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astaroth1357 · 4 years ago

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How about the brothers + diavolo reacting to an mc that smokes cigarettes, but only when stressed out? I hope this ask doesn't make you feel uncomfortable. 🙂

So this is interesting for me because I'm actually an asthmatic and cigarette smoke is one of my triggers. Naturally, that means I'm not the biggest fan of smoking (because I like breathing air) but I'm going to try not to turn this into a straight PSA. I assume if you smoke, you already know what's up and if you don’t, you're probably not considering it and leave things at that. I imagine what you want is the characters' perspectives and not mine, so I'll do my best to give that to you here. I hope you like it!

An MC Who's a Stress Smoker

Lucifer

Not the biggest fan of their habit, but mostly due to smell. Actually needing that bit of stress relief - he totally gets.

After he found out that they smoke he set a lot of ground rules: "No smoking in the House; No smoking at RAD; No smoking in uniform" yadi-yadi-yada… but he never straight up banned them from doing it.

If he catches the MC out smoking, he'll usually keep his distance until they've finished (and ideally changed clothes) before calling them in to ask what's wrong.

If they can't keep to the rules, that's when he's going to start having a problem. Cigarette/cigar smoke gives him a headache and he really can’t tolerate it for long…

If they start smoking in places they're not supposed to, then he will try to ban them cold turkey so better stay mindful about it. It wouldn’t take many slip ups unfortunately…

Mammon

Yeah… I know some people HC that Mammon smokes too. I wouldn't go that far, but I'll say he's most likely done it before.

Mammon picked up smoking for a century or so from his trips to the human world (humans freaking loved tobacco for some reason) but eventually stopped because the smell annoyed Lucifer and it has some weird effects on Diavolo…

When he caught the MC smoking on their balcony the first time, he was a little surprised because he didn't peg them for the type, but throwing stones in glass houses and all that… Who is he to judge?

Mammon actually likes to stick around during their outdoor smoke sessions. It's a pretty relaxing, dare say intimate, affair. He'll grab a cigarette himself and just let them vent about whatever's bothering them. Zero judgment about it all.

He will warn the MC about Lucifer’s dislike of the smell though… They have to be careful or he'll start getting on their case, you know?

Leviathan

Smoking is fairly common among badass characters in anime so it's not like he has a super negative image of it to start with, anyway. 🤷‍♀️

Surprisingly understanding of their coping mechanism, I mean, this man has made a life out of his own.

If he sees that they’re out smoking he may pop out to go ask what's up. He won't be much bothered by the smoke unless they blow it right in his face or something (which is a little rude anyway).

Will be a little disappointed that the MC only does it to calm down and they're not actually some kind of secret badass (or maybe they are, I dunno) but he gets the need to have some kind of grounding more than most.

Isn't nearly as bothered by the smell as Lucifer, but not about to jump in and join them like Mammon… He's pretty down the middle about it.

Satan

Though he can't fault them for looking for relief, he's done enough research into human health that he really can’t condone this method…

Satan, bless his black soul, is going to be the nag of the family. He will bring up how unhealthy smoking is and he will urge them to try and find a different habit.

To be fair, he did the same to Mammon too - but to a lesser extent because demon bodies can cope with the toxins a lot better. Since the MC is human, he feels a lot of urgency… it comes from a good place.

The MC should expect to have to hide from Satan if they’re out smoking because he will crash their de-stressing with a mini-lecture. He won't go as far as to take the cigarette from their hands, but he will ask them to put it out.

He's not blind to their feelings, though. If they’re smoking, he'll ask what's wrong and how he can help so they can just stop for the night. If they do want to quit, then he's more than willing to support them through the transition. He won't leave them high and dry, but he will make his thoughts known. Be aware of that.

Asmodeus

Uh, don't they know what smoking does to your skin? Your teeth?? Oh no, honey, you gotta try something else!

Yeah like Satan, Asmo isn't a huge fan but unlike Satan he's mostly worried about the physical damages alone. Poor guy can't understand why someone would actively do something with those negative effects when there are much healthier options!

He will pretty much be on a mission to give them other stress relief outlets like massages, bathes, music, meditation, or whatever else he can think of. He'll keep throwing stuff at a wall until it sticks. 🤷‍♀️

Again, it comes from a good place (albeit a somewhat more shallow one) but he cares deeply about them and always wants them to always look their best.

Unfortunately, Asmo's not even coming near them if he sees them smoking. He knows secondhand is a thing and he wouldn’t risk it, but he may call them or text them while they're out there to see what's wrong.

Beelzebub

Beel's pretty easygoing one way or another so I see him accepting the MC's choice with little judgment. Their life and all.

Being an athlete, I also can imagine he may have a bit of knowledge about why it's not good for you but he won’t hammer it in like Satan. He might remind them once or twice if they start coughing because he worries… but that’s about it.

If there's anything he's going to be sad about, though, it's if their smoking habit starts to diminish their sense of taste… There’s so many foods he wants to share with them, he hopes they can enjoy it all… 😥

If Beel sees them out smoking, he'll pull a Levi and just come out to see what's wrong. He may not stay long because he doesn’t want to breathe in too much secondhand (still an athlete and all) but he'll still check in on them… Such a sweet guy.

Belphegor

The smell did take some getting used to, but he used to nap around Mammon all the time so it's not like it's unfamiliar. He can adapt.

Really can't give two shits on whether or not their habit is healthy for them. In the long term, that may bite him in the ass, but that’s also kind of Sloth's whole deal so…

More or less would treat them the exact same way, smoking or not, because that doesn't much affect him or his chances to cuddle them.

If there's anything that is going to bother him, it might be coughing when he's trying to sleep... But that won't be a serious concern unless it gets BAD.

If Belphie sees them out smoking, he'll ask what's wrong… but also if they want to just come inside and sleep the problem off. He's trying to help… in his own way. 🤷‍♀️

Diavolo

Daddy Devil smoked and you can't convince me otherwise.

The smell of cigarettes and cigars kind of give Diavolo a knee-jerk familiar reaction - like when you smell a food or soap that you associate with your childhood. It may not be a good smell or one you even like, but you're drawn to it anyway for the memories.

Doesn't matter how many times the MC has changed clothes or how long they scrub their body for, he can still smell it on them and it's like hitting a lightswitch in his brain - he knows that smell and it's oddly comforting…

Diavolo is going to hover around them a lot. Expect a lot of hugs or just standing a bit too close so he can get a good whiff. Lucifer is going to be utterly confused by his actions but Barbs knows what's up.

The MC is strictly forbidden by Lucifer to smoke anywhere near Diavolo, but that’s hardly going to matter. He can pick up when they've done it recently and he'll ask what's wrong… probably while hugging them because he's looking for that comfort too.

#obey me #obey me shall we date #shall-we-date-obey-me #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me satan #obey me asmodeus #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor #obey me diavolo #obey me headcanons #obey me requests

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english8muffin · 4 years ago

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Vogue morning routine

Y/N Y/N/L’s guide to effortless natural makeup

Summary: you are asked to do the Vogue Beauty Secrets video and your two boys decide to join the party

Word count: around 2000

Warning: none, just pure floof!

I apologize in advance if there are any spelling and/or grammar mistakes, English is not my first language (+ this is my very first fic)

HEADLINE Henry Cavill’s new girlfriend, designer Y/N Y/L/N reveals her everyday morning routine in recent Vogue video: Y/N Y/L/N shows off her secrets to the perfect fusion of European and Asian beauty.

You stood in the spacious bathroom of the hotel room, only wearing a big, fluffy, white robe, that was actually Henry’s. But since the man was in the gym, you took the opportunity to lend it and bathe yourself in his musky smell, that calmed your nerves. Last night you started panicking, thinking you would probably look stupid for the entire world to see, luckily Henry and Kal tried to calm you down with cuddles and kisses.

This was the first ‘interview’ you would do, being such a young, successful entrepreneur really caught the attention of the media. When you first started your small online shop, you never would have thought you would end up here. Five years later, with a steady income, the job you always wished for and the man you had a crush on since the first time you laid eyes on him. Being a creative, it really made your heart soar with happiness, seeing all your products, your babies, in new homes where they would make others happy.

You were really proud of yourself. Henry was as well, and he made sure you and everybody around you knew. You were apprehensive at first, being with such a well known actor, who was also much older than you, it made you nervous of what people would say, what the media would say. You didn’t want to tarnish Henry’s image. You knew there were people with a much bigger age gap, but still, people were ruthless. So you both decided to take it slow, being careful with going out in public and social media posts.

You stand in front of the large mirror, which had a camera attached to it and open up your makeup bag. Right before you went into the bathroom, you made yourself a nice cup of tea, trying to stay calm. “Hi! I’m Y/N and today I am going to show you my everyday makeup routine,” you say with a smile, “I am not a dermatologist so please don’t take what I say too seriously.”

You grab a small white washcloth and hold it up, so it was in the frame, “First, I am going to wash my face and put on a few drops of serum,” You dampen the cloth and wipe it over your face and neck. You put a few drops in the palm of your hand and pat them into your skin. “Now I going to use my jade roller to massage the serum into my skin. It’s quite funny seeing so many people use these nowadays. In ancient China they were mostly used by the elite to keep there skin ageless. They would call jade the Stone of Heaven. It’s really helpful for the people who wake up with a puffy face like me,” you chuckle.

Somethimes you’d wake up with puffy cheeks, which led to Henry calling you his chubby bunny in the morning.

“Just a quick tip, and this is for everybody, make sure you always use SPF. I personally use SPF 30 and this one is shine control, since I tend to get an oily skin, but you can also use a regular one or a foundation with SPF in it. Believe me when I say your skin will be thankful.”

You grab the small tube of sun cream and show the amount you’ll use. You even convinced Henry to wear SPF everyday. At first he said he didn’t think it would make such a big difference, but when he realised you were going to be the one to put it on him, he was convinced about its benefits and adamant to wear it everyday. After working the thick cream into your skin, you put on some lipbalm and rummage through the pouch in front of you. When you find the product you’re looking for, you hold it up. “Now, I am going to put on a bit of concealer, this one is from Maybelline. After this, I will use a lighter shade under my eyes and on my acne scars that I have here,” you point and circle around the small cluster of scars on the sides of your cheeks.

Before blending out the concealer, you smile at the lens and put in two bright yellow hairclips, to keep your dark locks from falling into your face. “I probably should have done this at the start,” you laugh. The nerves creeping up a little. It wasn’t that you where a shy person, but knowing thousands of people will watch this, did something to you. You were always a very easygoing person, who could talk with pretty much everybody. But knowing people were going to watch you do something so intimate in a way, and would probably comment on it, scared you a little. While you would be 100% yourself, doing something as mundane as getting ready. If they didn’t like you now, then they probably won’t like you later. And that was what made you so afraid.

The bathrobe falls a bit down your shoulder, but you ignore it, since your hair fell down your shoulders in big waves. “Okay, brows. I used to block them in really dark when I was younger, but now I try to keep a light hand. I’ll use this Got 2B Glued as a brow gel afterwards. The tails of my eyebrows tend to move if I don’t use a strong enough gel. If you’re Asian you will understand the struggle.”

You quickly finish your brows, put some bronzer on your face and eyelids and take out your liquid eyeliner. “Am I the only one that acts like I’m a beauty guru whenever I do my makeup? Like, I’m just acting as if I’m used to this, right now, but to be honest, I was really nervous to do this video for Vogue,” you admit, “they will probably regret asking me,” you chuckle. You finish your eyemakeup with curling your long lashes, thanks to your mother’s genes, and add a coat of mascara.

You take in a deep breath, excited to show everyone the product you had been waiting for. “The next thing I am really proud to show you guys, because I designed the packaging. This is the new limited edition blush and highlighter palette from Dior, which they created for Lunar New Year!” You beam with pride, holding up the elegant looking palette. It had a darker toned glossy finish and the borders were the traditional Chinese looking frames, which were 3D and were surrounded by a wild variety of peonies. In the middle of the lid was your Chinese calligraphy in big golden brush stokes that said ‘year of the Ox’, the clasp was designed so it resembled an antique Chinese coin and on the side hung a jade charm.

“You can pre-order this palette now, I think they will put a link-thingy in de description. I wish you all a happy and blessed Lunar New Year, 祝农历年新年快乐牛年大吉!”

Just as you’re about to add some blush to your cheeks, the bathroom door creaks open and a curly-headed, sweaty Henry pops his head in. Fresh from the gym, and were you thankful for his new intense workout, because he was truely a sight to behold. A cheeky smile graces his handsome face when he spots you in front of the mirror, only wearing his robe, which made his grin widen.

“what are you doing in here? Are you hiding from me? Playing hide and seek is it?” he teases and rakes his large hand through the tousled curls, but just as he’s done speaking, he sees the camera behind you, and blushes. “Oh, I didn’t know you were filming, I’m sorry darling,” he smiles and gives a small wave in the direction of the camera. You led out a giggle, cheeks turning red already, if he’d keep this up, you wouldn’t need to add blush. You couldn’t focus anymore, he looked so attractive, only wearing his black gym shorts and a tight dark blue tank top. Damn that camera, otherwise you would have jumped him. Henry, thought the exact same thing. Seeing you, only wearing his robe and your hair still a bit wild from this morning’s cardio, made him hold back a moan. Those two cute, yellow clips in your hair could have fooled him, because you were anything but innocent.

Before he’s about to close the door again, he blows you a kiss. But his actions are stopped when a big bear makes his appearance. Bolting past his dad’s legs, Kal comes into the bathroom. Henry tries to catch him but misses. The black and white akita excitedly sniffs his head around the sink, trying to see what you were up to with all the stuff lying on the marble counter.

“Kal!” Henry whisper-yelled, trying to stay hidden behind the door. But you could still see his massive body crouched down behind the wood. It was rather funny, seeing the large man so panicked about getting his dog to listen. It kind of reminded you of that one video from BBC were a professor was being interviewed and his baby and nanny showed up in the background. While Henry tried to get Kal’s attention, the dog just sat next to your legs, and smiled when you pet him behind his ear. He was your good boy.

You both knew there was no other option but to keep Kal here, once he saw you do your makeup, he wanted to watch and get his ‘makeup’ done as well.

Henry also saw the look in Kal’s eyes and let out a sigh. Might as well stay with his two loves. He stood up from his position and walked to you, wrapping his sweaty but oh so save body around your figure, and placed a prolonged kiss on the exposed skin just by your shoulder. So far for taking it slow… He pressed himself thighter against your back, hiding his face in the crook of your neck and intertwined your hands, slowly rocking you two back en forth. “You look beautiful, my love,” he whispered, so only you could hear it, at least you hoped the camera wouldn’t pick that up. You let out a little giggle, like the inner schoolgirl you were whenever he was around you.

“Kal loves when Y/N does his makeup as well, don’t you boy,” Henry explains with a smile and looks down at the bear by your bare feet. Kal gives a small ruff and sweeps his tail eagerly. “Did you show them what you made,” he asked you with a wide smile, and looked straight in to the camera, “she worked really hard on that design, so I hope you all like it,” he declared proudly.

