#the way this is my metaphorical pacifier and i feel better

[strawberrystepmom]

cw body image discussion. self ship coded. f!reader is feeling insecure and gojo is there to help work through the blues. he's mildly possessive and reader is really down on themselves. reader and gojo are in a semi established relationship (aka idiots in love). wc 1.6k

divider thanks to @/cafekitsune as always

The third time you pull a blouse over your head with a huff and toss it to the ground below your feet is when Satoru finally realizes that something is not right with you today. 

It wasn’t the instant frown upon waking up that alerted him, in fact that’s kind of just normal so he ignored it, but he has noticed you’ve been wound tight from the moment your eyes have opened. Your shoulders are hunched, he’s worried you’re going to give yourself a headache with all that scowling, your coffee sits on the nightstand getting cold while you glare at your reflection in the full length mirror against the wall.

Flipping onto his stomach and stretching horizontally across your bed, he appraises you where you stand. Even grouchier than usual, you’re dazzling. You’re wearing nothing but your least sexy nude colored bra and high waisted black trousers, bare feet stomping across the wooden floor as you rush back and forth from the closet back to the mirror.

He knows what’s happening and that he has never quite been good at stopping it but he wants to try, if only to make you smile at his failed attempt at comfort. You know him well enough to know that there’s meaning beneath his flippant words and veneer, something that saves him from a lot of trouble on any given day.

“Princess?”

His little nickname captures your attention and you shift from glancing in the mirror to him for just a moment, eyes narrowing slightly when you take in his relaxed posture. It must be nice to be him - ever the bored boy king watching the rest of us mortals folly. Raising your brows, you fold your arms over your chest defensively and stare at him.

He knows this defensive position better than anyone ever could. You’re internally wounding yourself and curling into your own torso, covering where it hurts the worst with your arms. Your heart breaks and he can see it on your face, eyes still narrowed and shoulders rounded forward. Trying to make yourself smaller, broken into pieces, something you feel will make you more palatable.

He hates it but he knows you don’t do it on purpose. You spend a lot of your time lifting others up and it’s easy to forget yourself in the fray. He sees it as his responsibility to step for you when you can’t do it for yourself and he cannot imagine allowing anyone else to ever do so.

He’s yours, in name, in body, in heart, and it’s his job to remind you of how perfect you are even when you forget. 

“C’mere,” he wags his head, motioning for you to join him on the bed while he pats the spot next to him. You sniff unenthusiastically and shuffle to the side of the bed, sitting and letting your legs hang off the edge of it. You don’t want to join him in his all too comfortable state but you realize quickly you are going to be left with no choice when he sets his head on your thigh and wraps his arms around your waist.

You feel yourself soften when you look down at him, all white lashes and big eyes and hair over his forehead as boyish as you remember it being when you were 16 and he was 17 and he laid his head in your lap just like this. It feels like a lifetime ago, years and tears that have passed, but part of you even knew then that it would end up just like this for the two of you despite the constant denial of those feelings. 

Even still, you deny his affection for you out of some strange attempt to hurt yourself rather than him. It makes no sense and you sigh. How anyone puts up with you is truly a mystery yet here the one person who puts up with you the most sits, cloudless sky eyes searching you for answers. He foolishly believes he may yet solve you someday.

Unfolding your arms, you reach out and pet the strands away from his face. Remembering you’re supposed to be having a fit, you frown and he smiles up at you. It feels like the sun moving in from around a cloud and you chuckle.

“You gonna make it?” He asks and you know what he means. 

What do you need from me? How can I make this better?

If asked, he’d swear you’re the only one who actually listens to what he’s saying instead of picking out what you want to hear. If someone were to ask you, you think you’d say the same about him. Nobody understands you the way he does, a fact you used to resent but now welcome with open arms. Isn’t the core of being loved just being understood at the end of the day?

You think for a moment before flopping backward on the bed, his head still in your lap and his arms still looped around your waist. Satoru shifts slightly, pulling one arm out from under you and using it to gently pet your cheek. 

“Probably not,” you finally respond and he looks across your body at your face and smiles, shaking his head and rubbing his freshly shaven cheek over your pants.

“I’m ugly, I’m stupid, I’m the butt of every joke,” you lament, gaze shifting directly to the ceiling to keep from looking at him while your eyes mist over with tears. Speaking the things you think about yourself only makes them feel more true but he doesn’t let you lament for long, unlooping his other arm from your waist and grabbing your hand.

He sits up and you look up at him. He looms the way a god does and he looks just like one, something that makes you rush to try and cover yourself up. It’s a pity he wastes his time with you, meant for something far better than hanging out with you. You feel a tear slide down your cheek and sniff, covering your face with your forearm.

“None of that is true and you know it.”

He remains hovering over you, backlit by the sunlight in your bedroom, but you refuse to look directly at him and settle for gazing through the tiniest crack in your vision that your forearm isn’t covering. 

“Everyone loves you so much it makes me feel jealous sometimes.”

Despite your sadness, you giggle. He’s so funny sometimes that you wonder if it’s intentional or not.

“There’s no reason to. People are just being nice.”

He scoffs and before you can blink, he’s on his knees and sliding his oversized form across the bed. Straddling your hips, settling either of his thighs on the side of yours, you groan and let your arm flop at your side. He isn’t putting his full weight on you but you sniff and make a face anyway. You’re still only partially dressed and he licks his lips at the sight, soft skin warmed by sunlight.

“Do you know how many threats I’ve had to make to keep people away from you?”

Shaking your head, hair dragging across the blanket beneath your body, you wonder if he means it. He has alluded to this exact scenario many times in jest but you always assumed it was just that - a joke. A little chuckle shared between the two of you.

“I’m not joking,” he replies seriously, eyes giving him away. “You’re not just liked you’re desired, pretty girl.”

Your cheeks heat and your belly stirs despite how the rest of you feels. Shifting your head so that you’re no longer looking at him, he reaches down and cups your cheek with the same gentleness he always does but guides your face back in his direction. His thumb caresses the soft round and you bite back another smile.

“I’ll keep doing it, too,” he mutters with a grin and a nod and you raise your brows. You don’t really care that other people desire you, knowing that the issue with how you feel lies solely within your own heart, but it’s nothing less than sexy that he insists on throwing his weight around in his longstanding mission to make you love him as much as he loves you.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispers and you smile, leaning into his touch despite all of your previous attempts to shrug it off. “The smartest person I know, brave, dependable…”

He trails off and leans over you, stopping himself with his forearm on the bed and kisses your forehead. 

“I could go on forever but I don’t want to make you later than you’re already going to be after four outfit changes,” he offers and you laugh. A real one. The kind of laugh that makes a big smile stretch across your face and he places his thumb in the divot of your dimple as you do.

“You’re right.”

He beams, pressing his thumb so deeply you feel the inside of your cheek against your teeth. 

“Obviously.”

The rebuttal only makes you laugh harder and you kick your legs out beneath him, trying to shove him off of you.

“Get off, I’m gonna be late,” you warn and now he plants some of his weight over your hips, both big hands cupping your face as he repeatedly dots your face and cheeks with kisses.

“Nope, I’m gonna make you even more late and you’re just gonna have to live with it.”

And live with it you will as his lips travel from the round of your cheek and tip of your nose to your own lips, tongue brushing against the seam insistently.

[chrysalis-the-butterfly]

The Five Types of Autistic Headcanon

1) Headcanon by (Armchair) Diagnosis

You look at a fictional character and notice behaviours that seem to fit the description of autism (e.g. difficulties in social interaction, difficulties in communication, repetitive behaviour, over- or under-sensitivity to sensory input, highly-focused interests, anxiety, meltdowns, shutdowns). Based on these observations, you headcanon the character as autistic.

Example: "Ali, from Boys Beware by Jean Ure, struggles with communication and with making herself understood. She either won't contribute to a conversation, or she'll say something random that has nothing to do with what's come before. She doesn't fit in at school and only has one friend. Ali has highly-focused interests in astronomy and in Star Trek, to the point where her sisters joke that she has a 'one-trek mind'. Unless someone interrupts her, she could talk about her interests for ages. I get massive autistic vibes from Ali!"

2) Headcanon by Self-Recognition

You recognise your own behaviours and personality traits in a fictional character. They're just like you! And you're autistic. So you headcanon the character as autistic too.

Example: "Rapunzel plays with her hair a lot in Tangled. Her model sheets describe her hair as 'almost a pacifier'. She tends to grab her hair at emotionally stressful times. I'm a bit like that with my hair - I stim with it, and it calms me down and makes me feel good. So I like to think that Rapunzel is autistic and that the stuff she does with her hair is stimming or self-soothing."

3) Headcanon by Metaphor

The character and the plot could be read as metaphors for the experience of being autistic, or being disabled in general. So you headcanon the character as autistic.

Example: "Schwi Dola from No Game No Life is a robot who wants to learn as much as she can about the human [heart]. That seems a lot like a special interest to me. Her desire to learn about that one topic causes 'errors' to occur in her programming, so she's disconnected from her cluster. That could be a metaphor for how isolating it can feel to be autistic and not have anyone understand your unique way of seeing the world."

4) Headcanon by Gap-Filling

No-one knows very much about that character. They're a blank slate. You can headcanon anything you want about them. So you headcanon them as autistic.

Example: "Hatsune Miku's personality can take any form; it just depends on what type of song she's singing. So why can't I see her as autistic? All Vocaloid headcanons are valid!"

5) Headcanon by Wish Fulfilment

You have no evidence that they're autistic. You just really, really want them to be autistic because it makes you happy.

Example: "Imagine if Jessica Rabbit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit turned out to be autistic. Wouldn't that be cool? She's already one of my favourite characters, so I like to think she's autistic. No, I can't give a better justification than that. Just let me have my fun!"

[dairy-farmer]

bruce strongly believes that the easiest way to get tim's attention is to confide his suicidal thoughts. 'Sweetheart, daddy's about to kill himself' and boom tim is tugging down his pants and goes 'no!! You need my kitty right now!! 🥺🥺 it will help you get over bad feelings! 🥰🥰'

no because i keep saying that if bruce and tim had met online then bruce would be the adult who holds himself hostage and threatens to kill himself while 13 year old tim is trying to talk him out of it at the breakfast table before school starts!!!!!!😩😩😩😩

i feel like tim would've been very 🥺🥺🥺 in the beginning but then he just starts rolling his eyes and peeling down his underwear, spreading the lips to reveal his cunt (waxed bare just how bruce likes it) and asking "is this what you want? will this make you feel better?"

like bruce is the level of toxic that will threaten suicide to get tim's attention because he knows that tim will absolutely drop everything to go to his side.

tim's on a date?

bruce will send him a text of the view from a roof with a message of 'thinking of ending it fr 😕'.

because he really was when he heard tim was on a date.

bruce almost couldn't stop himself from drinking bleach when he heard that he'd spent the night at jason's apartment (and he made sure to to text tim that).

and tim???

well tim has learned through trial and error that there's really only one way to get bruce out of that mental rut when he's like that.

tim has tried talking with bruce, reasoning with him, hugging him, holding him, feeding him, cuddling, and kissing him-

but the only thing that is guaranteed to work and get bruce off that metaphorical (and sometimes literal) ledge is pussy.

bare. raw pussy.

tim tried condoms in the beginning because he'd just started the sex-ed module of his health class but bruce had huffed the entire time. been disgruntles at hacing to wear and just overall been in a pretty foul mood about having to fucking tim with a barrier between them.

so tim bit the bullet and put himself on birth control.

it was worth it because bruce instantly livened up. and so long as tim made him cum and fucked him for hours he'd calm down. so long as tim rode him long enough that the 'bubbling thoughts' in his head faded away and all bruce wanted to do was to recline on a soft bed and drift to sleep- he'd be okay.

sometimes tim isn't lucky enough that bruce calls tim from his room and tells him about his 'dark feelings'. so tim is left with a pussy full of cum and a half asleep batman on some random roof in the middle of gotham.

maybe tim should be more 'sensitive' about bruce threatening to off himself but he can't help but have grown a little desensitized to it. and how couldn't he?

when tim was thirteen he'd get a call or text from bruce like that at least twice a week.

so tim had more or less developed a sort of 'c'mon bruce eat a snickers bar, you're not you when you're hungry' attitude.

bruce being able to touch tim's body calms him down. like how a pacifier calms down a screaming baby.

bruce had once been angry after a rogue got away and been lashing out at anyone who came near so tim had no choice but to climb into his lap and unzip his pants, shoving his cup out of the way. bruce had been gritting out a demand for tim to get off, that he wasn't in the mood.

but tim ignored that because bruce didn't throw him off and because bruce was never NOT in the mood.

tim got about halfway down his cock before bruce launched up, pinned tim to the console, and fucked him hard hard, fast, and mercilessly. beating up tim's pussy like he'd wanted to do to that rogue.

when bruce picked tim up from school he'd sometimes have his brows furrowed in stress and he'd finger tim at every stop light, curling his fingers in deep as tim clenched around them.

bruce is the most mentally and emotional unstable person tim has ever known.

but he's also tim (and his pussy's) responsability.

and tim would sooner die before he'd fail the self appointed responsibility of being bruce wayne's mood stabilizer.

[nicklloydnow]

“Watching events unfold this weekend in Israel, I thought back to a feeling that I first felt more than two months ahead of Russia launching its war in Ukraine. That same sense of dread is, if nothing, more firmly entrenched in my chest today. The feeling is still nebulous. It’s as if we are all watching a catastrophic car crash and simply don’t have the vocabulary to describe it.

(…)

“Autocracy versus democracy��� does not usefully describe the moment. It feels like a discarded line from some kind of late-night brainstorming session. Its purpose was ostensibly to organize thinking — to name a threat and to allow for collective action. In the cold light of day, it reads like self-regard.

