#saltwater writes

[n1ightw1ng]

writing is going not so good but i have to spread the word about my omega dick brainrot. the instincts he would have about the robins. about tim showing up in his apartment after jason died and just being this generally unattended kid. about the pack having only its alpha (bruce, ig) and nothing to balance it with because he needs to be in bludhaven.

[just-my-latest-hyperfixation]

Saltwater Symphony - chapter 1

Read it on AO3

“Is he dead?” blurts another kid, a lanky guy with a shock of dark hair and a sullen face. “You can just tell us if he's dead, you don't need to sugarcoat-”

“What the-” Robin sputters. “Jesus, Mike, he's not dead. Where'd you even get that idea?”

“Whoa whoa, wait,” Eddie says. One hand flies up to rake through his hair. “Stop talking all over each other, you're giving me a headache. Who's dead?”

“Nobody,” Robin groans.

“Stevie,” blurts Dustin.

Eddie blinks. “Stevie who? Wonder? Nicks?”

Red looks at him as if he just said the dumbest thing in the long history of dumbfucks. “Wow. You aren't from around here, huh?”

“Stevie the seal,” says the second girl, who has been silently watching the exchange with dark, oddly intense eyes. “One of the zoo's longest standing celebrities and beloved visitor favorite among parents and children alike. Shows are daily at one and five, except on Sundays.”

“Erm,” Eddie says. “Okay. Thank you?”

“No problem,” smiles the girl. “It's all on the zoo’s website. It’s really good, you should read it some time, now that you work here.”

[prismaticpichu]

I'm craving a concept only you can deliver: Sephiroth comforting Zack during a personal crisis? What would that be like?

YESSS MY BEANS!!!! <333 I adore these kinds of scenarios with them 💙💚 You’ve come to the right place, my un-rotten friend! I shall do my best! <33

~

It happened on Angeal’s birthday.

Crumpled on the floor; fists clenched into veiny, trembling balls of cement; thin pillars of candlelight quivering and flickering against the apartment’s gloom, deserted atop the vanilla terrain of an abandoned birthday cake as, like a feather, left to the mercy of even the slightest gust of wind, too weightless to resist the current, their fragile flames bent to the mercy of wherever the wintry draft whispering through the apartment pulled them.

This was the state Sephiroth found Zack in.

At first, he almost left. Sincerely (and he had trouble lying), that was what he wanted to do. Leave the document, leave a pen, leave a note explaining that it required his signature—and then leave without saying a word. Everything in his mind was screaming at him to do just that. Go, leave, you don’t know what to do… And when he stayed, when he didn’t budge, the reins tugged harder: GO… now! Leave! You don’t know what to say…!

And it was true: he didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what in that moment, standing in an ajar door, cracked open only a fissure, cracked open only after three unanswered knocks, watching his lieutenant sob unrhytmically into his knees, what he could possibly do. Zack didn’t even seem to notice his presence—oblivious to the gauzy belt of light stretching across the apartment, unaware of the two conflicted emeralds peering inconspicuously into his darkened quarters. And the sheer frequency of his rattling breath masked any groan or creak that his weight against the door would produce.

Yet…

For every tug and lash of the reins in his mind, demanding him to go there was an anchor thrown over the hulls of his heart and keeping him rooted in place. Don’t go, don’t leave… And as he tried to uncomfortably wriggle out of its grasp, it would beat louder in his chest: Don’t leave him… Please, don’t go. Don’t abandon him. Don’t you understand why he is hurting…?

The man’s eyes had seemed to flicker.

Oh… he understood. He understood good and well. He, too, had also felt a toxically-stifling cloud billow in the wake of his thoughts throughout the day. From the moment he woke up, he knew what day it was. Angeal would be turning 26 today. Had he still been with him, he would have added another year to his life, another block of wisdom to stack atop the castle of what seemed to be the spirit of an elderly father encased inside the bones of a young adult. He would have been here to celebrate that growth. He would have been here to honor himself.