You ended up doing your makeup routine with your two boys in the background. Henry left for a few minutes to shower in the second bathroom your hotelroom had, and came back clad in a pair of light jogging trousers and a sweater. Even though you were inside, it was still a bit too chilly to walk around in short sleeves, being mid-winter and all. He just sat on the small wooden bench by the door, still in frame for everybody to enjoy and behold. His hair now damp. He was reading in a book and patiently waiting for you to get ready, occasionally looking up and laughing when you would wet your hands or Kal’s special makeup brush in the sink and pretend to do his makeup. The dog would bark excitedly and give you kisses. “Wow Kal, you look so pretty,” Henry told the big floof with the chuckle.

“Okay, this was my -somewhat- everyday makeup routine! Thank you guys for watching this chaotic mess, hope you laughed a bit, bye-bye, 再见!” How do those vlogger end their videos? Smash like and subscribe?

Behind you Henry looked up from the pages of his fantasy book and arched his brow, “Hey! No shout-out for your special guests? See you all next time!”

WOOHOO!! This is my very first fanfic, I really hope you enjoyed it. Liking, reposting and commenting would mean a lot to me! If you do repost this, please do not edit or copy my work. I worked really hard on this.

Much love, Nahmi xxx

Masterlist can be found HERE!

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arcadejohn127-9 · 4 years ago

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Ahhh I love your writing sm!! Could I request how the brothers would react to an MC that's super doting and overly loving from the get-go?. Always insists on helping w cooking duty, brings the brothers coffee if they look busy, etc? pls & ty!

Tbh I don't really have a love language over than verbal but this speaks to me

In game I make my MC very much like this, overly positive and always wanting to help. Not because I have to, I could easily pick more honest or teasing options but when it comes to it. My first instinct/Response is those options because I like the idea of being helpful to people

It's only when people start using that for their advantage or make me help them out even though I'm busy or just don't want to do it. That's when there's an issue.

Lucifer:

"oh~ Luci! You still working?"

You peered over at him at his desk, peaking from the space between the wall and the stair railing

He looked up at you with a tired expression, frowning

"I am, what do you need?"

you trotted down the rest of the steps, walking over to him with a bright smile

A tray in hand with coffee and biscuits and apple slices

"I made these for you, I know it isn't much but you're always working so hard... perhaps I can help?"

Lucifer wasn't too surprised, you were always offering your help whenever you could but it still surprised him you were so quick to offer

He didn't know how you had all that energy to face the day and then do more for others but he always enjoyed your company

"be my guest."

You grabbed a mini stool and sat beside him, you'd read over papers with him, massaging his hand whenever you noticed it cramped

He shared the snacks you got him and even revealed the mini snack draw he had in his desk

He put a finger to his lips with a smile

"don't tell my brother's, this will be just between you and me."

He showed you what he had and you picked whatever caught your fancy, happily eating as you looked over the papers

Mammon:

He wasn't use to Someone being nice to him so when you came along and offered acts of service - he was blown away!

Even over time he wasn't really use to it

Speaking of you and your acts or service; you were whistling a happy tune

A thick wallet in your pocket, you headed straight to mammons room

It was as if he could smell the money, he rushed to your side and started eyeing the wallet

"Stop peeking - it's a gift."

He looked at you confused but was grinning

"oh? The great Mammon can't refuse a gift!"

You placed the wallet in his hand, he let out a yelp at the weight of it

It was completely loaded!!! It was stuffed with money!

He couldn't believe it - it had to be a trick! There was no way you were giving him this much money!

"Are ya playing with me? Ha ha human."

"no tricks, you've been struggling with your debt to the witch's so I thought I'd help, I heard you've been getting in trouble with Lucifer more because of it so I wanted to help!"

He didn't even realize he teared up, he jumped towards you and hugged you close

Nuzzling your faces together as he hugged you tight

"You-! YOU DAMN HUMAN- NO YOU ANGEL! YOU'RE THE BEST THING THAT'S HAPPENED TO ME!"

You patted his arm, laughing and it wasn't long before he was planning to spend a big splurge on you despite his issues with money already

Levithan:

He was shuffling into his room, headphones on and just starting to calm down

Today was hectic so he was happy to finally be back home

"Evening! Don't worry, I still used the secret password."

"HUH-?! THAT'S NOT- WHY ARE YOU IN MY ROOM?!"

He threw his headphones off, face bright red

He should of known you were up to something, you kept humming whenever you entered his room

Talking about cleaning up after himself but he kept forgetting due to getting distracted

"I noticed it's gotten really messy so I decided to clean it for you but before you say anything, I know you hate when it's cleaned because you don't know where anything so I've labelled where everything has been stored if it's changed places."

He was still upset, he REALLY hated it when things are changed without him knowing first

But he looked around the room and sure enough, things were still in the cupboards and places he stacked them in and the labels were correct

Everything was completely organized! All the piled up ramen was even gone!

He exhaled a long breathe calming himself down, he was happy - really really happy

"Thanks.... just - can we arrange something next time? But I do like what you did! It looks nice - it's much better now!"

"of course, I'll ask next time - also~ I got you some special ruri-chan themed chips in hopes to make you feel better."

He moves before he knows it, hugging you tight

"STAY WITH ME FOREVER!!!!"

He's definitely embarassed afterwards and gets you out of his room before he makes himself look more like a love sick fool

But don't worry, he texts you wanting to hang out later

Satan:

Satan has been locked in his room after having a big outburst earlier that day

He got overwhelmed from all the noises and threw a book at mammon

You waited awhile before going after him, wanting him to calm down and looked after mammons sore head

You grabbed the book he threw, making a nice calming tea and even made some Apple pie

When you knocked his door he freezed

"Who is it-?! Lucifer, I'm not in the mood for your scolding-"

"it's just me, I got you something!"

He opened the door for you, letting you inside

His room looked clean for once - you didn't doubt he continued his rage into his room and cleaned up to calm down

You offered him a smile, placing the tray on his bed

"I hope you like it, I made it myself."

He looked at the fresh apple pie, his stomach rumbling at the mere sight of it

"you did this...for me? Didn't I scare you?"

You hummed, sitting close to him

"yeah a little but everyone has their bad days, you having one doesn't change anything - though you do need to apologize to mammon."

He sat down by his bed, placing the tray on his lap

"you're right I do, thank you for not just seeing me as some angry creature....I didn't intend to blow up like that."

You patted his arm, still smiling

You two sat together, you read his book for him whilst he ate and drank

He was very bashful at how supportive you are but that was you, you've always been so quick to offer help or do things for people ever since you've arrived

You were good to him, he'll always appreciate that

Asmodeus:

His love language is affection and words

Yours is acts of service

It's perfect!

Though, when it was established you were quick to help and offer your service - prepare for MANY innuendos

He'll come skipping to you, draping himself off the nearest object and asking if you want to help him de-stress

Most of the time you just have spa days or lay around doing nothing

You decided to treat him today seeing as exams were stressing him out

"Asmo! Won't you help me? I have this lovely new-"

He's skidding as he appears in the doorway, ready to do whatever you want

But you just grinned, knowing your plan worked

You grabbed him and shoved him into a chair

Before he knew it; his hair was tied up and his jacket and scarf has disappeared

"oh? What's all this about? Does my love want some special care?"

"nope, I just want to look after you today~ you've been stressing over exams so much, I wanted to treat you like a prince."

He had the biggest grin on his face after that

And treated like a prince he was

You did his skin routine, brushed his hair and curled it

If he even mentioned being thirsty you were straight to getting him a nice refreshing drink

If you're able to - please carry him bridal style - he will love every second of it

"you treat me so well, I know I'm already a blessing to this demonic world but you're just pure light."

He's so love sick, an absolute fool in love

"nonsense, I'm just helping you like usual."

Which is true, you were always being helpful to him

Thats why he loved doing whatever he could for you

"Never leave the Devildom, I couldn't bare not seeing your beautiful face everyday."

You just laughed, massaging his face and gave him a quick kiss

Beezlebub:

Another person who does acts of service as a love language

Though, do forgive him if he forgets due to hunger - he'll immediately make it up to you

At this point he's become a subconscious challenge/game of service - always trying to one up each other

Currently, he was really anxious about his up coming game

It was the biggest one that R.A.D was having and was against a smaller school in the Devildom

The brothers all agreed to come watch him play and even made banners and levi brought glowsticks

You were no were to be seen

The weeks running up to the game you were always busy and whilst you still do some things for him here or there - you were mostly out of the house

But it was but a long lasting plan

You planned on supporting him the best way you could!

When he finally rolled onto the field he felt dread when he didn't spot you in the crowd

He couldn't stop frowning until he saw you, shaking pom poms and running with the cheersquad

That's right, you joined the cheer team to show your support for the lovely demon

"I WANT TO DEDICATE A CHEER TO OUR STAR PLAYER - BEEZLEBUB!!!"

He's so flustered and absolutely shining with joy under his helmet

As soon as he could he came running towards you and hugged you tight

"I was so worried I did something that made you drift away....you did this for me?"

"of course! I'm sorry I made you worried, I wanted to surprise you."

He had to take off his helmet after trying to nuzzle your face, you yelped when it bonked you

"This is the best thing anyone has done for me, thank you (Y/N)."

"you're welcome, now go win that game! Prove those losers that R.A.D is the best school around!"

It was no surprised that R.A.D won

The players all cheered and partied, inviting the band and cheerleaders to celebrate with them

But you decided to have a sleepover with Beelzebub, feeding him plenty of tasty foods as your own type of celebration

"Open wide."

You almost choked on the cake basically shoved in your mouth, laughing as frosting covered your nose and cheeks

You got your revenge but he happily licked what he could

This is the best celebration he could ever get

All because of you!

Belphegor:

Even if your love language wasn't acts or service, you definitely got in the habit of doing it with this guy

He was spoilt from always being carried and pampered by his twin

He could get away with sleeping anywhere as long as he got things done and good grades

But you were always the helpful human, giving him snacks or fluffing his pillows

He's joked about getting a bell so he could call you whenever he needed you

That never happened

"Belphie!! You awake? I got something for you."

He immediately popped his head up and waved to get your attention

You showed him the cup of hot mocha you've recently made; sweet and delicious and has an extra kick to help with keeping awake

"Smells delicious, you made this?"

"yep! Now drink up, we got plans today."

He happily drunk it, feeling more awake with every gulp

By the end of the Cup he was absolutely overjoyed from the taste

Though you almost groaned in frustration when he yawned, so happy that he got sleepy

"you have anymore~? I could drink loads of these- make me more, you know how to make them, I'm too sleepy - it's your fault I'm sleepy."

You flicked his head

Reminding him to not act like a brat

But you did make him more and throughout the day you'd give him a large cup

You needed to do studies and make sure belphegor kept his grades up - Lucifer's orders

But he was already a star pupil regardless so you weren't sure why you had to

But spending time with your favourite demon was never an issue, regardless of his attitude

"We need to do this more, I love it when you look after me."

"I know, now write your answer, I need proof you're working so I don't get strung up."

#obey me #obey me shall we date #gamingclubpresident #aracadejohn217 9 #obey me mammon #obey me mc #obey me asmodeus #obey me satan #obey me belphegor #beelzebub obey me #obey me leviathan #obey me luficer #obey me imagine #obey me headcanon #obey me x you #obey me x mc #obey me x reader

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cielrouge · 4 years ago

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YA SFF Books by Latinx Authors

A Fierce and Subtle Poison by Samantha Mabry: Spending the summer with his hotel-developer father in Puerto Rico, 17-year-old Lucas turns to a legendary cursed girl filled with poison when his girlfriend mysteriously disappears.

All the Wind in the World by Samantha Mabry: Working in the maguey fields of the Southwest, Sarah Jac and James are in love but forced to start over on a ranch that is possibly cursed where the delicate balance in their relationship begins to give way.

Beneath the Citadel by Destiny Soria: In the city of Eldra, people are ruled by ancient prophecies. For centuries, the high council has stayed in power by virtue of the prophecies of the elder seers. In the present day, Cassa, the orphaned daughter of rebels, is determined to fight back against the high council. But by the time Cassa and her friends uncover the mystery of the final infallible prophecy, it may be too late to save the city — or themselves.

Blanca & Roja by Anne-Marie McLemore: The del Cisne girls, Blanca & Roja, have never just been sisters; they’re also rivals. Because of a generations-old spell, their family is bound to a bevy of swans deep in the woods. But when two local boys become drawn into the game, the swans’ spell intertwines with the strange and unpredictable magic lacing the woods, and all four of their fates depend on facing truths that could either save or destroy them.

Blazewrath Games by Amparo Ortiz: 17-year-old Lana Torres, who after rescuing a prized dragon, is awarded a spot on her native Puerto Rico’s Blazewrath World Cup team. But the return of the Sire, an ancient dragon, soon threatens to compromise this year’s tournament.

They Both Die in the End by Adam Silvera: Set in a near-future New York City where a service alerts people on the day they will die, about two teens who meet using the Last Friend app and are faced with the challenge of living a lifetime on their End Day.

The Body Market (Wired #2) by Donna Freitas: When Skylar's sister betrays her and opens the Body Market, everyone in the App World is for sale and Skylar resolves to stop her sister and the malevolent market.

Bruja Born (Brooklyn Brujas #2) by Zoraida Cordova: Teenage bruja Lula Mortiz tries to save her boyfriend, Maks, by cheating Death; however, Lady de la Muerte is not so easily bested.

The Buried by Melissa Grey: After disaster strikes the remote town of Indigo Falls. A horrific event drove the residents underground, into shelters that keep them safe from the danger on the surface. Now, a handful of families inhabit this bunker together, guided by a charismatic leader named Dr. Imogen Moran.

Cazadora (Wolves of No World #2) by Romina Garber: In this follow-up to Lobizona, Manu and her friends as they continue to fight for a better future.

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas: Latinx trans teen Yadriel, hoping to release his cousin’s spirit and prove himself as a brujo, accidentally summons the wrong ghost and resident bad boy Julian Diaz, falling in love with him.

Dark and Deepest Red by Anna-Marie McLemore: Summer, 1518. A strange sickness sweeps through Strasbourg: women dance in the streets, some until they fall down dead. As rumors of witchcraft spread, suspicion turns toward Lavinia and her family. Five centuries later, a pair of red shoes seal to Rosella Oliva’s feet, making her dance uncontrollably. They draw her toward a boy who knows the dancing fever’s history better than anyone: Emil.

Dealing in Dreams by Lilliam Rivera: 16-year-old Nalah leads the fiercest all-girl crew in Mega City, but when she sets her sights on giving this life up for a prestigious home in Mega Towers, she must decide if she’s willing to do the unspeakable to get what she wants.

Diamond City by Francesca Flores: Pulled from the streets at age twelve and trained to become one of the most powerful assassins in Sumerand, Aina Solis discovers a conspiracy that could rewrite the kingdom's history.

Dragonblood Ring (Blazewrath Games #2) by Amparo Ortiz: After the Sire’s capture, teen athletes Lana Torres and Victoria Peralta travel to Puerto Rico with their former Blazewrath team. While Lana discovers her roots, nothing fills the void Blazewrath’s cancelation has left in Victoria. But it’s up to their team and the Bureau to protect their dragons.

Each of Us a Desert by Mark Oshiro: Xochital is destined to wander the desert alone. Her one desire: to share her heart with a kindred spirit. One night, Xo’s wish is granted—in the form of Emilia, the cold and beautiful daughter of the town’s murderous mayor. But when the two set out on a magical journey across the desert, they find their hearts could be a match… if only they can survive the nightmare-like terrors that arise when the sun goes down.

