#pronounced like giraffe

[projectblueballs]

Always hustlin’

[gguk-n]

The Exception (Max Verstappen x Reader)

Summary- 4 times Max let y/n get away with whatever she wanted and 1 time he didn't.

I just have so much love for maxie and I wanna show it so it came out as this. Hope you like it!! I hope maxie is only loved tbh

Max was very young when he had moved to a Netherland. If someone asked him when it was, he'd probably never be able to tell. But he could tell you about the annoying neighbours he had growing up. Yes, he did spend most of his time karting and didn't have the time at home or in school like normal kids his age would but the fleeting moments spent at that house in Netherland left behind fond memories that he can look back and only because of a certain little girl with chubby cheeks and two identical braids on either side of her head who had made quite a place in his life. Jos wasn't very happy with Max wasting his time entertaining those kids but he couldn't do much when the children's father was a tall bulky man who could take Jos out in one punch, insisted on letting the kids play together. The tall man had 3 kids Max noticed when he had dinner at their place for the first time; the oldest being the girl who we mentioned before followed by 2 younger brothers who seemed to love karting. They asked Max so many questions about it that they got scolded by their mother for ruining dinner for everyone but Max thought was cute because the youngest couldn't even pronounce karting but had a lot to say. Every time he would spend time with his neighbours, it would always be with the 2 young boys who wanted to learn how to kart better and become like Max like the younger one put it. Even now it makes Max laugh reminiscing about those days. They never really made it professionally though.

2008

Max and the 2 boys were playing around when their older sister asked if they would like to join her for a session of afternoon tea with Mr Whale and Miss Teapot. The brothers made a face of disgust and ran away from her, dejected she turned around when Max agreed. Her face lit up like a Christmas tree. She quickly dragged him into her room and had him sit next to Mr Longneck, the giraffe. An hour later Max was found in Y/N's room with two pigtails if you could call them that on the top of his head, a tiara and the prettiest necklace Y/N owned. Looking at himself in the mirror he couldn't help but laugh. Y/N on the contrary looked pleased with her handy work. She thanked him for being a good and compliant customer and to come back again if he ever wanted to look pretty. It wasn't easy to get Max to do what you wanted except he couldn't say no to her puppy eyes. She even gave him a drawing of him in his kart saying that it would bring him good luck since she couldn't be there and placed her favourite bracelet on his hand.

If Y/N was to ask him about the bracelet, Max would say he lost it as soon as she gave it to him, but deep down in the watch drawer of Max's Monaco apartment sat a brightly neon pink bracelet with Y/N’s initials.

2014

Y/N had started highschool and remained the annoying self Max had come to love. Her over the top demeanor and affection to screaming at the top of her lungs whenever she spotted Max never failed to make him smile. Having joined Formula one this year, meant Max was way to busy to be home but Y/N seemed to never forget to text him regularly. She would ask him to get autographs of other drivers or souvenirs from different countries. It was a regular race weekend when Y/N texted Max asking him to explain how the engine in a go kart worked. In a split second Max was on call with her asking "why she needed that?" to which she replied "I'm doing a project on that. I even made a small scale replica of your cart Look here!!!" She exclaimed. "I just need to shrink you and place you inside it" Y/N laughed. Max told her not to worry and that he would text her the details in a hour or so. Actually it took a couple hours and Y/N was starting to get agitated and called him back. Max replied with a almost done and smiled at her. He had literally written her entire report for her and sent it to review. Y/N almost screamed when she saw the assignment. She thanked Maxie for doing this for her and that she owed him her life. Max was just happy to be of help, he told himself more than he told her because who stays up till 5 in the morning on a race weekend doing someone else’s project.

He kept the small scale replica of his Kart on the mantle above the fireplace if anyone wanted to know what happened to the kart.

2018

Y/N was freshly 18, so getting drunk was the only thing on her agenda. On a night out, she was so drunk that no one could get her to move because she wanted her Maxie and would only leave with Maxie, she enunciated. Her friend was able to open up Y/N phone and thankfully find a Maxie in her favourite contacts. She called the number to be met with a groggy but worried voice. "Hi! This is Y/N's friend Kate speaking. Am I speaking with a....maxie?" she said tentatively. Max let out a sign while rubbing his eyes, "Yes, this is Max speaking." "Can you come pick Y/N up?" She asked hesitantly followed by, "She won't leave with anyone but you apparently." Max was already out of bed and near the door when he said "I'll be there in 10, where are you guys at?" She sent him the location and waited for 'maxie'. Nothing could've prepared them for this. They had thought Maxie was a friend, a boyfriend maybe even a neighbour; they did not think Maxie was Max Verstappen, F1 driver for Redbull racing. He apologised for the inconvenience and crouched down to Y/N level who seemed to have realised that he was here. She cupped his cheeks and giggled while turning his head to the crowd of people standing, "Look, this is my Maxie." Hearing Y/N say my maxie made his heart beat faster then it should've, he admits but that girl had a tight hold on his heart and he couldn't really do much about it. She stood up and wrapped her arms around Max asking him to carry her since her legs felt like mush. Max gladly carried her back to his car, as he fastened her seat belt she asked him to take her back to his place since her parents would probably disown her if she come in drunk for the 6th time this week. Max looked shocked and asked her to stop drinking so much since it wasn't good for her. All Y/N could mumble was that the alcohol made the pain in her heart bearable. This broke Max's heart. Who would dare hurt his precious little angel, if he met that guy he was so dead, Max thought. Little did he know that guy was the one driving her back home.

Y/N was a nuisance when drunk, she reminded him of the little girl he had befriended when he moved here. She wouldn't listen to anything he asked her to do that night until he agreed to let her do make up on him which he would gladly agree to, real or not.

2022

Y/N had recently graduated and was looking for a place to stay. It was one of those nights after a fruitless apartment hunt Y/N facetimed Max. He looked very comfortable in his sim racing chair in his luxurious apartment in Monaco having moved recently. "Maxie" the younger girl sighed. "Meisje, what's the problem?" came a concerned voice. "I can't seem to find a decent apartment, I've been at it for months now." she said. Max offered to help her find the right place and Y/N started listing out all the things she wanted in her apartment which was sounding a lot like Max current apartment which was true, that was Y/N's dream apartment currently; after seeing it a couple months ago when she had visited him as a housewarming surprise and even held a party for him. "You can move to Monaco, the house you're looking for is here" Max said. After a long pause Y/N replied with a chuckle, "I don't make formula 1 money. I'm too broke to afford a house here. In Monaco, I'd have to sell my organs to afford a place there." As if it was the most obvious thing, Max offered her to stay at his place and look for a job here.

The allure of Monaco was too much and Y/N was able to thankfully find a job there so that she wouldn't be completely dependent on Max which he wouldn't have minded. Max never let her pay rent, he'd always tell her to cook good food and that was rent sorted.

2023

It was the night of the Abu Dhabi grand prix. Max had just won his third WDC so him and his friends decided to go out to celebrate, Y/N included. The night carried on as usual, Max not touching much of the alcohol since Y/N decided to down drinks like a thirsty person. She was now in the middle of the dance floor making herself familiar with Lando's crotch, much to Max's dismay. He made his way to her and led her away from Lando while she shouted at him to let her go. They were now stood in the quieter part of the club but you could still hear the music blasting. Y/N looked visibly annoyed at being taken away from the dance floor. "You are drunk, you'll regret it tomorrow." Max said. "That's for sober me to deal with. Drunk me just wants to forget about everything and having an eventful night with a guy would do just the trick." she said. Max winced at the words and held her arms so that she could steady herself. "I don't wanna feel like this," was this the alcohol giving her the confidence, "the guy I've been in love with for ages can't seem to see me as a woman. I've been trying for years now. If I walked out naked, I'm sure he wouldn't even be phased." she sounded dejected. "Any guy would want you, Meisje." Max whispered. "But not the one I do" she stepped closer, enough that their breaths mingled. The woman in front of him was driving Max mad, had she not been drunk he would've shown her how much any man would want her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and looked into his eyes before saying, "He's so dumb, can't even see the woman in front of him." The statement felt oddly targeted. "You know, he's a 3 time world drivers champion and he doesn't even get that I love him so much." she said while looking into his eyes. "You're in love with me?" Max exclaimed. "I have been since the day you let me make pigtails on your hair but thanks for realising now." she replied sarcastically. "You're drunk, you don't know what your saying" Max replied. "Well, sober me would never tell you this but I love you Max Verstappen. So much that you make my heart beat faster and my chest swell when you look at me. I think about marrying you and having a family with you, but you think I'm joking." she declared. Max couldn't help but smiled, "Tell me all of this in the morning when you're sober so that I can tell you that I love you too schat and then I can finally kiss you." "You can kiss me now" Y/N made a kissy face and eagerly leaned in. Max shook his head and carried her back to the hotel room.

Y/N indeed remembered everything and the first thing she did even though she wreaked of alcohol was finally kiss those soft pink lips.

this is just brain rot at this point. hope you liked it

[dontexpectmuch]

sometimes jude gives himbo vibes (lets never forget he thinking mexican was a language lol) so what about headcanons of himbo jude and smart reader? I think this could be fun 😂😅

jude bellingham testing his partners patience could be like…:

you try your very best to help jude and his friend, gio, as much as you can when it comes to freshen up their general knowledge. you try. however, as soon as you talk about the first topic, a huge discussion erupts with both of them talking as loud as possible, trying to get their points through. and somehow you always end up in the middle, both of them trying to get to tell the other that their opinion is wrong.

“bro, a piranha could kill you.” gio laughs, looking at jude who only shakes his head scoffing with his hand squeezing your thigh. “not me, though.” he denies, now looking at you, in hopes that you would back him up. “don’t look at me like that, love, of course they can.” - “you should support me instead of that geezer!” he exclaims, offended that you would betray him like that. “bro, why wouldn’t it? have you seen them?” gio continued, not believing that his friend could be this naïve. “i’ll just swim away.” jude shrugged. both gio and you looked at him flabbergasted, no words found to describe how disappointed you felt.

explaining him different theories throughout the day, whether it was biology related or historical, became the new norm for you. it almost felt like playing teacher/pupil. jude somehow always comes up with the most interesting (?) questions ever. and instead of googling it or whatever, his first reaction is to go to you, the smartest person he knew. “babe, what did they say about the giraffe necks again?” - “babe, how can genes skip a generation? do they just, i don’t know, wait?” - “bro, what do you mean the proteins dissolve in heat?” you have to be patient, but also couldn’t help but coo at your boyfriends confused expression.

he uses your wide spectrum of vocabulary to roast his teammates or jobe in the group chat, never in real life, since he wouldn’t be able to pronounce everything correctly for the first time. it is usually in the evening, the two of you laying on the couch, a tv show softly playing in the background. “yo,” jude speaks up, his face focused on his phone, eyebrows drawn together and lips agape, “how do i say that he can go fuck himself and that i don’t care that he doesn’t want to do it, but, like, make it sound smart.” - “jude, what are you doing?”

sometimes, when his cluelessness gets too much for you to handle, you usually walk away, to a different room or something. just, something so you wouldn’t hit judes pretty little head with the next slipper you found. though, he is really mature and is able to keep a conversation flowing, he’d sometimes say something so out of pocket that one would have to be left alone for a while, just so you could comprehend what had happened. and jude would follow you, not giving you a chance to escape his weirdness, “bruh, c’mon it wasn’t that bad.” he’d laugh, his hands closed around your arm to pull you against his chest. “no, please.” you shake your head, trying to break free, “i can’t do this today.” -“babe! don’t be so mean.” - “love, what do you mean you thought mexican was a language? please, don’t do this to me.” hearing you say that caused him to laugh even more, eyes closed and head thrown back.

