#so if anything looks off thats why | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cheswirls · 3 months

Text

short asl thing based on @where-does-the-heart-lie's modern au :) i started this over a year ago but the beginning is all dialogue and felt more like a script to me i suppose??? which deflated my desire to work on it. anyway i checked it over recently and it's completely fine lmfao, self-confidence restored here we go !

"Yo. Aren't you usually in the middle of your shift by now?"

"I've been banned from the hospital."

"Like, for life?"

"No. For the next, uh.. Twenty-two hours."

"That's oddly specific."

"It was twenty-four, but I fell asleep after leaving the building."

"That wouldn't have to do with why they kicked you out, at all?"

"Hmmm. I'm too sleep-deprived, apparently."

"Ah. And, um, you called me because...?"

"I pressed a random number in my call log after waking up. Lucky you, I guess."

"Yeah. Right. Lucky me. And your car keys are...?"

"Confiscated."

"Ah, right, of course."

A beat of silence. Two. Three, then "Look, if you're busy, then–"

"No, no. You called me, so I'll be there. Give me twenty minutes."

"Alright. Thank–"

"Thank someone else. Also, if you fall asleep in my car, I'm taking it as express permission to drive you around wherever I want."

"Ugh, go die. I don't even know why I bothered."

"LUCKY YOU, I guess," sounds off way too loudly in his ear. "No take backs. See you in ten."

"I thought you said–" Sabo breaks off as the call ends, leaving him staring blankly at his phone's too-dim screen. He squints, turns the brightness all the way up, and still squints as the sunlight proves too strong for the display.

Ace shows up in more than ten but decidedly less than twenty minutes. Sabo doesn't waste much brain power on it, only climbing into the passenger seat and yawning into his palm while his other hand fixes the seatbelt into the buckle. Not a second too soon, too, as Ace roars the engine to life and peels away from the curb at record speed.

Ace fiddles with the radio. He turns the music up, then dial it back down to inaudible. They hit the expressway and he leans over the steering wheel, frowning with his eyes fixed on the road far ahead. Sabo yawns again and this appears to be the limit to his patience.

"Hey, so, I had a thought after you hung up on me."

Sabo grimaces. "You mean you–"

"Today's Wednesday."

He doesn't elaborate. Sabo is too tired to process. "Yes," he follows, after a second. He glances at the sky out the front window. "What time is it?"

"Oh, uh." Ace fumbles with hand placement so he can lift his watch to his face. "Nine forty."

Sabo takes a couple beats to try and process this, moves his eyes away from the skyline, and sighs as he pulls his phone out. 2:47 is what the display reads, which sounds much more believable.

"How did the minute hand get off?" he mutters to himself, chancing a look at Ace's busted wristwatch. Ace raises a brow, taking his gaze off the road to scrutinize Sabo. "No, it doesn't matter," he mutters to himself once more, sliding his phone away back on his person and out of his hands.

"My point is," Ace continues, like he hasn't just been interrupted by a whole thing. "Your timeout will be done midday Thursday. Did they switch your days off?"

"No." Sabo sighs. "They technically gave me the next thirty-six hours. Technically closer to forty. Something like that. I go back in on Friday. Sometime.” He tries to smile and it turns out very lopsided, from that he can make out in the rearview mirror. “Can you tell I’m tired?”

“I don’t think ‘tired’ is an accurate description,” Ace quips. “When did you eat a proper meal last?”

“Uh, yesterday. Maybe.”

“Maybe??”

“A ‘proper meal’ means different things to the two of us,” Sabo huffs. “On my account it was yesterday. I’ve had food since then, of course.”

“Alright, so here’s the plan,” Ace announces before absolutely whipping it around a curve. Sabo is his passenger in the passenger seat and had fully prepared to be so when he got in the vehicle, but he’d been vastly underprepared for this sudden course of action, which is how he ends up halfway out of his seat with his cheek slammed into the cold window. Ace doesn’t quite notice his brother’s terminal velocity until the car is once again on the straight and narrow, and only then it’s because of the audible thunk Sabo’s face makes when it collides with the glass.