Fire with Fire by Destiny Soria: A contemporary fantasy about two sisters, Dani and Eden Rivera, who were raised to be fierce dragon slayers but end up on opposite sides of the impending war when one sister forms an unlikely, magical bond with a dragon.

The First 7 (The Last 8 #2) by Laura Pohl: After leaving Earth, now devastated by an alien attack, and exploring the galaxy, Clover Martinez and her fellow teen survivors return home to find crystal formations in the soil that are threatening to destroy the planet, and a colony of survivors who are not who they seem.

Five Midnights by Ann Davila Cardinal: If Lupe Dávila and Javier Utierre can survive each other’s company, together they can solve a series of grisly murders sweeping though Puerto Rico. But the clues lead them out of the real world and into the realm of myths and legends.

The Grief Keeper by Alexandra Villasante: To have her family’s asylum request accepted, 17-year-old Marisol participates in a risky experiment to become a grief keeper, taking another’s grief into her own body to save a life.

The Healer by Donna Freitas: Manifesting astonishing healing powers that cause some people to consider her a saint, Marlena Oliveria struggles with edicts that prevent her from attending school, having friends and falling in love when she meets a boy who makes her question what she is willing to sacrifice.

Hollywood Witch Hunter by Valerie Tejeda: When a coven bent on retaining their youth must sacrifice the beautiful, and rich women of Southern California, a society of witch hunters will try to protect humans from a great evil uprising.

Incendiary by Zoraida Cordova: As Renata Convida grows more deeply embedded in the politics of the royal court, she uncovers a secret in her past that could change the entire fate of the kingdom–and end a costly war.

Illusionary (Hollow Crown #2) by Zoraida Córdova: Reeling from betrayal, Renata Convida is a girl on the run. With few options and fewer allies, she reluctantly joins forces with none other than Prince Castian, her most infuriating and intriguing enemy.

Infinity Son by Adam Silvera: In the Bronx, two brothers, Emil and Brighton, get caught up in a magical war generations in the making.

Infinity Reaper (Infinity Cycle #2) by Adam Silvera: Emil and Brighton Rey defied the odds. When Brighton drank the Reaper’s Blood, he believed it would make him invincible, but instead the potion is killing him. In Emil’s race to find an antidote that will not only save his brother but also rid him of his own unwanted phoenix powers, he will have to dig deep into his past lives.

Iron Cast by Destiny Soria: In 1919 Boston, best friends Corinne and Ada perform illegally as illusionists in an infamous gangster's nightclub, using their "afflicted" blood to con Boston's elite, until the law closes in.

Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Cordova: Alex is a bruja and the most powerful witch in her family. . When a curse she performs to rid herself of magic backfires and her family vanishes, she must travel to Los Lagos to get her family back.

The Last 8 by Laura Pohl: After an alien attack devastates the Earth, pilot and future astronaut Clover Martinez bands with seven other teens to survive.

Lobizona by Romina Garber: As Manuela Azul uncovers her own story and traces her real heritage all the way back to a cursed city in Argentina, she learns it’s not just her U.S. residency that’s illegal… .it’s her entire existence.

Lost in the Never Woods by Aiden Thomas: When children start to go missing in the local woods, eighteen-year-old Wendy Darling must face her fears and a past she cannot remember to rescue them in this novel based on Peter Pan.

The Mind Virus (Wired #3) by Donna Freitas: Skylar Cruz has managed to shut down the body market that her sister Jude opened, and to create a door to allow App World citizens reentry into the Real World. But as tensions between the newly mingling people escalate, she s not sure if it was the right decision after all. Still reeling from Kit’s betrayal, she s not sure of anything anymore.

Miss Meteor by Tehlor Kay Mejia & Anna-Marie McLemore: Two friends, Lita Perez or Chicky Quintanilla, one made of stardust and one fighting to save her family’s diner, take on their small town’s 50th annual pageant in the hopes that they can change their town’s destiny, and their own.

The Mirror Season by Anna-Marie McLemore: Graciela Cristales meets Lock, a boy who was sexually assaulted at the same party as her, and they find their fates unexpectedly intertwined during a month of vanishing trees, enchanted pan dulce, and inherited magic.

More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera: After enduring his father's suicide, his own suicide attempt, broken friendships, and more in the Bronx projects, Aaron Soto, sixteen, is already considering the Leteo Institute's memory-alteration procedure when his new friendship with Thomas turns to unrequited love.

Never Look Back by Lilliam Rivera: An Afro-Latinx retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice set in the Bronx. Pheus is a bachata-singing dreamer who falls in love with Eury, a girl who lost everything in Hurricane Maria and is haunted by the trauma—and by an evil spirit.

Nocturna by Maya Motayne: In the Latinx-inspired kingdom of Castallan, face-changing thief Finn Voy and grief-stricken Prince Alfehr must race to vanquish a dark magic they have unleashed.

Oculta (A Forgery of Magic #2) by Maya Motayne: After joining forces to save Castallan from an ancient magical evil, Alfie and Finn reunite once again to preserve Castallan’s hopes for peace with Englass. But will they be able to stop sinister foes before a new war threatens their kingdom?

Pitch Dark by Courtney Alameda: Tuck Durante, a shipraider, and Lana Gray, a curator, must work together to try to rescue a space capsule hijacked by nightmarish creatures who kill with a scream.

Rated by Melissa Grey: For the students at the prestigious Maplethorpe Academy, every single thing they do is reflected in their Ratings System. But when an act of vandalism sullies the front doors of the school, it sets off a chain reaction that will shake the lives of six special students – and the world beyond.

Sanctuary by Abby Sher & Paola Mendoza: In a near future dystopian America set 2030, 16-year-old Vail and her brother must escape a xenophobic government to find sanctuary in California.

The Savage Dawn (Girl at Midnight #3) by Melissa Grey: A darkness has entered the world and the Dragon Prince is wreaking havoc wherever she goes. With the war upon her, Echo must use every bit of her firebird powers or risk losing those she holds dear.

Seven Deadly Shadows by Courtney Alameda & Valynne E. Maetani: A contemporary fantasy set in Japan, about Shinto temple priestess Kira Fujikawa, who must seek the aid of seven demons in order to protect her village and the world from an ancient evil.

Shadow City (The City of Diamond and Steel #2) by Francesa Flores: Aina Solís has fought her way to the top of criminal ranks in the city of Kosín by wresting control of an assassin empire owned by her old boss, Kohl. But Kohl will do anything to get his empire back.

The Shadow Hour (The Girl at Midnight #2) by Melissa Grey: With the firebird awakened, the war has become even more dangerous for Echo and her friends. There is a darkness spreading too and staying in hiding might not be enough to keep them alive.

Shadowshaper by Daniel Jose Older: When her summer plans are interrupted by supernatural phenomena, Puerto Rican teen Sierra Santiago finds herself in a battle with the killer targeting her family of shadowshapers who believes she is hiding their greatest secret.

Shadowhouse Fall (Shadowshaper #2) by Daniel Jose Older: While working on her shadowshaping skills, Sierra Santiago is beginning to think she may need all the skill she can summon because it seems that when she channeled hundreds of spirits through herself in order to defeat Wick, she woke up something very powerful and very unfriendly and put her family and friends at risk.

Shadowshaper Legacy (Shadowshaper #3) by Daniel Jose Older: Sierra Santiago and the shadowshapers have been split apart, but a war is brewing among the houses. As old fates tangle with new powers, Sierra will have to harness the Deck of Worlds and confront her family’s past if she has any hope of saving the future and everyone she loves.

Shutter by Courtney Alameda: When a routine assignment goes awry, 17-year-old ghost hunter Micheline Helsing is infected with a curse and on the run, pursued as a renegade agent by her monster-hunting father, with only seven days to exorcise the entity or be destroyed body and soul.

Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland: A Mexican American teenage girl discovers profound connections between immigration, folklore, and alien life, when a spacecraft crashes in front of her car…and it’s carrying her long-lost mom, who’s very much alive.

Tigers, Not Daughters by Samantha Mabry: Loosely inspired by the story of King Lear and his daughters, set in San Antonio, Texas, following the Torres sisters, struggling to escape their tyrannical father’s claustrophobic world while dealing with the loss of their eldest sister, whose troubling death continues to haunt—perhaps even literally—the loved ones left behind.

Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson: While investigating the supposed suicides of her best friend, Riley, and mean girls June and Dayton, 16-year-old Wiccan Mila Flores accidentally brings them back to life.

Unplugged by Donna Freitas: When she moves from the Virtual World to the Real one, Skylar Cruz discovers that her body is both exquisite and valuable -- a dangerous combination in a place where bodies are sought after in sinister ways.

Wayward Witch (Brooklyn Brujas #3) by Zoraida Cordova: Rose Mortiz begins to discover the scope of her powers, the troubling truth about her father’s past, and the sacrifices he made to save her sisters. But if Rose wants to return home so she can repair her broken family, she must figure out how to heal the land of Adas, a fairy realm hidden in the Caribbean Sea, first.

The Weight of Feathers by Anna-Marie McLemore: Although Lace Paloma knows all about the feud between the Palomas and the Corbeaus, she finds herself falling for Cluck Corbeau when he saves her life while both families are performing in the same town.

We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia: When she is asked to spy for a resistance group working to bring equality to Medio, Daniela Vargas, a student at the Medio School for Girls, questions everything she's worked for.

We Unleash the Merciless Storm (We Set the Dark on Fire #2) by Tehlor Kay Mejia: La Voz operative Carmen Santos is forced to choose between the girl she loves, Dani, and the success of the rebellion she’s devoted her life to.

When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore: As odd as everyone considers Miel and Sam, even they stay away from the Bonner girls, four beautiful sisters rumored to be witches. Now they want the roses that grow from Miel's skin, convinced that their scent can make anyone fall in love. And they're willing to use every secret Miel has fought to protect to make sure she gives them up.

Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore: A novel of magical realism, the Nomeolvides women have tended the lust estate grounds of La Pradera which they’ve grown for generations, until the reemergence of a family curse starts to makes the men they love disappear, again.

#authors of color #latinx authors #booklr #book recs #book recommendations #yalit

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eirasummers · 2 years ago

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He compartido 6851 publicaciones este 2022

¡Son 159 más que en 2021!

76 publicaciones originales (1 %)

6775 reblogueos (99 %)

Estos son los blogs que más he reblogueado:

@missbonekitty

@kokone12

@tisafinedayforsimping

@cloudofdarkness

@simps-reblogs

He etiquetado 3787 publicaciones en 2022

Solo el 45 % de mis publicaciones no incluye ninguna etiqueta

#twst: 1653 publicaciones

#lmao: 476 publicaciones

#<3: 379 publicaciones

#om: 217 publicaciones

#mxtx: 200 publicaciones

#enstars: 150 publicaciones

#my art: 143 publicaciones

#cute!: 125 publicaciones

#gi: 96 publicaciones

#aww: 76 publicaciones

La etiqueta más larga tiene 137 caracteres

#but soon i realized i could just take the jeans off and just sleep in underwear so i started doing that when it happened after that hahah

Mis publicaciones más populares este 2022:

He made me go to pity but I GOT HIM! 🎉🎉🎉

I'm working on a drawing of him lately, I'll try to finish it soon as celebration~ Or at least finish it before the event ends xD

8 notas. Fecha de publicación: 14 de noviembre de 2022

I was about to sleep but got hit with depressing sad thoughts....

Hopefully I can push them down and fall asleep 😢

8 notas. Fecha de publicación: 10 de abril de 2022

I usually don't post much of my random happenings here buuuuut

MY SON CAME HOME!!!

It only took 40 pulls, I was blessed 🙏🙏🙏 I'm now working on a drawing to thank him for coming ♡

12 notas. Fecha de publicación: 31 de enero de 2022

Twst questions

I was tagged by @deeva-arud here, but the post was getting long so I decided to answer them in a new one. I hope that's ok! Here we go:

Would you be a mer, a beastman, a fae, or a human? (or other!)

Mmm… maybe a lioness beastwoman?? If we're being actually realistic it would be a simple human but we're having fun here hahah

Would you be at rsa or nrc?

I don't really fit completely in either, but since RSA would be to stuck up, probably NRC.

What dorm would you belong to?

Ignihyde, but I refuse. I wish it were Savanaclaw, but I won't be xD

What character(s) would you be best friends with?

I would probably get along best with Rook? And Epel too. I'd probably get along with Cater and Kalim too, even if they'd be too extroverted for my poor introverted soul hahaha Also… Trey too. He seems nice to hang out with.

What character(s) would you hate?

Well, I already can barely stand Idia and Azul without knowing them in person… so probably them lol

What character(s) would you date?

Well, the dream would be Vil, but he wouldn't like me back xDDD So maybe Leona or Ruggie?? None of them would like me back tho hahaha

What would Floyd’s nickname be for you?

I am so bad at thinking this stuff, but my friend Sha always associates me with sharks, so we'll go with that one even if Floyd would not give me that one in a million years XDD

And Rook’s?

Again, really bad at these. Maybe something like "Dame verte"??

What twst character(s) are you most like? (personality-wise)

Jamil, definitely.

Which subject(s) do you think you would excel at?

All the Sciency ones, Biology, Potions, Alchemy…

What club would you join?

Mountain Lover's Club. Maybe also drop in the Light Music Club sometimes~

How do you think you would survive in twisted wonderland/what would your life be like in general?

I'd just have a normal quiet life. Just minding my own business at school, not really trying too hard not lazying too much (let's go with that xD). Just a normal person from a normal background hahaha

[Optional!] What would your unique magic be?

Nothing really specific comes to mind, but some kind of healing magic, for sure~ Tagging: @kokone12 @missbonekitty @kirayamidemon @chervtheherb @anevilbunnyinthehat @fumikomiyasaki @atwstedstory @evilcokito @rozengrotto and anyone else who wants to do it! (Also, you can ignore the tag too xD)

15 notas. Fecha de publicación: 30 de septiembre de 2022

Mi publicación más popular de 2022

I've been using Riddle and Azul's double duo a lot for the training camp battles and they're so op 🙏

Azul's card is my friend Milka's card~ I couldn't pass these battles without her 😌

32 notas. Fecha de publicación: 5 de marzo de 2022

Descubre tu resumen del 2022 en Tumblr →

#tumblr2022 #resumen del año #mi resumen del 2022 en tumblr #tu resumen del año en tumblr #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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robininthelabyrinth · 4 years ago

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Now I want the story where NMJ is half war god and NHS is half fox spirit, thank you so much xD

based on this tumblr post and Lao Nie’s decision to refer to WRH as A-Han in this one ficlet

on ao3

Nie Zonghui had long ago suspected that his Sect Leader was a madman, but he didn’t really know it for certain until the first time he lost the man while on a bodyguarding mission – his first, and a great honor.

Supposedly.

“It’s all right,” his father said, looking long-suffering, when he reported back in distress. “He’s an adult, our sect leader, and this is a small city with no major threats in the middle of some idiosyncratic festival celebration for some goddess or another. How much damage can he really do before he sobers up?”

Nie Zonghui stared at his father, then turned to his mother, who was also staring at her husband with an expression of sincere incredulity.

“Lots,” she supplied. “Lots and lots and lots, and that’s assuming he doesn’t get himself killed in the meantime. Why would you even say that?”

“He’s our sect leader, have some respect.”

