#their color palettes were bothering me

[glitchedfoxx]

I was gonna wait until I had all of them done to post these but I've been struggling hard with Shadow and Zelda's designs so have some adjustments/redesigns to the quadruplets for now while I figure out what the hell I'm doing

[musubiki]

.🖤🔄🤍.

[meamiiikiii]

isat color palette challenge WOO!! these are always fun :D

[captain-astors]

There’s no place for you, in this world or the last. 

[supercantaloupe]

hehe. rake's progress designs

[ominouspuff]

No Man Left Behind / Something Worth Dying For

REQUESTS / BLOG EVENT

Request from @razzbberry - Palette #1 - Alpha-17, Cody - Death of the Cynic in Me

Notes and close-ups beneath the cut!

Notes: I think Seventeen would, both subconsciously and consciously, keep his cynicism as long as possible. It’s how he thinks the world works, but it’s also a survival tool. It’d be a very, very slow death.

It’s put to the test with Cody — not because Cody is special among his fellow clones, but because he’s one of the first that bothers to fight Seventeen on his own terms. The argument is always the same. Cody wants to talk about what he hopes to be, someday, after he is a soldier. Seventeen thinks he’s stupid to think that’s possible, or that he’d be capable. Cody knows it, and he, might not be. Seventeen thinks it’s even more stupid, in that case; what a waste of energy.

It develops. When they’re older, and in the thick of war, one day Cody risks his life for the chance to save a brother that was going to die anyway. Seventeen yells at him for fifteen minutes once he’s conscious about luck and stupidity and the trouble it’s causing Seventeen and the false hope it’s engendering in others. Cody says he can disagree all he likes, but he doesn’t give a fig, respectfully. Seventeen thinks Cody can go try to get blown up again, if he thinks so.

There’s no point fighting for a better tomorrow; they’re bought and paid for to fight for something else, FOR someone else. Seventeen is prepared for being fodder, as a result. He’s prepared for unfairness and the bleak life that they’re living. Instead he watches as Cody defeats odds time and time again, somehow managing to balance being an exceptional military leader with a secondary war to live for something more, running himself ragged and — inexplicably — gaining ground. Each of those little victories are a little death for Seventeen’s cynicism; a chipping away. A little seed of Cody’s brand of hope takes root, awkward and begrudging, fond and tentative.

Then Order 66 happens. Cody’s efforts for a better life are in vain, and Cody himself-

Cody may never know that Seventeen was right abut just how helpless they were. Now he only knows that Seventeen is a traitor, apparently, because Seventeen — for once in his life — was the lucky one and his chip malfunctioned.

And Seventeen could say ‘I told you so’. He could rest, vindicated and resigned, in the fact that every dream Cody built up and everything he thought was worth dying for is pointless, now — as he always suspected it would be.

But it isn’t fair, even by Seventeen’s standards.

“What are you doing,” Rex will rasp, caught in a strange role reversal as Seventeen paints an armor set with Cody’s golden colors. “He’s not coming back, Seventeen. He can’t. It’s pointless to keep going after him, you need to stop.”

“No,” Seventeen will answer, unbothered, “I don’t think I will.”

“We can’t — we can’t keep hoping,” Rex says, because he means he will probably have a breakdown if he imagines there is even a pitiful possibility he could save his brothers and then have to turn away from that scrappy chance for the greater good and Rebellion, and all that. “We’ve got to move on.”

“Go on.” Seventeen will invite sincerely, one brow raised because he knows Rex better than that.

“Do you want him to shoot you?” Rex will finally yell, all knotted up at the thought of losing Seventeen too, even though it’s funny because Seventeen was never kind to Rex.

“He can try,” Seventeen will say, touching up the last of the paint. He will stand, wiping his fingers, and pick up his pack. “See you when we get back, then.”

Alt version:

[alllgator-blood]

I posted these on reddit a while ago and I've gotten multiple messages asking if I had any other social media? Which I didn't at the time, but after years of not bothering to post my art I think that was the boost I needed to finally re-emerge from the rock I've been living under.

ANYWAY uhhhhhh I've drawn these guys so much since I posted this that they might look a little different when I eventually post my newer art of them. Mostly because I don't bother drawing the little crosses on their heads anymore besides on leshy because frankly the antennae are really funny. If anyone has any questions about my hcs or what I intend to do with the characters, my ask box is open and I don't have anything better to do than endlessly ramble about gods that 100% would rip my head off immediately if I ever encountered them!

SPEAKING OF WHICH, the reception I got for these on reddit was way more positive than I was expecting which I am immensely grateful for, but there was definitely some miscommunication about the afab shamura headcanon so I'm just gonna dump about that below the cut if you want to hear me ramble about my nonbinary-ness for a while:

OKAY SO it's canon that the bishops were feral little animals before they found their crowns, right? Leshy and Shamura both talk about it during their follower quests. Feral animals do not have a concept of gender, only biological sex, so if they ascended to sapient godhood they would suddenly have a grasp of gender. My hc is that Shamura was a female feral spider, ascended to godhood, lost their bio sex in the process as with all the other bishops, and was just like "you know what? I don't want to be anything. This is kinda swag actually" so they just became War and Grief and Cosmic Horror incarnate. I am fucking desperate for any relatable enby representation in the media I like, so I just want to clarify me saying they were female at some point just is me going "I am living vicariously through this character who shed their mortal flesh prison to be an eldritch spider war god devoid of any sex characteristics" and not "I'm one of those numerous people who for some reason lumps this canonically agender character in with a binary sex". Anyway thank you for reading this far, here's an unfinished voidpunk shamura from a pride flag color palette thing I did of the bishops:

[goosita]

attending a gala with young!politician!snow is both more and less terrifying than you’d imagined

he’d picked you up at 7pm on the dot, waiting outside of his car for you. coriolanus was dressed in all black, a departure from his usual red color palette. the moment you’d stepped outside to meet him in the dress and shoes (as well as necklace) he bought you, he’d smiled charmingly at you and offered his hand.

“you look absolutely enchanting, miss y/n,” he breathed, tone full of sincerity. you could feel your cheeks blaze at his compliment, giving a timid grin.

“thank you, coryo.”

coriolanus brightened even more, opening the back door of the car with his free hand and keeping you steady with the other as you slid in. he followed just after you, settling in beside you on the seat. now here you were, on the way to a big fancy party full of people who made more money in an hour than you did in a whole year.

“are you nervous?” he asks, glancing at you.

“absolutely terrified,” you admit with a soft laugh. “i’ve never been to anything like this. i don’t want to do or say the wrong thing.”

“you’ll be fine, i promise. just follow my lead, and it’ll be over before you know it.”

you nod, but still can’t force down all of your nerves. aside from this whole event being unfamiliar to you, you’re still jittery and unsure with coriolanus. he’s been so hard to read lately. you’re not sure if he’s just toying with you, but it feels too bold to think that perhaps he has a real interest in you either. too indulgent of your daydreams, your fantasies. you can’t seem to stop the fluttery drumming of your fingers against your thigh, until coriolanus is taking your hand and sliding his fingers between yours to stop their incessant tapping. your gaze snaps up to look at him, surprised by the touch.

“everything’s going to be okay. trust me,” he says gently, giving your hand a soft squeeze. for someone who’s last name is snow, his hands are so warm. his thumb brushes over your knuckles soothingly, looking down at you with a calm expression, and you nod. you do trust him. he adds, “i’ll be right beside you all evening.”

his promise makes you feel better, some of the tension leaving your body at both his words and his soothing touch. you glance down at your interlocked hands, his so much bigger than your own. his fingers are so long, pale and beautiful as if they were carved from marble. the veins along the top stand out, raised little rivers of blue that crawl up into his sleeve. his silver watch band rests against the delicate skin of both of your inner wrists.

once you arrive, it feels like a whirlwind of colors and lights and sounds. you find yourself dissociating from most of it, from the moment coriolanus leads you inside with a hand at the small of your back. you try to focus on the way his cologne catches your nose when he turns or moves, the familiar scent helping to ground you. the event passes in a flurry of coriolanus’s voice chatting pleasantly with Very Important Men, fond introductions of you at his side by your name and never your job title, being handed flutes of posca that you only sip on here and there. your date, however, seems to have no trouble at all socializing and sharing drinks with these people.

he’s a natural people-person. coriolanus charms and wins over just about every person he speaks to. the men respect him and listen to what he has to say, while the women giggle and let their eyes wander his face and body. you don’t like that the latter bothers you enough to sling back an entire flute of posca at one point while some district 8 office holder’s wife practically undresses coriolanus with her eyes. if he notices the female attention at all, he doesn’t show it. coriolanus simply keeps one hand planted firmly along your spine, occasionally stroking the exposed skin there softly.

finally, finally, the night comes to an end. coriolanus is loose from the bubbly drinks he’s had, making him a bit more smiley than you’re really used to. his cheeks are flushed a pretty pink that spreads over the bridge of his nose and makes him glow.

“did you have fun, darling?” he asks as he gets into the car with you. while he waits for an answer, he fumbles until he finds the button that raises the privacy screen between you two and the driver.

“fun is…certainly a word,” you offer, unable to stop your grin. coriolanus seems younger like this, spine less rigid and jaw less tense. he looks his age right now, you realize.

“hm. yes, well, i don’t have much real fun these days,” he laments, undoing his tie and shrugging off his suit jacket. “especially not with a beautiful lady on my arm.”

he glances sideways at you as he says it, sly smirk making his smile line in his cheek stand out. you resist the urge to reach out and touch it, instead looking down at your hands in your lap. you never know what exactly to say when coriolanus says things like that. you’re not sure if he’s being sincere, or if it’s just meaningless flirting to him.

he says your name softly when you avert your eyes, gingerly lifting your chin. “look at me, darling,” he whispers. he’s turned his body to face you fully now. his eyes search your face for a long moment before they trail down, landing on the snowflake pendant resting between your collarbones. his finger trails a path down your throat before tracing around the charm.

“it suits you,” he murmurs. the air in the car is suddenly so very warm, electric with the energy between the two of you. he’s so close to you, you wonder if he can hear your heart racing right now. if he knows its because of him.

“coryo,” you exhale, breath trembling slightly. you feel his touch again against your cheek, cradling it softly in his palm. his eyes seem to almost glow in the low light, the streetlights you pass making them appear almost translucent when they reflect off his irises. you both lean in simultaneously, eyes fluttering closed.

the first brush of coriolanus’s lips is soft, curious even. as if he’s giving you the chance to push him away. instead, you sigh and melt into him. his free hand comes to rest on your waist, squeezing softly as he kisses you more firmly when you don’t pull away. his mouth is plush and slick against your own, tasting like the sugary posca he’d drank.

you lose yourself to his kisses, slow and languid and indulgent, making you dizzy with how good it feels. coriolanus slides his hand down from your waist to your hip, then further down to tease at the slit in your dress that splits over your thigh. his teeth nip at your lip playfully, and he smiles against your mouth when you gasp at the way his fingers curl behind your knee to hitch your leg up over his own.

he encourages you to move so you can straddle him, sitting pretty in your silky dress on his lap. your hands land on his broad shoulders while his lips parts from yours, pressing hot, open-mouth kisses along your neck. his tongue drags along the side of your throat, making you shiver and moan softly.

“there’s a good girl,” he mutters, hands smoothing up and down your thighs that splay over his. “you make such pretty sounds for me.”

coriolanus’s words make you feel lightheaded, paired with his wandering touch and exploratory kisses. you shift in his lap just slightly, gasping softly when you feel how hard he is beneath you. his cock presses into the apex of your thighs, his hips pushing up subtly. he lets out a quiet groan, the hottest sound you’ve ever heard. the uncontrolled noise spurs you on, gives you the nerve to cup his jaw and bring his mouth back to yours and demand more of his heated kisses.

“stay with me tonight, my darling,” he pleads, panting against your mouth.

“yes.”

[manochulios]

MY NINJAGO DESIGNS (UPDATED)

Ok FIRST OF ALL!!! follow me on tiktok and AO3!! I'm posting my art there and I have a fanfic project centered on Nya (and Morro) that I started writing, I think you might be interested!

Secondly..... YES! After less than a week of posting the first designs, I decided to change some things!!!!! If you compare it to the old post you'll see that there weren't any very drastic changes, but there were a few things that were particularly bothering me and now I feel like I'm satisfied (for now.....)

Obviously, as you can see, I haven't changed a lot of things. Maybe I shouldn't have made this update in a new post, changing the main one would have been more than enough but.... nah.

Colors of the gold armor - I gave them a brighter tone, the old one was very dull

Zane and Nya's boots - brother wtf were those, now they are sooo much better

Zane gloves - I totally forgot about them in the first version, but now he has them!!