(…)

But many woke up on Saturday to the palpable fear of a real threat. Towns and small cities overrun by well-organized militia. Scores of civilians shot dead. Hostages abducted. As I write this on Monday night, the IDF is still fighting battles in Israeli population centers. Soon enough, it will be waging a Stalingrad-like fight in Gaza, doling out horrific human costs in pursuit of retribution. And that’s if no other nasty surprises are looming. The prevailing consensus is that 9/11 is the correct historical parallel for Israel. If Hezbollah enters the fight in the coming days, the 1973 Yom Kippur War will be a more apt comparison.

(…)

No, it’s not about democracy versus autocracy. The wheels are coming off. Our predecessors bequeathed to us a period of unprecedented tranquility. They were not infinitely wise in getting us here — no wiser than we are. But we grew up used to it in ways they could never imagine. We assumed order was normality, that peace was what naturally arose when power-hungry hyperpowers minded their own business. A better and more just world was there for the taking, if only we were moral enough to push for it.

The overarching metaphor in one of Robert Kagan’s recent books is fundamentally correct: order is a garden to be tended, but the jungle is the norm. I still hold that his moralistic “authoritarianism versus democracy” paradigm is misguided. Morality has nothing to do with it. Pessimism about progress — a conviction that nothing is permanent — is a far better guide.

My friend and former colleague Walter Russell Mead penned a prescient column earlier this year. He put his finger on the failings of the Biden administration’s fundamentally optimistic worldview. He pointed out that China, Russia and Iran are eating away at the existing order.

From the outset, the administration knew that the American-led world system was in trouble, but it underestimated the severity of the threat and misunderstood its causes . . . Two years later, the Biden administration is struggling to manage the failure of its original design . . . Russia isn’t parked, Iran isn’t pacified, and the three revisionists are coordinating their strategy and messaging to an unprecedented degree.

The Biden folks really are the third Obama administration. They fundamentally believe that the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice. At the limit, they see our primary task is to make sure we don’t stand in the way.

It’s time to abandon those good feelings. Our holiday from history is over. Or at least it needs to be over.

The Wall Street Journal ran a strong editorial today calling on the United States to get on a solid war footing. I’ve made a similar case for months now. Given how the Ukraine War has progressed, I’ve argued that President Biden needs to stand in front of the nation and tell the American people that the free lunch is over. We can no longer enjoy the massive “peace dividend” we reaped in 1991. It’s time to embrace that the world is dangerous and unforgiving. Prepare for the storms that are coming.

(…)

The Europeans were perhaps rattled in the first weeks of the war, when everyone thought Kyiv would fall in a fortnight. Even German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was saying how German thinking about security was undergoing an epochal transformation. That didn’t last. And even reports that Russia is by some measures now militarily outproducing both the United States and Europe combined hasn’t altered the mood.

Make no mistake, this isn’t just European decadence. We here in the United States are no less complacent. We talk about shared values and how we must support the Ukrainians until the end. But (not-so) secretly, we are glad that they are dying instead of us. Apart from a handful of military veterans and foolhardy enthusiasts, there are a vanishingly few people putting their lives on the line for a common moral cause. Though we say this is our fight, it’s really not.

Why? We come full circle. “Democracy” is not a real cause, “autocracy” is not a real threat. Or, to put it more carefully, that binary does not resonate today in ways that would have you put your life on the line. Not in the way it did during the Cold War, anyway. Safe peaceful street protests against domestic despots-in-waiting? Sign me up. I’d love to re-enact 1989. But as a unifying narrative with real stakes? It’s misaligned. It misidentifies the problem in some non-trivial way. Everyone feels that disconnect, and shrugs when it is invoked. This is not an assertion, just an empirical observation.

But something is happening. I feel it. I think many others feel it. The jungle is growing back. And we naive civilized folks, we couldn’t even start a fire without matches, much less feed or defend ourselves in the wilderness.”

“The larger context is that the U.S. and its allies now face two regional wars provoked by rogue states that are increasingly aligned. Israel and Ukraine are on the front lines, but the risk of an expanded conflict is real. Iran is feeding weapons into Vladimir Putin’s invasion in Ukraine. Mr. Putin is a junior partner of the Chinese Communist Party, which could try to exploit the moment in the Pacific.

The strategic and political point is that the return of war against Israel isn’t an isolated event. It’s the latest installment in the unraveling of global order as American political will and military primacy are called into question.

The President now has an obligation to increase the defense budget and stop treating the U.S. military as a political wedge to feed the American welfare state. For three years Mr. Biden has proposed cuts in defense spending after inflation, even as the world has become more dangerous.

The President can stop the budget games—the demands that every dollar on U.S. forces be matched with another for solar panels or food stamps—and work with Republicans to rebuild U.S. military power. That package should include aid for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. It should feature a generational effort to expand U.S. munitions inventories, from 155mm artillery to sophisticated long-range antiship missiles. Ditto for a plan to build more U.S. attack submarines for the Pacific.

Already officials are leaking that the U.S. may struggle to supply both Israel and Ukraine with artillery or other weapons while also deterring China. But America can either meet the moment or regret it later when the world’s rogues attack other allies, or U.S. forces deployed abroad, or even the homeland.

(…)

As for Republicans in Congress, they will have to get serious about governing and elect a new Speaker with dispatch. They need to isolate the Steve Bannon acolytes who treat shutting down the government for no good reason like a personal power play. Americans may be among Hamas’s hostages, and the GOP should support Mr. Biden if he sends a military mission to rescue them. The world needs to see that the U.S. can unite in a common security purpose.

(…)

The growing global disorder is a result in part of American retreat, not least Mr. Biden’s departure from Afghanistan that told the world’s rogues the U.S. was preoccupied with its internal divisions. But too many Republicans are also falling for the siren song of isolationism and floating a defense cut in the name of fiscal restraint. The Hamas invasion should blow up dreams the U.S. can “focus on China” and write off other parts of the world.

Donald Trump didn’t rebuild U.S. defenses as much as he claims, and his political competitors should say so. Former Vice President Mike Pence was correct when he said over the weekend that the awful scenes abroad are what happens when political leaders are “signaling retreat from America’s role as leader of the free world.” Nikki Haley sounded similar notes.

They seem to know what time it is. The rest of Washington needs an alarm clock.”

“Exactly 37 years ago, on a bleak outlook overlooking the Atlantic, the two remaining Cold Warriors met in Reykjavik and proposed the almost unthinkable — to rid the world of all nuclear weapons.

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev began a dialogue that set in motion a series of summits that would ultimately not achieve this bold objective but resulted in what many historians cite as the beginning of the end of the Cold War.

However, the question remains: to what end?

While the Cold War came to a close, the threat of nuclear war did not. The global nuclear arsenal had reached its peak in 1986 with over 63,000 weapons in circulation compared to 12,500 today, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

But the number of missiles is immaterial, as today’s weaponry is five times more lethal than Big Boy and Fat Man — the two bombs dropped on Japan at the end of WWII.

In addition, the range and mobility of the current arsenal have expanded significantly with the ability to reach any destination — from London to Moscow to Washington — in a matter of minutes, wiping out millions of people instantaneously.

(…)

The subsequent arms race that ensued between America and the Soviet Union led to the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, or MAD, that served to handcuff both sides with the premise that “if you fire on me, I’ll fire on you.”

A flawed concept to be sure. Yet the MAD strategy (which it truly is) remains the primary nuclear conflict deterrent today.

Adding to this MADness is the nonchalant manner that a large part of the world has adopted toward the threat of a nuclear conflict.

The possibility has shifted to the back of our collective psyches allowing us to focus on more important issues crowding our agenda.

A case in point is the most recent Republican presidential debate. While there were several questions around Taiwan and Ukraine, there was no specific reference to the “what if” of a nuclear engagement.

(…)

As a child of the Cold War, I can still remember the air raid drills in my community and hiding under my school desk.

That clear and present danger had lurked over the civilised world’s head but has since dissipated into the ether.

One would hope bright minds in political capitals around the world are gaming how to avoid a nuclear conflict.

But that notion calls to mind a moment when President Reagan after being briefed on the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction posed the simplest of questions, “What is Plan B?” to which his advisors had no answer.

And today as we celebrate their famous meeting in Iceland almost four decades later it is time again to ask our leaders — “What is plan B?””

[gayofthefae]

To me, this show has always been a metaphor for trauma symptoms. Sure, this is literally what happened, but really:

His life got better externally but then this dark monster attacked him. And it took him away. It stole his life and made him keep hiding like he always did. Maybe even feel like he did when his dad was still there. Then there’s this smoke monster that attacks him - but only in his mind. Nobody else can see it and he’s not sure if he’s going crazy, but it is valid and real. It’s still harmful to him. And in Owens’ defense here, it DOES happen to get worse around the anniversary of the incident. He tries to lock it out, quite literally repress it.

This is what the whole show is about, really:

Season 1, he runs from it.

Season 2, he/El represses it, quite literally.

Season 3, that wasn’t enough. There are still remnants in this world. Repression will never get rid all the way and it’ll just come back just as big, if not bigger, but this time affect the people around you more.

Season 4, he left for real. He escaped it in season 1 but now he’s avoiding any connection or trigger. And that works for as long as it works. But then something comes up again and it pulls him right back in.

As someone with PTSD, I relate to Will - especially because my flashbacks have been traumatizing so season 2 has always been a very validating allegory for me.

Will’s relationship with the upside down is all about how when the real life bad stuff ends like abuse, you are free...technically. But your mind isn’t yet. There’s still a lot of work to be done to convince yourself that you’re safe, especially from a long-term situation like his with Lonnie.

So yes, on the surface, he was finally safe and then the monsters came.

But in actuality, once the relief wore off, his body was still in the habit of being attacked. So he was attacked again. He was free from Lonnie. The monsters represent becoming free from his mind.

It’s actually very cool, too, because with El, we get to simultaneously catch up on WHAT her trauma was THROUGH her flashbacks, but because hers are real flashbacks and his are narrative representations, we don’t get the same with him. But Brenner and Lonnie are meant to parallel each other so it’s almost context from another character’s trauma.

Brenner forced her to open the gate. Just like Lonnie is responsible for Will’s body remaining under attack even after he’s gone.

And this leads into its own theory too of how to end this all. He needs to face his trauma. He needs to confront it. He wants to kill it, but I don’t think that’s right. It’s too simple. And it’s what they’ve done every season. He needs to pacify and integrate it. Whatever Henry and the mind flayer’s literal origins, the theme of the show is confronting trauma. So he CAN’T simply “kill it”.

Henry is El’s representation that was sent into Will’s world and now attacks her after she’s been free of Brenner. She had her own relief in season 2 before season 3 and on after she repressed it herself as it reached for her. It stepped up to coming directly into her mind when she opened to it by looking for it. So if the mind flayer and Vecna really are separate, Vecna is hers and the mind flayer is Will’s.

But they’re both everyone’s too. Eldritch - very old. They tell a very old story of abuse.

Henry is a representation of someone who didn’t break the cycle. He was pulled in and possessed by the eldritch monster and took it out on others. He’s a combined force in that way. So maybe it is just getting to him.

You can’t kill the monster. You can’t kill universal abuse or trauma symptoms for all. As I said and as they said in season 2, it’s so old, it doesn’t even know it’s true home. That’s abuse by its very definition.

But you can break the cycle. You can break Henry out of the cycle. Killing him, if anything, perpetuates it in you. But you can break through to him.

I think maybe it really is Henry, in some ways. That’s why the mind flayer has no true motive like him. It’s just doing its job. This is just how the world works. It’s just black smoke. It will always exist. But it doesn’t have to attack in the way Henry weaponized it. It doesn’t have to be a combined force.

[littlefreya]

As I was saying

Summary: You recently found out that you’re pregnant and Henry is being all sorts of over-protective and annoying about it and won’t shut up about what you should or shouldn’t eat. So you find a creative way to shut him up...

Pairing: Henry Cavill x Reader (no description of body type or ethnicity thought it’s mention that Henry is taller)

Word count: 1.8k

Warnings: 18+, RPF, fluff to smut, early pregnancy, blow job, bodily fluids, slight FemDom/SubMale, My overuse of poetic sex metaphors, cottagecore!

*No permission is given for reposting my work, copying it, or parts from it.

A/N: This story was born out of a convo I had with my sweet @the-soot-sprite​ about the photo above. Many thanks to @agniavateira​ my solid rock who betas all my work and to @firefly-graphics​ for the dividers

Please comment and reblog if you enjoyed my story. I work hard on each one of them and your validation means the world to me. 🖤

As I was Saying

Henry’s velvety voice carried through the cottage like seductive vapours of honey liqueur. It wasn’t often that he'd sing a blissful tune so casually out of the blue—after earth-shattering sex perhaps, which indeed you had the night before. However, this morning, his chants were laced with a new flavour of sugary bliss. 

Two little pink stripes. That's all it took for his eyes to shimmer the way precious cobalt is kissed by a moonlight glow.

Sneaking about in the mien of a curious little mouse, you trod after the pleasant tune of his voice, which was now accompanied by a soft rustle. Wander laved your face once you leaned against the kitchen door frame, peering at the prodigious man who stood in front of the open fridge. 

Preoccupied, he appeared to be ransacking through the shelves with the song ‘Cheek to Cheek’ thrumming on his tongue.

“Heaven... I'm in heaven…”  

Fingers clutching at the edge of the wall, you pressed into the chilled surface with a relaxed smirk, lingering on the irresistible view when your ease of mind faded with a blink of an eye — while methodically rummaging through the fridge, Henry threw fresh food straight into an open trash can.

“What are you doing?” you asked, your voice rising to a high-pitched yip. 

Henry made a soft flex; the muscles of his back rippled in a tidal motion. Though acknowledging your presence, he proceeded to hover a finger over different products. 

“Cleaning up the fridge," he answered absentmindedly.

With a soft shove, there went your French cheese. 