“I respect the boss bull of the herd, too, but it doesn’t mean I let it go wandering around the fields wherever it pleases!” She shook her head, snorting in a manner not entirely unlike a bull herself. “Well, if we’re very lucky, maybe our cousin will knock up a cow while he’s out and about rather than just breaking things. We could use a direct heir already; he’s not getting any younger.”

“We could use him being properly married is what we could use. I don’t understand why he’s so resistant – ah, Zonghui, you’re still here? Go gather some cultivators and go look for him, but don’t kick up any fuss, and worry too much if you can’t find him at once. He’ll be back to business soon enough.”

He was, if by “soon enough” one meant “after nearly ten days” and by “back to business” one meant “still drunk off his ass and waxing rhapsodic about some girl he met and possibly married”.

“Yes, yes, I’m sure the sun shines out of her ass,” Nie Zonghui’s father said, his face stormy. “You still could’ve told us where you went. Look what you did to poor Zonghui, he’s been wearing down his heels pacing in worry over you!”

“Oh, heels, yes, did I mention that my gorgeous goddess had amazing legs, too?” their sect leader asked with a soppy smile and stars in his eyes, totally uninterested in any of their petty complaints. “She could kill a man with them – oh, but I would die a happy man between those thighs…!”

“Zonghui, go guard the outside door,” his mother told him. “Also, tell his younger sister that she might need to be sect leader sooner than she’d hoped, because I’m going to murder this fucking –”

Nie Zonghui was there, too, when ten months later his new little baby cousin was (metaphorically) ditched on their doorstep.

The entire thing was entirely too dramatic for his taste, and yes, he was aware that as a person who chose to dual wield sabers he had very little room to criticize others for being overly dramatic, however correct he might be.

They had been fighting bandits – barely disguised mercenaries, really, probably paid off by the Wen sect to harass them – in what had turned into a particularly bad situation. Three separate regiments had joined together to take advantage of a terrible thunderstorm and ambush them at all once and them with their backs against a raging river, swollen with rain to the precipice of flooding, with no way to retreat except by fleeing on their sabers, abandoning the common people they were protecting and losing all face.

The sect leader had been raging on the battlefield, saber in hand, but even he had seen that they would need to shortly choose between death and dishonor; Nie Zonghui, close by his side, had seen how his face was split with a terrible scowl as he wracked his brain for more options.

Then there had been a terrible roar of thunder, and then a flash of light that had blinded them all.

Nie Zonghui had immediately noted the anomality of it, thunder first and lightning second, and wondered it if it was some sort of array working against them, especially when the light had not faded away but grown brighter, causing searing pain in his eyes that made him fall and clutch at his face. But he was a good soldier, loyal and true, and he forced his eyes open to squint into the night, looking to see he did not know what.

Through his sun-blindness, he vaguely thought he could see a silhouette not unlike that of a woman, ten feet tall and radiant as the sun, wearing a dress of nine colors and carrying a guandao in her hand that seemed to reach the clouds, but when he blinked again he saw nothing at all.

Or, well, he did see something: all of their enemies were headless, no matter where on the battlefield they were, their bodies dropping like a loosened string of coins where they had been standing and splattering anyone they were fighting with blood as they gawped at the sudden corpses.

Also, the sect leader was suddenly holding something in his arms when he hadn’t been before.

“What’s that?” Nie Zonghui asked, and the sect leader turned towards him. Nie Zonghui squinted, and suddenly wondered if this entire battle had been a very bad dream. “…is that a baby?”

“Yes,” the sect leader said, grinning broadly. “He’s my son!”

“He’s your what,” Nie Zonghui said.

“My son! I didn’t know about him, of course – apparently he came as something of a surprise to her as well – but anyway she thought that it would be more appropriate for me to raise him, all things considered. A baby doesn’t quite fit her lifestyle. What do you think of ‘Mingjue’ as a courtesy name? Good, yes?”

Nie Zonghui suddenly understood why his parents were always cursing all the time.

“I don’t see why I need another wife,” the sect leader said. “I already have a son.”

“Don’t you want to give said son a mother?” Nie Zonghui’s mother asked, her arms crossed. “One that isn’t the Dark Lady of the Nine Heavens, the war goddess you somehow managed to knock up without getting killed?”

“She never specified that she was –”

“Someone needs to be Nie-furen,” the sect leader’s younger sister interrupted, “because I am sick and tired of doing the job, and it’s a little difficult to ask a goddess to do it. So you are going to find yourself another one that’s a little closer to the ground this time, you understand me?”

The sect leader nodded and agreed, which was universally agreed upon to be the only appropriate reaction when his beloved meimei said something in that particular tone of voice.

(He did, after a suitable period of time, state that he wanted to make clear that there was no actual evidence that he had knocked up Jiutian Xuannü and that it was quite plausible that the mother of his heir was nothing more than a rogue cultivator of particular strength and possibility even immortality. If Baosan Sanren had managed it, why not someone else?)

At any rate, they brought him several pictures of women that might fit the bill and who would not be too offended at being asked to be a secondary wife – their sect leader swore up and down that he had performed bows with the mother of his first son, rendering him legitimate, and anyway no one was in the mood to see if the maybe-a-goddess would take offense to someone calling her child a bastard – but none seemed to catch their sect leader’s interest.

“Consider visiting a few brothels,” Nie Zonghui’s great-uncle suggested. “Anything to get you back in the habit of thinking about women of a less divine nature – though of course we’d prefer that she be literate.”

The sect leader scowled and stalked off to go night-hunting instead.

“I don’t like brothels,” he said to Nie Zonghui as they made their way through an especially deserted mountain valley in search of something that had murdered all the local mensfolk in the surrounding villages with especial viciousness. “Surely there’s an option in between.”

Nie Zonghui preferred his sabers to either men or women, but he obediently wracked his brain to think of where people in stories and famous songs found their wives. “Innkeeper’s daughters?” he finally suggested.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the sect leader scoffed, but the very next day, he decided to break his usual habit of staying out in the wild no matter the weather in favor of taking shelter from the encroaching storm in a small inn right at the base of an especially lonesome and nasty-looking cliff.

“We’re always happy to have guests,” the innkeeper said with a somewhat sinister smile – he was pale as a ghost in the guttering candlelight, and his lips looked very red. “My daughter will show you to your rooms.”

The daughter in question was inhumanly beautiful: small and graceful, with a fox’s face and dark hair that fell to her knees.

“Wow,” the sect leader said, staring at her. “You know, I think you could kill me with those nails of yours.”

Nie Zonghui took a look and agreed with the sentiment, seeing that her nails were as long as claws and looked just as sharp, but apparently he and the sect leader had somewhat different interpretations of this sequence of events and plans on how to address it.

Namely, Nie Zonghui pointed out that the lady was obviously some sort of yao or maybe a gui and that she was probably the one seducing the local mensfolk, draining their yang energy and then slaughtering them, and therefore that it was undoubtedly their duty as cultivators – and cultivators of the Nie sect in particular – to put an end to her vile deeds through the swift application of their sabers. Furthermore, he explained, they should take care never to allow themselves to be alone with her in the process, lest she seek to entrance them with her seductive magics and lure them to their undoubtedly violent deaths.

The sect leader’s rebuttal to this line of logic was limited to “I’m the sect leader and if I want to bang the probably-a-ghost, I’m going to bang the ghost and there’s nothing you can do to stop me”.

Amazingly enough, the sect leader did not end up dead the next day – the innkeeper looked just as surprised as Nie Zonghui felt – and instead announced, very happily, that he was planning on marrying her.

“You what,” the innkeeper said, staring at his very smug-looking ‘daughter’. In light of dawn, she was wearing a dress of many colors with a foxfur ruff, and her beauty was almost painful to behold.

“You why,” Nie Zonghui moaned.

“You shut up,” the sect leader told him. “I’ll have you know that my lady here is very clever, literate and well-learned, and she doesn’t at all mind being the second wife. Weren’t you one of the ones on my case about getting a Nie-furen to help managing things back home?”

“I didn’t think we needed to specify that the person in question didn’t murder a lot of people!”

“Isn’t his first wife supposedly a war goddess?” the lady inquired, her clever eyes dancing in amusement.

“Well…yes…”

“Also, all those men deserved it,” she said. After a brief pause, she added, “In my opinion as a totally unrelated observer, of course.”

“See?” the sect leader said, putting his arm around her waist. “No problem. Anyway, she’ll stick to killing bad people from now on, it’s fine.”

The lady smiled. There were many teeth in that smile, and they were very sharp.

“If she doesn’t, I’ll have my first wife discipline her,” the sect leader added and her smile abruptly disappeared.

Nie Zonghui coughed into his hand, but reluctantly admitted that maybe this wouldn’t turn out to be as bad as all that.

“Huaisang is a lovely name,” Nie Zonghui’s mother said, being the best of them at diplomacy when she put her mind to it, although admittedly it was something she did only very rarely. “I think we were just expecting something a little different, that’s all.”

“Possibly something a little more fox related,” Nie Zonghui’s father said.

“Please,” the sect leader’s second wife said. “That would be gauche.”

They looked at her.

“…all of my suggestions along those lines got rejected,” she admitted, and glared at the small shrine in the corner as if it had personally wronged her. In this context, it very well might have.

“Is there anything we should keep an eye out for?” Nie Zonghui said, watching his little cousin carry around his even littler cousin under his arm as if he were a sack of potatoes and not a baby that hadn’t yet had its first month celebration. He would have interfered but for the fact that little Nie Huaisang seemed to be notably more in control of his various limbs than the usual infant. “A tail, for instance?”

“Oh, no,” the second lady said. “Nothing like that.”

“Great,” Nie Zonghui said. “I’m glad to hear it.”

“It’s very rare for fox children to achieve a grand plot worthy of a tail in their first lifetime.” A pause. “From what I understand, that is.”

“Great,” Nie Zonghui said. “…great.”

“You’ll take good care of him when I’m gone, won’t you?” she asked, and when they all looked at her, smiled. “Not for another year or two, don’t worry, but I really can’t stay here that long. Sometimes, a girl’s got urges she has to take care of.”

“The sort of urges where we’d need to hunt down a mysteriously appearing fox yao for having murdered a lot of people?”

“I already promised to stop killing people,” she said sulkily. “Although I do think I made some plausible arguments in favor of a little bit of entirely justified murder in connection with the Jin sect and maybe the Lan sect and, oh, the Jiang sect –”

“Please don’t.”

“It’s not my fault your Great Sects are all headed by men who wrong women.”

“You’re not wrong,” Nie Zonghui’s mother said, and Nie Zonghui’s father looked alarmed. “But still, don’t.”

“You’re such spoilsports. But no, as it happens, it’s getting to that time when I need to return home for a while to pay my respects to the older generation.”

“How often does that happen?” Nie Zonghui’s father asked. “Once a century?”

“A gentleman shouldn’t ask a lady her age,” she sniffed. “At any rate, my family home is rather far away and they’re fairly insular, so I’ll probably be gone for at least a decade or so. I’d take the baby with me, but, well, you know, long travel and all. He’s better off sticking with his father.”

“All right,” Nie Zonghui’s mother said. “We understand, and we’ll help take care of him as best we can.”

“I’m glad.”

“We have only one thing to ask of you in return.”

Their second lady arched her delicate eyebrows.

Nie Zonghui’s mother smiled. “You be the one to tell your sister-in-law that you’re leaving your post.”

“…you know, on second thought, maybe I can push my departure out a few more years…”

“Before you say anything, I want to be clear right now that I don’t need a third wife,” their sect leader said. “I’m fine.”

“Sect Leader,” Nie Zonghui’s mother said, not unaffectionately. “You’re not allowed a third wife.”

“And therefore – wait, really?” he asked, a little skeptically. “You’re not concerned about me?”

“Oh, we’re very concerned about you,” Nie Zonghui’s father said. “But not in that specific respect. Some celibacy would probably be good for you, at least in terms of increasing your life expectancy.”

“…my sister is lying in wait with a cleaver to make sure she doesn’t have to take on the duties of Nie-furen again, isn’t she.”

“I’m not discounting that possibility, but don’t worry about it, it’s fine, we’ll talk to her. The Lan sect haven’t had a proper hostess in years either, we can just say we’re following their example.”

The sect leader eyed his cousins beadily. “They haven’t had a proper sect leader in years, either.”

“No, you don’t say,” Nie Zonghui’s mother said dryly. “What a coincidence -”

“You have two fine sons,” Nie Zonghui’s father said hastily. “That seems like enough, really.”

“You don’t think they need a mother…?”

“Sect Leader,” Nie Zonghui interjected politely. “While we admit that it may be within your capabilities to be able to find a mother willing to deal with one step-son who has been waiving around a saber taller than he is since he learned to walk and has a penchant for the unyielding, unmerciful and very violent application of the norms of divine justice –”

Nie Mingjue’s presence bolstered the spirit of good men, while his gaze seemed to make evildoers itch. He was the most earnestly good person Nie Zonghui had ever met, and also one of the most stiff and unbending in respect to what he believed should and should not be done.

Unfortunate that his standards didn’t seem to match up to the needs of either human law or diplomacy…

“– as well as another who can scheme circles around anyone and persuade them of anything as long as he puts his mind to it and only doesn’t because he’s too busy lazing around in the sun to bother –”

Nie Huaisang liked to file his nails down to something that looked quite normal, but they grew sharp quickly enough if he wasn’t paying attention, and he had a penchant for pranks. There was nothing quite as unnerving as running into a sudden and unexpected ambush and then suddenly hearing the shrill peal of a fox’s laughter, hidden behind a scholarly fan.

“– but all things considered, we’d really rather you - didn’t.”

His mother and father nodded fervently.

“Good,” the sect leader said, though he still looked suspiciously at them as if he thought they were hiding something. “Good. As long as we’re agreed.”

Nie Zonghui walked in on his sect leader pinning the Wen sect leader to a wall, murmuring something in a low voice with a very particular smile on his face, and then he turned around and walked right back out again.

The sect leader of the Wen sect might appear beautiful and young, but he was at least a generation older than the Nie sect leader. Not that that had stopped the latter from relying on their respective positions to refer to him in startlingly intimate terms – my dear A-Han, the sect leader would say with a touch of wickedness that reminded one of his second son and the tiger gall bravery of his first – and while at first the Wen sect leader had taken it as a challenge to his authority, an act of brash insolence, it appeared that they had progressed beyond that.

That the Wen sect leader already had three wives and two concubines apparently didn’t present any obstacles either – except perhaps in what those poor women might have to endure from their husband when he returned from the wretched teasing he was enduring. Nie Zonghui felt a bit of pity for them.

Shortly thereafter, he felt a bit of pity for himself. The Wen sect had long dreamed of dominating the cultivation world and sought to increase their influence with the other sects through underhanded means, with the Nie sect opposing them at every turn. Even if war was not on the immediate horizon, the wise could smell its distant approach in the air - the best estimates said that it would take another decade or two to arrive, unless the Nie sect leader took an especially hard stance.

It appeared, however, that the Nie sect leader had chosen to take a different sort of…hard stance.

Ugh.

Maybe Nie Zonghui could conspire to throw his sect leader into a cage with a live tiger in heat next time he felt in the mood. It’d probably be less dangerous.

Nie Zonghui had assumed that the first person to talk to him about what he had seen would be his sect leader, even if it was only to remind him of the general rule that the sect leader had ultimate power and therefore could exercise his own bad judgment in deciding to fuck whoever he wished, but instead it was the Wen sect leader that found him later that afternoon.

