping him grow, it's doing quite the opposite, and how the Vermillion (or Fire Vermillion anyhow) seems to be "demanding of strength" in a way. As in, sure, they would support Leo through anything, and would come to his rescue if need be, because they love Leo, but as Vermillions, they're also striving for strength and greatness (but "greatness" can be interpreted in a lot of ways). Which is placing a lot of pressure onto Leo. I don't think that "demanding" is necessarily the right word here, but perhaps "expecting" it? Sure Leo can take his time, but he's expected to become strong, and Leo feels the pressure to actually be and become strong. And I don't think that any of the parties involved really realize this. But instead of allowing Leo to really find his own path, he's put on a path to become, specifically, a strong knight through the means that they have at your disposal in the Royal Capitol (or Clover Kingdom). It was only in the later chapters that Leo was allowed to venture to Heart, which Mimosa had done before already. Why this is, I don't know. And for myself? I do adore the Fire Vermillion brothers. Leo admires Fue so so so very much, and while I think that Fue has the best of intentions with Leo's training, I don't think he's making the best decisions for Leo specifically. Fue obviously cares for Leopold. I think it was most concretely seen when Heart was under attack, and Fue was all fired up to go save Leo. But I also think that was one of the moments, or times, which proved to Fue that Leo, the baby brother of the family, is capable of standing on his own two feet. Fue just needs to see Leo as who he could be; a strong, capable knight, rather than someone to worry about. So, I think that the wish to protect one and another would be my favourite thing in both relationships Fue has with his siblings.

[gingerbreadmonsters]

Heeyy Ginger~~ 💕 self-love time! talk about which ones of YOUR creations (edits, artworks, fanfics) you like the most then send to other creators to do the same 💕

warning for 18+ discussion under the cut! minors dni please <3

WAIT THIS IS SO SWEET DON'T 😭😭😭

hmmngmgnhmg it is, of course, impossible to choose a favourite child - but i think if i had to pick just one to talk about then it's got to be blood sugar, baby!

this fic was written in the wake of imperium: cataclysm in late november of 2022, basically because prime universe!william solaire is really really hot already and imperium!william - aside from having literally no screentime, so i can say whatever i like about him - has the potential to be hot AND evil, which for me is like the ultimate combination 🤩🤩

my version of prime!william is very much a man who loves his children more than anything else - he won't let them get away with anything, per se, but he absolutely loves those two to pieces and holds his family very very close to his heart. imperium!william, then, takes that love and (as for everything in the imperium) whacks it up to eleven - so what happens then?

the solaires, for better or worse, really get the short end of the stick during catacylsm, so i really wanted to talk about what alexis and vincent's fates might have meant for william - what it might have done to him, feeling both his progenies die in such quick succession, and what that would have made him do now.

in canon, we also have that first william audio where lovely meets him for the first time - this fic is sort of my answer to that, i guess? it's never clear if they ever met in the imperium before vincent died or not, but i think it's unlikely they ever did. it also felt kind of boring to me, that they get rescued by asher but then we never hear anything about them again, so the idea of william kidnapping lovely and staging this first meeting was born!

the vibe of this fic rests quite heavily on the aesthetics of it all - the room around lovely (and william himself, now that i think about it) gets described in a way that's trying to show the reader that the house is quite old and quite expensive! things like william's gloves and handkerchief, the addition of a mantel clock, a chest of drawers, heavy curtains on the windows... all of those things are meant to suggest that we're dealing with a man who's very wealthy, and combined with lovely's restrained, confused body, there's the implication that he's also very powerful.

(obviously, we get that in the dialogue and the narration as well - william and lovely both mention the fact that he's a vampire king, and although lovely doesn't really know what that means, it's not difficult to infer that it means he's got a lot of money.)

the way that william speaks was actually not as difficult as i thought it would be to write - it's supposed to be slightly stilted, archaic, and a little bit awkward! it's referenced towards the beginning when lovely notices 'letters sticking and sliding where [they] don’t expect them', but that's all meant to get across the point that william a) is speaking with a noticeable french accent, b) is much, much older than lovely (by hundreds of years), and c) is much more formal in his speech than vincent was, and that lovely's used to.

in every iteration of this, lovely was always going to be tied to the bed for the whole time. while that does make for quite a nice (if obvious) reminder of the power dynamic here, there were actually two more significant reasons for having the scene play out with them stuck there: the first is that the idea of being tied to a bed has a whole load of, uh, explicit connotations that i wanted the reader to have in the back of their mind - sex and vampires kind of go together anyway, and i wanted to make william extra extra hot in this one because i think it's what he deserves and also i am an equal-opportunity vampirefucker and everyone deserves the chance to think about getting fucked by the sexy powerful rich vampire king, this is my contribution to society

the second reason is literally no more complicated than i wanted this to echo various conventions of film, specifically with an eye to horror and melodrama - our poor captured protagonist has been caught and is being tied to the railroad tracks, while our villain is busy monologuing up a storm.

(and wow, does william monologue in this one! you can probably tell that i wrote the dialogue first, and then went back in to fill in the rest - he really doesn't shut up at all...)

however, william was never going to be a purely evil character for me - i did my best to make him as sympathetic as possible, while still adhering to the conventions of the imperiumverse and making it clear that this is a world where the boundaries of socially acceptable and morally justifiable behaviour are absolutely not the same as the prime universe.

part of that is tied to that slightly laissez-faire, hand-wavey 'we're in the imperium, anything can happen' mentality that i like, but to me his attitude of 'i have to preserve anything i can of my children, anything at all just to prove that they existed' comes from a place of very deep, very tragic loss. it's an expression of desperation, of bitter regret, and of absolute and screaming grief.

this is a man who loved his children more than anything else in the world and who is not willing to let them go, and is now calmly explaining to lovely why that love justifies keeping them captive indefinitely. it makes sense to him, although he's not keeping them in exactly the same way that vincent kept them. vincent kept lovely as a food source - william is keeping them as a souvenir. he's hoping that lovely remembers vincent as fondly and as lovingly as he does.

lovely... isn't really sure if they do or not, but they're not immune to the imperium either - they were kept by vincent long enough that the stockholm syndrome had time to reasonably set in, enough that they definitely associated vincent with survival, with warmth and food and human contact, but can't quite figure out if what they're feeling is actually love. they're strangely upset that vincent never told them he had a sister, and they're surprisingly fine with the idea of getting revenge on vincent's killer. however, they know that what vincent did was, on some level, wrong - hence their confusion, and their slightly contradictory behaviour.

it's all about survival rather than affection for poor lovely, as shown by them asking william to stay ('if he leaves, there’s no telling when - if ever - he’ll come back for you. Call it personal experience.') but also refusing the water he offers them ('Like hell you’re drinking anything he gives you.'). they don't trust william, but they've learnt that the best way to survive is to obey.

the ending with william trancing lovely is deliberately ambiguous - does he turn them? does he keep them as a human? it's entirely open to interpretation, but my personal version is that he keeps them human for a little bit in a sort of weird, vincent-esque way? they're kept in much better conditions than vincent had them in, but it's william's twisted attempt to emulate his son, and feel closer to him by doing things as vincent did them (hence why he calls them 'my little thrall-to-be'). then, after that, he does turn lovely into a vampire to keep them 'preserved' forever, eternally attached to him and kept in his house.