“Aw shit. You good bro?”

“Ow,” Sabo mutters. “If I have broken bones I’m suing your ass.”

“Well, if you’re good enough to make jokes, I think you’re better than you’re letting on.” Ace keeps the wheel steady with one knee while he takes both hands away to crack his fingers. When he glances over at Sabo again, he looks even more pathetic – like he’s becoming one with the glass. “Anyway, as I was saying.

“I’m taking your ass home. You’re going straight to sleep and while you crash, I’ll make you something decent to eat and stick it in the fridge for you to heat up later. I’ll even make you two servings to eat two different times, since you clearly can’t be trusted to take care of yourself correctly.”

“Ouch.”

“I want you to conk out for as long as your body allows. We can reset your sleep schedule tomorrow, alright? Put your phone on silent; do not answer any calls. In fact, you know what, just give it to me.

Sabo glances over to see Ace’s hand held out to him, palm up. Fingers wiggling expectantly. His lips pull up into a grimace. “I’m not doing that.”

“Fine.” Ace takes his hand back. “But you will comply with everything else.”

“Wow! It’s so funny, I didn’t realize you turned into my mother overnight! Really tapped into your mom potential, huh? Anything exciting happen in your life that would cause that? I guess I wouldn’t know, since I’ve been a zombie for the past two days.”

“There’s nothing wrong with acting like your older brother, you dipshit, especially if you keep putting yourself through the wringer like this. You go home. You sleep. You wake up and eat. You go back to sleep. Then we do laundry. Does that sound agreeable?”

“That’s negotiable, at the least,” Sabo mumbles. “I will accept good food as a form of bribery.”

“Oh, nice, because I’m flat broke at the moment.”

Sabo makes a mental note of that, and then they’re pulling into the driveway. Ace lets him exit the vehicle by himself and then promptly manhandles him all the way onto the couch where it will be easier to force his body to relax than in a real bed. Ace knows this, so he calls him weird before chucking a loose blanket at his head. Sabo is almost too tired to function at this point, so he lets Ace have the last laugh in favor of finally closing his eyes.

Coming to is a surreal experience, especially since the sun is still out. He must make a noise because Ace is suddenly within view. His limbs are tangled in the blanket and still so heavy that he doesn’t bother moving. “Thought you would be gone,” he half-groans, eyes slipping shut again for a moment.

“I did leave,” Ace confirms. “I had to go pilfer some stuff to make stew with. It’s almost done, so I’ll hang here until then.”

Pilfer. That could mean any number of things. Sabo chooses to believe in the option where Ace is an upstanding citizen, and then remembers Ace saying earlier that he had no money. He frowns and squirms on the cushions enough to where it looks like he’s checking his pockets. “Where’s my wallet, Ace?” he bluffs.

“Somewhere around here,” Ace pipes up. “Your stomach will thank you for your contributions to the Portgas Household’s pantry!”

“Ugh, I got robbed,” he complains. “This sucks. ‘m going back to sleep.” He rolls over so his back is to Ace.

“Yeah, you do you, bro. Stew will still be here later. I’ll see you when you’re back in the world of the living.”

—

Luffy comes in late that night and slams the front door shut as loud as humanly possible. When he appears in the main room, he doesn’t seem to be upset, so Ace writes it off as a Luffyism. Sabo hasn’t stirred at the noise, so it’s all good.

Realizing this, Luffy pads closer to Ace’s side and looks at Sabo’s unmoving body warily. “Why is Sabo passed out like a corpse? Is he sick?”

“No, he’s not sick, he just can’t take care of himself. Which is why we are going to let him sleep for as long as possible.”