A flush had yet to fully fade from his cheeks, and Nie Zonghui raised his eyes to the ceiling to avoid looking directly at the man in front of him.

He did not want to know. Others might, given that no one had ever complained about the looks of either party, but he himself had realized long ago that he had no interest in matters of the flesh under any circumstances; he was very content with that conclusion.

“Is there some service this one can provide to Sect Leader Wen?” he asked politely, and it was only when the sect leader flushed again that he realized belatedly that his words could be misconstrued. After all, his own sect leader had probably already made a similar offer regarding the provision of services…

“Your sect leader has a sister, doesn’t he?” the other man asked, his voice tight and his hands in even tighter fists. “I’m not misremembering that?”

“He does,” Nie Zonghui responded honestly, and not without sympathy for the Wen sect leader’s position. He was given to understand that making certain belated discoveries regarding one’s own preferences could be highly disconcerting, particularly later in life. “But she’s rather different in kind than what you may be thinking, so it won’t work out that way. It wouldn’t work even if she wasn’t already married, which she is.”

After a moment of thought, he added, “Also, consider your predecessors.”

The Wen sect leader’s eyes narrowed.

Really, it was the sect leader’s own damn fault that he got himself murdered.

#mdzs #lao nie #nie zonghui #madame nie 1 and 2 #wen ruohan #my fic #my fics #the alternate name of this fic was #a goddess a yao and a tyrant walk into a bar to bitch about their boyfriend #but I refrained #atwitchofthewrist

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phantomato · 3 years ago

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Five Tom Riddle Crossover Fics to Read

Tom Riddle is a difficult character to ship. For those of us who want to see pairings beyond the Big Two (Tomarry and Tomione), canonical options peter out relatively quickly. Sure, we can invent our own pairings by fleshing out side characters, but sometimes, the itch is best scratched by borrowing from another canon.

And it makes sense for Tom more than nearly anyone else in HP. Tom was born into an era that is the subject of so much literature, so it’s easy to find another person kicking around postwar Europe if that’s your goal. He’s an archetypal character, the villain seeking immortality, and can be matched against other villains with the same aims. Hell, even his quest to recover lost artifacts turns into the basis for two of these works—Tom Riddle has the perfect combination of a recognizable context and character model, plus the ambiguity of his canon timeline, to slot him alongside so many other fictional figures.

I want to pause on some of these themes for a second. Immortality or relationship to age, for one, is something that comes up in three of these pairings: the Darkling and Koschei the Deathless are both immortal characters in their own canons, and Edmund Pevensie is not immortal but has aged and de-aged repeatedly in his travels to and from Narnia. The HP series doesn’t give us nearly this wealth of different perspectives on age and immortality, which is fair—HP makes it clear that immortality is unnatural and undesirable, and Flamel is notably a ‘good person’ because of his willingness to accept his own death—but for a character as obsessed with the idea as Tom, some emotions can only be explored when you match him with another character who has a complicated relationship to aging. Even someone like Indiana Jones, not immortal and not trying to be, has an interesting perspective to bring to a story because he has seen so many other quests for power gone terribly awry.

Of course, the other thing we get from crossover pairings is the ability to match Tom with a villainous character. And whether you’re a fan of conflict at the start of a relationship or not, I think there’s something to be found in putting two villains together: moral arguments, when they exist, are rarely about whether death is necessary but about what kinds of death are best used when; the entire concept of either a redemption arc or a breaking bad arc can be thrown out a window. It’s a space wherein our two villains are allowed to be themselves, and the reveal of the extent of each character’s villainy becomes a strange form of celebration. This is challenging to achieve if one sticks to HP canon alone, whereas crossovers are a fruitful space.

My selection methodology was to read every crossover fic with a clear focus on Tom Riddle or Voldemort on AO3. I found crossover pairings by visiting the meta pages for the Tom Riddle, Voldemort, and Tom Riddle | Voldemort tags—I may have missed some pairings for Tom Riddle, as the character has over 300 child relationship tags and AO3 cuts off at 300 displayed. If you know of any ships I missed and should check out, do tell! I’ll also make a note here that one of these fics is my own—if self-recs bother you, skip Bluebird.

The following five fics are ordered by wordcount. Let me know what you think!

Neurotic Virtuosi, by skazka

Crossover: Hannibal Rising (movie version). The wizarding world exists, and Tom and Hannibal encounter each other in non-magical Eastern Europe.

Summary: Tom and Hannibal ride the same train when Tom is hunting down the diadem. Tom shares an apple and thinks about keeping Hannibal.

Mature, <1k, Graphic Torture Fantasies

Why?: This is one of those pairings that I wouldn’t have thought to do when the characters were both young, but it’s so much better for that choice! The length of this fic means we only get a taste of their interactions, but what a taste it is. Tom’s internal fantasies are horrifying and described in a very erotic way, which fits both characters.

This also serves as an interesting vision of what Tom might have experienced during his world tour to find the diadem, a period we rarely get to see. I particularly like that the author chose to write it as frustrating and mostly fruitless; a Tom who is stymied and unsuccessful is a particular weakness of mine.

Two Sides of the Same Coin, by Anonymous

Crossover: Chronicles of Narnia. Both Hogwarts and Narnia are real, and the characters meet in Britain. The magic isn’t the same, but there’s mutual recognition.

Summary: Tom tries to use sex to seduce secrets out of Edmund. Edmund sees something reminiscent of his younger self, the version of him who could join the White Witch, in Tom Riddle.

Explicit, 2k

Why?: Edmund and Tom are a pairing made in crossover heaven, both boys of a similar age born into war in the same country and whose discoveries of magical worlds help them escape it. Both lust for power and make poor choices; Edmund canonically recovers and finds redemption from his actions, and Tom does not.

This fic wears the hat of something pure smut, starting in the middle of a sex scene and tagged with top/bottom roles, etc., and it is that and does that well. But give it a shot for Edmund’s reflection at the end, his hopeful musings that he can apply the lessons learned from Aslan to help Tom before Tom’s utterly lost. It’s a crossover ship with unbelievable potential for both characters, and this fic makes me want so much more.

Shedding Skin, by electric_typewriter

Crossover: Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente. Both the wizarding world and the magic of Deathless exist.

Summary: Tom meets Koschei before splitting his soul. They keep meeting, and Tom keeps attempting to match Koschei’s immortality.

Not Rated, 2k

Why?: Immortality via relocation or storage of souls is an idea that easily predates Harry Potter as a series, and seeing two different versions of the some core idea interacting with one another is precisely what crossovers exist to enable. Koschei as an immortal being that found his immortality in a way he considers superior is a fascinating concept, because it creates a power imbalance between them that leaves Tom always running to catch up. And Tom, poor Tom, feels like a desperate man, finding sensation only when he’s around Koschei and feeling nothing at any other time.

This reads a bit like you’re dissociating. The author uses descriptive language to keep the reader a little distant from the grounded reality of the events happening, which has the effect of keeping you focused on the metaphysical question of what it means to have part of a soul.

Bluebird, by Phantomato

Crossover: Shadow and Bone. S&B summoning powers instead of HP magic, set in the real world, with characters’ histories preserved.

Summary: Tom is the second sun summoner to exist, born long after the first gave up her powers and lived out her natural life. He tracks down the Darkling, the shadow summoner who never really died.

Explicit, 17k

Why?: Tom is an immortal being for at least part of his life, and his character arc is about pursuit of immortality, but he is fundamentally a young immortal, and is killed before he can graduate to old immortality. Aleksander, the Darkling, is canonically an old immortal, and his character arc is about the burden of living with the knowledge that you will likely always be alone. That loneliness sets the scene for the relationship between Tom and Aleksander, driving Aleksander’s behavior—he fundamentally believes he will always be alone, even an immortal like Tom passes through his life.

There is a high proportion of smut in this, serving in place of the emotional honesty that neither character can muster, and I recommend it for that. But the story also relies on investment in quiet everyday moments shared between the characters. It’s a fic told through behavior because both men are so cautious around one another, where they nevertheless manage to find sympathy for the other.

Riddles of the Dead, by Maeglin_Yedi

Crossover: Indiana Jones. Blends together the wizarding world and the mysticism present in Indiana Jones films.

Summary: Tom Riddle hires an expert archaeologist and gentleman adventurer, Dr. Indiana Jones, to help him pursue an artifact that might grant him immortality. There’s fucking, fighting, magic, snakes, and some difficult choices in store for our leading men.

Explicit, 18k, Angst

Why?: Maeglin Yedi has been a mainstay of the Tom Riddle/Lord Voldemort ficspace for nearly two decades, but an old crossover like this can unfortunately slip through the cracks. It shouldn’t! With an original publishing date in early 2005, this predates the concept of horcruxes, the knowledge of Tom’s early years at Wool’s orphanage, and, well, so much of what we would eventually learn about Tom Riddle as a person. It’s a testament to the author that the story manages to capture Tom’s character in such a way that he’s still fully recognizable to a current-day reader, despite working with so much less canon.

This fic is fun. It’s an adventure, featuring hazards and traps and assassination attempts that you would expect from an Indiana Jones film, but the magic and mystery never overwhelms the relationship at the core of this story. It’s set up beautifully, with a mirrored structure between the front and back halves of the fic that foreshadows the inevitable end of the story. Watching older, confident Indy seduce young, hungry Tom is a delight. One (possible) mark of a great Tom-centric fic, imo, is to be able to portray Tom enjoying the exchange of power, giving it to someone as well as taking it from them, and this Tom is able to revel in giving up some perceived power as he practices being vulnerable with Indy. The romance is quite sweet, especially considering that ‘angst’ tag at the top of the fic!

#tom riddle #tomato fic rec

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threecrowsinatrenchcoat · 4 years ago

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Plant Your Hope With Good Seeds

Dukeceit Week Day 3: Snakes/Bugs

Remus and Janus break up. But literally everyone knows that's not what they want. Everyone, including their plants.

AO3 Link: [here]

Word Count: 4337

Warnings: n/a

@dukeceitweek <3

Unknown Number

hey so i kno i said i wouldnt text u but rupert isnt doin good. can i bring him back? he misses u

Janus stared at the text for several minutes. Rupert was, of course, the Monstera Variegata that he and Remus had raised together all the way from propagation. It had been one of the pride and joys of their plant collection. Losing Rupert in the split had hurt almost as much as losing Remus.

...Almost.

Janus

Is it getting enough light? Remember it needed the grow light even next to the window.

Janus texted back against his better judgement. He and Remus were broken up. They’d agreed not to text for a while. They’d agreed to give each other space, get used to being apart.

It sucked, though. The apartment felt empty without Remus and half their plant collection.

Unknown Number

ya i kno. but i don’t have any south facign windows here. our place is better

Unknown Number

i mean ur place

Janus sighed morosely. Well, if it was for Rupert…

Janus

Fine. Rupert can come back.

Unknown Number

yay! ill be in town this weekend. ill bring him ok?

Janus

Ok.

And then Janus promptly threw his phone across the room.

Because here’s the thing. Janus and Remus were broken up. Remus had moved eight hours away and everything. He’d been accepted into the Nuclear Engineering graduate program a state away, and they had both heard too many horror stories about long-distance relationships to brother trying. So they’d had a very civil and mutual split. Janus kept the apartment. Remus took the TV. And they’d divided their plant family between them: they each kept their favorites, and Remus had taken the hardier plants, while Janus kept the ones that were likely not to survive an interstate move.

And then… Remus left.

And Janus had not immediately wanted him back. Not at all.

(And, of course, Janus was lying to himself.)

Remus texted him Saturday morning that he was on his way, and Janus spent the first few hours of the wait stress-cleaning. He then checked on every single plant in the apartment. Watered the ones that needed it. Rotated some of the more vivacious growers so that they wouldn’t lean full-body toward their light source. Moved his small army of Sansevierias out to the apartment balcony for some extra sun.

Then, when all that still failed to fill up the entire eight hours of waiting, he started stress-cooking. So by the time Remus texted that he’d just gotten off the highway, Janus had himself a pot of minestrone soup simmering on the stove, a tray of made-from-scratch lasagna in the oven, and was mixing up a batch of double chocolate chip cookies.

There was no way he was going to eat all this food himself, he realized. He was so used to booking big meals like this, because Remus ate like he was three people. And lasagna was his favorite.

“Oh, Jake, what am I doing?” he groaned to the N’Joy Pothos that cascaded down the side of the refrigerator. And then his doorbell rang.

Janus opened the door to find Remus, dancing awkwardly from foot to foot, with his face half-hidden behind the green-and-white leaves of Rupert.

“...Hey,” Remus said, sounding sheepish. Janus’ heart clenched.

“Hi,” he said. They stood there in the doorway for a full minute before Janus stepped back and motioned for Remus to follow. Remus hesitated, but obeyed.

“Uh… I’ll just…” Remus looked around. Janus hated how uncomfortable he looked. Until about two weeks ago, this had been Remus’ apartment, too. “Can I put him in his old spot?”

“Sure,” Janus replied with a nod. Rupert’s old spot had been in the bedroom, where the big, beautiful south-facing window let in a ton of light. He’d moved Venus de Milos, his Marble Queen Pothos, and La Hoya Jackson, the finicky Hoya Carnosa that Remus had wanted but didn’t expect to make the 8-hour drive without going into shock, to free up Rupert’s spot. Remus hesitated again, before he nodded awkwardly and wandered off to the bedroom, all three feet of plant and two gallons of soil in tow. Janus went to the oven and took out the lasagna.

“Howl looks good,” Remus said when he came back into the kitchen. Janus glanced up from where he was laying balls of cookie dough out onto baking sheets.

“Thank you,” he replied. Howl was their dramatic fiddle leaf fig tree, which had decided to throw a fit just before Remus left. “I switched it to a terracotta pot with peat moss and pearlite, and doubled its water intake. It seems to be tolerating it well.”

“Good.” There was a long pause. Then,” How are you?”

Janus looked back to the cookies. “I’m doing well,” he lied. “And you? Do you start class soon?”

“Next week,” Remus answered. “And, uh. Yeah, I’m doin’ good.” Another long pause. “Uh… I’ll just. Head out, I guess.”

“You could stay,” Janus blurted out. Shit. “For dinner, I mean.” He gestured to the tray of lasagna, fresh from the oven. “If you want.”

Remus gave him an uncharacteristically shy smile, then nodded slowly. He didn’t say anything, though, so Janus just gestured for him to take a seat at the table. And then he joined him, a plate of lasagna for each of them.

“So tell me, how’s living with Roman again?” Janus asked, a few bites into the meal, because he could not take the awkward silence a moment longer.

“It’s ok,” Remus answered. He shoveled another forkful of lasagna into his mouth. “This is really good, Jan.”

Janus smiled softly. “Thank you.” A pause. “Roman doesn’t mind all the plants?”

“Nah, he’s dating this guy Patton who apparently loves plants, so the apartment being full of houseplants is a huge plus to him now.”

“Good for him.” The oven timer went off, startling him slightly. He started to get up, but Remus waved him off.

“I got ‘em, you did all the cooking.”

Janus didn’t protest. Remus got up and took the cookies out of the oven. And he even moved them to a cooling rack like Janus had taught him to do. He came back to the table.

“How’s work?”

Janus sighed. “Oh, terrible as always,” he answered. “I really must start looking for a new job.”