it's implied that there's some degree of attraction there, at least in a sexual sense ('You shiver slightly, but you’re not sure why. “Oh, is that it? That’s what you want - to be good for me?” A playful smirk. “You spoil me, darling.”'), but the extent of that is also up to the reader's interpretation. all i'm saying is that he's hot on purpose, the long hair and the gloves were absolutely on purpose, and i don't blame you <3

my favourite favourite part of this has got to be that last dreamy bit ('There’s a house in the woods, a very long way away...') - if i remember correctly, i think i wrote that bit quite early on but saved it, because it didn't really fit the tone of the rest. it's designed to read like a closing montage sequence in a film, where the dialogue has finished and the music is coming to a finale, and i think it mostly worked...?? idk i'm just really pleased with how it turned out, especially the sensory description there! the house that lovely mentions is deliberately left unclear - you can decide whether i meant it to be vincent's or william's. i have to keep some secrets, after all 🥰🥰

honourable mentions: get in, loser!, a ring on the carousel, motion capture, resist and elongate, mad or sublime, five more minutes

[inkluvs]

i wonder how many people have picked up habits and mannerisms from me that i've picked up from my best friend that they've picked up from their mom and so on and so forth and it's just a beautiful web of influencing each other and passing on little traits <3

[maroon-winestain]

sometimes i reread blurbs / songs i've written n it's like. this shit kinda slaps ngl

[renabe4life]

Day 3 - Sky/Sea | Mythology

afraid to take to the air for so long but up here with you i can't recall what for

[gamingmint]

Full Cloves under the read more just so there’s no 🍑 jump scare.

Also go read Ebb by @renabe4life it’s hilarious and amazing.

[bubbleddisasters]

I’m bored so DORM SET UP HEADCANONS!

———-

Heartstabyl:

-With the stairs constantly moving, most second and third years have somewhat memorized the patterns, yet never tell the first years.

It’s like a right of passage to figure it out for yourself.

-Similarly to how each of the other dorms has their special little extra area (Ex: Pomfieores Hidden Lab, Savannaclaws Colosseum etc) Heartstabyl has a literal courtroom that goes often unused, but sometimes if Drama or Arguments gets too much, they will have a court session to debate it, or just joke debates.

-Due to it nearly breaching capacity, the third years do not have their own dorms, but share with one other student, of their choice if mutual or random otherwise. Trey and Cater share a room, which has been jokily dubbed the Leprechaun room. (Clover suit with green hair and goldenish eyes + Ginger with soul sucking bright green eyes)

-There is a confiscation room that only Trey and Riddle are SUPPOSED to have access to. Unfortunately for them, Che’nya does exist and can be bribed into robbery with (good) cheese, (good) cheesecake, or cool trinkets as long as the confiscated item isn’t overly dangerous or too illegal.

-Ace and Deuce’s room is known for being the loudest and has received an unorthodox amount of noise complaints.

-Some students make the hedgehogs outfits and little hats.

____________

Savannaclaw:

——

-As it’s literally made of ROCK, there are many incidents and injuries from running into walls or tripping.

-If food goes missing, their is actually war fare and it is taken personally, but Ruggie has managed to escape suspicion for his entire stay so far.

-Not a goddamn vegetable in sight, Jack has a stash of them and is so far one of three students to do so.

-Dumbest dorm in the club with the highest drop out (usually for pursing a sports scholarship at another school) , expulsion and injury rates.

-Due to fights, sports and literal brain damage from being hit in the head with a discus one too many times, the dorm members are often at the nurses office.

-Sometimes gets ABO jokes from (mostly) Ignihyde students, and has literally no clue what they’re talking about unless directly explained. Jack didn’t say anything to the majority of the school for about a week after Ortho explained it to him.

-From what we see in Leonas Room atleast, all the windows are glassless, so some students will straight up jump out the windows or fall through them on the regular.

-There actually IS a vice housewarden, atleast on paper, since it was required, but nobody knows who it is, not even the vice themselves.

Leona picked a student from his dorms name at random, and Crowley never checked in with the student, and has been under the assumption they’re constantly busy or just neglectful thanks to Leona gaslighting.

The only thing he has told Savannaclaw is that he can confirm it’s not Ruggie, since he didn’t know he existed at the time.

-Rook has crawled through Leonas window ATLEAST ONCE to bother him, and after that he put up drapes so he had a better chance of hearing him coming.

___________

Octavinelle:

_____

-ALL the drama and ALL the blackmail. Literally a dorm of Regina George level dramatics. Pomefiore has nothing on them.

-Gaslighting and Manipulation extraordinares

-As Ursula herself is based on a Drag Queen (Divine), I imagine they have Drag Nights at the lounge, and they’re extremely popular.

-Alot of the non-mer students make jokes about drowning if the barrier ever gets removing, and as most of the mers likely blush blue instead of pink/red, usually many first year humans think their literally choking/ can’t breath for a hot sec.

Also alot of strange incidents and firsts for them, like finding out your roommate is bioluminescent.

-24/7 Elevator music in the lounge, so it drives them absolutely INSANE if played around the dorms too.

-The music was never actually turned off during Azuls OB, as Jade, Floyd or Azul himself probably had the key to the audio room, or was already locked into the bluetooth, so everyone was losing their shit whilst spa music was playing in the background. Sort of like that one Markaplier quote:

“If purple guy is the creator, then what does it all mean- CAN WE CUT THE CASUAL BONGOS?!!”

-I KNOW we see the beds aren’t this way from the Octatrios beds but I hate the basic ass design of Octavinelles actual inner dorm, so y’know what? Clamshell and/or Oyster beds that can open and close like the ones Ariel and her sisters have in the movies.

I’m also changing the color scheme because where the fuck dId they get MAJORITY WHITE AHD LIGHT FUCKING LAVENDER FROM?? URSULAS COLORS ARE BLACK, SILVER/PEARL AND PLUM??

So yea fuck you, Plum, Pearl/Silver, Black, Blue and dark teal color schemes with alot of corals, underwater cove and ocean themed furniture.

-If the dorm were to ever run out of transformation potions, things would get wild real quick.

-They have a pool that is basically just an aquarium you can swim in. Floyd was banned for a month once for trying to drown someone. (Jade was infact not only an accomplice, but the one who gave Floyd the idea in the first place, and immediately threw Floyd under the bus when Azul caught them)

-Azul has a secret private pool hidden behind a door wall thing.

-Jade has a Room of Shrooms that is locked off to the general students.

-Many of the students learn serving tricks to get extra tips.

-Will spitefully bring someone who came laters order first if you’re being a pain. Repeatedly if you really earned it.

-A student once brought heelies, and Floyd immediately jumped on the idea. So yes, some students will heelie over to your table for the sake of “convenience”

______

Scarabia:

—-

-Introverts: Welcome to hell.

-As another dorm with open windows, there are some falling issues.

-Jamil does that mom thing where internally he’s like “Nobody helps me in this fucking house” or will passively aggressively say something like “Well if you want to do this more often, maybe you could start helping out.�� but when the dorm students actually offer to help 9 times out of 10 he’s like “absolutely not you’ll mess it up.”

-Schemers canonically but both negatively and positively. Like would say the most sweet and positive plans like their planning a mutiny.

-Like that one “If Antinious was actually a sweet guy” remix of Hold Him Down from Epic :

“Haven’t you noticed who’s missing? Don’t you know the prince is not around?