Kai and Nya eyes - in the old version they already had matching eyes (main color in their own color palette and pupil in the color of their siblings), but I made Nya's eye color more towards gray and Kai's towards brown, instead of the dark -cyan-almost-green and amber that they had)

Nya's hair and sleeves - I left her hair a little closer to her original hair, I felt that in the old one I ended up giving her a hairstyle more similar to mine in real life..... oops? I also changed the flowing sleeve to a more well behaved one similar to Kai's, I don't know if I totally like this change to be honest

Marks on their body - Lloyd now has marks from the oni transformation!! although they are not that visible from far; Nya and Cole's marks are better done than before and Zane has more robot features (although these three in particular are more visible under his clothes *wink wink*)

Jay has goggles now :D

Some close ups (I swear I don't know what I'm doing wrong for the images to be saved in SUCH poor quality)

Some headshots

So I guess this is it? NOW I'm gonna leave these designs alone. I already posted on my tiktok too, so if you can stop by and give me a boost I'd really appreciate it!! I'm already working on the individual images of each one with some headcanons and more specifications on the details of each one's designs, but it will probably take a while. I also plan to do a part two of the designs with some secondary characters, but that totally depends on my willingness and willpower LOL

see you soon <3

[itsgirlyki]

“Princess of the island”

the jujutsu trio and their sensei take a trip for a celebration vacation but megumi likes a little more than the scenery

🌺includes: megumi fushiguro

contains: pure fluff, fem coded reader, ooc megumi ngl

‧₊˚❀༉‧₊˚. ‧₊˚❀༉‧₊˚. ‧₊˚❀༉‧₊˚. ‧₊˚❀༉‧₊˚. ‧₊˚❀༉‧₊˚. ‧₊˚❀༉‧₊˚. ‧₊˚❀

the white haired sorcerer came to an abrupt stop after walking through milestones of trees and shrubs.

he points out to the crystal waters “here we are my cutie students. the beach of mamanuca island!” he turned to face his students and sees they already went ahead of him to explore the beautiful scenery.

“woah, this is so cool! i’ve never been on an island before.” yuuji exclaims while expanding his arms out as he fell against the warm sand. two feet slammed beside his head causing him to jerk away with a yelp.

nobara couldn’t tell seeing as she was to excited jumping in her spot. “so many views to take pictures of!” she pulls out her phone filming herself then the ocean ahead.

yuuji sat up in a hurry dusting the sand off his hair. “you almost stepped on my head!!” he huffs and pouts to the brunette.

“well your head should’ve never been in the way.” nobara shrugs not paying him any mind, keeping her focus on the device. yuuji growls and gets up out of the sand beginning to chase her. she sprints in the other direction screaming playfully, hoping not to be caught.

megumi sits quietly muttering to himself under the umbrella he set up watching the two fool around. gojo steps next to him offering a water bottle and the boy waves gojo away not wanting to be bothered by his antics. the childish man frowns and opens the water bottle letting it fall over megumi’s head drenching him.

“gojo-sensei what the heck?!” he growled shaking the water from his hair.

gojo chuckled snapping a picture of the now wet megumi “starting to act like your shikigami’s now eh? very doggish if you will.” he smirked teasing the younger male giving him a brief ruffle on the head.

megumi retracted from gojos touch almost snapping at him but kept his cool. he huffs through his nose turning around leaving away from the beach traveling elsewhere hoping to get as far as possible away from ‘the teasing gojo’.

after some time he came across a bush that was very lively which had him in confusion. he put his ear closer and could hear the slight sound of instruments playing which entranced him to come closer. inching up above the bush his view expanded bringing him to awe. beautiful color palettes of flowers and people littered the place, not to mention the aroma was mouth watering.

megumi stepped into the scene past the bushes basking in the bright sight. he sees many women approach him. he had frozen thinking he was intruding but only to receive a lei across his neck and arm. the eldest pats his cheek with a heavy grin reaching to her eyes “enjoy yourself darling!” all the ladies then giggled waving him away to find another target.

he sighed in relief then pondered around embracing the warm set up of the island wondering what kind of tradition it is. he found comfort in the place taking a seat at one of the empty stalls with wandering eyes.

a man tatted from head to foot came out from behind a tarp and saw megumi seated. “why hello there youngster, are you hoping to get a bite?” megumi tensed not knowing what to say.

“uh no thanks. i haven’t got any money on me.” the man blinks at him weirdly before laughing boisterously. megumi raises a brow with a tight lipped face.

the man halted his laughing before looking at megumi again, “oh, you were serious?” he scratches his head.

a girl suddenly came up and sat at the stall next to him entering their conversation, “i think he was definitely serious mau.”

megumi watched her from his peripheral drinking in her appearance letting a heavy blush coat his pale cheeks. she was glittered in body gems making her look glow even brighter.

“well then two bowls of saimin please mau.” she grinned.

“you got it yn.” mau nodded with a sweet smile going back past the tarp beginning on their meals.

he felt himself looking at her again only to see she was staring right back, “i see you’re not from here.” she giggles.

“uhm.. no i’m not.” he said dryly looking forward once more.

she tilted her head wondering who the mysterious boy is. she closed her eyes while leaning closer to him to catch a whiff of his scent making him flinch away and flush. “what are you doing?”

she stayed in her position still trying to sense his aroma putting a finger on her chin, “smelling you.”

after a few more seconds she leaned back opening her eyes. “you’re from kyoto, japan. and you’re not alone.”

megumi couldn’t hide the shock that was evident on his face. “how did you know all that?”

she chuckled pointing at her nose, “really good sense of smell. and you have multiple.”

he didn’t know why but he felt his chest speed up a bit at the odd girl. he coughed in his arm looking away rubbing the back of his head awkwardly. “so, what is your name?” he asked but shortly smacking himself after remember hearing the man say it.

though the girl didn’t pay mind to that, “it’s yn ln! what about you pretty boy?”

“megumi. megumi fushiguro.” he chokes back a stutter feeling the heat rush to his face.

“cute name for a cute boy.” she smiles with a wink. oh she was going to kill him with these compliments.

“foods ready to be served!” mau came out with his hands full of two saimin bowls. he placed them in front of the two as well as chopsticks.

yn claps excitedly smelling the dish. she looks at megumi and ushers him to taste. he slowly picks up the chopsticks digging into his meal. one bite after another he hums in fulfillment and gratitude.

“thank you, it taste good.” megumi bows slightly to mau then returning to his meal.

mau crosses his arms with a smirk, “oh don’t be so modest young man. you can say it’s more than good.”

yn chuckled at the man shaking her head, “don’t get too over your head mau.”

she quickly finished her food and waited for megumi to be done shortly after. they then waved off mau a quick goodbye before yn dragged megumi elsewhere. they were going further away from the liveliness and more into a calmer area that he hadn’t had yet to explore.

he looked down noticing their fingers are laced together and tried to ignore it failing miserably. yn noticed his fingers tense so she fully cups his hand bringing him closer. “why so stiff? relax a bit!” she smirked up at him causing megumi to burn brighter.

they walked past a few shrubs and hanging vines entering a beautiful garden that had just as much color as the festival. megumi was stunned at the sight letting out a little, “wow.”

yn chuckles at his reaction letting his palm go,“beautiful isn’t it? grew them myself.” if megumi’s jaw couldn’t drop anymore than he thought it would it did.

his brows risen in amazement, “all??” she nodded ushering him closer. they walked to the center of the garden seeing a beautiful hibiscus protected by glass. he noticed that it matched the one in her hair and reached out to touch it only for a vine to stop his hand.

“oh! yeah i wouldn’t do that if i were you.” she shook her head as the vines were very protective of the flower.

“they move..”

“yes! they do!”

“does the one in your hair move too?” it peaked his curiosity as things got much weirder. she flushed and nodded her head. she plucked it from by her ear and another regrew back in its spot.

“kinda, since i am the one who controls them.” she dropped a big bombshell on him like it was normal. maybe to her it was but this was new grounds for him. she saw as he was still confused and waved her hand around the garden making more flowers bloom. “see?” she hands him the flower she plucked forcing it into his hands.

she turns her back hiding the blush the arose to her cheeks, “now come along, we wouldn’t want your friends to think you’re missing.” he nods in agreement following the girl closely behind.

as they step through the shrubs together megumi trips over a branch bringing yn down with him making them smack lips together. they stayed intertwined for a good two seconds before pulling apart heavy blushes on each face.

“imsosorrywhattheheck.” megumi stammered feeling embarrassed but not regretful. he held out a hand for her to take seeing as she was still on the floor.

she gratefully took his hand which firmly pulled her up into his arms, “thanks.” she mumbled shyly flowers started to bloom around her feet and his. megumi smiles slightly tucking a hair behind her ear almost leaning in again.

“woah woah woah. back off our princess!” megumi felt a shove to his chest causing him to stumble back away from the girl.

“princess?” megumi asks in confusion. but no one has spoke up still leaving him in the dark.

“hey! don’t push him like that pali!” she frowned stepping in front of megumi. “he’s my friend.” she said crossing her arms.

“didn’t look very friendly.” pali smirked down at her. he glances at megumi curiously. “who are you anyway? not too often we get visitors.”

megumi squints and huffs, “i’m fushiguro.”

“well fushigurgur, i need to collect our princess so she can finish our ritual.” pali grabbed yn’s arm preparing to leave.

“ritual??” megumi rose a brow. yn glowered quickly denying.

“he’s being an idiot, it’s just a firework show at every ceremony. you’re free to watch.”

“well come on less chatting or we’ll miss it.” pali unhanded yn walking ahead letting her fall beside megumi so they could walk together.

“so yn?” megumi pondered.

“hm? something on your mind?” she questioned.

“yeah actually. why’d he call you princess?” yn giggled at the question feeling the answer was obvious enough.

“well silly, that’s because i’m the princess of this island.” the sound of a penny could be heard dropping. megumi was bewildered stopping in his place bowing at the girl.

“get up! none of that is necessary.” she blushed softly grabbing his shoulders lifting him up.

“now come along we have some fireworks to see.” her hand pulled his into the crowd as she settled him down in the sand. “i have to go on the stage but you can watch me from here pretty boy.” she winked at him with a thumbs up.

she stepped on stage with presumably the king and queen of the island waving. they lit the fire works letting them set off into the night sky doing beautiful patterns with many colors. but the only thing megumi could look at was yn. she was the prettiest thing of the night and he couldn’t take his eyes off her. she felt the burn of his eyes on her and turned to look at him with a smile and wave.

“megumi! megumi! megumi!” the said boy had woken up to yn pushing him out of his bed. he groaned rubbing the back of his head.

“you’ve been sleeping since 3pm! gojo told me to come check up on your before we went to our next mission… but you’re not even ready.” she shakes her head with a facepalm.

“oh.” he blinks up at her from the floor looking around.

yn scrunched her face with a questioning look, “oh? did you hit your head or something?”

“nevermind. get out so i can change.” he told the girl blankly.

“well okay meanie! i’ll be waiting for you outside.. by the way your hair looks a mess.” she chuckled walking outside closing the door behind her.

megumi got up off the floor stretching before rubbing his face, “way to ruin a good dream.”

‧₊˚❀༉‧₊˚. ‧₊˚❀༉‧₊˚. ‧₊˚❀༉‧₊˚. ‧₊˚❀༉‧₊˚. ‧₊˚❀༉‧₊˚. ‧₊˚❀༉‧₊˚. ‧₊˚❀

for more like this follow @itsgirlyki !!

( this is based off a real abandoned island with hawaiian traditions )

[bg3daydream]

Frescos and Flowers

Solas x Inquisitor Lavellan Fanfiction.

Summary: Inquisitor Lavellan hadn't expected Solas, the mage who made her heart flutter, to know how to paint frescos, much less the reason why he was doing it. Neither was she expecting that she'd try to sneak flowers into Solas' quarters, hoping to make Skyhold feel more like home...and maybe make him smile.

Notes and tags: Fluff, Solas being frustrating with his push and pull about his feelings for Lavellan, Fade-kisses. I just wanted to write something sweet.

Words: 5k

Inquisitor Lavellan walked into the rotunda that Solas had claimed as his space, looking for the mage. 

The room was empty, but Lavellan's eyes were instantly drawn to a fresco starting to take shape on one of the walls.

The painted wall was a stark contrast to the other, worn-out and bare walls of the room, which was empty except for the desk full of books and papers that Solas had placed in the middle of the rotunda, some old, broken furniture covered with sheets, and a big couch in which the Inquisitor was sure Solas slept in, instead of claiming a bedroom.

The fresco wasn’t there before, the walls had been as bare and run-down as the rest of Skyhold…was Solas painting it? It looked like so, the paint seemed still fresh and there were brushes and bottles of pigment on a small table placed against the wall. It took Lavellan by surprise, she hadn’t seen many frescos, much less met anyone who knew how to paint those, and she hadn’t imagined it was one of Solas’ skills and interests.

She was still observing the new painting when the door opened and Solas walked in, holding another bottle of pigment, which Lavellan imagined was what he’d gone out looking for. 

“Inquisitor,” he greeted, surprised to see her standing there, yet polite as always.

Lavellan almost jumped back from the fresco. She didn’t know why she felt like she’d been caught red-handed, it wasn’t like Solas could demand people not to walk in and see his painting, otherwise he should have chosen a spot that wasn’t right under the library were mages worked and under Leliana and her spies’ quarters. There were bound to be people coming and going from time to time…though, probably they knocked, while she’d just walked right in… hopefully Solas didn’t mind?

“I, uh… I was looking for you,” she explained.

“Something in the matter?”

“Nothing bad, Josephine asked me to let you know she wants us to meet to talk about a noble house she thinks we could talk into helping the Inquisition.”

Solas nodded with a hum, heading towards the fresco and placing the bottle of pigment next to the others.

“I didn’t know you painted,” Lavellan said, to which Solas just nodded again, picking up a small piece of wood that he seemed to be using as a palette to mix the color pigments. “I imagined you were all the time here reading, doing research, studying…brooding…” she teased and Solas gave her an amused look over his shoulder. “Yet here I find you, devoting your time to a hobby.”