Admittedly, it hadn’t occurred to him how Zack may be feeling. Perhaps that was because he had swallowed every last bit of pain today like a gallon of vinegar—or maybe it was because he had blindly assumed that Zack would be finding a way to resist the same acid. Clearly, he had tried to do something to cope with it. Only it was just as clear that he ended up buckling under the leaden pressure that had been building throughout the day—and now he had cracked, imploded, left broken and bent on the cold hard floor of his home away fro—

“Monster…”

And it was that word, choked viscously from the depths of Zack’s throat, cold and hard as the floor he lay crumbled upon, that made Sephiroth stay.

He pushed open the door, golden light dilating across the room.

“…Zack?”

The First’s head shot up from his knees—blue eyes sleek and wet with a boil of burning tears, swollen cheeks vaguely catching the light like tiny stones glistening against shallow water, the Mako-fueled gems narrowing slightly yet unclear if it was out of annoyance or surprise or an attempt to see better amid the darkness.

Sephiroth took a step closer.

“What are you doing here?” Zack bit out then.

Sharp, serrated, rancorous.

Sephiroth didn’t move any closer.

“…You’re upset,” he observed. Stated, more like—considering the sheer lack of emotion he managed to gouge of the two simple words, as if a straight and businesslike approach was the only compromise his mind could compromise for intervening.

Immediately, Zack wiped at his eyes.

“…Yeah?” His response was just as emotionless. “What about it?”

Cold, bitter, and edging on venomous. The tone admittedly stung Sephiroth—pierced something in his heart that he didn’t know was there, like an inconspicuous crack in the mortar where a tender swathe of his heart was beating. He knew the boy was upset; he wasn’t that blind, nor was he that ignorant. But it was hurtful nonetheless. Their last interactions didn’t seem to have this poison—unless, of course, it had been festering underneath, had been hiding under his tongue as he warmly saluted goodbye on that warm Junon evening by the dock.

I’ll hold you to that!

All again, Sephiroth’s eyes seemed to flicker.

“…I know you miss him, Zack,” he said, attempting to defrost as much cold professionalism from his voice as he could. “I know it’s—“

Whatever he said, it was the wrong thing.

Zack’s eyes began boiling with tears once more. Only this time, the mist seemed to be daggerous—acidic, sharp, spearlike—and there was no ambiguity anymore as to what the narrowing of his bloodshot eyes signified.

And he erupted.

“GET OUT!” Zack’s voice exploded around the den like a deadly, roaring echo. “GET OUT!”

Sephiroth took several steps back.

“Zack…—“

“I SAID GET OUT!” He threw his arm toward the door in jagged emphasis.

“Zackary.”

“SHUT UP AND GET THE HELL OUT!”

He had never seen Zack in such a state. By all means, he knew the young First wasn’t as happy and cheerful as he masqueraded for the rest of the world to see. That much he knew, that much he had learned, as someone who wore an oppositely-temperatured mask himself. But that didn’t make the degree of his SOLDIER’s temper right now any less unsettling. It didn’t make it any less painful.

It didn’t make it any less concerning.

And maybe that was why, against the boy’s blazing demand for him to leave, Sephiroth chose to stay.

“…You’re upset, Zack…” he stated again, only his voice had completely thawed. Softening his eyes, steeling his resolve, the man took another step forward. “You’re upset. You’re grieving. I know how you—“

“YOU DON’T KNOW SHIT!” Zack’s throat was beginning to close as he bellowed. And then, as if having suppressed the poison for so long: “You weren’t THERE, were you?! No! I don’t THINK SO! I was THERE, Sephiroth! I had to DO IT! Do you know that? Do you know that’s why he’s DEAD! It’s because of ME! ME, DAMNIT! I killed him! I… I killed him. Oh Gaia… Oh Gaia… I did it… oh man… I did it… I killed him, Sephiroth… I killed him…”

And then he was crumpling back to the floor, his voice slowly trickling away like tendrils of smoke from an inferno.

“I’m… I’ma monster…”

Sephiroth watched the broken SOLDIER, his mouth hanging ajar. Hardly even breathing. His chest was twisted at such an angle that he was certain he would snap at any moment, like a feeble twig, his lungs on the verge of imploding in on themselves and shutting down the entirety of his shock-drugged body. Swells of different emotions were raging inside him at such a speed him that, like roaring rapids during a storm, flowed too fast and viciously for him to grasp and even begin to digest. If all simply crashed against him, tumultuous and unrelenting. Almost suffocating. Paralyzing.