I heard today is Telemachus birthday, and I heard today he comes back to town so-

I say we gather near the beaches, I say we wait til he arrives~

I’ll slip away while you all distract him so I can go PREPARE THE SURPRISES.

Hold him down…While I’m in the kitchen~

Hold Him down…While I start to bake~

Hold him down while we slowly bring his buddies his family and Favorite Cakeeee~

Cut it down….into tiny pieces

For the prince…Serve it Alamode…

When the prince wonders what his gift is…ONLY HIS MOTHER AND I WILL KNOWWWWW”

Yea thats Scarabia student planning core.

-Steal one thing from this dorm and you can probably feed a family of four for a month.

-You can get a medical pass to be exempt from being in the dorm during the day if you’re sensitive to heat.

-Not all the students actually like the parties, but participate in them for the free food regardless.

-Its concerningly easy to lockpick most of the treasuries, but nobody has done it sheerly because they would feel bad if Kalim still forgave them.

-Its common for first years unused to the heat to straight up pass out before even making it to the dorm since from the map, its a concerningly long walk, so they had to install a mini secondary teleporter sheerly to avoid constant heat stroke.

_______

Pomfieore

——

-Smells like a Sephora and Bath and Body Works with a side of Chanel Perfume

-Many of them are very invested in celebrity drama.

-There is what has been nicknamed “The Garden of Death”, which is a small garden in the back of Pomfieore containing many poisonous plants used to create, and this may come as a surprise, poisons.

-Second highest drop out rate, mostly due to struggles with pursuing a budding career in the entertainment and/or artisic industry and balancing school aswell.

Vil usually does try to dissuade them, but unfortunately it is a good point that he was, even if he did his career work on his own, still had the Schronheit name behind him, creating a high bias with many directors and companies, so he already had higher chances then the average budding actor since the start, and I can imagine alot of the students pointing that out if they didn’t have the same.

-Some students, when they think Vil is not looking, will sit on the throne as a joke.

-The amount of makeup and mirrors in this dorm is crazy.

-Epel has, on more than one occasion, jumped out of windows to escape Vil/Rook, so 80% of the common area windows are locked.

-The walls and carpets in the main areas actually have very thin sheets on them to prevent makeup stains.

-As one of the chonkiest dorms, both in length and width, walking around can be hell if you’re in a rush. So many stairs, so little time.

-The Secret Lab has a Emperor’s New Groove like lever system that only the dorm students know which is which, but sometimes mistakes are made.

_____________

Ignihyde:

——

-When I say you can HEAR the electricity moving through the wires EVERYWHERE.

-Actually blinding to walk into at night due to the amount of screens.

-The kitchen is actually souped up and super clean because it’s nearly never used.

-They have Streaming Parties whenever a new season of a well liked anime or show among the students comes out, and on very rare occasions, Vocaloid Raves when a new album comes out.

These are the ONLY parties Idia attends and actually assists in the setup of, so you know it’s absolutely wild. Its a unanimous agreement that nobody is allowed to tell any other dorms about it (Ramshackle excluded)

-Ortho is the world’s nicest hall monitor at night when he’s bored and Idias actually asleep for once, but it can give students whatever the equivalent of FNAF is flashbacks.

-It’s a dorm joke to say “I’m tired, i’m heading home to Hell” or “I’ve got to catch the Ferry to the Underworld, see ya later”

-The projects the students are cooking up in this dorm makes Elon Musk look like a toy maker.

-These motherfuckers are also nocturnal sometimes. The main room is more active at night then during the day.

-They have a constant cat visitor that they’ve yet to realize or find out is Che’nya in a cat form. Trey once noticed Idia walking to a vending machine with a purple and pink cat on his shoulder and simply aggressively sighed.

-The Cat is lowkey pampered, and it actually started when Che’nya was making a getaway and accidentally ran into Ignihyde in his secondary form.

-Least Magic using dorm. Literally that one meme where it’s a few characters using normal weapons and then it’s a character from the same series with a gun. Ignihyde is that character.

The Genya of the NRC dorms.

________

Diasomnia:

——

-Will practically go into nuclear reactor evacuation if Lilia manages to get into the kitchen.

-They have an entire armory of everything but firearms. However there is a bazooka that Lilia donated for comedical reasons.

-Nearly everyone in the dorm despises Sebek for a multitude of reasons. It’s unfortunate but by god is it true. He is mostly unaware of this and the fact they were near ready to throw a party when he started hanging around Ramshackle more.

However, The only thing keeping Sebek from being literally mass jumped is the fact they don’t want to risk pissing off Lilia or Malleus and thats about it.

-Very Pointy furniture. Everything is VERY POINTY. Poke at your own risk.

-When leaving their room at night, their constantly on guard because of Lilias jumpscaring streak.

-The bridge is the worst thing ever if you have a fear of heights as it’s extremely cracky and thin.

-Some students genuinely think Silver is dead when they find him in random spots asleep.

-Lilia can turn into a bat and you cannot convince me otherwise, therefore alot of the students will eye bats on the ceiling with suspicion trying to see if A: Lilias among them. Or B: If they’ll snitch to Lilia if they’re doing something they shouldn’t.

-Sometimes they’ll polish the gargoyles and grotesques for Malleus.

_____

Ramshackle:

_______

-Yuu/MC has a string of Polaroid photos taken with the Ghost Camera in their room.

-Creakiest couch known to man, and everything within the dorm has some scorch or scratch marks from Grim Zoomies.

-The ghosts become cool Great Uncles, and Knit like crazy during october, since they can’t really touch things afterwards, so MC ends up with a pile of blankets, sweaters, scarves, hats and more.

-They also tell MC the tea with the other school ghosts.

-Skully actually haunts Ramshackle, but the secret area below it, which used to be the main dorm, but nobody dares go into the basement, so nobody really knows about it anymore. If MC were to find it, he would be BEYOND thrilled.

-Everytime a new idiot is initiated into the first year squad, they usually end up with their own “room”, since Ramshackle has way too many empty ones anyway.

-Originally Ace and Deuce just shared one since most of the rooms were broken down and they weren’t taking chances, plus there was only one next to MC and it would feel weird if they were an entire dorm apart.

-This came in useful during Book 5 because alot of their stuff was already kinda just…there anyway.

-Jack just uses his room for Cacti. Thats really it, since the last time he tried to store weights in there, it didn’t end well.

-Epels is excess Apple Storage and a Vil-Free Safe zone, which is often raided by the rest but mostly Grim since Apples.

-Orthos is just a charging port and some movies and games. It does look very strange compared to the rest with all the near SCI-FI theme going on.

-Sebeks is just more of a reading and training room now then anything else, and there are swords in there that Yuu/MC is permitted to use for self defense.

But it used to be, for awhile, jokily named the Room of Shame, because Ace consistently managed to trick him into going in and would lock the door when he made one too many human discriminative comments and wasn’t allowed out until he apologized.

-Ramshackles outer doors and windows actually use a super old enchanted lock with only 5 keys in existence (Yuu’s and the 4 extra you can give in the guest room) , so its unable to lockpick, to Rooks dismay, he’s banished to only looking through the windows

-Unfortunately, Ace did get his grubby little hands on one of the key’s at some point, so he is a constant B&Er of Ramshackle (truly best friend core) and often drags Deuce with him.

-Ramshackle has a themed mess of items, as many are gifts from the other dorms, a Kettle from Ramshackle, Rug from Savannaclaw, “Accidentally over ordered extras” of chairs and a table from Octavinelle, Silks and Culinary equipment from Scarabia, etc etc.