“We all have our vices, Inquisitor.” The corner of his eyes crinkled in the way they sometimes did when she managed to amuse him, a gesture that Lavellan found adorable and wished to see more often.

 “You’re good at it, I like it.”

“Thank you, Inquisitor, your words are appreciated.”

“I have a name, you know…” Lavellan sighed…She didn’t know why it bothered her that he’d call her just ‘Inquisitor’ all the time but it did.

“I know.” There it was again, that twinkle of amusement in Solas’ eyes. “And it's Inquisitor, judging by how people speak about you around here.”

He was joking, she knew it, and yet…yet he was painfully right. Sometimes it seemed as if she herself were disappearing, drowning, swallowed by her new role…everyone called her “Inquisitor” now, or still “Herald of Andraste” despite her protests, not even at Haven had anyone called her by her name…

The amusement was gone from Solas’ eyes, replaced with concern as he noticed the look on her face, that she couldn’t mask. “I'm sorry, lethallan, I didn't mean to upset you.”

“I know.” Lavellan nodded. “Besides you’re right. Inquisitor, that’s my name now…better than Herald of Andraste anyway,” she couldn’t help the bitterness in her last words. “I like it when you call me lethallan, though.”

She smiled at Solas, and when he returned it, she felt dancing twirls in her belly.

“I will do it more often, then.”

His words made the twirls in her stomach dance even more, and Lavellan turned to focus her attention on Solas’ fresco instead of his face, trying to keep the damned butterflies under control.

“So…what will this be?” She asked as she gestured at the fresco.

Solas briefly looked at her and then back at the fresco, his demeanor changing. Despite being an elf and not only a mage but an apostate, dangerous things to be at that time, Solas always seemed confident and self-assured, but it looked now like her question had made him uncomfortable.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Lavellan said tentatively…maybe his art was something personal and private for him. Then, Solas hadn’t chosen the best place to paint, though, people would be seeing it for sure.

“It’s…” Solas began and stopped, looking at the fresco. “It’ll be the Inquisition story, your story.”

“Oh…” Lavellan didn’t know what to say, she had not expected that…was Solas painting what she was doing, for real?

Solas turned to face her then, looking at her with an intensity that took her by surprise.

“People have a tendency to remember things as they want, not as they were…or to forget them, or twist them, turning them into something else, something that suits them, far from the truth. I don’t want that to happen to you, so I wanted to paint your story, your actions.”

Lavellan still didn’t know what to say, it wasn’t what she had expected, at all.

 “I…I uh…thank you, Solas…that’s…” She fumbled to find words and gave up. “It’s not only my story, though, it’s all ours.” She gestured around. “I’m not doing this alone, you all are helping me…I know I couldn’t do this on my own.”

“Mmh…I think you don't give yourself the credit you deserve, Inqui-...lethallan.”

His words combined with the way he looked at her, the fresco he was painting and why he was doing it…the dancing twirls in Lavellan’s belly were getting worse and her heart did something funny. 

“Sweet talker…” She murmured.

It was the same she’d called him that night at the Fade, when they had talked as they walked what had looked like Haven, before she kissed him and he kissed her back. 

The memory of Solas’s lips on hers, his hands and arms firmly holding her close to him while he kissed her with an intensity she hadn't expected, as if he were starved of her… It did nothing to stop the twirls and the beating of her heart, if anything it made the warmth growing in her belly worse. 

She wasn’t sure if Solas’ mind went to the same place, but something flashed through his eyes for a second, before he cleared his throat and turned away from her and back to the fresco. Lavellan hoped she hadn’t made him uncomfortable with her unfortunate choice of words.

“I’ll leave you to it, while we still have free time for a change.”

Solas nodded. “Dareth Shiral, lethallan.”

*

That night, Lavellan was sitting on her new bed, her back against the wall and her knees hugged to her chest, looking around the room. She was still not used to it. It was massive, the biggest bedroom she’d ever seen, seeming excessive for a single person.

She knew she should be grateful that she’d been given such a room, the best at Skyhold, but she couldn’t help her discomfort… It was so big and so empty, it felt cold and foreign. 

The whole of Skyhold felt empty, worn-out, and cold, though improvements were being made. Josephine had gotten workers to fix walls, floors, and roofs and they were working swiftly. Some of her people had also managed to make their spots feel lived in, despite having moved in not so long ago.

Josephine had her big and pretty desk near a fireplace, surrounded by bookcases that, just like the ones Cullen had in his space, were somehow already full to the brim of books. Sera had claimed a room at the tavern, filling it with trinkets, cushions, and what-not, and the Iron Bull and his Chargers were making themselves comfortable at the tavern too. Dorian seemed to take great pleasure in complaining about his quarters but he did seem to enjoy decorating it with what he assured were important stuff but looked just like trinkets to the Inquisitor, and with even more books.

Lavellan hadn’t done much to improve her room, though, she didn’t have anything of her own to fill it. Some people had sent gifts, but she’d felt weird about it, and she’d told Josephine to just place the stuff around Skyhold as she pleased.

Josephine had arranged some things in Lavellan's room too, though, trying to make it more homey, she knew it, and she appreciated it even if she still felt odd alone in that room. 

Now there was a tapestry hanging on the wall in front of her bed, a fluffy rug, a trunk with clothes, a small desk empty except for quill and paper she hadn’t used yet, and a bookshelf with some books chosen by Josephine. Most books were about history, etiquette, but it amused Lavellan to find a copy of High in Hightown by Varric. It’d be the first book she read as soon as she had time.

Still…she missed her clan’s tents, her own tent, her things, her trinkets…she had thought herself independent, yet there she was, missing she wasn’t even sure what… She missed the wilds, too.

The only thing she’d placed for decoration herself was a vase with some wildflowers she picked in the early morning, during the few moments she could still be alone with herself.

It was a small detail, in such a huge, empty room, but it made it feel different somehow, more like home, even.

Looking around the room again, Lavellan thought on Solas’ rotunda. It was so empty too, so cold, although probably the fresco would make it better. She felt flustered once again at what Solas had said, that he was painting her story, her actions…

Her feelings for him just grew each day, the more time she spent around him.

Solas had told her that their kiss had been a mistake, that it couldn’t be, that it was a bad idea…then he did something like that, talked to her the way he did, and sometimes he looked at her in a way…how was she supposed to stop feeling the way she did? She didn’t understand him, though, sometimes he seemed to flirt, encourage her advances, then push her away, just for the same cycle to start again…

It was maddening and yet she still felt the way she did.

Lavellan wondered what Solas was doing now, alone at his rotunda. Was he asleep and dreaming, wandering the Fade? Was he studying? Painting the fresco? Did he feel out of place in that empty, cold room too? Lavellan doubted it, probably he didn’t, but who knew…

Looking at the flowers again, the only thing that felt homey and like herself in the room, Lavellan got an idea.

*

Lavellan had waited until Solas left his rotunda, trying to look like she was not spying or up to something, and once he’d left, she’d picked up the vase of flowers that she’d arranged earlier that morning. She hoped that not many people had seen the Inquisitor picking wildflowers outside the walls before the sun was even up.

Vase in hands, she took the longer route to the rotunda, up the walls and through corridors that usually were empty, unlike the main hall and other areas of the fortress, hoping that Solas wasn't back by the time she reached the room.

She carefully checked that the rotunda was empty before walking in and rushing to place the vase with flowers on the desk that Solas had placed against the wall, the one empty of books and papers, unlike his table in the middle of the room.

Once it was done, Lavellan tried not to get distracted by the additions to Solas’ fresco and rushed out the same way she had come in before anyone, or worse, Solas himself, could walk in and catch her.

Not much later, she had a meeting with her advisors and companions, as per usual. What wasn’t usual was Solas arriving a few minutes late. He was frowning and seemed in thought, more than usual, his eyes scanning every one of them as if he suspected one of them was the culprit of the mysterious flowers that had appeared in his quarters, and Lavellan fought the impulse to smile. 

His eyes lingered on her a bit too long and Lavellan tried to keep her face neutral and not give herself away. She really should be paying attention to what Cullen was saying, though, not sneaking glances at Solas or thinking of trying to get some more flowers on his rotunda the next morning…

*

On the next day, Lavellan repeated the same process, sneaking into Solas’ rotunda with a new vase of flowers after making sure he wasn’t in. This time, she placed them on the table at the center of the room.

It seemed Solas had worked on his fresco that night, it was bigger now and with more detail than when Lavellan had gone to see him the evening before. They had talked about it, about Corypheus, about the Fade, all while Lavellan tried not to look at the vase of flowers that still stood untouched on the desk by the wall.

As she was leaving, doubt crept into her mind. Why was she doing this? Solas hadn't complained about the emptiness of the room, he probably didn’t feel like her, he didn’t need flowers…did he even like flowers? He couldn’t hate them if he hadn’t thrown out the ones she’d placed there the day before, right?

Cursing at her suddenly overthinking mind, this time Lavellan didn’t leave, and instead he took some steps up the staircase that led to the library on the next floor. She leaned over to see into the rotunda but tried to stay hidden, waiting for Solas to come back.

She didn’t have to wait long, she’d barely hidden when the door opened and Solas walked in. His eyes went instantly to the new vase of flowers on his table and… he smiled. He actually smiled. Lavellan couldn’t help her own smile at it and her heart began beating funny. 

Solas looked up from the flowers and straight to where she was hidden and so Lavellan pulled back, trying to rush up the stairs as quickly and quietly as possible. She tried to ignore the looks of the mages as she walked into the library, she knew she had a silly smile on her face, but she couldn’t help it.

He’d liked the flowers.

*

It shouldn’t feel so exciting and thrilling, to get a new vase of flowers in Solas’ quarters, but it did. Lavellan’d picked up some more for herself early that morning too.

She looked around the rotunda, pondering where to place the new vase. She knew she should be quick, Solas could come back at any moment…she felt silly at hiding like that, but giddy at the same, and the idea of giving the flowers directly to him made her flustered.

Focus. Judging by the book he’d left still open on his table, next to the vase of flowers, it didn’t seem like he was going to take long. Lavellan noticed that he was using one of the flowers that she’d first gotten him and that was already drying, as a bookmark…her heart did something funny at it.

She saw that he’d also placed one of the fresh flowers on the small table next to the fresco, where he kept his pigments and brushes…the twirls dancing in her belly were unavoidable now. She decided then that she’d place the new vase of flowers there on that small table.

“I knew it was you.”

Lavellan had barely placed the vase when she heard Solas’s voice, and she looked up to find him walking in from the corridor that led up to the library. He’d been waiting there for her just like she’d been waiting for him the day before.

He was smiling, smug yet sweet too, but Lavellan couldn’t stop how flustered she felt. “I…uh…I’m sorry,” she found herself bursting out those words, she didn’t even know why. She was not sorry.

“What…why?” Solas’ smile faltered for a second, replaced with concern, but then he was smiling softly at her again. “Don’t be. Thank you for the flowers, lethallan.”

“Did you like them?” She asked and Solas nodded.

“Of course I did.” His smile was reassuring, making Lavellan smile again. “But why all the secrecy and hiding?

“I don’t know.” Lavellan shrugged. Because it was too flustering to give him the flowers directly, perhaps. She was not going to say that. “But it was fun.” It was, indeed, she’d felt almost giddy sneaking flowers for Solas.

Solas chuckled, looking at her in a way that made her feel dancing twirls in her belly.

“Dorian’s been having fun too, every time he walks down the library he asks me who’s the admirer delivering flowers.” Solas rolled his eyes but he was smiling. “Should I tell him who’s behind the flowers?”

“No!” Lavellan wouldn’t hear the end of it if he did. “Let’s keep up the mystery.” Solas chucked again, his eyes light with amusement.

Admirer, Dorian’d said…as if someone who was besotted with Solas was leaving him the flowers. It was painfully true and yet…did she want Solas to think that? It was embarrassing, especially if he didn’t feel the same, even if sometimes it felt like he did…

“I’ve been picking flowers for my chamber too,” Lavellan said, as if that could make bringing flowers to Solas feel less intimate. “Trying to make this place more homey.”

“Skyhold is your fortress now. It should feel like your home.”

Solas was nodding to her words, but Lavellan wondered if she should have worded it differently. It was Solas who had gotten them there, who told them about that fortress which could be useful in their current predicament.

“It’s a great fortress, we’re lucky to have it,” she rushed to say. “And I’m sure it’ll feel like home in no time. It already does, with Josephine working on it…and well, with all of you here too. It feels more like home having you all around…having you…”

Lavellan trailed over, stopping her river of words and playing with one of the flowers. Was she saying too much? Being too honest? Too intense?

Without a word, Solas picked the flower she’d been playing with and placed it behind her ear, his fingers lingering on her hair for a moment. Lavellan looked at him. How he was looking at her made her breath hitch.

Solas was looking at her as if she were precious, beautiful, something to treasure. As if he, too, felt like her. He was looking at her like he did that night in the Fade, when she’d kissed him and he’d kissed her back in a way that stole her breath away, holding her so close to him she could just cling to him while they kissed, nothing but him on her mind.

She wanted him to kiss her like that again. Needed it, she’d dare to say

He was so close, he barely needed to lean in and they’d be kissing again. Lavellan placed her hands on Solas’ shoulders, gently, and for a second, it seemed like he’d kiss her, but then he pulled away, like he’d done in the Fade.