He was numb.

The only thing to stay afloat, echoing clearly in his ears, as if it was the only thing his mind could seem to hear, as if it was louder than anything else despite being the softest thing mumbled, was the same unyielding word that had drawn him into the apartment to begin with. Raw and cold, but no longer venomous—as if the poison had been wrung out of it, leaving only a deadly and poised blade behind, and was now balancing under Zack’s chin, the spear digging into his pulse and aimed only to harm himself.

Even in his numb and drugged state, it drove him to speak again.

“No…” Sephiroth vaguely shook his head, his voice edging on a whisper. “That’s not true.”

Slowly, Zack lifted his chin once more, the shadows of torrents now glistening on his reddened cheeks. His incision shone bright in their wake, shimmering in a rich and ghostly red—still to heal, still raw, and probably burning like acid into the deepest layers of his skin.

It made Sephiroth’s chest snap.

Gingerly, as if there was glass strewn about the floor, Sephiroth took another delicate step forward. He then took another step after that, and then another step after that, gradually closing the distance between them until only a tiny creek of wooden floor separated them. His shadow looming over the distraught teen, he carefully bent down until he their gazes were level: green eyes staring into blue, glistening sapphires mirroring the small shimmers of light radiating from the tame, softened emeralds.

And Sephiroth spoke again.

“You are not a monster…” The man’s voice had turned to porcelain, gazing deeply into those anguished azure eyes. “Don’t ever say that. Zack.”

A snuffle, a choke, and a thin trickle of tears bled through Zack’s eyes as he strained them shut.

“…You weren’t even there,” he whispered. “You don’t know what happened.”

There was a moment, a lull, where Sephiroth questioned it he should say what he wanted to say next. His lips briefly hovered, floating in the painful purgatory of uncertainty and obligation. Of righteousness and potential regret. Of fear and endangered friendship.

But just like the candles, bent only by a single wintry draft, a single pained beat of his heart opened them wide enough to speak.

“Then tell me.”

Silence, then Zack let out another choke.

“…I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll hate me.”

“No… no I won’t.”

“Yes you will! You would want me dead.”

“Don’t ever say that.”

“You will though… You’re gonna hate me…” He sucked in his breath, choked again, lowering his chin back into his knees. “I don’t want you to hate me…”

Never had Sephiroth’s chest ached so fiercely.

“Zack…. Zackary. Look at me. Please.”

It took a beat, a strained one, but Zack eventually did.

And Sephiroth held him steady in his gaze.

“You are all I have left, Zack. You are my… last friend. My only friend. So, please… believe me. There is nothing that will ever make me hate you. Nothing at all.”

He reached out then, hesitant, but not enough to stop him from gripping his teary friend’s shoulder.

He squeezed.

“It’s alright…” Sephiroth said gently, delicately. “Tell me what happened.”

And so Zack did. Every detail, every cry and shout and plea for his mentor to stop the madness—he retold it all. He told of finding Angeal in the bathhouse; he told of the brief swell of hope he felt; he told of how the hope was violently extinguished; he told of the way their cherished friend mutated, how he was forced to fight him, how he was forced to take the blade and stab it through the beast’s heart after it nearly tore his face agape; he told of crumbling on the ground after the deed was done, looking over his mentor’s blooded face, reverted back to a human, and just how monstrous he himself had felt.

By the time Zack was done, the dam had completely splintered, and he was leaning so far that he was on the verge of the falling over.

So, when he did, Sephiroth caught him.

He wrapped his arms around the boy as Zack collapsed into him, pulling Zack close against his chest and letting him cry. Letting him cry, letting him grieve, he held him steady, like an anchor rooting him to the ground, trying his best not to move as Zack rattled and quaked and lifted his own arms to wrap around him in turn, resting him chin against the bed of harmless spikes, holding him close, and then holding him even closer.

“Gaia… I killed him…”

“Shhh… He didn’t give you a choice.”

“He would be here, Seph… he would—“

“He left long ago, Zack. You know that.”

“I know… I…”

“It’s alright…. Shhh. It’s alright.”

