#the third is a child holding a tree branch (?) who tells him that he will be slain when Birnam wood marches to duninane | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

merv606 · 3 years ago

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Silverrusso: Terry has fallen hard for his child’s (toddler Tory?) young nanny, and plans to make Daniel his for life in every way - only thing Daniel is so young only 18/19 and even worse: completely oblivious to the fact that Mr. Silver’s in love with him. Tory totally loves him too and fusses whenever Daniel has to leave. (So does her Dad of course - between the two Daniel almost loses his mind.)

Eventually Terry coerces Daniel into moving into the mansion with them (“You can stay in one of the guest apartments!”) and Daniel innocently agrees, thinking only about how kind Silver is to him (haha). This turns into private dinners, being Terry’s date for lavish parties, etc.

Of course Daniel eventually falls hard for Terry, but remains blissfully unaware that Terry has loved him from the start. Of course this ends with Terry snapping one day and then railing him senseless. (“Really Danny-boy, making me keep my hands off you for so long. How could you?”)

They tell Tory they’re getting married (very soon after all this, maybe within the week - it’s Terry after all. Lol.). Of course she’s flower girl. She also wants to know when she’s getting a sibling - Terry just smirks, and Daniel turns very red.

Narrows eyes - do you have access to my WIPs/notes in my phone

MWAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHSHH - you’re about to be hit with so many mafia AUs - it’ll be chaotic but we’ll make it through.

OF MY MANY MANY (MANY) mafia au ideas - one of those is Danny working for Terry as his nanny.

This is so long it’s ridiculous 😂

Terry has custody of Tory, Sam, and Robby (his nieces and nephews) as their parents died - sometimes it was when they were babies.

I imagine them as a set of twins and then the third as like an Irish twin situation. So there was three kids just under one basically.

Sometimes there’s still the fact that they were all born in the same year but they’re older this time / maybe 5-7ish

Now this AU itself splits - sometimes it’s a regular AU (with many many different ideas branching off).

Daniel maybe working for Terry - fresh out of school for child development or whatever.

Sparks fly and Daniel resists his employer at first but he eventually succumbs.

Sometimes, it’s happenstance - he’s at the right place and time.

Little trees isn’t doing the best so maybe he was working a night job at open all night dinner that Terry happens to go to one night and he is of course, taken with the younger man’s beauty / knows he will bed the boy eventually but Terry finds himself coming back.

But one night a rival shows up and catches Terry off guard (rare but his infatuation for Daniel is making him a bit sloppy that night) and maybe Daniel saves Terry.

For some reason I imagine a scenario where Daniel comes up behind the guy holding a gun on Terry / maybe he didn’t realize Daniel was there or maybe they though he was knocked out - but his back is turned to him and he’s focusing on Terry and Daniel hits him with a frying pan. DO NOT ASK ME WHY BUT MY BRAIN INSISTS ON THIS SCENARIO - personally I think it must be from something. But he knocks him out (or maybe he accidentally kills him / who knows these things).

Point is, he saves Terry and through it all, Daniel finds himself ingratiated into the “family” as Terry is indebted to him now.

No way is he given any dangerous jobs though, as Terry has realized his feelings run a lot deeper for the younger man than just wanting to bed him.

Daniel, stubborn thing he is, doesn’t want to be on the payroll without earning his keep (and Terry can think of a few ways for Danny to earn his keep). Maybe he tried to turn down the offer first and well, Terry didn’t take no for an answer) but Daniel gravitates towards helping with the kids - he loves kids and of course this just increases Terry want to make his Danny-boy his spoiled housewife (so to speak).

Sometimes an elaborate kidnapping plot comes into play - someone looking to hurt Terry through the kids (and there are rumours about how Terry Silver may have a soft spot for the young nanny) so that’s just a bonus.

Daniel is a badass and protects the kids, and when Terry comes to rescue him, Daniel helps or Terry finds there isn’t much rescuing left to do but in either case, Terry isn’t wasting any more time, taking Daniel for the first time that night - and the wedding isn’t far off.

But sometimes it’s an ABO NANNY MAFIA AU - (yeah this is my life).

And Daniel is an omega - who are sought after as they are by nature the best nurturers but a lot of them don’t work - omegas are rare and so usually they have their pick of the best alphas / so they tend to not have to work - usually tending to their own families.

They make small talk / the conversation flowing easily and then into deeper subjects.

Daniel is single which is surprising. The boy is gorgeous and as a male he’s rarer still.

There’s also something about the boy himself - a spirit that shines through. Terry is also impressed by his work ethic and what he has accomplished especially given his impoverished background. More impressive still, He could have whatever he wanted / Alphas would give their eye teeth for him - he could have a life of pure indulgence.

Omegas were rarely treated than anything less than the rare gems they were - their alphas knew if they didn’t, it wouldn’t be hard to replace them with another - omegas were that wanted.

The more time they spend in the room talking, the interview long since forgotten, Terry finds his alpha reacting to the omega in ways he never has before. Being as wealthy and powerful as he is / Terry has had his fair share of omegas seek him out.

But Daniel’s scent stirs something in him.

He tells Terry he wants to focus on his career which Terry finds odd - Daniel had talked so passionately about his love of kids and how it was a driving factor in his career choice - seems odd that he wouldn’t just have his own.

Terry is all but ready to offer him the job when he glances down.

On the employer forms you’re supposed to fill in days for your heats / in this it’s maybe a thing that occurs a couple times a year. They aren’t needed for breeding / omegas are fertile all year round but sex during a heat guarantees conception type deal. But laws require that omegas have time off. Also, no employer would want an omega in heat around - there would be riots.

Daniel’s is blank.

“Looks like you missed a spot,” and the boy’s smile falters slightly, the lovely smell souring slightly.

“Just fill this out so we have it on file.”

“It, uh, won’t be necessary,” he says softly.

“The law begs to differ,” Terry tries for light hearted, the mood shifting.

He goes quiet, eyes not meeting Terry.

“No, I mean. It’s not required. I don’t have them. Heats,” he clarifies.

That is practically unheard of.

“Thank you for telling me,” Terry says and he means it - the boy could have just lied.

Daniel waits for the rejection and his heart sinks when he hears - “That’s that then.”

He stands, taking Terry’s proffered hand, about to thank the older man For his time when Terry asks. “How early can you start?”

After a few weeks, a relationship forms, outside of employer worker, but they dance around it.

Terry knows he’s falling for the younger man and he knows Daniel has feelings too but he’s holding back.

Terry suspects it may have to do with the heats.

Maybe Daniel has started to sleep over / the kids have Grown attached fast - and after happened with their parents / they start to throw fits. Tory has angry outburst me, Sam won’t stop crying, and Robby just goes quiet when he tries to leave one night.

So he accepts Terry’s offer to be a live in nanny.

But one night, it’s a bit stormy and after Daniel had gotten the kids to bed, Terry breaks out some wine and they sit up, watching the sky light up, the rain beating against windows their background noise.

As they talk about the kids / the topic of his heats come up.

“Never?” Terry says, at a loss. That is practically unheard of.

“Not one.”

“I can have my doctors,” Terry starts.

“I’ve had every test imaginable.” Daniel says. “They just can’t explain it.”

Terry drops the conversation but knows there’s something else.

Weeks turn into months, and no part of Terry’s life hasn’t been improved by Daniel.

He wants Daniel to be his boy so bad, and he knows Daniel wants that too.

Terry really doesn’t see the issue - he himself never wanted kids although he loves Tory, Sam, and Robby. But the pressure to settle down and have an heir had been lifted when his nieces and nephews ensured the Silver name would be carried on so it doesn’t matter to him that Daniel can’t give him a child. There’s so much more - much more important things - he wants from the younger man anyway.

Daniel tries to not let the older man touch him or get to close, probably sensing the bond growing between them.

One night in the kitchen, he tries to step past Terry and he snaps.

Crashing their mouths together. Large hand pressing into the small of Daniel’s back so Daniel can feel how hard Terry is against his belly.

Pheromones filling the air, Terry can smell how wet Daniel is - a smell that he’s used to as the boy always Carries the faint smell of slick around Terry - but now it’s so much stronger.

A large hand squeezing his ass now.

He buries his face into Daniel’s neck inhaling, lips finding and sucking on the mating gland.

Daniel cries out, knees buckling.

Terry catches his easily, holding him up to further explore all the warm lovely skin.

Small Hands against his chest - “ no, Terry please. We can’t.”

Interesting choice of words / Not that he doesn’t want to -

“I want you so much. You have no fucking idea Daniel,” he growls. “You drive me crazy. Your scent, your body, not being able to touch you. To have you. To not be able to claim what is mine.”

Daniel manages to finally slip free putting distance between them.

Terry advances but the whimper from the omega has him gaining some control over himself.

“No one wants a broken omega, Terry.”

“You aren’t broken. You just need the right alpha.”

Whoever told Daniel this - whoever made Daniel think this will pay.

“You say that now.”

Turns out he had an alpha. A young blond haired boy who had been his high school sweetheart. Family was rich and the expectation was marriage was inevitable as soon as they graduated.

His family approved because he was an omega and it was expected he would produce heirs as soon as possible.

Johnny had wanted the moment to be right when he mated Daniel for the first time - he wanted their first time to be during his first heat.

But it never came.

The season came and the alpha became more and more frustrated.

The family paid for the best doctors and every test was run- every specialist consulted.

The family was not happy - Johnny though, told Daniel it didn’t matter / he loved him regardless.

And Daniel had believed him until he found his alpha in bed with the pretty blond haired beta and his heart had been crushed.

Tears are streaming down his face when he finishes the story and Terry holds him tight, rubbing his back.

“That alpha was a fool and no real alpha at all if…”

Cries come from the nursery and Daniel’s name shouted.

Terry lets him go so he can tend to the kids.

After twenty minutes or so he goes up himself, only to find Daniel fast asleep, the kids sleeping around and over him.

He watches from the door and he knows he will make the boy his. He will make him see that he is safe with Terry / with them.

He carefully peels the kids off and tucks them in.

Picking Daniel up, he’s a dead weight in Terry’s arms / the emotional evening probably contributing.

He considers bringing Daniel into his room -his bed (where he belongs) to sleep - Terry has ached to hold the omega in his arms, to feel the rise and fall of his chest, to wake with him in his arms, but he decides against it.

The next morning the kids are up earlier than normal and begging to go out.

It’s Sam’s turn to pick and as expected she picks the beach.

Terry gets an unexpected call that needs his attention / he tells them to go ahead / he’ll meet them at the beach.

This is where the kidnapping plot is reused. 😈

Daniel is still a badass and Terry laid waste to anyone standing between him and his mate and their kids.

The kids are fine because of Daniel - who has a few bruises and cuts but that might Terry won’t be denied.

It was seeing Terry come for them, how fierce he was - the way he had snarled out “where’s my mate,” that made Daniel realize that Terry wasn’t lying / he was different. He loved Daniel no matter what.

Terry confesses later on, as he holds Daniel, breathing him in - extra security on the kids - how scared he was - how he can’t live without Daniel. He won’t, just like he won’t go any longer without Daniel being his. He won’t be denied and Daniel has no plans to try.

He presents himself to Terry, hands and knees, chest flat to the bed, ass up high as he holds himself open and Terry gives them both what they need.

Daniel is good and mated come morning.

The kids are elated - Daniel is theirs now too.

Sam excitedly asks when they’ll get a new baby brother or sister - Robby muttering it better be a brother - and Daniel finds that it doesn’t make his heart hurt they way it used to.

To him their family is fine just the way it is.

A few weeks pass, and Daniel finds himself experiencing symptoms he never has - and he thinks nothing of it.

Until Terry gets home and in an instant he’s in a full blown heat, Terry’s rut triggered because of it.

He puts Daniel face down on the bed, growling out, “going to bred you so good,” although he rolls him to his back. He wants to see the look on his mate’s face when he takes a knot for the first time.

Try to his word, he does. Terry knots him, so many times Daniel loses count.

Rutting in, biting down over the scar his teeth left when he first claimed him, as he pushes in his knot for the first time, Daniel crying out as he comes - his body forced open wide for his alpha to fuck into / to fill with his seed. Planting his claim deep inside.

When he pulls out, Daniel is wrecked.

The once tiny hole now gaping wide from being so throughly used - the tell tale white appearing moments later, belly bloated the alpha filled him so well.

Anthony is brought into the word screaming, and Terry presses a kiss to the exhausted omega’s head, holding his hand as the baby is placed on Daniel’s chest.

Later on, The kids come in excited for the new addition. Daniel’s mother is in to watch them as he recovers. Daniel makes space on the bed for them as they each take turns holding their brother.

Sam seems slightly disappointed but Robby is elated.

When they’re finally alone, Terry joins him on the bed, Anthony asleep in the bassinet.

“Told you you just needed the right alpha.”

But in your idea -

I can imagine Tory being such a headstrong little alpha (it’s the silver genes, Terry swears).

Heart of good and a sweet kid but can be a handful.

And Terry is watching their interactions - when Daniel comes to the house for interview.

Tory takes to Daniel right away / they chat and play for a bit and when Tory does something, Daniel gently reprimanding her - Terry smirks, waiting for it but all he hears is a, “sorry Daniel.”

And no interview needed now.

I can also see her being very very protective over Daniel.

And, of course, in your idea Terry would 💯 use Tory to get what he wants (Daniel).

“Please Danny - it would mean so much to Tory …. And me.”

And of course the snapping and railing his Danny-boy 😈

Poor Daniel - 🪦 🍑 - they have a lot of lost time to make up for.

And Tory as a flower girl 🥰

Tory asks about a sibling and Terry just smirks - “I’m working on it.” Daniel smacking him in the chest.

#ask #i got an ask🤩#cobra kai #daniel larusso #terry silver #silverusso #the karate kid #silverrusso #the karate kid 3

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hanjizung · 3 years ago

Text

♡ Fading Inure ♡

Lee Felix x Reader.

Word count: 5.6k

♡ Warnings ♡: smut; fingering, multiple orgasms, creampie, vaginal sex, praising. Mentions of; blood, death, murder, vampire mythology.

Growing up in a family of hunters, you had to learn to take care of yourself, your education consisting on how to identify dangerous beings, training just in case you ever got attacked, and how to improvise hunting tools, besides the basic how to write and read for when you started your own branch of the family business.

You weren't too into that, much to your family's disappointment, no. Your real passion was books; reading, writing, learning. All that, you liked it.

Thanks to that passion of yours, you learned a lot of useful things that your parents didn't show you because, well, you were their only child. They expected you to keep hunting monsters. You hadn't told them yet that that lifestyle wasn't for you.

One day after coming back from reading under the sun in the backyard, your parents were packing their luggage.

"Where are you going?" you asked them in confusion. Your mother, who was nearest to you rested her arm on your shoulders, moving a lock of hair from your face.

"Honey, your father received a letter, we're traveling to see what is kidnapping virgin girls, my darling. We'll be gone for a month, maybe two since it's a bit far from here," she explained.

"We trained you well, princess. Take good care of yourself and the town while we're gone," your dad finished, closing his suit and putting it on the floor. You nodded, hugging both of them and telling them that you would miss them a lot.

That same night, a carriage arrived and waited outside your home to take them to their client's home.

From the next day, it would be you and yourself to keep yourself fed and the house clean.

Two days passed normally, it was almost as if your parents had never left, except that you had no one to talk to, your best friend Seungmin travelled a few days before your parents to meet the girl who he had to get engaged with, and your friend Jeongin was busy working at the bakery with his parents.

Strangely, the third day alone after visiting Jeongin, you saw a carriage stopping by the city pond. People were reunited near it, whispering about who was probably inside. You looked next to you at Jeongin, who was kind enough to walk you out. He looked equally confused as you.

"Whose carriage is that?" you murmured for him to hear only, but instead of responding he just shrugged.

And then you saw him, the most handsome man you'd ever seen. He seemed young, near your age if you dared say. He was slender, tall, his head full of golden hair that the sun would probably envy, and he wore elegant clothes.

Your jaw dropped to the floor, all about that stranger screamed rich kid, because even the way he stood and scanned the place gave away that he came from a wealthy family, and that led you to wonder: what could someone like him be doing in a place like this? That didn't mean that your town lived in a state of poverty, because saying that would be a lie too big, but the place wasn't full of mansions everywhere. It was just a pacific town, with humble and caring people.

"I'm going home," you announced to Jeongin, who simply nodded and kept staring at the man of the moment.

You turned, holding tight the bread you bought and going home, not caring anymore about the stranger. If he was as rich as he seemed to be, he wouldn't stay long. There was no point in bothering to get close to him.

You followed the temporary routine you created the next day after your parents left; you woke up when the birds started chirping, took a quick shower and had breakfast and once you had a full stomach, you walked outside and watered your mother’s beautiful plants. After coming back from Jeongin’s family bakery, you prepared a quick food, placed it in a basket along with the current book you were reading and walked out your home to your spot in the back of the garden near the tree where you always spend your evenings until the sun went down and there wasn’t enough light to keep reading.

Unexpectedly to you, your reading got interrupted when a shadow got in the middle of the light you were using to immerse yourself in the fantasy book in your hands.

"Hello," the intruder said, an enchanting smile greeting you when you removed your eyes from the pages of the open book to look at him.

Words got stuck in your mouth when you saw who it was; the new man in town, with his fancy clothes and beautiful freckled face.

"Good evening, sir, how may I help you?" you politely responded.

The stranger sat on the grass next to you, sighing as he looked up at the cloudless sky. For someone who wasn't familiar with any of you, it would seem like you were a pair of friends (or a couple, even.)

"I saw you sitting here by yourself. You seem like a relaxed person, you know? And I'm new here, so would you like to be my friend?" his head turned to face you, the same gentle smile on his face didn't seem to hide any second intentions, but you still remembered the promise you made to your parents.

"That'd be cool, really, but I'm afraid I'll pass this offer. I don't even know your name! Maybe another time, I'm sure you'll find no trouble in finding friends." Listening to your reasoning, the man nodded, a little conflicted.

He stood up, respecting what you just told him, and said "my name's Felix, if you decide to change your mind. I hope you have a pleasant day," and he started to walk away.

You tried to continue your reading, but a feeling of guilt seemed to grow stronger the further he walked away from you.

"Wait, Felix!" you called out for him, closing your book and putting it in the basket again. Felix turned, waiting for you to reach him.

"Would you like some tea?" you offered him a shy smile, taking his hand when he nodded to your offer, and you took him to your house, which wasn't too far from where you were.

You walked through the door, looking at him standing still on the opening waiting for your invitation. You turned to allow him inside, "please, come on in, get comfortable while I heat the water."

Felix walked in, slowly walking to your couch and sitting there. "I didn't get your name, by the way," he timidly said from his seat. Your cheeks heated up, you were thankful that you weren't facing him.

With the water on the stove, you made your way to the couch and sat next to him, an apologetic smile on your face "oh, sorry about that, I'm Y/N."

Felix placed a friendly hand on your knee and offered you a welcoming smile. "Nice to meet you, Y/N. I guess we are friends now that we know each other's names," he chuckled, making you smile as well. His happiness was very contagious and his smile incredibly warm, almost hypnotizing.

"I guess you're right, but I'd like to know more about you. Where do you come from, what are you doing here?" the sentiment of curiosity took over you, now that he had established your friendship.

"Wow, you really wanna know, don't you? Well, if you're getting to know me I think it's fair that I ask you questions too, don't you think?" you nodded, waiting for him to continue, "I live with my parents in a Manor a little far from here, I don't think you know where it is. I'm traveling because I want to explore the world. What about you, do you live here alone?"

You opened your mouth when a sudden loud noise made you jump scared from the high pitch. The whistling of the kettle announcing the water was ready to become a delicious chamomile tea. Maybe if you were more superstitious, like your mother, you would keep your mouth shut and take the whistling as a bad sign to not reveal any information to the stranger you just brought into your family's home.

You stood up, walking to the cupboard to take your finest porcelain mugs to pour the hot beverage in them, clearing your throat to answer them, because unlike your mother, you didn't believe in such things.

"No, this is my parents home. They're away because of work and they decided to let me here. I don't like traveling much, but I'm fine staying here and reading in the backyard. How have been your adventures so far?" you sat on the table, placing both cups on seats facing each other and Felix was quick to reunite with you on the table to keep chatting about everything and nothing at all.

The evening soon faded, giving the spot lit to the bright moonlight and just then Felix decided to leave your humble home, thanking you for inviting him in and accepting the offer to be with friend.

Crickets chirped outside your window at night, singing in the outskirts of the leafy beginning of an ample forest right next to your house. You stared out the window from your bed, not looking at the scary trees but to the sky, appreciating the stars and allowing your mind to run through many thoughts; about how your day went, worried about your parents, what would you cook tomorrow, and lastly, about Felix and your newest impression of him.