“Solas, wait, please,” she called after him.  She reached for his hand out of instinct, and was surprised when Solas not only let her hold his hand but intertwined their fingers, as if it were instinctual for him too. He was still turned half away from her. “Please, don’t leave…I thought…if I’m imposing…I’m sorry.”

“No…it’s not that.” Solas shook his head.

“What is it, then?”

Solas kept confusing her, she couldn’t understand what was going on, why he kept pulling back, when it felt like he too wanted to be close to her.

“I…I fear I’ll forget myself again.” Solas breathed out.

If that meant to deter her, it had the opposite effect, even if she still didn’t understand this situation between them, his constant pull and push. 

“Would that be so bad?”

“Yes…” Solas nodded but he sounded and looked almost sad. “Yes, it would.”

“Solas…if there’s something wrong, you can tell me,” Lavellan told him softly. 

“I…I can't…forgive me, Inquisitor.” Solas let go of her hand and turned away from her. “Thank you again for the flowers, I appreciate them.” With that, he walked out of the rotunda through the door that led up to the walls.

Lavellan watched him go, confused and frustrated, but she didn’t call for him or try to follow him, she didn’t want to press it. Part of her didn’t want to overwhelm Solas, while the other part was afraid of how Solas might react if she insisted.

He kept dodging and refusing her advances. Maybe she’d misinterpreted him and he wasn’t interested, but he was too polite to say so. But then, what was the way he looked at her sometimes…or the way he’d kissed her in the Fade, as if he couldn’t get enough of her…Lavellan felt warmer every time she remembered his kisses.

Then why did he keep refusing her…even in the Fade… Why did he keep saying that it couldn’t be, that it was a mistake. Something was going on and it drove her crazy that she couldn’t know what, that he wouldn’t tell her.

She hoped it wasn’t something silly like not wanting to risk staining the Inquisitor's reputation or having people talking about it, because she really didn’t care.

Maybe he wasn’t interested in her that way and he really meant it when he said their kiss in the fade had been a mishap.

The thought was enough to sour Lavellan’s mood for the rest of the day.

*

Lavellan wasn’t sure what had woken her. She looked around her dark room and found a vase with flowers on her nightstand table. She hadn’t put them there and she didn’t recognize the flowers nor the vase. What was going on?

“Lethallan.”

Solas' voice came from her balcony and she made his silhouette in the darkness. Had he brought her flowers? The idea was sweet but she was too confused to appreciate it. Why in the middle of the night. And how had she not woken up when he walked in, placed the flowers next to her, opened the balcony…did she really sleep so deeply?

“Solas…what’s going on, it’s the middle of the night…” Not that she’d have anything against Solas being in her room at night, in fact, it was not an unwelcoming thought, but still, the situation was…odd.

“Come.”

Lavellan got up from the bed, brows knitted together, and approached the balcony, taking the hand that Solas offered.

Looking out, Skyhold looked different, unspoiled by time.

“We’re in the Fade…” She murmured and Solas nodded. “When is this?”

“I don’t know exactly, but a long time ago…come.” Solas tugged at her hand.

He guided her through an oddly empty Skyhold. Lavellan was sure it should take them longer than it did to walk out of the fortress walls but she tried not to question it, she wasn’t sure how things worked in the Fade.

Soon she found herself in a field of flowers like the ones on the vase at her nightstand table, illuminated by the moon and the stars.

“This is so beautiful,” she said as she looked around, taking everything in. When she looked at Solas, he wasn’t looking at the field but at her. “Thank you for bringing me here.” She smiled at him.

“I knew you’d like it.” A smile tugged at Solas' lips  “You were the one barging into my dreams the last time, I thought I might come knocking on yours.”

“I still don’t know how this works but…thanks.”

They walked together through the field of flowers, with Solas still holding her hand, and the butterflies in Lavellan’s belly danced faster, faster… He’d come to her dreams to bring her flowers and to take her to a field full of them, under the moon and stars…

Lavellan stopped walking, turning to face Solas and taking his other hand. He was looking at her in that way again, like she was precious… She wanted to hold him to her, kiss him, but she didn’t want him pulling away again.

This time, it was her who let go of his hands and took a step back. Solas frowned, looking at her like a puppy who’s been denied more cuddles, and Lavellan wondered if she was evil for enjoying it a bit.

She didn’t move far, though, just enough to sit down on the ground among the flowers. “Come.” She reached towards Solas again and he took her hand, sitting down next to her.

Lavellan looked at all the flowers surrounding them, and then up at the stars shining in the dark sky. Her eyes trailed back to Solas, who was looking at her in that way that was going to be her end…

“Do you know how to make flower crowns?” She asked.

“I…” Solas blinked at her as if taken by surprise at her sudden question and Lavellan couldn’t help her smile at it. “I can’t say I do.”

“Then, let’s learn together.”

*

It took a bit, but eventually, Lavellan was happy enough with the flower crown on her hands.

“There.” Before Solas could react, she reached to place the flower crown on his head. “Pretty.” Solas rolled his eyes but…were his cheeks and ears turning pink? “My, is the wise mage Solas blushing?”

Solas scoffed, clearly flustered, but when Lavellan grinned, Solas smiled too. He took the flower crown and put it on Lavellan’s head. “Now, that is beautiful.”

“Sweet talker, always.” She wanted to kiss him so bad…

There was a moment of silence before she spoke again.

“Solas…you said the kiss was an impulsive mistake, that we shouldn’t…that there can’t be anything between you and me,” she began quietly. “But you’ve never told me why...I'm not asking you to tell me right now, but maybe someday, you’ll explain it…just…I just hope you know you can trust me.”

“Inquisitor…” Solas sighed. 

Lavellan looked at him, expecting frustration that she was asking again, but he just looked sad in a way that made her want to hold him tight.

"I think…I think you too want to kiss me again,” Lavellan told him and Solas nodded but didn’t move any closer. Lavellan reached to cup his face, stroking his cheek with her thumb when he rested it on her palm, leaning into her touch. “So do it. Do it here, in the Fade, and we can pretend it’s only a dream.”

“No.” Solas moved away from her touch. “No, you know it’s not only a dream. I won’t have you here and pretend it’s nothing when you are awake. It’s unfair to you.”

“You can have me too when we’re awake, you know,” Lavellan told him, arching an eyebrow.

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know. And I’ll decide what is unfair to me.” Lavellan knew that something was going on, and she wanted Solas to explain to her what, but not right then. She was tired of cryptic excuses and tangents, of this push and pull between them. “So…stop it and just kiss me.”

She knew he wouldn’t do it if she didn’t take the first step, so she reached to cup his cheek again and leaned to kiss his lips.

For all his talk, Solas kissed her back immediately, reaching to hold her and pull her closer to his body as he’d done the first time, and she clung to him as the kiss deepened.

“This is wrong,” Solas said, pulling away, but he didn’t go far, he was still holding her tight to him and he buried his face on her shoulder.

“So you keep saying…” Lavellan murmured, placing a hand on the back of Solas’ head.

Only he could say something like that after kissing her in a way that stole her breath away, and after pulling her so close she was practically sitting on his lap. Lavellan gasped when he kissed the juncture between her shoulder and neck. 

“Because it is,” Solas said as his mouth trailed kisses over her neck. Lavellan didn’t care. She didn’t care for his words nor for his contradictions, not right then, not with his mouth on her skin and her body pressed warmth against hers.

“Hush.” If he stopped now, Lavellan felt she might just die right there in the Fade. She moved to sit more securely on his lap and she felt Solas taking a sharp breath against the skin of his neck at it. “It’s a dream.”

“You know it’s not,” Solas said and Lavellan reached to cup his face with both her hands, making him look at her and stroking his cheeks with her thumbs.

“Let’s pretend,” she whispered as she leaned to kiss his lips again.

Solas didn’t say anything else, didn’t fight it anymore, giving completely into her, kissing her deeply as he held her tight to him.

*

Lavellan woke up regretfully when the sun began to come up. No. She didn’t want to wake up. She wanted to stay in that flower field in Solas’ arms forever. But it was gone…

Now that she was awake, she couldn’t help but wonder… had it been real? Had she really been in the fade with Solas? Or had it been just a regular dream? It hadn’t felt like only a dream, but how could she know for sure? How could she be certain?

There was no vase with flowers on her nightstand table and the door of the balcony was closed, but she’d expected it, she knew that had happened in the Fade…or in the dream, if it had been just that. But it hadn’t been just a dream, had it? She really hoped not.

Lavellan spotted something on top of the trunk where she kept her clothes, and a smile spread on her face when she realized what it was.

A flower crown.

She rushed out of the bed to pick it up. It was real, and it was made not with the flowers she’d seen on the Fade but with flowers that could be found outside Skyhold walls, like the ones she’d picked for her room and for Solas. He must have sneaked in to place it there without waking her. Who else would have left her a flower crown and made it with those flowers?

Butterflies danced on her belly as she looked at the crown, carefully twirling it on her hands, a big smile on her face. She intended to wear it the whole day, everywhere.

Lavellan couldn’t wait to see Solas' face.

*

NA:

If I knew how to draw, I'd draw Solas in a flower crown.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. If you liked it, please let me know in a comment, and as always, reblogs are more than welcome.

Solavellan has taken over my life and mind. I love Solas character, his story, his depth, and I'm in love with his relationship with Lavellan. It's all so beautiful and tragic. I can only wish they'll get a happy ending in DATV.

I'm also incredibly grateful to Solas and Solavellan for giving me the will and imagination to write after so long.

I hope to write more Solavellan, if anyone would be interested in reading it, although writing Solas is incredibly intimidating.

Excuse my English, it’s not my first language.

[ak4e7a]

sweet disposition – psh

notes: high school au, slice of life, scifi, jay lives to torment sunghoon, angst, hurt, comfort, i learned quantum mechanics to write this, also the first draft of this got me into grad school so #slay i guess

wc: 10.7k

cw: mentions of violence, SA, su1c1de attempt (not actually, it's a metaphor), parent trauma

trailer: you were always stuck in your ways. what happens when you decide to change out of love for someone else?

starring: park sunghoon, lee heeseung, park jongseong, sim jaeyun, and aespa karina (yu jimin)

₊˚ ‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿୨୧ · · ♡ · · ୨୧‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿˚₊

“just desserts” arc — episodes 1-4

You never liked your name. You thought it didn’t suit you. 

After all, it was supposed to mean something like “sound of the heavens”, and you hadn’t spoken in three years. It wasn’t like you were mute or anything. You just didn’t have anything to say to anyone. Like, ever.

Yu Jimin was the closest thing you had to a friend, often acting as a translator between you and the rest of your classmates. You got along well with Jimin because most things she asked would be in the form of a yes or no question, and if she wanted more, it only took one look into your eyes to get an elaborate answer. And you were glad Jimin wasn’t pushy when it came to the subject of your intentional silence.

“I heard they’re playing ‘Silent Penalty’ next week! Those boys are crazy, don’t you think so? Especially Jaeyun and Jongseong,” Jimin cried, clutching her textbooks to her chest with her free arm. You were on your way to your family's cafe, where you worked part-time—Jimin as a waitress, you in the kitchen (where you wouldn’t be bothered).

The month of April tinted the otherwise muted color palette of the outskirts of Shibuya in blushed hues. You always walked home together; the stories of the Hello Kitty murder and the Setagaya Family and the Junko Furuta case so deeply ingrained into their memories that neither of you would allow the other to go anywhere alone. You and Jimin even carried dainty pocket knives in their bags; these were mostly used to open boxes at work or cut slits into the packaging of snacks from the convenience store by your school. But it never hurt to be too safe, especially as teenage girls in a big city.

You nodded, the wind blowing through your high ponytail, tousling several strands out of place. Sometimes you took pity on your friend, wishing you could be better company to the girl who had not left your side since you first moved to Shibuya. You often wondered if you should just tell Jimin how much you appreciated her, and how you wouldn’t leave her unless Jimin explicitly told you to do so. 

Tamago to chikai wa kudake-yasui, you thought to yourself as you continued to walk hand-in-hand. Why not just show her?

It wasn’t like you were a “bad” friend. You often helped Jimin with homework (you did it for her) and you were the one who taught her how to ride a bike. You prepared the best bentos, often shaping the onigiri to resemble the cats from Sailor Moon, and always brought an extra fruit jelly stick for Jimin, who would never fail to still be hungry after lunch.

You wondered if that was enough for Jimin. You supposed it was, since Jimin had never once complained… at least, to your face. But you also wondered how long that would last.

“But, I mean, their leader… he’s kinda cute,” Jimin trailed off. The boy in question was Heeseung, the quiet half of the Fox Club twins. Said “club” was known around Kokusai High School as a sometimes-rowdy, always-mischievous gang, whose members were all brilliant in their own right. “And I heard they’re looking for new members! We should try joining them! Even though… even though we’d be the only girls.”

You exhaled sharply, forcefully — your way of laughing with as little effort as possible. Sometimes, if you felt up to it, you would even treat Jimin to a smile. You followed the pebble you’d been kicking since you left Kokusai before stopping to pick it up and rub it clean with the hem of your sweater. Then you handed the polished stone to Jimin, who took it happily, saying she’d add it to her jar at home.