“I—I miss him, Seph…”

“I know you do. I do too.”

And they stayed like that, side by side, in each other’s arms, until the candles on the cake went out.

[red-riding-wood]

Saltwater Tears

@runnning-outof-time K... Tumblr ate your ask when I saved it to my drafts so I apologise for the shitty screencap (I always take these beforehand in case it does this lol). And thank you for the request. <3 As I promised, I brought all the angst.

Also, while writing this, the character/reader reminded me of the song Dragonslayer by Lana Del Rey (Isa, you have ruined me) so I decided to use that as some added inspiration.

Pairing: Tommy Shelby x F!Reader

Fandom: Peaky Blinders

WARNINGS: Angst, sexual references, mentions of cheating, language

WC: 1816

Thomas’ words still echoed through your throbbing skull, no amount of his haughtiness lost on your memory as you trudged through the rain slicked streets. The coldness of his gaze was blazoned on the forefront of your mind, the flippancy with which he had dismissed you after the tense meeting with your father as if you were merely a trophy to flaunt before shelved to suffocate in a slow build of dust.

And with each step, your lungs seemed to constrict tighter. With each step, you remembered bits and pieces of the evidence you’d found of his infidelity – the unfamiliar hair brush on his bedside table, the smell of another woman’s perfume on his sheets. You hadn’t wanted to believe it, hadn’t found your suspicion to be unbearable until now.

He called your name past the roar of the storm, but it only drove the spike in your heart deeper each time, your tears mingling with the cold of the rain and your body shuddering from head to toe.

And yet, every time your name was uttered, you couldn’t help but falter, your bleeding heart beating for him and some cruelly human part of your mind urging you to turn back and let yourself fall into arms that would be so warm in the cold, that would soothe the bitterness in your burning veins.

You jumped back, a sheet of filth drenching the skirt of your dress. A shiver seemed to travel to the very marrow of your bone, and as you stopped, staring in shock at the car that sped by and the road you had nearly stepped across, your heart felt as if it were about to split your ribcage in half.

“Y/N.” A gravelly yet distant voice called to you so soft now, a warm breath on your neck sending another shiver to your aching bones. You turned, slowly, and swallowed your grief as you met Thomas’ piercing eyes. Once his touch grazed the bare of your arm, it was over. You weren’t going anywhere.

“Let’s talk about this,” he said, catching his own breath as his fingers travelled down the length of your arm and laced with your own that shivered, numb, from the cold.

That was the first time you had ever heard Thomas Shelby suggest you talk about anything, and it pulled at an aching heart.

“Okay. Let’s talk,” you breathed, voice nearly washed away by the roar of the storm. You blinked fiercely, lashes fluttering in the rain that struck them. “You never told me your history with my father.”

“It’s in the past,” Thomas said, and you nearly winced at his words. As his other hand reached to brush the hair slicked to your cheek, you flinched away. And like that, your bleeding heart came undone, and you said, “Really, that little pissing match was ‘in the past’? The entire purpose of that meeting was just to rub his nose in the fact that you fucked me.”

Thomas’ hand seemed to catch in the air, not used to this side of you. The side of you that was bitter, that was fed up.

And he didn’t say anything. But his fingers loosened from yours.

You choked back a sob, and your words came weaker now, and you stammered over them because you couldn’t believe what you were saying, didn’t want to imagine him answering. “Did you… did you ever… Do you really want me? Or is this your way of getting back at my father?”

All your life, you’d been taken advantage of by men who wished to grow closer to your family for their ties and their power. And while your father had many enemies – the Blinders included – you never could have imagined that someone would pretend to love you just to hurt him, let alone the one person who seemed to understand you, who’d offered you some ounce of reprieve in this unforgiving city.

You’d been used many times, but this, this was different. It would’ve hurt less had you stepped onto that road.

Thomas was still silent, chest heaving as he panted out his own breaths. Blue eyes twisted with grief, the bright of them taking your reluctant mind through memories of the pastel sky above the two of you as you rode through the countryside, of the dress he had bought you and had said did not compare to your beauty.

Your fingers bunched the drenched fabric of the very same dress, peeling wretched garment from your flesh as if it caged you to such memories. You tried not to think of all the times you’d worn it for him, that it had been discarded across the same bed that had been inhabited by other women.