———————————

himbo bee effs for the win

[bemusedlybespectacled]

since I saw Ye Olde Tumblr Post from before we had polls trying to get the answer to this question, and now I want to actually empirically know the answer:

[journey-to-the-attic]

3rd anni FINALE: brothers / paws n claws

ao3 link

note: based loosely on the pop quiz of the same name, though with the requested change of levi being a snake rather than a giraffe - and since that was different, i decided to do something new with ik as well (this is what that random animal poll was for). this one's a proper long one, so i'm deeply sorry if the keep reading bar ever breaks

∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎

You'd normally think that an event that makes Luke flee the House of Lamentation, tearfully shouting, “I’ll go get help!” must be some kind of catastrophe. Well, it still might shape up to be - but I'm hopeful that it won't. Right now, it's a situation at most.

Said situation can be summarised with one sentence: there was something wrong with the cake. This is vague enough to be misleading, though, so I’ll elaborate: there was a potion in the cake, and it made Beel grow fluffy ears and a tail, then shortly thereafter started doing the same thing to everyone else.

‘Fluffy ears and a tail’ might not sound too bad, but Luke wouldn’t have run like that if that was all. Beel has rapidly developed a mouthful of sharp teeth, a bone-shakingly powerful roar, and a sudden, even more pronounced taste for meat. Raw meat, specifically, because that is what lions eat. It'd be cool if it wasn’t for the fact that we had been the nearest sources of raw meat when the hunger first hit.

The only thing to do, really, was run and hide. And that probably wouldn’t even have worked (Beel is also now even faster and stronger than usual) if Mammon hadn’t suddenly sprouted new striped features of his own and pounced on him in return. Things just sort of went crazy after that.

I haven’t been able to keep track of them all, but knowing their track record, everyone else has probably been hit with the curse, too. Asmo definitely has, at least - I know that because it happened while he was rushing me to the safety of his room's two locks.

“It’s weird that the potion changed your clothes as well,” I say, trying to figure out whether that’s a dress or a really long blouse as he pushes me in. “Isn’t it?”

Asmo doesn’t answer for a moment - he turns the key, then peers fretfully through the peephole. After a moment, he hisses, “That doesn’t matter, does it? You know Mammon’s a tiger? There—”

There’s a knock on the door, and Asmo skitters backwards. After a moment, there’s another, mellower knock, then a plaintive, “Hello?”

Though it sounds closer to a ‘he-wo?’. Asmo frowns. “Levi? Why do you sound like that?”

There’s a shuffle. “I goh— got fangth. It’th… wha’ever, can I come in?”

Asmo doesn’t move for a moment, but relents quickly. Levi sidles in, head turning from side to side, tail dragging in behind him. It’s longer and thinner than in demon form, and iridescent green instead of deep grey - his pupils look narrower, too, and there are dark markings along his cheeks.

“Whoa!” I hadn’t gotten a good look at him when he first started transforming. “You’re a snake!”

“I notithed,” He says unhappily. He has fangs now - long, curved ones that keep catching on his bottom lip. “It’th a nigh’mare. Theeth teeth…”

“Are they retractable?”

“I’unno…” He scrunches his face in concentration. The fangs suddenly swing up into the back of his mouth. “...oh! Yes! Finally!”

“When did you switch?” I ask as he opens and closes his mouth several times with relish. “Asmo went a few minutes ago, I think he’s a panda… it looked like it hurt.”

He makes a popping sound, then releases a long sigh. “Eh - not really? It’s more like everything gets really hot and itchy for a bit. Isn’t anything happening to you?”

I look down at myself. “Doesn’t look like it.”

“Guess the potion only works on demons. Lucky…” Levi rubs his arms, then abruptly dives into Asmo’s bed. “Brr! Why’s it so cold in here?”

“Snakes are cold-blooded, right? So you need to get heat from somewhere else.” I lean over and plant my hands on his cheeks. “Is that nice?”

“Ooh… yeah…” He blinks at me. “Hrm. Everything looks so weird. It’s, like… fuzzy.”

I squint at his face. Wait - those aren’t markings after all. “Oh! You’ve got heat pits! You’re, like, seeing temperature. That’s so cool.”

Asmo looks as well, then recoils, hands flying to his mouth. “Eww! There’s holes in your face!”

“As if you don’t have a nose,” Levi snaps, but reaches self-consciously to cover his cheeks anyway. “...ugh. I’m still cold.”

I’m not large enough to be an effective heater - what we really need is either a heat lamp, or the sun, neither of which Asmo has in his room. He resorts to dragging Levi to his bathtub instead, and lighting candles in a circle around him. It looks like we’re using him for a nefarious ritual, but it seems to provide Levi with a little relief.

“It’s like I can see them way clearer than everything else,” Levi says, squinting, then covers his nose. “And they smell super strong. You know I’ve got venom now, too? I got some on the carpet and it started, like, dissolving.”

So the potion definitely isn’t just a cosmetic thing. I glance at Asmo. “Do you feel any different?”

“Hmm. Maybe?” He stretches, and for the first time his sleeves fall down enough for me to see his hands. The pads of his fingers look thicker, and his nails look more like claws. “Like, I kinda wanna go to sleep, I guess.”

He leans forward on the edge of the bathtub, then fumbles and slips down into a heap. “Ooh. Gosh, this whole thing is weird. How do you think everyone’s doing?”

“It might not have even worked on Lucifer.” Those candles really do smell strong. It’s making my nose tickle. “What animal do you th— achoo!”

I can tell something’s changed as soon as I open my eyes again, but Levi’s yelp and jerk backwards (dangerously close to the candles) confirms it. I look down. Those definitely aren’t the clothes I was wearing a minute ago.

“Oh,” I say, defeated. “So the potion did work on me.”

“You’ve got a tail!” Asmo squeals, trying several times to scramble to his feet before succeeding, and immediately reaching for me. “And your ears!”

“Whoa whoa whoa—” I think I can empathise with Hyde when Aunt Lisa rushes him now. “Wait, wait, wait— put me down for a sec—”

Asmo (somewhat unwillingly) releases me, and I hurry to the mirror. White ears, a bushy red tail, distinct markings across my cheeks… am I wearing gloves? No - that’s straight-up a paw. It’s alien trying to move my fingers and watching the claws flex instead.

…my right hand is still normal, though. That one is just wearing a sort of glove. It’s like the potion got mad about not being able to do anything to the prosthetic and doubled its effects on the intact one.

I lift my paw as if to swipe at the mirror, then bare my teeth at it. “Rarrgh!”

Behind me, Levi’s reflection soundlessly pretends to get shot in the heart and collapses backwards into the tub. Asmo isn’t nearly so quiet - he squeals again, twice as loud this time.

I give him a moment to compose himself, then turn and announce, “I think I’m a red panda.”

“Ooh! So we’re matching?!” He slides over and sets his head on the crown of my head, then brandishes his own claws at the mirror as well. “Oh, we need to get pictures. Or film some videos! We can’t let this go to waste!”

“Hey, hey, slow down.” Levi emerges from the tub again. “What about everyone else? If the potion even works on humans, then Lucifer’s probably…”

“Oh, yeah! We totally need pictures of him, too.”

“That’s not the point—”

Levi pauses to yawn, but it’s nothing like anything I’ve ever seen before. He just keeps going, wider than should really be possible. His fangs click out, and the entire roof of his mouth seems to turn inside out for a moment - then everything realigns, and his jaw swings shut again.

“What?” He asks after a moment. Asmo is staring at him in horror - and I with fascination.

“What happened to your bones?” Asmo asks in a hush.

“That was so cool,” I say with the same intonation. “And gross.”

“...you don’t sound like that’s a bad thing.”

“It’s not.”

“That potion really is crazy,” Asmo whispers. He looks haunted. “Should that stuff really be allowed? What’s Solomon doing in that lab? Am I gonna start doing that?”

“You’re fine, Asmo,” I reassure, patting him on the arm - he latches onto me like a stress blanket. “Pandas don’t do that.”

“You promise?” He asks tearfully.

“Promise.” I think of all the videos I’ve seen over the years. “And everyone loves pandas, anyway. They’re super cute.”

Levi crosses his arms over the edge of the bathtub and rests his chin atop them, then heaves a melancholic sigh. “And everyone’s scared of snakes ‘cause they think they’re gross.”

“Oh, don’t be a spoilsport,” Asmo scolds - though, to be fair, that’s easy for him to say. “We don’t think snakes are gross.”

“Uh, yes you do. You went ew about my heat pits.”

“That’s not the same thing!”

“I love snakes,” I declare. “Anyway, every animal’s kind of gross sometimes. You should watch Planet Earth.”

All while we’re saying this, I’m beginning to worry a little about the others. Levi’s the only reptile so far - if we’re lucky, that’s the furthest up the evolutionary tree anyone else has gone, but if we’re unlucky, one of them could be a fish. If the potion’s capable of giving Levi heat pits and the bone structure to actually unhinge his jaw, there’s no reason it couldn’t give someone gills.

I wonder how the potion decides what it’s going to turn us into. Levi being a snake makes sense… but Beel being a lion and Asmo a giant panda feel more arbitrary. (Though I couldn’t imagine what it’d look like if they turned into a fly and a scorpion.) And I don’t know why I’m a red panda, either.

“I think I’m gonna go look for Beel,” I decide after a while. He’s probably sated himself at least a little by now - he knows where the fridge is. “You guys stay here.”

“You think we’re gonna send you to the lions?” Levi asks in disbelief, and starts attempting to get out of the tub. “No dice! You’re staying here, where it’s safe. I’ll go check on Beel.”

“You have to stay here, though - you’re cold-blooded now, remember?” I push him back down, which takes surprisingly little effort. “So you have to keep warm.”

“Come on, d’you really think these candles are doing anything for me? They’re tiny.”

Now that he mentions it… “Hmm. Maybe we should run you a hot bath.”

“You want me to take a bath while you go talk to a lion?”

“He’s right, hon.” Asmo interjects. “We’re not the ones who need protecting.”

“Come on, we do this every time something—” I sigh loudly and try to compose myself. “—okay, look, you know you never win this fight. Nothing’s happened to me before. And it's just Beel, anyway.”

They exchange a look. After a moment, Levi huffs. “Fine - but you’d better not do anything stupid, alright?! I’ve seen this go wrong in way too many shows!”

“And if it looks like trouble, you’re coming straight back here,” Asmo adds. “Or I’ll cry. I mean it.”

I sigh, but smile at him anyway. “Sure, Asmo. Take a nap or something.”

It’s finally business as usual. We have an impromptu team handshake - which is nice, that’s never happened before - and then I let myself out into the hall, and into the figurative jungle.

It’s eerily quiet out here. Or it is for a moment, at least, because then something crashes in the kitchen.

I can take a guess at who it is. I hurry downstairs - I feel more agile, somehow. I don’t think my feet are paws as well, but these boots definitely look like them. I’d thought having a tail would feel stranger, but the sensation seems to have settled in seamlessly. It feels as if it’s been there the whole time.

Beel, just as I’d thought, has his head in the fridge when I get there. I can hear glass clinking and plastic crinkling. Several containers are already lying empty on the table. The only real difference between this and his usual fridge raids is that he’s gone exclusively for the raw meat.

I’ve never seen him get food poisoning, but that doesn’t mean he can’t. Well, maybe the potion gave him a lion’s stomach too... “Uh - Beel?”

He makes a sound of surprise that isn’t that different from a cat’s ‘mrrp’ - just a lot deeper - and pulls back from the fridge with startling swiftness. There’s a scrap of something pink hanging out of his mouth.

“...are you having fun?” I ask after a moment. Ignoring all new features, his demeanour looks about the same. Maybe his eyes are more dilated than usual.

He makes a rumbling sound at the base of his throat and swallows the rest of the scrap in his mouth, slamming the fridge shut with his elbow and moving to the sink. He cups his hands under the faucet and drinks deeply - every move is poised and purposeful. Then he closes his eyes and shakes himself all over, like a wet dog.

When he opens his eyes, they look normal again. I can’t say the same for the rest of him - his hair is longer and poofier, as if in imitation of a mane, and there’s fur around his neck that makes him look almost twice as large as usual.