“I think joining them would be a good idea, even if we’d be the only girls… Maybe they’ll find a way to get you to talk again,” Jimin mumbled as you walked ahead of her. 

Sometimes, you mused, Jimin would say things and forget that you weren’t deaf, just quiet. Extremely, deafeningly quiet.

“Oh! Did you see that new experiment on TV last night?” Jimin asked, catching up to you. “The one about the snails getting their memories erased.”

You raised your eyebrows, and Jimin continued recounting the details from the news report she watched with her dad.

“I bet they taste gross. Don’t know why people have tried eating them. But you could probably find some way to fix that, huh?” she chirped, opening the back door of the cafe. “Since you’re so good at cooking.

You looked up, turning to Jimin with a playful gleam dancing along the outer corners of your normally blunted affect. You shrugged, as if to say, maybe, but it’s anyone’s guess, and helped Jimin tie her pink apron up.

It was a slow afternoon, the usual customers trickling in one at a time like the dregs of a coffee machine after it’s finished brewing. You noticed that Jimin was especially chatty at the register today, and sighed to yourself as you refilled the almond flour jar slower than your grandmother would have liked. How you wished you could join in the conversation.

It was a shame you were still convinced they’d hear you, but no one would truly listen.

When you finished every random task you could think of doing, you peeked out of the little window between the kitchen and the front counter. Its position was perfect for you to watch the television above the customers’ seating area without being caught by whoever happened to be working the cashier shift.

The program on the television that afternoon was a replay of Yuzuru Hanyu’s record-breaking short routine in figure skating at the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. Yuzuru had since become one of Japan’s permanent darlings, on and off the ice.

You frowned. That could have been you, had you not torn your right Achilles tendon right before high school started; had you not disappointed your entire family in front of a national audience; had you not landed on your ankle on purpose, because you didn’t know how else to tell your mother that your coach had been touching you in the locker room ever since you put your first pair of skates on. It’s not like your mother would have believed you. She was dating him, after all.

Maybe you would have been an Olympian had you not done any of those things, because no one gave medals out for lying and saying everything was fine.

“Y/N-ie,” Jimin called. “Where’s the milk bread?”

There was no answer, but that was a given. Jimin turned around to find your attention fixed to the television, eyes following Yuzuru’s every movement. If you still spoke, you would have been excitedly calling out each triple Axel and Lutz jump as you saw them.

But no sound came out of you, aside from the slow, deep breaths you took.

Jimin immediately grabbed the remote and changed the channel.

You snapped out of your maladaptive daydreaming, picturing yourself on that podium, and went back into the kitchen without any hesitation, and the milk bread was out of the oven several minutes later.

“Hello!” Jimin said. That was odd, you thought. You were about to close for the night. Usually, in the time you’d been working there, this part of your shift went interrupted.

“Oh… Is halmeoni not here?” went the soft, low voice.

Why are they looking for Grandma?

“No, not today. She hasn’t been feeling well lately. Can I get you anything?”

You crept toward the little window again, peeking behind the vase of lavender flowers that sat on the left side of the shelf that ran along the bottom. You recognized the person speaking. He was wearing the Kosukai boys’ uniform: navy blue blazer, a white shirt, burgundy and mauve necktie, and navy trousers. He was quite tall, with full, messy, dark-brown-almost-black hair parted down the middle, framing his tired, upturned eyes.

He was one of the Fox boys—but not one of high ranking, to your knowledge.

“Oh… um…”

“I’ll give you a moment to decide what you want. Pardon me,” Jimin said sweetly, before walking into the kitchen. The sound of the door swinging open startled you, causing you to nearly knock an open sack of flour over. You ducked down under the window before the boy could spot you. Jimin laughed. “What are you doing? Are you spying?” 

Pause. 

“Do you know who he is?”

No, said your pursed lips. You grabbed a sheet of scrap paper and a pen from the pocket of your frilly black apron and scrawled something down quickly. Jimin took it from you. 

I think that’s the boy Grandma told me about. The one she gives the unsold pastries to at the end of the day.

Jimin giggled. “Oh, no shit. He’s cute! But not as cute as Heeseung.”

You rolled your eyes at a specific tempo that Jimin perfectly recognized to mean shut up, he can probably hear you.

“Well, I’ll clean up here. You go give him the bread.” 

And with that, she pushed you through the swinging door as if she were moving a stack of heavy crates.

It was times like these that you wished she still had the will to speak, so that you could scream at your friend in disbelief. Jimin sometimes liked to take advantage of the fact that you would only physically protest if she thought it was worth fighting about. 

Your eyes softened when you looked at the boy, whose complexion had suddenly tinted the color of pickled plums. It was an uncanny look for someone who was seemingly so reserved and collected, from the times you’d seen him in passing.

“Oh. you ’re the granddaughter, right? Y/N? you ’re in class 3-A, right?” he said, his hands behind his back as he bowed. You nodded.

“I’m in 3-B… So it’s true, huh?” 

Pause. 

“You don’t talk?” 

Another nod.

“You can call me Sunghoon. Nice to meet you,” he said, to which he received a decidedly polite nod. “Oh, yeah. I forgot. I guess you can call me that in your head. Are you the one who does all the baking? If you are, it’s really good.”

You smiled like your muscles weren’t used to the strain before heading to the display case, a brown paper bag in hand. You slid the metal door open and used a pair of tongs to transfer the baked goods into the bag, deftly maneuvering each piece so as to not crush anything. You tied the bag closed with a piece of white ribbon and handed it to him, not allowing yourself to linger on how his cheeks had not let up on their rosy hue.

Sunghoon offered to walk you and Jimin home, out of politeness (and genuine concern for your safety, he said). Jimin accepted before you could even so much as blink a strong no, thanks, and so he waited as the two of you finished closing the cafe before heading in the direction of your apartment building. You tried your best not to panic. Being around the opposite sex was not high up on your very short list of favorite situations.

“I’ve never had a conversation so one-sided and yet only mildly uncomfortable,” Sunghoon said, having since regaled you with some of the more tame stories about the Fox Club. He told you about the time the twins came to school dressed in the girls’ uniforms, when he and three other boys (Park Jonseong, Yang Jungwon, and Nishimura Riki) got into a fight on the train after catching someone nonconsensually taking an upskirt picture, and the famous incident in which more than half of the Foxes ended up in the swimming pool, still fully clothed. “Y/N could hate me for all I know.”

You scowled. He adjusted the strap of your bookbag on his shoulder, clearing his throat. “No, wait, that’s not what you think it means. I meant that because you don’t say anything, you can spend more time judging me.”

You gave him a variation of the same exhaled laugh you only reserved for Jimin, shaking your head. You could already tell Sunghoon was kind by the way he walked on the side closest to the road, and never pushed you to speak the way others tended to do.

“You aren’t?”

I am, but I don’t think poorly of you. It’s the opposite, really.

Jimin chuckled. “She has other things to do besides complain. Like be my best friend. Right, Y/N?”

You nodded.

Of course. you’re pretty much all I have left, and that makes me more pathetic than ever.

—

The next Friday, you took the challenger’s seat at the Fox Den’s lunch table, on an otherwise bleak, foggy afternoon.

The entire cafeteria was in shock. The aforementioned seat was more of a symbolic gesture than anything; the Foxes rarely, if ever, gained new members because of how rough their games could get. The reward, however, was respect, notoriety, and the unyielding loyalty of seven teenage boys.

“Alright, hold on,” Jaeyun, the outgoing one of the twins and de-facto second in command, interrupted as the other boys cheered and swooned over you. He ran a hand through his dyed pastel pink hair cooly, eyeing you in front of him; your posture indicated that you were not scared in the slightest. 

You were everyone’s hallway crush, despite your cold exterior and refusal to even consider any confessions of their affection. Not one day could go by without you hearing usually-innocent comments about how pretty you were, garnering comparisons to different shoujo protagonists.

And to exacerbate those remarks, that week, you’d heard the boys giving Sunghoon shit after finding out he walked you and Jimin home; it was all they talked about in their free time since Monday morning, bombarding him with questions about what your voice sounded like and if there were really scars on your ankle and how you smelled. 

Everyone froze, waiting for the next words. Jaeyun looked at you as if you were a particularly difficult sudoku puzzle. “You sure you want to do this? I won’t go easy on you just because you’re a girl.”

You nodded metronomically.

Jimin cried out a sharp “No!” before covering her mouth in what you thought was a mix of devastation and realization, tears pooling in her eyes like spring dewdrops on blades of grass. When her eyes locked with yours, the universe was put on hold for a moment. You wished you could hold her hand and say it out loud.

I’m doing this for you.

Beside Jaeyun, Park  Jongseong, another one of your fellow third-years, brandished two long needles, previously wrapped in his white handkerchief. He towered in front of you like the Tokyo Skytree, his long black hair covering one eye, the other glinting playfully under the fluorescent lights of the cafeteria. He’d abandoned his blazer over the back of the empty chair in front of her, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up, exposing the prominent veins along his inner forearms. “Who’s going today?”

“I’ll do it,” Sunghoon said over the voices of the other club members, easing his way through the slowly-growing crowd of students. “Let’s make it quick.”

“Who has the stuff?” Jongseong asked, spraying something onto the needles that made the club’s seating area instantly smell like a hospital. You grimaced only for a second, pushing back the memories of being in the emergency room.

There was an exchange between two closed fists, and before any more objections, Heeseung was announcing the rules to Silent Penalty, tossing a pair of dice in the air as he spoke.

“A roll of eight means you take a penalty mission. If both parties have eight at the end of the same round, both will face penalty. We’ll do two penalties. Keep a straight face through both, and you win. Back out, and you forfeit the whole game. Consequences will be decided later on.” He shot a glance at Y/N. “If you win, you will be the first girl in the club. Do you accept?”

You shook your head slowly. The boys whispered furiously behind you. You pointed at Jimin.

“Oh… She means that I get to come, too,” Jimin piped up, half-hidden behind Yang Jungwon’s broad back.

The dark-haired twin snickered. “Fine. That doesn’t bother me. Anyone against it? No? Then let’s start. Good luck, Y/N. Sunghoonie is our best Penalty player.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘best’,” Jongseong argued. “Luckiest, sure.”

Round one: you , 7; Sunghoon, 4.

Round two: you , 9; Sunghoon, 7.

Round three: you , 5; Sunghoon, 11.

“Shit, Seung,” Jongseong murmured to Heeseung as they stood behind Sunghoon. “Maybe you should have picked a different penalty number.”

Heeseung grinned, patting his friend on the back with a heavy hand. “It’s a thirteen-point-eighty-nine percent chance of rolling an eight. Not zero. Just be patient.”

Tensions mounted in the tenth round, but neither Sunghoon nor you were fazed. Not even when both of you rolled your first eight.

Jaeyun clapped, earning him a glare from his twin brother. “Oh, finally.”

“First penalty,” Heeseung announced, nudging Jaeyun aside. “Jongseong, the needles, please.”

Jimin gasped. “No, wait, what are you doing?”

“Ear piercings,” Jongseong answered with a grin as he began to sanitize two silver studs in his handkerchief. With his free hand, he held Jimin firmly in her spot by the cuff of her blazer. “Don’t worry, Heeseung is good at it.” Still clutching her, he used their joined hands to point to his right ear, a diamond earring in the center of his lobe. “Got this one last year.”

“Ready?” Heeseung asked, taking the alcohol-soaked handkerchief from Jongseong, hands already gloved up.

Everyone watched in silence as Sunghoon allowed Heeseung to confidently push the needle into his cartilage. Sunghoon blinked once, twice, then licked his lips all while the earring was inserted and the backing locked into place.

Taking the other needle, Heeseung sauntered over to you. You looked at him before turning to Sunghoon, brushing your hair away from your face.

“You already have a piercing,” he frowned, gingerly pinching your right ear between his pointer finger and thumb. “I’ll just pick another spot… is this okay?”

You nodded, feeling him graze over the protrusion covering the opening of your ear. You inhaled what could have been construed as the last breath of a dying woman, then exhaled as Heeseung pushed the needle through the thick cartilage of her tragus. He screwed the earring into place, smirking.

“Brave girl.” He turned to his brother. “Did she flinch?”

“Didn’t even blink,” Jaeyun praised. “Fucking sick.”

Sunghoon bit his lip, taking the dice out of your cold hand.

Round fifteen: you , 8; Sunghoon, 8.

“Damn, again?” Jongseong remarked. “That’s either very lucky or very unlucky.”

“The special lunch, Sunghoon,” Heeseung commanded. The boy ducked under the table to retrieve a bento box, blowing his bangs out of his face as he came back up. He looked like he was going to throw up. You thought the pain in his ear couldn’t have been that bad for him.

“Do we have to?” he asked. “Can’t we do something else?”

You answered on Heeseung’s behalf, leaning forward, propping your chin up with your hand, elbow resting on the tabletop as you looked into his eyes. Whatever it is, let’s just get it over with. Unless you’re too scared.

“No.” Jaeyun opened the box, revealing two snails and a small clear container filled with white crystalline grains. Sugar, you hoped, although it was most likely salt. “Here. We’re running out of time.”

You each reached for a snail, Sunghoon opting for the larger of the two.

“Wait,” Heeseung ordered, eyes narrowing to the point where he resembled the nickname he was often called—snake. You and Sunghoon waited, still clutching their own snails. “Sunghoonie, give yours to Y/N. She’s the challenger, not you.”