Lying in your comfortable bed, your eyes closed while your mind played images of him smiling and joking in your head until you fell asleep.

The next following days went similarly; you would make breakfast in the morning, go to the market to buy ingredients for dinner, going home to prepare said dish and eat outside to later be met with Felix on your reading spot, ending the day together in your house talking about his adventures and your favorite books.

It was inevitable for you to fall for him, not because he was an outsider, but something about his personality… maybe it was the attention he gave you, or probably the way his eyes widened when you narrated your favorite adventures you'd read, or perhaps the way his laugh filled the empty silence when the two of you were joking around…

You fell for him hard, and you even wrote about it in your diary, talking more fondly about him on the spare pages of it as you spend more days getting closer to him.

Nearing the end of the third week with your parents away, the townspeople started the rumor that the two of you had started to date. You didn't care what they had to say about your close friendship with the freckled man, you were only close with Jeongin and Hyunjin, who knew the truth, so you didn't mind what everyone else had to say. Apparently, Felix found that funny and sometimes even fueled those rumors by acting more loving than he usually would.

You didn't know if your dislike to those fallacies bothered Felix, but in the middle of week four he suddenly started distancing himself from you.

It hurt, and as hard as you tried to ignore the feeling of something missing, of loneliness, it hurt more. You only saw him from afar, like he didn't want to be close to you anymore, and you noticed.

Growing tired of the new avoiding game, you decided to visit him in the hotel he was staying at, knocking on his door impatiently, until it opened, and when you made out the figure and their features, your blood ran cold.

On the other side of the wooden door, a tall man stood, a menacing aura surrounding him. His skin was pale, inhumanly pale, and his eyes drowned in a black pool of nothingness.

When his void-like gaze focused on you, he showed a scary smile full of sharp fans instead of teeth. His hand looked for your arm and he pulled you inside with no force at all, closing the door behind you and standing in front of it to keep you from escaping.

"And who are you supposed to be, child?" they asked, making you shiver. He sounded terrifying.

This is what your parents had trained you for all your life; you recognized the creature, you clearly knew what he was and the danger his mere presence meant, and yet, you couldn't run.

Your brain screamed at you to start walking away, nervous eyes scanning the place, but this was the first time you visited Felix (or at least, where he was staying) so you were completely unfamiliar with your surroundings. Everything was a lost cause, and you were just about to become a 5 stars course meal for an old blood drinker.

Blinking and focusing on the being standing by the door, you remembered the reason why you went there, and after swallowing hard, you finally dared to speak, your shaky voice giving away the fear consuming your body and mind. "W-where is Felix?"

"Oh, are you friends with him? That stupid boy, he shouldn't be playing with his food," he rolled his eyes and crossed his arms.

Suddenly, the thing moved and towered above you, and you couldn't do anything else but wish that the earth could swallow you in that mere instant as a form of escape. They grabbed your arm again, this time their freezing cold grip on you was too strong, their nails digging into your flesh while they licked their lips before they spoke again.

"You foolish little thing, you smell like a hunter, and yet you don't seem to be able to hurt me," they twisted your arm, making you fall to your knees and whimper in pain. "Didn't your parents teach you to not make friends with vampires? I guess not, and because of that, I'm going to drink your blood."

They raised you in the air, their other hand on your neck keeping you from moving as they sunk their teeth in your carotid vein, the sting of their fangs hurt at first, but as you felt your blood being drained, you lose all knowledge and your eyes shut, leaving you in complete darkness.

The next time you opened your eyes, you were resting on your bed in your home; the familiarity of the blankets warming you up, the dark room being illuminated by the moonlight entering through your window.

You looked around, a little bit dizzy and with a horrible headache unlike any you'd had before.

Someone's familiar voice ringed, and soon you had hands pushing you back to the comfort of your bed.

"I'm so glad that you're okay, Y/N. You had me so scared…" he whispered, throwing himself around you and hugging you, truly relieved to know that you were okay.

"F-Felix? What happened? I don– wait, why wouldn't I be fine?" you asked, swallowing multiple times trying to ignore the itch in your throat. It was an uncomfortable thirst, very annoying.

"Oh, Y/N," he removed himself from you, sitting on a chair you failed to notice before and he grabbed your hands gently. "You went to where I'm staying at the worst time possible and… I regret not telling you this before, but look, I'm a vampire," opening his mouth, he showed you the pointy canine teeth, closing it when he saw your widened eyes.

"I wasn't there, but I think Alistair was and you… I don't know what happened but when I got back you were dying… I couldn't hear your heartbeat, and that scared me so, so much…" locking eyes, he stayed silent after that sentence, because you knew what had happened next.

The reason why you could still see the world, why you were breathing, why you were thirsty.

He bit you.

The friend you had fallen for, the handsome and mysterious stranger that had arrived in town the next day your parents, the famous part of hunters had left, had turned you into one of his own species…

"Felix…" you whispered, weak hands squeezing his stable own, and he removed his eyes from your blood red ones, ashamed.

"I'm sorry, Y/N. I didn't know what to do, I couldn't… I couldn't lose you. You're very special to me, since the moment I first saw you," his voice broke, a sob coming from his pinky lips as he strengthened his gaze on your hands, then finally raised his head to look at your eyes, a single tear falling from his eyes.

"... and I love you, too, a lot. You don't know how happy I was that time when you called my name after I asked if we could be friends," he paused, wiping his tears with one hand and breathing in before he continued. "And you also don't know how… devastated I was when I saw you almost lifeless on the floor. I understand if you hate me for doing this to you, but I had–"

"I don't hate you" you muttered, interrupting his babbling. He looked at you with teary eyes, almost afraid to say anything else, but silently begging for confirmation of what you said.

"I don't hate you, I can't. I love you, Lix, as… as more than a friend, so thank you. Thank you for not letting me die," you smiled, sitting in the bed so you could clean his tear stained cheeks. He still couldn't let go of your hands, keeping his own on top of yours as you touched the delicate cold skin of his beautiful face.

"I'm a little thirsty, though, and I don't believe you have a spare bloody bag in your pockets, do you?" he sat too straight on the chair at your mention of blood, standing up and leaving somewhere to later return with a mug in his hands. It was the same mug you prepared tea that first time.

"I knew you would be hungry, so I brought you this."

You arched a brow, suspiciously staring at the liquid inside the mug. "Where'd you get this from?"

"Ah, I didn't– it's not stolen. I buy them from the local hospital, I have a few in my suitcase," he explained, now giving you some peace because while he was a vampire, at least he didn't drain from people like others.

You drank the blood (which honestly, it tasted delicious) and your urgent thirst calmed down, thankfully, and when you were about to take the mug to the kitchen, Felix stopped you, taking it from your hand and telling you to lay in bed again because you were still recovering, rushing to wash it and return with you, still sitting in the chair.

The night was dissipating, the start of the sunlight giving new space to another day, and you felt exhausted, trying hard to be away from it. The headache you woke up with decreased after trying the blood, but it seemed to grow stronger with the sun decorating the sky.

"You should probably sleep, I can wake you up during the twilight. Get some rest, Y/N," his soft voice instructed, gushing you like you were a kid.

"Get in bed with me, please?" you asked him, moving to the side and patting the free space next to you. He seemed hesitant, but he followed your orders to make you happy, awkwardly getting under the blankets of your bed and staying still. You wanted to laugh and made fun of him for that, but you were too tired and in obvious need of rest so you passed your arm through his middle and rested your face on his chest, where his heart should be beating, and fell asleep to him rubbing your back.

Later on, you feel someone gently shaking you awake, opening your eyes to meet Felix who was still lying in your bed, cuddling you under the blankets.

"How'd you feel?" he asked as you rubbed your eyes, blinking away your remaining sleepy state.

"Better, thanks. Did you sleep?" he nodded, sighing and standing up.

"I know you're a bit weak still, but I need to teach you the basics to vampiric life, Y/N," Felix said, his voice serious and tone stern like a professional who had done that multiple times. You could only sigh, but stood up regardless.

That night, Felix taught you everything he knew; the best way to get blood, what you could do in case that you were ravenous and there weren't any blood bags left, and how to get your senses to afine better, and he also told you some rules that you thought were only myths, like having to be invited inside a household to be able to enter, the morning sunlight weakening you, as well as crucifixes, rosaries and holy water because they would burn and healing from those wounds would take more time than normal wounds.

"Why don't… why don't we try replacing human blood with animal blood?" you asked him, confused. The two of you were sitting on the grass in some place deep in the scary forest next to your house, looking at him next to you.

"You could do that, if you can tolerate the taste. I personally don't recommend it, animal blood tastes like… wait, think of rotten raw meat. That's what animal blood tastes like, to me at least, but don't worry, my parents had a fortune and I use that money to buy bags at the hospital, or sometimes I even pay homeless people to let me drink from them, not too much of course," he explained, looking anywhere while he tried to describe what he usually did.

"Oh" you lied on the grass, looking at the stars above you, "I didn't know that."

"There's a lot to discover, Y/N. There are some things that I can't describe to you, things you need to experience" he lied on the grass as well, staring at you instead of the sky. "Lucky for you, you won't be alone."

"Lix?" he hummed, animating you to continue. You bit your lip, hurting yourself a little with your new sharp fangs. "Can you kiss me?"

He nodded, moving his arms to rest on his elbows and then hovering over you. He placed a hand on your cheek, caressing it gently, and then his face got closer to you, not really touching yours but close enough that you could feel the ghost of them over your own.

"Say it again and I'll do it."

"Kiss me," and after hearing your demand, he happily complied to it, being mindful of your fangs and his, sweet and gentle but also intense.

You don't know how long that kiss lasted, because there was no need to breathe air anymore; what you did know was that you hadn't had any kiss like that before and that you were eager to kiss him again, this time adding hands exploring his body.

"Fuck, that felt so good, can I touch you while you kiss me this time? Y-you can touch me too if you want…" you proposed. If you were still a human, you were more than sure that you would be blushing in that moment, the stuttering giving away your nervousness.

You waited for him to nod, and when he did it was your turn to hold his face in place and kiss him again, this time with second intentions poorly hidden between the breathtaking kiss.

Your hands moved from his face to rest on his shoulders, then to his shoulders and that's where you took a pause in the wet kiss, saliva connecting you to him but you didn't care, maneuvering to push him to the grass and sit on his hips, a surprised huff coming from with his a laugh that got quickly interrupted by another kiss and your hands resting in his chest, legs on each side of his hips and your centre slightly pressed over him.

When you separated from him, you were breathless. Not because you needed air, but because you were desperate, you needed something else, you needed him.

"Wow, Y/N, I'm very happy that you really like me, but what if we take a short break, baby?" Felix asked, placing his hands on your hips and sitting with his back straight looking at your eyes.

"But I don't wanna rest, Lix," you pouted, resting your forehead against him. "I… I don't know what is happening to me but I need you, I wanna have you" you cried out.

You couldn't see him, but his eyes widened as he made an important realization. "Oh," was the sound he made when the imaginary light bulb over his head shone.

"That's… part of the transformation, darling. I thought it was just a myth, but newborn adult vampires usually get… horny when they're bonding with their creators. Apparently, it's because they share an unbreakable bond," he explained, but considering the ultra horny state that you were in you didn't catch any of that new information, you were too busy trying to figure out what was going on with yourself.

"Lixie, I liked kissing you but I need more than that, can you help me? Can you make me yours tonight?" you cried out to him, your hands turned into fists resting between the two of you.

"I can do that, let's head to your ho–"

"No, let's do it here, please?" you begged, arms wrapping around his neck and hips subtly rocking to get some release.

"We can get caught, love, we should better go to your house…" he said again, trying to talk some sense to you.

"It's the middle of the night, Felix, people are sleeping and we're in the middle of the forest, just take me here, I need it, I need you," you cried out again. He felt bad, because he was the reason why you were feeling like this, and he hated himself for causing you this discomfort.

"Alright, but if you want to stop don't hesitate to tell me," he finally said, kissing the tip of your nose when you nodded and he started taking off his jacket, placing it on the ground next to him, manhandling you to lay you there, him still between your legs and doing all of that while kissing you gently. You let him move you as he wanted, sighing in complete relief to feel him touching you.

Lifting your shirt to expose you, you helped him take it off you and then did the same procedure with your bottoms, staying completely naked under him, looking at him through hooded eyes while his hands carefully traveled through your soft skin, fingers leaving a surprisingly warm trail provoked by his cold digits, and then he rested his hands on your thighs, spreading them and looking at your wetness.

He cursed under his breath, fingers coming in contact with your sex making you shiver. He collected your essence with his middle and pointer finger and passed it up and down, stopping at your clit and rubbing it tentatively, earning a moan from you.

Felix groaned, continuing playing with you, making you grab one of his wrists, your other hand playing with your nipples, a choir of moans and pleasant sighs coming from your lips motivating Felix to keep going, the way you called his name let him know he was successfully making you feel pleased, the stimulation from the sounds you made making his cock harden under, he palmed himself, then with that same hand he started undoing the buttons of his shirt. After some struggling, he was finally done and just then he decided to slide a finger inside you, grunting when he felt your warm insides welcoming him greedily; you gasped, the strange intrusion feeling somewhat good.

He tested the waters with just one finger, deciding to put another in when you raised your hips and told him to go deeper, both of your hands above your head ripping the poor grass from underneath you in your squirming pleasure.

"That's it, princess. You're doing a great job taking my fingers," Felix hushed, scissoring his fingers inside you and massaging your clit. Soon enough, he managed to make you cum around his fingers, darkened eyes looking at your spasming cunt hugging his digits so tightly, he almost wanted to pull his hair out with his hands.

Pulling his fingers out of you, he kicked them clean from your juices, looking down at you before asking "do you feel better now? Maybe you need to rest."

You shook your head from side to side, eyes barely open from your spot on the floor.

"I still need you, Felix, I want to be intimate with you, I– I really need you," you pleaded, voice ducked up from all the previous moaning.

"Fuck, you… I can't tell you no," his hands went to undo his pants, pulling his hardened cock out and placing it in through your folds, coating it with your still fresh cum.

Your pussy throbbed when you felt him come in contact with you, you wanted to move but you knew better than to act on your own so you allowed him to do the honors himself, and when he finally did, he inclined and took your lips romantically, filling your insides while he kissed you so hungrily.

Straightening his back once he was inside you, he started slowly. Felix savored the view of you underneath him, arching your back and pulling your hair with one hand, the other around your throat while you babbled for him to keep going, telling him that he was doing good and trying your best to be coherent in your compliments for him. He thought you looked beautiful, because yes, vampirism does wonders, but you were still almost the same as before (or at least, your naked self looked exactly as he imagined) with your eyes as the only exception.

He bended again, to allow your adventurer hands to explore his body like he had explored yours, but surprisingly they just settled on his shoulders, nails leaving marks and scratches where they touched while you rolled your eyes in pleasure, the tightening of your walls warning him of your second orgasm of the night, and you came again, this time on his twitching cock. The sweet embrace of your velvety walls provoked him to cum inside you inevitably, and he let go, placing his head on the curve where your neck and shoulder connected, hissing in pleasure and whispering that he loved you, lastly kissing the skin under his lip so tenderly.

After the post orgasmic moment, he pulled himself out from you, putting in place his pants and taking off his shirt to cover you from the cold air dancing through the forest trees.

You put on your underwear, cuddling Felix on the floor, neither of you saying anything for a while.

"Felix, why was Alistair at your home? Who are they?" you timidly asked in a low whisper, knowing well that he could hear you.

"He's my creator. He turned me, he murdered my parents and then turned me to make me suffer. I've been trying to escape from him, he wants to kill me to get his hands on the fortune my parents left me back home," he explained, eyes looking up but not focusing on anything, memories of those times playing before his empty eyes.

"I'm so sorry that happened, I wouldn't know how to… oh shit. Oh, no" you stopped mid sentence, shutting up, a hand flying to your mouth to cover it.

Worried, Felix looked at you to try and decipher what was on your mind, until you answered his unasked question.

"How am I going to tell my parents?"

… and the silence returned. Both of you with different ideas in your head. You planned a fake funeral, while Felix tried to think of something not so tragic.

"Let's run away. Right now, we can go walking anywhere, where people don't know anything about us, what do you say?" he proposed, hugging you to his chest. Words got stuck in your throat, you couldn't do that…

Your parents raised you as a hunter, yes, but they did so because they loved you and only wanted the best for you, their only child…

"L–let's do it. Go pick up your things, I'll do the same, and leave a goodbye letter for them and my friends, then we can go anywhere, far from Alistair, far from my family. Far from where I died."

Nodding once you voiced your opinion about Felix's plan, you got dressed again, walking with Felix to get his stuff and then to your house to pack what you would want to wear.

Lastly, you sat on the table where you and he had tea for the first time, taking the freshly written letter and leaving it at your favorite seat at the table, walking out of the house holding your suitcase in one hand, Felix's hand in your other hand, and mentally saying goodbye to your beloved home.

'Dear parents,

While you were away during your business trip, someone new arrived in town. I fell in love with him, and he did too. I'm sorry I can't hug you one last time, I'm sorry that we won't be able to reunite again, but I hope you can understand I'm doing this to make it less painful.

I love you, I'll always love you and remember you. Thanks for raising me and teaching me all you know.

With love,

Your child, Y/N. '

#skz smut #stray kids smut #stray kids fanfic #lee felix smut #felix smut #felix x reader #felix x you #lee felix fanfic #self insert #felix x y/n #fanfic #smut #FaIn #mine #original content #original writing

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moonbeamsung · 4 years ago

Text

You’re Just a Boy in a Blueberry Field

No fruit is sweeter than a summer love.

member: haechan

au: blueberry farmer!haechan x gn!reader

word count: 5.0k

genre: fluff, very light angst

warnings: mentions of food

author’s note: It’s here! I actually wrote most of this last summer, but only recently did I find the time to edit and get it ready to be posted. I added some parts and changed a few things, and now I like it quite a lot, so I hope you do as well! Thank you @astroboy-lele for beta-reading :) As always I would love to hear any feedback on this, and I hope that you enjoy the fic!

taglist: @astroboy-lele @kyuwoyo @rvse-hvvck @nakamotocore @kisshim @leejunini @chicksung @mrkcore @radiorenjun @moon-jun @jisungiest @stayctday @byutafy @jujubean23 @treasurehobi @bluejaem @lyshoonn @vera-liscious @allegxdly @cupfullofjeno @thats-a-jen-no-no @yo-ddream

network tags: @kpopscape @neo-constellations @culture-cafe @dreamlab-nct @k-dinernet

Thank you lovely Ana @rvse-hvvck for this additional header!

Donghyuck knows everything there is to know about those blueberries.

Without even pausing for the briefest of moments to think, to instinctively recall the information instilled in him throughout his childhood spent on the farm, he can answer any question that’s thrown at him. He can point out just the right color of berry to pick so that they’ll be ripe when you eat them later. Likewise, he can also tell you which ones are best to eat now, as you pick them, pretending not to notice when you pop one or two into your mouth and grinning when your eyes light up from the sweetness.

A day comes where he, filled with mischief as usual, places a not-so-ripe blueberry into your hand, and you, being so wrapped up in the peacefulness of the morning that surrounds you, fail to notice its red color and don’t think twice about lifting it to your lips, biting into it with your teeth. When the tart taste meets your tongue, your face contorts into an expression that elicits a raucous fit of laughter from him. You’re the first one in the fields that day. When the sun had risen on the horizon, the fleeting touch of color in the sky that dawn left behind still lingering above, he had been there, sitting on the front porch as always to greet customers.

Donghyuck knows every bug that loves to rest on the branches of the blueberry bushes. After spending so much time next to you as you scan them for the pops of vivid blues and purples that are hidden behind jade green leaves, he begins to learn that you are not fond of any bug, no matter how harmless. It’s cute, he thinks, how you inspect every berry that you drop into your basket, fearing that some small creature is lurking on it. If you do find something, he hears a small noise of both surprise and disgust before you fling the perfectly good berry away from you. It also hurts a little, knowing that it’s one less for you to take home.

When more people arrive at the farm after you, he’s forced to leave your side and get them started on their own search for the delicious fruit that’s nestled among the branches of nearly every bush. And if they ask where the best ones are, he specifically points them in the direction of the fields where you aren’t. It isn’t a lie, really, because they’ve had a good harvest everywhere this year.

...Okay, so maybe it’s a little selfish on his part, but who can blame him for wanting you to have some of the most plentiful bushes all to yourself?