“You switched, too?” He asks after a moment. I catch a glimpse of sharp, bloodstained canines, and recoil before I can stop myself. “...hm? Are you okay?”

“Y-yeah, peachy.” Do red pandas’ tails fall between their legs when they’re nervous, too? I feel like mine’s trying to do that. “What about you? Do you like being a lion?”

“I don’t like… liking all this,” He says after a moment, gesturing at all the empty boxes. I try not to think too hard about the image they conjure. “I mean, it’s way better when it’s cooked. You can put all sorts of different stuff on it to make it tasty. But it’s the only thing I feel like eating right now.”

“Well, that’s how a lion eats.”

Beel looks at me for a moment. Then, unprompted, he reaches up and scratches my fluffy new ears. I feel my shoulders fall. “Hey. It’s alright. I’m not going to hurt you.”

I hadn’t even noticed myself tensing up. It’s not like I thought he ever would, but… actually, I can’t tell if those were the red panda’s survival instincts, or my own. I’m fairly sure the latter hasn’t been working for a while.

“Yeah, I know,” I sigh after a moment, sitting down with him. Using my tail as a cushion, I can’t feel the chill of the kitchen tiles at all. “I just… I dunno. Do you know what happened to everyone else?

He thinks for a moment, then looks a little alarmed. “Uh— I think I was chasing Satan for a while. He was moving all fast and funny, and I just— I don’t know. It felt like I had to grab him. I don’t think I caught him, but…”

“We’d better see, just in case,” I conclude, getting up. “I need to check on everyone, anyway. Asmo’s with Levi already…”

“Belphie went to the observatory,” Beel says thoughtfully, following me out of the kitchen. “And I haven’t seen Lucifer since we split up. He looked like he was gonna follow you and Asmo, but then…”

“Did it look like he transformed?”

“Uhh…” He looks mildly guilty. “I don’t know. I stopped thinking straight. Mammon bit me, and then I was chasing him instead…”

“He bit you?” I saw Mammon jumping at him, but I didn’t think he’d gone that far.

“Yeah. Pretty hard, actually. It only hurt for a bit, though.” Beel points to his shoulder. “I think he thought I’d go after you first, so he was trying to chase me off. I don’t know where he went after that…”

I sigh. “Well, he’s got to be somewhere in the house. Let’s go find Belphie first.”

“Mmm? Sure.” He pauses to yawn. It isn’t quite as spectacular as Levi’s, but it’s impressive all the same. The teeth are still a little unsettling. “Be careful. I don’t know what he turned into.”

He rubs my ears again, then moves away with long, languid steps, tail trailing lazily behind him. My own tail swishes anxiously for a moment before I steel myself and follow him.

It turns out Belphie didn’t even make it into the observatory - he got into the music room, then apparently couldn’t be bothered to walk any further past the divider and just curled up under the piano. Beel very nearly stands on an extended arm before he seems to smell his presence.

“Belphie?” He crouches down and reaches for the thick brown tail he’s using as a blanket. “Wake u—”

As soon as his hand closes around the fur, Belphie’s entire body goes rigid - the underside of the piano presses his ears flat against his head as he rolls out from under it and flips upright in an instant, poised as if to pounce. It’s all so quick, all so alarmingly sudden, that my entire body tenses, jerks backwards, and I find myself with both hands raised high in the air.

I don’t know what I expected to do, only that I had to make myself look as large as possible. Belphie - eyes wide open in a way that they almost never are immediately after waking - looks at me for a moment, then laughs so loudly that Beel jumps back this time.

“Where’ve you been?” He asks, grinning. His teeth aren’t nearly as pointy as Beel’s, but his smile is a lot more devious. “Hey, I’m just messing with you.”

“Uh huh,” I say, trying not to look too scared. For some reason, I can’t bring myself to bring my hands down. I just look like I’ve long since surrendered. “I knew that.”

Belphie snickers. His tail curves up behind him, ears swivelling to the side of his head. “C’mon, relax. Let’s play a game.”

On the last word, he hops just a bit forward, and I take a great big step back. Beel glances between us, then commands, looking mildly concerned, “Be nice, Belphie.”

“I am being nice,” Belphie says with a sniff, baring his teeth at me again. The longer I look at his grin, though, the more it begins to look playful. “Hey. Hey!”

He darts forward again, but this time I’m ready for him - I pounce straight at his chest, knocking him within an inch of smacking his head on the piano, then quickly get up and scurry to the other side of the room. Belphie springs straight back to his feet and rushes so swiftly at me that there’s little I can do before he scoops me up with deceivingly gentle hands and tosses me a fair distance across the room.

A ‘fair distance’, however, is not long enough to prevent me from running straight back at him (for some reason, my hands end up in the air again) and bowling into his knees to knock him over. He lets out a sound between a yelp, a yip and a laugh, tumbling back onto his stomach and forgoing even getting back to his feet before he charges again.

“Wait—” Beel’s head swings back and forth until he’s blinking from the whiplash. “You two, come on—”

Belphie swipes at my feet at the same time that I seize his hood, sending us both back to the ground in a tangled heap. I recover first and unpin myself from beneath his unexpectedly heavy limbs, and register Beel standing over us - without stopping to wonder if it’s a good idea, I reach up, hook my claws into the fur around his shoulders, and scramble up him like a tree.

He only wobbles for a moment before balancing himself again. I adjust myself onto his back, then peer triumphantly down at Belphie through his mane.

“That’s cheating,” He complains, sitting up. “C’mon, are you really doing this?”

“You started it.” I muffle through Beel’s mane.

“What? You literally jumped at me first.”

“You’re bigger than me, so it doesn’t count.”

Beel makes a deep, rumbling sound that I’ll take as one of amusement. Hmm. I’m a lot closer to his ears from here.

Belphie yawns and flicks his tail about, then wraps his arms around it like it’s a toy. “Whatever. Bet you’re only getting away with it ‘cause you’re cute. Right, Beel?”

Beel lifts his hands innocently. Meanwhile, keeping my right hand latched to his mane, I reach up with my left to touch his ears. “I’m just standing. I can’t control what IK does.”

“Uh, yes you can. You can literally just pick her up. Any time.”

Beel’s fur is softer than I was expecting, but still coarser than any dog I’ve ever pet. I turn around to look at his tail. It’s sort of similar to Belphie’s usual demon tail - sleek along most of its length, but with a big fluffy bit at the end. He’s holding it too far down for me to reach from here, but if I twist a little more…

“Whoops—” Turns out I twisted too far. My claws detach, and I rapidly start slipping down his back.

Belphie’s eyes flash up. As smoothly as if he’d anticipated it, he ducks forward and cushions the landing with his tail - then draws in a breath through his teeth and scrunches his face up. “Oww. That hurt.”

“No one told you to do that,” I counter, but hurriedly shuffle off anyway.

“And let you break your tail? I don’t think so.” He reaches over before I can get far enough away and squishes my cheeks inward, then puts on a voice that he reserves for his most infuriating bits. “You gotta be careful, you’re just a little baby. Look at your cute little ears. What are you meant to be?”

“Not telling you!” I try to wrestle my face out of his hands, but he’s a lot better at this game than either Beel or I am. “Hey! I’m gonna bite you if you don’t stop!”

“Fine,” He sighs with unnecessarily gloom, and acquiesces. “You’re so mean to me. Well, do you know what I’m meant to be?”

I fold my arms and regard him for a moment. It’s not as obvious as the others have been so far. “I dunno. A weasel?”

He gives me a look. “Be nice.”

“I am being nice. What’s your problem with weasels?” I lean forward and pick up his tail at the tip. It’s heavier than it looks. “...well, your ears are the wrong shape, anyway. Um… you could be a hyena. Do a laugh?”

“Ha ha ha.”

“A proper one.”

“That is my proper one.”

“What do you think, Beel?”

He starts. He doesn't seem to have been paying attention - just watching us with a warm look on his face. “Uh— a cow?”

“A cow?” Belphie repeats incredulously. “Have you ever seen a cow? You just want steak, don’t you?”

Beel’s face says ‘guilty as charged’. I prop myself up on my knees and start ruffling Belphie’s ears without permission. They feel like they could be extra-big cat ears.

“I think you’re some kind of desert fox,” I announce. “Try barking.”

He looks offended. “No way.”

“I command you to—”

“I think it’s time for Beel to have a snack,” He says loudly, and gets to his feet. “We’re going now.”

“It’d be easier if you just do it on your own,” I say persuasively, following behind as Beel gets unceremoniously pushed out of the room. “It’s less embarrassing. It’s on your terms.”

“I’m not barking!” He insists, moving a little faster, as if that will stop me from speaking. “Make Lucifer do it. Wolves are way closer to dogs.”

“I d— oh, so the potion did work on him?” My attention is successfully shifted. “Where did he go?”

“I dunno, I wasn’t looking— where are you going?”

I’m already in the other room when I realise I was meant to answer that question, but it doesn’t matter that much. There are only so many places to be in the House of Lamentation, and Lucifer’s pretty predictable. He might well have gone back to his office to do his work for the day.

I look into the common room just in case, which is empty - but, rather suspiciously, there’s a lot of grey fur stuck to the cushions in Lucifer’s usual spot. The common room has a pretty distinct mix of scents to it, and Lucifer’s is strong enough that he can’t have left too long ago.

I’m not sure I enjoy having such strong senses. It’s easier not to pay attention to it all when I’m in the middle of something else, but it’s overwhelming as soon as I stop and try to dissect everything.

I sit down for a moment, close my eyes, and listen carefully to the silence. There’s some distant clanking and conversation from the kitchen, but other than that it’s just quiet…

…the weird thing is that we all still have our normal ears, on top of the new animal ones. I can’t tell which ones are doing the work.

Garden, a voice in the back of my head suddenly supplies, and I open my eyes again. I don’t think I even heard anything - not consciously, anyway - but it feels like the right thing to do.

And apparently it is. Lucifer is sitting out on the grass and doing absolutely nothing.

Which is quite suspicious, really. But all I can think about is how he doesn’t seem to have heard the door open, and that it would be really funny if I snuck up on him.

I take a slow, careful step onto the lawn. He doesn’t give any indication that he’s noticed anything. Maybe he can’t hear me over the rustling of his own tail swiping idly through the grass. I think this is about as close as I can get away with. Can I jump that far? Only one way to find out.

I crouch back and adjust myself. Then, using the soft grass as a springboard, I launch myself ever-so-gently at his shoulders and grab him by the head.

Lucifer doesn’t scream - I wouldn’t have expected him to, and if he had, I’d have been very alarmed. But he does let out a loud, gruff ‘heurgh!’ and nearly topple straight over, which is about as good as you get with him.

“Hey,” I announce, into his regular ear, then lean up and do the same into the wolf ones, just in case. “Hey!”

“Yes, I can hear you,” He sighs, catching himself on a hand and trying to act stern. (His tail is wagging.) “And what do you think you’re doing?”

“Dunno.” I lean forward until I’m just about hanging over his shoulder. Lucifer has to switch from hunching forward to tilting back to keep balance. “What’re you doing?”

He’s quiet for a moment. I get the feeling that he doesn’t know, either. “Keeping watch.”

“Watch on what?” The only thing in front of us is a big hedge and some flowers. “There’s nothing here.”

“Hmm,” He says, which isn’t an answer. “Shouldn’t you be inside?”

“Well, I was looking for you—” I tip further forward still, and at this point Lucifer seems to decide that it’d be more prudent to just lie back, so that I’m lying on my front instead of attempting to fall head-first into the grass. “—oof— ‘cause I didn’t think the potion would work on you. And I wanted to see what you were like.”

“You wanted to see me do something embarrassing,” He concludes, and waves off my defensive ‘nooo’. “I didn’t think it would work on you, either. What are you, exactly?”

“Red panda.” I reach across his chest and poke at one of the straps running down his shirt. “Wow. Your suspenders are kind of ugly.”