You resisted the urge to squirm as you felt a jolt run up your arm, like you’d accidentally touched the prongs of a plug that was halfway out of an electrical socket.

Sunghoon scowled. “This isn’t going to be pretty, regardless.”

Amane put her free hand over his, with an expression she hoped he would understand as  don’t worry, it’ll be fine, and they switched snails.

“Put some sugar and eat it,” Jaeyun chimed in.

Amane let go of his hand as he glared at the shock of pink hair sticking out in the crowd. “The shells, too?” he drawled.

“Don’t be a smartass, Hoon,” Jongseong laughed.

It was slimy and bitter, even with the sugar. You kept your focus on Sunghoon as your lips wrapped around the opening of the shell, sucking on the body until it slid into your mouth. you r first mistake was chewing, the snail guts oozing onto your palate. you r vision blackened around the edges, and in the span of several milliseconds the Sunghoon that sat in front of you was replaced by the image of a younger boy, with the same dark black-brown hair and dark eyes, albeit thinner, almost haggard-looking.

All you could do while you were frozen in place was swallow, watching the boy as he was pushed out of the front door of an unfamiliar house by someone who could have only been his father, a silver second-place trophy thrown after him. It clattered to the ground, smashing into several pieces that the boy gathered up into the hem of his black sweater. He ran through the old, worn-down neighborhood until he reached another apartment, knocking on the glossy red door until a dark-haired woman with glasses answered, letting the crying boy inside.

You felt the unwelcome but familiar sinking feeling of parental disappointment gather in the pit of your stomach, its endless tentacles swirling and wrapping themselves around the chunks of snail entrails that slid down your esophagus.

You guessed that Sunghoon was experiencing something similar, which meant that he saw the memory of a young girl gliding across a sheet of ice in a skintight jeweled red leotard and matching skirt with all the elegance and grace of a koi fish in water. Out of the corner of the girl’s periphery, a group of people gathered at a section of the plexiglass that framed the entire ice rink; one man smiled, and he saw you skate into a jump before landing with a resounding crack that caused every spectator in the stadium to get on their feet for a closer look.

He would have then seen that man run onto the ice and pick you up, cradling you too close to his body even if he were your father. His hands were in the wrong places, and Sunghoon would have to have wondered why no one was saying anything. Perhaps their focus was all on the blood that began to seep through your nude-colored tights.

“Congratulations, Y/N,” went one of the twins—your focus was too far elsewhere to distinguish or care about who it was. “Welcome to the Fox Club.” 

You ran out of the school building as soon as the dismissal bell rang, Jimin and Sunghoon calling out after you.

— 

“Umiushi,” Sunghoon said, pointing to the creatures at the bottom of the metal basin. You were in the kitchen of the apartment he shared with his aunt, who just so happened to be a marine biologist studying these so-called “memory snails”. “That’s what we ate. But it’s a special type. Jimin said she told you about them.”

You watched the sea snails in a curious disgust, afraid that they would somehow leap out of the water and down your throat. You nodded to affirm him.

“Yeah. Basically, they have some sort of molecule that can be blocked so that their memories can be blocked, too. There’s not much else we know about them… and I asked Aunt Mina—don’t worry, I didn’t tell her what I saw or anything, it was a hypothetical question—I asked her if it’s possible to transfer memories, and she said it’s impossible right now. Something like that would be magic.”

You grimaced. Magic was for children.  

It had been two months since that Friday afternoon that changed everything. Since that day, Sunghoon had followed you home, knowing full well what you’d seen from the snail he’d first touched, the one you ended up eating. He told you how his Aunt Mina took him in after his father disowned him for losing the chess tournament, and how they hadn’t spoken since. 

The next morning, you showed up at their house and handed him an origami crane with Why the bread, then? scrawled inside.

Sunghoon explained to you that he was saving all his pocket money to one day pay for a chess “tutor” to whip him into shape, so he could win enough matches for him to go home—the promise his father had made to him the last time they’d spoken, almost a decade ago. You appreciated the honesty of a mere acquaintance so much so that you returned to school after that weekend with a photocopy of several diary entries that pertained to the memory he’d intercepted.

Inside, you confirmed his suspicions. The man was your coach, and, incidentally, your mother’s boyfriend. No one believed what was going on, and your furious mother sent you to live with your estranged father’s mother in Shibuya. It was almost five hours away from Sendai, where you had grown up and trained with one of Japan’s future Olympic figure skaters, Yuzuru himself. Before the incident, it was pretty much guaranteed that you would reach that level, too, since everyone said you were blessed by the gods with such talent. But as your mother said, it was you who ruined everything. Not the gods, not the universe, not fate.

You stopped speaking, Sunghoon learned in your handwriting, because you felt as though no one would listen if you did. You said it was easier that way, less effort on your part. It was harder for you to make promises that you didn’t even want to consider keeping. It forced people to be direct, otherwise they’d get nowhere with you. You didn’t like talking, anyway. It was worth less than acting upon things.

The final page of the diary entries was a single line, a proverb you lived by. 

Tamago to chikai wa kudake-yasui.

Eggs and vows are easily broken.

— 

You stood on the rooftop, the frigid night air whipping your cheeks the color of the sakura trees below. You and Sunghoon had snuck to the top of one of the Tokyo skyscrapers way past midnight, on a whim. Now, as one of the Foxes, you would agree that life was a bit more fun with some trouble.

You were more than happy Jimin had finally confessed her feelings to Heeseung, and he’d reciprocated, even if it meant you and your best friend spent less time alone together. While Sunghoon could never take Jimin’s place exactly, he fit into your life just fine. Maybe it was because you made space for him to be there.

He loved fruit jelly sticks just as much as Jimin, so you started bringing an extra one for him as well. You noticed that when he took the leftovers from your grandmother’s cafe, the taiyaki in the bag excited him the most. He told you that they were called something else back home in Korea, but he thought yours tasted better. After that, you would always “accidentally” make too many, and give him the rest when you thought no one was looking. You once found him in the library playing chess against himself, and the next day you sat in front of him and played until the lunch bell rang, having learned the rules the night before.

You found out Sunghoon spoke the same language as you. Acts of service. He carried around a pack of Salonpas because you were prone to muscle cramps and the occasional shooting pain in your ankle. you ’d always blush and look away when he’d hand you a clip to keep your hair out of your face, ignoring how his fingers lingered on yours just a split second too long to be platonic. When the boys would tease the two of you about being constantly together, you would text your snarky comeback to Sunghoon, and he would say it out loud for you. And everyone would laugh.

You truly were practically inseparable, though. You couldn’t bring yourself to shut him out, not when he’d already seen what you considered to be the worst part of you and why you were the way you were, and still chosen to think the best of you. On Friday nights, when Jimin and Heeseung were out on yet another city expedition, the two of you would sit on the plastic-covered couch in your grandmother’s living room and watch Yuri On Ice, the anime about a competitive figure skater’s return to the sport. And Sunghoon wouldn’t make you feel embarrassed about crying, only comforting you after making sure it was okay to touch you.

You liked him. He could doze off at times, but he never made a big deal about it. You admired that. And you also appreciated that he never said he felt sorry for you and what happened when you were thirteen. It was unnecessary, you thought. The important thing was that he was there.

The Foxes always traveled in packs. For the boys, it was a sign of friendship. To you, it was protection. Being one of the two girls in the club meant they were extra protective over you, and Sunghoon was no exception. In fact, he was the rule. Every day, without fail, he and Heeseung would walk you and Jimin to school, then to work, then back home.

The world felt a little less lonely to you. And maybe, just maybe, you could stop running from it with one good leg to stand on. Maybe you could find it in yourself to forgive a world that took, since that world had Sunghoon in it. Almost as if it were trying to make it up to you.

His black scarf was wrapped around your neck, flooding your nose with the scent of clean laundry and musk. He’d let you wear it on the train ride over to Shinjuku, and you wondered if he was falling in love with you, too. You hoped that he knew you weren’t scared of being so close to him. Not when he was everything you needed from yourself.

“It’s time we started living for ourselves, don’t you think?” you asked, staring down at the city lights in all their neon glory. Every single speck represented another disappointment, another broken heart, another fruitless wish. None of it mattered. But it still did. “Maybe start chasing a different dream. Maybe the same one. But be in control this time. It’s more fun that way, isn’t it?”

The wind blew your pleated uniform skirt upward, and when you turned to see if Sunghoon was looking, he was. At your face. You had just mustered the courage to speak again, voice raspy from years of unuse. You leaned ever so slightly over the edge, arms spread out wide, feeling the strong breeze catch your body in the current. The tickle of the urge to free-fall played around in your mind.

“Y/N!” Sunghoon yelled before grabbing your wrist at the last possible moment and pulling you back hard enough for you to fall on top of him. You clambered off after a moment’s hesitation, sitting beside him and smoothing out the hem of your skirt.

You looked down, almost ashamed of your impulse. “You….”

“Y/N,” he wheezed, pushing his bangs out of his face as he tried to collect himself. “Are you crazy?”

Your brow furrowed as you examined the worried expression that painted his delicate, sculpted face. “What… What’s wrong, Sunghoon?” The roll of your tongue felt nice in your mouth; yes, you could get used to saying his name out loud. “Are you okay?”

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” Sunghoon retorted, to which you answered with your usual breathy laugh.

“I don’t think killing yourself is that funny—did I miss a joke or something?”

You smiled at him, taking his hand into yours. His was much bigger, and warmer, but felt right all the same. “I wasn’t going to kill myself at all,” you said. “At least, not literally.”

Goodbye, silent Y/N.

–––

“under the moon” arc — episodes 5-8

It had been four months since the snail incident. And while you certainly would have not preferred to have someone who was a stranger at the time witness the worst thing that had ever happened to you, you didn’t regret having the sticky ooze of entrails coagulate in your body.

Because you would have never guessed you would gain a whole new family out of it.

The boys could get rowdy at times, but they meant well—for the most part. Those occasional instances when they didn’t were usually because someone had decided to bother you  and force you to speak for them. You didn’t mind talking most of the time now; all that mattered was that you got to decide when you’d open your  mouth and to whom you’d speak to.

Being one of the two girls in the group certainly had its drawbacks, but you liked to think you balanced them out just fine. After all, their detention rate had gone down in the past couple of months thanks to you insisting they stop throwing water balloons off the gym’s roof and they stop sneaking into the basketball team’s gym to deflate all the balls.

“Y/N-ie,” Jongseong chirped as he sauntered over to the Foxes’ table with his bento in hand. He was the only one besides Jimin who used that particular honorific, and you only allowed him to do so because of how stupidly tall he was compared to you. “Where’s Hoon?”

You looked up from your food, stony eyes glancing at the other boys—and Jimin, who sat beside Heeseung—and everyone shrugged. You blinked slowly at Jongseong before answering, “He’s going to enter the cafeteria in… five seconds.”

“You’re just bullshitting at this point,” Jaeyun laughed, mouth full of rice. While he was certainly more in-your-face than his twin brother, the Foxes’ vice president was surprisingly still pleasant to be around. You would never say it to his ridiculous pink hair, though, because he’d never shut up about it if you did. “Damn, you eat one snail and suddenly you’re Yuuji Itadori or something.”

“She’s not making it up, Yunie,” Jimin chimed in from where Heeseung’s arm was around her shoulder. She pointed in the direction of the double doors. “Look, there he is.”

You lifted your bag out of the chair next to you without even looking to see if Sunghoon had already reached the table. It was like you had a radar for him and him only, and you’d spent the last few days staying up late thinking about how that was possible.

You both seemed to be able to sense what the other person was feeling, which meant that neither of you were ever hungry, tired, or in a bad mood for long. You often would run into each other during times you normally weren’t supposed to be together, the rare occasions where you would spend your weekends alone always seemed to change the moment the both of you left your houses. At one point, you two discovered that not only did Sunghoon have an insane talent for drawing, but he could accurately guess what you were wearing and how your hair was styled without having seen you prior to his sketches.

Thankfully, however, you couldn’t totally read each other’s minds. You would be embarrassed for Sunghoon to find out you’d come to love him if he could hear your thoughts.

It couldn’t have been the snails that did this to you, right?

“Sorry, Hiroto-sensei was chewing my ass out,” Sunghoon said as he shrugged off his uniform blazer and sat down. He placed a carton of mango juice beside your hand, the straw already punctured through the foil seal.

“You were sleeping in class again, weren’t you?” you asked, handing Sunghoon the bento you spent the morning preparing for him. It had all his favorites—pork curry, rice, natto, a soft boiled egg, and the taiyaki from your family’s cafe.

“At this point, I don’t know why he even tries,” he laughed. You smiled at him softly. You were glad you found it in yourself to speak, because your new family actually paid attention to you. They didn’t possess Sunghoon’s attuned nature towards you, but you appreciated them all the same. “I need my nine hours one way or the other.”

“You had nine hours last night.” You paused, chopsticks in midair. “Jongseong, why are you staring?”

The black-haired boy looked at you as if you should have known the answer. “It’s like you two have powers or something.”

“Why would you say that?” Sunghoon asked.

“You two are so connected, it’s romantic.”

You tried to hide the blush spreading across your face. “Shut up.”

You and Sunghoon both agreed that God—at least, the one from Christianity—wasn’t real. Something from a World War II history documentary they’d watched together said it best—a line carved into the walls of a jail in the Mauthausen concentration camp.