-Sebek did fall through the floor once because he was stomping around like he was kinda used to in Diasomnia, and overestimated the durability of Ramshackles Floors.

-This happened multiple times to Floyd aswell during their occupation of Ramshackle in Book 3.

-A ton of random trinkets from Malleus exist within the dorm, some found, some not.

-Lilia will sometimes follow Malleus and MC on their midnight walks as a bat, and Grim once tried to fight him, telling MC a random bat he saw on the porch was being fishy.

_______

I’m tired so thats about it.

Enjoy

[calcifiedunderland]

Part I (here), Part II, Part III (COMPLETED)

Trey Clover vs. Azul Ashengrotto vs. Jamil Viper x GN! Reader

In which the way to the Prefect’s heart is through their stomach! At least, according to three of NRC’s students…

I got the idea from @recreyomakesdoodles , from this post! Thank you so much, hope you liked it!!💕

Tagging people I think would be interested: @aruis4nosleep , @tinseltina

Warnings: food/eating

Notes: I decided to split this into multiple parts because I never have any restraint while writing and this ended up being long. Enjoy :D

———————————————————♣️🐙🐍

“Well, I didn’t expect to see you here.”

Azul pushed his glasses up, balancing a stack of takeout boxes emblazoned with the Mostro Lounge logo on them. Cold blue eyes met Trey’s golden irises. Trey cleared his throat, shifting a heavy picnic basket from one hand to the other. “What brings you here, Azul? I thought you’d be busy at Mostro Lounge…”

Azul snorted, “the Prefect knows to expect me today. Clearly, you are the one intruding.” Earlier that week, he overheard you wailing to your friends about your upcoming History of Magic exam. Apparently, this unit was on Atlantica’s magical history - a topic that was, unfortunately, giving you trouble.

Fortunately, Azul was a mer who grew up learning the history by heart. Naturally he offered you assistance in exchange for having you taste-test some dishes. And how could he not help a poor, unfortunate fellow student like yourself?

Besides, if he wanted to bring along some personally cooked meals to Ramshackle, under the claim that you both would be there ‘for hours, so you may as well try some foods (that I made!) for the upcoming Lounge menu (that I run)!’, that was nobody’s business. And certainly not Clover’s business.

Trey crossed his arms, easily holding the heavy picnic basket like it weighed nothing. Azul could smell the buttery pastries and powdered sugar through the closed basket lid where he stood. “Riddle sent me to give the Prefect an invitation to the next Unbirthday Party. I thought I’d give them some treats to… sweeten the deal.” Though Trey had a disarmingly pleasant smile with the pun, his eyes bored into Azul’s.

Azul frowned. “That couldn’t have been more than a simple text. Aren’t they friends with your first years, as well?” He asked, remembering your first year friends that he’d turned into anemones.

Trey adjusted his glasses and averted his gaze, a telltale deflection sign that Azul didn’t miss. “Well, it’s more official coming from the Vice Housewarden.” “And I suppose the baked goods are complimentary?” Azul sniffed disdainfully at the basket, “Surely, the prefect needs more than pastries. A proper meal,” he emphasized.

Trey’s eyes narrowed, “a basket of baked goods is better than whatever deal you’d have for them,” he nodded to the boxes Azul carried. “Everyone loves a good old fashioned pastry. Can’t say the same for seafood.” Azul opened his mouth to retort, when suddenly both of their ringtones went off.

IM SO SORRY AZUL!!!!! I got caught up with something, can I come over tomorrow?? I likely won’t be done until later, the headmage has me doing stuff 😭

TREY!!! Tysm for the invite, you didn’t have to go out of ur way to give it in person!! ill definitely be there at the party! 😄 sry I’m not there atm, Crowley wanted me to do something for him

Trey frowned, reading your text. Azul huffed, shouldering the stack of food boxes, muttering “looks like today was a loss.” Trey sighed, “well, it can’t be helped…” he made a mental note to put the pastries in the Heartslabyul fridge and just deliver it to you tomorrow, under the guise of ‘checking up on you’ after working for Crowley. The two of them trudged down the path to the Hall of Mirrors, heading back to their dorms.

The two of them walked in silence until Trey abruptly said, “I don’t know what you want with the Prefect, but I hope you have their best intentions at heart.” Azul turned to give Trey a withering look, “I assure you, when it comes to the Prefect, I have nothing but good intentions.” As he stepped into Octavinelle, Azul smirked and muttered, “especially regarding their heart.” Trey lingered for a bit, staring at the Octavinelle mirror with an unreadable expression. “We’ll see about that,” he said aloud in the empty Hall, then headed back to Heartslabyul.

—•—♣️🐙🐍—•—

Meanwhile, you sighed heavily, collapsing onto the chair. The cafeteria was pretty much empty, save for the random student or two. It was already darkening outside, and you were hungry. Crowley wanted you to do something for him just before lunch, and soon half your Saturday was gone running around NRC. You’d even lost track of time, and missed Azul’s study session and Trey dropping in! You groaned, hearing your stomach growl loudly.

“Prefect? What are you doing here?”

You glanced up, seeing Jamil with a large container of tupperware and other small containers. The delicious scent of curries, labneh yogurt cheese, and freshly made pita made your mouth water. Despite yourself, Jamil caught you looking at the boxed-up food more than once.

“…Crowley had me running errands, and I may have skipped lunch…” your voice grew quiet near the end. Jamil raised an eyebrow, then smiled. “I actually ended up making too much food for Kalim,” he said, moving around the table to sit next to you. “There’s enough for an extra person, and I’ve have already eaten.”

Your eyes widened, and Jamil started dishing out some curry and flatbread for you. Bright-colored curry sauce and chickpeas flooded the platter, wafting a delicious scent. As Jamil ripped a piece of pita, your stomach growl loudly. Your face felt warm. Jamil only chuckled, pushing the plate he’d conjured towards you. “What about Kalim?” You asked, feeling bad. Jamil smiled, “Please, go ahead. There’s enough for Kalim and you.” A warm smile grew on your face, and you gave Jamil a one-sided hug before digging in. “Thank you! You’re my savior!”

As he watched you eat, a tender look grew on Jamil’s face. He shifted the food containers so he could watch you while nibbling on some flatbread. It wasn’t difficult to determine that you were off on Crowley’s whims again - with you running around the school and being gone for several hours. With that in mind, it wouldn’t be anyone’s fault if he accidentally made too much food, so he thought he’d drop it off at Ramshackle later. It was sheer luck that you’d dropped by the cafeteria!

You hummed, soaking up some of the leftover curry sauce with your flatbread, “this was delicious, Jamil. Thank you so much.”

Jamil smiled genuinely, but a devious look came into his eyes when you looked back at your plate. “Please, Prefect, allow me. Wait here.” He took the plate, going to the kitchens to box up some food for you to take back. Walking back to you, he handed you the container, “It’s getting late, I can walk you back to Ramshackle.”

The two of you set off, with you holding some of Jamil’s boxes. “This was… really sweet of you, Jamil,” you smiled. You knew Jamil always had his hands full, whether it was taking care of Kalim or managing literally everything else. Maybe the food was making you gush, but you were definitely grateful for the impromptu meal. As you opened the door to Ramshackle, you gingerly handed the boxes back to him.