“That’s brand new!” you protested and rushed toward him, alarmed. 

Towering over the trash can, you considered diving in to salvage the precious bulk of cheese from the dreary pit. Henry glanced at you from the corner of his eyes, testing your resolve while his claw grabbed some papaya salad leftovers and pushed it over the edge of the shelf, joining the rest of the discarded meals. 

“It is,” he nodded and closed the refrigerator door, carrying on to the high cabinets. With a slight wrinkle between his brows and a hand scratching the stubbles of his dimpled chin, he narrowed his eyes to scrutinise the items carefully. “I'm pregnant-proofing the kitchen. I called Hanna while you were asleep. She created a proper daily menu for you with the dos and don’ts: less sugar, more veggies and protein.” 

It took you a moment to process his words, your eyes narrowing while asking, “Hanna? As in Hanna, your nutritionist?”

Henry nodded at your question, a faint crease lining his cheek. “That’s the one. Don't worry, princess, she specialises with pregnant women.”

Unwittingly, a somewhat inhuman growl sounded in your chest. You were only getting used to the idea of developing another person inside you, and here stood your husband, already seeing fit to dictate your diet. Slithering into the narrow space between the heavy man and the counter, you tilted your chin to meet his stare while your fists pressed into your hips assertively. 

“Listen here, Cavill! You might have jizzed me one too many and succeeded in putting a baby in there, but this is still my body. I can take care of my own pregnancy diet.”

With an arm stretched above your head, Henry offered a charming display of pearly whites to pacify your strained nerves. His dimples nearly managed to beguile your senses when your eyes flared at the sight of what was held between his long fingers.

“No! Henry, no! Not the coffee!”

“Oh, I’m afraid so, my love. You shouldn’t have any caffeine at your current state.” Despite his argument, the tenderness of his gaze stroked upon your face like a warm ray of sunlight piercing through heavy clouds. Lazily it dropped to your belly, the cascading heat cradling your unborn child. 

Words of protest left you for a sliver of a moment, too in awe of the dreamy grin on his face. 

Thoughts of how beautiful you’d look rounded and full with his child illuminated him that you swore his skin developed a glow over the night. Didn’t they always say women are radiant when they are pregnant? Well, it seemed that in your case, it applied to your husband as well.

The charming haze of bliss almost swallowed you up; but you quickly slapped yourself back into reality, reaching a hand in an attempt to stop Henry from throwing away your delicacy. Though taller, Henry held his hand far out of reach, a hint of a smugness stretching his lips.

“A pregnant woman is allowed to have a little bit of caffeine!” You muttered and sent both hands in an attempt to retrieve the box while Henry teased you by throwing it from one hand to the other, further fueling your annoyance. 

Vexed to the point of frustration, you stood still and sighed, “you know what else is bad for the baby?” 

Henry paused his foolish games and tilted his head as he waited to hear your answer.

“His father at the morgue after I’ll kill him. Now stop that and hand it over! A pregnant woman can have a cup a day, according to Google.” 

“Nope,” Henry clicked his tongue, his laughter replaced with a severe stare. “Love, I know they say it’s okay to have a teeny bit, but I’ve been doing some research while you were asleep, and it’s not recommended. Caffeine increases heart rate and blood pressure, which is not good for you nor for the baby. It also increases urination, which may cause dehydration.”

Clenching your jaw at the onslaught of information he bestowed, you watched his lips move while none of his words registered. Preoccupied with the rules of a “healthy” pregnancy, Henry was set on being the practical one, completely forgetting to enjoy the moment. And damn, it was the moment to celebrate. All you wanted right now was to stay in bed for a day, ride your handsome husband to hell and back and eat as much ice cream as possible.

“Everything you eat from now on goes to our baby,” Henry proceeded to lecture on a thing you were perfectly aware of.

Ire found you within seconds, embroiled with pregnancy hormones which made him further intolerable at the moment— intolerable

... and delicious.  

Soaked with hunger, your eyes raked his sight: the thickness of his muscles was apparent beneath a plain black t-shirt and those good old grey sweats outlined the source of your current predicament. Your fingers twitched just from thinking about it, mimicking the sensation of squeezing its girth and eliciting those low groans that made your heart flutter. 

But his chatter still interrupted your sultry thoughts. If only there was a way to get him to shut up, you mused. Then your eyes focused on the soft bulge that winked back at your hungry glare.

Unaware, Henry turned toward the table to grab a bulk of informative documents he printed earlier in order to educate you of your pregnancy, he licked his thumb and began to read through, “As I was saying….”

Hastily, you exploited his lack of attention and took a step forward, your fingers latching around the hem of his sweats. With one swift movement, you fell to your knees and tugged his trousers along. 

Lost in his passionate speech, Henry was still muttering nonsense when your hand seized him; but as the lushness of your tongue bedded his soft cock without warning, all that could be heard in the kitchen was a husky gasp. 

Feeling the warm silky flesh swell and harden within your mouth, you sent your eyes up to peer at him, admiring the sight. Nothing spoke of your power better than the wrinkle between his shut eyes and his mouth agape with all air draining from his lungs. There you were, lowered to your knees with a maw full of his cock and yet, he was the one who lost his ability to speak and had his legs quaking of need. 

Unable to help yourself, you sent one palm to feel the tremor that ran through the muscles of his thighs while the other cradled his heavy sac. 

“Uh……” he finally managed to utter, a groan of bemused bliss pushing itself between his parted lips. “What… what are you doing?” 

You crooked an eyebrow in response and answered by dragging your mouth along the length of his shaft. Your pillowy lips ran across ridges and thrumming veins, your jaw loosening until you felt him deep in the back of your throat. 

Locked in the cavernous cage of your maw, he tightened his gut and shuddered with pleasure. Though, the low unbridled groans that sputtered from his chest fueled your enticement just as so; memories of how the same thick girth that brimmed your mouth would split open your narrow canal made both your eyes and abandoned cunt tear of desperation.

It always beguiled you how much arousal could be found in bringing him to his rapture without touching yourself. The harder he throbbed on your velvety serpent, the more you soaked.  

With fervent strokes, you feasted on the briny flavour of his cock; the tendons vibrated with bliss while your tongue twirled and pushed around them. You pulled, sucked, and pumped him in your warm mouth, milking the senses of a man infinitely stronger—a man who succeeded in conquering your womb yet now crumbled to nothing at the touch of your tongue.

“Fuck…. Babe… keep going,” Henry breathed out a plea. The documents held by his hand slipped between his fingers as he pressed his palm to the cabinet with a thud, and began to rock his hips back and forth to fuck back into your mouth. Like feathers, the white slips floated around you, landing onto the ground while you worked him to his ecstasy.  

His other hand found your head, caressing lovingly and trying to take control: yet his strength waned and his head fell back with a moan. Faster, harder, you sucked your husband to the point of submission while hums of admiration laced around his rigid length. Your eyes beamed as you watched his resolve shatter. Your fingertips toyed with the coarse hair at the apex of his thighs, your thumb seeking the tendon at the base of his cock and pressing into it, urging him to spill his gift down your throat.

“I’m going to… I’m going to…. In your throat… fuck.”

With a guttural grunt, he thickened against your tongue; the overflow of salty-sweet cream glazed your mouth and then flowed down your flaring throat.

The room thrummed with the buzz of the refrigerator, Henry’s heavy exhales - these were the sounds of your triumph. Wiping your lips with the back of your hand, you cracked a smile and neatly pulled his trousers back on before you rose to stand straight. 

Overwhelmed and drenched in sweat, your husband scrutinised you while you reached for the box of capsules and tilted your head.

“You were saying?”

[spotsupstuff]

"I want to learn how to do the shadow stuff."

"Wrgh???" The six eared macaque gets startled by that almost enough to drop the weapons he's been trying to collect. They got knocked over during training again. Maybe he should find them a better place than in the training hall.

Kai glances to the side, feeling awkward under his shīfu's confused stare. "Y-y'know, the things with shadows you do like the- the weapon summoning and teleports and whatever..?"

Six Ear blinks at him.

"Xiǎotiān and also Clementine told me that over here one can learn how to wield an elemental power without having to be chosen by it or something like that?? I thought it would be best to ask *you* about it since I wanted to learn shadows and you are very cool when using them and also because you're kinda my shīfu- I thought that it was possible to lea-" he starts to regret mentioning it, feeling a tad dumb about it as he starts rambling. But then Six Ear puts the weapons down and stands up, hands waving in a pacifying gesture.

"No no- yeah, it is possible, yes. You just caught me off guard with that. Nobody has ever asked me to teach them *that* of all things." Kai's eyes light up with giddiness and an excited smile forces itself onto his features. The monkey demon finds himself snorting and rolling his eyes to dodge a smile of his own. And, glancing away, with a hand coming up to mess with his goatee, he starts thinking how he'd go about teaching Kai shadow manipulation.

The thing is that he is very much made out of those. Which means he had it quite easy when it came to learning how to control those powers. From what he heard from his siblings he actually had to learn how to *restrain* his raw strength to stop overdoing the intended moves once he figured out where his powers metaphorically lay in his body. In turn, that means he won't be able to reference his own process while teaching Kai.

The same Kai who has at some point started babbling, while pacing, about how cool it actually will be to be a ninja *with* proper shadow powers and not some weak sauce version from his own realm. That does peak Six Ear's interest, but he decides to rather ask about it later.

"Training dismissed." Six Ear informs. "You stink like a skunk, Kǎikai. Go hit the showers while I consider our options."

Kai quickly comes back in front of Six Ear, yelling out a "Yes, shīfu!" on the way and giving a quick bow to his teacher before skedaddling to yoink his duffle bag from the corner of the room. Sooner than Six Ear gets to nag the kid about proper parting post-training, he's out of sight, lost somewhere in the home part of Six Ear's kwoon.

Back to his thoughts he wanders, so.

When he had been training Qí Xiǎotiān- a faint wave of unpleasant emotion washes over him, a wicked result of his redemption. It isn't exactly guilt that he feels over it, but perhaps annoyance with his past self.

Either way, when he was training Qí Xiǎotiān, they did poke around shadow powers a little bit- mostly so the kid would be satisfied with the flashiness of Six Ear’s training over Sūn Wùkōng's. But to do that, Six Ear in a way sneaked through the back then ramshackle pieces of his and Sūn Wùkōng's yīn and yáng bond to pour his own powers into the kid and, Qí Xiǎotiān being so used to reaching into the pool of golden energy, simply took what was available and fit the description Six Ear had given him and wielded it as if it was a no brainer.

With Clementine, he was planning to teach her how to bend shadows and wield other magic through a combination of dao paper slips and dharma chants, but she ended up refusing to bring upon herself even more cold magic. Whatever Red Son uses to teach her of flames is none of his business. Especially since his favorite nephew is qualified way better to be a teacher than him. Studying under Bodhisattva Guānyīn and all.

One of those two approaches he would have to take with Kai, but first he'd rather talk about it with the kid. Hell, he doesn't even know how that "elemental" power of his works... Where does it even-

Just then Kai walks back into the room, hair fluffed up and wearing new sweatpants and t-shirt. T-shirt... that will work well for what he needs to do.

As his student comes up to him, Six Ear pats the mat in front of him. "Sit."

Kai gives him a look, one eyebrow raised, but does as he is told, putting his duffle bag beside him. "Why. What's going on?"

"If we are to work with magic I need to know how your current one functions." Summoning a shadow near the light switch near the entrance to the building, he wills it to turn off the lights. It's evening, so the gentle light of the sun setting filtering through the half-circle windows near the ceiling is the only light source. For now, at least.

"It's... not really magic," Kai tries to argue.

Six Ear gives him a look that screams 'you just spilled some serious bullshit'. "By definition of the word, it is. Now extend your hand and make a flame. A *small* one, please. And keep it steady." It's not that he doesn't trust Kai with fire (definitely not as much as he doesn't trust his own sister with the thing), but it's the simple fact of trauma existing and of shadows becoming rather erratic in movement near a flame.

Kai follows the instructions once more, offering his shīfu his left hand and then makes a palm sized ball of fire appear. Six Ear, admittedly, hoped for a smaller one and he eyes it with some distrust. The kid notices and gives a smug smirk, "What? Afraid of a little heat, all-powerful shīfu?"

If he could, Six would punch that expression off this little mortal's mug *so* fast. But he's supposed to be above that now and they also have a thing to do here. So he settles for a really mean sounding growl and a stink eye. "I could wipe the floor with you faster than you could manage to blink in *any* fight, you little shit."

A slightly nervous laugh comes out of the other before he tries and fails to make it sound confident instead.

"Now would you hold still?!" Six Ear lowly barks, making Kai straighten his back and it seems like he also stopped breathing a bit. The demon doesn't bother himself with that much, though, instead focusing on shedding the masking magic and some protection spells from his hands.

Once done, Kai immediately abandons his proper posture in favor of ogling the dark as night and smoky hands, with mostly little scars pretending to be stars glowing gold. They used to shine in pale bright blue, Six Ear remembers with a pang of pain shooting through his heart. Now they are gold, filled with his brother's own light.

"Woah..." Kai breathes out, losing the focus he held on his flame, allowing it to dance.

Six Ear replies to that with a hiss as the unstable light makes his vulnerably bare hands bend weird, if not seemingly fade out of existence for a second. "Damn it, kid! What did I *just* say??"

Recognizing now what the stakes of the situation are, Kai scrambles to hold his fire steady. "Sorry! Sorry- I didn't know."

"Of course you didn't." Six Ear says, blowing a little bit of air to the side. It isn't in an accusatory tone, though. He probably should've explained himself and his conditions. After all, this kid isn't even from this realm.

Moving to the task at hand, with a little bit of hesitation he cups Kai's hand and presses the thumb of his right hand to the center or the other's wrist. He stays there for a little bit, apparently feeling out the structure, before gently and slowly sliding his hands up Kai's arm.