Wednesdays are his favorite because it’s always the least crowded of all the mornings they’re open for business, and he can spend more time following you as you make your way down the rows, admiring the focus on your face and the way that you sometimes pause mid-reach, closing your eyes and standing still as the sun peeks through the clouds and casts its warm glow down onto the farm. A gentle sigh tumbles from your lips, darkened by the violet nectar that remains from the countless blueberries that have crossed their usually pink-tinted threshold. You resume your search after a few seconds, catching his eye and returning a smile he didn’t even know was there.

He makes the berries taste a little sweeter when he’s next to you. The purple juice that stains your fingers is a little darker. The sun feels brighter and warmer than ever, its heat shining down onto your skin.

One particular morning, after you finish picking all the blueberries you can carry, you decide to accompany Donghyuck on the porch, sitting beside each other in matching rocking chairs that first belonged to his great-grandparents, the farm’s founders. The familiar sounds of birds chirping and the low mumbling amongst customers meet your ears. You both gaze fondly at the horizon while immersed in casual chatter, all the while tending to several families as they come and go.

Whenever a car turns off of the two-lane, paved road and onto the noisy gravel path leading into a small grassy area that functions as a parking lot, Donghyuck excuses himself from the lively conversation both of you always find yourselves sharing. He stands, brushing his hands off on his faded denim overalls that are only slightly too large for his frame. His hand lifts up the baseball cap he always wears while the other runs through his hair, and your gaze falls on the back of his neck where it rests in longer strands. You always wonder why he keeps it like that since he complains about how hot it makes him feel. The humid summer air is stifling enough as it is, after all. The thought vanishes only moments after it arrives, though, and he flashes a brilliant grin at you over his shoulder as he descends the wooden stairs leading down to the patio.

Today, a happy looking family gets out of a shiny silver minivan. The mother and father with two kids, a boy and a girl, make their way toward the covered patio and Donghyuck bounds down the steps like always, grabbing 4 stacked pails in his calloused hands. You lean forward a little in the creaky old rocking chair, your weight in your toes, ears just barely picking up his conversation with them. He greets the parents warmly, shaking their hands and then he kneels down to be eye-level with the small children. The little boy seems shy as he clasps his fingers in front of him, thumbs twiddling back and forth, while his sister is clearly the opposite. She skips over to the much taller boy, saying hello.

“Do you two like blueberries?” He asks them, one arm resting on his knee and the other extending a pail out in front of him. The young girl nods enthusiastically before she takes the container from his hand and turns around, passing it to her brother as he nods, making eye contact with Donghyuck for the first time. A small smile grows on his face when he’s met with the wider one of the unfamiliar but still welcoming stranger. His sister speaks up again, “Every Friday we get to help Mom make her famous blueberry pie!”

“Is that right?”

“Yep! In the morning we always go to the supermarket and get fresh blueberries,” she explains. Her mother leans down, softly telling her that this week they’re here to pick blueberries instead, fresh from the farm they were grown on.

“Really? So that means we’re not buying them at the store anymore?”

“Well, honey, today we can pick enough blueberries to last us for a whole month’s worth of blueberry pies.”

“And besides,” Donghyuck starts, still kneeling on the ground next to her, his boot leaving an imprint in the dirt underneath it, “it’ll taste even better since you picked them yourselves, don’t you think?” The boy punctuates his question with a wink.

The young boy steps up for the first time, grin stretching even wider as he finds the courage to happily agree with the wise words. Exclaiming eagerly and in a way that only a child can, he takes his sister by the hand that’s not holding his small bucket before scurrying off, their parents close behind after grabbing pails for each other as well as a third that their daughter had forgotten in the midst of the excitement.

As Donghyuck joins you on the porch once again, you can’t help but smile as you remember how he interacts with each and every customer that passes through the weathered fence surrounding the property. When he talks to kids in particular, his eyes seem to light up, and you see just how much of a kid he still is deep down. His playfulness never fails to make an appearance whenever you spend time with him.

You’re thankful for the moo of a cow in the distance that interrupts his question of why you’re smiling like an idiot and hopefully drowns out the steady sound of your pounding heart.

The next week he tells you that the rest of his family is out of town, and he’s been left with the responsibility of running the farm all on his own. He usually does most of the work himself these days anyway since he’s getting older and more mature, although some of his jokes say otherwise. You miss the way his mom would poke her head out of the upstairs window of the main house, calling out a greeting to you both from across the property, overjoyed at the sight of her son spending time with the particular customer he’s mentioned so many times before. Whether he would share an amusing anecdote of yours with his siblings at the dinner table or point out something that reminded him of you, it was far too easy for her to figure out how he feels about you.

In an effort to spend more time with him, keep him company and just help out in general, you offer to stay at the house with him for a little while. Or at least until his family gets back from their trip, and to your delight, he agrees. You arrive in the late evening, on a day when the fields are closed, just in time to catch the setting sun as it disappears behind the trees and power lines that seem to stretch for miles in the distance. Tugging an overnight bag of belongings with you, you knock twice on the wood of his front door.

It opens swiftly and Donghyuck welcomes you inside, wearing an apron that he must have outgrown 10 years ago, at least. You snicker at the snug choice of attire and he shoves your shoulder, though not with enough force to make you stumble. He whines a little in that saccharine-sweet voice of his that makes your heart clench, but you don’t give in. Not this time.

When the farm is closed for the day, the family has a chance to pick from some of the bushes that are planted in a more secluded area, all to ensure that they also have a big enough supply of the fruit to last them for the season. So Donghyuck had woken up at the crack of dawn, although you aren’t sure why. He had made his way downstairs and out into the dewy air of the morning, gathering just enough blueberries to bake a cobbler that night when you came over, since he’d learned it was your favorite treat after hours of conversation about anything and everything. The recipe comes straight from his great-grandfather, he informs you, and it’s written on a yellowing piece of paper in handwriting that you couldn’t read even if you tried. He, however, can somehow decode the seemingly nonsensical swirls and lines on the page. You suppose it’s part of the magic of the family recipe that gets passed down with it.

Donning an apron yourself, you join him at the sink as you begin washing the berries, gently grabbing a handful at a time as you let the tap water clean them. When you both reach into the large container at the same time, your hands brush and you almost scoff at the swell of your heart that you feel inside your chest.

As you’re working together to make the batter that you will soon pour into his mother’s finest glass baking pan, Donghyuck briskly swipes his fingertip on the side of the bowl where the mixer had splattered the combined ingredients, extending it in your direction. You raise an eyebrow at the boy and said fingertip before turning your head away.

“If you really think that I would lick that off your finger, then you’re terribly mistaken.”

Coyly, the mischief-maker in question retorts back as you glance at his impishly delighted expression. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” you state rather firmly, but matching the mirth in his eyes with a glimmer of amusement in your own. “I’ll settle for the spatula, thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” Donghyuck rolls his eyes, your answer completely expected. At least he tried.

You won’t deny that you enjoy sampling a bit of the batter of a dessert as much as anyone. But not that much.

Left with no choice, he takes himself up on his own offer and sticks his finger into his mouth with an audible ‘pop,’ exaggerating the action just to get a rise out of you, feeling the upward curl of his lips when you react ever so slightly with a silent chuckle.

You’re adding the last bit of flour to the mixture when you accidentally get some of the powdery substance on your hand in the process. Turning the automatic mixer off, you momentarily forget about your stained skin and you make the mistake of wiping your face with the back of your wrist, smearing the white stuff on your cheek. Donghyuck notices, of course, and an innocent attempt to help clean up the mess only ends with the two of you blushing like crazy.

“Let me help you,” he speaks up.

“Don’t be ridiculous, the pan’s not that heavy, and even if it was, I’m strong enough anyway—”

You’re about to pick up the glassware but his sudden strides over to you from across the large kitchen cause everything you were saying, doing, and thinking to come to a complete stop. You’ve never really had a problem with personal space before, but right now he’s leaning down and his face is so close that you’re afraid to even breathe for fear that the action might just throw you off balance and towards him. For fear that you might not push his chest away with your hands if that happens.

He’s bending his knees to match your eye level and his hand lifts from its place at his side, hovering in midair not far from where the flour still lingers on your skin. His eyes had been so focused on the stain but the shrinking proximity between you and him pulls his gaze from your cheek to your eyes, blown wide and confused because you still have no idea that there’s something on your face.

The undoubtedly palpable tension in the room almost reaches down his throat and pulls the words from his vocal chords in an effort to dispel the heavy air circulating around the both of you.

“There’s… uh… you have flour…”

Donghyuck still hasn’t broken the less than comfortable eye contact, but he’s unable to look away for reasons unknown to him. After an agonizing amount of seconds your brain switches on again, albeit slowly, and you’re able to properly process the position you’re currently in. Your own hand starts to lift and though the movement is slight, it’s enough to draw his eyes down to it and he finds the strength to complete his goal at last.

His thumb swipes across your cheek and without even thinking he pops it into his mouth once again, forgetting about the unpleasant taste of flour. The way that the boy’s face scrunches up when the bitter powder meets his tongue doesn’t eliminate the awkwardness completely, but it’s a start. You hastily make an effort to avert your gaze as you frantically wonder if he caught your face that’s surely as warm as a blazing fireplace, all because he did the unthinkable with that stupid finger of his.

You won’t let yourself dwell on how his hand is just the right size to cradle the side of your head, or how much nicer his lips look up close, or how they must taste like the blueberries that he snuck into his mouth as you made the cobbler, or how you wished he had used his lips on your cheek instead of his thumb.

How you wish he had closed the almost nonexistent distance between your flushed faces.

These thoughts do nothing to ease the steadily growing heat that’s currently taking over your skin. Your eyes land on the glass pan and you take the opportunity to grab it, acting as a sort of distraction for your mind and also as something to snap you both out of your embarrassed hazes.

You get the finished dessert into the oven with no trouble after that, and now you have a little over half an hour of time to kill before it’s ready, so Donghyuck leads you into the nicely furnished family room and plops down onto the plush couch. When you don’t immediately follow he glances up at you, sensing that you’re still hesitant after the awkward moment. He smiles softly and almost apologetically, as if he’s sending a silent signal that you’ll both move past it soon enough, an invitation to put the incident behind the two of you. And you accept it.

You take a deep breath before you sit down next to him, sinking into the cushions underneath and behind you. The material dips slightly under the weight of both your bodies and gravity itself seems to be in control as it pushes you together, shoulders bumping and the sides of your legs being pressed up against each other. Thankfully, the television roars to life with the laughter of a live audience on one of your favorite shows, and you exhale a puff of air you didn’t even know you were holding in. With every scene that lights up the large display, you curl up further and further into his side, his arm migrating across the back of the sofa and winding around your shoulder only a few centimeters at a time.

This feels like home. Donghyuck feels like home.

The buzzer of the oven interrupts when you’re halfway through another episode, prompting you to jump to your feet just as abruptly as the alarm-like noise had started blaring. Consequently his arm flops down by his side as he mentally curses the loud intrusion into what had become a comfortable atmosphere, an atmosphere that was finally surrounding you again after what felt like an eternity but had really only been an hour.

In no time, you’re returning from the kitchen, the warm blueberry contents of the cobbler oozing out onto the flowery pair of plates you had grabbed from the cupboard. Handing one to him and setting the other aside for yourself, you quickly go back around the corner to grab two tall cups of cold milk. Your second time joining him on the couch comes more easily, almost all of the earlier tension having dispersed into the room, wafting out the windows along with the delicious scent of the fruit baked into the sweet, flaky crust. In fact, you’re fairly sure that it’s strong enough for even his neighbors down the road to smell. Which reminds you: you need to package some up to deliver to them tomorrow, per Donghyuck’s suggestion.

You’re most definitely sure that he smells the aroma, of course, because it’s hard to ignore the eagerness with which he takes a large bite of the dessert. “We make better bakers that I thought we would,” the boy comments, taking a sip of milk. The white mustache that it creates above his top lip when he lifts the glass to his mouth is enough to make you giggle, and you’re unaware that this predictable reaction was his objective all along. He grins, rather satisfied.

With your stomach now full, a head-plaguing drowsiness begins to set in. It slowly fills your senses enough for you to drift off, fork nearly falling out of your hand and onto the floor before he catches it, along with your weight when you slump down against his shoulder. Donghyuck is barely able to reach one of the end tables, and he sets the dishes and silverware down next to the now empty cups. Your body unconsciously clings to his like a koala to a branch, with both hands clutching one of his arms and a leg hooked over his thighs.

He takes one look at you and wishes he could pause time, to stay here forever. It’s not every day that he meets someone who can easily match the amount of snark he possesses. Simultaneously, you also balance out the friendship you share with your compassion and sense of wonder about the world, always evident in your morning routine when you come to the fields. Donghyuck has noticed that you bring out those same qualities in him, perhaps more than anyone else ever has. And just like you’re holding him right now, he vows to hold on to you.

As much as he doesn’t want to get up and for the evening to progress, he knows he should, that it has to. So he manages to detach from the hold of your limbs, gently pushing himself up and off of the couch so he doesn’t disturb you.

Glancing at the large antique clock above the doorway that leads out into the hall, Donghyuck realizes it’s much later than he thought. He decides to turn in for the night, but on a regular day he usually finds himself still awake well past midnight, despite the need to wake up early the next morning and run the farm from the crack of dawn.

Since you’re tired and he doesn’t want to risk you waking up alone in an unfamiliar bed and place, he comes to the conclusion that he’ll join you. Only leaving your side for a moment, he puts the cobbler into the refrigerator and turns off the kitchen lights behind him as he goes. Softly padding halfway up the stairwell, Donghyuck makes sure there’s enough light for him to see where he’s going before making his way back into the living room one last time. He tucks one arm underneath both of your bent knees as tenderly as he can, and places the other behind the middle of your back, hand gently curling against your waist. He carries you with probably the most delicacy he’s shown in his entire life.

Going upstairs is generally an easy task, but doing so while carrying another person is a different story. He would never forgive himself if he were to hurt you in any way. If even your foot happened to bump the wall next to you, a burst of frustration at himself and his own carelessness would surface regardless of the impact’s intensity

Your position in his arms gives him yet another opportunity to gaze upon your peaceful expression, and he begins to think more deeply about what you are to him. Looking forward to your visits makes his work so much more enjoyable and worth it. You’re someone who truly appreciates what he and his family do for a living and you faithfully support them with your business as a customer whenever you can, which is a rare thing to find in most people that come. Most are just bored and in need of something to occupy themselves or their kids. Sometimes they don’t even pick that many berries. But you always make sure to bring your own basket, which holds just as many as if not more than the ones the farm provides, and fill it to the brim. In his eyes, you’re special.

Amidst the mostly-asleep state that you’re in, your eyes just barely open far enough to see a blurry picture of Donghyuck’s face as he carries you through the house and up into the bedroom he had suggested you share. He sets you down onto the soft mattress before pulling the covers up to your stomach, retreating into the attached bathroom to quickly change into a thin t-shirt and his favorite pair of plaid pajama pants.

The memory of that conversation floods back to you. Initially, you refused the offer, saying that he would rest better if he had more space to move around. But being the clingy person he is, he had pouted desperately as you struggled to stand your ground in the discussion. “Fine,” you had huffed, only half-frustrated with those doe eyes he always uses to get his way, and your lips had great difficulty holding back a smile.

The hum of electricity that can be heard emanating from the next room snaps you out of these thoughts, and is enough to wake you up a bit more. Your gaze scans the surroundings for a minute or two before he opens the door again, his eyes now looking as heavy as your own.

Donghyuck joins you under the blanket and shifts to lay on his side, facing you. It’s funny that you’re both able to adjust to a situation so intimate and new almost instantly. Still on your back, your head turns and you’re conscious enough to raise an eyebrow at the boy. There’s that pout again.

“Please?” He mumbles, his bottom lip jutting out in an action he’s perfected. You know exactly what he’s after: cuddles.

You don’t even try to hide the playful roll of your eyes as you scoot a little closer, but it’s not close enough for him. He gets impatient, meeting you halfway, and this time it’s him that flings a leg over yours. An endearing, small noise of contentment from him fills your ears as you take notice of his arms, now interlocked behind your neck and around your shoulders. You melt into the snug position, a hand landing on his forearm that’s laying across your chest. Turning ever so slightly to the side, your other hand winds around his middle and eventually rests just above his hip, pulling him into you even more. Donghyuck nuzzles his face into the side of your neck, a few strands of your hair tickling his skin as he sighs in complete and utter bliss.

Determined to savor the moment until the irresistible inevitability of slumber starts to overtake you once more, you fight to stay awake with all of your might. But in what you thought was only the blink of an eye, the glittering stars visible through the bay window’s sheer drapes morph into the pale golden rays of first light. There’s a soft murmur of your name along with an unintentional, almost imperceptible peck to the place where his lips meet your skin, and you’re wide awake. Not to mention a little shocked.

He’s utterly unfazed, though, slowly waking up now that the sun has gotten brighter, its beams filtering into the room and hitting his already glowing face that becomes a gorgeous honey-colored hue.

Donghyuck reluctantly withdraws his arms from your form after one last embrace, effortlessly rising from the wrinkled bed sheets and offering his hand to you when you start to do the same. A sleepy smile makes a home on his features and he reminds you of your task to deliver a portion of the dessert you made to his next-door neighbors.

That’s exactly what you do, first making yourselves presentable in the bathroom by smoothing down wild bed hair and freshening up your faces with cool water. Being around to see each other’s natural morning states is a major act of trust, and he doesn’t miss an opportunity to poke fun at you for it.

“How long does it normally take for you to do your hair every day before you come here?” His tone is dripping with feigned innocence, but the sly grin on his lips says otherwise.

“Shut up, Hyuck.”

Tupperware container in hand, your shoes step in rhythm with his as you amble along the grassy shoulder of the street together. Somehow you end up hand-in-hand by the time you reach his neighbors’ front patio.

“Donghyuck!” The elderly woman at the door greets him with a twinkling voice, her husband coming into view soon after. “Look who it is, honey,” she motions fondly to the boy who they both once knew to be much shorter and younger, but now is all grown up before their eyes. “You’re getting so tall. It seems like only yesterday you were scurrying through the blueberry fields and waving to us through the gaps in the fence.”

“Yes ma’am, it does,” he responds politely. The couple has been living there for as far back as he can remember, and quite honestly they feel as if they’ve become part of his family, too.

Her warm brown eyes light up. “Is this the customer your mother was telling me about last week? She mentioned how close you’ve become, and now I’m finally seeing it for myself. You make a lovely pair.”

“Oh—” Donghyuck startles. Not much can get him flustered, but he hadn’t exactly been anticipating for his mom to recount all the things he’s said about you to the sweetest and most innocent of elderly couples. Of course they would assume that there’s something going on.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, with you. He wouldn’t mind at all, really. He’ll just need to have a word about a little thing called privacy with his mother later.

You see the glint of panic in his eyes and speak up. It’s not often he makes such an easy target for teasing. “Thank you,” you state graciously, the smugness in the statement only noticeable to him. “We’re very happy together.” He feels you lean into him, fingers unwrapping from his and gripping the other side of his waist. You know exactly what you’re doing, and so does he.

Almost forgetting to hand over the slices of cobbler you’d cut earlier, Donghyuck nudges you to do so, and the four of you exchange thanks and farewells before you’re on your way back to the farm.

“Happy together, huh?”

“Shut up, Hyuck.” You mumble something else afterwards that he doesn’t quite catch.

“What’s that? Didn’t hear you,” he sings, stopping in his tracks. You do the same. “Shut up and what?”

“...And kiss me.”

After many days and many nights spent wondering, you can confirm that his lips do, indeed, taste as sweet as the blueberries in those fields.

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finaledenialist · 4 years ago

Text

okay eveyone please stop yelling at me in the tags that you want to sue me for therapy money, here, quick, grab a happy ending (also yes, i am shamelessly tagging you @lobotomycastiel because this is all your fault:

When the Empty spits him out he doesn't know where he is or what year it is. He looks around and well, this is certainly Earth and it's still existing

There is nothing for you back there.

But he has no clue how much time has passed. He looks around. It seems to be a field in the middle of nowhere. In the distance he sees a bunch of trees. They look like they are slowly changing colours, they are not bright red yet but the browns and yellows are already showing; the sun is warm and birght but the temperature is not what could be described as hot. It's early autumn.

There is nothing for you back there.

He shakes the words echoing in his mind and starts walking towards the slowly setting sun in search of a road. After a couple of miles he finds it but there are no cars, there is nothing but the silence of a lazy evening, and he is worried. No cars on the road doesn't immediately mean that it has been years, he thinks, maybe it's just one of those long forgotten roads that lead to nowhere, one of those he ended up on when he had to leave the bunker. It's been hours until he hitched a ride back then, maybe this was a similar case.