Luffy just nods to this, but it’s the uncomprehending Luffy-nod that means he’s just going to end up doing whatever he wants to regardless. Ace sighs, then jerks his head towards the kitchen. “He ate a little earlier, but I want him to eat again when he wakes up. There’s stew in the fridge if you want it – just leave him a little. Got it, Monkey D. Luffy?”

Luffy throws him a salute and then runs off in his socks. “Yippee! Ace made stew!”

“Think of your brother, Luffy, and make good choices!” Ace calls after him. “He’s a pathetic man who needs food to feel better or he’ll end up sleeping through Laundry Day!”

—

Sabo does not sleep through laundry day, but he does sleep for sixteen whole hours, so it’s just around noon when he forces himself up off the couch and into a warm shower.

Ace is around, which is mildly unexpected. But he’s still half-asleep, so everything is at least a little unexpected. He glances up from playing video games with Luffy to see Sabo leaving the steam-filled bathroom with his hair hanging around his shoulders. “You look like a wet cat,” he calls.

“Sabo’s awake!” Luffy cheers. “Ace thought you died at one point.”

Ace elbows Luffy in the gut, making him hunch over. “I did not!”

“He totally checked to see if your heart was still beating!”

“I’m undead, actually,” Sabo says completely seriously.

“Does that mean you don’t need to eat anymore?” Luffy questions. “Because I ate all the stew last night.”

“I saw that coming and made extra.” Ace finger-guns in Sabo’s general direction. “That’s why I bought two sets of ingredients. With your money!”

“With my money,” Sabo echoes, because it’s such a wild statement to have to deal with this early in the day. Well, early for him. “Fuck you.”

“I mean, I can tell Luffy where I hid–”

“Thank you, Ace, for agreeing to share your quarters with both of your brothers so we can all do laundry today on your dime!” Sabo raises his pitch so his voice is mockingly squeaky when he says this. He starts moving down the hall before Ace can start to argue, letting his and Luffy’s voices bleed into the background.

When he comes back out, now dressed, it smells significantly better than before. “I reheated the stew,” Ace announces, gesturing for Sabo to take a seat at the kitchen counter. “Let’s all have lunch before we head out.”

“You have to drink this too,” Luffy tells Sabo, sliding a Gatorade across the counter so it sets in front of him when he finally does take a seat. “Ace’s orders.”

“Gotta get those nutrients back somehow.”

“Aren’t we so considerate, Sabo?”

“Do you even know what ‘considerate’ means?” Sabo asks, lips quirking up into a half-smile. At Luffy’s shrug, it turns into a real smile. “Well, thanks anyway. Both of you.”

“No sweat. And look!” Ace brandishes a five dollar bill for both to see. “I found this baby for us to use on coins! It’s all on me today–”

“Where’s my wallet, Ace?!”

#writing #op #whery if i realized anything while doing this its that we need 2 get you a custom theme....#1) anyone whos not logged in will be able to see all your posts w/ no limits #2) (and the more important COUGHCOUGH) it'll be so much easier to find shit on your blog #if you want a cool blog layout lmk and i'll hook you up but for now #there are many benefits to a custom tumblr url........ being able to search /tagged for better blog organization is one of them #if there's a switch to writing style i wrote the first half of this in april 2023 so thats why!!#also lmao i jus spent the weekend w/ my brother so if its too mean-spirited thats unintentional n i'm prolly channeling is all #sighhhhhhh i love when they look after each other its so very very good #wittb has been great but i do wanna see them get up to other shenanigans later #after the comic (plot) at large i mean #little one-off side things still in the modern au #enjoy the rest of artfight month for now tho!!!#(< says someone who has been putting off af attacks to write things again)

375 notes · View notes

billy-cockblock · 3 months

Text

REV AU one shot: Chris finds out

Crawls out of my hole covered in blood and mold: I don't know why this was so hard to write, but the writer's block is hitting me hard. I could see several parts of this scene so clearly in my head, but my brain just really didn't want to put words to paper. Once my brain's better I'll probably come and edit this a bit, but I hope y'all enjoy it. It's definitely one or the favorite scenes I've come up with.