Confused, the human tilts his head, noting that the touch feels like graphite dust left after sharpening a mechanical pencil, safe for the ridges of the scars and the claws. Those feel a little sharp, especially the claws that his shīfu takes care to keep largely away from his student's skin. "What are you doing?"

"I need to figure out where your magic stems from. Over here it's usually either from one or two chakras or an organ- primarily so if your power is fed by an emotion. You are easily frustrated, sometimes explosive and kind of easy to anger-" he shoots the kid an unimpressed look with a pout which makes Kai giggle a bit. The expression looks silly on the monkey's face. "-so my guess is liver. Traditional medicine and magic go pretty much hand in hand."

He moves his attention back to Kai's arm, slowly coming up to the chest. "I'm kind of following the trail of your qì that is specifically created by you making a flame out of seemingly thin air. Breathe deeper now, into your diaphragm."

Kai does so.

"I didn't really have to cast away my masking and magic for this, but it's just easier to feel out yours without mine in the way." One of his hands wanders to the upper center of Kai's chest, pressing against the bone there and Kai puts a little bit more effort in staying upright against the effortlessly strong hand.

Suddenly, some kind of realization strikes the human. "Wait wait wait- you mean to tell me-?! That the way your hands look right now is how you *actually* look all over??"

The ancient demon in front of him shoots him a sly sharp grin, making Xiǎotiān's anxieties easier to understand in that little moment. "There is a lot of things you don't know, Kǎikai. Most of which will stay like so, too." He gives a cheeky wink next, as if all that just didn't leave Kai completely wide eyed.

The hand moves down over Kai's stomach, still applying the same pressure. And after a little bit, Six Ear nods to himself and pulls away, doing whatever he needs to turn his hands back to "normal". Kai eyes the rough skin of them with burning curiosity. And then gets snapped out of that by Six Ear nonchalantly hitting his outstretched hand.

"Turn that shit off." The monkey says in a manner that Kai would simply describe as 'bastardly'. But he does as told.

"So?"

"So. I was right, your powers stem from your liver. And also the solar plexus chakra. That's going to work well, since you can use your fire powers as a sort of boost for the shadows. I also have a similar thing going on in the exact same place so I can actually help you perfect that part of shadow manipulation rather well."

"You have fire powers??" Kai asks before realizing that's probably a dumb question.

And it evidently is, judging by the bark of laughter Six Ear lets out. Shaking his head, the monkey lifts his own shirt and with one hand somewhat parts the fur of his solar plexus. All to reveal faintly golden glowing spot there. Kai leans in, trying to get a better look in fascination. It's kinda weird, but at this point anything can happen, honestly.

"A shadow cannot exist without at least a little bit of light. You already have yours, a personal one," the demon informs, letting his shirt fall. "And there is a difference between shadow and complete darkness. The latter is rather dangerous and kind of negates all shadow powers, actually."

Kai nods. "Noted."

Next, Six Ear takes a deep breath. "Alright. So if you want to know how to do what I do, you need some kind of... magic source or a tool to be able to actually wield them. I'm pretty sure that human shadow magic wielders of this world have their own perfected ways that I do not know about, but you didn't come to them with this."

"There are two options you can choose from. Either you turn to dharma chants and dao paper slips- this includes a certain dedication to those religions which I doubt you wanna do-" shīfu definitely doubts correctly, "-*or* we will mirror what Sūn Wùkōng and Qí Xiǎotiān have going on. That means you will be able to draw from my own power."

Now *that* peaks his interest. One, because Xiǎotiān is very cool and his entire power deal is very cool and he wants to be as very cool as his very cool bestie. Two, because from what he has seen, Six Ear is pretty much equal to the Great Sage which means a lot of power juice for him to master and fuck around with. Three, because... it's kind of sweet.

Sūn Wùkōng's and Xiǎotiān's bond is very nice. They are more than a teacher and a student at this point- they actually have a father and son thing going on. Kai knows that the whole shared power thing does not equal such a relationship and that the two had to actually work for a good while to get there, but the fact that *Six Ear,* the guy who obviously has some trust issues, is willing to extend a part of himself like this... It has to mean *something.*

It makes Kai feel warm, even though the power offered is ought to be damnably cold.

He smiles softly at Six Ear, who in turn looks at him kind of weird, but Kai can guess that it's some kind of not wanting to admit to caring thing rather than actual disgust. "Yeah, I think I'd like to go with the second option more."

There's some kind of painfully somber look to Six Ear's face then, combined with a very small and contained smile that would be easy to miss if Kai wasn’t looking for it specifically. Kai wonders how deprived this demon is of simple trust- how did the long life he has led and still leads treated him to be like this.

"Fine." Six Ear says. "Wipe that thing off your face, though." He points at Kai, hand idly waving in a circle. Kai answers it by sticking his tongue out at the elder and the demon tsks and grumbles something about disrespect.

"Uhhh... and how... does a connection like that happen, actually?" Kai asks a few seconds later, realizing that he actually doesn't know how Xiǎotiān got his own bond to the Great Sage. Xiǎotiān himself doesn't really know.

"Oh, right. Give me your hands. Both of 'em." Six Ear extends his own to Kai, holding Kai's firmly once the human settles them down. "No idea what Qí Xiǎotiān may have told you, but it's going to be different with me. Don't be scared no matter what happens. It will get a bit dark, but that's supposed to happen. If you start feeling really cold on the inside, well- that's supposed to happen too."

Kai eyes him warily.

"It's not going to kill you so it's fine, but you will have to tough it out until I'm done. Then we can warm you up as much as you need."

That's certainly nice to hear.

"Ready?"

Ah, right now too- Kai braces himself, squaring his shoulders and shutting his eyes tight. He trusts Six Ear enough to keep him safe through this. And to never regret taking a demon's hand.

With a singular nod, everything somehow gets darker and frost shoots from his hands to fill him whole.

[myopinionhi]

A Will Solace Character Analysis: the Underappreciated Soft Side

I've noticed many fanfictions have Will Solace OOC. So I’ve been thinking about aspects of Will’s personality fans seem to either gloss over or exaggerate. Here, this post is me doing an in-depth analysis explaining Will Solace’s canon personality in the books, and how it can sometimes differ from fanfictions. Sprinkled in this analysis are tips to fanfiction writers on how they write Will as more in-character.

There is one major aspect of Will that people seem to ignore or underemphasize. Nico best explains it when describing Will in this quote

Jason was a fighter. You could tell from the intensity of his stare, his constant alertness, the coiled-up energy in his frame. Will Solace was more like a lanky cat stretched out in sunshine. His movements were relaxed and nonthreatening, his gaze soft and far away. In his faded SURF BARBADOS T-shirt, his cutoff shorts and flip-flops, he looked about as aggressive as a demigod could get, but Nico knew he was brave under fire. During the Battle of Manhattan, Nico had seen him in action - the camp's best combat medic, risking his life to save wounded campers.

To sum it up, Will Solace is a very chill and calm character. A lot of writers make Will more irrational, impulsive, overbearing, and emotional than he actually is. Will is not the type of character to create drama unless he's, as Nico puts it, "under fire." In other words, the intense side of his personality doesn't come out unless the situation is urgent or dire.

Fans remember during the Second Giant War how he gets angry and argues with Nico over Nico's health and shadow-traveling, so many assume Will is going to be this fiery over a lot of other things regarding their relationship. For example, fanfic writers may make Will controlling or overly sensitive with Nico. However, keep in mind, Will gets heated with Nico during the Second Giant War because Nico's shadow-traveling is killing him. This is how Will describes Nico's dire state.

"Coach Hedge told me all about your shadow-travel. You can’t try that again."

"I just did try it again, Solace. I’m fine."

"No, you’re not. I’m a healer. I could feel the darkness in your hand as soon as I touched it. Even if you made it to that tent, you’d be in no shape to fight. But you wouldn’t make it. One more slip, and you won’t come back. You are not shadow-travelling. Doctor’s orders."

Will is a healer. When he touches Nico's hand, he can sense how little sleep and food Nico has been getting and how Nico's being taken over by darkness. Nico is on the verge of death and hasn't cared about his health for a long time. Nico is also stubborn about it, so Will has to be aggressive in order to save Nico's life. This aggressive behavior is not the norm for Will, but it can sometimes come out when he has to assert control in a life-or-death situation.

Will is a calming prescence. He's a diplomat. He stops violence on multiple occassions.

He's one of the few people who's able to calm Clarisse's violent rage, and he does so in a gentle manner.

Clarisse pointed her dagger at Rachel. "What about their allies, huh? Did you see that tribe of two-headed men that arrived yesterday? Or the glowing red dog-headed guys with the big poleaxes? They look pretty barbaric to me. It would’ve been nice if you’d foreseen any of that, if your Oracle power didn’t break down when we needed it most!"

Rachel’s face turned as red as her hair. "That’s hardly my fault. Something is wrong with Apollo’s gifts of prophecy. If I knew how to fix it –"

"She’s right." Will Solace, head counsellor for the Apollo cabin, put his hand gently on Clarisse’s wrist. Not many campers could’ve done that without getting stabbed, but Will had a way of defusing people’s anger. He got her to lower her dagger. "Everyone in our cabin has been affected. It’s not just Rachel."

One of the most underrated Will Solace moments is when he stops a bloody battle from happening between Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter.  

But he knew it wouldn’t do any good. After weeks of waiting, agonizing and steaming, the Greeks and Romans wanted blood. Trying to stop the battle now would be like trying to push back a flood after the dam broke.

Will Solace saved the day.

He put his fingers in his mouth and did a taxicab whistle even more horrible than the last. Several Greeks dropped their swords. A ripple went through the Roman line like the entire First Cohort was shuddering.

"DON’T BE STUPID!" Will yelled. "LOOK!"

People are so used to seeing demigods, especially male demigods, being aggressive fighters that they can't wrap their heads around a brave and strong demigod who actively tries to avoid unnecessary conflict and destruction as much as he can.

And that's Will Solace's strength: he has the ability to prevent as much harm as possible.

Will is a difficult character to write. There's a lot of dueling factors with his personality. He's calm and pacifying while also being brave and assertive. He's fun and lighthearted while also being intelligent, logical, and grounded. He's laidback while also being responsible and hardworking. He's insecure but not melodramatic. He's very caring and protective but not pushy.

Will's personality confuses Nico sometimes too.

He’d always thought of Will as easygoing and laid back. Apparently he could also be stubborn and aggravating.

The trick to writing Will is to keep in mind his default personality is a soft and lighthearted character. Writers tend to overemphasize the hard side of his personality when his default personality is actually the soft side.

Think of the relaxing, lanky cat metaphor Nico uses for him. He and Nico bicker often, and it works for Will because he rolls with everything and doesn't take things too seriously. He's able to alleviate Nico's moodiness with humor, wittiness, groundedness, and patience. Nico affectionately calls Will a "dork" because Will usually keeps things light. Interestingly enough, he's able to be lighthearted without coming across as insensitive or an airheaded goofball, the latter of which is something Nico dislikes about Percy's personality. On a related sidenote, another way writers make Will OOC is they make him too dumb or too immature. I know I mentioned to focus on Will's soft side, but be careful to avoid that too. He's a SENSIBLE, lanky cat.

The way Will keeps his composure during a stressful situation by using laughter while still being mature is expressed well in this exchange with Apollo. (Yes, Will has a lot to manage.)

It was difficult to think of this young man as my son. He was so poised, so unassuming, so free of acne. He also didn’t appear to be awestruck in my presence. In fact, the corner of his mouth had started twitching.

“Are—are you amused?” I demanded.

Will shrugged. “Well, it’s either find this funny or freak out. My dad, the god Apollo, is a fifteen-year-old—”

“Sixteen,” I corrected. “Let’s go with sixteen.”

“A sixteen-year-old mortal, lying in a cot in my cabin, and with all my healing arts—which I got from you—I still can’t figure out how to fix you.”

“There is no fixing this,” I said miserably. “I am cast out of Olympus. My fate is tied to a girl named Meg. It could not be worse!”

Will laughed, which I thought took a great deal of gall. “Meg seems cool. She’s already poked Connor Stoll in the eyes and kicked Sherman Yang in the crotch.”

The fiercer side of Will's personality comes out only when the situation calls for it; this happens sometimes when he has to be a caring family member, a responsible healer, or a warrior in a dire situation. Even when he gets more forceful, he doesn't get more forceful than he has to.

Since Will has such a balanced and lighthearted personality, what are his flaws? What are the dark sides of his personality? There are four main things that stick out.

1. He's insecure about his self-perceived lack of abilities.

"I agree," Will said. "I wish I was a better archer … I wouldn’t mind shooting my Roman relative off his high horse. Actually, I wish I could use any of my father’s gifts to stop this war." He looked down at his own hands with distaste. "Unfortunately, I’m just a healer."

2. He sometimes struggles to endure the heavy responsibilities he has as a healer and as a protector to his family.

“I got it reattached,” Will told me, his voice shaky with exhaustion. His scrubs were speckled with blood. “I need somebody to keep him stable.”

I pointed to the woods. “But—”

“I know!” Will snapped. “Don’t you think I want to be out there searching too? We’re shorthanded for healers. There’s some salve and nectar in that pack. Go!”

I was stunned by his tone. I realized he was just as concerned about Kayla and Austin as I was. The only difference: Will knew his duty. He had to heal the injured first. And he needed my help.

3. He forces himself to bottle his emotions to keep his composure.

Will laughed under his breath. “I’m terrified. But one thing you learn as head counselor: you have to keep it together for everyone else. Let’s get you on your feet."

Here's a second example.

I rested my hand on Will’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll be back by dawn.”

His mouth trembled ever so slightly. “How can you be sure?”

4. He constantly worries about his loved ones.

Nico rested his hand on Will’s shoulder. “Apollo, we were worried. Will was especially.”