He walked until the night fell, and then he just kept on walking, because what else was he suposed to do, finding comfort in the fact that at least the world still somehow existed. But how many years it has been? He put one foot in front of the other in total darkness and suddenly he noticed a shadow. It was definitely his shadow, and the night was starless, moon hidden safely behind the clouds; but if there was a shadow then there also had to be... A light?

He turned around and he let out the deepest sight of relief when he saw two front lights of a car driving in his direction. He stood there, wonderstruck. That's how Noah must heave felt like when he saw the returning dove, carrying an olive branch after days with no sight of land, he thought as he waved at the driver.

This time he catches a ride much sooner than the last time, but he doesn't want to think about it. The car looks old, but normal-old, he saw these kind of cars before, the radio plays a song he vaguely remembers, but he's too afraid to ask the driver what year is it; it would make things weird and he needs this ride more than anything. He navigates his way through the small talk, yeah, I just got lost in the woods, yes just take me to the nearest town and I got it from there, please and thank you so much for your kindness, he adds. The driver is an older man who looks tired and they spend the rest of the ride in silence.

He doesn't know the town’s name but he notices a phone booth, hidden in the alley; it's dark but the booth's light shines like a beacon and he feels like he found an oasis on a desert. He has no money, but there is a sticker that has the town's name written on it, along with some emergency numbers. It also says that if you press the correct combination of zeroes and hashes you might get a chance to call someone and that person would be charged for the call. So at least that problem is solved.

But what if

there is nothing for you back there?

He wants to call Dean. He wants to more than anything, but he ends up staring at the numbers and not daring to make the call. What if no one answers, what if they are all long dead and gone? What if the only thing he hears is silence? There is a little screen next to the keyboard that tells the hour, it's almost 2 a.m., and despite claiming that he is already saved to the Empty's face just hours ago, he feels completely lost.

It's 3:24 a.m., when he finally taps Dean's number on the old, worn out keyboard, desperately clutches onto the phone, closes his eyes and fucking prays.

There is signal.

And after the third one, there is also an answer.

After he manages to tell Dean where he is and that yes, I am fine, I am somehow, again, back, he hangs up and he just breaks. He steps out of the booth, breathes in the cold autumn air that smells like rain and dirt, and starts to cry. He didn't mean to, he wasn't supposed to feel anything that deeply, he wasn't supposed to feel anything at all, really, but he feels, he feels like the crushing weight on his back was just lifted, disappeared, and now all he has to do is just wait and then, then everything will be okay. He looks at the starless sky and the tears just run down his cheeks freely, because he was given yet another chance, undeserved and probably one-too-many, but that didn't matter, because he was alive, and Dean and Sam were alive and that's all that mattered.

He heard the approaching car before he saw the shadows casted by the impala's lights on the pavement. He would recognize the sound anywhere; after all he spent a lot of hours in that car, in the passenger seat, in the backseat...

He took another breath and quickly wiped his face with his sleeves. When he heard the car's door opening, he slowly turned around and saw them. Dean and Sam. Dean looking at him like he was witnessing a revelation and the shock on Sam's face. They looked just like he remembered them. Maybe that much time didn't pass after all.

'How long was I gone?', he manages to ask.

'Too damn long', Dean answers immediately and Sam's jaw drops.

'I don't know what to say', Sam says, and the little smile starts to make it's way on his face.

'I do', Dean says and takes a step, and then the second one, towards Cas, and suddenly Dean holds him, embraces him, like that one time in Purgatory years ago. 'I missed you so damn much, Cas', Dean's whisper is meant only for the two of them.

Suddenly there is a cry. A child's cry. Dean makes a step back and looks at Cas. He looks exhausted, Cas judges by the bags under Dean's eyes, but Dean smiles, the widest smile Cas has ever seen and says:

'We have a child to raise, Cas.'

It's Thursday and everything is alright again.

#baby jack truthing #widower arc #here here it's okay guys enough of this angst

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stargaze-sunflower · 4 years ago

Note

Hello! Could you do some Dewey and Louie bonding? Or maybe Dewey protecting his brothers? Your writing is amazing btw.

This ask is from way back when I was taking prompts sajdskj I'm sorry its so late but I dug up something that I wrote for the green beans discord and it sort of fit this so I cleaned it up a bit :]

The context is that Dewey and Louie have been stuck in a magical forest that shows them their worst memories, but it kinda starts near the end of that story so asjdkkjsa anyway I hope you enjoy!! <33

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Dewey’s worst nightmare used to be Huey being freakishly tall, but now that he’d been introduced to freakishly tall trees in a disturbingly magical forest, he might be reevaluating that decision.

“We’ll get out of here,” Dewey said, softer than he might’ve, had it not felt like something was watching them. “We always get out.”

“Yeah, sure, we always escape magical forests that trap us and show us our worst memories,” Louie grumbled, sarcastic and defensive; tired and lost.

“You know what I mean,” Dewey said, standing up from where he’d been kneeling in a patch of bright green and glowing moss. He held out a hand for Louie to take. “We’re two-thirds of the Duck Boys, we’ll be fine.”

“It only takes once, you know,” Louie said, taking his hand and rising on slightly shaky legs. “And then always turns into sometimes, and my mental health will somehow get worse.”

“We’ll be fine,” Dewey reiterated, his chest squeezing a bit at Louie’s words, at the fact that he was so scared of sometimes. “I mean, we could probably use some help, sure. Or ideas. Or a miracle.”

“I’m afraid I’m out of stock,” Louie said drily.

Dewey laughed a bit, glad that most of the horrible tension from earlier had dissipated into something more manageable. Running from reruns of their worst memories until Louie collapsed into a panic attack had not been the fun adventure he’d been hoping for.

Still holding Louie’s hand, Dewey turned to take in their surroundings for what had to be the thirtieth time. There were trees as far as he could see, and they were taller than he could even fathom, so much so that he couldn’t see the sky, couldn’t tell if it was night or day. Patches of glowing green moss were spread haphazardly across the forest floor and growing near the bases of the trees. And speaking of trees…

“Do you think we should try climbing?” Dewey asked, his head tilted backwards at an uncomfortable angle as he searched for one worth a try. All the branches were at least twenty feet in the air.

“Nope, no. Absolutely not,” Louie said, tugging on his hand as if to shake the thought of it from his head. “I’d rather you didn’t fall and die, thanks.”

“Maybe one of those giant deer we saw earlier would catch me.”

“I don’t really want to see that either.”

“What? But it’d be so cool!”

“Do it on your own time, then,” Louie said, but a small smile was pulling at the corner of his beak, and Dewey grinned.

“That sounds like a challenge,” he said, teasing.

“That was the opposite of a challenge,” Louie said. “That was a thinly veiled plea to never leap into the arms of a giant deer.”

Dewey pouted playfully. “You’re no fun.”

“No, I just happen to have common sense and a healthy fear of injury.”

Something in the air shifted.

(“Fear, you say?”)

Dewey jumped about a mile in the air, startled, as Louie yelped in poorly concealed surprise. The voice seemed to come from all around them, layered and echoing and amused. Slowly, they turned around, and with wide eyes they took in the figure in front of them.

It was a child, glowing with the same light that had formed imitations of their family members just a few minutes ago. The child looked like a ghost, or a hologram, and despite its youthful appearance, Dewey got the feeling that it was older than anything he’d ever met before; ancient and magic and terrifying, like the trees surrounding them and the creatures they’d encountered throughout their adventure.

But it looked like a child.

The figure smiled, and Dewey blinked, feeling Louie’s grip on his hand tighten as they stared at the entity in front of them.

“Who are you?” Dewey blurted, forgoing a polite hello in favor of getting straight into whatever this was.

(“I am the forest,”) the child said, as if that were a perfectly normal and reasonable response. For their family, it might as well be. (“Why are you here?”)

“Trust me, I’d rather not be,” Louie spoke up, stepping out from where Dewey had subconsciously stepped in front of him. He gave the forest spirit a long, resigned look. “So if you could point us towards the exit, that would be great.”

(“There is no exit,”) the forest said, that amused undertone to its voice again, and then it smiled. (“But there is an escape.”)

“Okay, uh, can you point us to the escape, then?” Dewey asked, already frustrated by the word games the thing was playing.

The forest hummed as if deliberating, and the leaves around them rustled in an echo of it, low and haunting. Dewey felt Louie shiver.

(“It is something you have to find for yourself,”) said the forest spirit, floating forward a bit. (“All I can be is a guide. It is up to you, whether you leave or not.”)

There was a moment of silence, in which Dewey got the impression that the trees were breathing, or something equally as ridiculous.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Louie asked, growing bolder in his irritation. “We want to leave. Let us out.”

(“Freedom is not free, child,”) the forest said, for a moment sounding exactly as ancient as it really was. Sounding sad, almost. (“You have to give me something in return.”)

Dewey glanced back at Louie with a question in his eyes, and Louie just shrugged. Bargaining with the forest. Sure. Now he’d seen everything.

“What do you want?” Dewey asked.

(“An answer,”) said the forest, tilting its head to the side as it examined them. (“An answer to a question.”)

“Great,” Louie said flatly, exhaustion and resignation seeping into his voice. “Ask away.”

What Dewey had expected was some sort of riddle, or trick, or maybe an impossible task. What he got was something completely different.

(“What are you afraid of?”) the forest asked, and Dewey’s breath caught. The child frowned. (“No one ever tells me the truth.”)

“This has happened before?” Dewey asked, and the spirit shrugged.

(“I’ve lived for centuries,”) the forest said, looking around at the trees that were growing tall and proud around them. (“There are always those who wander.”)

“And do you let them leave?” Louie’s voice was careful in the way that meant he was scared. Dewey lightly squeezed his hand.

(“It depends on what they tell me.”)

Dewey swallowed, feeling the pressure begin to press in on him from all sides. He was the older brother here; he had to make sure they made it out.

“Okay,” Dewey said, after a few long seconds of eerie quiet. “I’m sacred of heights, and thunder, and— and rivers.”

He heard Louie’s rushed breath of surprise at his declaration, because there were definitely some things in there that his brother hadn’t known.

(“That is the truth,”) the forest acknowledged, (“but it is not enough.”)

“Why not?” Dewey asked, halfway to being offended.

(“What are you afraid of?”) the forest spirit repeated the question gently. (“More than anything.”)

“More than anything?” Dewey parroted, and the forest nodded. He’d never met a forest who could nod before.

Sighing, Dewey turned to look at Louie, who was staring back at him in resigned bewilderment. The glow from the moss cast him in an eerie sort of lighting, but he supposed it reflected the mood well enough. Eventually, Louie broke eye contact and sighed.

“Okay, sure, if we tell you our greatest fear, then you’ll let us leave?” Louie asked, apparently making sure that if he bared his soul, it would be for a good reason.

(“Yes,”) said the forest, simply. (“You will be free.”)

“Great, not ominous at all.”

“Do you even know what your greatest fear is?” Dewey asked, glancing at Louie over his shoulder. He wasn’t even completely sure if he knew his own.

“I’ve got a few ideas,” Louie said absentmindedly, not meeting his eyes, and Dewey’s stomach twisted into anxious knots.

(“Will you tell me the truth?”) asked the forest spirit, and it almost sounded like it was excited. (“It has been a long time since I’ve heard honesty.”)

“It’s been a long time since I’ve practiced it,” said Louie, “but I’ll do my best.”

The forest nodded, something like a wry smile pulling at its lips. (“That is the truth.”)

“Thanks,” Louie said, and then in the same breath: “I’m afraid of being useless. Of having nothing to offer that makes me worth keeping around. I’m afraid of hurting people, of letting them down. I’m afraid that I’ll be left behind because I’m the only one who doesn’t always like where we’re going.”

Dewey stood rigid in the wake of Louie’s confession, his hand gone still and clammy in Louie’s tight, shaking grip. The weight of the words was not lost on Dewey, who suddenly had something new that he was afraid of. He never wanted Louie to feel like any of that was even possible.

“Louie?” Dewey’s voice wavered around his little brother’s name, but Louie ignored him in favor of staring challengingly at the forest spirit.

There was a long pause, in which everything was hauntingly still.

(“That is the truth,”) the forest said eventually, a bit of pride making its way into its voice. (“Thank you.”)

“Yeah,” Louie said, sounding equal parts fragile and relieved. “No problem.”

Big problem.

“Louie,” Dewey said, looking at him with confused, hurt eyes. “Why do you— You know we’d never do any of that stuff, right?”

Louie just shrugged, smiling a bit awkwardly.

“Somedays it seems more rational than others,” he said, and then, “It’s your turn.”

Reluctantly, Dewey turned back to the forest spirit, who was standing there serenely and watching them patiently. Right. His greatest fears.

“I don’t like to think about being scared,” Dewey opened up with, deciding to just wing it. “So I guess I’m afraid of being afraid. I’m afraid of missing out, being ignored. I’m afraid that no one will ever think I’m special or unique. It would really suck to be thought of as boring, you know?”

(“I do not know,”) said the forest spirit, kindness shining through its old eyes as it looked at him. (“But that is the truth. Thank you.”)

“Sure,” Dewey said, feeling slightly sick. “Anytime.”

“Though preferably never again,” Louie added, his voice thin and weak.

Dewey turned to look back at him, and found nothing but sadness and understanding in his gaze.

“You’re special, Dewey,” Louie told him, “and the fact that we’re standing here talking to a forest spirit is testament enough to the fact that you couldn’t be boring even if you tried.”

Despite himself, Dewey started chuckling, and Louie joined in with giggles soon after, all of the tension tumbling out of them in the form of laughter. The forest spirit smiled at them.

(“Laughter is rarer than honesty,”) the forest spirit mused. (“Or at least it is so where I come from.”)

“It depends on the person, I think, more than the place,” Louie said, and how did their lives reach this point? Making casual conversation with the embodiment of a magical forest. “Can we go now?”

(“Of course,”) said the forest, leaning back against a tree, seeming completely at ease. (“I told you the truth. You may go.”)

“Oka—"

“Why did you need to know our greatest fears?” Dewey asked suddenly, overcome with curiosity. “Are you holding them hostage now? Will we not be afraid anymore?”

(“I am a magical being,”) the forest spirit said, smiling up at the leaves above them, (“but even I cannot make you fearless.”)

“Then what was the point?”

(“To make you brave.”)

“Brave?” Louie asked, frowning a bit.

(“Honesty and Bravery are closely connected.”) The forest shrugged. (“To have any of either is to wear your heart on your sleeve.”)

“That’s another thing I’m afraid of,” Louie said softly, a bit wonderingly, and Dewey glanced at him sharply. “Being known.”

(“And yet you are,”) said the forest, glancing at Dewey and smiling softly. (“And you are loved all the same.”)

“I’d call that a miracle,” Louie said, a wry grin growing on his face even as Dewey squeezed his hand in a silent reprimand.

(“You may call it whatever you want.”) The forest around them began to change, the trees shrinking and shifting in the corners of Dewey’s vision. (“But I call it the truth.”)

The glow of the moss began to fade away, leaving behind a depressing normalcy. The trees had molded themselves into a mere shadow of their former glory, sunlight passing through the leaves that hung shortly above them. Before long, the only thing left of the magical forest was the figure in front of them, fainter and more translucent now that its home was back in… whatever realm it had come from; Dewey didn’t really know much about the logistics of magical forests and such.

“Bye,” Dewey said awkwardly, uselessly, and the forest spirit laughed brightly, eyes crinkling.

The laughter lingered even after the childlike figure had disappeared, until even that was carried away on the wind, leaving Dewey and Louie standing in a perfectly average sort of forest, staring at the spot where the last of their adventure had just vanished into thin air. Too much had happened in the past few hours. Too much to even begin to process.

“That was… something,” Louie said faintly, and Dewey snorted.

Understatement of the century.

Dewey opened his mouth to respond, but the harsh sound of the bushes to their right moving around pulled his attention away. Huey and Webby came tumbling through the underbrush moments later, looking wild and worried. Dewey and Louie turned to look at them with wide eyes, and Huey sighed in relief.

“We’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Huey said, rushing over to them to pull them into a hug. “Where have you been?”

“And why were you holding hands and staring at a tree?” Webby added, scanning them for injuries.

“It’s a long story,” Dewey managed, finally letting go of Louie’s hand as they shared a look.

“Yeah,” Louie agreed, looking back at their other siblings, “and we’re not telling it until we’re far, far away from anything resembling a forest.”

“The trees have eyes and ears,” Dewey said, nodding seriously, fighting a smile when Huey and Webby looked properly baffled now.

“And the forest talks like a poet from like, 80 centuries ago. I don’t—” Louie cut himself off with a yawn. “I don’t know. I’m tired.”

Hueys face softened into something concerned and caring.

“Okay,” said Huey. “Okay, let’s go home.”

The wind ruffled their hair gently as they were led back towards the Sunchaser, and somehow the rustling of the leaves sounded like a goodbye. Dewey looked towards the sky and smiled.

#ducktales #star snippets #louie duck #dewey duck #ducktales fanfic #ducktales fanfiction #i know this came out of left field asjdkkasj sorry about that #i wrote this in july during one of mine and cookies angst sessions JKASDJKDAS #i hope this isn't super confusing #also thank you for the prompt!!!! :D #it was one of my favorites ajkdsaj you guys know how much i love dewey and louie bonding #it was just that by the time i got to it i had run out of energy to write it #but this is already written so here it is #i'm thinking about posting these snippets on ao3 but idk if i should do it separately or as a chaptered work #yall i just really wanted to write a mystical magical forest spirit when i wrote this #anyway enjoy :]

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liibrii · 4 years ago

Text

fem!Miya!Reader & Miya family

Part of the Third Miya Series

Synopsis: Three is a weird number. It's only two units bigger than one and only a unit more than two and yet it seems to be so much more, especially when the three in question are toddlers needed to be dressed for kindergarten.

wc: 2.1k

a/n: baby Miyas, the ultimate serotonin providers 🙃 if you wanna be tagged in future chapters let me know, and as always feedback is greatly appreciated!

Mrs Miya has always trusted her gut feeling and in that moment it was telling her the bathroom was down the corridor, last door on the left, and, just as Mr Miya had told her that morning, eating leftover curry for breakfast was a dreadful idea.

Doctor repeats her words and Mrs Miya's neck becomes completely stiff. If it wouldn't she'd perhaps be able to look at her husband whose face turned ashen pale. “Triplets?“

Well, this will take buy one get one for free jokes on a whole new level.

Doctor's words are just buzzing and the soon to be Miya parents nod and smile and nod and hold on each others' hand as if there's no tomorrow. They're silent on the way out.

Mr Miya turns to his wife. “Do they even sell strollers for three kids?”

Three is a weird number. It's only two units bigger than one and only a unit more than two and yet it seems to be so much more, especially when the three in question are toddlers needed to be dressed for daycare.

You all wear the same colours because Atsumu would throw a tantrum if your jumper wasn't the same colour as his and you would throw a tantrum when yours was a different colour than Osamu's, who in turn would throw a tantrum because his jumper was now the same colour as Atsumu's.

Mrs Miya had read advices that one should always dress their twins (or, in this case, triplets) differently as it is good for their personality development; which is all well and good and a great advice, except that whoever wrote it forgot to take into account that two and a half out of her three children saw being dressed differently as their siblings as a horrific violation of their toddler rights.

Your parents tell themselves one day you'll grow out of this phase, but till then mom stitches little numbers one, two, and three on the edges of your clothes. She did start stitching your names, but with only two pairs of hands in the house and three little sprouts in constant need of attention there was never enough time to finish them.

“One,“ says Mr Miya and Atsumu raises his hands.

“Ichi!“ he proudly chimes.

“Two,“ Mr Miya grabs you before you'd crawl out of the reach of his arms.

“Ni!“ like his brother Osamu too raises his chubby fists, but only halfway.

“And three!”

“San!“ You hug your dad's neck, perhaps hoping that will get you out of having to wear socks.

And heaven forbid they ever messed up which jumper belonged to whom. It was beyond your parents' wisdom how you could tell the number stitched on the edge was not the same they said when counting your heads, but you could.

“Must be yer superpower,“ jokes Mr Miya while changing your sweater that has the wrong number on the edge. He barely pulls it off when Atsumu's chubby hands already grab it and begin pulling it over his head. He screams when his father offers to help, pouting even if he's completely lost between the left sleeve and the opening for the head.

“Alright buddy,“ muses Mr Miya and turns his attention to Osamu who already pulled his socks off so, naturally, now you've mysteriously lost one of your socks too. Mr Miya sighs. Maybe it's time to let his boss know he's going to be late.

Three is an enormous number, when the three in question are a feverish toddler in your arms and two more running around doctor's office. Perhaps it was time to ask the daycare to put you three into different groups. That will cause an outrage, oh ever since the 'One child, one pillow' incident Mrs Miya is well aware of that. But then again, better that than all of you throwing a tantrum when only one got to leave the daycare early.