“Ah, wait,” he shuffled them and held a large one out to you. “This one is yours.” Your eyes widened, “Jamil, this is a lot-“ “Please.” Your eyes met his dark grey irises, and warm gratitude filled your chest. “Jamil, I… I really don’t know what to say. I have to repay you somehow-“ Now that was what he wanted to hear.

“You know, I’ve been meaning to try making some new dishes,” he glanced at you. “I’ve been needing someone to taste test them, and Kalim won’t be available…” You nodded eagerly, “Of course! I’d love to help you!” You said your goodbyes, and as the door shut behind you, Jamil had a calculating smirk on his face. Oh yeah, it’s all coming together.

————————————————————♣️🐙🐍

Thanks for being patient everyone!! Hope you enjoyed this part, reblogs and comments are forever appreciated 💕

lmk if anyone wants to be added to the taglist! Take care shrimpies~ 😘

[inkluvs]

rose my brainworms are thanking u for this

steve harrington x stick season (we'll all be here forever) - noah kahan

my dad will strike it rich, we'll be the big house on the block. some day i'm gonna be somebody people want...

[dilatorywriting]

Monster Mayhem: Siren's Song

Gender Neutral Reader x Vil Schoenheit Word Count: 6.1k

Summary: What do you call a deaf pirate? Not 'Siren Food' apparently, which is really sort of hilarious when you've been kidnapped by a hungry Siren. Not for the Siren though—he's definitely not having a good time.

A/N: *rushes in at the 11th hour* Happy Mer-May!! I've been back and forth with clinical rotations and also working on some commission things and Leona's Part 4, but like, it's a fanfiction holiday. I couldn't miss out. And for one of my favorite tropes nonetheless. So here we are.

[PART 1] [PART 1.5] [PART 2] [PART 3] [PART 4] [PART 5]

There was a legend that floated throughout the Sage Island Seas of the Pirate With No Ears. Which was ridiculous—half because such a tall tale managing to survive so long and so wildly really showed just how pathetic the rest of the gossip around here was, and half because you still had ears. They just didn’t work very well was all.

Some said you’d been deafened by a prowling sea sorcerer who had tricked you into trading away your once keen sense for some mortal foible or other. Others whispered about how you’d been trapped in an ice cavern, surrounded by electric eels and sharks, and that the only way you’d been able to weasel your way out was by cutting off your own ears so that you’d have enough wiggle room to escape from your bindings. Which made absolutely zero sense at all.

In reality, all you’d done was stand far too close to a canon for far too long when you were far, far too little, and ever since all you could hear was the dull ringing of post-battle silence. Sometimes it was a bit sad. When the waves crashed against the shore, or when the gulls flew overhead—you were sure all those things sounded very lovely. You remembered music and laughter and sometimes they echoed in your head at a distance—a memory not quite forgotten but certainly fading at the edges. But other times, like now, where your fellow crewmates were bawling into their ales and wailing about lord knew what… well, it was always nice to find a silver lining in these sorts of things.

One of the tipsy lads tottering around the deck of The Rose Queen tripped and landed against the wood with something that looked like it’d be a very loud smack. Your brain helpfully filled the silence with some nonsense noises and park-play-style laughter instead. You watched Cater stumble by out of the corner of your eye. He patted your head and said something that twisted his mouth into a gaping ‘uuuuu-eeeee-oooo’ before he puttered away to leech off First Mate Clover instead. Ace threw a drunken arm around your shoulder and burbled something against your cheek that popped with the scent of stale booze, and you decided to pretend that you were as alone at sea as your muted senses would like to think.

The party raged on long into the evening and you stared down at the rabble contentedly from your perch in the crow’s nest. They were a good bunch—dullards though they may be. You’d heard (hardee har har) that they were planning to raid the Port o'Bliss, and something must have gone terribly right. You only really hung around to scrub barnacles off the paneling and keep an eye on the tides well enough that Deuce wouldn’t run the lot of you ashore, so you weren’t really sure how the whole ‘pirating’ business actually went about. But clearly they were doing a pretty good job of it.

You rested your chin on your crossed arms and sighed into the salty breeze. The night was warm and pleasant, and before you knew it, you were nodding off against the rough fabric of your sleeves. You weren’t quite sure how long you spent dozing there tangled in the ropes of mast, but it was long enough that by the time you snorted back awake the festive lights had dimmed to embers and most of the crew had sidled away below deck to either keep drinking themselves blind or collapse in a pool of their own colorful vomit.

There was a lone figure swerving towards the bow—precariously close to the railing for someone so clearly unsteady on their own legs, if you did say so yourself. You squinted suspiciously at his mused lavender hair, not entirely sure you recognized the head bobbing around below you. But perhaps The Rose Queen had picked up some fresh recruits at the Port, or maybe the crew had gotten a bit too booze happy with some dye. Purple Hair leaned up against the rails and tipped forward on his toes like he was thinking about diving in, or maybe barfing. Either or, you sighed and shimmied your way down to stop him from tumbling into a watery grave.

“Oi!” you called, the shout vibrating up and out of your throat, and the kid jumped half a foot in the air. “What do you think you’re doing? Get away from there. Riddle’ll have your head if we have to send out the rescue rafts this late at—”

The kid turned to face you with wide, wide, glowing eyes. Your own went round as dinner plates as you watched his too-dark pupils pulse like drumbeat. They were so bright, practically illuminating the whole of his delicate face, but there was no light to them. Matte and sleek like a shark’s eyes.

He shouted something at you so whip fast that you couldn’t even begin to make sense of, and then he was glancing nervously back and forth between the roiling waves at his back and the encroaching deckhand at his front—making all sorts of nonsense gestures that had you sighing behind gritted teeth.

“Look,” you said, interrupting whatever indiscernible gibberish he was spouting, “I don’t know who you think you are. But you’ve picked the wrong ship to try and—I don’t know—seize? Pirate? You can’t pirate a pirate ship! But either way, you—”

Then the kid opened his mouth like he was screaming, and you frowned again. There was strange prickle along your arms that had goosebumps crawling up your skin and the hair raising at the back of your neck, but you shook it off and moved forward with another weary sigh. You pulled a length of rope from the belt slung around your hips and held the limp bundle of salt-soaked mesh up like a threat.

“I will throw you overboard. And hogtie you first,” you promised cheerily. “So you actually sink.”

Purple Hair just looked like he was trying to scream louder, and you were sourly tempted to stick your fucking tongue out at him and make petulant ‘nyeh nyeh nice try’ noises at him, but then there was a heaviness behind you. A creak in the wood that you could feel if not hear. You rolled out of habit—tumbling across the deck just in time to avoid a nasty swipe along your back. And oh no. The thing crawling up over the railing was worse than any lavender would-be ship thief. The black tipped claws and flared fins were telling enough, but the sharp-toothed grin was somehow more so. It tilted its unnaturally lovely head at you and spoke politely—clearly and very, painfully, slowly.

“What’s—this—perhaps—” you were able to vaguely make out. Maybe. The dark and your panic were both a terrible hindrance to putting shapes to sound. His lips curled into something wicked before parting far more smoothly than the younger man’s had. Singing. It was singing, not screaming. Hauntingly green eyes glowed bright and you felt the tunk tunk tunk beneath your feet of the rest of the crew starting to move around beneath you. Around you.