“Finally getting fed up?” Remus teased. Janus rolled his eyes. More seriously, Remus continued, “You deserve better, Jan. You gotta find some place that treats you right and pays you what you’re worth.”

“Thank you, Remus.”

“And hey, just sayin’, I still think you’d make an excellent stripper.”

Janus snorted at that. “I haven’t fully ruled out that particular career change.”

They fell easily back into their usual banter, lingering late into the night over a dessert of milk and cookies. It was pushing 10pm when Remus glanced at his phone and cursed softly. Janus glanced at his phone as well.

“Ah, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you so late,” he said. Remus shrugged.

“Nah, it’s cool. Thanks for dinner, Jan. It was real good, as always.”

“Where are you staying?”

“Uh… well, the plan was to stay with Logan, but I guess he had some kind of family emergency, so I don’t wanna trouble him. I’ll probably see if I can find a hotel room.”

Janus’ brow furrowed at that. “Why don’t you just stay here?”

“Oh, uh. I don’t wanna trouble you. I kinda feel like I already overstayed my welcome a bit?”

“Nonsense. A hotel room will cost you at least $100 for the night, and that’s simply ridiculous,” Janus insisted. “You should just stay here.”

Remus worried at his lip, which Janus knew meant he was mulling over his options. Then, he nodded. “If it’s not a bother?”

“Of course not. You’re not a bother, Remus.”

Remus’ eyes softened, and he smiled. “Ok. Thank you. Oh… lemmie go get my overnight back outta my truck.”

When Remus came back inside, Janus had just about finished making up the couch.

“Hey, you don’t gotta get all fancy,” Remus teased. “You know I can sleep basically anywhere.”

“This is for me,” Janus replied. He fluffed up one of the pillows a bit more. “You take the bed.”

An odd look flashed across Remus’ face. “No way, Jan. I’m good on the couch.”

“Remus, you just drove eight hours, and you’re doing it again tomorrow. I am not letting you fuck up your back.”

‘I don’t-”

“Yes you do, no matter how often you say you can sleep anywhere,” Janus scoffed. “You can’t lie to me.”

Remus’ eyes softened, and after a moment, he sighed. “Ok, Jan. But what about you?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You hate sleeping on couches.”

“It’s only one night-”

“And don’t you work tomorrow?”

“Yes, but-”

“You’re going to be so grumpy at work without a proper night’s sleep.”

“I’m usually grumpy at work anyway,” Janus pointed out. Remus snorted.

“Ok, that’s true. But I don’t want you to be even grumpier,” he said. “Let’s just share the bed.”

Janus eyed him for a moment. This was a terrible idea. They should not do this.

“Ok,” Janus said anyway.

They got ready for bed in awkward silence, which just made Janus miss Remus’ long, rambling chatter that much more. When Janus finished in the bathroom, he found Remus sitting gingerly on what used to be his side of the bed. Janus came over and sat down on the other side.

“Hey, uh… thanks,” Remus said. “For lettin’ me stay.”

“Of course,” Janus answered. “I… I still think of you as a friend, Remus.”

At that. Remus grimaced slightly. He didn’t say anything, seeming unable to find the right words. Before he could, Janus pulled back the top blankets on the bed and laid down. After a moment, Remus did the same.

“Good night, Remus,” Janus said quietly.

“...Good night, Janus,” Remus answered. Then he reached over and shut off the light.

Remus played that night over and over in his head in the days after he got home, and each and every time, he was just as stumped.

He knew, in his brain, why he and Janus had broken up. It had been the only thing that made sense at the time, when the facts were just that Remus was moving away to pursue a lifelong dream, and Janus would never ever try to stop him from doing so. So they broke up. It made sense… right?

But… That morning, he’d woken up to Janus curled up in his arms, face smushed against Remus’ neck, and… Remus had completely forgotten why they had even broken up in the first place.

Remus was back at Roman’s apartment, now. Eight hours away in his own cold bed, arms empty of the man he loved, just staring at the ceiling. A sharp knock on his door snapped him out of his daze.

“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty,” Roman called. “Don’t you have class in like an hour?”

“Fuck!” Remus scrambled to get up, but succeeded only in rolling out of the bed.

“Don’t forget to lock the door when you leave,” Roman added. Clearly he was unconcerned by the loud “thump” of a body hitting the floor.

��Yup, got it,” Remus groaned in reply. He staggered, successfully this time, to his feet.

Getting dressed was a rushed affair of ‘grab whatever’s closest,’ and soon he emerged from the bedroom with one shoe on, the other in his hand, and his backpack slung over one shoulder. He rushed into the kitchen to grab the travel mug of coffee Janus always set out for him in the mornings. And then the realization hit: Janus didn’t live here.

Remus dropped his shoe.

The rest of the day went about as well as it could have gone without any coffee- that is to say, terribly. He got lost trying to get to campus, then he got lost again trying to get to class. Then he got stuck in traffic on the way back to Roman’s apartment. And then, to top it all off, the grocery store had been out of his favorite chips.

So here he was, mopey and chip-less, and fucking exhausted. He dumped his backpack and collapsed face-first onto the couch. Roman, who happened to be sitting on said couch, made a noise of protest.

“Move, I need to sulk,” Remus mumbled, though his voice was thoroughly muffled by Roman’s thigh, since that was where his face had landed.

“What on earth do you need to sulk for?” Roman asked incredulously. He moved to shove Remus off of him, but Remus went full ragdoll, and Roman couldn’t do a damn thing. “You are a grown man, you know.”

Remus turned his head just enough to stick his tongue out at Roman. Roman stuck his tongue out back.

“I had a terrible day, I earned a good sulk.”

“Didn’t like your classes?”

“Nah, they were great.”

“Professors?”

“Great.”

“Classmates?”

“Great.”

“Then Zeus Almighty, what are you so mopey-dopey about?” Roman remanded.

Remus squirmed around so he was laying on his back, head still in Roman’s lap, to look up at his brother. “So… uh… you promise not to get all, like. I told you so and shit?”

“You miss Janus!”

“No! I-”

“You do!” Roman crowed triumphantly. Remus rolled onto his side so he didn’t have to look at his brother’s dumb gloaty face.

“...Maybe,” he groaned. Abruptly, he clamored to his feet and started for the stairs. “I gotta go build a chair.”

“Carpentry won’t solve your relationship problems,” Roman called after him.

“I know,” Remus called back. “Wrong type of wood.” If Roman had a response to that, Remus was already out the door and didn’t have to hear it.

Patton found him out in front of the apartment building some time later, a jigsaw in hand, and a pile of cut wooden dowels at his feet.

“Hey, kiddo, what are you up to?”

Remus looked up from where he was balancing a plank of wood precariously across a milk crate, because his work table was one of the things he’d had to leave behind at Janus’ place.

“Oh, hey. Ro-bro’s upstairs.”

Patton gave him the sort of smile teachers gave to the kid they caught eating glue for the fourth time. “That doesn’t look super safe. Do you want any help?”

Remus took in Patton’s soft blue sweater and the dad-jeans from the nicer end of his closet, as well as the reusable grocery store bag that smelled suspiciously like some kind of lovely home-cooked meal; he shook his head. “You look dressed for a date night,” he said. “I don’t wanna fuck up two relationships this week.”

Patton’s eyes, impossibly, got even bigger and softer than they normally were, which honestly was quite the feat. He walked over to the stairs but, instead of making his way up to Roman’s apartment, he plopped down on the third step, facing Remus. Remus stared, bewildered.

“Uh, what’chu doin’ there, pops?”

“Well, it just sounded like you needed to talk,” Patton replied cheerfully. “So here I am.”

Remus stared a moment longer, somehow even more bewildered than before. “Uh…”

“I know I haven’t known you very long,” Patton continued. “But something tells me you’re the type of person who busts out the power tools when you’re upset.”

“How the hell can you tell that?”

Patton glanced over his shoulder, then leaned forward slightly. “Because,” he said, voice lowered conspiratorially. “I’m like that too.”

Remus blinked. “You?”

“Yup! I replaced all the tables and chairs in my house with ones I made myself after my last breakup,” Patton giggled. “Only two of them collapsed when I sat in them, too!”

Remus glanced down at the jigsaw in his hands, and then he sighed. He set it down, and went to sit next to Patton on the steps.

“Ok, well. Yeah, maybe I’m kinda upset.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Yeah? No? Maybe?”

“Yup, those are your three options!” Patton teased. Remus rolled his eyes.

“Ok, fine. You win, daddy-o. I’m upset because I miss my boyfriend. Or, well, my ex-boyfriend. I want him to be my boyfriend again.”

“Have you told him that?”

“Of course not,” Remus whined.

“Why not?”

“Because… I mean. It wouldn’t change anything. I still moved away. And I don’t even know if he’d want to be my boyfriend again either. Maybe he’s happier now.”

“You don’t know that,” Patton said gently. “Sure, maybe the circumstances aren’t the best right now, but if you both want it, things have a funny way of working out. But you have to talk to him.”

“I…” Remus paused. And then he sighed deeply. “I guess you’re right. Hey thanks, that did actually sorta help.”

Patton offered him a gentle smile. “Of course, Remus! Any time!”

“Hey!”

They both turned to see Roman standing at the top of the stairs, arms crossed.

“My own brother, hogging my boyfriend like this! The betrayal-”

“Relax, Ro, he’s not my type,” Remus shot back. “I prefer sarcastic little menaces.”

Patton giggled at that. He stood up and patted Remus on the shoulder. “I hope things work out,” he said. Remus smiled back.

“Yeah, I hope so too.”

Really, he just wanted Janus to be happy. Ideally with him, but if Janus was happier without him, well… so be it.

- - -

Janus was miserable.

“Dude, c’mon,” Virgil grumbled, immediately upon seeing the state of the apartment. “You’ve been watering your plants and filling the humidifiers, but you can’t be bothered to throw out your gross pizza boxes?” A pause. “Wait, you don’t even like pizza, what the hell.”

Janus just shrugged. After letting Virgil and Logan into the apartment, he’d gone straight back into blanket-burrito-on-the-couch mode. And really, he’d only bothered to get up and let them inside in the first place because Virgil had threatened to axe down the door- and Janus knew for a fact that Virgil owned multiple axes.

“I believe he is engaging in what is described as ‘emotional eating,’ or using food as a coping mechanism in a time of stress and emotional turmoil,” Logan said helpfully. Virgil just huffed.

“That’s fine and all, but Jesus Christ, dude.” He gestured around the livingroom where… ok, yeah, it was a mess.

“Did you two come here just to insult me?” Janus grumbled. His face was half-mashed into a pillow, though, so who knows how much of that was actually discernible.

“We came to make sure you were still alive,” Virgil snapped, indicating that at least most of what Janus had said was discernible. “You weren’t answering any texts.”

“Yes, and you called out of work three days in a row,” Logan added. “We are concerned for you, Janus.”

“I’m perfectly fine,” Janus lied from the comfort of his depression blanket burrito. He was not particularly surprised when neither Virgil or Logan looked even remotely convinced.

“Alright, drastic measure time,” Virgil growled. He walked over to the window, and picked up the young Burgundy Rubber Tree Janus had yet to name. Janus sat bolt upright.

“Virgil? Don’t you dare-”

Virgil walked past him and vanished down the hall. When he came back, his hands were empty, and he had a smirk on his face.

“Oh, fuck you,” Janus hissed. He dragged himself up off the couch to go rescue the poor thing, finding it stashed in the dark, windowless bathroom. When he came back to the livingroom, Virgil and Logan were sprawled across the couch.

“Ha ha, very funny.” Janus set the rubber tree back on the windowsill alongside the Snake Plant Army. “Ok, I’m up. Are you heathens happy now?”

“I take offense to that,” Logan muttered, while Virgil just crossed his arms and said, curtly, “Spill it.”

“Spill what?”

“Why are you so upset?”

“I’m not upset-”

“Falsehood,” Logan interrupted. “I have known you since high school, Janus, and I have never seen you like this before. It is highly alarming.”

“Is this about Remus?” Virgil asked.

“No,” Janus said immediately. “Of course not.”

Virgil and Logan exchanged a Look. Janus groaned.

“Fuck. Ok, fine. Maybe it is.”

“Was that so hard?” Virgil asked.

“Yes.”

“You-”

“Janus,” Logan interrupted Virgil’s retort. “It is my understanding that emotional distress is often alleviated through, as they say, ‘talking it out.’ It is clear you are not handling the break-up as well as you initially believed-”

“Of course I’m not!” Janus snapped. He took a deep breath, and turned back to the plants on his windowsill. Kaa, the Sansevieria Moonshine Remus had gotten for Janus as an anniversary present last year, was already leaning slightly toward the window again. He rotated it, and a few of the other snake plants on the sill. And then he realized the others had been quiet for far too long. He turned to find them both watching him with sympathetic expressions. “What?”

“Keep going,” Virgil prompted. Janus sighed. He felt exhausted.

“Of course I’m not,” he said again. “Because I love Remus.”

“And?” Virgil prompted.

“...And I didn’t want us to break up,” he finished, feeling glum. Wordlessly, Virgil stood up, and approached Janus, arms out. Janus stepped into the embrace. Nobody said anything; Janus didn’t cry, but he stood there for a long time. Then, he stepped back.

“Thank you,” he said, and he meant it. Virgil gave him a small smile. Logan cocked his head, seeming confused.

“I don’t understand. You just… needed a hug?”

“Hugs are great, Logan,” Virgil replied. “You should try them sometime- hey, where are you going?”

Janus strode past them both, beelining for his bedroom to find his laptop. Over his shoulder, he answered, “To fill out some job applications.”

- - -

Remus was outside building a new bookshelf- because Patton was moving in, and Roman's teenie-tiny sad little excuse for a bookshelf, which held only Disney DVDs and no actual books, wouldn’t suffice for all of Patton’s cookbooks- when his phone rang. Which was weird, because nobody ever called him, because he never fucking answered.

“Not interested, Mr. Spam Man,” he crooned over the sound of the generic iPhone ringtone. He was learning how to do kerf bending for this bookcase, and goddamn it he wasn’t going to be distracted by-

His phone started ringing again. He swore and ripped off his gloves to silence his phone. But as he did so, he realized the number flashing across his screen was a familiar one.

“Janus? Are you ok?” he answered the call, half panicked, because Janus hated phone calls almost as much as he did.

“Hi. Yes, everything’s fine.” Janus sounded slightly hysterical, which made Remus feel even more frantic. “Where are you?”

“I’m at Roman’s. Are you sure you’re ok-”

“Great, don’t leave. I’ll be right there.”

“What does that mean-” Remus demanded, but the line was already dead. Remus swore again. He briefly considered calling him back, because what the actual fuck was that all about, but he was only about 30 seconds into that brief consideration before a familiar car tearing through the apartment complex parking lot caught his attention. He quickly brushed as much of the sawdust off his clothes as he could because holy shit Janus had just parked right there in front of Roman’s apartment.

Remus watched, dumbfounded, as Janus scrambled out of his car- dressed in his very nice black suit and pale yellow button-up- and came running across the lawn toward where Remus was working. He had a tiny plant clutched to his chest.

“Uh, Jan, you good?” Remus asked. Janus stopped in front of him and doubled over, breathless, for a few moments. Then, he straightened up, and fixed Remus with a look of sheer determination.

“Remus. I want to get back together.”