“If there is a God, then He will have to beg for my forgiveness.”

Certainly, that God was all sorts of fucked up to grant free will. To allow your figure skating coach to violate your body for years. To be unable to stop Sunghoon’s father from beating him for every game of chess he lost. To give the worst pain to the least deserving.

That is the problem of evil. That if there were such suffering in the world, and yet God could not prevent it, then He is not omnipotent. Maybe He didn’t even come close to the power that Izanami and Izanagi or any of the other Shinto deities held, and they were far from perfect.

Sunghoon once told you that he would destroy the whole world for you if he could, to which you simply rolled your eyes and said that that would be no fun. This was, incidentally, after he’d gifted you a painting he’d done of the ancient lotus garden in Kumamoto. Making art was his new hobby that you made him pick up so he wouldn’t be so burnt out playing chess all the time.

“And why not?”

“Because our suffering helps us delight in everything else that much more,” you answered, resting your cheek on his shoulder. You knew you wouldn’t have said that two months ago, that you would have instead told him that humans are put on Earth to suffer and nothing else, but after being around friends who didn’t take life so seriously (if they ever did at all), you’d learned to have fun with your finite existence as it was.

Of course, you appreciated Sunghoon’s sentiment all the same. It held you close and told you everything would be alright, that the way your life had turned out was not your fault like you’d believed it was, but rather a consequence of things you could not control. In your physics class, Hiroto-sensei had quoted Albert Einstein during a lecture on quantum mechanics.

“God does not play dice with the universe.”

That was to say, Einstein never believed in the idea that atoms were governed by randomness. He turned his nose up at the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which itself stated that there was no way to accurately predetermine the speed and position of a particle at any moment. He asserted that there was no way that anything could be certain, that it wasn’t possible to describe things in terms of probabilities. He thought that the course of all events was fixed, that God formulated and prescribed a certain set of laws and sat back to watch the universe evolve in accordance with those laws.

You would have to disagree with him.

After all, what kind of vindictive God would— 

— 

“Sunghoon,” you said as you laid on the floor of your living room, listening to music in English because you promised each other that one day you would get out of the country together. On this particular night, your album of choice was Radiohead’s Pablo Honey. 

He had mentioned that the band, at one point, refused to play “Creep” live because it was the one song the audience came to hear. You knew what that felt like. 

Sunghoon turned his gaze away from the ceiling to look at you, his eyes softening. “Hm?”

“Do… do you still like chess?”

You knew that he would understand what you meant by that. In the past few weeks, you’d had to practice with him after it turned out that you were a better opponent than anyone in Kokusai’s chess club. Sunghoon was still dead-set on going back to playing competitively, all in the name of being allowed to return to his childhood home, to his father, one day. At least, that’s what you thought.

Something about that made you uneasy, but you knew you were in no place to cast stones. After all, you had your own share of disappointing your parents. Your own mother had not come to see you in Shibuya since the day she abandoned you there, effectively handing over any parenting duties to your grandmother. The phone works two ways, and she’d never acknowledged that fact of the universe. And, unlike Sunghoon, you had never been offered the opportunity to go back “home” to Sendai. As if that place had ever been your home to begin with.

The nuances between your circumstances were only sparing, to say the least.

“You’re worried about me,” he declared. “You think I want to win a tournament so I can go home.”

You hummed in agreement.

“Well, yeah. I want to go home. But only to drop that stupid trophy off at my father’s door and be the one who never speaks to him again. Besides, why should I return to that place when I’m completely fine here?”

Maybe Jongseong had a point, you thought. Maybe you two did share something more than a lunch box of snails. Maybe it’s romantic, after all.

“Are you really okay here?”

He returned his gaze to the ceiling, avoiding your eyes. “Yeah. Because it’s where you are.”

— 

Sunghoon knelt down at your feet, lacing up your ice skates.

However, your legs were bouncing uncontrollably, and it wasn’t because of how cold the indoor rink was. Part of you wished that your Achilles tendon didn’t heal completely.

“Look, you made it this far,” Sunghoon said quietly, brushing his fingers against your supposed bad ankle. The doctors had said you’d be fine to skate on it, that it was your mind that wasn’t allowing you to try again. “We can come back another time.”

You shook your head. How you’d longed to be back, pining for a time where you would be free from the prison of invisible hands gripping her limbs, pinning you down on the ground. “No. I promised you we’d do it today. I need to do this for myself, too.”

“If you can’t—”

“Don’t tell me you doubt me, because I’ve already got that covered,” you snapped, the words flying out faster than you could control them. Your hand came up to cover your mouth. “I’m sorry, Hoonie. I didn’t mean—”

He shook his head, a slight smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “Don’t worry. It’s nice to finally hear what you think. But I disagree. You are so much more than you realize. I’m proud of you.”

Your eyes closed gently before you allowed herself to momentarily soak up those four words.

Then you shrugged off your coat and took his hand, letting him guide you to the rink. The frigid air tried to seep through your fleece-lined stockings but it was nothing to you as you began to wobble on the ice. You scolded herself internally and forced her muscles to relax. It was unbecoming of you to say you should have been an Olympian before the accident and then proceed to look like you needed a walker. 

It took several moments before you began to glide carefully, the blades of your skates just an extension of your body.

You didn’t need to go back to Sendai anymore. You could stand on both legs now, head held high.

For the next few minutes, you took your time getting used to the feeling again, silently willing all of your faith in yourself to return. You were different now. You could trust yourself. Protect yourself.  Being a Fox brought that out of you—your bravery, determination, the unabashed desire to take what the universe threw at you and spit it back in its face.

Of course, you had to thank Sunghoon for showing up when he did. Before then, you were what some people would call just waiting to die. Waiting for the possible day in which you would stop being who you were.

He never forced you to do anything you didn’t want to do. He never forced himself on you. The first time you ever held hands, it was you who reached for him in your sleep as you napped on the floor next to him, the space heater keeping the two of you warm.

Don’t be scared. Don’t be scared.

You didn’t need to, anymore. You glanced over your shoulder to find Sunghoon watching you intently, head propped up with his hand as he leaned on the railing.

One, two… three… jump.

You closed your eyes and leapt, spinning three hundred and sixty degrees before landing with only minimal strain, the skirt of your dress fluttering. You could hear Sunghoon’s overjoyed cries faintly as you continued to swim through the air, feeling the rush that used to overcome you when you were younger, although this time, there was nothing looming over you like the shadow of the Grim Reaper. Your entire body vibrated, all of your electrons dancing along with you.

Sunghoon didn’t hesitate when you came to him, pulling you in for a tight hug.

It was short-lived, though, because as soon as you came into contact,

you passed right through him.

“What… what the fuck?” he whispered, turning his head around to see you standing behind him. You were staring at your own hands, wondering what the hell just happened. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. It didn’t hurt.” You looked at him with a mirrored wide-eyed expression. “I think we need to call Jongseong.”

“I knew it,” Park Jongseong said smugly, strolling into the lobby of the ice rink with his hands in his pockets and an unlit Seven Stars dangling from his lips. You and Sunghoon sat one seat apart, in fear that it would happen again.

“Don’t be crazy,” you muttered as you crossed your arms. You uncrossed them when you considered the possibility that your hands could go inside your body if you weren’t careful. “There’s no such thing as having powers.”

“Sure,” Sunghoon added. “But there has to be some sort of explanation for this.”

Jongseong grinned, pushing his black hair out of his face. “Yeah. You’ve heard of quantum theory, right? Atomic principles? Hoon, you weren’t asleep during that lecture, were you?”

“Maybe I was. What do atoms have to do with any of this?” Sunghoon asked, rolling his eyes.

“Well, basically… how can I explain this easily… uh… your atoms and Y/N’s were so perfectly aligned that you… y’know… passed through each other.”

You frowned. “But Einstein said—”

“He was wrong. People can be wrong. Shit, even the gods were wrong sometimes. Damn, do you sleep in class, too?”

“I—”

“Nothing,” Jongseong said, “is a guarantee. Except death.”

Take that, Einstein.

— 

“You’re beautiful. I wish I could draw you right now,” he said.

You let out a soft, nervous laugh. “Cameras exist. You could just take a picture.”

“That’s not nearly enough.”

Your hands trailed shakily along the lapels of Sunghoon’s blue blazer, fingertips grazing the hem as he edged closer to you. You wondered if the accident would happen again.

“H-hoon…” you whispered as you attempted to sink your head deeper into his scarf wrapped around your neck. “I’m scared.”

They were on the rooftop you’d killed herself on—in the metaphorical sense—all those months ago. Since then, everything as you knew it was different, from your voice to the way you presented yourself all the way down to how you felt. 

“Nonsense,” he quipped in the same hushed tone. Your eyes were locked on your shoes, feet pointed toward one another. “You’re damn well the bravest person I know. It’s contagious, actually.”

“This is different,” you replied. You rubbed the fabric of his blazer feebly. “I…”

“I love you,” he said, tucking his index and middle fingers beneath her chin to tilt your head up to look at him. “I really love you.”

I love you. I love you a lot.

“No! you  can’t just… you can’t just say it like that!” you protested, hands flattening against his broad chest and attempting to push him away from you. It was no use. Despite how lanky he appeared to be, he was built like an iron wall.

Sunghoon chuckled, wrapping his fingers around yours. “How would you rather I say it?”

You froze as heat rose to your face. They’d just discussed this in class; the story went that Souseki Natsume, a famous writer who once taught English, said that because the Japanese did not declare their love so loosely the way Westerners did, the most appropriate equivalent of the expression would be “the moon is beautiful, isn’t it?”.

And the most appropriate “literary” response to that came out of your mouth smoothly, like melted ice cream. “Shindemo ii wa.”

I would die happy.

–––

season finale: i know the end — episodes 9-12

When observed under a microscope, two particles both affected by one experience will no longer exist as individuals thereafter, but as two halves of one whole. This phenomenon is known as quantum entanglement, and had been used by several of your closest friends to describe the way in which your life had flipped itself over its axis on one April afternoon in your third and final year of high school.

Five years had passed since you’d graduated. Since the day you grew a spine and ate a snail with Park Sunghoon, the day you stopped living on autopilot. Since you’d fallen in love with him and regained the mastery of your own voice, both of these things you’d done over and over again, day after day. And it had been three years since you finally returned to competitive figure skating to prove that you could do more than just fine on your own, without your mother and certainly without a coach who would violate your physical existence.

But in those years, Sunghoon still hadn’t made it out of Japan like he said you both would someday. At least, you hoped, not yet. Not yet, but soon. You knew it had to be soon.

You sat in your small apartment in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles, an expensive neighborhood you were only able to afford because of the amount of endorsements you’d taken on. Your little black cat, Tai, as in taiyaki, as in the dessert Sunghoon loved so much, purred contentedly in your lap as you stared out of the window and into the street below. 

You’d agreed to adopt a cat together one day. You wondered if he already had one of his own by now. You assumed he did; on several occasions you could sense his presence, encouraging you, making you push forward and keep fighting against the universe, against Izanami and Izanagi, against God Himself.

This was what you did in your free time. Miss your life back home. You didn’t want to make any new friends. It was useless. No one could take or come anywhere remotely near Sunghoon’s place—or Jimin’s, or Heeseung’s, or Jaeyun’s, or Jongseong’s, for that matter. 

Soon, you promised yourself, you could show Sunghoon all that he’d missed out on. In your second year in America, you finally mastered the quadruple lutz after several doctors quelled your anxieties and confirmed your ankle really had healed miraculously. 

You decided you would also take Sunghoon to Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, where you’d go every time you felt like getting on a Boeing 747 to give up on this dream once and for all and go back to him, your other dream—if he’d still have you, that is. You didn’t know for sure.

You played with your phone in your hand, turning it over in your palm. You knew he was only a call away, but you were starting to go back to your old self, unsure of whether or not he’d even pick up. There was also a newfound sense of pride you had, not wanting to be the first one to cave in. If he was the one who pushed you forward, why should you be like Eurydice and turn around to look back?

But Sunghoon was the one who put it best, every single time you asked him why he gave up on playing chess in favor of going to art school after graduation—even though his victory in the championships would win back the respect of his father: “I don’t need to go home when you’re right beside me.”

Liar. Where are you?

That night, like many other nights spent lonely, you could feel him beside you, when everything was still except your own chest, aching for some sort of reprieve from the constant gravitational pull of your personal sun and moon, and the monotonous whirr of the electric fan that sat watch beside yoiur bed. You felt the ghost of his fingertips along your spine, and since you happened to be super lucky and lying extra quietly this time—you heard his voice, soft and low and warm like whiskey down your throat. It played on a loop until it lulled you to sleep.

“We’ll go together. I promise.”

He’d said that the night he admitted he loved you.

You also knew that he always knew where you stood on things as flimsy as words:

Tamago to chikai wa kudake-yasui.

Eggs and vows are easily broken.

And since he knew, why would he say that—when he was the one who could read you without even so much as a perfunctory glance? Why would he stand with you in Terminal 1 of Tokyo Narita without his own boarding pass? Why would he tell you to break up with him right before you got on that plane to California?

Stupid plane. Stupid distance. Stupid Y/N. Stupid, stupid, stupid. You had no patience for idiots. You weren’t excluded from your own disdain.

The only thing that kept you sane was the fact that somewhere deep inside you, in a place whose existence you were reluctant to acknowledge, you knew that one day, you’d see him again.