“I know about her,” you added bitterly. “Or them. I know about them.” Your eyes bled tears, and your heart pumped venom. “I’ve lied to myself for too long,” you said, as you began to turn away. “Goodbye, Thomas.”

“They were just business.”

You halted, anger flaring from the raw ache of your heart, and you spun on your heel. “So you’re using them, too?” you snapped. “Everything is business with you, Thomas. Everything. Even me.”

“You’re not just business.” He took a step forward. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

It seemed as if your heart hadn’t broken enough. At his words, it shattered in your chest.

“Y/N, I want you,” he said. “And I don’t say it enough, but I love you. It was never about your father.”

“What was it about, then?” Your voice shook and you fought against every basic instinct to draw him in close, to press your chin to his chest and hear his own heart beating for yours.

He shook his head, lips parted but not speaking, as if at a loss for words. You were about to turn away again, when he took another step forward, his hot breath fanning against your cheeks. “That first time you asked me to take you to the ocean. And fuck me, I nearly didn’t say yes.” The faintest of chuckles broke his speech, the rare chuff of his laughter clawing at your aching chest. “But when you caught the wind in your hair it was like you came alive.”

Past the damp of the rain you could smell the sea, could nearly taste the saltwater on your lips when he’d kissed you that day. The last of your worries had melted away in the heat of that kiss, had been swept away by the breeze and carried far offshore. Or so you had thought.

“And you made me feel alive,” he said, his hands cupping your cheeks now. You were paralysed, at his mercy, leaning into his touch and inhaling the scent of horses and gunpowder past the rain. “For the first time since the war.” 

Breaths exchanged, and you tilted your head so that his lips brushed your forehead instead, and you said, “Why don’t you say things like this to me more?”

“I don’t know. But I can. Just come back to me.” His fingers wrapped around the back of your neck as if to trap you. You’d never heard him so desperate. It nearly made you do exactly what he asked.

As if that wasn’t what you yearned for. As if you wouldn’t do anything to forget all of this and go back to that day by the sea, or under the pastel blue sky on the back of a racehorse.

“I want to.” You could hear his heart beating now, thundering like the hooves of one of his horses as you uttered your truths into the dampened fabric of his shirt. “And I want to believe you. But I don’t know if I should.”

“Come back inside,” he breathed against your hair.

“I don’t know if my heart can take this, Thomas.” You tore yourself away, practically shoving him off while avoiding his gaze. “I don’t know if I can go through this again if you’re lying…”

“I’m not lying. Look at me. Look at me.” Firm fingers swept beneath your chin and forced your gaze to his.

“If I make you feel so alive, why do you keep killing me, slowly? Why do I keep watching you drift from me?” As if you were taken by that ocean. Your saltwater lips trembled around your words.

They were questions you’d been burning to ask for a long time now. Questions you’d buried beneath your own lies that you told yourself, like how you’d buried your anguish beneath the sands of the beach only to feel it slam once more against your chest, harder, more forceful than anything you’d known.

You couldn’t take it anymore, not as each second of silence that dragged by killed a piece of you. “You can’t answer. And if I come back to you, it’s going to keep happening.” You spoke past the rising sand in your throat until it came out as a whimper, and you shook your head helplessly, and you realised that it was your tears that you could taste on your tongue, not the ocean. “I’m so torn, Thomas.”

“I’ll flip a coin,” he said, digging into his pocket. “Heads, you trust me. Tails, you walk away.”

Those words might as well have been the last nail in your coffin. They’d sealed your fate, at one time. When he’d asked you to work for him. When you knew the moment the silver caught the wink of light that he would be your undoing no matter what it landed on.

“Not everything can be solved with a coin,” you protested, the bitter taste of betrayal on your tongue.

“Remember, it will tell you what you want. Remember when – “

“I remember, Thomas.” It was all coming crashing down on you just like the rain that pelted your shivering body, and you closed your eyes, your tears achingly warm as they bled across your cheeks.

“Watch.”

“No – “

The coin was a watery vision as it came down in the air, your lashes peeling open and lips parting in terror. Whatever it landed on, it was over. Either he’d kill you slowly or you’d die here, tonight; you’d never be the same. Your fate had always been sealed.