There’s a short, sharp exhale, and then he remembers to be offended. “I didn’t choose them.”

“Well, I was saying - it’s weird that the potion knows how to make clothes, isn’t it? I mean, it’s adding bones and everything…”

“Which is exactly why I’d like to question Solomon about what he put in it,” He says, and now he does sound genuinely severe. “He’s lucky it hasn’t done any damage. I don’t know how Luke managed to bake it into a cake.”

The tip of his tail - the rest of it is trapped under his back - has started lashing angrily at the grass. I wonder if scratching his ears would help calm him down, or just make him madder.

“It’s not his fault,” I say in what I hope is a persuasive voice. Maybe it’d help if I sounded more pitiful. “And I helped him bake it, too.”

He gives me a look. “You’re the one I’m most worried about. A human body shouldn’t be able to handle the same kind of magical stress as a demon, and it wasn’t exactly comfortable when I transformed. Is there something you aren’t telling me?”

“Funny story, actually. I just sneezed and then it happened.”

“You just sneezed,” He repeats.

“Didn’t feel a thing,” I confirm. “Anyway, it’s cool, isn’t it? Like - Levi has heat pits now.”

“We still don’t know how long this is going to last,” He says, but he does look less tense. “...well, you might as well have fun with it.”

“Do you feel like howling at all?” I ask, looking up at the moon. I mean, I know it’s not actually a thing, but even so… “Actually, do you feel any different? Like… is the wolf within talking?”

“You make it sound more dramatic than it is,” Lucifer says with another little exhale. “But yes.”

“What’s it saying?”

“To hunt, mostly. Feed the family, or something along those lines. But we’ve been grocery-shopping this week already - and I’m not sure what I’d hunt even if I listened. What about your… ‘panda within’, then?”

It’s nice that he’s playing along. “Mmm… I think I really wanna climb up something.”

“Something up high?” He gently pushes my head off his shoulder and gestures to the end of the garden. “Will that do?”

It’s not the tallest tree in the Devildom, but to someone of my stature it’s an intimidating enough height that I’d probably feel a little dizzy at the top - which is perfect. I hadn’t realised how much I wanted to do this until Lucifer pointed it out, but I’m moving before I can even stop to think about it.

There’s something liberating about this new agility. Scaling the trunk comes about as second nature as taking stairs - so smoothly that it feels like the air is parting around rather than rushing against me. It’s only once I’m crouched contentedly on the highest sturdy branch I can find that I notice Lucifer standing at the base of the tree, ears pricked and eagle-eyed in apparent trepidation.

The bark is rough, but for some reason it doesn’t bother me at all. I lie forward with a leisurely sweep of my tail and give him a winning smile.

He huffs. “Proud of yourself, are you?”

“Yup.” It’d be better if this was an apple tree - then I could pick one and toss it down to him, and it’d be extra cool.

Alas, the tree just has regular leaves. Which… look kind of tasty, actually. It’s not like I have access to bamboo down here, so this might be the next best thing.

“Don’t,” Lucifer warns. I can only assume that I was wearing a Beel expression. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

“I’m not doing anything,” I insist, then pause. Something’s just sped past one of the windows upstairs. “...huh? Was that Mammon?”

I can hear Lucifer’s tail swishing agitatedly as I edge closer to the end of the branch to get a closer look. A moment later, another blur goes by.

“He’s just running. Okay—” I quickly unlatch from the branch and drop down, landing neatly in Lucifer’s arms. “—I’m gonna go check on him.”

“Was a warning too much to ask for?” He asks, as if he hadn’t reached up as soon as I let go. “Alright, but be careful. He’s… energetic.”

“You aren’t coming?”

“In a moment,” He says, and an odd look comes over his face. “I might have a walk. I need to…”

I feel like ‘patrol’ might be the word he’s looking for, but Lucifer seems pretty adamant that he’s the boss of the wolf and not the other way around, so I won’t tease him. He sends me back to the house with a nod, then sets off - turning his head first, then the rest of his body, tail pointing out behind him.

I’m expecting to hear the thunder of feet as soon as I get inside, but apparently tigers are lighter-footed than I’d thought. I barely even sense Mammon approaching until he suddenly springs out from around the corner, coming within less than an inch of slamming tie-first into my face before yelping and jerking away.

At the same time, as if struck by invisible lightning, I half-twist and half-leap backwards, hands flying above my head again, and it’s only a moment after the weird, chattering sound that I realise I was the one making it. Mammon skitters several feet away, eyes wide with alarm, then catches himself on the wall and realises what’s going on.

“Whoa whoa whoa!” He holds out his hands in supplication. “Chill, it’s just me!”

I blink at him, mildly out of breath, then say, “I knew that.”

“...are ya gonna put your hands down, then?”

“Yeah.”

He waits. It takes a little effort, but I manage to regain control of my limbs and bring my arms back down to my side.

Mammon cocks his head to the side. His tail goes from pointing down to up, and begins to move idly from side-to-side as he sets his hands on his hips.

“Didn’t scare ya that bad, did I?” He steps closer, then motions for me to look up. “C’mere, lemme get a look at ya.”

“Why were you doing upstairs?” I ask as he pokes at the new markings on my cheeks, then leans back and tilts his head from side to side, squinting at me. “I saw you in the window.”

“Runnin’,” He says after a moment’s thought, squashing both my ears flat against my head. “I kinda… bit Beel. I was sorta worried I’d start bitin’ everyone else, so I was tryin’ to blow off steam. Actually, I was takin’ laps around the garden first, but Lucifer said it was makin’ his head hurt.”

“So you came back in?”

“Well, I did wanna start runnin’ faster,” He admits. “Like, I was there first. But then he growled at me. Figured it wasn’t worth pissing him off after that.”

He swipes a hand across his face, then sighs. “Man. I’m beat. Let’s just find somewhere to chill.”

“Aren’t you hungry at all?” I ask, following him back to the common room. “You were running for ages. Tigers eat a lot even when they’re just sleeping all day.”

“Eh, I’ll manage,” He yawns, slumping onto the sofa cushions and turning onto his side, like a leisurely cat. “‘Sides, I’m pretty sure Beel cleaned out the fridge. And it ain’t like there’s anything to hunt around here.”

“Ooh— actually, do you want a fun fact? Tigers kill their prey by biting onto their throats until they suffocate.”

Mammon lifts his head and gives me a look. “That’s a fun fact?”

“A lot of people think they maul them to death. Well, they can, but the throat thing’s easier. ‘Cause it saves energy.” He looks uneasy, so I try to comfort him by adding, “It’s just what they do. Tiger’s gotta eat.”

“Tiger’s gotta eat,” He repeats, but his face stays creased. “Okay, now tell me something nice.”

“Alright.” I sit down on the carpet in front of him. “Every tiger has a unique pattern. So these are your special Mammon stripes! They’re the same under the fur, too, so you’d still have them even if you were completely bald.”

“Ha! Reckon I could pull it off?”

“Uh... I dunno, your head’s pretty big.”

He smacks me on the arm. “I told ya to tell me somethin’ nice.”

“I’m not going to lie - that’s the nice part. If you did go bald, Levi wouldn’t stop calling you an egghead for a week.”

“Ain’t that mean someone’s smart, too? Hey, I could live with that.”

“But your head would be so shiny. And an eagle might think it was a rock and drop a tortoise on it.”

He snorts incredulously. “Yeah, ‘cause that happens all the time to bald people.”

“It’s happened at least once,” I assert. “Historically. According to one guy two thousand years ago. The bald guy died, by the way.”

“Be a hell of a way to go.” He twists up, so that his chest faces the ceiling, and folds his arms with a deep sigh. “Fine. Guess I’ll hold back, just for you.”

His tail lolls over the edge of the sofa as he closes his eyes. I watch it for a while, glancing periodically up at his ostensibly absent expression, then reach out to catch it.

Like a spider on a string, it flicks backwards, and goes to lying barely an inch away. I try again, then again, then again, and yet it keeps bouncing away, as if it can sense the movement. No matter how fast I move, it’s always just a little faster.

I refuse to give up. I keep batting at it with mounting frustration, switching from quick jabs to slow, careful ambushes before finally turning a glare to Mammon’s face - and belatedly notice that his eyes are fully open again.

We look at each other for a moment. Then I realise that he’s not paying attention, and instinct takes over. Before he can react, I seize his tail and - for some reason I can’t fathom - bite it.

But I suppose I can’t have bitten it very hard, because Mammon usually makes it very loudly known if someone so much as pinches him. This time, he just stares at me. Then he starts laughing.

“Hahaha, oh man—” He reaches forward and gives both my ears an aggressive, adoring rumple, declaring, “Aren’t ya sweet? You havin’ fun with that? Hahahaha!”

“Quit it,” I mumble, pushing his tail away from me with perhaps an unnecessary amount of force, then decide on a whim to climb up onto the sofa with him. “Move up.”

“Oof!” He ends up squished against the back, but I’m too embarrassed to care. “Sheesh, give a guy some breathing room.”

“No,” I muffle into a cushion. “Die.”

“Fine, then. Have it your way.” He burrows one arm under me, then uses that as leverage to make himself some more room. I bury my face in my hands and pretend not to hear his pleased chuffing. “Wanna tell us a bedtime story?”

I peek up at him through a gap in my fingers. “...all the stories Dad told me about tigers end in the tiger dying.”

“Oh, don’t tell me, lemme guess—” He snickers. “—some little red thing tries to eat its tail and—”

Before he can finish, my hands shoot up and tug both of his tiger ears down. This time he does yelp. “Oi! Okay, okay, you win—”

“I don’t even know why I did that,” I grumble, letting go and shielding my face once more.

He chuffs again, pinching my nose with just enough force to be annoying. “Yeah, well, it was funny. Don’t even worry about it. Y’know Levi used to bite my arm whenever he got excited? Man, that was ages ago…”

“You shouldn’t let him bite you now - he’s got snake venom. You’ll get necrosis and your arm’ll fall off.”

“That bad? Yikes.” He yawns, then abruptly tucks me under his chin like a glorified teddy bear. “Good thing you’re gonna guard me, right?”

“I can’t do anything when I’m stuck here,” I complain - knocking my head affectionately into his at the same time, like a hypocrite. “I can’t die valiantly in battle if you don’t let me go.”

“Against a snake? Nah, leave it. That’s not even a cool thing to fight.”

“How dare you say that about Saint Patrick…”

The conversation continues in that vein for a little longer - until Mammon finally runs out of energy to keep coming up with responses, and instead starts responding with a series of low, growling hums. He dozes off soon after that. Considering how long he was sprinting around for, I’m impressed he managed to stay awake for that long.

I’d like to stay with him for a while, but I don’t feel sleepy at all, and it’s also getting kind of warm. I carefully wriggle my way out, then stand up and survey the scene. I reckon I’ll build a few cushions around him, like a fort, and that way he’ll be extra safe…

Once I’m done with that, I decide to go wandering again. Satan’s the only one I haven’t seen so far, and I can’t tell if the ongoing silence from him forebodes well or poorly.

The first place to check is, as usual, the library, which is empty at first glance. Then I catch a pair of vivid green eyes staring at me - a large demon-shaped cat tucked neatly into a high-up gap in the bookshelf.

“...why are you in there?” I ask, even though I know the answer from Hyde, and it’s just that he can, and wants to be.

Satan stays there for a moment, then slips out, landing softly on all fours, and sits gracefully back on his haunches. I’d be worried about the lack of response if it wasn’t for his tail pointed straight up behind him, waving slowly like a happy flag.

“Hello,” He says, perfectly serene.

“Hey.” I give him a knowing look, which he ignores. He’s not fooling anyone who knows him even a little - let alone me. “Are you having fun being a cat?”

“You would not believe,” He replies, and at this point the giddiness starts to seep into his voice. He leans forward a little. “Come here. Scratch my ears.”

There’s a weirdly intense look on his face. I wrinkle my nose at him. “What?”