“One, two, three,“ she counts your heads under her breath, then hurries over to where you just picked up a very interesting small stone that probably fell from the soles of someone's shoes, “San! I mean y/n, sweetie, that's a stone. See, it's rough and cold.“ You whine when she takes the treasure from you but still listen closely to her words that spark Atsumu's interest too, and he trots closer to see what is happening. Thankfully feverish Osamu has fallen asleep in her arms. Really, the last thing she needs is his firm conviction the stone is just greyish candy. Mrs Miya still lets Atsumu take the stone in his hands. “No,“ she grabs his hand when he lifts it towards his mouth that is already curving into a grimace. “Hey, hey, no need to cry over it sweetie. Yer gonna wake up yer brother and he needs sleep right now.“

“Is he sick?” your tiny voice chimes in. Mrs Miya nods. “Because he ate melon seeds,“ you nod with all the wisdom of a 3 year old. “He's growin' melons in his tum-tum,“ you tell Atsumu whose wide eyes blink twice before he bursts into tears.

“One, two, three,“ Mrs Miya counts your heads while you play around the house. If you hide from her sight sooner or later screaming and crying alerts her something happened. A moment later Mr Miya returns to the living room with a very much red faced and screaming Atsumu in his arms.

“What happened?“ she asks, crouching down to console you, also crying because there's no way you'd let your brother scream his lungs out by himself.

“Ah the usual,“ he places the scissors on the counter, “wouldn't let him shred his shirt. Osamu, no!“ He quickly grabs his other son who also starts crying, shocked that his own father would take the lost sock from him before he got the chance to find out how it tastes.

Ah, just another Sunday.

The good thing about three children running around is they're never lonely. There are always games to play, fights to win, faces to colour. Most of the days all of you exhaust yours (sometimes apparently infinite) supplies of energy by the time evening falls. Mr Miya puts you to bed (one bed, because trying to make you sleep in separate cribs is apparently a disgusting violation of Toddler convention) before he collapses beside his wife.

“Asleep?“ she asks.

Mr Miya hums. “For now.“

The moment they turn the lights off slide door across the hallway open. Light steps cross the dangerous waters of the dark hallway, enter the bedroom and climb over Mr Miya to the safe haven between the parents.

“Bad dreams?“ asks Mrs Miya. In response Osamu sniffles and snuggles closer. Not a minute passes when two more pairs of legs pass through the darkness of the hallway and climb to be beside their brother. You shriek when Atsumu pushes his cold feet on your back, but dad's stern word makes you stop. A few moments later you're all asleep.

“One, two, three,“ sleepily mumbles Mrs Miya, patting each of your heads.

“Four,“ says Mr Miya and his wife giggles.

Three is the number of band-aid packages your parents buy per month. Ever since you've grown for about a chopstick taller, well you only grew for about three thirds of a chopstick because nature thought it would be funny if you got outgrown by your brothers at the tender age of 5, it turned out the tall tree in the park could in fact be climbed, if you climbed on someone's shoulders and then pull them on the lowest branch. Sadly the branches aren't big fans of being climbed on but no amount of scratches and falls could stop you from trying.

“A champignon never stops tryin'!“ proclaims Atsumu after the failed attempt that left bark in his hair and Osamu laughing on the branch.

“What's a champignon?“ you ask.

“It's the person who's the best! It's what I'll be one day!“

Osamu snorts, firmly grabbing on the thin branch he's sitting on. “Champignon's a mushroom.“

“No it ain't!“

A mushroom, you make a little note in your memory, because no matter how much Atsumu protests you're more inclined to believe Osamu when it comes to mushrooms.

Your heads turn when you hear mom calling and waving, waiting for Osamu to climb down before running over to her.

“I win!“ announces Atsumu despite Osamu reaching her first.

“Why, because yer a champignon?“

“Are we all here?“ loudly asks Mr Miya before his boys could jump into each other's hair, “identify yerselves!“

“One!“ calls Atsumu.

“Two!“ calls Osamu, louder.

“Three!“ you call and jump, because being louder than them was never an option.

Four heads turn to Mrs Miya. “Mom,“ she raises her hand.

“Excellent!“ proclaims Mr Miya as three small voices cheer. “Then we can get goin'!“

“Where to?“ you ask.

Mr Miya picks up a stick and starts drawing lines in the sand covering the path. “It's a secret but maybe ya can guess, we'll go down this path-“

“A treasure hunt!”

“Almost. At the fountain we'll turn left, and what lies down the fountain path?“

“Pigeons?“ you try guessing.

Osamu bumps his fist on the open palm. “Ice cream stand!“

Mr Miya nods.

“Last one there's a loser!“ shouts Atsumu who starts running before even finishing the sentence. Osamu immediately follows, both ignoring your shouts to wait up.

Three is a funny number. It only works when the two and one have the third , because otherwise it's just one and two. Like a clover that got munched on by a picky rabbit that tried a leaf and then decided it doesn't fit its taste.

Volleyball sort of became the rabbit munching on the clover. One day teachers simply decided you're not allowed to play on the same team as your brothers anymore. And no amount of crying, screaming and sulking could convince the rabbit to give the leaf back.

“Maybe we can sneak ya in,“ suggests Atsumu one night, “all ya hafta do is wear our clothes. No one will know!“

So you try that and funnily enough, people do notice when one and two together make a three, and what surprises children even more is that parents also notice when they return late from school because they had to stay in detention. And as if cleaning the school hallways for a month wasn't enough, now they have to clean the house too.

It is however enough to discourage you from trying to sneak into practice again, so you stick with only coming to games and waiting for their practice to end so you can walk home together. From time to time some of their teammates stop to say hello or to complain to you about their shenanigans, but that's knowledge you hold to yourself, since you never knew when blackmail material might come in handy.

It's only when Osamu teases they get to go to a volleyball workshop and you don't that you get envious.

“It sounds stupid anyway,“ you try pretending you couldn't care less.

“It would be perfect for ya then,“ Osamu shots back and sprints away as you dive after him.

Maybe you are just a teensy bit envious, still as long as you get to play with them when they are home it's not that bad. After returning from their workshops you don't even let them take their shoes off before dragging them to the volleyball net dad set up in the garden. You stand where you always stand, by the net so you can throw balls for them to hit over.

Atsumu pushes you away. “No, this is my position now. I wanna be a setter.“

You don' mind, and throw the ball towards Atsumu who sends it back into a bit of an awkward place and you end up not even hitting it.

Osamu bursts into laughter. “Ya suck.“ He jumps to avoid the kick aimed at his knee. “We play with good players now so yer gonna hafta practice more. There was this tall player with a cool name! Right, Tsumu?“

“Tsumu?“ you repeat.

“Tsumu and Samu. It's our names but they sound way cooler now!“ proudly declares Atsumu.

Your eyes widen in admiration. “I want that too! What should I call myself?“

“Yer always copyin' us,“ complains Osamu but he gets ignored as the first name Atsumu suggests earns him a ball to the face.

“Oh I know!“ You bump your fist on your open palm. “I'll be San!“

Atsumu thinks it over with the same expression Osamu has when trying to decide which udon toppings to order. “San,... Y/n... San,... It sounds so cool! Whaddaja think Samu?“

Osamu shrugs. “San, let me show ya how to spike the ball properly.“

tag list: @espressons @trashy-simp @nachotrash

#miya twins #miya twins x sibling reader #miya atsumu #miya osamu #miya atsumu x reader #hqcorenet #miya osamu x reader #miya family #hq #haikyuu #haikyuu x platonic reader #inarizaki #inarizaki x platonic reader #the third miya #libri scribbles #also big thanks to tumblr for destroying the quality of the banner -.-

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yostresswritinggirl · 4 years ago

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I like Venti so much. Best boy.

How would Venti feel about an S/O with synesthasia. The ability to hear color. One day she goes to him performing on the street with a sketchpap and shows him what he sounds like.

My, my, look who it is. The person who started it all, and ending it. It's amusing how this came full circle and of course you bring me such an interesting yet difficult prompt *balls fist, shakes at sky*

I had a lot of time to think about this and I feel it was still so hard to make. And there's so many variants and uniqueness to each case so this will be a wild ride. But this marks the end of this special event and on to a new one, and I thank you especially for being with me through it!

This fic made me realize I need a better Venti banner lololol

Ethereal Hues

Venti with a Reader with Synesthesia (Specifically, the ability to see sounds)

The wind-borne bard fancies audiences that sings along, that joins him in his merry tunes. He knows faces, distinguishes them, reads their responses. If it was unorthodox tales he sang, he would laugh at the predicted angry churns. If it were awesome tales of adventures, Venti would bask in the glory of awe and cheers.

And so he finds you to be the most peculiar individual he has ever audienced. You stand in the back far away from the crowd as you carry with you a notebook. Based on the way you steal glances to him whenever he performs out in public and the way your hands moved, you were definitely sketching him, yet you paid no such expression for his songs the same way the others did. And he was sure you were no deaf individual.

He had been intrigued since day one, and he had been so even at the third. When he wishes to come to you, he would always find you packing up immediately after his performances, and he would be swept aside by the task at hand: getting his share of Mora for a fantastic performance.

You were only there for his music, and your interest seem to disappear the moment the music is lost.

So slowly he would adjust his schedule, making it so his songs linger longer, his notes stretching out more just to keep you there in his vision for longer. And yet whenever he privies himself to have caught your attention, it seems as tho you were not really interested at him: even if the distance between you were great, he knows you were looking through him.

This game of cat and mouse had stretched out to seven days.

You managed to attend every tale the bard tells within the walls of Mondstadt but never have you stepped foot inside the tavern of Angel’s Share when he would perform late at night. With this discovery, he doesn’t bother to try lure you out from there, opting to skip performing in the tavern.

Much to Diluc’s surprise. It had gone so that the bartender himself asked if things were not looking great for the bard, but he was met by a smug and conniving smile, that he was quick to smack the shit out of and never bother about again.

Every time the bard wishes to approach you after the last string of his lyre is plucked, he was blocked by the crowd or pulled by a child, enough to render him unmoving, enough of a timeframe for you to disappear. You would think it was you purposely evading the bard’s advances but the way you move and act doesn’t seem like you were running away or in a hurry, more so, you look more disappointed that the festivities had to end every time.

A week of disappointments had led Venti to play his sorrows to his lyre under the tree at Windrise. It was a tune that no one in the public eye has seen him play and he was content in indulging on his own misery.

“Eyes from the fountain bench, of a longing stare had whence.

Slip between thy grasp, even as I call out through a rasp.”

“Ah, a different one this time,” he’d almost fallen out of the branch he was hanging by when a voice suddenly spoke out from beneath the tree’s shade. And there you are in all your glory, an amused expression in your face as you watch the Anemo wielder catch himself before gracefully flying down in front of you in disbelief. “Hello.”

“Hi!” He squeaked out before clearing his throat, adjusting his posture to reflect his usual composed facade with that wide grin.

“The colors brought me here, but I didn’t expect you to be the one producing them.” He watched you fumble with the familiar sketchbook in your hand, his muse in his curiousities right in front of him nonchalantly, as if fate had not been trying its best to separate them for the past week. "With the collection complete, I can finally show you the whole thing!" You practically shoved the pad to his face, forcing him to step back.

And there he saw the most ethereal painting he had seen of himself. His lone form in front of the statue where he usually plays, there in his company were streaks of light blue, reminiscent of Barbara's elemental skill. He clutches the pad for a better look as he notices more blots of complementary colors littered in ecstatic manners. Below, the words 'glee' was written in dark cursive.

Next page had warmer colors, that wrapped around him like silk and satin which would then plunge to the floor like cold white mist. This one was labelled 'Comfort.'

There were four more illustrations that depict numerous vibes of his tunes whenever he had performed, and paired with it comes different colors and patterns. Each one was more detailed than the last and with new vigor he was more than eager to see the next ones—

And then the last one was the latest, where he was once singing his odes and woes from the tree's branches. Yet this one holds a different gesture to it and he sucks in the details with a faraway gaze. Black, gray and navy blue hang like curtain as it seemingly seeps from his flesh, tangling into a weightless form before diverging into a single string of black that casts itself past the borders of the paper. It was like shadows that desperately cling to its owner, ones sadness and desperation taking form into a monster that seeks a vessel.

He looks up to you with eyes once again shining at the brilliance of the illustrations- before he clutched the pad to his chest, a toothy grin and a dangerous glint in his teal eyes, "I'm keeping this~"

To hell with that.

First he takes your sketchpad and rifts through it like there's no tomorrow, and then he lays claim on it?! The audacity of this bard!

With the only arsenal that you had, you started throwing brushes and acrylics at the floating bard until he had to crash land from getting caught by his extravagant cape. What an oversight.

That day, you'd finally sit down with the famous bard and properly got to introduce each other. While you're ecstatic to chat with the person you'd long admired from afar, Venti was more ecstatic at the idea of you and your marvelous power. It's similar to elemental sight, he imagines, and he pried with more inquiries than you had anticipated.

You thought he'd be weirded out by both your colorful sense or the fact that you had stalked him for a week to immortalize his ethereal glow in the shadows.

Yet he was so open-minded about it, wanting to accompany you more on your endeavors and jokingly using you as his marketing manager for more Mora opportunities. You find the idea not so bad.

At one point in time without your knowledge nor acknowledgement, Venti (ever so curious boy) changed his form from his bard friend to copy yours, trying to see if he were able to replicate your vision. Alas it was not as easy as that. Whatever Venti did after that, not even Celestia knows.

Your ability to see the streams of music instead of just projecting associated shapes and colors had made it easy to find Venti, and vice versa.

When he wants to find you specifically, Venti sings your name in a lilting melody as he walks through the stone streets of Mondstadt, the blazing color pouring through your window as you crane your head out and look him down from the second floor.

Venti's invisible aura brightens at the sight of you and he presents the fresh Cecilias in his hand, singing for you to accompany him to another day and you're forced to do so with his cheesiness.

He continues to sing even as you resign to your home to prepare. Unbeknownst to you the people of Mond watched with wonder and awe at the sweetness of the serenading bard that comes by every 9 AM daily to your doorstep.

Nature rarer uses yellow

Than another hue;

Saves she all of that for sunsets, —

Prodigal of blue,

Spending scarlet like a woman,

Yellow she affords

Only scantly and selectly,

Like a lover's words.

You tilt your head at Venti at his lyrics, its lines influencing the color that coats him before his lyre finally calms its strings. He does not expand on his words as the silent conversation ended with a smile. Venti had been making songs with colors incorporated in them and despite the Muse of hues, you have yet to understand what they truly mean. If they mean anything at all.

You wish you could bring about the same flowery words to describe how beautiful Venti is, your current muse, adorned with the colors of a world only you can see. But for now, as you watch him smile past the crowd and lock eyes with yours, the most you can do is immortalize his ethereal hues. Until you finally work up the courage to admit it was not the colors that had drawn you to him.

This is a blessed day as it marks the end of the 50 followers event, and start the 100 followers one! Thank you for joining us in this journey, we still have a long way to go!

#genshin impact #genshin impact oneshots #genshin impact imagines #exile.flower #genshin impact venti #venti #venti x reader #followers special #i feel emotional ending this event #stay strong author stay strong #genshin impact x reader #gender neutral

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magalidragon · 4 years ago

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For the Drabble challenge: 29 + 30 please! 😁

Here’s one! I have #30 coming up in a minute! This is set in a new universe, just something sweet and soft and maybe a tad angsty!

Safe Haven | 29. “Come over here and make me!”

"Daenerys get down from there and come here!"

"Come over here and make me!"

Jon muttered under his breath, storming towards the large oak tree behind his house-- and hers-- rummaging around in the dirty leaves and mud to find the knot at the base where he put his foot and then the groove just a foot above his head for his hand, beginning to haul himself up the back way towards the house above him. "I'm going to kill you," he vowed, hating when he had to get up this way because she'd cranked up the rope ladder.

He emerged at the top, crawling over ungracefully onto the platform and fell to prop his back against the wall, peering into the treehouse where she sat, her face a beautiful mess of fury, fire, and pain. She sniffed, hiding it behind her hand, and he ducked his head. He knew she didn't like it when he saw her cry. His dragon was always so strong. He hit his head against one of the tree branches that curved out from the main trunk, which was in the center of the house.

It was hard to tell what came first, the tree or the treehouse. It had been there forever; he joked that hte Children of the Forst must have built it. It belonged to no one, stuck behind his house and hers, in a space of the Wolfswood that did not fall on his family's property or hers. He drew his knee up to his chest and hooked his arm around it, holding onto his ankle. "Dany, please," he said softly. "It's not the end of the world."

"You're leaving!"

"I was always going to leave!"

"You didn't <i>tell</i> me!"

He would give her that one. He closed his eyes, sighing hard. Couldn't take it back. "You knew I was going to join," he muttered. There wasn't much for him. He wasn't interested in going to college. He had great grades, was one of the top of his class, but it wasn't for him and he knew it. "I didn't want you there when I did."

She scowled, reaching over and picked up a stray beer can from the other night when they'd spent the entire time that his cousin had a party hiding away in their own private one. She chucked it at him, with no heat behind the action. "I hate you."

"I love you."

"I hate you."

He crawled towards her, repeating the words. Over and over. "I love you, I love you, I love you."

"No," she cried, when he pulled her small frame into his arms, and she cried into his chest as he rocked her. She hiccuped, clutching his shirt. "It's all changing Jon."

"I know." He was leaving the only place he knew as his home, joining the military, disappearing into wherever or whatever they wanted him to do, although he had ideas. Ideas he wouldn't tell her about because she could convince him otherwise. He kissed her brow. This was the only place she had thought of as her home, after an entire life of moving from place to place. He exhaled, eyes fluttering shut. "Dany...if you were with me...I would not have done it and...and I have to do this."

"I know." She tilted her face up, the sunlight dying away at the end of the early summer day, her face a pale oval, tears streaking. She blinked her violet eyes, looking indigo in the dim light. Her silver hair was tangled, dirty from spending most of the day in the treehouse. She brushed her lips along his pulse, racing. "Hold me Jon, just...just hold me until the end."

If he had his way there wouldn't be an end. He nodded and squeezed her close, until their hands grew bored, their emotions needing release, and they peeled at each other's clothing until they were making love under the stars, still not close to being 'experts' at the act even after the last few months of numerous hours of practice.

When he woke up in the morning, she was gone, and he stared at the carved heart in the tree trunk, smiling at it. he wouldn't see her again; he had a feeling she was already on her way to Essos.

One day, he hoped, and he gathered up his clothes and climbed out of the treehouse, tossing the rope ladder up so no one could get to their safe haven.

Dany had not been back since she left for college. It broke her heart, being back here, but she had to return, because it was Ned Stark's funeral. It was important for her to be there; he was always so kind to her, the weird silver-haired "Ghost Girl" they called her. He knew her family's issues, why her mother had relocated them up North, as far away from anyone in the South who might know about her father's embezzlement and crimes. She hated running, she just wanted a place to call home.

And it wasn't even really home until she had discovered that ancient treehouse in the woods behind her house. Except she wasn't the only one.

It became their place. The weird bastard child with no mother and father, left to the charity of his aunt and uncle, and the see-through Ghost Girl. They were the best of friends. They did everything there. It was where she had gone to cry over her brother Rhaegar's death, her brother Viserys running away and leaving them, all the kids making fun of her, and the highs and lows of friendship and heartbreak. They watched meteor showers and stared at the stars, they both had their first drunk moments there-- and hangovers-- the first time they sampled Shade of the Evening-- she hated it, he threw up-- where she hid her cat Drogon from her mother for a week before he got out and ended up in her bedroom.

It was where they had their first kiss-- she wanted to know what it was like and he had already told his cousin he'd kissed someone-- laughing and giggling through it. Then it was where they relaized they were in love with each other, shouting and angry because he'd gone on a few days with Ygritte Wilde who was telling everyone she'd taken his virginity and where she had been stood up on a 'date' that turned out to be his stupid fucking cousin Sansa setting her up for humilation.

They'd admitted their love, they had fumbled through their first time there-- and second, third, and fourth too. It was where everything important happened.

It was where he broke her heart. Where she broke his.

She stared up at it, reaching up with a branch to knock at the rope ladder, grunting from effort since it was caked to the wood from years of weather and countless leaves falling. A clump of leaves and sticks fell, almost showering her with the detritus, and she smiled, lightly touching the frayed rope. "Well if I die climbing this thing, that's appropriate," she muttered, hooking her foot into the bottom and making her way up.

It was like time stood still in the treehouse.