He snapped the coin shut in his hand. You met his eyes, your own fear reflected in their bright blues. And you realised that neither of you wanted to look. And so, tentatively, you asked,

“What is it?”

Slowly, he opened his hand. Slowly, you both looked at the coin. And slowly, the shards of your heart weighed so heavy in your chest that you felt as if you’d collapse to your knees.

But the answer wasn’t what crushed you. It was the realisation that, despite what the coin said, despite knowing what was best for you, you just…

… you couldn’t.  

A.N. I'm leaving the ending ambiguous and it's up to you if the coin landed on heads or tails!

MASTERLIST • REQUEST

Please let me know if you would like to be added/removed to any of my taglists and notified of new works!

TAGLIST: @eclecticwildflowers @emotionalcadaver @evita-shelby @minaethrym @shelbydelrey @zablife @runnning-outof-time @poisonedtruth

[sforzesco]

poetry might not convince me to pay attention or care about the medici family beyond necessity, but you CAN convince me to turn the spotlights directly onto lorenzo de' medici with phrasing like this. intimately linked. even wedded, you say. and with galeazzo maria sforza's named mentioned. fascinating choice of words.

Magnifico: the Brilliant Life and Times of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Miles J. Unger

[aurevives]

AURE VIVES, to lull the deep awake

[antirepurp]

admittedly i wish i could do writing as a way to tell original stories too because i feel like i've gotten pretty decent at pacing and conveying moods, and i have a lot of fun figuring out how to best express things to give them the impact im looking for. alas i think reading is kinda hard for everyone since it's not very stimulating the way comics and other visual media are, and beyond that i don't know if there are any platforms that would host original fiction where people also go for original fiction, ao3 doesn't seem like the ideal place for that anyway. also publishing would probably never happen since i do pretty much all my creative writing in english which means i'd probably have to self-publish and boy howdy that's not happening lmao

[wooftphr]

hello tumblr fishposters

send me a fish in my ask box and i will write a poem about them

rb to share with more fish fans if u want <3

[rosereleasestheart]

Happy Birthday @linneakou! 💙💜

I decided to do something a little different this year, so I wrote a one-shot fic for her series "Saltwater Melodies," aka her YOI/H2O: Just Add Water crossover! I love it so much, and highly recommend it if you love mermaids and fantasy and supernatural stuff~

Click here to check out the fic, or here to read the original it was inspired by!

[squishosaur]

throwing her directly into the ocean btw

[just-my-latest-hyperfixation]

Coming soon: Saltwater Symphony

Eddie thought the night guard job at the local zoo was easy money. He didn't expect to encounter homicidal parrots, nosy middle schoolers, greedy hotel tycoons, or being attacked by a beautiful naked dude in search of his magic cloak - and it's only his first week!

—

Or: The one where Steve is a selkie who lives at the zoo and Eddie needs to help him find his hide.

Coming soon on AO3

[autism-swagger]

Decided to do the math for fun and realized that for this one moment in my WIP to happen one of the characters would have to have a bite PSI of at least 20,000.

[falseficus]

what would your project be called if it was titled like a shitty YA fantasy romance (format: [a/the] [noun] of [noun] and [noun])

mine is "a god of blood and saltwater"

[howtotrainyournana]

what if i posted new scarian fic content while i'm on vacation. what if i just did that.

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Hi, I love your original character Ahti II very much he has such a cool design. Does he live in fresh or salt water?

Thank you very much!! Ahti II is very special to me :D

Funny story, he is a brackish water dweller! His home is the Baltic Sea, which on average has a salinity of about 7‰ or 0,7%. By contrast, oceans on average have 35‰ or 3,5%! The salt content of the water is even lower the further you go from the ocean, and Ahtola, Ahti II's home city (and the capital of his country) is located pretty deep in the Baltic, it's somewhere between Sweden and Finland and south of Åland. There isn't very much salt ^^'

As he is away from home a lot as a teen (learning to be like the average person and whatnot) he enjoys the joys of swimming in pure freshwater too, in Finnish Lakeland in the summer!

[the0phrastus]

Just doing a little research.