Remus’ heart, the traitorous bastard, leaped up into his throat and blocked all his words from coming out.

“It’s… it’s ok if you don’t want that,” Janus continued. His look of determination faltered slightly. “It’s ok. But I needed to tell you. Because I love you, so much. And I… I didn’t want you to think I didn’t, even if you don't-”

Remus found his words abruptly. “Jan, fuck! I do! I do love you. I never stopped loving you. All I want is to be with you.”

Janus’ eyes softened. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Good, because I’ve just been offered a job here.”

Remus choked. Janus was eyeing him smugly. “You. Just like that, you got a job here?”

“Just like that,” Janus grinned. “I just came from the interview. They offered me a position on the spot.”

Remus couldn't help himself any longer. He lurched forward and pulled Janus tightly into his arms.

“Hey, be careful,” Janus said, though he made absolutely no effort to get out of Remus’ embrace. “You’ll crush our new son.”

Remus pulled back just enough to look at the small plant Janus held in his hands, and only then did his brain register what it was.

“Is! Is that-”

“Yes,” Janus replied, holding up the tiny Drosera Capensis seedling. Remus had wanted one of these for ages.

“For me?”

“Well, for us, ideally,” Janus answered, with a shy smile. “But, mostly for you, yes.”

Remus gently plucked the baby octopus plant- their new son!- from Janus’ hands, and placed it carefully on top of the milk crate that was serving as his carpentry workbench. Then, he hoisted Janus up off the ground and spun him around.

“Oh- Re-” Janus exclaimed, though he was laughing. “Put me down!”

“No!” Remus trilled. He spun Janus around once more. Then he just stood there, holding Janus, gazing up at him. Janus’ eyes grew soft. Slowly, he carded his fingers through Remus’ hair.

“Hey,” Janus said.

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

Remus set Janus down, but kept his arms still wrapped tightly around him. His heart felt warm.

“Hey.”

Janus looked up at him. “Yeah?”

“I love you, too.”

#dukeceit #dukeceitweek #remus sanders #janus sanders #sanders sides #sanders sides fic #kye writes

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unbakedziti · 3 years ago

Text

A/N Helloooo this is the first time I’ve posted anything like this or written. So if anyone decided they want to read it, that’d be super cool. This kinda just was something I started writing and then decided to posts. Also my apologies for any grammar or spelling errors, and that it’s pretty short.

Summary: Peter Parker is dealing with some trauma after Civil War, and Tony finds him being reckless in trying to fix it.

Word Count: 2.8k words

Warnings: anxiety, trauma, mentions of su*c*de

Scott Lang did not mean to traumatize Peter Parker. In fact, they were in a fight with minimal rules of engagement, so there was no real reason for Peter to resent Scott at all. Peter knowing that Scott was not at fault was never helpful in stopping nightmares or panic attacks when he was mid-swing in Queens. He kept reliving how he was smacked out of the air, easier than vanquishing a fly with a swatter. Even worse, Peter understood why comic books and cartoon characters were said to SPLAT on surfaces, and he wish he didn’t. Peter could feel his flesh meeting concrete and stiffening over and over, every time he started to get confident as he was flying through the air.

He didn’t want to tell Tony, mainly because he was scared that he would think Peter couldn’t handle being Spider-Man anymore, and he simply could not have it. Peter ran through all the possibilities of what Mr. Stark would say had he opened up.

“Maybe an early retirement?” Peter’d imagine him joking. “You should sit on the bench for a while Pete, maybe even see someone.”

Peter had seen someone, after his parents disappeared and then had their death’s announced in the news before he even knew. His therapist’s name was Ryan and he helped, but only at the cost of Peter getting bullied by other kids until he decided to stop going. It wasn’t Uncle Ben’s fault, he let it slip to some other parents that Peter was doing so much better with the help of therapy, and when Flash got a hold of it ——- Peter’s reputation went right down the toilet.

Plus, Tony would feel the need to get him the best and brightest psychologist out there, when really all Peter needed was to get used to swinging again, and he could force himself to do that. He started with lower buildings, but Peter decided he was giving himself too much of an out, he was babying himself. So he ditched the shipyard for skyscrapers. He had stood on top of the tallest building he could find and looked downwards. Peter couldn’t tell if it was fog, or if there was a cloud up as high as he was. He looked around and closed his eyes, figuring that he senses would kick in, or that suit Tony gave him would pick up on it, as they had discussed many nights before. He had it all planned out, with all the fail safes. He just needed to stop his hands from shaking and jump, like he’d done so many times before.

Peter braced himself, shooting down a single string of web to see how far he was really going, if he would be able to pull himself back up on another building. As he was standing there calculating and looking around, he lifted his mask to get a different view.

“What on earth are you doing?” The almost robotic voice came from behind him, and he turned around, he nearly lost his footing. “Kid, kid, calm down.” Tony raised his hands to signal he didn’t mean to scare Peter, but it was way too late for that.

“Hey- hey Mr. Stark, what…what are you doing here?” Peter stumbled through his words as he watched the Iron Man suit unsheathe Tony’s face.

“Well I got a call that Spider-Man looked like he was about to try and join Ripley’s Book of World Records, and I thought you might need a witness.” Tony stepped out of his suit. “Now, I’ll ask again, what are you doing?”

Peter stepped down from the ledge, and he sighed and shrugged.

“You’ve gotta do better than that Pete, the police thought you were trying to do something and I hope you weren’t…” Tony’s voice was desperate, and he was running out of options the more Tony spoke. Peter looked down and saw three cop cars looking up, probably only seeing a red silhouette.

“I was trying to get myself to be Spider-Man again,” Peter cut him off, in a rushed jumble of words. The implication of what Tony and the police thought he might be doing sounded way worse than anything Peter could think of in that moment. Tony would have benched him forever if he was even close to thinking that was the truth.

“What?”

“Ever since Berlin, the airport, when Scott smacked me out of the sky.” Peter breathed. “I can’t get it out of my head Mr. Stark.” Tears started to stream down his face, his voice was breaking.

“FRIDAY, call the car to 7th and 12th, big building can’t miss it,” Tony spoke to his suit.

“Where are we going, I can’t, my Aunt May,” Peter tried to object, wiping the tears roughly off his face, but Tony shook his head.

“Avenger’s Compound, I’ll tell May I’m keeping you overnight with a note for school tomorrow. And FRIDAY, tell Ms. Potts Peter is coming please.”

“You got it, sir.” Peter could hear Friday’s muffled voice.

“How’d…how’d they know to call you?” Peter cleared the rest of the moisture from his face.

“I have a few friends on the force, who let me know if the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is about to do something incredibly stupid.” He stated, plainly.

Peter nodded slightly and just stated the word ‘oh’ before Tony’s phone rung to alert them that the car had arrived.

“Shall we?” Tony pressed his chest, and his suit collapsed into a housing unit that looked large and clunky. “Don’t mind that, it’s just something I’m testing out a housing unit for nanoparticles. There’s still a few kinks I need to work out.”

“Nanoparticles?”

“Yeah, I’ll show you all of it at the compound.”

He ushered Peter into the elevator, where he slid back on his mask, and dropped his head. He wondered what his dad would have said if he were there. They had such limited time together, and so much advice had a time stamp on it. Peter couldn’t apply the “don’t worry unless I tell you to” anymore, because his dad couldn’t. Peter couldn’t help feeling drawn to Tony for advice, even though he hadn’t wanted to ask for it in the first place. He had actively tried avoiding looking at Tony as a father figure, and instead like a mentor. There were a lot of self willed rules that Peter was miserably failing at.

They were silent in the car, Peter sat there and put his head against the seat as Tony instructed him to call May. At first, Peter wanted to beg him to just let him go home, that they could talk tomorrow, but something told him that Tony wasn’t letting him out of his sight.

“Peter? What’s going on? I was about to text and ask if you wanted to do grilled cheese for dinner, I’d just need you to pick up tomato soup!” Her voice was normal, and steady.

“Hey, May, I actually can’t, Mr. Stark invited me up to the compound tonight…” Peter trailed off, hoping that Tony would cover for him, so that May couldn’t detect any kind of sadness from him.

He did, he snatched the phone out of Peter’s hand and made up some lie about how he’s never seen his work in action and figured that he should. Of course, Aunt May agreed easily, knowing that Peter was safe indefinitely with Tony. He handed the phone back to Peter.

“Are you on your way? Do you need to stop at home for pajamas or anything?”

“No, no it’s okay, it’s fine,” Peter said hurriedly into the phone. “I love you, I’ll text you when I head to bed. Bye.” He hung up after she responded, and put his head back again for a while, only to look up and see they were there.

Upon entering, Mr. Stark’s friend who he’d only ever known as Rhodey was standing there talking to a bunch of holograms in suits.

“I want you to tell Stark that if he has intel on where the rest of the Avengers are, he needs to fess up. My head’s on the chopping block and I won’t let him make a fool of me for much longer,” a salt and pepper haired man said.

“Secretary Ross, I’m starting to think you have a crush on me,” Tony faked a smile, earning a smirk from Rhodey.

“Stark, you haven’t returned any of my calls.”

“And I’m not continuing this one, c’mon kid,” he nodded to Rhodey and Ross and led Peter to a room.

“Clothes, shower, then ask Friday to guide you to the lab so we can talk,” he put his hand on Peter’s shoulder. “I’m not disappointed, I’m not mad, and we’re gonna just talk.”

Peter nodded and murmured a thank-you-Mr.-Stark as he left the plain and modern looking room. He showered, and noticed that it wiped any smell off of him, figuring the soap must be completely scentless. Then he found basic clothes in the drawers, an assortment of navy blues, blacks, blues, and whites. He opted for a white sweatshirt and a pair of navy blue joggers, and slid back on his worn sneakers.

“FRIDAY?” He asked.

“Right this way, Peter,” it replied, and a small light strip in the floor illuminated. When he finally reached the lab, Tony had on a paid of goggles and looked like he was welding something together. It reminded him of how when he was younger, and Tony Stark revealed that he was Iron Man, there was a huge classroom debate of whether or not Mr. Stark made his own suits or was paying people to. Peter confidently maintained that Tony made them himself, and figured it would not be such an incredible feat if someone was just paying other people to do it.

He recounted the small story to Tony, as a way to announce that he’d arrived. Tony waited and nodded.

“Doing this is what’s gotten me through a lot of times,” he lifted his goggles up. “When I can’t sleep, when the nightmares are too much, whenever I have a panic attack.”

“You- you get panic attacks?”

“After New York, all I could dream about, all I could see, was the beginning of space and- well- the end of me.” He slid a plate with a sandwich and a cup of fruit and salad over to Peter, making a motion for him to start eating with his I’m-not-taking-no-right-now eyes. “I had this, just terrible, anxiety attack. I was out to eat with Rhodey, and some kids wanted me to sign their coloring pages or whatever. The little boy, he asked me how I did it, how I got out of the wormhole.”

“What did you do?”

“Well, I thought I was dying, so I jumped into my suit like I was on fire and flew how after, it was JARVIS at that time, told me I just was freaking out,” he explained, stealing a pineapple from Peter’s plate. Peter stayed quiet, and waiting for Tony to keep talking. “So, what does a crime fighting spidering have to do to become Spider-Man again?”

“I- Mr. Stark I just need to get used to swinging, I won’t do that again I swear.” Peter rushed and babbled on as soon as he swallowed his food.

“Pete, Pete, you’re not in trouble.” He raised his hands. “Just tell me what’s been going on.”

So he did. Peter Parker told The Tony Stark that he woke up screaming, how Scott Lang was the face he saw even though that wasn’t fair. How he thought he was seriously hurt, and didn’t know if anyone would have noticed since he kept getting up, or trying to. He described how every time he would hit the peak of a swing, he’d start hyperventilating and looking around to see if something was going to hit it out of the air. Peter listed the ways he was dealing with it, by making himself do it again and again and again until he stopped seeing Scott.

“Okay,” Tony nodded. “It’s normal. I wouldn’t have let anything bad happen Pete, I brought you there.” Peter saw something flash across Tony’s face.

“And- and Mr. Stark, it’s not your fault, I wanted to be there-“

“I recall you saying that you had too much homework?”

“Yes, but once I was there, it was different.” He admitted.

“Different?”

“Yeah I thought that it would just be like, a conversation, I thought I was just back-up.” Peter shrugged, pushing in another helping of salad.

“No, no unfortunately I needed you web-slinging skills,” Tony sighed, taking his goggles off the top of his head. “I’ll tell you what, tonight we’re gonna talk. Then afterwards, we’re gonna get someone who definitely has better advice than me for you to talk to.” Peter started to protest. “No, no you will, and May doesn’t have to know because it’s covered in your- intern- health- insurance? Yeah, your intern health insurance. Don’t ask for anything else I won’t do dental.”

“I went to a therapist after my parents died, can’t I just-“

“Just what?” He waited, and Peter took in a deep inhale.

“Why can’t I get over it? Mr. Stark, I swing off of buildings and I have a secret vigilante life. A radioactive spider bit me when I was trying to see what my dad was working towards, and now I’ve got these abilities that no one else does.” He looked Tony in the eyes. “Why is this any different?”

They sat like that for a while, just still and silent, until Tony finally spoke up.

“Often times, you’ll see that it’s not different, but what’s different is the presence of all these different things,” he said. “So you got bit by a radioactive spider, had already grieved your parents, so it wore on you a little. Then you start navigating your abilities, and it’s scary so that wears down on you too. Then a playboy, millionaire, philanthropist, Iron Man, shows up in your Aunt May’s apartment and says he wants you to fight in something you don’t have any stake in. And now you’re tired, and traumatized because your a teen boy and don’t know how to pace yourself. That sound about right, yes or no?”

Peter looked at him and nodded.

“You are Spider-Man, no matter how it’s cut. But you won’t be for long if you don’t rest. Try to learn that lesson earlier than I did, yeah?” He stood up and clapped Peter’s shoulder again. Peter stood up, not even realizing that he had tears brimming his eyes and hugged Tony.

“I thought you were gonna be mad,” Peter said, his voice breaking. Tony hugged him back tightly, and shook his head before pulling away.

“I just want you to be okay, kid.”

“Thank you- thank you Mr. Stark,” he sniffed.

“Don’t mention it. I’ll have Happy pick you up to go see Dr. Nguyen once a week, just let me know what day works for you.”

“Okay, I will.” Peter nodded. “So what’s the deal with the nanoparticles?” Peter asked, taking a bite out of the ham and cheese sandwich. He kept eating as Tony showed Peter what he was working on, and hinted that there was a new suit in the Spider-Man’s future, if he was patient. Peter was amazed, and was even allowed to tinker with a few of the different projects Tony had going. His body felt tired, but he wanted to keep going, regardless of what they’d just discussed. Tony must have noticed because he set down his tools hastily.

“You finished with your food? Take it up, Ms. Potts is eating her dinner up in the kitchen, I think she wants us to try keto but I really don’t think I could give it up next to dairy.” He said, nonchalantly. “Oh and put your stuff in the dishwasher, if we get ants in here I’ll lose it.”

“So you haven’t tried Ben and Jerry’s Stark Raving Hazelnuts?” Peter asked, after agreeing that he would clean up all of his stuff.

“They did that? God I need to get out of this compound.” Tony shook his head.

“Yeah yeah yeah, that and a Hulk of Burning Fudge,” Peter continued, carrying his plate up the stairs.