“Scratch my ears,” He says again, as if it was the instruction that was the problem.

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

“Not if you’re gonna be weird about it—”

“I can purr now,” He says impatiently. “Come on, come on, I’ll show you.”

“Okay, okay—” I bend down a little and give the base of his ears a rub. They’re sleeker than Hyde’s - more intact, too. “Is that good?”

He shuts his eyes, ducking his head so that I get the angle correctly. A familiar sound starts up, even louder and deeper than I’m used to, like a little motor in his chest.

It’s hypnotic. I kneel down beside him, and in turn he starts dipping his head even lower, until it looks like he’s contorted in a funny yoga pose. Eventually he just gives up on supporting himself and flops over onto his side with a content little smile.

A voice in the back of my head comments that this must all look incredibly strange. The voice in the front of my head replies that it’s really cute, so it doesn’t matter.

I mess around with one of his ears and turn it inside out. He doesn’t seem to notice, but the ear itself starts twitching restlessly, as if trying to reverse itself. “What’ve you been up to? What else can you do?”

(It’s kind of hard not to start baby-talking him, but I’m not sure he’d forgive me if I did.)

“Well, Lucifer left his office unlocked, so I went in and got some fur on his chair,” He says triumphantly, opening his eyes for long enough to offer a slow, happy blink. “Then I just took a nap. Sleeping as a cat is much nicer than sleeping as a demon. No wonder they always look so happy.”

There’s no way Satan didn’t spend at least a little time just basking in the bliss of his feline transformation, but I won't force him to admit that. I pick up one of his hands and turn it over. Like Asmo, they look mostly the same, but with little pads on the ends of his long fingers.

Satan yawns, then slowly sits up again. “What are you looking at?”

“Trying to see if your hands do the…” I press down between his knuckles, and his nails do indeed seem to protract. “Whoa! I wonder how that works?”

He looks down, then lets out a shallow gasp and wrenches his hand out of mine, reversing the positions so that he’s holding my left hand instead. His ears are pointed straight up - I imagine a pair of whiskers fanning out from his cheeks.

“You’ve got paws,” He whispers in awe.

“Paw,” I correct, showing him the right one. “This is just a glove. I don’t think the potion works on prosthetic stuff.”

“Interesting..." He frowns. “I wonder if we have any textbooks about this kind of thing.”

I know he prefers spellwork over brewing, which I’ve heard Professor Baal vocally complaining about in the staff room before, so this is a good sign for them. After a moment, though, the scholarly look on Satan’s face vanishes again, and now he’s wearing the same expression he watches kitten videos with.

He tweaks my nose, then starts combing his fingers methodically through the hair I messed up on the sofa earlier, beginning to purr again. I’m suddenly put in mind of those videos of cats grooming each other.

He shifts to better reach the back of my head, and I hear a quiet chime. I look down. There’s a bell tied around his tail.

Weird choice of accessory. It’s not attached very securely - just loosely looped around with a strong string. Satan pauses as I detach the bell, then lift it up and give it a jingle.

I open my mouth to say something, then realise that, based on his expression, he won’t hear a word of it. Satan’s completely frozen in place, eyes fixed on the bell. His now-unadorned tail swishes restlessly behind him.

Holding my breath, I jingle the bell again. The pupils of his eyes expand until there’s barely any green left in them, and he crouches back unconsciously. I think he’s actually trembling a little in anticipation.

I give it one last shake, then toss it away. Satan follows it with a sharp turn of his head - then, wiggling as if to calibrate, pounces at it like— well, like a cat at a mouse.

As soon as he lands beside it, his hand strikes the edge at just the right angle to send it spinning away, and this time he doesn’t even try to adjust before leaping at it again, then again - head held close to the ground, digging his claws into the carpet to keep himself from skidding and then getting them stuck when he tries to keep going. Each time, the bell seems to evade his grasp, right up until he lunges for it a little too rapidly and runs head-first into the wall.

“Oh no—” I’d been covering my mouth to stop myself from laughing, but now it’s more out of shock - I hurry to prop him back up as Satan stares at the ceiling, dazed. “—are you okay?”

He blinks deliriously for a moment, then gives himself a shake and flushes. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine—”

He hurriedly gets back to his feet and, for want of something to do, starts flattening the fur on his ears. The bell lies, discarded, a few feet away. His eyes keep darting back to it again.

After a moment, deciding that he doesn’t seem like he has a concussion, I get up to retrieve it. Satan watches me in close anticipation as I toss it in my hand for a moment, then roll it over to him.

His hand shoots out and slams it to the ground. Then he smacks it my way again, and without thinking I dive to the side to catch it.

With each pass, he gets a little more boisterous, and the bell starts moving in wilder, faster directions, criss-crossing all over the library, passed back and forth with barely enough respite to actually jingle. I bounce this way, Satan bounds that way - knocking into furniture so frequently and loudly that it’s not really a surprise when someone comes to see what’s going on.

The door opens, and Satan stops himself short. He sits up straight, replacing his playful expression with a completely serious one, and Levi eyes us both suspiciously.

“What were you doing?” He asks after a moment.

“Nothing,” lies Satan, getting up. His eyes dart down to the bell again, and he discreetly kicks it away. “What’re you doing here?”

He scratches his head. “Well, Asmo got hungry. And I didn’t wanna just sit around in his room.”

“Are you still cold?” I ask. He shrugs.

“I think I’m getting used to it,” He says, coming further into the room. “I mean, it’s still chilly, but it’s like… outside chilly.”

“That’s good. Oh, have you tried eating anything yet? Do you reckon you could swallow stuff whole like Gerald does?”

He grimaces. “Do I have to? That sounds gross. Do we even have anything big enough?”

“Uhh… a big loaf of bread, maybe…?”

Satan, listening to this with interest, glances to the side and spots Levi’s long snake tail, and abruptly shoots into the air - so high that it looks as if a helicopter took off with a rope tied around him. Levi yelps and dives to hide; a moment later, Satan lands on his feet, a good ten feet away from where he started.

Levi peeks warily out from behind the armchair. “What was that?”

Satan clears his throat and refuses to make contact. “Ahem - do you hear people in the common room? Let’s go to the common room.”

The common room is a lot busier than it was since I left it. The twins have arrived, and the scene looks like Mammon’s swapped personalities with Belphie - while the latter is playing a chase game with Beel around the sofa, he has his head propped up on a cushion, blinking reproachfully at them for disturbing him.

Asmo shows up soon after we do, throwing himself into the seat next to me with a metric armful of some leafy vegetable that I can only assume is the Devildom equivalent of celery. He offers me a stick and keeps crunching loudly throughout Levi and Satan’s bickering, cheeks perpetually full like a hamster.

With everyone else gathered here, it’s not long before Lucifer slips in as well, and immediately gets dragged into Belphie’s game with Beel. Lucifer waits until he’s tuckered himself out (which doesn’t take long, because it’s Belphie), to finally call a family meeting of some kind so that everyone can get their bearings.

Though there isn’t much to say - we're all more or less settled into ourselves now, so it’s just a matter of getting used to everyone else. That doesn’t take long, either, and soon enough, certain demons start getting bored. Within the hour, they’re all running around the house again like excited puppies.

…I say ‘they’, but that includes me. Levi’s the one who opts to stay sitting calmly by the fireplace. Belphie keeps collapsing in the middle of the hallway for a five minute nap before he gets up to join in again, and Lucifer has to try to keep up with us to make sure we don’t start breaking everything.

Such is the commotion that no one hears the knock on the door, which Luke left unlocked when he fled. That also means that no one thinks to stop Mammon when he makes to use it as a launchpad - Solomon steps inside and immediately gets bowled over, sending the carefully corked bottle in his hand flying. Behind him, Luke lets out a short squeak and covers his eyes, but it lands safely on the carpet, its momentum carrying it down the hall.

And then it comes to a stop by Satan’s feet.

He stares at the bottle, eyes dilated. His tail flicks restlessly.

“Satan,” Lucifer starts, ears pricked in caution - none of us are close enough to grab the bottle to safety. “Don’t—”

Satan reaches down and bats the bottle cleanly into the wall. It smashes it into about a million smithereens. The rest of us watch the violet potion inside drain into the carpet.

“You know,” Solomon says, cross, “Sometimes you bring this on yourselves.”

[theminecraftbee]

also since i've decided to be on a pearl and bigb kick with the whole one piece au, bigb's devil fruit. as i mentioned, frog frog fruit, he is a frog man. which makes it PARTICULARLY ironic he can't swim; he ate a devil fruit that turned him into a creature with webbed feet and hands, but the ocean goddess still fucking hates him, like she hates every single devil fruit user, and even sort of touching seawater fucks him up. like, talk about the ultimate irony...

anyway, for the non-one piece fans: zoan-type devil fruit users (the ones that let you transform into an animal) normally have three(-ish) forms: their "base/normal" form, one where they have a lot of their animal traits, and one that is like, full animal. approximately. chopper exists. chopper is an anomaly, we are going to ignore chopper.

anyway i think even in human form bigb has had his devil fruit a long time. he moves a little strangely. his limbs are SLIGHTLY too long, his joints a little too pronounced, his smile a little too wide--although to be fair, he exaggerates this on purpose around people he wants to unnerve. (this seems like a bigb thing to do. i think he largely does this to brass he dislikes, lol.)

he tends to use his beast form more often than his beast-man form. that's because, even unable to swim, being a frog is useful, because frogs are overlooked! plus, he can somewhat communicate with any local frogs (or frog-adjacent creatures, island wildlife can be WEIRD) to get information on criminals he's pursuing. oftentimes he just... catches his enemies off-guard this way, too. no need to challenge them to a straight fight if he can sneak into the room they're staying in and just whack them over the head, after all.

(pearl is. mildly annoyed at how effective that is, actually.)

if he DOES have to fight, though, his man-beast form is a little bit slapstick, in that i imagine he has these huge webbed hands and feet, kind of absurdly long legs and arms that give him ABSURD jumping ability, and a tongue that is practically a deadly whip itself. also, i think he deserves to be able to stick to things using his hands, feet, and tongue, entrapping his enemies as part of his fighting style as well. he's half comedic looking and half a little horrifying and that's what we love about bigb. (also would it be one piece if the designs weren't as comical as they were cool. can you tell kaku's giraffe fruit has been my favorite zoan fruit so far.) also, in a fight, despite his slapstick appearance, bigb REMAINS a little bit more of a thinker than a fighter, and is unafraid to resort to "dirty" tactics.

actually, that's the other irony of his devil fruit: he's a silver-tongued smooth talker who, thanks to the length his tongue grows to in beast-man form, can't use that foremost skill of his to its full strength while he's using his devil fruit.

its almost like someone's laughing at him out there in the cosmos for this one, honestly.

well, whatever. he's pretty good at making the most of it anyway (and i think a hallmark of bigb's devil fruit use is that he's dangerous because he's CREATIVE, not because his fruit is inherently one of the more powerful ones in the story, a thing we know from one piece is the actually important part of getting the most out of your powers).

[seat-safety-switch]

It’s sort of trite to complain about traffic. We all know that it’s bad: idiots going slow, maniacs going fast, yada yada yada. There’s a lot of schemes to make this traffic better. Adding lanes doesn’t work, because people will just get wider cars. Adding public transit doesn’t work, because it requires our governments to care about the general well-being of the public. And replacing all of our cars with independently-owned-and-operated taxi cabs doesn’t work, because now everyone drives like a taxi driver.

Here’s what I think is the answer: difficulty. If your commute is more difficult, maybe even dangerous, then you’ll stay home. Maybe get a job working remotely, controlling one of those war drones in a country whose name you can’t pronounce. Order your groceries in, delivered by wild-eyed psychopaths who scrape the highway-mounted FIA curbs with the undertray of their Ford Transit Connects on every apex.