It was dusty, piles of leaves and dirt in the corners. There was a blanket that had been eaten through by some animal, nothing but thread now. She used to be able to stand straight up in it, but now she crouched, glancing around, smiling at it all. There were a couple of band posters they'd tacked up, the paper caked onto the walls now. If she touched it it would probably turn to dust.

And the trunk in the middle, with the carved heart, weather worn and the wood darkened. She traced her finger along it. DANY + JON.

She hadn't seen him yet; the funeral wasn't until tomorrow.

They had a lot to catch up on, she supposed, rocking onto her heels. It was for self preservation she'd left him that morning. That they'd ceased all communication. It would kill her to keep it up. They needed to leave. To create their own lives and futures.

She exhaled, a puff of cold air coming out and she frowned, glancing down and realizing that the ashtray that she had made in art class was still there. Except there was a single cigarette butt in it. Delicately, she lifted it, and her eyes widened; it was still warm. "Bloody hells," she cursed.

"Hi Dany."

Whipping her head, she fell backwards onto her butt, feet sliding under her. She gaped at the opposite doorway; the back entrance up to the house, the way that they had to take if one of them had pulled up the rope ladder. "Jon," she gasped.

He looked good. Dark curls over his forehead and ears, his beard trim and lines threading from his eyes. Gray, singular eyes, that made her think of the winter storms and the angry seas. He smiled shyly, an arm draped over his knee. "I heard you and...and I don't know why I hid," he admitted, shy.

She swallowed hard. She wanted to yell at him for some reason. He'd been in the papers six months ago; a dangerous mission at the Wall. He could have died. "Jon," she repeated.

He scooted a little closer to her. "You look good."

Her hair was shorter than it had been. She didn't know what to say. What did you say after all this time to hte only man you had ever loved? The only boy? She took a deep breath, exhaled hard, and then did the only thing she suspected one could do.

She kissed him.

Lunged towards him, arms flying about his neck, and planted her mouth so hard on his, she knocked him backwards, and he grunted, the breath pushed out of him from her tiny body sitting on his. He grabbed her hips and kissed her back, as urgent and desperate as her. They were in heavy parkas and scarves, but none of that mattered, because she could hear his heart racing in time with hers, and feel the same hot bloody pulsing through him as her.

He broke the kiss a second later, hand rising to cup her cheek; it was cold, but she didn't mind, because the shock reminded her this was real. "Dany," he sighed.

"I love you," she mumbled. Tears trickled down her cheeks. "I love you still Jon. I don't care if you've changed, or...or if you're with someone or something...because I will always love you."

He smiled slowly and nuzzled his nose against hers, their hot breaths mingling. "I love you too." He paused, his brow wrinkling. "And...and there's no one.. There's never been anyone but you."

They had so much to talk about, so much to catch up on, but for now, she needed to just remind herself that he was there, with her, in their safe space, away from anyone else. She kissed him again, and again, and buried her face into his neck, smiling, finally at home.

#jonerys #jonerys au #my fics #my moodboards #jonerys fanfic #drabble ask

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ofstarsandvibranium · 5 years ago

Text

Traditions of the Court

Fandom: Criminal Minds (Royalty AU)

Pairing: Spencer Reid x F!Reader

Summary: You grew up around Spencer, since his mom was your teacher growing up. You two grow up together and he ends up taking his mother’s place, while you become ready to become Queen. But what’s to happen when you and he realize that you have feelings for each other?

A/N: this is like 3.5k words because I didn’t feel like breaking it up into chapters. Anyway, sit back, relax, and enjoy!

“But mother-”

“No, Y/N. You need to attend your classes like everyone else. Just because you’re the princess, doesn’t mean you can’t get an education like the other children in the court.”

You groan as you drag yourself into the library where several other children of royal court members are. Mrs. Reid’s face lightens up when she sees you, “Y/N, dear! Wonderful! We’re just about to start! Take any available seat and we’ll get started.”

You sigh as you trudge over to an empty seat near the back next to a boy who doesn’t look like a he’d be a child of the court, “Who’re you?” the young boy is startled when you address him and pushes his glasses up his nose, “I’m, um, Spencer. Spencer Reid. My mom’s the teacher.”

“Are you even allowed to be here?”

He nodded, “Yes, uh, the Queen, your mother, said it was alright. Do-Do you want me to move, Princess Y/N?”

You sigh and shake your head, “No, it’s okay. And you can just call me, Y/N.”

“Oh, okay, Y/N.” Spencer mumbles and goes to pay attention to his mother’s instructions. Throughout class, he sees you looking sad, dejected. So while his mother is helping another student, he leans over, “Are you okay?”

You shrug, “Not really fond of going to class.”

“How come?”

“I don’t think it’s very interesting. I’d rather be learning how to defend myself with my father and the Royal Guards.”

“Well, if you’re going to be queen someday, it’s important for you to know this stuff. The geography of our kingdoms and surrounding kingdoms, the history of our country and your family, how to speak publically, appear proper, all of that stuff.”

You look at him a little confused, “You’re not even a court member’s child. Why are you here? It’s not important for you.”

He shrugged, “I like to learn new things, plus, I’ll be taking over teaching when my mom gets too old. So it’s better to learn stuff now rather than later. I remember all kinds of stuff.”

You hummed, looking down at the books in front of you, “Think you can help me then? Since all of this isn’t my kind of thing?”

“S-Sure.”

It was during class and the extra tutoring on the side that you and Spencer ended up getting close. From when you were seven year olds up to when you were eighteen, he’d been by your side. He’d read while you attended your fencing and archery lessons. He’d wait for you while you shadowed your parents during court meetings. He was there when your father died due to an unknowing heart attack. He was there for it all until...

“You’re leaving me?” you looked at him with saddened eyes.

“It’ll only be for a few years. I want to travel around and learn as much as I can before I come back and take my mother’s place as the court’s educator.” his hands rest on your shoulders and you look down in solemn, “It’s not forever, Y/N.”

“But we’re always together, Spence. You’ve been there for everything and-and-”

“Do you want me to stay?” he asks softly. You look up at him and he asks again, “Y/N, do you want me to stay? If you do, then I’ll stay.” you search his eyes and see that he’s completely serious. But you also see the yearning in his eyes, the need to explore and learn more.

“I do, but I won’t ask you to say. I can’t be selfish with you, Spencer.” you sigh and choke back a sob, “You’ll write to me, right?”

“Every chance I get,” he says with a smile and he pulls you into a hug, “I’ll miss you, Y/N.”

You hug him back with a sigh, “I’ll miss you too, Spencer.”

3 Years Later

Spencer leans against the carriage watching landscape and farmlands pass by. It’s been seen he’s left his home. In the three years he’s earned higher levels of education, learned so many new things, met so many new people. And then when his three years was up, he was going back home.

He was so anxious to be home again. In a good way and a bad way. Good because he gets to see his mother again, bad because, well, he’ll be seeing you again.

Within his first year abroad, you and Spencer exchanged letters. When the second year rolled around, the letters lessened. Eventually, the third year, he received no word from you. He didn’t know if something happened or if you just no longer wanted to keep contact. Either way, he didn’t send a letter back to you, not wanting to be a nuisance.

Growing up by your side, a love blossomed within Spencer. A love for you. Yes, you struggled with your lessons, but the more Spencer helped, the more you were able to get it. Eventually, you didn’t need him to tutor you anymore, but you still wanted him around. You two played with each other, read in the library. You tried to teach him fencing, but that didn’t go well. Despite your differences, you found friendship within one another. And for Spencer, he found love.

He was fourteen when he realized he loved you. You and he were in the gardens. He sat under a tree reading while you went around collecting flowers. He didn’t look up until he heard you giggling.

He saw the mischievous look in your eyes, “What are you up to?”

“Nothing. I have a gift for you.”

“What is it?” from behind your back, you pulled out a flower crown you’ve woven together of branches and flowers, “That’s for me?”

“Yup!” you bend down to rest it on his head, “There. You’re the king of the gardens now!” you giggled, sitting beside him and resting along the trunk of the tree.

Spencer looks to you and he feels his breath hitch when he sees that soft smile on your lips. You looked so pretty, so happy. He imagined leaning in and kissing you, but that wasn’t right. You’re the princess and he’s just the son of your teacher. You could never be.

From then on, despite his ever growing love for you, he kept his feelings hidden. And it broke his heart when he told you that he was leaving. It broke his heart even more when you stopped exchanging letters with him.

But all of that must be pushed aside. He has a job to do now.

__________

“This is so unnecessary,” you groan at the big poofy dress you were currently trying on. Your friends, Emily and Jennifer, or as she liked to be referred to as JJ, both snicker at you, “Tradition is tradition,” Emily jests and you roll your eyes.

“Once I’m queen, to Hell with tradition,” you grumble, causing your friends to snicker more, “No more poofy dressed or corsets forced upon me or any lady of the court!” Your bedroom doors swing open and you dive behind the changing screen with a yelp. You peek from behind and see Penelope rushing in.

“Oh, it’s you, Penelope,” you step out from behind the changing screen.

Penelope practically stumbles over to you, slightly out of breath, “I-I-You-You need to-” she stops, clutching her sides, “Hold on,” you, Emily, and JJ smirk at each other in amusement and Penelope straightens up, “You will not believe who I saw!”

“Do tell, my analyst friend.”

“Spencer Reid!” she exclaimed with a squeal.

Emily and JJ sat up, “Spencer Reid? As in our teacher’s son?” JJ asked.

“The Spencer who attended lessons with us and the one that Y/N was sooo in love with when we were children?”

You scowled at your friends, marching over to your bed and whacking them with your pillow, “I wasn’t in love with him!”

“Yes, you were!” the three women, proceeding to giggle at your frown.

“Whatever! We haven’t exchanged letters within a year and a half. I don’t owe him my presence and I don’t expect him wanting to see me.”

Your door begins to open again and, with another yelp, you dive back behind the changing screen.

You hear your mother’s voice as she greets the three ladies in your room and then she addresses you, “How does the gown fit, Y/N?”

You frown when you come out from behind the screen once more, “I hate it.”

“As did I when I was your age.”

“So why do I have to wear it?!”

Your mother sighs and shakes her head, “Y/N, this dress has been passed down for decades. Many women from the royal family wore this dress on their twenty-first birthday. It has a special significance in this family. And since you’re part of this family, you’re wearing it.”

You mumble out a, “Fine,” and your mother nods, “Perfect. Now change out of that and hang it. Also, someone would like to see you in the gardens. Don’t keep them waiting.”

Your mother leaves and once she’s gone, Emily, JJ, and Penelope help you out of your gown and corset.

_____________

Spencer has never felt so unsure about himself. Despite your lack of contact, he never once stopped thinking about you, never stopped caring about you. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe he shouldn’t have requested your presence at all. He slips your birthday present back into his satchel and he’s ready to leave, but he hears your voice and it makes him freeze.

“You requested to see me, sir?”

He turns around and he’s taken back. In the three years he’s been away, you’ve grown into a beautiful young woman. The day that your day gown hangs around your body, the way that the sunlight hits your skin, it creates this glow about you that makes you seem...ethereal.

“S-Spencer,” you practically whisper.

He approaches you but still keeps some distance away, “Hi, um, Y/N-Princess-Princess Y/N?”

You can’t help the giggle that escapes you, “Y/N is still fine, Spencer.”

“Oh. Okay, um,” he opens his satchel and digs out your present, “Happy birthday.” he holds it out and you see that it’s a book with a ribbon of your favorite color wrapped around it.

You take it, undoing the ribbon and flipping open the book. You see Spencer handwriting and your name written out - Dear Y/N...

You flip through other pages, seeing your name at the header and he proceeds to tell you what he’s done throughout his day, what he’s learned. You see little doodles, pressed leaves and flowers within the pages.

You close the book and look back at Spencer, “What is this?”

“After our letters stopped, I-I don’t know-I felt the need to continue to write to you so I started a journal. Telling you everything about my time away from home.”

“Why?”

“...Because I missed you.”

“If you missed me, you shouldn’t have stopped writing me back.”

Spencer looks at you with confusion, “I didn’t stop writing you back. You stopped writing me back!”

“No, I didn’t!”

“Yes, you did! I sent two or three letters within weeks of each other and I never heard a word back! You just stopped replying!”

“Princess Y/N,” you look back to see Lady Strauss looking at you with a stern gaze, “You’re needed at court.”

You clench your jaw and look back to Spencer, “I need to go,” you push the book back to Spencer and pick up your gown, walking away from him. You pass Lady Strauss with a nod and she watches you head to the court room.

Lady Strauss then turns to Spencer, “Know your place, boy. She’s a princess. You’re a teacher. You’re from two different worlds. It’s not meant to be.” with that, the older woman leaves, leaving Spencer to feel confused and dejected.

____________

“The audacity of him!” you gasp when your handmaidens pull at the strings of your corset, “He really thinks that I stopped replying to his letters? Why would I? How could I? And erase our years of friendship together? I can’t believe him!” you gasp again and your maidens apologize, “It’s alright. These things are just....horrendous,” you grumble.

It took hours to get you ready for your birthday ball, but you were ready. You waited for everyone to enter the ballroom, standing by your mother’s side. This was supposed to be a happy event, but you just felt so sad and angry.

“Smile, darling. It’s a joyous occasion,” your mother mumbles before the doors swing open for you two to enter the ballroom. You put on a fake smile and entered the room, everyone bowing as you passed them.

“Everyone, please enjoy yourselves!” your mother announced. The band started up again and you immediately went for some wine.

“Already?” you hear as you gulp down an entire glass. You turn to see JJ and Emily smirking at you.

You roll your eyes, “I’ve had a long day.”

“So...how was seeing Spencer again?” JJ asked with a smirk and you narrowed your eyes at her, “What? Word travels fast!”

You took another glass of wine, gulping that down, “I swear, Jennifer, you’ll turn out to be likes these gossiping hags,” you muttered, causing Emily to burst into laughter.

“If it wasn’t your birthday, Y/N, I would pour wine over that hideous dress.”

“Please, do.”

You smile at your best friends as you hook your arms around theirs, “Now let’s go mingle, ladies.”

______________

After dinner, your mother stood up, wine glass in hand, “Everyone. I’d like to thank you again for coming tonight to celebrate my Y/N’s twenty-first birthday. Not only does this year signify you finally becoming a woman, Y/N, it also means that this will be the year that you will find a husband.” you nervously gulp as your mother raises her glass up, everyone, including you, doing the same.

“To Princess Y/N!”

Like earlier before, you gulped down your wine, excusing yourself for some air. You move to a balcony that overlooks the kingdom. The cool air refreshes your face. The music and festivities continue inside while you’re trying to calm yourself outside.

“Are you okay?” you jump, hearing a sudden voice.

You look over your shoulder to see Spencer. He’s in a white button-up with black slacks. It’s not as luxurious as what the other men are wearing inside, but you had admit he still looks good.

You look back out to the kingdom when you ask, “What are you doing here? I don’t recall you being invited.”

“My mom was invited and I’m her plus one,” he states as he joins you at the stone railing of the balcony. He lets out a deep breath and rests his drink onto the platform, “What happened to us, Y/N?”

“You stopped-”

“I didn’t. But apparently neither did you, so it begs the question: who stopped our letters from reaching each other?”

“Princess Y/N,” you both turn around to see Lady Strauss, “You should really be mingling with your guests inside instead of this peasant boy.”

Spencer’s jaw clenches and nose flares in anger. For the second time today, Lady Strauss has interrupted you both and has insulted Spencer. Again, you excuse yourself from Spencer’s presence.

“What did I say-”

“She looked upset. I was just checking on her, that’s it,” he sneers and moves to leave, but Lady Strauss grabs him tightly by the wrist, “Stay away from her, boy. You can never be together. What do you have to offer her? A sickly mother and an annoying array of knowledge? You have nothing to provide for a princess. So whatever silly feelings you had for her growing up, get rid of them,” she sneers and let’s go of his wrist.

Spencer rubs his wrist as he goes back to his mother. How does Lady Strauss know so much about him?

________________

Spencer allowed his mother to continue teaching until the end of the month. In the meantime, he’d be refreshing up on information in another part of the library, while also doing a secret project on the side. The librarian and historical analyst, Penelope, aided him whenever he needed. Penelope had a certain set of skills that were very helpful on finding certain information.

“So what Sir Derek from the Royal Guards told me that he heard from Lady Emily that she heard from Lady JJ that she-”

“Penelope-”

“Right! So, Strauss assigned some men to interfere with your letters. According to whoever our sources may be, she didn’t like how you two got very close, thus ruining her plans of getting our dearest princess wedded to her son.”

“It was her behind this all along. That-That-That hag! Because of her, I’ve lost my friendship with Y/N and now I may never get to tell her how I really feel!”

“Well, my knowledgeable friend, our dear princess will be coming in soon to read to some of the court’s children. You can tell her then!”

Spencer liked the idea but he shook his head, “I can’t. Despite my anger towards Lady Strauss, she’s right. Y/N and I are from two different worlds. If she did return my affections and we did end up together, I’m to be king alongside her. I’m not king material, Penelope.”

The analyst shrugged, “You’re kind, loyal, caring, logical, strategic. Sounds like a king to me.”

“But I can’t protect the kingdom if need be. I never found interest in swordfighting or archery.”

“Y/N does, so that means you don’t need to worry about that.”

“But still Y/N. I’m...I’m not enough.”

“Let me decide on that,” Spencer heard your voice and looked up to see you standing there some distance away.

“Y/N!” he stood up abruptly, “I-uh-”

“Uuuuhhh coming!” Penelope cried out and scrambled away from the two of you.

You slowly approached him and he gulped, “H-How much of that did you hear?”

“Which part? The part about Lady Strauss being a scheming hag? Or the part about you having affections for me and being afraid that I won’t return the sentiment?”

“Y/N-”

“I was so heartbroken when your letters stopped coming in. I thought-I thought you no longer wanted to speak to me, that you found comfort in someone else. I loved you and I felt my heart shatter when I didn’t hear a peep from you. And now it turns out that one of my mother’s advisors was behind my heartbreak and not you. It’s...overwhelming.”

“You loved me?” Spencer asked in disbelief and you nodded, “I thought it was obvious, honestly. How I always wanted to spend time you, how I barely entertained being the presence of other boys.”

“I thought it was because we were best.”

“No, it was because I loved you. And seeing you again on my birthday, despite me being upset with you, everything came rushing back. I don’t think I ever really stopped loving you, Spencer.”

“Neither did I,” he breathed out, hands coming up to cup your face, “May I-May I kiss you?”

“Please,” you whispered, leaning in for your lips to meet his. The kiss was soft and gentle and everything you always imagined a first kiss to be.

When you both pull away for air, you’re both smiling and chuckling, relishing the feeling of being in each other’s arms.

“Marry me,” he murmurs.

“What?”

“We’ve loved each other since we were children. And I can’t promise that I will be a good king, but I’m willing to learn to be, as long as you’re by my side.”

“Do you mean it?” you ask with such elatedness.

He nods, “Yes. So, will you?”

“Yes! Oh god, yes, I will marry you!” you kiss him again, but pull back with a gasp, “What will my mother say?”

“She will say that you have her blessing,” you see your mother standing there beside a nervous Penelope.

“I’m-I’m sorry, Y/N. She was looking for you and she’s the queen and I didn’t think you two would be-well-”

You chuckle out, “It’s okay, Penelope.”

Your mother walks towards the both of you, hands clasped in front of her, “I always knew you two were meant for each other, ever since you were children. It doesn’t surprise me that you love each other and want to be with one another.” she has a fond smile on her face as she glances down at your intertwined hands.

“You really give us your blessing, mother? Even if Spencer isn’t part of the court?”

“Well, you always said that some traditions need to die out. Might as well start now,” she smiles widely and you throw your arms around her, whispering, “Thank you.”

_______________

Months later into the year, you’re standing beside Spencer wearing a beautiful red and gold dress while he stands before you wearing the most regal uniform you’ve ever seen. Your wedding, a month previous to this, was a beautiful one filled with love, tears, and kisses.

The officiant holds out the crown above you, “I now pronounce you Queen Y/N and King Spencer. Long live the king and queen!”

With crowns donning your hands, you and Spencer stand, hand in hand, while everyone proclaims, “Long live the king and queen!”

#spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid imagine #criminal minds #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds au #royalty au

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archetypal-archivist · 4 years ago

Text

Xisuma and Evil X- A Hero By Any Other Name

So. This happened. You ever get the urge to write 9000 words of Evil X and Xisuma as brothers that in a Super Hero AU where the government is corrupt and runs all the heroes into the ground in the name of “protecting the most people possible”? With lots of Evil X making poor choices to help out his exhausted hero of a brother? And then have that story end up taking over your life for about a week until you can get it all out? Yeah. Yeah, glad I finally finished this but gosh darn am I double glad that I can move on to other projects.