In conclusion, Will Solace's personality is difficult to get correct. But don't worry, if you write Will as a laidback, witty cat in your fanfics, I guarantee he'll be more in-character than many other fanfics with Will Solace.

(Note: I am only human. If you believe I'm misinterpreting some aspects of Will's personality, feel free to express it. What I say isn't 100 percent the right interpretation.)

[lady-literature]

I rewrite Sky High

okay so, disclaimer: sky high was actually pretty damn good for it’s time and a lot of the plot twists/tropes used in it were still just starting out and not as commonplace as they are today. so 10/10 really good movie.

Also as i was writing this, it turned into half analysis of what’s already in the movie and half things I would change about the movie so,,, yeah. enjoy!

***

So the point about Sky High is that and the way the school and hero society as a whole works, is that you, as the audience, are supposed to look at it and know that it’s a flawed system. We’re supposed to see it as an injustice that kids are sorted into hero or sidekick- Sorry, I mean ‘Hero Support,’ on your first day of school based on something you can’t even control.

(This movie was my hero academia-ing it up before it was cool.)

Anyway, the movie calls a lot of attention to it in the beginning, but then doesn't actually give it the resolution it deserves in the end. Which, not cool guys.

The Hero/Sidekick debacle is, on the whole, a very thinly veiled metaphor for the problems minorities face. Specifically, those of the alphabet mafia, or LGBTQ, as we’re more commonly known.

There are a lot of examples for this so I’ll speed through the big ones real quick:

Will’s nerves regarding not having attraction to girls superpowers?

The way he tries to fake having an attraction to girls superpowers to get approval from his dad?

Being literally outed in front of his whole class (by someone named Boomer no less) and then immediately trying to hide it from his parents as long as possible?

The constant references to being a ‘late bloomer’. Doesn’t it remind you of the common phrases: ‘it’s just a phase’ or ‘don’t worry. You’ll start liking [opposite gender] eventually.’ ?

The scene in the kitchen, right after Will introduces the Sidekick Squad (and yes, that is what I’ll be referring to them as for the rest of this essay tumblr post). Will is so obviously trying to gauge how his dad is going to take his friends being sidekicks and also him being a sidekick. I just, this is so blatantly a coming out scene? How does anybody not see it as that?

(also the dad talking so offhandedly about bigotry and the hatred his own father had for sidekicks??? Who else has been there?)

Will telling his dad that he doesn’t care, that he’s proud of being gay to be a sidekick is just,,, *chef’s kiss*

With all of this backing behind Will and him growing into not being ashamed of his lack of powers, My first change would be that Will does not, in fact receive his father’s super strength. It’s just such a cop out! The movie had all this amazing build up, and this brilliant metaphor it could have used and, instead, they threw it all away.

The sudden acquisition of powers and immediate acceptance by his peers, feels too close to someone being ‘fixed’. That Will wasn’t good enough the way he was and had to be better, had to be his father in order to be good enough.

So, no. Will remains powerless.

Instead of the revelation of ‘he’s strong’, we get to let the Sidekick Squad shine.

Lash and Speed still cause a fight between Warren and Will, but when Will is under the table, the sidekicks actually do something.

Will knocks the table over (not, like, lifting Warren up but something closer to pushing him off. I mean, even I could push upwards from underneath a table fast enough that if someone is standing on it, they’d lose their balance and fall to the ground) and that starts things.

The Sidekick Squad all grab forgotten lunch trays or cartons of milk or something and throw it at Warren. It isn’t long then that the whole scene devolves into a food fight (Zach, at least, does not have good aim and probably hits a bystander accidentally, drawing more people in, until the whole cafeteria is involved.) The fight turns into something more playful, but still with that bit of an undertone of trying to actually hurt each other.

Ethan melts at one point and (accidentally) causes Warren to slip and land on his back, Magenta probably punches someone (not Warren) and Zach is just mouthing off to anybody who gets close enough. Near the end, right before Principal Powers shows up, Layla finally gets the right idea and just fire extinguishes the shit out of Warren.

(Side note here: I am very much also nixing the Layla crushes on Will plotline. I love best friends to lovers just as much as the next person but… no. Let kids see boy/girl friendships! 

Instead, I will be inserting a Layla/Warren love story and you can consider this the first scene on the road for that.)

Anyway, the whole Sidekick Squad plus Warren ends up in the detention room and all of them are covered in food. Right after Principal Powers leaves, the Sidekick Squad is immediately talking excitedly to each other about how cool they just were and what they did. Basically it’s very wholesome and they’re all hyping each other up and then one of them, Layla or Will, excitedly turns to Warren and goes, ‘and that thing you did with the fireballs? God! I don’t think Lash is going to have any eyebrows for a month’ and the tension between them all but drops.

Warren, of course, tries to push them away and not get involved with their ridiculousness, but the Sidekick Squad is stubborn and by the end of detention, everyone but Warren is in agreement that he’s a part of the Squad now. They will not leave him alone. They also start hanging out at the Paper Lantern all the time just to annoy/make fun of him in that loving way friends do.

(I just want Warren to be a part of the Squad guys. Will calls him his best friend at the end but what did the movie actually do to show they were friends? Nothing, that’s what. I want that fixed.)

So the cafeteria fight boosts the whole Squad’s reputation, right? People think those sidekicks are pretty cool, and they get their fifteen minutes of fame. Only… Will gets a little hooked on the feeling of being popular. He doesn’t want to be a capital-h Hero or anything! But, well… he’d be lying if he didn’t like people thinking he was cool.

The others don’t really care all that much about being cool, but Will does. He hates that he does but what is he supposed to do? He can’t change how he feels. So he starts trying to make himself more popular and sometimes tries dragging his friends into stupid schemes.

And then enter stage right, one Gwen Grayson.

I prefer Gwen being Royal Pain’s daughter, actually. A girl who would’ve had no stock in this fight but her mother, who is sickly and weak and survives mostly because her daughter takes care of her, practically brainwashes Gwen to do her bidding.

Gwen is a minion here, and also, perhaps, a victim.

At first, she follows her mom’s orders and charms Will into dating her. She also feeds into his desire to gain popularity but can’t, in this world, break him from his friends. Actually, Will brings Gwen along to the Sidekick Squad hangouts and, slowly, she becomes a part of the group too.

She starts to doubt her mother. Starts to care for Will and the Squad.

She throws the party, and the Squad is all invited (trying to break them up isn’t conducive to the Plan her mother has anyway and wouldn’t work besides) but she lures Will away to make out and… other things, and he brings her to the Sanctum for privacy just like before. She still steals the pacifier (or whatever death ray equivalent you want idk) but she and Will don’t break up at the end of the night.

It’s not actually until two days later, right before the dance is going to start, does Gwen decide she can’t stand back and let this happen anymore. She spills the whole plot and her betrayal to Will when he comes to pick her up for the dance. She’s crying and apologizing and basically expecting to be hated forever by the only people she thinks ever actually liked her.

And, well. Will is furious at her for lying but there’s more important things to deal with at the moment. They’ll talk more about this and he’ll be angry, but that’s all going to be later. Right now they have a school to save so he grabs her hand and starts running to warn the rest of their friends.

Things happen mostly as canon from that point with minor changes.

It’s Warren who pulls Layla into a kiss before they all split off into groups, telling her to kick ass and stay safe before sprinting off after Speed. There have been scenes throughout the movie where the two are very obviously getting closer and are into each other. And then, before the dance, while Gwen and Will we’re technically going as a couple, the whole Squad was going as a group.

When Warren and Layla saw each other all dolled up, it’s very cliché. Warren says she looks nice and Layla visibly gulps at his outfit of a button down and suit pants, sleeves rolled up to his elbows (because homeboy does not wear a full tux you can fight me on this).

And also, Will doesn’t fight Royal Pain by himself. Instead, Gwen is there with him and they don’t fight with super strength. Gwen’s been helping Will build an arsenal of gadgets a la Batman and the two face off against her mom together, Gwen with her powers, and Will acting as half support and half as a watered-down Batman who still needs some more training before he’s totally polished.

The school falls from the sky, but Gwen buys them time by keeping the anti gravs working through sheer force of will, while Will holds off her mom from attacking her while she’s vulnerable and concentrating. Magenta eventually kills the EMP or whatever it was, and the day is saved.

Gwen passes out, cause ~drama~ but she ends up okay so don’t worry. She’s just exhausted. 

The sidekicks get their recognition and then immediately bounce because dances suck and they all agree that they should go to the Paper Lantern instead to celebrate cause they’re tired, alright? Saving the day is hard.

So it’s all of them, a little battered and bruised and exhausted, crowded into this corner booth and laughing and being kids. The camera does it’s fade to comic book page thing, and the narration is something more along the lines of:

“Royal Pain and her cronies got locked away. Gwen and I talked things out, and she’s getting help for all the stuff her mom did to her. We’re taking things slow in the meantime.

The school is undergoing a lot of changes to the curriculum and getting rid of the whole ‘hero/sidekick’ divisions. (Mostly at the urging of my parents… and Layla). Next year is going to look a lot different, I think.

But it’ll be a good different, just like we are. None of us were what we were expected to be, and, I think, we’re going to keep defying expectations. There’s a whole world out there that needs changing.

And I can’t think of a better group of friends to do it with.”

THE END

(just give me found family saves the day by being themselves rather than somebody else, give me them saving the day because they care about each other, give me them fighting for what’s right and fixing things. please i am b e g g i n g.)

***

Additional nitpicks that are small but Very Important to Me

Coach Boomer is still called coach Boomer because there is no way I am missing out on the ‘okay, boomer’ jokes

Layla stays like Layla, but i’d like for the movie to stop trying to make her seem annoying for her beliefs or like she’s wrong to be so vocal about them. Her caring about things that are wrong ends up as the butt of too many jokes and i… do not like that.

Why so many dad/son scenes? Why this janky imbalance parenting dynamic between the Strongholds. Knock that shit off. I want happy functional family thank you very much

Mr Boy and the mad scientist are very obviously in a relationship

Wait, actually: mr boy, mad scientist and Boomer are al in a poly relationship and are ridiculous about it

I’d like to see more of the sidekick classes going over like, ‘the boring’ parts of the job, and teaching the kids how to deal with the aftermath of the heroes heroics, just to hammer in the fact that the system is fucked up and that it’s messed up that the heroes get all the recognition while the sidekicks are left to clean up the mess

Use actual 14 year old actors? These kids look like seniors.

Or, if you want more ‘mature’ characters make it so sky high is like,,, a finishing school or smth. Something kids 16 and over go to.

(What the fuck kind of parent thinks that their freshman child dating a senior is a good idea?? An almost adult coming onto a fourteen year old??? Are you trying to make Will’s parents (particularly the dad) seem like irresponsible assholes??)

Gwen is, at most, a year above Will in this rewrite, kay?

[petrenocka]

* I want to criticize Deltarune's combat a little more if you don't mind.

* I love the game, but that doesn't mean that I love each aspect of it equally. Combat, more precisely - pacifist solutions to combat, got the short end of the stick unfortunately.

* And obviously all of this is very subjective

* So far, in my opinion, it feels like a downgrade from Undertale.

* See, what bothers me is that all enemies are effectively the same, or at least feel the same in regards to how you SPARE them. Majority of enemies are spared by using a single ACT (sometimes more then once), and then SPARE (rarely Pacify) on the next turn, which is not engaging imo.

* And these are supposed to be social puzzles. Not "Hello! Bye!" kind of interactions.

* Undertale also had simple enemies like that, don't get me wrong. But in Undertale there were also wrong ACTs, that would do nothing, hinder your progress, or make your encounter harder if you used them, like "Talk" with Madjick (or was it "listen to"? I don't quite remember).

* Deltarune doesn't have this. In Deltarune it is ACT: 1) Solo action, a little progress 2) Team action, more progress 3) Make it tired, inferior option. And I don't quite remember anything else ever in the game.

* There was also no mercy progress bar to show you if you guessed it right in Undertale. You were encouraged to read the dialog that plays out before the enemy attack and narration and make your decisions based on that. My favorite example of this being the Mercenary Look in the Core, who would tell you what ACT to perform on it. This ACT was unique to each Look, or would even change mid fight if I remember correctly.

* Not to mention more complex enemies that required you to use certain ACTs in certain order, like most of Dog monsters in Undertale. Deltarune straight up doesn't have those.

* Instead Deltarune has minigame enemies, like Maus, which are, in my opinion, tons of fun and the best ones.

* I want at least more Swatchlings and less Tasque, if you catch my drift.

* And with Deltarune's introduction of several playable characters this feels like a loss of potential.

* You could do such interesting puzzle enemies with Deltarune's new, improved model for combat, compared to Undertale. Like, for example some enemies becoming less SPAREable if they see Susie do anything, who need to be calmed down by Ralsei, or can be distracted by Kris. Or the other way around. And you don't know who's who, maybe you'll even get some of both in the same encounter.

* And will have to either take a closer look at the design or lines of these enemies to figure them out faster that you would by trying every option out. And make these enemies a fanclub of your characters that don't like your "cosplay" or are at war with each other.

* Or a group of enemies that compete for attention from playable characters. Maybe a theatre themed mini-boss that wants your team to ACT out a certain, but rather vaguely described act.

* I should stop brainstorming.

* Now, important to point out, Pacifist Combat in Deltarune is still enjoyable, I just think it could be better.

* And there is obviously great things about this game that render these criticisms somewhat insignificant, that deserve a post of their own. Not a reason for me to not give this criticisms though.

* Or this is all a deliberate choice to express some themes and is a metaphor and I am a boo-hoo fool. Also a possibility. Always a possibility.

[lettrespromises]

╰┄───➤   LettresPromises informs you : you have one notification. ❜

╰┄───➤ Letter object : The heart speaks freely on birthdays.