Then there were more of them—crawling up over the railings, trilling into the night air. All far too lovely and far too sharp to be anything but predators. The moonlight illuminated their fangs and scales in a ghostly white glow. There were shivers running along your spine, but otherwise nothing but silence echoed through your head. Small mercies. You watched several of your fellow crewmates rush out of the cabins only to double over with their hands clasped over their ears. Others stuttered and tumbled forward towards the railings as if they were being dragged along like puppets on a string. You cursed and ducked between them—looping your rope around their legs as you went and tugging them to their knees like a line of falling dominoes.

You let your hapless comrades collapse to the deck and curled the last throws of rope around your fists. You were decent enough with a knife when it came to dueling an unmoving, completely unaware foe—like a barnacle or some rusted over door hinges. But real people? Sirens?Fucking literal blade-tipped-merfolk straight out of every sailor’s nightmare? No thank you. So the teeny blade stayed sheathed at your hip and you dove into the fray to find something rope-wrangle-able.

At the other end of the bow, you watched Purple Boy straighten from a crouch. There were new, silvery blue scales crawling up his neck and forearms. He was still tottering around on legs that he clearly wasn’t all too used to, and you watched as the little guppy started to make a furious beeline for Captain Rosehearts. Which—no. Absolutely not. You were never one of those pirates who was like ‘oh, Captain, my Captain~’ but Riddle was good. He was tough, and taciturn, and could throw a tantrum that could bring down an entire harbor. But he’d written out all of his ridiculous six hundred rules by hand so that you could have them. And the teeny furrow in his brow as he staunchly taught himself hand sign after hand sign so that he could yell at you in earnest was so endearing that you’d protect that little firecracker for as long as you breathed.

So you went after Lavender Head, and then of course Lavender Head turned and tried to shout at you all over again. When that continued to not work at all, the Siren began to backpedal in earnest. He turned his head and squawked at whoever was around to listen, but in the chaos of the attack there didn’t seem to be many of his pod free to lend him a hand.

You descended on the little snake, rope at the ready and perfectly happy to make sushi out of the fucker, when something big overshadowed the both of you. Another Siren crested over the side of the ship, larger and clearly more impressive than the rest of its kin. Which matched your stupidly terrible luck just fine. Ah, yes, Mister Big Bad. Please. Go for the deckhand rather than the literal trained mercenaries less than ten feet away. Brilliant. The Siren bared its fangs like some great, terrible, beast and tore into the paneling with its curved claws as it attempted to drag you down to your watery grave. You cursed, and kicked, and yelped in a panic when the thing managed to get one of those cold, pale hands around your ankle.

Despite the fact that all of it surely happened in less than a few seconds, your descent seemed to progress in steps. First, the Siren tugged you over the side. Second, you smartly flipped the loops of your rope up to try and lasso yourself a handhold. Thirdly, you outright missed the ship and instead tangled the spools of thin rope all around your Murderer To Be. Said Murderer’s eyes widened in shock as your unintentional trap wrapped the both of you up like a mess of bugs in a spider web. And finally, the pair of you crashed towards the churning ocean in a knotted-up heap and slowly sank beneath the waves.

.

.

You rubbed the grit and salt from your eyes and sat up with a groan. Where were you? Not too far out at sea, hopefully. Washing up ashore had been nothing short of a miracle, and you weren’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth if it meant you got to avoid becoming chum for another day. The sand beneath your fingers was soft and white, and it slipped beneath your palm like water. You moved to push yourself to your feet and froze—a blur of amethyst swiping out and knocking you back onto your ass with a splash.

You spluttered and spat, and had just barely managed to flip yourself over like a turtle who’d been upended on its back when you caught sight of the absolute last creature in the world that you’d ever wanted to see again.

The big Siren had washed up nearby.

Because of course it had.

The creature narrowed his eyes at you and immediately set about lashing his rope-twisted tail against the sand like a rattlesnake. He bared his pointed teeth in a hiss and you were dowsed in a barrage of saltwater ammunition.

“Stop! Stop!” you begged, spitting out wayward chunks of seaweed, and shells, and gods knew what else. “I get it! I won’t come near you, jeesh! I wasn’t planning on it to begin with!”

The Siren curled his lips unpleasantly, putting that wonderful row of dagger-like pearly whites on display. He spat something completely indiscernible—the line of his mouth so harsh and flat that you couldn’t have even begun to pick up the shape of things if you tried—and you scooted as far back as you could without toppling yourself over again.

He dug his clawed hands into the sand and said something else, just as clipped and tight. You assumed it was an accusation. You were very used to recognizing the glare that accompanied those. When you didn’t respond, his brow tugged down low and he snapped something else—this time jabbing those pointed, black, nails in your direction. Ah, so definitely a complaint then.

You cocked your head at him out of habit and that griping turned into a snarl so ferocious that you could feel it racing up your skin like static. Which was definitely pretty trippy.

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” you told him honestly. Which just made the spiked fins flatten all along the side of his head and another wave of those zippy sneers dance up your arms. “Literally,” you tried. “I—”

The Siren opened his mouth and that sparky static from earlier amplified into something near painful. It was strong, and prickly, and left the imprints of invisible shackles all along your already aching joints. You could feel his voice carrying on the breeze—brushing against your cheeks and playing with hair. Thin, icy, fingers digging their way into your brain and yanking. But there was something missing from all that ethereal hypnotism. Something pleasant and sweet to complete the circle of temptation. A voice, you’d guess. There had to be a call after all, or else it hardly mattered how deep and all encompassing the need was to answer.  

When you didn’t immediately, like, fall to your knees in subjugation or drown yourself in the inch and a half of tepid water pooling at your hips, the Siren’s eyes dimmed with something that almost looked like hesitance. His brow pinched tight and he parted his red lips wider. A seagull dropped from the sky. Three different crabs crawled out of the sand to bow down.

“I can’t hear you!” you tried again, loud enough to have your teeth aching. His mouth went wider, and an entire ass tuna beached itself to flop pathetically near your ankles. “It’s not a challenge!” you wailed. “My ears literally, actually, do not work, you fucking overgrown anchovy!”

The static disappeared all at once, and the Siren’s lips slipped into a small, surprised sort of ‘o.’ He blinked his too-long lashes at you and stared you down like you were some sort of escaped alchemical experiment.

“There,” you huffed. “Finally.” And then went quiet and a bit concerned. Because apparent Song Immunity or otherwise, the thing was still hugely impressive and scary looking. His claws definitely wouldn’t have any problem picking the leftover bits of you out of his teeth, and you knew well enough that if he dragged you into the depths with that powerful tail of his, there would be no resurfacing.

The Siren too was using this time to glare at you like you were somehow a threat to be taken seriously. Which was half flattering, half pretty funny.

“Well…” you said after a long moment. “I should get going, I suppose.”

You made your way to your feet in the mucky sandbar and started heading off to see where you’d been stranded. You could feel the Siren’s heavy gaze on you the whole while, and decided he was probably trying to figure out if you’d taste better paired with seaweed or a nice jellyfish spread.

.

.

The pair of you had been stranded on a small, crescent, islet that couldn’t even rightly call itself an island. You were able to walk from its curling east to west coasts in just under fifteen minutes, and that was at a meandering pace where you stopped to peer into all kinds of little grottos and rocky formations. There was some vegetation at the heart of it—short palm trees and tufts of grassy knolls—and thankfully a few deep divots that had collected some still rainwater, but otherwise it was entirely boring and stupid. Not even any weird tortoises or anything meandering about to make friends with.