Also on AO3.

__________

A story in which there are two little boys, a pair of twins by the names of Evil X and Xisuma. Xisuma is good and kind and responsible, everything that his mother ever wanted and more. Evil X was the mistake, the additional child their parents didn't want nor could afford to have. Their parents had run the math, knew the risks, knew that if they penny-pinched enough, they could afford to have the child they always dreamed of. Evil X threw their maths into chaos, and if they wanted one son, they had to take both.

Evil X and Xisuma knew that Evil X was a mistake, that his presence was why their family could never afford to go to the movies, why they couldn't buy school lunches like all the other kids, why their parents were so stressed and tired and cruel. Still, Xisuma was glad that his brother existed, even if it made his parents' lives harder. He wondered if that made him a bad son.

In time, Evil X and Xisuma were left alone by everyone in their lives and until all they had are each other and the void that their parents left them with when they had to look them in the eye and tell them that they couldn't take care of them anymore. Even now Xisuma thinks that the void raised them better than their parents ever did, teaching him and his brother to lie through their teeth, be sneaky, be cruel.

In the orphanage and the many foster homes that followed, Evil X did his best to take care of his twin as a sort of penance for screwing up the life Xisuma could have led. In return, Xisuma lied and lied and lied to the matrons and the well-meaning children about anything and everything he needed to. They don't need anyone but each other. (Truth.) They are happy. He is everything that Evil X needs, Evil X doesn't want a family. Xisuma is enough. (Lie.)

(Gods, don't take his brother away.)

Xisuma grew up with lies on his tongue and smiles in his eyes, warping himself into the golden child, larger than life. Evil X grew up in the shadows with bruised knuckles, a bruised heart, and eventually, scars across his face from a fight gone bloody and wrong. He was protecting Xisuma, the scars were worth it- his brother accepts them with an odd little smile on his face and a shattering in his eyes. It is a moment that stays with them long after.

---

Eventually, foster homes turn into streets and dumpsters, and long nights spent under the covers together are turned into nights spent up in the branches of trees in the park. Xisuma makes friends with the pigeons while Evil X pretends not to like their feathered neighbors. They curl up the same though, bodies fitting together like puzzle pieces high in their bower. Made for each other, quietly shaping themselves around their twin so as to better protect them and shield them from the cold.

Evil X comes home to their tree with stolen sweaters and wilted flowers and popcorn kernels from behind the movie theater so that the birds don't starve. Xisuma meets him with tears of wonder in his eyes and fire dancing on his fingertips.

Xisuma has magic. Evil X tries not to be jealous. As it turns out, he has very little to be jealous of when it's revealed that there are many other people who have magic throughout the city- or rather, "superpowers." It's like something straight out of a comic book, if that comic book resembled something like Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" or the Transformers IDW continuity.

People start dying. A lot of people. Those with powers that make them look monstrous are feared, hated, and eventually outcast. Those with powers that are useful are drafted to fight wars and heal people for hours and hours with no rest in the hospitals. Xisuma sells himself to the city officials behind Evil X's back and in return, he and his brother get a cold glass and steel apartment and food enough that they will never starve again.

Evil X begins to build up muscle, fleshing out and growing tall and strong. He hates it, hates his body, because Xisuma never becomes more than whipcord strength and whispered words- down-turned eyes, up-turned lips. Reassurances that he's happy, really, truly. So obedient, his brother, the ideal filial son to the system that Evil X could never bring himself to be. They train the civilian out of his twin and mold him into a leader, a real proper superhero.

They don't give his brother lunch breaks. They need his power too badly, they say. There are people dying and they need his strength.

Gods, it makes him sick.

Xisuma's slight figure hides in his brother's shadow when they are at home, and Evil X does his best to wrap around him until the "monsters" of the world can't get him. Evil X lets Xisuma's flames dance across his fingertips and tickle his face, their gentle warmth driving out some of the chill in their big empty apartment. On truly special days, they go to the park to feed the birds. The higher ups don't like that, of course, insisting that Xisuma under Evil X's care is like using his spark for a kerosene lamp, contained, stifled, unable to help anyone in any way that matters.

The city wants a bonfire. Evil X growls and tells them no, but Xisuma just smiles and his eyes shatter a little more as he goes with them willingly, offering himself up as kindling. His superhero name is Matchstick of all things, and Evil X knows his brother well enough to know that he picked it out himself.

A nod to the fact that he is destroying himself? An inside joke and an apology in one, maybe. It breaks his heart too much to think on it.

---

With time, the rules and roles become a little clearer and the war begins to solidify. Basic rights for those with powers is still in the works, but Xisuma is able to start eating a little more. Evil X makes him protein shakes to take with him to work anyway.

The heroes are this: Matchstick, Reaper, Ivy-Over, Xenon, Spatter, Shank, Krypton, and Trigometric. Xisuma, Cleo, Gemini, Tango, Vintage Beef, Iskall, Impulse, Cubfan.

The villains are this: Armistice, Zyon, Ooze, Clockwork, Poultryman, Valkerie, and Lumesce. (Welsknight, Etho, Jevin, Mumbo, Grian, Stress, Pearl- but our hero doesn't know this yet.)

Evil X sits on their shared bed and holds his twin in his arms, listening to him talk about work with troubled eyes.

Reaper. Cruel, with a tongue like a knife and teeth even sharper. She eats her enemies whole and seems to enjoy the taste of blood. Somewhere in the dark of the building is a man named Joe who whispers comebacks and threats to her for her to use in her next fight. She has not seen him free or unshackled in three years. Around his neck is a metal collar, an irony too bitter for her to speak of often. Xisuma hopes they treat him well.

Ivy-Over, blinded by the glitter and shine of heroism, still firmly thinking the best of her political overlords. Naive. Carefully herded off the battlefields as soon as her fights are over so that she never sees the casualties her massive vines leave in their wake. Xisuma worries that one day the illusion will be broken and with it her mind. She seems like the kind of person who could regress to using entrails as a skipping rope if pushed far enough. Evil X does his best to reassure him, but the lies turn to mulch in his mouth.

Xenon and Krypton, a duo that never let the higher ups split them up or force them to fight alone. Together they share a record for the fewest recorded injuries, as well as a certain fierceness in their eyes as they volley explosive balls of shadow and light between them, bouncing them back and forth to build up velocity before letting them loose on their enemies. Still, the people whisper about how much more help they could do if they were simply separated, able to cover more places at once. At night, Xisuma hears them crying, bundled tight in each other's arms and mourning their missing third.

Shank, their sniper. Supreme accuracy, a consequence of his self-built bionic eye and his special laser rifle. The higher ups are murmuring about what he could do if more of him was bionic. What improvements could be made to his body? How many more lives could be saved? (How many more "monsters" could be put behind bars?)

Splatter, their brawler. A sip of blood and he hulks out, his strength becoming all the greater the more he drinks, so the higher ups give him all the blood he could stomach and more. They never tell him where it comes from, and he's too afraid to ask. (He was a butcher before this whole hero thing, he had explained to Xisuma once. He knows what animal blood tastes like. What they give him is definitely not animal blood- and sometimes, it makes him feel sick. He always was allergic to steroids.)

Trigometric, who bent reality into fractals, who seemed just a bit more broken than the rest. He actually liked his job, and that perhaps made him less of a hero and more of a monster. (Mr. Goodtimes was a head of government of some renown, famous for his power plays and his campaign that favored brutal action against those that the city condemned. Trigometric called him "Scar" with affection on his lips and that was perhaps scariest of all.)

It's terrifying hearing about his twin's coworkers and their varying flavors of unfortunate and unstable, even worse when he has to stay at home and watch the news to see if his brother has survived to see another day against the violent protests and the drug rings and mobs and super villains.

Because there are super villains. He even meets one.

---

The pigeons need feeding. Life or death, whether Xisuma is around to remind him or no, the pigeons need feeding so every Tuesday and Saturday Evil X goes to the park with a bag of bird seed. It just so happens that one sunshine-filled summer day there is someone there before him. Crouched close to a few pigeons, at first he thinks the figure is just dressed in a purple cloak, but when the figure stands up and stretches, the cloak separates to reveal a pair of brilliant purple wings. Poultryman.

Evil X has seen his brother come back from fights and he knows that while Poultryman is a figure of some renown, his battles rarely cause collateral damage- that's more the hallmark of his partner Clockwork. So when Poultryman turns to face him, trademark white mask over his eyes and an odd expression on his face, Evil X just glares and walks up to him to dump the bag of bird seed on the super villain's feet.

"For the birds," he says tersely before spinning on his heel, preparing to walk away. The sound of bright, cheerful laughter has him pausing and the sound of wings meeting the dirt has him turning around. Poultryman is on the ground, rolling around in the bird seed and laughing his head off, clutching his stomach and flapping his wings wildly, which only makes even more of a mess.

"Pffftt- hahaHAhAHaH! Oh gods, your face! If I couldn't tell you were so pissed off to see me I wouldv'e thought this was the greatest prank ever!" Oookay? Evil X crosses his arms, unimpressed and left with a sneaking suspicion he is being made fun of.

"And?" Poultryman lets out a last few wheezing gasps before smoothly rolling to his feet, mask askew and utterly covered in dirt, grass, and bird seed. The local pigeons have, surprisingly enough, not scattered just yet.

"And that was brilliant! Tell me, are you the one who's been feeding the birds around here? The pigeons have been dying to introduce me to their 'friend' and I've been eager to meet them ever since. Well, the word translates more to family but there's some non-pigeon implications mixed in there, so friend works a little better. I don't think my feathered friends have quite yet figured out how to buy their own bird seed. You don't look like a pigeon anyway."

"No. I am not a pigeon," Evil X sighs, shifting his feet but keeping his posture defensive. If he remembers right, Poultryman never did any real damage but he apparently came off to Xisuma as a little unhinged and he'd rather not test the super villain's good mood. "And yes, I feed the birds around here. Can I go?"

Poultryman tilts his head to the side, going abruptly silent and still, all emotion wiped from his body language, expression, and voice. "That depends. Would you like to make Matchstick's life a little easier? I have a deal for you."

---

It goes a little something like this.

Clockwork and Poultryman schedule a raid on a local food processing plant, hoping to take their newest shipment of tin. Matchstick and Splatter are in the area and are called in to help. It's a poor match up to begin with, with Splatter's strength not doing much against Clockwork's robotika and Matchstick- while able to keep up with Poultryman in the air, barely- can't seem to land a solid hit on the villain. It doesn't help that he seems to be limited in how hard he hits, too conscious of what his flames might do to Poultryman's vulnerable feathers and of just how high they are in the air. Clockwork, meanwhile, is free to pilfer what he and his partner please from the plant.

However, despite the lack of damage the super heroes are able to do, the villains do even less. To Evil X, that is all that matters.

In another part of the city, a group of civilians meet in an abandoned railway car, dry docked in a train yard with its rusted frame resting on several heavy blocks of wood. The door is chained shut, but that means little when the underneath has a hole cut into it and if one is determined enough, crawling inside is easy. There, they exchange moth-eaten blankets, half-broken appliances, tattered clothes, and the tools to fix them. Money. Documents.

Evil X brings food. The government promised food unending to him and his brother, he may as well take advantage of it.

A deceptively normal-looking man with glasses and a deactivated metal collar around his neck brings a stack of books in, most of them picture books for the children. Another man, this one with green skin and robotik prosthetics, brings a stack of battered but newly repaired mobile phones, gaze shifting around nervously, as if scared to be caught there. Evil X makes a quiet note of the men but moves on. Theirs is not a story he feels like tampering with today.

When Xisuma comes home to find Evil X laying face-down in bed, fast asleep, he just smiles and tucks himself in beside his twin. Today is the first day in a long time he had come out from a fight unscathed, and tomorrow he will share the good news with his brother. For now, he sleeps.

---

In time, Evil X becomes a staple of the Homeless Enforcing Principles, which quickly gets abbreviated to the rather unimaginative "HEP." He wonders in the back of his mind if a certain man in glasses had something to do with the name, but decides not to bother with that quickly enough. He has enough on his plate as is with his newly adopted duties.

You see, when you get a diverse enough body of people together from all echelons in the city, and then put them into a rather small space, they begin to do what every group of friendly strangers like to do on the train- start complaining. Sometimes it's about the new "neighborhood watch" starting trouble on the corner of 6th and Fruit, sometimes it's about the new increase in taxes their boss wants to implement, sometimes it's about the stock that slips through the gaps when the trucks come to restock the supermarket.

Between him and his twin, Evil X never really was the one for idle chit-chat, but he knew lies just as well as his brother did and public speaking was just lying with a pretty bow on top. Stock begins to get left off of inventory sheets and put into the hands of the needy. The "neighborhood watch" get pointed towards the parts of the city that actually need their help (conveniently drawing the attention of the local law enforcement, who can actually do something about the problem).

He begins to donate more and more food to the cause, waistline thinning in the process. He thinks he likes his figure better that way.

As Evil X puts more time into his new project, crime rates don't exactly go down, but the number of people arrested for stupid reasons certainly does. The other members of HEP begin to bring in their friends and family and the pool of resources and talents grows, expanding outside the walls of their train car and out into people's basements, gas station parking lots, metal trash bin bonfires in the park. Little pools of community, and for Evil X, wellsprings of information.

Clockwork and Poultryman are some of the first actual super villains to come to the meetings, this time under the names of Mumbo Jumbo and Grian, but they are not the last.

---

Armistice arrives hanging off of Lumesce's shoulder one night, his metal body forcing her to drag him along on the ground, shredded legs unable to hold his own weight. She cries steady tears of light, seemingly near-physically pained at being unable to further help him. Evil X watches quietly from the background as Grian looks up and over the bonfire from where he is tending the jagged gash in the unconscious Mumbo's leg.

"Wels. Pearl. Got you too, huh?" The carefully kept-up cheer is gone from the man's face as the duo settle down by the fire, sprawling out in a rough heap.

The woman, Pearl, nods wearily, pulling off her hood and wiping at her face, glowing tears staining her black jacket. "Yeah. Trigometric decided he wanted to come and 'play' for a bit, seems he finally caught on to the illegal clinic I was running down in Mr. TFC's basement. I was lucky enough to get an anonymous tip that he was coming, but Wels got caught in the crossfire for defending me." Grian nods back, eyes distant.

"Give Mumbo a hand with his leg, I'll go grab the last of our tin for Wels to eat so he can patch himself up. E-X?" Evil X straightens up at the winged man's attention. "Call up Keralis and see if you can't get some hew housing sorted for Mr. TFC. I doubt his house survived in the crossfire and you might as well fix it for him with my permission and funds rather than just sort it out behind my back and try to sell it to me as an 'investment' later." With that parting remark Grian stands up stiffly and flies away, leaving Pearl to make her way over to his partner, healing tears already streaming down her face so that she can start to fix the wound.

On the other side of the fire, Wels reaches down and rubs at the sharp and twisted metal of the remnants of his left leg, expression lost and weary. "Things can't keep going like this, so many of us are running on fumes by this point. Something has to change." Expressionless, Evil X just turns away, pulls out his cellphone, and begins to make a few calls.

He carefully ignores the twisting of his heart in his chest.

The next day, Mr. TFC has a room in a decent hotel and Evil X sits on his perfectly white couch staring at his overly large TV, watching the news. Armistice and Poultryman are fighting against Matchstick and Ivy-Over, dashing in and landing a few hits before retreating to the shadows, then running up to repeat the process again. The fight ends with both sides retreating, the heroes to the hospital, the villains to skies with Poultryman straining to bear both Armistice's weight and the load of cash stolen cash in his arms.

Grian's going to pull a wing muscle again, Evil X just knows it.

Xisuma leaves the fight unscathed. Gemini isn't nearly so lucky.

---

The next super villain he meets is mostly on accident, a random encounter more than anything. Tired of lounging about all day, if you call making connections and surfing the internet doing fuck all, Evil X decides he hates himself a bit more than he usually does and decides to go job hunting. A quick internet search later and he finds himself standing outside an abandoned warehouse on the North docks. He and his brother never had much more than their birth certificates and social security numbers to their name, so shady suited him perfectly fine.

A man steps out from behind a corner dressed in a hospital mask, black pea-coat, and a sailor's breton cap as white as his hair. Evil X freezes, eyes going wide as the familiar-looking stranger goes bug-eyed to see him right back. Then the man shifts his weight to his back foot, crossing his arms and wincing playfully, very real trepidation lurking in his posture.

"Uh, you wouldn't happen to by Matchstick's brother, would you?" Evil X takes a careful step away from the man, who he now recognizes as Zyon from watching the news, one of Xisuma's more common foes. His own research proved that the fellow had ice powers to put an iceberg to shame, which was ironic considering that he was secretly the business mogul Etho, who ran a shipping company helpfully named "Titanic Inc." It was doubly ironic since "Zyon" was notorious for causing problems for "Etho," who then claimed the insurance payouts when the boats eventually sank.

That the boats that sank frequently carried weapons, junk food made with GMO ingredients, and weirdly enough, socks, was of little consequence to him, but he kept that amusing tidbit in his back pocket for later. (The sailors on board were... collateral. And a nonissue. Anyone who signed up on a ship run by "Titanic Inc." deserved what they got.)

(Their deaths were not his concern.)

"Yeah, that's me. And you're Zyon- or rather, Etho." Zyon chuckles nervously.

"Yep yep, that's me. And you're very firmly on the 'no touchie' list around here, so I'm just gonna gooo...." Zyon flinches as Evil X suddenly attaches himself to his wrist, expression steely.

"List?" It's more statement than question, but it has Zyon gulping back a frantic giggle anyway.

"Oh no, I'm not messing with that one. Let's just say you should take that up with your brother and leave it at that. Get too deep into that mess and someone's gonna end up regretting it- and I'm not that dumb, that's for sure!" With that parting remark, Evil X finds his feet frozen to the ground and Zyon running off, dropping the black pea-coat of Etho to reveal the icy blue Kevlar ninja suit of the super villain underneath.

Bemusedly Evil X watches Zyon vault up a stack of pipes onto a nearby roof, then off towards the city where he could better better disappear.

Hmm. Seems like he needs to step up his game.

---

He runs into Ooze at the supermarket. Apparently they both prefer the green grapes to the purple ones. The more you know.

---

It's his encounter with Valkerie that really sets things off.

Xisuma comes home one day, tears streaming down his face and his gloves covered in blood and dust. He crumples in a heap at Evil X's feet where he sits on the couch and drops his face into his twin's lap, trembling. His arms dangle at his sides, blood dripping from his fingers onto the sterile white carpeting.

"Four dead found in a park near here. All teenagers, just having fun. Just. Just fucking kids! She ruptured their ear drums and they bled out because they couldn't move to get to safety. Gods E-X, their eyes... They looked so scared..." Evil X stays quiet and runs his fingers through his brother's hair, heedless of the muck clinging to the ends. Xisuma shakes himself to bits in his hands. "They were just kids. We couldn't do even do anything but clean up the mess afterwards."

Xisuma pauses, hesitant, before choking out- "That could have been us. Had we still been on our own, that could have been us." Ah. So that's it.

"We're safe, you know. Whoever Valkerie is, she won't get us here."

"But we don't know that! What if you're out shopping and she's at the market, or if she gets on the news and her scream works through the TV? What then?! I can't-" The words die in his twin's throat and Evil X gulps back his own.

I can't lose you. It's a phrase that's crossed his own mind more than once.

"Okay. Okay. I'll stay home until she's caught, okay? Get delivery or something, I don't know. And I'll keep the TV off, the radio too. Shhh. Shhhhh. I'll be okay." Xisuma struggles closer, shoving his face into his brother's stomach and getting snot and tears all over the both of them. Evil X doesn't complain. It's a lie and they both know it, but they've lived lies before, are used to it. What's one more, in the face of that?

To be fair, Evil X gives it a few weeks before he makes his move, and he knows he'll be fine so really it's only half a lie anyway.

---

Feet crunch against gravel as Evil X approaches the woman kneeling in the center of the abandoned construction site, hands over her mouth, eyes scrunched, biting the flesh of her thumb to keep her sobs held in.

"Hello Ms. Valkerie. Grian's told me about you."

The woman whips around, eyes wide and bloodshot at his sudden appearance, before she shakily lowers her hands from her mouth to clutch at the fabric of her pink cardigan. "I'm- I'm not some monster, got it? I'm just Stress, j-just- I'm just me! I don't want to hurt anyone!" Her voice goes shrill and thin towards the end and Evil X hides his wince, although apparently not well enough because she immediately slaps a hand over her mouth again, eyes watering anew.