He quickly lifted heavy limbs, picking them up from the ground. Leon’s vision had gone dark, but his rapidly came into focus.

He fumbled for the gun dropped when they went flying, foreign hands finding familiar purchase against the metal. Taking aim, he let off a volley of shots at the monsters encroaching on them.

They were tougher than infected he’d faced before; the center body of the strange knife-whipping tentacles needing to be basically shredded before they died, and bullet holes slowly sealed over with black tendrils if it wasn’t killed completely.

He felt like he was wasting ammo, but it just took so many bullets to drop the monsters. The larger one that’d flung them across the room and slammed Leon’s head into a desk was getting closer, lumbering steps slow. He tried to shoot its head like the rest of them, but the gun only clicked.

He swore under his breath and pulled Leon’s knife out; he hated close-quarters combat, but he didn’t have time to reload. Diving past flailing, dangerous limbs, he buried the knife in its main body. It grabbed and sliced at them, but he kept stabbing and cutting until it was too shredded to keep moving. He shoved it with more strength than he was used to, and it fell to the ground, dead.

Head still on a swivel, he made sure there were no more infected. The room looked clear, but there were a few desks and filing cabinets something could hide behind.

While he checked the room over, Ethan took a breath. He felt bad for having to break his promise of not taking control, but Leon wasn’t waking up in time. He’d pull back once Leon woke up, but it felt like he’d gotten a concussion with how hard he’d gotten his head hit. He spread his mold, stitching closed the scratches and scrapes Leon’s body had accrued. Skin and muscle was easy to regenerate, then pull his network from, and it’d almost become second nature since he’d gotten permission from Leon.

Nerves were a little harder. The mold naturally liked to cling to the nervous system, trying to take control and upload a person’s consciousness to the megamycete. It preferred to envelop or take over nerves, and that took more coaxing from Ethan to get it to untangle.

That’s why he was hesitating trying to do something about the concussion. He’d done his best to take control of Leon’s motor functions without getting the mold too tangled with his brain, but he’d have to root even deeper if he wanted to heal it. He subconsciously felt along his connection from the megamycete to the brain-

He froze. Damaged cartilage, more mold present, fractured vertebrae, and frayed nerves. A lot of frayed nerves.

He reached for the back of Leon’s neck, both with the body’s hand and his mold. The joints in the spine felt like they’d been misaligned before snapping back into place, nearly severing Leon’s entire spinal cord. His brain still sent and received continuous waves of signals to and from the body, impulses carried across the gap by Ethan’s mold network tangling with Leon’s nervous system.

Ethan felt like he was going to be sick. Or, as sick as he could feel in the state he was in. He didn’t think Leon hit his head that badly, but he guessed his neck did snap in a weird angle when they hit that desk.

After the horrific stories Leon had told him, a desk is what would have done him in?

He tried to pull the nerve fibers back together, but the mold that had taken their places was stubborn. It had locked itself firmly in place to keep the cord from coming detached and shutting down Leon’s body functions. He’s glad it obeyed when he tried to program it to protect Leon without his input, but he needed the mold to move if he wanted to heal it enough that he could remove it. He’d have to work to remove his network from his nerves anyway, so he might as well work on healing the concussion. He could practically hear the megamycete sing in joy as he spread to repair the battering Leon’s brain had taken-

“Close call, huh?” a familiar voice asked from behind them, making him tense up.

“Y-yeah, no kidding,” he replied, trying his best to speak like Leon. He nearly enveloped the man’s brain to speed his healing; he needed Leon awake now.

“I got worried when I saw one of them toss you, but I knew you’d have it handled,” Chris Redfield continued, none the wiser that he wasn’t talking to the real Leon. Ethan could hear him do that dumb slow pace he does while talking, where he wouldn’t look at him; dramatic asshole. Leon would’ve been dead if he didn’t have the mold. “You aren’t hurt too bad, though? Or infected?”