╰─➤ Trafalgar D. Water Law sent you a letter, would you like to read it? ❜

Letter object : ❝Law dreads his birthday, another regular day on the calendar according to him— but this year, you’re here with him, and you teach him that the hearts speaks freely on birthdays.❞ 

Author’s letter :  ❝dear reader,

law lives rent free in my head and he will keep on doing so for the rest of his life, as he should!! happy late birthday to my favorite character in one piece, he deserves all the love in the world. sealed with a kiss,  nikki.❞ 

Genre : Fluff. Warnings : Cursing. Word count : 1.6K

It was a miracle in itself that you had managed to convince Law to grant himself a bit of slumber, but don’t miracles belong to the world of fiction? Judging by how Law had woken up at the glorious hour of six in the morning to finish the work languishing on his desk and answer the hushed demands of his pen calling his name and begging to be used to spill more ink on his documents... Miracles indeed belonged to the world of fiction. He was, in a way, both the literal epitome and oxymoron of a doctor— the amount of healthy hours of slumber in his body was close to none, the amount of anxiety coursing through his veins was brushing the limits of sanity. He wrote the prescriptions as a doctor for his crew, but never did he once bother to take the own medical advice he gave to his subordinates… Ah! Acerbic poetry.

The harsh grip of his fingertips, which had already turnt white, over the edge of the mattress was a physical testimony that he was letting the guilt coloring his deeds a spectrum of all the colors associated to self-denial. Law couldn’t gather the strength to lay his silver orbs upon your frame, after all, he was blinded by culpability.

He knew that, he knew because this thought kept haunting his mind and kept taunting him. Each time his lids shut close, he could picture the outline of your face and the plea in your eyes. Then, when silence settled in his earbuds until it became deafening, Law swore he could hear you say « Please, Law, tomorrow’s your birthday— I know you’ve forgotten about it, but I haven’t. So please take care of yourself, just this one time, for me, please? » And the nuances of care embedded in your every word. And just like that you filled all of his senses, yes, all of them— even the touch.

« Don’t tell me you’re already up at this ungodly hour, Law. » your words crashed against the skin of his back in a whisper.

He was tormented, hesitating whether or not he should respond.

« I know, I know you don’t care much about your birthday. But just take this day to yourself, make it an exception. » your arms snaked around Law’s waist to metaphorically use his back as a human pillow, slumber enveloping your movements. « C’mon, doctor, you should know about slumber and everything. » you said, a yawn breaking suddenly the rhythm of your sentence.

It seemed like each one of your lingering touches couldn’t make things more soothing to him, and thus he gave in to the sweet temptations and promises orchestrated by the pacifying sound of your voice. « It looks like you have won this time, Y/N-ya. » this time only, his gaze landed on your half-asleep form and he secretly cursed himself for not having given in to his temptations earlier on.

He untied the grasp you held around his waist with the delicateness worthy of the touch of an angel, Law turnt around, every so slowly not to disrupt your journey to Morpheus’ arms and cradled your cranium filled with tonight’s dreams and set it on your pillow. Of course, your pillow was only a temporary placement, you slept much better on his chest anyway, when the rhythm of his heartbeat would synchronize with yours. Ever so naturally, and eagerness influencing his movements, Law shifted in your shared bed to lay by your side. Once he was settled under the warmth emanating off of your blanket, he allowed himself to grant your silent wish and place your head above his chest whilst the tips of his genetically given thin digits brushed the strands of hair caressing your forehead. He was bound to join Morpheus’ arms soon too, but not without voicing a confession first :

« You always seem to find a way to win, don’t you, doll? I might have to be stricter on you, I can’t have that stain my reputation as the captain. » Law hushed a snicker threatening to pierce the defense of his mouth and bowed his lips into a grin instead, « but who am I to refuse your love when it’s all I crave? Tell me, Y/N-ya, because I can’t seem to find the answer. » he kissed these words into your skin, just a way to imprint these words with the crimson color of his sentimental ink.

Law shut his lids close, and took the same path as yours to join you within the hold of Morpheus, your perfume accompanied him on his journey which never made him feel alone.

And what a surprise it was when he saw that your body was missing from your shared bed once he had woken up, or rather, once his body had absorbed a tolerable amount of slumber. The absence of your lingering smell in the air, the lack of the familiar warmth emanating from your body (and although Law despised how warm you could get at nights, he did miss this), where were you? His facial features bent under the panic, his orbs scanned the room for a hint of your presence somewhere on the submarine, somewhere, anywhere.

The crave to find you fueled his deeds and the urgency to find you was surely more important than putting a shirt on, he couldn’t, he had to— Law blamed this on having overslept, surely, if he had woken up earlier (and before you), these stirring thoughts would have never crossed his mind, not even once, and even hearing you drown his ear with complains would have been a much sweeter feeling than the burning sensation of his heartbeats adopting the pattern of a crescendo.

And thus the quest began— Law looked in his office but failed to see your frame, the bathroom, perhaps? Another defeat. Somehow, the mechanic room? Wrong guess.—

« Ahh, fuck! How was I supposed to know this was still going to be burning hot? It burns like hell! »  Now, now, how Law was not supposed to hear your plea of pain? Thoughts took control over his body and he wasted no time going to the source of the sounds, and, of course, you were in the kitchen. It seemed like such an evident answer, and he cursed himself yet again for not having thought of this earlier.

And there you were, in all your glory, blowing air on your reddened thumb, already guessing that you were bound to consider this burn as a medal. He couldn’t help but allow his lips to bow into a grin which shone by its genuineness : « I think I heard someone in distress, what a shame, where’s the doctor? » Law trailed off as he was reducing the space between the two of you, and soon enough— your martyr of a finger was held like the finest of china between the expertise of Law’s digits, a martyr which was soon soothed by a kiss planted by the man himself, « Oh, correct. I believe I’m the doctor here. So… Are you feeling any better? » He wondered, the smirk on his face emphasized the loving mockery lacing his words.

« Did I really deserve to burn my finger after having baked this birthday cake for you? Talk about unthankful karma! Maybe I shouldn’t have baked you this cake in the first place. » You suggested, adopting the same faux mockery tone Law had previously been using.

« You stand correct, Y/N-ya, you should have stayed in bed with me. » He begun, planting a peck on your forehead, an old habit which never faded away, « but did I really deserve someone like you in my life? I believe my karma is pretty wonderful, if I dare to say. » he mocked, but genuine adoration underlined his words, a tone only you could catch. « Will you join me in bed? It gives us an excuse to let the cake cool down for a bit, don’t you think? »

« Mhm, sounds like a plan to me, I just have one thing left to do before that. » You said, already grinning at the shenanigans taking form in your head, begging to become reality.

« What’s th- Hmph! » And there, in this very instant, your thoughts had become reality. Your lips crashed on his as your forelimbs circled his neck to invite him to deepen the kiss. And, once more, who was Law to refuse such thing coming from you? His own tattooed arms found shelter on your hips until vacuity throned between your two bodies, and thus began the marriage of your lips pushing one against the other in an union of sentiments which exploded in a myriad of smaller pecks delivered all over the flesh of his face.

« Happy birthday, Law! I love you so, so very much even if you’re grumpy all the time and never smile, you’re still handsome! » You said, a peck interrupted each part of your sentence.

And just like that, the melody of Law’s half-hushed laughter connected with your eardrums, just enough for you to hear, as per usual. Law allowed his forearms to settle on your shoulders whilst his cranium was placed upon yours, giving him a perfect platform to secretly voice his silenced thoughts : « I love you too, Y/N-ya, more than you will ever know. » It was a voiced confession, it was secret, just enough for you to hear, as always.

[justjessame]

Starting Over Chapter 25

Bucky redressed, with NO help from me because apparently I’m NOT actually helpful when he’s partially dressed.  I’d dare anyone to actually HELP Bucky Barnes put clothes ON.  I sat on the bed that we mangled and watched, biting my lip as he blushed through his changing of the guards, so to speak.

“You’re making me self conscious.”  He offered, as he pulled off the blue shirt that I wanted him to wear forever and ever after.  My eyes were raking his bare chest, the dog tags that hung proudly, my teeth digging into my lip.  “Are you that hungry?”  

“For food?”  I asked, eyebrow arching as he pulled a shirt that was as red as the other one had been blue.  Well, fuck, maybe red was a good color on him too.  I watched him pull it over his head and pouted as his bare skin disappeared from view, earning a laugh from him.  “What?”  

“You,” he shook his head, and contemplated something with narrowed eyes.  “Turn around.”  I stared at him waiting for the punchline.  “Brooke, turn around.”  

“Why?”  Countering his orders was becoming something of a habit, but to be fair, I wanted to know what he was planning while my eyes were on the wall or the window.  

“So I can change my pants,”  I blinked at him, surely he was fucking joking.  I SWALLOWED him barely an hour earlier, what was with the sudden need for modesty?  “If you don’t turn around, we aren’t leaving this room today.”  My stomach clenched, my pulse kicked up a gear, and my mouth went dry.  “See?”  

I nodded and turned around.  “You’re only winning this round because I’m hungry,” I gasped out, shutting my eyes because I could swear the sound of his zipper was amplified.  “For food,” I clarified as they hit the floor.  I was throbbing again, everywhere, listening as his pants reversed course.  “Can I turn around yet?”  

“Not yet,” he murmured.  My eyes were still closed and my arms were broken out in goosebumps.  How could he manage to do that?  He wasn’t even in touching distance for fuck’s sake.  And then I felt his warmth closing in on my back, his fingers skimming my arms - raising more gooseflesh, making my breath catch.  His mouth touched the juncture where my neck met my shoulder and I sighed.  “Mine?”  All I could do was nod, but I could feel his smile against my skin.  “Mine.”  And then he turned me and our lips met again, but it wasn’t the fevered hunger I expected, it was soft and sweet, tender and filled with affection.  And when he pulled away, his forehead met mine, our eyes opening to stare into one another’s, and he whispered back.  “Yours.”  

We managed, after that very hot start, to leave the hotel with our phones not completely at zero percent charge.  Finding a diner while we charged them in the car on the drive there, we talked about him helping Sam with his family’s boat.

“How much more work do you think it needs?” I asked, as he pulled into the diner’s lot.  He shrugged, and I unplugged our phones.  “Aren’t you lucky I don’t have a job to get back to?”  

He laughed as he jumped out to get my door, always a gentleman Bucky.  “I didn’t know you were a photographer,” he reminded me of the camera I’d shown up with, and been clicking away with all day long.  

“I’m not a REAL photographer,” I shook my head, walking through the diner door he held open for me.  We were told to grab a table and we’d be waited on in a minute, so we grabbed a booth and pulled the menus free from the condiment stand.  “I loved taking pictures in school - for yearbook and I don’t know, my dad thought -”  I stopped talking when the waitress came and took our drink orders.  

“You were saying?”  Bucky was watching me as if I were the most interesting person he’d ever met.  

“We should figure out lunch first, then I’ll finish my story.”  My attention went back to the menu, it was normal diner fare, with a southern bent - so I chose simply enough.  A burger, fries.  Bucky needed more fuel than me, so his servings were a bit larger, but pretty similar in choices.  Once our waitress had our drinks in front of us and our orders down, he was in listening mode.  “My dad reached out to some professionals, he used some prints of pictures I took to set up the camera for the yearbook.”  I shrugged, but he was still waiting.  “When I - when it happened, everything was put on hold.  My dad KNEW we were coming back, Bucky, somehow.  And my mom figured it out too.”  I bit my lip and shook my head, it sounded crazy.  “You have to understand, my parents were KNOWN for being the MOST pragmatic people in our neighborhood.  They weren’t fanciful or prone for fairytales or miracles.  So when my dad, and then my mom told everyone that they KNEW I’d be back - which meant that everyone else would be too?  People figured they had to be right.”  

“OK,” he wasn’t saying it to pacify me, I could tell.  “So the camera?”  

I smiled.  “They had presents for me, for my birthdays and holidays - everything I missed.  Up to their deaths.”  I thought about the car.  “Including a REALLY big one that I’ll show you when we get back to New York.”  

His eyebrow went up, but he didn’t ask.  “Have you reached out to the professionals your dad made contact with yet?”  I shook my head, but we were interrupted by our food.  Small town diners were the best for quickness.  Once we assured our waitress that everything looked amazing and we had everything we needed, she left and we could dig in.  First bites out of the way, we talked while we ate.  “What do you have to do to get into it?”  

I considered his question.  “It depends on which one actually wants to take me on as an apprentice,” I explained the list that my mom wrote up with the notes.  “So this trip is great for more than the obvious reason.”  I let my foot drift to his side and tease against his.  

“That picture of Sarah’s sons and the shield?”  I nodded, smiling as his foot moved so my foot could go higher on his ankle.  “I think you should include that in any of your portfolios.”  

“Really?”  I asked, chewing carefully while I considered it.  “Any and all of them?”  He nodded, taking a drink of his water.  “You don’t think it would be -”  I didn’t want him to think I was using him.  “I don’t want you to think I’m using our relationship for -”

“Hey,�� I bit my lip and he shook his head.  “You’re not, Brooke.  You took that picture because it struck you as being lit well, right?”  I nodded.  “It’s gorgeous, and you should include it.”  

We finished lunch and while Bucky paid, because yes, he is THAT guy, I finally looked at my phone.  Connie had practically lit my text and voicemail on fire with her need to see that I was safe and sound, but I had actually sent her a message upon landing, I swear.   

I was in the car, waiting for Bucky when my phone rang.  Seeing her name and face I considered letting it go, but that would NOT be a good idea, not after how many missed messages and calls I had wracked up so far.  

“Hello,” I was holding the phone away from my ear without the speaker on when Bucky opened the door and he looked confused, until Connie’s voice exploded out of my phone.

“What the literal fuck?!”  I cringed and Bucky’s eyes went wide as he climbed into the car.  “One fucking text, Brooke, I got one miserable fucking text that reads, ‘here.’” I heard her take a deep breath and knew she was building up for another explosion.  “HERE?  Are you fucking kidding me?!  I guess you made it to bumfucked Lousiana, well la-de-fucking-da.  But for all I know one of those fucking hicks could be wearing you as a skin suit by now.”  