"Okay. It's okay, Stress. I'm here to help," he placates, lowering himself down to sit next to her in the dirt. Around them, rusted I-beams and concrete pillars rise, giving them some semblance of privacy. The full moon lurks overhead, casting them both in a silver glow. "You're life must be very hard, hm?"

Stress nods, expression wary.

"And retail is very- ha- stressful too, I imagine?" Here a little grin leaks out from behind her hand. "All those customers whining on and on about discounts. 'Oh, I have a gift receipt why can't I return this?' Like, lady, you opened this box. 'I'm gonna talk to your manager!' Lady, he's just gonna say the exact same thing."

A stifled giggle and a whispered "Worse! I work in the women's clothing department." Evil X gives a mock gasp, face going wide and shocked.

"So you don't just have to deal with fussy customers- you deal with fussy suburban soccer moms!" Stress tips forward with the force of her muffled laughter, tucking her damp face into the curve of his neck and putting her full weight on him. Hesitantly she clutches the tail of his shirt with her freehand, then a little tighter when he makes no move to shove her off. Evil X just wraps a gentle arm around her shoulders.

"Some of those customers must make you want to go home and just scream, huh." Her laughter tapers off, but she nods, quiet. "So you go somewhere empty and abandoned and scream your heart out so you don't kill someone." Another nod, a little hitch in Stress' breathing. "And you scream and scream, so glad to release some of your pent-up feelings, but oops. It turns out there are people there anyway. And your screaming just killed them. You've become a murderer and the police brands you accordingly."

The hand in his shirt tightens, tugging. "I- I didn't want to hurt them! I didn't want to hurt anyone! But- but it just happened and then I was running, and no one saw me so I had to just go to work the next day, a-and. And-"

"And now you're the wanted super villain Valkerie." His hand smoothes up and down her back as her breath hitches again, once, twice, and then wetness against his neck.

"Valkerie is such a stupid name, anyway. I'm not escorting anyone anywhere, let alone to Valhalla. I just scream and. And they're dead."

Evil X hums quietly. "You must be very tired."

"...Yes. Yes." The moon slips through the sky for a while and they drift with it, lost in thought. Evil X stares up at it, squinting against its light to try and figure out what time it is, if Xisuma is likely to be home yet. The gravel is harsh against his knees.

Then. "Things can't keep going like this. I'm so tired, all the time these days. It's just work, day in and day out, and all this stress." She pulls away then and Evil X watches as Stress scrubs at her face, expression going cold and determined. She stares him straight in the eyes, but something about her still seems lost, like she's gazing through him. "Something has to change or else someone is going to get themselves killed."

He tilts his eyes head, considering, thoughtful, with a well-hidden edge to his voice.

"I think I could help with that."

---

The morning news. Four calls placed, a frantic brother reassured, Stress is sitting a cafe on the corner of Elm and 5th. Her gut flutters with nerves but Evil X can see her expression is calm from her position in the background of the shot. The news anchor is a pretty blond-haired, blue-eyed young woman blathering on about how the cafe apparently is the oldest one in the city and some other historical nonsense. Out of shot of the camera, a desperate, dog-eared petty thief is running for his life down 6th street, the hulking figure of Spatter hot on his heels.

They round a corner, onto 5th. Past the cafe, the startled reporter, the public shrieking as their morning is disrupted. Stress nearly throws up as her heart launches itself into her throat but she's... There's a plan and she's going to stick to it.

So she stands up, small and in the background of the shot, but her bright pink jacket makes her stand out. She opens her mouth, expression going scared like a civilian's, and screams just as she had been told to. It's not for long, barely a second or two all told, but it's enough to have the people near her cringing away, blood trickling from their eyes and from where their fingernails dig into their skin in trying to cover their ears.

Spatter freezes in his tracks, pupils mere pinpricks as the sudden outpouring of blood triggers something deep and wild in him. The camera shakes, the frightened camera man ducking down to avoid notice but carefully recording what's about to happen, as if sensing that whatever happens next is about to be important.

The hero turns towards Stress, eyes wild, and although she's scared out of her mind, she stands her ground. Her voice barely even shakes as she speaks.

"S-stop. Stop running, can't you see you're scaring people? You nearly ran me over!" In the eyes of the camera Stress looks like a frightened civilian gone civil defender in pink, the morning light casting her in gold and the cafe's shadow creeping over Spatter's massive, muscled-out form to cast him in darkness and grey. The lack of harsh lighting makes it even more obvious when he starts sniffing the air, darting eyes pausing on all the bloodied hands and finally resting on the woman who caused the damage.

The world has insisted, long and loud, that he is a hero and with that comes certain ingrained responsibilities. Stress is Valkerie. Splatter fixes his gaze on her and with a snarl, he moves.

The camera catches it in perfect, awful clarity when his arm goes through her stomach and her blood starts pooling on the floor. Her expression is so betrayed.

From his place on his clean, white couch at home, Evil X turns the TV off.

---

Stress is buried with honors and all media depictions of Valkerie as a monster cease as the streets are made "safe" from the super villain. Instead, news programs and talk shows take up a new crusade, this one against the "heroes" that protected the city and the governing bodies that controlled their movements. Mr. Goodtimes has his name dragged through the mud, and each day his brother comes home with stories about how frazzled Trigometric is, Evil X has to hide his smile.

Seeming to pick up on the way things are turning, Clockwork disappears from the public eye while Poultryman steps up the showmanship, making more appearances in public spaces to egg government buildings and steal petty amounts of scrap metal from junk yards and factory scrap heaps. The heroes that give chase, usually Xenon and Krypton, end up causing more damage than they actually prevent.

Ivy-Over- shocked at the public outrage about the apartments left in shambles after her particularly brutal battle against Zyon- rather predictably ends up snapping, although not in any way Evil X expected.

She ends up going to the news and telling them everything. Public outrage rises anew.

There's a riot in town square and Matchstick and Reaper are sent in to stop it. Thirteen people die, kindly Mr. TFC one of them. Xisuma comes home, collapses into Evil X's arms, and cries.

Things have to change. And so they do.

---

Midnight and two figures meet on a roof top somewhere overlooking the domed silhouette of city hall. The first wears a set of armor shaded in green and grey, a purple visor over his eyes and an oxygen-filter over the lower half of his face. The second figure has wings, stretched wide to block out the light of the crescent moon above.

Matchstick. Poultryman.

Xisuma. Grian.

Matchstick tilts his head to the side, drawing himself up to his full height to loom over the far shorter villain. "The status quo is falling apart, Poultryman. Does the deal still hold?"

Poultryman rolls his head to make it clear he had just rolled his eyes, the purple insignia on his mask flashing to display his annoyance. "Yeah yeah, I've spread the word to the others and they're not as crazy as the news likes to make 'em out to be. No one has hurt your precious 'E-X,' nor do they have any plans to. Too much trouble to mess with beyond trying to keep him out of whatever crime scene we'll be making, and that's hard enough as is. Your brother has a habit of making himself hard to track and it's getting... troubling."

The hero's posture suddenly goes as stiff as his namesake, smoke starting to hiss from the vents carefully built into his suit. "Troubling?"

Violet wings flap once, twice, before pulling tight against Poultryman's back and not for the first time, Matchstick curses himself for never bothering to learn what his various wing positions mean. The villain in question just rolls his shoulders back and settles into a careful parade rest that gives nothing away, expression pensive.

"Xisuma..." Matchstick flinches back, the careful line between them wavering at the name. "What exactly do you about your brother?"

A hesitant head tilt and he taps his fingers along his leg, thinking back to when he had last spent more than a few fleeting hours with his twin at a time.

"He likes sweet foods, even if he pretends he doesn't. Has more money invested in Derp Coin than he probably should. Likes red and black but gets fussy if anyone calls him a goth. Never seems to sleep, or eat regular meals, but he never seems to forget anything either. Best brother I could ever ask for- he loves me, I know that for sure. All the important stuff. Why?"

A wisp of cloud drifts overhead, casting a brief shadow over the pair, and in the sudden darkness Matchstick could swear that Poultryman had pulled a frown. Then the moment passes and the villain is back to his usual inscrutable self, the only emotion in his body language being what he had put there intentionally. His wings remain tight to his back.

"Then I think you might be in for a bit of a surprise one day, Matchstick. Here's to hoping you can roll with the coming storm."

---

Evil X is beloved by the HEP network. Regardless of Grian's intention in putting him in contact with them- or even why the villain knew of the group to start with- his repeated contributions to their food stocks made him an opening among them and his ability to make and exploit connections made him their hero. If you were desperate, hungry, in need? Evil X could get you whatever you needed at the cost of a simple favor.

When it came to the price of a life, a favor is a small thing to ask indeed. Is it any wonder that they became so loyal to him? So when Evil X began asking questions about some of the city's more sensitive secrets and its shadier underbelly, it was only natural that they told him.

From the tall man with green skin, he learned the best places to dump things so that they disappeared. From a sleepy-looking fellow with a bandana, he learned the locations of the best drug dealers, and from those dealers he learned of their suppliers, their manufacturers, the places where heroes never walked. From the man with glasses, he learned about the back doors and hidden routes through the biggest, most important buildings, the places where they held people until they could make them disappear.

And with this information, Evil X's services expanded even further. Drugs for the addicts, as contaminant-free and trust-worthy as he could find them. Ways to make people appear and disappear in the eyes of the law (and the occasional abusive spouse). Alcohol, cigarettes- and most importantly, information.

Or rather, black mail. If you wanted to know something on someone, Evil X became the person to go to. Months of careful manipulation had spread his name and his reach through all levels of the city and people from all walks of life took advantage of her services, although usually all meetings were held over the phone and through a voice changer fashioned to look just like his twin's mask. The secrecy only increased his popularity, as people just love a good mystery and a grey-shaded crime boss made a lovely story indeed.

And soon, this caught the intention of another of the city's fabled figures- the mad scientist who lived deep in the underbelly of the city, a place where no light shone. The man, the myth, the legend... Void.

But then, myths never were all that accurate, especially with things like names.

---

Curly blond hair, brown cardigan, a ripped white lab coat. Calculating purple eyes and a wide, wide eerily white grin. Short and stocky with a complexion like a ripe peach, the blue light coming off the lights overhead casting hazy shadows over his form, everything about the good doctor is simultaneously creepy and a soft sort of handsome- he has to say, he's impressed. The mythical Zedaph lives up to the city's dark rumors of him and he says as much, which prompts that grin to grow all the wider.

"Ah, hello Weaver! Y'know, I kind of thought you'd be shorter. And down here a lot sooner, I almost could say I missed you~!" Evil X balks as the scientist steps forward and grips his chin to tilt his head down, purple eyes wandering over his scarred features.

"It's not like you make yourself easy to find- and that's not my name." Zedaph shakes his head, leaning his face up with just scant inches between them.

"Little spider, you might be pretty good at hearing things but you're awful at listening. If you have large enough ears, you'd find you're just about the most talked about thing in the underground these days-"

"Do spiders have ears...?"

"-so like it or not, your web is big enough that people have been spotting it in odd places, which means your twin will probably catch on soon. Which means..." Here Zedpah spins away to walk to the opposite wall, pressing a few buttons on his tablet which make the underground laboratory brighten considerably. Evil X tries not to feel bereft at the sudden loss of contact. "Your plans are gonna have to hit double time. And I love me a good speed potion!"

Speechless, Evil X just nods as the scientist opens a previously hidden door and pulls out a laptop case from inside, turning to present it to him with a fiercely proud expression on his face.

"Knock 'em dead darling. I can't wait to see you rock their world~!"

---

What does the end of an era look like? It's not a sudden collapse of civilization, people screaming and running through the streets. It's not the violent murder of the governmental leaders or riots against the past order. It's not as clear cut as all that. Nor is it so subtle that people look around one day and go huh, as the world around them had shifted beneath their feet without their notice. Indeed, there are many who saw the tide rising and were all too happy to watch the waters sweep in and away.

It goes like this.

The super villains go missing. First one week goes by with no wild scheme or dangerous incident, then two, then three. The higher ups are frantic with worry, running constant meetings and keeping the super heroes out on the streets for as long as they could without the heroes themselves rioting. It keeps Matchstick out of the way of Weaver, and at the moment, that's all the thought he can afford to spare his twin. It's for the best, really. The next step is important.

Across every government-issued computer in the city, an email is issued out. Personalized, first middle last name, parents' names, chidlrens' names. An alphabetical list of every law the person in question had broken in the last ten years, the number of witnesses who saw them do it, sometimes video footage or photo-copied documents if the crime was serious enough to warrant more concrete proof. What the punishments for those crimes would be. What could be done, if those punishments were waived for money or fame.

Nearly a thousand people get an email in the span of 24 hours. (Evil X never wants to write another email ever-fucking-again. None. Ever.) The heroes also receive an email detailing what laws were broken by denying them rights, food, decent living conditions and overtime pay, as well as the names of several lawyers who would work for them for free if the email was shown to them within three days time.

Every email is emblazoned with a web-like logo with a bright red "X" sitting in the middle like a bloody spider. Though some plucky tech people attempt to track the emails back to the sender, their every attempt is rebuffed by the impossible firewalls built into the computer the messages were sent from. As imagined, chaos in its most understated form ensues.

The city officials scramble to keep their sinking ship from falling apart and the little people kept cooped up in square offices and cell blocks come crawling out of the woodwork to jump ship. Some of the heroes, such as Xenon, Matchstick, and Shank try desperately to hold things together, but others like Reaper head for the nearest legal office and hole up with a team of vicious prosecutor attorneys. Meanwhile, the civilians go about their business, unaware of what is going on in the ivory towers far above their notice.

Xisuma comes home to fin their apartment empty, and although betrayal sits like a rock in his gut, his guts still squirm with desperate, aching fear. (No... please, no.)

The super villains make their reappearance with flair, setting the stage for the next act. Each one takes to a corner of the city, working in pairs to capture civilians and hold them hostage en mass, their efforts to wide spread for the remaining heroes to deal with in one go. From here, walking along a quiet street and watched by hundreds of frightened eyes- a captive audience- Weaver makes his debut as he makes his way to the city capital.

Tall, whip-thin enough to make his proportions lean more towards slenderman than super model, and dressed in red and black armor with a matching helmet and visor, Weaver cuts an imposing figure as he makes his way up the white marble steps of the capital building to where a nervous-looking reporter stands. She straightens up at his approach though and with a nod to her camera crew, she starts asking questions just in time for Poultryman to swoop in and land beside the newest super villain, expression stern but a clear presence of support.

In his hands a laptop is clutched.

---

The demands are simple in theory, but Xisuma feels his heart thunder in his throat at every point on the list.

The week would be split into three types of days. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays would proceed as normal and the heroes and villains could go at each other as they pleased. Fridays would be reserved for the villains to do as necessary without hero interference under the caveat that no blood would be spilled, and Sundays heroes could have the same. Tuesdays and Saturdays, no one would fight, a proper break for everyone.

The villains would keep to their side of the bargain, Weaver says darkly as he stares directly into camera, just so long as the heroes kept to theirs. And measures would be taken for anyone who chose not to comply. Xisuma's brain goes fuzzy with static as the super villain makes a few other demands, something about fair wages and from when to when each group could operate, but his gaze remains locked to where he can just barely make out his twin's face through his visor. The words filter through him, dismissed into a soft numbing blur.

The air suddenly feels chilled on his skin, fingers twitching in his lap, a rough, twisting feeling in his gut like the bottom of his stomach just dropped away. He feels trapped, unable to move from the couch, from the wrong side of the screen. Oh, he thinks hazily to himself, he's about to be sick. Hmm, ought to do- something. About all of- of this.

Gods... What did his brother do?

---

An era ends like this- Poultryman sweeps Weaver away in his arms and in his place, Evil X comes home. Xisuma watches his brother come through the door, eyes glued to his brother's face even as Evil X places his keys on the table by the door and takes off his shoes. There's a gentle realization bubbling up that this is the first time he's seen his brother's bare face with his own eyes, without the tint of a visor between them, in far too long. His twin's got paler as of late, making the eye bags and scars stand out all the more.

"You're home." The words hang in the air and Evil X sags at their weight, leaning against the door as if to prop himself up for the conversation to come. His arms hang behind his back, a laptop case dangling in his grip.

"You know this isn't home any more than the tree was."

"We- we were supposed to be safe here. This was where we were going to stay!" Xisuma is going red now, rising up from the couch in his anger, and Evil X watches him with the dredged-up calm of a man resigned to drowning. Good, anger he could handle.

"You thought this was where we would stay, got us a nice, normal apartment that looks like it's out of a fashion plate without asking me. You think I like staying in this pretty white bird cage that you bought by selling yourself to the most corrupt people around? This place isn't any safer for us than the tree was, and at least in the park we had company!"

"Says the one who fell into bed with the literal bad guy! At least here you weren't getting into fights every other week."

"No, now you're the one doing that!" They're shouting at each other. They never do that. An acrid taste fills Evil X's mouth and he gulps it back, along with a few words he just knows he would regret if he said them. A deep breath, a slow in and out. "Look, just. Don't be a hypocrite, okay?"

Xisuma pauses in his wind up for a proper tirade, eyes wary and wet. "What?"

"You aren't the only self sacrificing moron here."

"...Oh." Yeah. Oh.

Here Evil X takes another breath, resisting the urge to hold it, then extends his arm to show his twin the laptop case. "Hey."

Xisuma folds his arms behind his back, looking at his feet and then up again, shuffling back a step. "Yeah?"

"Got you a present. You always were the best of us, so. Here. It was the last part of the deal I kinda set up, a kind of fail-safe slash card to add to your deck. This laptop has evidence of my entire operation, every backroom deal, every piece of black mail, every person I've had killed or vanished or what have you. Everything I've been up to for the last however long. And... it's for you to read. It's not gonna be fun, but like, I trust you so it's okay. If you read this and really, honestly think I've crossed a line you can't forgive me for, you can turn this into the police and... I'll deal with whatever you choose to do with me. No loop holes, no take-backs."

Here Evil X leans his full weight against the door and lets his arm swing back down to his side, gaze sliding off to the side and a melancholy smile curling at his lips and pulling at his scars. "I trust you. I trust you. It... It'll be okay, yeah? Just make whatever choice you need to. Don't hesitate." He doesn't promise anything, keeps the words 'I'll be okay' from spilling into the air between them, but instead allows a careful submission to enter his posture, head bowed and figure loose and hanging.

It... might not be alright, but it will be right and that will have to be good enough. (It has to be.)

Xisuma chokes, a sob rising in his throat as his brave, strong brother gives up before his eyes. The air in his lungs freezes solid at the thought of having to choose whether or not his twin lives or dies, because that's what this is, he can't pretend that the city wouldn't execute him at the slightest chance, agreements be damned. His gaze tracks wildly from the laptop case to the top of his brother's head to the window, as if trying to see if anyone could be watching, could make the choice for him.

It's not fair. It's not fair, why him, why? He was so good, tried so hard- his heart is loud in his ears, breath rattling in and out in wheezing gasps- sobbing now, utterly sobbing. Evil X doesn't look up, doesn't try to comfort him. Won't even move, gods.

Fuck it.

Evil X startles, back banging against the door as Xisuma rushes forward and rips the case from his hands, only to chuck it into the far corner before throwing himself into his arms. On instinct Evil X catches him and holds him close just in time for Xisuma to bury his face in the crook of his neck and burst into messy, tearful sobs. They shake together and Evil X lets his head thump back gently against the door, eyes hazily gazing up at the ceiling.

"It's not- *hic*- it's not fair! I didn't want this!"

"I know. I know." He runs his hand over his twin's back, his taller form bowing forward to shelter his brother's smaller one. Somehow, even now it feels like Xisuma is the larger one between them, solid and warm in his arms.

"Why do I have to choose? I never wanted this! Why?! Why would you do this for me?"

"You're my brother. I love you." A gasping, wet sob against his neck and his twin lets out a moan like a dying cow, low and agonized. Evil X focuses on a soot mark on the white ceiling, tears stinging his eyes and running down his face to plop softly into his brother's hair.

"But why?!" Screaming. Gods, he can't-

"I love you. I love you." Rocking now, back and forth, gentle, just as he had when he had come home from beating up the men who had tried to lay stomp out his brother's heart, scarred and beaten and bloody. I love you, he had said then, and he repeats it now.

Later, much later, Xisuma will have to boot up the laptop and read through its contents. He will try to burn it, first, but Zedaph's work is more durable than most and Evil X will watch as his twin will dump his emotions into his flames, desperately trying to stoke them hotter and brighter. Later, a choice will have to be made.

But for now, Evil X will hold his brother, warm and safe, and let him cry.

#minecraft #my writing #fanfiction #hermitcraft #xisuma #evil xisuma #evil x #pretty much all the hermits actually

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