“No, I’ve had worse,” he replied, echoing what Leon said every time he’d close his wounds. He did his best to keep casual while hiding every inch of skin he could. His dark veins under Leon’s skin were visible even on his hands, and Ethan was sure his face was worse.

“True, but this is my case,” Chris stopped his pacing and sighed. “This wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t lost control of E-003.” A bolt of white-hot anger flared through Ethan’s entire network, and he felt a tingle from Leon’s brain. “Someone got to her, and-“

“What did you call Rose?” a voice, distinctly not Leon’s, left his mouth. Ethan whirled around without thinking, face pinched in anger, before freezing, rage forgotten.

He met Chris’s eyes for the first time in sixteen years, and it was like the horror and dread never left them since that day in Europe.

Without breaking eye contact, Chris pulled his pistol from its holster but kept it trained on the ground. With his other hand, he clicked the radio on his shoulder.

“Redfield reporting,” his gravelly voice didn’t give anything away, but Ethan couldn’t let him finish. “Kennedy’s been-”

A pillar of mold extending from Leon’s arm slammed him in the shoulder and enveloped the radio. He rolled with the force and raised his gun. The bullets aimed straight for Leon’s head harmlessly embedded themselves in a thick, carapace-like shield formed on his other arm.

Ethan had to get them out of there. The door was behind Chris, but the windows behind them were busted. They were on the second floor, so climbing to the roof would be better.

With half a plan, he tried to form tendrils to drag them back while he kept guarding their front. The mold twisted up in the space the megamycete laid in and instead formed four long, spider-like legs from Leon’s back.

Whatever, I can work with it, he thought, sending a tendril off his arm to pull Chris’s feet out from under him. He lifted them off the ground, pulling them back to the window. He found it with the limbs and hooked them outside the frame. He grew claws over Leon’s hands to scramble up the side, earning him a bullet to leg once his guard was dropped. He ignored Chris’s shouts as he climbed over the edge of the roof and jumped for another.

He strengthened his legs and used the spidery limbs to get him as far from Chris as he could. He wouldn’t let Leon get found out, he wouldn’t let him get killed, and he’d only stay until he knew Rose was safe. Now he just had to find a place to settle down enough to finish Leon’s healing.

A sudden stab of pain to his consciousness nearly sent him careening off a roof. He thought it might’ve been something from the megamycete trying to fight its way out before he heard him.

What the hell was that?! Leon mentally shouted; he was wrestling for control back to his body, and was doing a damn good job of it. You promised! And why did you attack Chris?!

Ethan pulled any mold back back from his skin and shoved control back so fast, Leon fell to his knees.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry… he said on repeat. He felt Leon’s shoulders loose a little tension as he shakily stood to find cover behind an air conditioner. Once he’d gotten settled down, he laid a hand on his chest over where the megamycete rested.

“Hey,” he said, tapping his chest to get Ethan’s attention. “I feel like I missed something while I was out. Mind filling me in?”

#re venom au #resident evil #ethan winters #leon kennedy #I dont feel like designing enemies yet #but my idea is that they're some combination of plagas and mold #maybe plagas infested with cadou #but the mold basically makes the knife tentacle ganados really hard to kill #ethans still a little salty at chris for how he handled the whole “dont tell ethan anything” thing #and how he treats rose #he didnt want to have to talk to him #when ethan turns leon around he kind of looks like how mia did when she gets possessed in re7 with grey eyes and stuff #chris kinda has his “foot in mouth” syndrome from re8 where he somehow says the perfect thing to piss ethan off #ethan also promised to help hide that leons infected with mold so the government wont have any reason to stop him from retiring #thats why he only attacks when chris grabs his radio to call it in #and woohoo the plagas-shaped hole influencing mold form shape #i gotta finish actually describing the final mold-venom form #later #not beta read #enough stalling time to post #my writing

19 notes · View notes