Sure, the first week or so is gonna be worse than usual. Tow trucks will have a hard time keeping up with all the base-model crossovers and adversarial-package-equipped pickup trucks that are sliding off the road after they encounter a gentle right-hand turn at speed. After that’s done, and ideally after the insurance mafia threatens enough drivers into giving up their licenses, things should be clear sailing for anyone who’s taken an autocross course.

Making ordinary roads more challenging is, appropriately, not an easy task. There are millions of miles of streets in any given major city, and it costs a lot of money and time to figure out how to make “super wide, long high-speed road that has unprotected crosswalks on it” into “brutal series of suspension-punishing chicanes that challenge the mind and stamina.” In fact, it costs way more than just adding a train, which everyone could ride safely and calmly to their destination, ideally while doing sudoku or reading a novel about a woman who works at the zoo and hates giraffes. I’d read that novel, too, after I lose my license for failing to drive at a frankly reckless posted speed limit through a sweeping downhill corner with no streetlights and an 800-foot sharp dropoff on either side. Between you and me, I probably deserve it.

[cisthoughtcrime]

alright i'm asking this to you because you're like. one of the #1 radfems on this website. how is "gyn" pronounced? is the G pronounced like the G in vagina, or like the G in gynecologist? because like, what if i meet a super cool radfem in real life and mispronounce it and embarrass myself? how could i ever survive that? if i embarrassed myself by mispronouncing a word in front of a beautiful woman i think i would explode and die.

humbly, I believe "gyn" is pronounced as in "gynecology".

with a Y, gyn is from the Greek γυνή (gyne) / γῠναικός (gynaikos), which means "woman". the g sound here is the same as the g in girl, NOT the g in giraffe.

while gyn with a Y is Greek (the Y is the transliteration of υ or upsilon), vagina with an I is directly from the Latin word for "sheath" or "scabbard". technically, the Latin would also be pronounced as vuh-GYE-nuh rather than vuh-JYE-nuh, but it's pretty regular for English to put J sounds into Latin words.

TLDR: "gyn" with a Y is the same root as in "gynecologist" and is completely unrelated to the "gin" with an I in "vagina". I pronounce it as G not J, as in "hey, guys" but with an N: "hey, gyns."

[sweet-villain]

Believe~2~B.H

Summary : After surviving by the Mind Flyer, Billy decides to leave Hawkins. Leave you. Max. He goes back to California, has a new look and a couple years later he's back. He's looking for you, this time he gets a surprise of his life. You're a mother of a little girl, and she calls Eddie Munson daddy.

@sidthedollface2 @tayhar811 @tanyaherondale @flvneurss @stories2504 @arsenicred @strangerthings1983fan

@lilostif16 @blackmagicwoman

Part 1

" Mama!" you heard Lilly yell out for you from the other room in the trailer, you yawned as you sat up throwing the covers off the bed but an arm pulled you back into bed. You giggled, looking over your shoulder at your boyfriend. He had his eyes closed as he laid on his side, " Where do you think you're going?"

" Lilly needs me" he mumbled something underneath his breath as he released you, putting the arm that was holding you underneath the pillow. You leaned over to kiss him on the cheek seeing a smile appear on his face. Your feet hit the floor as you rounded the corner from your room to Lily's. She was sitting up in bed with her little stuff dog that was named Bubbles. Eddie had won it at a fair for her, she was over the moon. When she grasped it in her hands and placed it against her cheek feeling the softness of it, Eddie's eyes shined with a few tears as he looked at her.

Those two were irrespirable.

" Good Morning, my love" you greet her as you remove the cover off of her. She is dressed in purple pjs that had lions and giraffes on it. Her dirty blonde curls hanged in her face a bit and her bright blue eyes stared up at you. " Monin" Lily couldn't pronounce all the words but Auntie Robin has been teaching her a few words, here and there.

" What would you like to wear today, sweet girl?" She shrugged her shoulder, " Blue." Her favorite color was blue just like Billy's and it brought so many memories. You paused as you glance down at your daughter as she talked to her little stuff doggy. She looked so much like Billy but she has your personality. You turn to look for a blue flower top, she loved flowers and butterflies too.

" How about this one?" you showed her the long sleeve soft blue shirt with a big flower in the middle of it. Her blue eyes grew wide with happiness seeing the flower. She nodded. You went back to looking for something else blue since she would fuse over if you chose any other color then she would ask. You brought out some blue jeans out for her, " These?" she looked over and shrugged. She wasn't too big of a fan of jeans. She preferred wearing shorts and skirts or a dresses.

She loved it when you were summer dresses because she wanted to be as pretty as you. You laid the clothe on her bed as you took her in your arms into the bathroom. You held her on her hip as you washed her face and helped her brush her teeth. You settled her down in front of you as you got a brush out.

" No!" she saw the brush and ran out of the bathroom. " Lilly bear, come back here. Mama needs to brush your hair." Lilly ran into yours and Eddie's bedroom, pushing the door open as she crawled onto the bed.

" Daddy!" she yelled reaching with her small hands for his mane of curls and tugging on them. " Ow! Lilly that's not nice" Eddie grabbed her and put her on his chest as she sat there, with a small pout. You had stopped to watch the scene in front of you. Taking a mental picture of them together.

" What is it Lilly Bear? What has Mama done?" Lilly giggled as she laid down to cuddle into Eddie's chest. She points with her small finger at the brush your holding.

" is that the monster?" He asked, lifting up his head as he chuckled down at her. " No, funny" she rose her head up and poked Eddie on his chin. You couldn't help but smile watching them. " How about this? Let Mama brush your hair and you get dressed. Then we can come Mama's work and I will get you ice cream or cake?" Her blue eyes beam with happiness hearing she might get a treat. She began to jump on his chest and clap her hands.

" Would that work, sweetheart?" He looks at you in approval, you nod. You loved it when Lilly came by your job with Eddie, the two of them made the diner much brighter than it is. " Just not too much or she won't sleep tonight, Edward" he winced at the usage of his real name but didn't say anything.

" How about you let daddy brush your hair?" you ask Lilly sitting on the bed. She crawls over to you and grabs the brush in her hands and throws it Eddie's way. It hits him on the side, and he gasped playfully at her. " You little monster" he shot out of bed as he hovered above her, tickling her side as he laughed with her.

" I love you both so much" the giggling stop as a pair of brown eyes and a pair of blue eyes look over to you. " I love you too, sweetheart. More than you know."

" Wuv Mama" Lilly says. " I think Mama need some kisses" Eddie tells her as Lilly gasps, shooting quickly up almost hitting Eddie with her head she stands up on the bed and walks over to your side. She grasp onto your neck and kisses your cheek. Eddie crawls to the other side with his hand on your waist as he kisses your other cheek. The two share a look as they tackle you with kissed causing all three of you to laugh and giggle in bed.

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Eddie has fed Lilly while you were getting ready for work. You heard the giggles coming from the kitchen, Eddie had used his Dungeon Master voice as you remember it was your favorite when he used it to read to you. You peeked out from the bathroom watching as Eddie sat on the couch with Lilly in his lap, she was looking up at him as if he hung the moon for her. He had brushed her hair just like she wanted, added little blue clips to her hair.

" You two are my whole world" you put on your shoes as you grabbed your jacket. " Daddy, silly" Lilly says as she gets off Eddie's lap and makes her way to you. " Be a good girl for daddy?" you kneel before her. " Give me a kiss and hug" she throws her arms around you and placed a kiss on your cheek. When you had to go into work, Eddie watched Lilly. When Eddie had to work, you watched Lilly. When the two of you worked, it was either Steve watching Lilly, Dustin or Robin.

"See you two later" you were about to leave when your metal head boyfriend frowned with his arms across his chest, pouting and tapping his foot against the floor.

" Are we forgetting something, sweetheart?" He asked a bit hurt that you didn't give him a kiss or a hug. " Oh, opps" his eyes narrowed seeing the little smirk appear on your face. " I'll give you opps" he grabbed your waist, and tugged you to him as he crashed his lips against yours. One of his hands went into your hair as he gripped the back of your head bringing you any closer than he can. You pulled away, breathless.

" I'm going to be late if you keep this up"

Eddie pecked your lips one more time.

" Have a good day at work, sweets" he grabbed Lilly in his arms as he walks with you outside seeing Steve's car is there already there. Steve gets out of the car as his eyes spot Lilly in Eddie's arms.

" Look at the little sunshine, looking all pretty" he kneels down and opens his arms for Lilly once Eddie puts her down, she giggles in her hands holding Bubbles as she runs towards Steve. Her little curls bouncing as she ran. Steve brought her up in his arms as he looked down at her.

" I see Bubbles is joining you" she nods and brings up Bubbles to lay a kiss on Steve's cheek. Steve dramatically puts a hand to his forehead as he sighs happily. " A kiss for me? I need one from you too, Lilly. I'll be really sad without it" he pouts. Steve hoists her up in his arms to reach him and her little arms wrap around his head as she kisses him on the cheek.

" Uncle Steve is happy!" he kisses her cheek in return but blow raspberries on her cheek causing her to thrash in his arms and giggle.

" Harrington, I'm going to be late if you don't put my daughter down" Steve pouts as he hugs Lilly closer to him. " But I-"

" Steven" you warned. He scoffed, " That's not my name." But Steve gives Eddie, Lilly as she waves to you and Steve as you walk to his car. He still drives the same maroon BMW. It's still in good shape.

" Yeah, yeah. I need to get to work" you sit in the car waving to Lilly as Steve backs away and drives you to work.

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The diner wasn't too busy today as you spend most of your time cleaning tables and counters, counting the cash and making yourself a milkshake.

That's when a new freak of hair hits you as the bell above the door rings telling you that someone came in. When your head shot up looking at the person, you had to take a double looking. Your heart stopped when your eyes set on those familiar blue eyes, hint of freckles dancing on his nose, the mane of curls that used to be there are no longer there, just one curl hanging on his forehead. But it's his smile that hits you. It's him. It's your first love. The man that left you.

It's Billy Hargrove.

Billy's eyes set on you and like a light bulb light up above his head as his eyes settle on you. He pauses in chewing the gum in his mouth as a little gasp comes out. You heard it. His eyes roam the way your hair was longer but held in a braid to the side, the way your eyes look brighter than they used to bed, the way you looked better than you ever did before. You did look good, but Billy was blown away seeing you once again.

His heart sped up as he notices the look in your eyes. You knew it was him.

After all these years, you were here in Hawkins.

After all the years, you were here in Hawkins.

" Pretty girl" he used your old nickname to call you, a wide smile spreads on his face as he sits in the booth. You make your way over to him with the notepad in your hands and a pen, ready to get his order.

" You look good" He says. Does he really think your going to talk to him like things used to be?

" What will it be?" He frowns as you avoid him and seems like you just want to get things over with.

" Doll" he uses the other nickname he used to call you. The audacity of him calling you that after all this time. He feels the tension.

" I'm sorry" he says like it would matter if he didn't say it. " I'm working, what will it be?" he tells you what he wants and when you walk away, he can't help but look. His heart sinks knowing leaving you was his mistake.

You put in his order in for Benny telling him what Billy wanted and you can't help but feel eyes on you as you worked. The door opens again, this time, little blonde curls and that giggle that you love so much runs through the door.

" Mama!" Lilly beams as she runs to your side. Billy's attention is caught as he look at the little girl that runs over to you. He sees you kneeling down in front of her. He can barely see her at the moment but notices the dirty blonde curls off the bat. He continues to watch as you lift her up into your arms, tickling her tummy. His eyes widen when she looks around the diner seeing the electric blue eyes, a mirror of his own and her freckles on her nose. He gasps clenching his fist feeling his stomach tightened.

His breath hitches seeing you interact with her, the way you kissed her cheek, the way you tickled her and the way she called you mama. His heart sinks further into his chest when he sees a guy with long mane of curls walk up to you and lean in to kiss you.

You had moved on and you were a mother. He would tell you that he wanted to have kids with you one day. In California. He wanted to marry you. All those broken promises.