Peter had said hello to Pepper, and she asked what he was doing there, if he was finally an Avenger, which both Peter and Tony had replied no. Peter was kind of hoping that he’d say maybe, but then again it had been a long evening.

He went to the bedroom Tony had showed him at first, and texted Aunt May before collapsing on the fresh sheets. Peter didn’t even climb under the covers before he fell asleep. And for the first time in weeks, Peter hadn’t dreamt of Scott. In fact, he hadn’t dreamt of him being Spider-Man at all that night. It was the best rest he’d gotten in weeks.

#peter parker #tony stark #comfort #fanfic #peter parker oneshot #tony stark fluff #peter parker fluff #angst #marvel mcu #marvel cinematic universe #captain america civil war #spiderman #iron man

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remuswriting · 4 years ago

Note

hello !! can i request some hcs or one-shot for kageyama (or any character you want ) with a foreigner (canadian maybe ? i'm from canada !) bf ? i love your work, thank youuu !!!! •//v//•

Summary: Transfer student L/N Y/N meets Karasuno volleyball team through tutoring and Yachi

Pairing: N/A

Format: Heacanons

Warnings: None

Notes: I decided to do just Karasuno in general because I was struggling slightly with this (I have no idea why I struggled so much). I’m not the proudest of this but I hope you like it. Also, the language thing may not apply to everyone because I’m going based off my own experiences with learning Spanish and being around those who either don’t know English or know very little.

*****

You had just moved to Japan and even though you had been studying Japanese since your parents said you guys were having to move there; you struggled to talk to people.

The teachers were nice to you about it, understood how Japanese was one of the hardest languages for native English speakers to learn, and tried to find you a tutor.

Yachi appeared in your life like a ray of sunshine because she was one of the few at Karasuno that was pretty good with English, but she was so shy and anxious that it was hard to talk to her at first.

She’s tutoring you every other day and then she becomes the manager for the volleyball club and switched to only studying on the weekends.

That’s when you meet Kageyama and Hinata, who are struggling in English and Japanese kind of like you are (except you’re really good in English).

You join the study group easily, you and Hinata help each other with Japanese and English while Kageyama is writing down the answers you’re giving them.

When the study session is over, Yachi makes the comment that you didn’t stop to ask what someone had said once, which meant you were getting better with Japanese.

“Of course, I am. I have the best tutor ever,” you said as he ruffled her hair and she gets all flustered at the contact.

Then she says she may not be able to tutor you anymore because of becoming the team manager and you start begging because she was the only first year that understood English good enough to talk to you.

“You could always convince Kageyama and Hinata to study with you, even though they may struggle to talk with you sometimes.”

It’s an idea that you don’t explore until you start really struggling with your summer homework.

You call Yachi, desperate for help and you can hear her sigh on the other line before she agrees.

Kageyama and Hinata are there too and they are telling you how smart you are because you’re so good at English.

“I was born in Canada. English is my first language.”

The look on their faces and Hinata is then amazed at your Japanese while Kageyama just stares at you in awe.

“What’s volleyball like in English?” Kageyama asked and you laugh a little.

“I’ve actually never actually seen a volleyball match and only girls played it at my school,” you said and both Hinata and Kageyama just can’t believe it.

Instead of studying, you’re being bombarded with reasons why you should either watch a game or join the team. Yachi is trying to calm them down.

“Hey, he could be busy! Stop harassing him!” Yachi exclaims and is throwing her hands around all over the place.

“Don’t worry, Yachi. It’s kind of adorable,” you said and neither of the freak duo understood what you just said because it was in English (which was on purpose).

One day after studying, Kageyama asks to speak to you and you are kind of excited but not because your Japanese isn’t the best outside of study sessions.

You blame your parents for only speaking English at home for the reason of struggling with Japanese when at school and attempting to make friends.

“L/N-san, you should come to one our practices,” Kageyama said and you just stare at him because it was unexpected.

“I can try, I just know nothing about volleyball.”

“I will teach you everything you need to know about volleyball,” Kageyama said and you just nod because you’re pretty sure it doesn’t matter if you said yes or no at this point.

You go to one of their practices after they get to move on to the November tournament and it’s kind of stressful in a way. You’re impressed though.

You somehow get roped into going to practices nearly everyday with the promise of tutoring afterwards.

“Do you remember what that was called?” Kageyama asked and you just nod even though you kind of can but can’t say it aloud.

It’s like all those moments when you know what you want to say but you just can’t verbalize it. This time it’s literally just the word ‘receive’

“Kageyama, stop harassing Y/N and get back to practicing,” Sugawara said and of course, Tobio listens.

You’re about to go over to Yachi when Suga stops you and you just look at him kind of scared and confused.

“I’m sorry about Kageyama. You don’t have to come to practices for him though, no one will be upset.”

You would definitely stop going if you weren’t learning more slang Japanese from Tanaka and Noya or having Tsukishima correct you in a way kinder than you expected.

“It’s actually pretty cool watching you guys play,” you said with a smile and Suga chuckled before he walked off.

Noya suggests you become a manager because “you come to practice every day anyways.”

“He may not be comfortable with that because everyone we go against only speaks Japanese,” Tsukishima said nonchalantly. “Also, he probably doesn’t want to deal with your screaming.”

Tsukishima is right about being hesitant to join due to maybe not knowing enough Japanese to understand what’s going on all the time You were pretty sure that you’d know what was going on at least 75% of the time.

“Y/N! You came to practice again?” Kiyoko asked and you nodded, trying to figure out what you wanted to say.

“I really like the team.” There was more you wanted to say and you were getting nervous. “I don’t know some words in Japanese.”

“Oh, maybe try to explain them? I’ll try to help.”

Kiyoko is a literal angel.

“You and Yachi.”

“Managers?” She asked with a weird look and you nodded.

“Manager is what I want to be.”

That was such a choppy sentence and you want to die from embarrassment. You want to tell her that you really are better with words.

“You want to join the team?” She asked and that was what you were trying to say but your brain wasn’t processing.

“Yes, that!”

Takeda doesn’t necessarily try to talk you out of it but tries to make you aware.

He explains how everyone around you may speak Japanese you understand and you can’t always ask what they mean, which you knew. You didn’t grocery shop alone when you first got to Japan for that reason.

He also explains how late in the season it is to join, but you could if you really wanted to.

“You obviously know the best option for you and I can’t stop you from making that.”

Everyone on the team pretty happy you joined and Tanaka and Noya make sure to make a big deal out of the fact they’ll help you whenever you get confused.

Ennoshita then makes the comment that they would have to actually good at formal Japanese and English to really be of help, which deflates the two starters.

Surprisingly, enough Tsukishima is one that helps you most because he can tell when you’re trying to figure something out when others can’t.

Tanaka screams out “maji de” and looks frustrated, so you know he’s upset but you don’t know what to say to help if you don’t really know what he said.

“He said ‘seriously’ aka majime,” Tsukishima said as he took a drink out of his water bottle. “He’s pissed about something; I didn’t see what.”

You had never heard Tsukishima speak English until then and Hinata had once said he was a terrible tutor, but you’d disagree.

“Sorry, I won’t be at practice today I have to go to the doctor,” you said and Hinata got all wide eyed, even though everyone went to the doctor constantly in Japan.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, I just have to go for the.” The words were there and you knew them because your mom had told you them yesterday but what were they again?

“He’s going for his yearly checkup.”

Tsukishima saves the day again when Hinata would have probably just stared at you.

Yachi helps you understand the rules to the game better than if you would have tried to research it yourself and she even helps you make a notebook of the English terms (you had to look some of them up or ask your parents) to Japanese, which made it easier for you to learn.

#haikyuu x male reader #male reader #maler reader insert #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu x reader hc #haikyuu headcanons

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laequiem · 3 years ago

Text

Cheek to Cheek in Hell - Chapter 5

Fandom: The Folk of the Air

Pairing: Jude Duarte/Cardan Greenbriar

Rating: explicit

Word count: 1,508

Cardan is an idiot. That is the only explanation for this clownery.

fanfiction masterlist • ao3

Chapter 4 • next chapter • Cheek to Cheek masterpost

Chapter 5. no man's land

Jude POV

Cardan is an idiot.

That is the only explanation for this clownery.

Surely, he knows I have seen him high before. He is always intoxicated, I fail to see how this is any different. Yet, he let himself be poisoned slowly, simply because he did not want me to see him consume.

Idiot. Idiot.

I repeat it to myself as I hear the telltale sound of him inhaling the powder.

Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.

I look towards the man he has put to sleep. If he hadn’t been so stupid, we would be rid of him. I hate seeing one of the folk using glamour on unexpecting mortals, but we can’t have this man wake up here. Cardan should have sent him to get lost in an imaginary maze and told him to forget everything.

Instead, we’re stuck with a sleeping man who knows he has been put to sleep by some pale teenager after crossing a brick wall straight to no man’s land.

I sigh. Should we throw him out of the alley, put the glamour back up and hope he forgets?

Bribe him? We certainly don’t have the money for this.

Threaten him? Would I kill someone to keep my freedom? No. I have done horrible things, but I would not kill someone again unless they deserved it.

The person who deserves it the most stirs behind me. Cardan hobbles towards the sleeping man, kneels and starts emptying the man’s pockets. I rush to his side.

“What are you doing?” I ask, appalled.

“We need money, don’t we?” he replies matter-of-factly, not even looking at me.

I cross my arms. “We can’t just steal from him.”

He turns to me now, lifting a perfect brow. “Oh, so now you’re a preacher of virtue?”

My lip pulls back in a snarl, and he snorts. He takes out a thick leather wallet from the man’s pockets—thick with bills. Cardan gets back up and hands it to me.

“He followed you here, Jude,” he tells me as I grab it. “I doubt his intentions were good.”

“What do you know about good intentions?” I bite back and he rolls his eyes. I nod towards the pizza box, “Now that you’re well enough to be a jerk, eat.”

Cardan walks back to his little corner behind the dumpster as I open the wallet. I stare at the thick stack of green bills, my heart thumping wildly in my chest.

Don’t get your hopes up, I tell myself, maybe they’re all one dollar bills.

Except they’re clearly not.

“What is that?” Cardan asks, and I turn to him.

He is staring at the open pizza box, his head inclined to the side as he inspects the contents.

“Pizza,” I reply. “Just eat.”

I take out the bills and start counting.

This man has a few hundred dollar bills. I have never seen those in my entire life.

1500$.

I cannot stop the smile that forms on my face as I turn back to Cardan.

And when I see what he has done to the pizza, I laugh and he looks up from his work.

“What?” he asks, and I just laugh harder.

Tears prick at my eyes. It’s the kind of hysterical laugh that only comes from your life being completely absurd. From finding the money you need to rent a place, then seeing the boy you hate remove all the pepperoni from a pizza and stack them like a reconstituted sausage. Cardan takes a bite out of the thing.

I start to calm down as he finishes up his strange pepperoni mille-feuille.

“There’s over a thousand in there,” I tell him between long breaths.

“I assume that’s good?”

I grab the newspaper I had before I went out to the get the pizza, flipping through it to find the apartments, “It’s enough to rent a place.”

I spend hours looking through the papers, tearing out the ads of places we can afford. At one point, the man stirs and Cardan goes up to him. As if it were second nature, he orders him to leave and forget he ever saw our faces. The man, in a daze, follows his orders and leaves the alley, straight through the illusionary brick wall.

Cardan sits in his corner most of the day, sometimes staring at me, sometimes tearing small chunks of pizza to eat. I find it too endearing to show him how to eat it properly.

When the sun is at its highest, I rehearse the speech I will give the landlords on the phone.

“Hello, my friend and I would be interested in visiting the place you are renting.”

The words feel so strange. They should feel mundane to my human tongue, but they are words I never thought I would utter. Not when I thought I would spend the rest of my days in Elfhame, fighting for my right to be there.

I do not know how to define my relationship to Cardan. I try so many different options, and I can’t bear to look at him as I say the things that can only be labelled as lies.

My roommate. My boyfriend. My husband. My… partner? They’re all lies, all wrong.

My worst enemy is not something a landlord would want to hear.

When I finally make the first call, I don’t mention Cardan.

“Hi, I saw your ad and I wanted to know if the apartment is still available.”

By the time the sun comes down, I have a good schedule of places to visit in the Bronx tomorrow.

When I am done, I join Cardan by his dumpster to finally eat some of the cold pizza.

Cardan reaches for a piece after I do, his dark eyes watching my every movement intently. He copies the way I eat it, holding the crust and supporting the underside of the slice as I bite into it.

It’s still delicious, even cold and pepperoni-less. Unconsciously, I let out a small content sigh.

“What is your favorite mortal food?” Cardan asks, breaking the thick silence.

I purse my lips as I think. Pizza is really high up there. Otherwise… There are very few things I remember from my time in the Mortal Realm. Except for one that never left me.

“My mom used to make these pastries,” I say, nostalgic, “pastéis de nata. They’re little tarts filled with egg custard. I haven’t had them since…” I trail off. Since she was murdered. “I’d like to try them again, see if they’re as good as I remember them.”

“Perhaps we can find a place here that makes them,” he offers.

I don’t know why, but the proposition makes me smile. “Perhaps,” I repeat after him.

When I reach for the last piece, I notice Cardan was also reaching for it, but he pulled back before grabbing it.

We don’t do much for the rest of the night. We don’t talk either. We just sit in silence, the thrum of the bustling city a constant melody outside our dirty alleyway.

After relieving myself behind a dumpster and making a mental note to buy tampons tomorrow, I make my way to my makeshift bed.

I climb over the dumpster Cardan sleeps behind, then swing myself over the railing of the lowest landing of the emergency stairs. The corner I have been sleeping in for the last week is nothing fancy. Flat cardboard lines the cold metal and I have stuffed my dirty clothes in a garbage bag to use as a pillow. No blanket, since I only found one and Cardan needed it more than me.

I lay down on my cardboard and try to tune out the sounds of the city. Faraway, an ambulance blares its song. Cars honk, streetlights buzz, people talk and yell and cheer and—

The landing shakes as silent feet land next to me.

I turn on my back and open my eyes, only to be met with Cardan’s tall, dark form standing over me like Death incarnate.

“What are you—” I start asking, a little panicked until I see the blanket in his hands. I frown. “Keep it. I’m fine.”

Cardan rolls his eyes, then swings the blanket over me.

“You’re cold,” he says. A corner of the blanket lifts and he slips under it too, “and I have been told I am burning.”

I had not noticed how much I was shivering until his warm arm snakes around my waist and he shifts closer to me. The other one slides under the garbage bag I use as a pillow.

His hips are flush against my backside, sharp hipbones digging into my cheeks. He tangles one of his legs around mine.

“This is just for warmth,” he whispers to himself.

I breathe deeply.

“You are very warm,” I confirm.

“Does it make up for the burden of bringing me along?” he asks me, and I feel him smile against my hair.

“Just an idiot,” I say softly as I drift away to sleep, “not a burden.”

-----

tag list: @slightlyrebelliouswriter23 @thefolkofthefic @figonas @kingandfireheart @godgavemelou @lizziebxnnet @hazelsheartsworn @jurdannet

#the folk of the air #jurdan #judecardan #tfota #jude duarte #cardan greenbriar #the cruel prince #the queen of nothing #the wicked king #fanfic #fic #jurdannet #add to masterlist

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