By the time you circled back around to your original stranding point, you had fully expected the Siren to have flipped you the metaphorical bird and fucked off back into the ocean, never to be seen again. Instead, he was still stretched out in the shallows of the bay, carefully fanning his long tail out in the seafoam and picking through the mess of it with his pointy claws.

He reminded you of a beta fish—with wide, flowing, fins that looked far more like silk than skin or scales. The tips were a deep, plum purple that gently faded from near black to violet and finally a vivid sort of lilac at their junction. The bulk of his tail looked like it could be made from literal gemstones with the way it shimmered in the morning light (gems that had perhaps been a bit dinged and/or literally torn out in chunks from where he may or may not have been smashed into the rocky shore curtesy of your terrible hogtie, but who’s to say).

There were jagged cuts lining the right half of his pale torso. They oozed a strange sort of silver ichor that was probably some kind of mystical merman blood, but you absolutely refused to get close enough to try and find out. The fins framing his pelvis were tangled and thin looking, and the sweeping ones that trailed all the way down to the tip of his tail were battered and torn. Clearly pulled to bits by your handy, dandy lasso skills. Which… was still tied up at the base of them. Huh. You’d assumed he’d be able to slice through all that knotwork without issue. But maybe…

You approached the Siren cautiously. You caught the exact moment he must have realized you’d returned because the fins along the sides of his head flattened like the ears on a pissy cat and he turned on you with a very dramatic snarl that probably sounded all sorts of menacing.

“Hello,” you greeted, and the merman spat something that you assumed was probably a very polite ‘fuck right off.’

You nodded because, well, fair enough. And then pointed to his injured fins and the waterlogged ropes still twisted up around the heart of them.

“I can get that off if you promise not to eat me.”

He shouted something no doubt very indignant and then was back to hissing at you. Which definitely didn’t sound like an agreement not to immediately murder you on the spot.

“Alright,” you shrugged. “Your loss, I suppose.”

Well, your loss, really. Keeping a wounded Siren around was just asking for trouble. Their pods were viciously protective for one thing, and that wasn’t even taking into account the poachers and rivals who’d be more than keen to come sniffing after the fresh trail of blood in the water. Maybe you could find a big stick or something and just, I don’t know, push him back into the ocean and be done with it.

The thought must have shown on your face, because suddenly he was smacking his tail against the sandbar and spitting something that you very much assumed was a demand along the lines of ‘you are going to take accountability for this.’

Which absolutely no way in Hell. He’d kidnapped you sort of, so that made you his problem, thank you very much.

You felt your stomach gurgle, and it must have been pretty loud going off the stink eye he sent your way. You turned your nose up at him and went about collecting the various critters that had been washed ashore in his tenor’s tantrum.

“Thanks for the food!” you chirped petulantly as you worked on scaling the tuna with the knife from your belt—making long, pointed, eye contact as you did so.

The Siren sneered at you and went back to grooming the shredded ends of his fins.

The rest of the afternoon became a sort of pissing contest between the two of you to see who could earn the title of Bitchiest Beach Bitch. You thought you were definitely winning with the whole ‘eating something that could have been his long-lost cousin’ thing, but then he went and swamped the entirety of the small fire you built (and all of said ‘cousin’ being cooked over it) with one sweep of his tail, so now you were at the very least tied. You set up a nice little shaded hutch out of driftwood and ferns to escape the sun, he called down seagulls to shit all over it and pick it to pieces. He tried to roll around to reach some of the tighter fibers tangled in his pectoral fins, and you chucked rocks at him until he reared on you with a scream that had all the hairs on your arms standing on end. Y’know. Perfectly mature things like that.

That night you curled up beside a tall, jagged rock just at the outskirt of the bay—determined to get some shut eye but to also keep within range of your newest pest in case he decided to try and pull something sneaky. But every time you’d just about settled in to sleep, the shallow tide would lap against your toes in harsh shush shush shushes that had you furrowing you brow until you finally had enough and sat up to see what all the hubbub was about.

The Siren was tossing around in the shallows like a fish in a net—throwing his long body against the bindings and flailing like his life depended on it. And as much as he’d definitely deserved to get caught up in your unintentional hogtie, watching something as large and no doubt powerful as he was wriggling around like a worm on a hook was… Well. Something soured a bit in your gut as you watched him give one, final, great buck against his bindings before collapsing back into the shallows in a circle of seafoam. He panted against the surface of the water, the tips of his pale hair dripping down in a curtain around his haggard face, and you could see a fine tremor running along his shoulder blades.

You turned back to your rock and ground the heels of your palms into your eyes, fighting the absolute batshit insane urge to feel bad for a monster who had literally tried to drag you to your death less than twenty-four hours ago.

The water was calm and still for the rest of the night.

.

.

The next morning, you picked up a few of the crabs who had crawled up to shore and went about getting them clean and fit for eating. You glanced at the Siren, who was busy preening over his janky fins and fussing over his hair. It was entirely unfair that you probably looked like a half-drowned rat, and yet this creature that wasn’t even meant to exist on the surface was somehow managing to put himself together well enough to rival the courtesans you’d seen meandering around some of the wealthier coastal towns.

You stared at the crabs. There were three of them. It wasn’t really sharing if it was meant to be a bribe to keep him from eating you whole. Or at least, that’s what you reassured yourself as you cautiously tiptoed back to the water’s edge.

The Siren swiveled on you with a snap of something that looked sort of like a ‘What?!’ and you held up one of the gutted crabs in offering.

“I don’t know if you all eat fish or whatever, but…” You waved the limp crab awkwardly.

The Siren rolled its purple eyes and said something fast and sharp that you couldn’t really parse. Something, something, not, something, something, are crust—Something, something, are you that stupid? (you recognized the impressions of those words well enough to mouth them even in your sleep).

“Look, do you want it or not?” you interrupted, and he bristled—all those delicate, violet, fins flaring up like a porcupine’s spikes.

The Siren crossed his arms stiffly and pointedly turned in the other direction with a mutter of something you had no hopes of catching.

“Whatever,” you snapped and went to bite into your meal. Only to immediately forget that these pointy little fuckers still had their shells on them. You reeled back with a yelp as you stabbed a million, tiny, carapace-shaped holes in your tongue.

The fucking Siren had the gall to turn back around so that you could see him laughing at you.

.

.

That night he was back to flipping around in the shallows like a miniature hurricane.

You counted out the waves sloshing against your heels, telling yourself you’d intervene in his self-destructive tsunami once it hit one hundred. And then it became two, then three. You shifted hesitantly to peek over the rock’s edge and watched him curl into himself like some terribly wounded creature before shaking himself out of the fog of pain that had clearly settling over his nerves, and then continued with his nonsense.

You hurled a big, pink seashell at his head and he whipped on you like a rabid dog, practically foaming at the mouth and raring for a fight. When he lunged forward with the waves—seething with hatred, and blame, and nearly crashing onto his already shredded front in the process, something angry in your snapped.

“Look, fish face! You were the one who attacked me! You!” you demanded, stomping perhaps a bit closer than would be rational. “So stop acting like I’m some scheming shithead who was planning to trap you like this from the start!”

The Siren roared something back and slapped his tail in the surf. Static zipped along your cheeks and you grit your teeth. He glared at you bitterly and then began to repeat one word over and over—slow and angry.

‘Eeeeehhh-Pppe-llllll’ said his lips. Strong and harsh with the shape of it.