The plate hits the table causing him to wince seeing the little girl on your hip. His eyes go wide at the sight of her, she has freckles just like him too. She looks exact copy of him but she has your smile.

" Y/N" he calls out to you and you stop in your tracks hearing your name. " Eat up, Hargrove" Eddie's ears pick up the last name, he knows all about Billy. You didn't keep anything from Eddie. You dropped Lilly by Eddie.

Eddie eyes you seeing if you were okay but you walk to the back door, leaning against the wall with your hand on the wall of the diner, clenching your eyes feeling the tears.

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Billy stuffs the food in his mouth as he watches the little girl in the arms of the unknown man to him. He eyes him seeing the mane of curls, the vest and the jacket with a chain on the side of his pants. He eyes the rings on his fingers and scoffs at him. Was this to what you reduced to? Billy shakes his head as he stands up.

The little blonde blue eye girl waves at him which makes his heart flutter at the sight of her. He was never good with kids, he remembers how he treated his step sister Max. He wondered how she is. The little girl continued to waved but the unknown man brought her hand down once seeing who she was waving at. It was like the unknown man knew him but Billy didn't.

Billy eyes scan to see if he can spot you but you are no where near in sight. A frown appears on his lips, he drops some money on the table as heads out the door passing the little girl and the unknown man, sending her a smile.

He walks through the doors and his ears pick up a sniffle, the hairs on his arm and neck stand up. He knew that feeling. He got it when the first time he saw you in the parking lot of Hawkins High School.

He turns the corner of the diner and follows the sniffle, cautiously making his way. His eyes spot you leaning against the back of the diner as you had your eyes closed, some strands of hair blowing in the breeze and your hands were by your side.

You look more beautiful than he remembers.

" You haven't changed much" he speaks up. His voice scares you as your eyes flash open and turned your head his way. He stood there with worry in his eyes, tilting his head to the side with a frown on his face. You rolled your eyes as you turned your back to him. You weren't in the mood to see him right now.

" I just wanna talk" he makes his way closer to you, but you turned around to face him in a blink with anger in your eyes. " You wanna talk, Hargrove? Talk about what? How you left me? How you broke my heart? How you got into the car and didn't care about how I felt? You're a piece of shit, Hargrove. I don't know what I ever saw in you" you spatted.

Your words cut deep inside of him as he swallowed the lump in his throat. " I know I hurt you, but there isn't a day that goes by that I regret leaving you."

" But you did anyways" you were about to walk past him when his question catches you off guard. " Who's the little girl? Is she mine?"

Your breath hitches as you close your eyes. This wasn't the time for this.

" None of your business William" your shoulders were tense as you spatted his name like that. His heart felt like it would leap out of his throat. You never called him that unless you were super angry with him. Of course you were, he shows up all the sudden and want to talk to you? He doesn't deserve it.

" I-I'm sorry" you chuckled with your back to him. " Go back to California, Billy. No one wants you here" with those words you left him standing there with his head hung. For the fist time in a while, Billy feels his own heart in two. He really wants to run up to you and grab you, not let you go. But also, he wants to know who the little girl is. She looked nothing like the unknown guy you are with.

The only man you slept with, was him. His heart speeds up as he thinks about that possible that little girl can be his.

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Billy has no idea where his step sister is, where Steve is, where anyone is. He passed by your old house that you used to live in. The house where he would crawl through your window and lay in your bed with you, watching as you fall asleep. He looks to the side of his Camaro remembering how you looked in it, you had made it the princess passenger seat. No one but you were allowed to sit in it.

He parks the car just outside your old house and gets out. He looks up at the sky and look around the neighbors seeing it has changed, your parents were no longer living here. He noticed the house was empty, filled with trees and some trash around. The windows were broken, the house has lost it's color and everything was silent. He didn't like it.

" Hargrove?" his head shot side to side seeing a familiar face in the familiar BMW. His eyes scan the person in the car as he walks over, kneeling by the window with his hands on it. He's staring at the man that he used to tolerate because of you. He is starting at the man that he used to have fights with. He's staring at the man that was always by your side when things got wrong.

Steve Harrington.

" Harrington" he says. Steve's eyes roam Billy's face. " Nice look" he says. Billy laughs as he shrugs, " you still look the same, shit head."

Steve laughs.

" Surprise your back" Billy shrugs again. " Do you know where my step sister Max is? You know, red head, a bit of a bitch? You used to hang out with her with those kids"

Steve freezes in his seat. Billy squints his eyes watching Steve body language. " What happened to my step sister? Is Max okay?" this was a surprise to hear from Billy caring about his step sister. He used to be so cold towards her.

" Not here" Billy's eyes brows frowned together. Steve tells him where to meet and Billy hurries to his car as he follows Steve to Nancy's house.

When Steve tells Billy what happened with Max, the whole Vecna thing, the whole thing with Eddie, how Eddie almost died, how you almost died too , how they defeated Vecna but Steve leaves the part where you got pregnant with his child. That was your choice to tell him.

Billy sits with his head in his hands as he is taking all this information in. Robin, Nancy, Jonathan, El, Will, Dustin, Mike and Steve look at Billy. He scratches the back of his head as he stands up.

" I need to see Maxine"

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You were silent the whole time you got home, sitting across Eddie at the table as you picked at your food. Lilly was in her room playing with her toys while Eddie was watching you. He had saw Billy in the diner and he knew that your mind clouded, there was fear in your eyes that he saw and that everything was about to change.

He was terrified of that change.

" Sweetheart?" he calls out to you, reaching his hand out to grab your attention. His clad ring hand lays on top of yours. You snap out of your thoughts as you glance down at his hand.

" I'm sorry" you shook your head standing up and taking your plate to the sink. You weren't that hungry in the first place. Gripping the counter with both your hands, Eddie stood up too as he made his way over to you.

" You saw him? It brought you back those memories, didn't it?" you nodded not turning to face him. " Are you going to tell him about Lilly?"

You shrugged.

" Do you want him to be part of her life?" you shrugged again. Eddie didn't like that you weren't giving him verbal answers. He was growing frustrated. " Y/N.." he calls out to you, grabbing your wrist to turn you around but you took it out of his grasp as you made your way to the bedroom.

" We are not done talking about this" he spats, his nose scrunching up as he followed you. " I don't wanna talk" you say as you open the bedroom door. Eddie puts his hand on it, not letting you close it.

" Are there feelings still there?"

" I don't know" you answer him, sitting on the bed. Eddie runs a hand through his hair and then down his face. He is terrified that Billy is back, you'll leave him and Lilly will walk out of his life too. He loves you with all his heart. You were the first person to show him what it's like to feel loved. To feel wanted.

He kneels down in front of you with his hands on your thighs.

" Listen, he's going to have to be one day part of her life. You can't just shut down like this. I know you hate him for leaving, you hate him that he hurt you but he has a daughter. If I had a daughter and didn't know about it, I would like to know. You two might not see eye to eye, but he's her father.."

" Don't" you shook your head as you stood up. " You don't know what I went through with him. Don't tell me what I need to do, I don't need my daughter to know what kind of man he is. He treated Max like crap, he treated Steve like crap, he was horrible to everyone but not to me, I got to see a side of him no one knew. But he left me anyways. I felt so alone.. I felt so hurt.. don't tell me you let him into my daughters life. You don't know him"

He nods as he agrees with you.

" I don't know him, but the look in his eyes when he saw Lilly today-"

" He looked at her?" Eddie nodded.

" He smiled at her and she waved to him too" you sighed as you pinched the bridge of your nose. " Lilly doesn't need him in her life. She looks up to you, Eddie. She calls you her dad. You have been there for her since she was a bundle in my arms. You were overjoyed to meet her. I saw the look on your face when you hold her, you swore to protect her. Billy Hargrove can't know Lilly, do you hear me?"

Eddie nods as he takes your hand in his, " I'm sorry that this is causing you to be like this."

" I just hate him, why did he have to come back"

" Please, Eddie don't let him take Lilly too. She's my whole world. He can't know about her. He can't.

But too bad he already did since Robin can't seem to stop talking about you.

" What's her name?" Billy asks cutting Robin's rant off. The group look at each other, there is a silent what do we do know looks. Robin looks at the ground, she feels guilty for telling him he has a daughter.

" Lilly Willow L/N" Steve says. You had given Lilly your last name, because you gave her a part of Billy's name in her middle name.

" That's pretty" Billy says.

" Okay, who is this? What have you done with Billy Hargrove?" Dustin asks as he eyes Billy up and down.

" Shut it, Henderson" Steve says as he points to Billy, " You're not going near that little girl. She's a treasure to all of us, hell you'll have to go through me if you want to talk to Y/N about her"

" She is my daughter! I have a right to know her!"

" Y/N doesn't owe you shit" Mike spats, El nods as she glares at Billy.

" What did you say, you little shit?" Billy jaw tightened as he took a step towards Mike. El stood in front of Mike, protecting him as she glared up at Billy. Steve pushes El to the side as he stands in front of Billy.

Billy smirks.

" Like old time, Harrington?"

" Like I said, Hargrove, you'll have to go through me to get to Y/N and Lilly" Billy looks at each of them to your so called friends.

" I'll find them one way or another" Billy spats as he makes his way to the door. He was going to see Max first before he was going to look for you. He has given a thought to ask Benny where you lived, he would search the whole town to look for you.

He was going to see his daughter. He needed to. He needed to make things right.

[one-piece-aus]

Whumptober Day 11

Kaku x Reader

"Here let me see that," Kaku offered, reaching to take your hand so he could look at your arm better.

"I can do it myself," you scoffed and moved your arm away from him.

Kaku frowned but didn't say anything. He watched your turned your back to him and rewrapped your bandages. You were just as reckless as Jabra and stubborn as Kalifa, always insisting you were anything but delicate. Why had he fallen for you?

Kaku thought back to when the two of you went on your first undercover mission as teens. 

"Kaku! Check this out, it's a yellow hooooorse!" you exclaimed and point at the animal that caught your attention.

Kaku chuckled at your enthusiasm and the way you pronounced horse. "No, [Y/n], that's a giraffe."

"I- I knew that!" You puffed your cheeks and turn away from him. It didn't stop Kaku from laughing. You didn't let it keep you down because you moved on to the next strange thing you saw. "Look, it's a green aaaaaaaple!"

That's when Kaku learned the best way to blend in was to let your enthusiasm and fascination for the world take over, he learned it from you. He became better undercover and went on more missions as your partner, sometimes acting as a couple, however-

"They're going to get infected if you leave them sloppy like that," Kaku stated, gently taking your arm. Slowly, he unravelled the messy bandages before he started wrapping them around your arm, careful to make sure you didn't lose circulation. "Does it hurt?"

"No..." you mumble glancing in the other direction.

"There, as good as new," Kaku smiled and patted your arm, singling he had finished.

"It's not new," you told him, unamused as you stood up and began walking out the door.

"It's just an expression," Kaku replied, not knowing if you heard him or not. 

It wasn't acting on his part anymore, that's just how he acted with you when you gave him the chance. Usually, you only allowed him while undercover, that's why he took those kinds of missions when he got the chance. However, the last one you didn't join him, and it just so happened to take five years. Five years it took until he could see you again.

"Kaku, Spandam wants us to report back to his office," Kalifa informed him, standing by the doorway. "Franky is making commotion again."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming." Though he'd rather not, all he wanted was to talk to [Y/n].

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Wake up square giraffe!" Jabra slapped Kaku, finally waking him up.

"Urghh, do you have to be obnoxious all the time-" Kaku tried to insult but stopped as he began to cough out blood. As if all at once, his insides screamed in agony. That swordsman did a number on him.

"Say it for later, we're getting out of here before the marines find us. Blueno's just getting the last of us," Jabra informed Kaku.

Kaku tried to sit up but even the smallest attempt made his body cry. Pain blocked the nerves from responding properly so he decided to stay lying down. He did his best to see who was with them. There's Kumadori, Fukuro, Kalifa...