“They aren’t,” I broke in, my eyes meeting Bucky’s as he started the car and pulled onto the street to head for the dock.  “I’m alive and well, I swear.”  I didn’t chance putting the phone up to my ear, but I should have. 

“Uh-huh.”  Connie didn’t sound sure.  “What about Bucky?” I was about to ask if she was worried if a hick was wearing him as a skin suit, but I wasn’t fast enough.  “Did you saddle that boy up and ride him into the swamp?”  I’m not sure how wide human eyes can go, but I knew mine were in danger of falling out of my head.  Bucky was chuckling and in danger of nothing - the man was a fucking miracle of perfect reflexes.  

“Bucky’s right here, Connie,” I somehow managed to get out, glancing at him and catching him eyeing me.  He was licking his lip and shaking his head, but then he winked and I rolled my eyes.  “And he heard your - suggestion.”  

“Oh,” I could almost feel the burn of her blush through the phone.  “Um, hello, Bucky.”  She was quiet enough that I had to put her on speaker now.  I did so he could hear her better, and she could hear his answer to her greeting.  “Nice to sort of meet you.”

“Same,” he was grinning as we pulled up to the docks.  “I’m gonna go see what Sam’s up to,” he unbuckled his seat belt and kissed me.  “Bye, Connie.”  

“Bye, Bucky.”  She offered, waiting until she heard the door shut and it to get quiet.  “You could have told me he was listening.”  She hissed and I giggled.  

“You were so busy bitching at me for failing to check in that I didn’t have much of a chance, Connie.”  I watched Bucky move across the docks, his red shirt easy to spot.  “And as for that interesting metaphor you mangled, let’s just say that I don’t need pineapples for awhile.”  She gasped and I smiled. 

[vynnyal]

Throwing random thoughts, headcanons, and a variety of pasta at the wall (but only those having to do with vessels and/or their biology this time): The Thrilling Third Installment™

...aka pretending i can be dark and dramatic jskhdfd

Thk's larger form is not the standard, but the exception. Thk was cited as being "raised and trained to prime form", which people take to mean pk assisted in the vessel's natural growth. However, that conclusion leaves a lot of unanswered questions, most important of which being “then what about Ghost?” In short, I think that train of thought is backwards. Vessels can't grow- they are ageless, and immortal. We know this due to Ghost, despite living as long if not longer than thk, being completely unchanged over the years. The only thing pk trained into "prime form" was thk’s mind and fighting prowess. Their body... well, I think it was mutated. Most likely either directly by pk, or ordered by him- and with the shenanigans happening over in the sanctum, I wouldn't be surprised if Soul was involved, too. In any case, it was in no means natural. Vessels are corpses reanimated by void; neither corpses nor void tend to make drastic changes on their own all that often. Whether pk predicted the vessel’s “issues” and intended to manually “upgrade” them from the beginning, it's hard to say. But... yeah. Unless Ghost goes out of their way to make themselves grow- if its even possible, now that pk is gone- its fairly safe to say, they never will.

...with that in mind, we are promptly gonna ignore that for the rest of this post lmaooo

Grown-up vessels wouldn't look like thk; while they are described as being raised into "prime form"... prime form, to whom? Rather than looking like an idealized pk soldier, it sounds much more fitting that they’d have an entirely different, natural adult form. Consider: their cloaks being longer and fuller, perhaps filling out into something with a more practical use to their “species”. Better yet, they could even grow up to be more beast-like. Feral vessels, YEhaW

The black egg temple is cited as being "built to sustain [vessels]", yet it can't be their lifespan that is sustained. Rather, it seems the egg is specifically designed to keep the radiance from tearing thk apart, physically and/or mentally. Ngl its p obvious, but worth noting.

Sorta-au where Ghost’s shade has 8 eyes, and/or is generally all-around more cryptid-looking.

@ the sharpshadow charm and the strange, 6-eyed creature their shade turns into: kudos to this post, they bring up something super interesting- the creature not only resembles the Shade Lord, but the lord outright becomes it during the Embrace the Void cutscene.

makes me respect the ol’ civilization a whole lot more if a single charm can turn a baby shade into a baby lord.

The concept of finding ghosts unconscious body, laying next to a corpse, while they battle in their dreams. Alt: when ghost enters the dream realm, their shade leaves their shell... And protects their body from harm.

If steel soul mode is taken as canon, just how did ghost and the shade meet? Alt: Ghost may never have “met” it at all, as it technically doesn’t exist in that mode- instead, its more of a metaphor than an actual entity.

What the vessels looked like- or were supposed to look like- before the void. Alt: a story following a child, alive and untouched, that somehow managed to be spared. They could even have a gender. Alt alt: the void intentionally spared them for some purpose, or even out of simple kindness- or at least, something that resembles kindness.

Re: the shade inexplicably having a nail: all the vessel's swords are crafted from “will-bearing rock”- of which i’ve come to lovingly call living stone- and as such, are of void themselves. That's how the shade seems to conjure up its own copy; it merely shapes it, from the ground, using void. And, while more of a stretch, Ghost’s nail being some sort of living stone/pale ore alloy could explain just how Ghost can do seemingly pretty crazy things with an otherwise ordinary nail. Better, while 100% a baseless hc, its material might actually enable Ghost to build it up and modify it to suite their size as they grow older. finally, a logical reason adult Ghost has an adult-sized nail-claymore. hdsfghjfghdsjf

On that same thought: Ghost outright invented the "art" of manipulating- or creating- living stone to make their nail. ...gimme a sec. The other escaped vessels have nails, too, right? Either meaning they also discovered this ability... or that theres some legitimate ground for the “vessel gang” hc. Or, yanno, i’m reading too much into Ari’s sprites but sHHhh

How did all the vessels know to race to the top? They seemed to be falling merely because they had just been born and had literal, actual baby strength; yet not only did they inexplicably risk everything competing to the top, they somehow knew death was waiting if they lost. Alt: pk just, bringing a fucking megaphone and telling them like a sports announcer.

What if Ghost made it, and instead of falling, they managed to joined thk at the lip? What would pk do? Push them off the edge??? Or just adopt them both?? Oh fuck au where they're raised as twin sacrifices. Or worse yet, they’re raised unequally, and one is trained only as an afterthought. As a backup.

Alternatively, pk keeps all the vessels au, only a few years later when they're grown. Pk now has a literal army of pure knights. Radiance is fucked.

Hm. If vessels were fully coherent entities from the moment of birth, why was there a crib in the white palace? Did... did they use it? I have a feeling team cherry made that asset before the abyss scene lmaooo alt: they did, uh, use the crib. Cue a very awkward scene of thk, clearly not a normal baby, staring at wl with like... idk, the poofy baby hat and pacifier. I can’t tell if the image is more funny or more sad rn shdfgfjsdgg

The og notes that inspired this post, in case my rambling makes more sense (and w/o the awful comic hjsfgjsdfhj): Oh oh OH i GET it now. The void is all about "will" and whatnot, right? And shades are "fragments of a lingering will"- will, like the one you leave after your death, but instead of inheritance its the vessels' desires...last regrets.... DAMN team cherry, that symbolism is clever as heck. That took me a while. Kinda funny how a will is, technically, a person's last regrets Like I knew they were last regrets but I didn't understand WHY. Duh, it's because they're literally Made Of Will. They are the vessel's "wills". I'm so stupid.

Ghost, walking thru the abyss, getting increasingly fed up / freaked out, ducking into a crack in the wall. They follow the crack into the Scream Chamber, pause, then exhale in relief that this was EXACTLY what they needed.

Ghost's shade rolling up its void-sleeves like “fuck it, ima defeat thk myself”

Why was thk's sword there? Was its pedestal decayed? Did it fall from their body? Was it place there as an afterthought, or hurriedly? alt: taking thk's sword before freeing them, but doing the mom thing like you're grounding them hdhfjchjch

I can’t believe it just occured to me now, but... as objectivley stupid as the vessel’s test was, Ghost... technically came in second place. What if that whole scene was a metaphor? Because really, it’s just too silly to take seriously. To do so isn’t too far fetched, either; many other elements in the game’s story are better taken as symbolic or metaphorical, anyways. Take the PoP cutscene- while it could’ve been a literal moment, where they just happened to find themselves standing around and took the moment to appreciate each other... imo it makes much more sense to read it as the concept of their faint ~forbidden love~ and parental pride itself. Or, better yet, the scene at the end of the 4th pantheon. Sorry, but I severely doubt that was an actual event. What I’m trying to get at is the significance of “second place” in the cutscene. My brain is too fried to chase down any other possible connections to this theme rn (if thats even what the theme is), but even without proof, the theory smooths out a few interesting tidbits related to just how Ghost could tough it out when all others failed. All except for #1, anyway. Either way I’m just happy to take this as an excuse to pretend that cutscene didn’t literally happen because like, l m a o

The story of a small group of vessels as they work together to escape hallownest. (aka the aforementioned vessel gang hc... im sure theres a more formal name but you get the idea). Its impossible to tell how long it took them to discover that near-invisible hole, the last exit remaining after the king ordered the abyss to be sealed up. Once they did, however, the remaining vessels were quick to make a desperate scramble to escape- only for the entrance to suddenly crumble shut, far, far too soon. The remaining 8 slowly made their way through deepnest, their numbers quickly dwindling as the jouney started to take its toll. The group was nearly wiped out by those terrible, spiney-legged creatures that used their own kinship against them. Only three finally escaped the deep, yet only two made it through the basin- the third, largest sibling, left to fight alone againt a hopeless battle, just to buy the others time. It was in greenpath, so close yet so far to their goal, that the second succumbed to the infection. It was a mercy killing, that nail through the heart. The last, after all of that, finally made their way to the very precipice of howling cliffs, hesitating for just a moment to gaze out upon the still-fresh ruins of hallownest. But only for a moment, before Ghost jumps down to begin their journey beyond this wretched place.

A vessel running from its shade as it tirelessly pursues them, the vessel refusing to put it to rest.

tw: suicide, + personal on main

Ugh ugh ugh ugh Either thk was fully conscious and in terrible pain for all those years... or they couldn’t feel anything at all. The former is horrible, but imagining thk waking up, chained, unable to do anything but wait for Ghost to heed their call? Did they turn their nail on themselves to help Ghost, end the pain, or some awful mix of both? For someone who has personally dealt with close friends and family that struggled with suicide themselves, hollowknight is one of the worst horror stories I've ever seen. And the fact that the story is so personal, so open to interpretation? The fact that each character is so genuine yet vague enough to be read completely differently to someone else’s biases? Its why hollow knight- the game, and the character- will forever be one of the most powerful stories to me.

in short, good LORD THIS GAME IS SO FUCKING SAD

[magioftheseas]

Soul-Crushing

Summary: Komaeda's not his soulmate. Hinata yearns for him all the same.

Rating: T

Warnings: Death is referenced but really it’s just super angsty.

Notes: Y’all remember that time I posted the beginning of this because I was requested a soulmates AU...yeah it was a while ago. In fact, I’m pretty sure in-between starting this and finally posting a “finished” version of it that my cousin was born and started elementary school. Hmm. Uh. Well on that note, it’s still Ko day. Yaaaaaay Ko Day. Anyway this is sad.

***Alternate Ao3 Link***

Commission? Donate?

He doesn’t remember when exactly he and Komaeda met, but there’s some strange part of him that tells him it was important. If Komaeda felt the same way, he didn’t know, but the thing was that regardless... Ever since they met, they meshed together nicely.

They didn’t belong together, though. He’d known from the get-go that Komaeda wasn’t meant to be his—and Hinata also instinctively knew he didn’t belong to him either. Whoever Hinata’s soul mate really was—he hadn’t met them yet. As for Komaeda...  Well, his soul mate actually was no longer a factor. He was one of those cases—the very tragic but not that uncommon ones.

But that wasn’t a thing that Komaeda let upset him, and when he finally managed to ask him about it... Komaeda didn’t bother beating around the bush with how he felt about his ‘lost love’.

 “I never knew who they were,” Komaeda had told him, arms folded with an air of nonchalance compared to Hinata’s chest aching with sympathy. “They died a long time ago—a little before I met you, I think. I haven’t mourned them... But I don’t think I even have the right to. I never knew them, after all.”

But they were your soul mate. Hinata wants to say but the words get stuck because he’s sure Komaeda knows that. And Komaeda still chooses to be okay with the situation when Hinata doesn’t know what he’d do. The knowledge his own soul mate is still out there, somewhere, waiting for him sits heavily in his gut. It’s the same knowledge that holds his tongue—because the last thing he wants to do is insult Komaeda by trying to understand something he has no idea about.

“Really, it’s fine,” Komaeda says anyway because he sees that sad look on Hinata’s face. He smiles softly, brightly at him in a way that stills his world. “But now you know, Hinata-kun. It’s nothing to worry about, see? I’ve long since gotten over it.”

But Komaeda had always been like that—downplaying his issues and the difficulties life had handed him with a smile and a laugh. Hinata, who would spend continuous hours mulling over his faults and insecurities, couldn’t help but admire him for it.

Because sometimes he would worry, for hours on end even when Komaeda was speaking to him, about what would happen when he met his soul mate. It already seemed too good to be true, the idea of someone meant for him, who’d accept him for all his failings and shortcomings—another person like Komaeda who would smile at him and then soothe his worries with a calming smile and a chipper ‘it’s alright’.

Another person like Komaeda...but wasn’t actually Komaeda.

--

Hinata wasn’t so naïve he didn’t see the problem with his feelings towards Komaeda but he couldn’t help it. Komaeda was the first friend he made in the area, he’s sure, and to Hinata that made him special.