And then he was back to spewing all kinds of rapid-fire vitriol that you wouldn’t have bothered to keep track of even if you could. Something in his expression shifted almost quicker than you could notice and he lifted his massive tail out of the water. He smacked the fins in your direction and pointedly jabbed a clawed finger at the creases of them—where delicate, silky, tendrils met strong, gem toned, muscle. Where the purple was light and clean. A pale, shiny, lavender. Almost just like—

“That kid?” you frowned. “You attacked me because of Purple Head?!”

He sneered again and pointedly sent a splash of seawater into your face.

“You—” you grit your teeth. “He was still attacking us first! He was going after my friend!” you snapped, kicking your own wave back. For all the good it would do. “You don’t get to act all noble and protective, and like any of that makes any difference when you all were going to eat us!”

The Siren’s face twisted up like you’d force fed him soured milk, and he looped back around with a dramatic fwoosh of water to dive into the shallows. It was maybe two or three feet deep at best, and he was barely submerged. Not to mention how utterly ridiculous it looked to see a creature that was no doubt usually the peak of grace and athleticism reduced to flopping belly first into the waves with his proverbial legs tied up behind him. But you recognized a door slamming in your face when you saw it, no matter the species. Fine. Let him be a petty bastard. He could rot away in the sandbar for all you cared.

.

.

The next day you woke up with goosebumps crawling up and down your limbs.

There were all sorts of gulls crash-landed in the sand around you and more sad, little, sea creatures gasping on the beach than you dared to count. You shoved a particularly chubby octopus back into a tidepool as you passed and wondered just what sort of nonsense your co-strandee was getting up to now.

The Siren was circling the bay with his head held high above the low waves—lips parted and clearly caterwauling like a dying porpoise. The surface of the water trembled with whatever was making its way out of his mouth, and he looped and looped around the shores. It reminded you of the time you’d seen a whale calf separated from its pod. It had gotten trapped in a shallow inlet when the tides had changed, and your ship had been anchored just off the same coast. You’d watched it circle and circle, lifting its heavy snout to snort sharp jets of water into the air. Deuce had passed you a scribbled note when you’d asked him what it sounded like.

‘It’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.’

There was a moment where the Siren paused in his paces and tilted his head. The fins there flared out to the side, like he was listening for something. But after a long moment the spines drooped back against his damp hair and he went back to his singing an aria to no one.

‘It’s looking for its family,‘ Riddle had signed to you when you’d asked him why the calf didn’t simply leave once the tides had turned in its favor. ‘This is where they last saw it, so this is where it will stay.’

“Maybe they forgot about him already,” you mused petulantly, turning back towards the center of the islet to try and scavenge up something to eat from all the poor creatures who had collapsed beneath your nemesis’s wailing.  

The bitter thought wasn’t nearly as satisfying as it ought to be.

.

.

That night, the waters were still.

You squinted suspiciously at the merman curled in the shallows of the bay. He’d pulled himself half-out of the water, resting his more human looking bulk in the soft sand as gentle waves lapped at his tail. He slept on his front with his arms crossed beneath his pointed chin—his unbound fins sticking up behind him in a way that deliriously reminded you of bedhead. You watched him carefully for nearly an hour, searching for any tightness in his muscles or change in his breathing that might indicate he was faking it. But as the evening stretched on and he never lurched awake to try and gauge your eyes out, you assumed he might actually be properly resting.

He'd been swimming in circles all day—the aborted, stuttering, beats of his bound tail looking painful even by your non-tail-having standards. Eventually the tremors along the ocean had grown stuttered and strange, like perhaps his voice was giving out on him. And once that had happened, he’d curled up exactly where he was now. And hadn’t moved since.

You stared at the Siren hesitantly. He was certainly in enough of a state that you could probably pull off that whole ‘shoving him into the depths with a stick’ thing. He’d probably just let you do it—sink to the bottom in a mess of shredded fins and tangled twine and never rise again.

You gnawed at your lip, feeling something unpleasantly hot and sticky twist up your stomach.

The knife glinted between your fingers and you thought of crying whales and of the crew that you already missed so much that it felt like a gnawing chasm had opened in your chest.

You huffed out a miserable sigh and lamented for not the first time in your life that you really were just so fucking stupid sometimes. And then you were cautiously making your way down towards the waterline and the sleeping Siren sprawled out in the sand. Slowly—so very, very slowly—you tiptoed towards the mer and tried to get a quick glance at what amounted to the worst of the damage.

The rope had been thin and long, and the more he’d struggled, the more he’d dug the twine into his fins. You reached forward at half speed and slipped the blade into one of the too-tight creases beneath the bindings. You winced a bit in sympathy at the raw, pink skin beneath. No wonder he hadn’t been able to just rip the fibers away. He’d probably just ended up tugging them over and over against the oozing wounds beneath.

The first strand broke beneath your fingers with something that almost felt like a pop. Like seams ripping on a shirt. You glanced quickly at the sleeping Siren to confirm he was still lost to the world and not gearing up to bite your fingers off at the knuckle, and then continued making your way through the worst of it. It reminded you a bit of the time Ace had accidentally snared a sea turtle in one of his fishing nets and the lot of you had spent the better part of an hour slowly working the thing free of the seemingly endless tangles. You delicately worked the tightest edges away from the harsh indentations they’d left against his scales and peeled back the muckier bits with enough gentleness to avoid mangling anymore of his already battered fins.

The last of the rope finally came away with a satisfying, wet weight and you let it fall to the sand beside you with a pleased nod. Now you could let Mister Merman swim away in the morning with no unpleasantly gross sense of moral obligation weighing down your consciousness. Maybe he’d even be thankful enough to look at you with something other than a venomous glare for once. Certainly nothing like the one leveled at you right now. And—

Oh.

You didn’t even have time to properly gasp before you were being flipped and pinned into the wet sand. The Siren loomed over you, digging his black claws into your shoulder until you could feel the first pricks of blood breaking the surface. He snarled in your face, the curtain of his pale blonde hair shadowing his eyes in something so dark it was nearly black. The brilliant purple cast off his glowing irises were like little spots of stars in an otherwise empty night sky.

He leaned forward, teeth bared, and then some sort of tight expression flickered over his face. He paused, brow tugging together steep and angry. He hunched down once more, fangs at the ready, and then ducked back out. He shook his head, like he was trying to clear fog from his brain, and then he was snapping his canines at you all over again.

The Siren reared back with a booming snarl that sent ripples through the soft tide lapping at your ankles. He turned with one, final, icy glower and dove back into the shallows, disappearing beneath the surface in a flash of amethyst scales. He flicked his tail sharply as he went, and one of the tattered fins snapped against your nose with enough of a crack to make you yelp.

You sat up in disbelief, rubbing at your aching skin and watching in outright consternation as the great predator of the oceans swam tight laps beneath the warm waters of your little lagoon—fins occasionally cresting over the surface to smack pointed fistfuls of water into your gaping face.

Deliriously, one of The Rose Queen’s hundreds of nonsensical rules bounced about your head. Happy to fill the otherwise entirely empty space behind your eyes.

‘Never save a Sea Serpent on a Sunday,’ Riddle had demanded, hands at his hips. ‘No Serpents, or Sea Horses, or Sirens to speak of.’

‘Man,’ you thought wildly, brain high on adrenaline and static as you watched one of the aforementioned Sirens swan about like he hadn’t probably just been a half second away from gnawing on your literal bones. ‘If I get out of this alive, Captain’s definitely gonna collar me this time.’

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