"Where's [Y/n]?" Kaku asked Jabra, a little worry slipping out.

"Blueno's still looking for her I guess," Jabra shrugged as he kept an eye out. Kaku saw him narrow his eyes and then smirk. "Speak of the devil," he chuckled. The footsteps drew closer and Jabra frowned. "Ooh, what the fuck happened to your arm?"

Kaku's worry became visible. He tried his hardest to lift himself up so he could see you. Tuning out all the screaming his body did to stay still, Kaku hoisted himself on a crumbled wall. Instantly his eyes focused on you, or rather what was missing from you.

"It's nothing, the loud mask guy just got his exploding bullet in my wound and blew it off," you tried brushing it off but anyone could see you were struggling to suppress the pain as you walked. "It's not important, where-"

"[Y/n]..." Kaku sucked in a breath, gathering all the strength he had. "Let me see your arm."

Both you and Jabra looked at Kaku like he grew a second head.

"Are you fucking serious?" Jabra question. "You can barely get up, who the fuck are-" he stopped when he saw the dark aura behind you as you approached Kaku.

With the hand you had left, you slapped Kaku across the face. He looked back with hurt eyes but they dissipated to fear when you grabbed his turtleneck's collar. Your fierce eyes bore into him.

"Stop caring whether I get hurt or injured!" You yelled in his face. You sounded angry, you were angry- no... you were- "I'm not some delicate flower who can't take care of herself! I can kick ass just fine! You need to start looking out for yourself! You- You almost got yourself a ticket to death's door!"

Kaku's eyes were wide with surprise. Your entire face had painted itself with irritation but your eyes... Your eyes were watering, spilling concern and worry that you've never shown before.

"Stop worrying about me when you need to worry about yourself." With that said, you let go of his collar and walked over to Kumadori and Fukuro.

Kaku could only stare as a new kind of pain took over his attention. Heartache, his heart ached to see you in such a state, not just physically but emotionally. However, it only made it worse knowing you were experiencing the same feeling.

[projectblueballs]

[cowsaresushi-coral]

can we talk about how english speakers pronounce chinese places like beijing and szechuan?

why. why are you pronouncing it so insane. i was watching the hbomberguy video and the tommy guy kept saying "bei SH ing" instead of "bei Jing." Like, it's pronounced EXACTLY like what it looks like. Sure not a bunch of chinese words are so direct but this one is. WHYYYyyyy

SZECHUAN SOUNDS CRAZY IN ENGLISH WHAT IS THAT LIKE I DONT EXPECT ENGLISH SPEAKERS TO GET IT RIGHT BC ITS VERY CHINESE SOUNDING BUT WTF IS SESH SHUAN LITERALLY COULD NOT RECOGNIZE IT AND I WORKED IN A SZECHUAN RESTAURANT

something helpful. ZH is typically pronounced as a hard J sound like giraffe. that one i admit is a lottle odd! but it really is a sort of J sound

[skaruresonic]

Where would you rank English among the other languages you've learned?

For reference:

= I studied Spanish for five years in high school (forgot most of it), = am currently on my second year of studying Skaruręʔkyéha·ʔ, = tried learning a bit of Japanese hiragana but dropped it, = and am researching bits and pieces of Cymraeg (Welsh) and Old Saxon in my spare time.

Language is fascinating, a window into the way people think. I think all languages have the capacity to be beautiful, but also that beauty is not a prerequisite for a language to be allowed to exist, because beauty is subjective. That being said, it's difficult to rank languages as being "better" or "worse" because they're simply different from each other. It's like evolution: all languages have become the way they are to suit their own specific needs. While it's true that I sometimes call English "weird" or "dumb," it's out of frustration with the sheer gulf between the krirù·ręʔ and Skarù·ręʔ ways of thinking. They couldn't be more different if there were galaxies between them. For example, a perfectly sensible question in Skaruręʔkyéha·ʔ is "Teʔ waʔnę́·te saʔnę̀·nę́hwih íhsʔę naʔ čaʔnę̀·nę́hwih haʔ tì·waʔθ naʔ haʔ nyaʔnę̀·nę́hwih?" "[Which] [your relatives] [more than] [you two are related] [the amount] [than] [the] [you and I are related]?" In English, this is surprisingly difficult to translate because we don't exactly have a clean, congruent way of phrasing the sentiment. The closest attempt we made was: "Which of your relatives is it the case that you're more related to them than you are related to me?", which just sounds awkward no matter how you dice it.

Learning Haudenosaunee languages requires a restructuring of your thinking, a loosening of English's strict adherence to word order and grammar. There are multiple valid and correct ways of saying the same thing. What you'd call grammar is, for us, more like a guideline or a template from which we make educated guesses. Though there are "less appropriate" and "more appropriate" ways to structure sentences, the greater emphasis is placed on pronunciation than grammar. And there is so much that overlaps semantically, you'll wonder what the difference is. Learning aspects and how we conceive of time is one of the most difficult parts of the language because English just doesn't conceptualize time Like That. We have a lot of subtle nuances when it comes to time specifically, such that, when you try to find the appropriate English to match it, it feels a bit like using a fireaxe to hammer in a nail. It'll get the job done, but it feels weird and much too blunt. But then there are times where the Skarù·ręʔ feels equally blunt. I'll be honest, some of it isn't politically correct. Some terms come from colonial times, like our calling Asia the "old world." We could probably stand to work on that; making new words is the most fun part, imo.

I don't want to say our language is more "vibey," but because English is a low-context language where words more or less mean what they say on the tin, Skarù·ręʔkyéha·ʔ seems vaguer by comparison, if only because words are broader in their meanings. You either need to provide more information via context or think more abstractly. Skarù·ręʔ people have a rather quirky view of the world. We looked at the giraffe and decided its most distinguishing feature was not its spots, its long neck, or its black tongue, but its lack of a voice: yuwętú·kęʔ. "Cranberry," when translated literally, means "it says 'duks'! (onomatopoeia)," referring to the sound they make when boiled: túks wá·ʔnęh. Listening is important when studying Haudenosaunee languages because critical differences boil down to a literal hair's breadth: a lack of a pause, the way you pronounce one E, whether you aspirate those Hs, all of that can alter the meaning of a word. To an English ear, these words all sound the same: uhčíhręʔ = bear učíʔreh = light učirę́hręʔ = brown učì·reh = bee stinger I guess the main difference is nowadays English sounds stricter, more rigid, to me. Maybe a little... slow? Lumbering? Idk how to describe it. All this being said, it depends. Sometimes when I'm tired, I'll switch to English because it's easier and I don't have to hold eight million conjugations in my head - but sometimes the opposite is also true! I've grown so used to saying certain basic phrases in Skarù·ręʔ that I'll forget to phrase them in English.

From what little I've studied of Japanese and Welsh, they seem to bear some similarities in structure to Skarù·ręʔ as agglutinative languages. Smaller pieces strung together to create more complex sentences. (And this is just me but I like how Welsh sounds lol. why are you all making keyboard smash jokes. stop that.) They also do some similarly loosey-goosey word order stuff, although IIRC, Japanese relies a lot on passive voice whereas the concept doesn't exist in Skarù·ręʔ; everything has a cause and effect, something happening to cause something else. You can't just say the word "run" in isolation; you need to provide more context. Who is running? When? Where? How long? "Put it in a story," as they say. English uses a mix of active and passive language. Not sure how much direct language Welsh uses quite yet. I think Old Saxon is cool too, lol. It's fascinating to trace the etymology of English words through it. There's no such thing as a double-negative in Anglo-Saxon; you can stack as many negations as you want. How cool is that? Why did we get rid of it?

[smoll-and-tired]

A year ago, without anyone knowing how or why or even when exactly, a big lizard got into our home. Barring the First Sighting, no one has been able to either 1) locate it 2) get it out .The moment it senses your approach, its tiny, sticky legs kick into overdrive and it's scuttering across the wall and into the void. My mom has been calling it "Gecko" but with the g pronounced like in "giraffe" so I guess we have a lizard now

[doseofarabic]

Reminder!

Did you revise this week's batch of letters?

Make sure you do so before the next lesson on Friday (◕ᴗ◕✿)

Here's a quick summary

The letter ج

It's pronounced like the "g" in giraffe or "ja" in jack.

This is what it looks like with harakat.

The letter س

That's an easy letter to pronounce, the letter "s".

It has a simple crown along with the "boat" part of the letter ن. It goes both over and under the line

The letter ف

This is the letter that sounds like "f", it looks like the letter ب but with a small head wearing a "fancy" hat on top.

[broken-clover]

🍓🔪🍬🦴🥤 :D

Wheeeee

🍓 ⇢ how did you get into writing fanfiction? 

Tbh you think I'd remember but I really don't. I have vague memories of making Pokemon OC's but wasn't really introduced to the concept of fanfiction until my older sister got me into Hetalia and I found out about it while looking up fanart. I think I've discusses it before, though, that I didn't feel confident writing full-on fanfic for the longest time because I was too terrified about writing characters OOC. Idk what exactly made me get over it, maybe GG just instilled enough brainrot I couldn't help it

🔪 ⇢ what's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

See I dunno about 'weird' but I've done a lot of random shit I never thought would be relevant until I had to go look for it. Hard to objectively say what was the oddest so I'm just gonna make a list of some off the top of my head

-(I've repurposed a surprising amount of my learnings from mortuary for anatomical and medical reference)

-Giraffe/horse autopsy

-Introductory guides to Jamaican Patois

-"Can bats get polio"

-"Common clothing of Nepal"/"Common clothing of Tibet" (notable in that it ended up being relevant for half a paragraph)

-"Cheeses of Bhutan"

-"What is the highest proof alcohol you are legally allowed to buy"

-Profanities of numerous languages, including sign

-"How old are children before they can pronounce 'x'"

-Brazilian cryptids

-"least flammable bed fabrics"

-Treatment and recovery time of a PCL tear

-Step by step guides for kimono-wearing

-Bone throwing as a form of divination

-Adult clubfoot treatments

-"what type of video is security camera footage"

-"autoimmune diseases caused by stress"

-psychogenic stuttering

-how to replace/modify a clutch disk for a stick shift

-French homicide law

-Pyretic drugs

-LOTS of fish biology

🍬 ⇢ post an unpopular opinion about a popular fandom character

Probably in part due to oversaturation, but Bridget is just...kinda boring. I find her concept and story endearing and sympathetic, of course, but she doesn't have the same kind of complicated themes and bizarre lore that engages me like a lot of the series' other characters to the point where I can delve into it and get on that level of brainrot.

🦴 ⇢ is there a piece of media that inspires your writing? 

Can't simply say 'a.' I feel like I take a lot of bits from a lot of different stuff! I find I like to try and find 'weird' media frequently, though, I like seeing the bizarre concepts people can cook up and wonder if I'm not thinking outside the box hard enough. Likewise for horror, to a lesser extent

🥤 ⇢ recommend an author or fanfic you love

hweeeehhhh why do you always give me the tough ones. There's some really obvious picks, you and Jim and Roy and Crow, but I've probably done you all like three times already! Easy picks

Lemme see, if I wanna try and do something a little different than the obvious, I do have a couple recs! For anyone that's into Psychonauts, I totally recommend BabyCharmander (ESPECIALLY 'Cavity,' do not read anything else before you go into it, reading it for the first time hits you like a truck to the face) and The_Angst_Alchemist (Particularly if you're a Thorney Towers fan, they write the inmates with such panache and easily some of the best interpretations of Fred) It's a little more niche, but if you're an ARMS fan I recommend anything by MeltyMetroid, for a series that has such little lore they've written several incredibly fleshed out and well-constructed longfics (I'd recommend 'DisARMed' and 'Broken Mirror' for the plot-heavy jaunts and 'The Brass that Saved Christmas' if you want a good laugh)

Admittedly in general I don't pay as much attention to specific writers as I should, or the series I look for stuff for is so niche it doesn't really have dedicated writers