He has other friends, of course, but Komaeda had always been the one to approach him first. He was nervous when he first arrived, sometimes he tripped over his words, more times than not the wrong thing would come out, and while he tore himself up on the inside... Komaeda was still patient with him. Komaeda laughed off Hinata’s blunt observations that could come off as rude, and would warn him gently if he unintentionally strayed towards a potential ‘danger zone’.

Eventually, he could talk to the other kids normally and laugh with the others normally but at the end of the day, it all came back to Komaeda. It had always been Komaeda. And, oddly enough, Hinata wasn’t that sure if Komaeda had any friends other than himself.

He’s asked others about him a couple of times, and he gets the general gist as to why. Komaeda, as nice and helpful as he is, can be...strange sometimes.

Hinata’s not unaware about the things Komaeda would say that weren’t so soothing to hear—about the hierarchy of society, the inherent worth of the haves and have-nots, and a lot of unsettling philosophy about soul mates that he already had heard in textbooks—about how they were always meant to complete one another, fulfill one another, and how their lives would always lead up to that fated encounter... Stuff everyone knows but coming from Komaeda, he found he personally had a bit more of a problem with it. With others, they were unsettled by the implications Komaeda may or may not have had in his tone while ranting.

“Really, you shouldn’t concern yourself with the things someone like me says anyway,” Then again another thing was that Komaeda always concludes his tirades with little statements like these. “I’m just paltry in the grand scheme of things, Hinata-kun. I really shouldn’t be talking as much as I do. But I just get excited.”

Considering also Komaeda’s own situation... Hinata’s only more concerned while others would be more suspicious as to the exact meaning behind those words. Hinata’s questioned it, but Komaeda always thought he was being straight-forward, so he’s never really gotten anywhere.

It’s frustrating—and Hinata doesn’t doubt it’s at least part of the reason why others avoid him. Even though Hinata still can’t imagine brushing Komaeda off completely to the side, not when Komaeda still tries to smile when he sees how bothered Hinata is, and insists he doesn’t worry. Sometimes, Komaeda might try to pacify him by promising to refrain from saying the things he does in the future.

He’s making excuses for it, but really Hinata couldn’t leave Komaeda even if he entertained the thought for longer than a second. Komaeda’s special. He isn’t special in that way, but he’s special.

He’s special. Hinata never could just let him go.

--

He doesn’t expect to be accepted, of course. He’s stupid. He’s indulgent. But he’s not that stupid and indulgent—or at least he’d like to think so.

“You hang around me so often,” Komaeda says, smiling kindly but with a frustrated gaze. “Don’t you have better things to do, Hinata-kun?”

“We’re friends, aren’t we?” he refutes as if that’s all there is to it. His skin crawls before he’s cruelly reminded that it isn’t when Komaeda’s stare narrows. Those gray-greens are locked onto him, but they’re close to shutting. If Hinata could, he’d keep those eyes on him by any means necessary, even if it meant force.

Of course—he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t force Komaeda.

Let’s wait until destiny does that.

“We’re friends,” Komaeda finally agreed after a while. When Hinata grins, Komaeda falters, his smile twitching. “We’re friends, Hinata-kun.”

Hinata presses closer him, closer than a mere friend should be.

As long as I have a say in it, I want to stay with you. Stick by you.

The romantic sentiments linger on the tip of his tongue, but he swallows that back. Instead of words, he encircles Komaeda with his arms, holding him close.

“Hinata-kun,” Komaeda says, almost pitifully. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

Hinata nods against him, squeezing him.

“You’re the only friend I have,” Komaeda adds, wistful and wispy. As if close to fading away.

Hinata holds him even closer. Their chests press together so much so that the two of them may as well have been melded to one another. It might hurt, being held like this.

But just being this close came with unavoidable pain, because the reality of their situation hangs above. The shroud of death for the living—as metaphorical as it was physical.

The two of them were not meant to be together.

And yet, Hinata wished. He wanted. He yearned.

“I like you, Komaeda.”

Komaeda’s responding laugh is even more pitiful than before, a crumbled up facsimile of joy. It’s too heart-wrenching a sound to be humiliating.

“You like me, too, right?” Hinata found himself asking, softly and tentatively.

“Of course I do.” The answer’s immediate. He can’t see Komaeda’s face like this, but he’s not willing to pull back so he just imagines a soft expression even if the words don’t convey it. “As I said, we’re friends. You’re the only friend I have. How could I not like you?”

It’s all true. And isn’t that such a pathetic way to put it?

Komaeda embraces him in return. Komaeda squeezes. Komaeda sucks in his breath. He sounds close to tears.

You’re his only friend—practically all he has. You have a soul mate—someone you’re meant to be with and spent the rest of your life with. He doesn’t have anyone except you, and you’re taking advantage of him and your relationship with him.

What are you doing?

What the hell do you think you’re doing to him?

“That’s not what I mean.” What he’s doing is being honest. “That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

Komaeda quakes. He may have fallen to pieces if not for how he was being held tightly and mercilessly. Komaeda makes a strangled kind of noise, and Hinata’s quick to rub his back, running his fingers along that knobby, delicate spine of his. Komaeda feels more fragile than ever.

“I-It’s disgusting, isn’t it? To love someone who’s already promised to someone else.”

Komaeda’s voice is barely above a whisper before rising in fervor.

“To want to be beside that person even when you know in your bones that you don’t belong there.” His breath hitches. “Isn’t that gross? Isn’t it despicably indulgent? Isn’t it unnatural? That person—they’re promised to someone else. The best you can do is hope that someone else dies. Isn’t that just terrible?”

Hinata wants to ask him if he feels that way—but he thankfully stops himself. Komaeda is clearly spiraling and unraveling in his embrace. He doesn’t want that.

I want—

“You’re not disgusting, Komaeda. You’re a good person. I’m just a shitty friend.”

Because I want to be yours. Just like I want you to be mine—just the two of us. I can’t imagine being with someone else.

Komaeda makes another complicated noise. To Hinata’s horror, it sounds closest to a sob. He’s quick to squeeze him, to stroke his hair and coo at him and to try and reassure him.

“If I were your soulmate, I’d be a really lucky guy—”

“But you’re not.” Komaeda cuts him off, voice tight. “And I’m not your soulmate. I lost my soulmate—that person, whoever they were—but you still have yours. You don’t need me. When you meet them, you’ll...” Komaeda laughs quietly, mirthless and tense. “I know what to expect, but still. I don’t want to be discarded like trash, Hinata Hajime.”

His tone is unexpectedly venomous. Hinata almost flinched away.

Almost.

He instead stood his ground.

“I promise I won’t do that.”

“Don’t,” Komaeda sighed tiredly. “Please. Don’t.”

“It’s true,” he insisted. “You’re special to me. You’re important to me. Cosmic bond or not—that isn’t going to change. I’m always going to like you, Komaeda. I swear it.”

Komaeda’s face crumbles, even as he tries to muster up another despairing chuckle.

“I like you, too. A lot. I’m sorry. I...” He tries to twist away. Hinata doesn’t let him. Komaeda’s breath catches, taking on a tone of desperation as Hinata pulls him even closer than before. “Wait. Wait. We mustn’t. Please, Hinata-kun, you shouldn’t...”

Hinata doesn’t kiss him. He does, however, keep Komaeda’s watering gaze locked with his own.

“I love you, Komaeda...Nagito. I love you, Nagito. I’m...”

I’m not your soulmate, but I want to do right by you as one should.

“I’m going to stay with you—even if it can only be as a friend..!”

Komaeda shook his head frantically, but after a while, he just slumps into the embrace, sighing heavily as he does.

“Hinata-kun. I really like you. More than I should. But right now—I think I hate you, too.”

“That’s...” Hinata swallowed. “Honestly, that’s fair. I’m sorry. I just...”

“You shouldn’t have said anything,” Komaeda murmured tiredly into his shoulder. “In a world like this one—it would’ve been best to just keep your mouth shut.”

Maybe he would’ve been happier that way. Or least it’d be easier to pretend. This world—

“This world is garbage,” Hinata muttered darkly. “If someone like you is destined to be alone. I’ll defy it until the end of time. I don’t care. I’ll stay with you, Nagito. I promise.”

In what could only be described as a miracle, Komaeda’s soft bout of laugher was of genuine amusement.

“We’ll see, then. You’re already an incredible disappointment and infuriatingly defiant—even if it’s a source of despair, I can’t help...but be curious about you, Hajime-kun.”

Hinata’s grip tightened on him so much so that he couldn’t have escaped even if he wanted to. As if his will really was strong enough to rival that of the cosmic certainties of soulmates.

It’d be easy to believe that, with emotions running so strong. But Hinata Hajime only wanted to twist that passion into the truth, foolish as that endeavor may be.

Whether this was to be fortune or misfortune was something Komaeda Nagito could only dread and anticipate in equal measures.

[rpmemesbyarat]

RP meme from “Wonder Woman: Bloodlines” Part One of Two

This looks like Heaven. And you’re an angel.

I saw the battle. You continued to attack against hopeless odds.

You ever think about opening a resort business?

I take it deliberations are over.

You will thank me for my mercy.

You will never become Queen

Are you truly willing to throw away everything you are, for the mere chance of helping them?

It’s strange, that you should be my own daughter/son/friend/etc, and yet someone I do not recognize anymore.

Once we cross, we will never be able to return.

You’re an ancient culture, walking around in great shoes.

If I sleep any longer, my arms are gonna fall off!

If your arms fall off, it is a SMALL price to pay

Are you cleansing your house?

I know how you feel. I have a strong mother too.

I have so much to teach you. And so much to learn from you, of course.

I’m sorry I put you in trouble yesterday.

Do you miss it? Your home?

I came here to make your world a better place.

Can you just decide that?

Everyone gets to decide what they get to do with their life. I might not succeed, but this is what I choose to try.

What will you dedicate your life to?

Don’t worry, vampires aren’t real.

It doesn’t matter what I want.

What if you could choose?

I guess I want to be something else. Anything else.

You can’t even drive yet!

There’s more than one way to be a hero.

This is the right way to help for me.

So, what’s your codename?

I’m sorry these men hampered your day.

Exactly how long is it gonna be before you stop talking like my grandma?

I’m much older than your grandmother.

You really are something special, you know that?

Innovation isn’t nearly as linear as many people think.

Bigger and better, bitch!

I’ve secured the artifact.

Now that, I will not allow.

I think we can all agree you’ve made some poor life choices.

I’ve failed two mothers now.

I’ve cost [NAME] everything.

I detest cheap sentiment.

You’re standing between me and a lot of money.

As for your payment, I wouldn’t worry about it.

We didn’t leave her any options.

She’s young. Thinks she’s alone. We need to show her that’s not true.

Oh, I love flying.

Inner walls are breached. Tick tock, tick tock.

Show me how much more you’ve become since then.

Why did you let them do this to you?

You were always so perfect. Well, I’m perfect now!

They are not your friends.

Never dreamed someone as illustrious as yourself would grace my door.

She helps people see the future.

Ah, Pasiphae, famed goddess of...pacifiers?

How do you even get to a place like this on foot?

Sometimes, you just gotta focus on running.

You may have saved your friends, but you’re my REAL target.

I was really hoping the whole “maze” thing was just a metaphor.

You’ve improved. But you haven’t beaten me yet.

You couldn’t remember that sooner?!

How are we gonna get there before he does?

[sebastianshaw]

RP meme from “Wonder Woman: Bloodlines” Part One of Two

This looks like Heaven. And you’re an angel.

I saw the battle. You continued to attack against hopeless odds.

You ever think about opening a resort business?

I take it deliberations are over.

You will thank me for my mercy.

You will never become Queen

Are you truly willing to throw away everything you are, for the mere chance of helping them?

It’s strange, that you should be my own daughter/son/friend/etc, and yet someone I do not recognize anymore.

Once we cross, we will never be able to return.

You’re an ancient culture, walking around in great shoes.

If I sleep any longer, my arms are gonna fall off!

If your arms fall off, it is a SMALL price to pay

Are you cleansing your house?

I know how you feel. I have a strong mother too.

I have so much to teach you. And so much to learn from you, of course.

I’m sorry I put you in trouble yesterday.

Do you miss it? Your home?

I came here to make your world a better place.

Can you just decide that?

Everyone gets to decide what they get to do with their life. I might not succeed, but this is what I choose to try.

What will you dedicate your life to?

Don’t worry, vampires aren’t real.

It doesn’t matter what I want.

What if you could choose?

I guess I want to be something else. Anything else.

You can’t even drive yet!

There’s more than one way to be a hero.

This is the right way to help for me.

So, what’s your codename?

I’m sorry these men hampered your day.

Exactly how long is it gonna be before you stop talking like my grandma?

I’m much older than your grandmother.

You really are something special, you know that?

Innovation isn’t nearly as linear as many people think.

Bigger and better, bitch!

I’ve secured the artifact.

Now that, I will not allow.

I think we can all agree you’ve made some poor life choices.

I’ve failed two mothers now.

I’ve cost [NAME] everything.

I detest cheap sentiment.

You’re standing between me and a lot of money.

As for your payment, I wouldn’t worry about it.

We didn’t leave her any options.

She’s young. Thinks she’s alone. We need to show her that’s not true.

Oh, I love flying.

Inner walls are breached. Tick tock, tick tock.

Show me how much more you’ve become since then.

Why did you let them do this to you?

You were always so perfect. Well, I’m perfect now!

They are not your friends.

Never dreamed someone as illustrious as yourself would grace my door.

She helps people see the future.

Ah, Pasiphae, famed goddess of...pacifiers?

How do you even get to a place like this on foot?

Sometimes, you just gotta focus on running.

You may have saved your friends, but you’re my REAL target.

I was really hoping the whole “maze” thing was just a metaphor.

You’ve improved. But you haven’t beaten me yet.

You couldn’t remember that sooner?!

How are we gonna get there before he does?