You had to.

You just hoped you’d still be able to recognize each other.

— 

To change the polarity of an electromagnet, two people are required. They use one snail for each person. Their most repressed memory will transfer over to the snail once it’s been touched. In order for the magnetic fields to switch, the parties must switch their snails and consume them.

The result should not end in repulsion.

The day Sunghoon’s atoms had lined up with yours so perfectly that you passed right through him was an indicator that some things weren’t just theories that could be disproved with a fallacy or two. That much was true.

You sighed, trudging through the farmer’s market in search of your favorite stand, which was run by a group of friends who reminded you so much of your beloved Fox Club back home. They sold baked goods that your trainer would frown upon if she saw them, but you believed that you deserved to eat them every Sunday.

And without fail, Sunghoon’s voice popped up in your head, reassuring you that you could eat them every day if you wanted to, just as long as you did it in moderation.

“Thank you,” you whispered quietly, still unsure as ever if he could hear your reply.

You paid for the decadent salted chocolate chip cookies and walked the four blocks home, debating for the millionth time over why you and him had to be forced apart. Did it mean you had to grow alone first? Would you be able to ever feel whole again?

You were able, however, to feel him missing you. So it wasn’t as completely one-sided as it seemed to be sometimes. It was always there, a slight tug in your heartstrings like a thread on its last life. It sat in your chest right beside where you missed him. On this particular day, it was strong. Stronger than any of the other days that came before, so overwhelming that you had to stop halfway home and sit on a bench to catch your breath.

Could quantum theory explain how he could feel whatever you were thinking? Or how you knew, back when you two were still together, what he wanted for dinner before you even asked? Or how your anxieties would disappear just as fast as they came, replaced by a flood of reassurances?

You had had a feeling that he failed his Visa interview on purpose, six months before you were slated to go to America. In the embassy’s lobby, he’d told you that the interviewer said he would have passed if you were his wife and not just his girlfriend.

Liar.

He’d assured you that he did want to go with you. He could find a job working for Pixar or Illumination or anywhere that would hire him for his talent. So why was the universe making it so hard for you to be together now, when the first two years of your entanglement were so easy?

Nothing, you learned, was supposed to make sense. You could spend hours asking “But why?” to every answer and there would be nothing to shut you up. In fleeting moments you would reconsider your decision to speak again, because the one person you spoke for was a little more than five thousand miles away.

So how am I able to be happy when he isn’t right next to me?

Not as happy as you knew you could be, but happy nonetheless. You were running after your first dream, after all.

Your phone rang when you got home.

“Jimin?” you asked, squinting at the screen. You were met with the image of your best friend, bouncing her seven-month-old baby on her lap, a little girl named after you. “Are you okay? Did something happen?”

“Hey, Y/N,” Jimin’s husband, Heeseung, called, waving to the camera. It was so surreal for you to think that Jimin ended up with her high school boyfriend while you were twenty-three and still pining over yours.

“Have you seen it?” Jimin squealed over the sound of the baby’s giggling. A TV in the background could be heard, the voices speaking Japanese. “The first episode just came out!”

“Seen what? What are you talking about? It’s literally only ten in the morning here.”

“Sunghoon’s anime! It’s so good!”

Your heart stopped pumping for a split second as you heard the double saccharine syllables of his name. The little communication you had with him while you were gone were only simple, fond exchanges over congratulations. The last you’d heard from him, he’d gotten a job at a big animation studio. Of course he was too humble to tell you everything. “What… What's it about?”

“It’s a romance. Everyone in the world is assigned a soulmate and the main characters experience a lot of crazy shit the closer they get to each other. Sorry the summary’s so bad, I promise it’s way better than I just made it sound.”

Soulmates, huh?

— 

It has been said that the atoms of the universe have been rearranged to create the world as it is known now. Should that be true, two people can be born of the same star and not realize it until the moment presents itself.

You knew Sunghoon was there before you even saw him in the crowd. The air suddenly felt different, like you’d just dragged your bare feet through carpet and was just millimeters away from touching a brass doorknob.

On normal competition days you would have attributed the charged atmosphere to nerves or the ten-thousand volt energy of the spectators cheering on their favorite skater. But it wasn’t a normal competition day, unless the winter Olympics in Seattle was just some regular thing. 

You knew it: Sunghoon had made it out of Japan this time.

“Ladies and gentlemen, in third place, USA: Allison Steadmeyer!”

Cue music. Polite wave. Applause.

“In second place, Russia: Irina Khodorkhovsky!”

Music. Wave. Applause.

“In first place, Japan: Y/N!”

The single cheer of one person drowned out the rest.

“Why did you walk away from me?” you asked quietly; anyone around would have chalked up your tears as those of victory, of making a comeback worthy of an Oscar-nominated film. That was because they couldn’t feel the way you instinctively latched onto Sunghoon like an oxygen atom receiving its electron pairing. “Why didn’t you go with me?”

“I didn’t want to get in the way of your dreams,” Sunghoon said into the apple scent of your hairspray. You trembled in his arms, the dazzling Swarovski crystals of your midnight blue spandex dress digging through the wool of his coat. “I knew I would only be a bother to you in the end.”

“Liar.” Tears swam in your vision, blurring his face until he was only the galaxy of vanilla and cinnamon you saw every night behind your eyelids. “Didn’t you know? Didn’t you know that you were a part of them?”

“No.”

You were even stronger by then. The first time you ever tried to physically push him away, he was confessing his love for you. This time, he stumbled backward, albeit only by one step. “Liar!”

“I’m sorry. You know I love you and that hasn’t changed. I just wanted you to be free, I didn’t want to be a burden on you. But it seems as though we’re really meant to be together. I didn’t do what I did to hurt you. I tried so hard to make it not hurt. ”

“What do you mean?”

“As long as I tried to be happy, I figured that you would feel it, too. You know, like what Jongseong said when we were younger. We’re connected. But it was difficult. Every day, I felt you missing me as much as I missed you.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“That even if we were across the entire fucking universe, we’d still be tied together. And nothing could come between that. I know it now, and I’m sorry.”

“I never want to hear you apologize to me ever again,” you mumbled.

— 

“Y/N?” 

You were lying on your hotel bed, one of his arms wrapped around your shoulder as his hand aimlessly played with your hair that was still wavy from being knotted in a tight bun for your performance that day.

One side of your face was pressed against where his heart beat in synchronization with yours. “Yes?”

“Did you ever feel… alone?”

You shook your head. “No. Just lonely.”

“Do you still feel it now?”

“Well, you’re here, aren’t you?”

He pressed a kiss to the bony ridges of your knuckles. “And I’m never leaving unless it’s with you.”

a/n: surprise surprise! y'all thought SSV was gonna be my debut on here? well i lied. here's arguably one of the saddest things i've written so far besides that one angst i wrote in stella's dms last week. i hope you love it as much as i loved writing it. thank you to nia for encouraging me to post this :D taglist: @karinasbaby @enha-stars @intromortal @heeslomll @venomhee @heeheeswifey

[humanitys-strongest-bamf]

"Come Home with Me Tonight" | Levi Fluff Oneshot

✧ word count ➼ ~1.1k ✧ notes ➼ fem!reader, fwb to lovers, mutual pining, alcohol, no use of y/n, some suggestive commentary but no actual smut (yet), idk i originally wanted to write something for valentine's day but then realized that this has nothing to do with valentine's day LMAO but here you go

Formal events were never Levi's thing. He had grown up in the Underground and lived a life that was the complete opposite of the world he currently found himself in—a world filled with formalities and facades he couldn't be bothered to keep up with. Thankfully, it was just for the night, but it was still a drag to keep up with.

He sipped at his glass of bourbon as he struggled to pay attention to the work drama that Hange was chattering to Erwin and Miche about. It was long-winded and convoluted and the pieces stopped connecting for him long ago.

Levi getting immediately distracted upon seeing you walk in didn't help either.

His movements briefly stopped as his eyes landed on you. You had strolled into the venue wearing a loose-fitting dress that perfectly fell over your features. The color complemented your eyes and your hair was flowing loosely over your shoulders. Your outfit was very minimal, yet Levi couldn't take his eyes off you.

Levi's somewhat mesmerized gaze was immediately transformed into a frown as soon as he saw that you were accompanied by a date, with some overly pompous recruit following after you like a lost puppy.

He immediately turned back towards the conversation in an attempt to distract himself, but it was getting more and more difficult the longer that the night went on. He kept on swapping his gaze over to you, despite his best efforts to swallow down the jealousy arising within the back of his head.

It didn't help that you didn't seem particularly taken by your date either.

As the party went on, socializing became more draining, and you quickly found yourself outside of the venue on your own, leaning against the balcony. It gave you some solitude as you looked over the seaside. With the sun just beginning to set, the scene was pretty and it gave you some time to relax to stave off some of the tension building within you purely from the sheer amount of people in the building.

"Too crowded for you?"

You turned around towards the door and saw Levi's distinct figure approaching you.

You weren't that surprised to see him. You had been friends with benefits for a few months at this point, casually meeting up with each other to relieve stress after a chaotic work day, although you had been avoiding him for the past week or so due to some confusing feelings that were beginning to arise whenever you were around him.

"...started talking about work relations," you responded with a sigh. "Lost interest pretty quickly after that."

You watched as he walked up next to you, leaning his back against the balcony railing, before passing you the drink in his hand. He had picked up your favorite for you.

"And you? Got tired of Hange talking about their work drama?"

"You could say that," Levi grumbled, which clearly indicated just how spot-on your prediction was.

You sipped on the drink he had ordered for you, subtly smiling that he had not only brought you it, but also that he paid enough attention to know your taste palette.

Your eyes occasionally flickered up to look at him, with you noticing just how stupidly attractive he looked in a suit every time your eyes landed on him.

"Where'd your 'date' run off to?"

His question pulled you out of your daze, and it took you a second to reorient yourself.

"Date?" you asked, momentarily forgetting the recruit that you had dragged along to the venue. "Oh. Him? He's just a recruit that wanted to start networking or whatever, so he just tagged along. Owed him a favor anyway."

The clarification helped resolve any lingering feelings of jealousy present within him, but he was annoyed at himself for even getting jealous in the first place. The two of you weren't in a relationship, and it was never implied that it was where you were headed.

Still, he found himself perpetually bothered throughout the night at the fact that you had shown up to the venue with someone else.

As Levi fell silent, you noticed him begin to shuffle around awkwardly, with his hands casually resting in his pockets.

Your eyes wandered down from his eyes to his neck, noticing that his collarbones were showing from the top two buttons of his shirt being undone. Feeling your body begin to heat up, your eyes continued traveling lower, with your gaze falling on how his suit jacket seemed to be hugging the curve of his back, before going back up as you noticed how the color of his tie seemed to make his grey eyes even more intense to look into.

It didn't take long before you found yourself imagining yourself in bed with him again. No one had ever been able to pleasure you as much as Levi could, yet you still found yourself avoiding him and dismissing your desire for his touch due to one reason: you were falling in love with him.

Distressed upon finally connecting the pieces, you immediately set your drink down and began to move to head back inside.

"...I'm gonna go check on Nanaba and the others-"

"Wait," Levi interrupted, his hand reaching out to gently grab onto your arm to keep you from leaving. "Don't go."

You paused and looked up at him. It had been a while since you've last slept together. You had assumed that this was where he was going with his request for you to stay, given the fact that you barely ran into each other without it ending up with you in his arms as he fucked the stress out of you.

"...I can meet you after?" you suggested. "Hooking up at this fancy venue might not be the best idea."

"Tch." He let out a quiet tut as he let go of your wrist and leaned back towards the railing. "It's not that."

You blinked at him in confusion, slightly tilting your head. "Then what?"

"...is it wrong of me to want more than just a meaningless fuck?"

Your lips parted in surprise, with your eyes widening, as you realized that those feelings brewing underneath the surface between you were real, and more importantly, reciprocated.

"Levi..." you whispered. "...what are you saying?"

He was silent for a moment, and you could tell from the look in his eyes that he was trying to figure out what to say. Finally, he looked directly back into your eyes, before whispering,

"...come home with me tonight."

#: @spicerackofblorbos @romantichomicide95 @levisbrat25 @leviismybby @moonmalice @averysmolbear @cathybarn @tclbts @bejewelledd @sad-darksoul @ackermendick @aomi04 @apolloshaiku @laraackerman @pulpolicia @raenacreates @nube55 @roseofdarknessblog @saeyaki @noctemys @sixpennydame @dumbdollyx @heichoucleanfreak @svftackerman @catskze @nixie-writes-aot @la-undercover-latina @v4mp-wife @darkstarlight82 @professorweezy @braunsbabe @lovedbylevi @issacovegx @captainleviswifee @mrsmiagreer @youre-ackermine @starrylevi @levis-squishy-cheeks @dumbfound-princess @deepzombieyouth @evas-leslas @levilxvr @astri-ackerman @ackrmntea join my taglist!

[amhrosina]

The Artist and the Sea (Namor x f!Reader)

MASTERLIST // JOIN MY TAGLIST

Requests are open - slowing working my way through them!

Part 2

A/N: Hello Nonnie! Thank you for requesting! It inspired me, and I couldn’t not write it as soon as I saw it. Also, let's pretend we can't see the spears being pointed at Namor in this gif lol. (Again, if any of the Yucatec Maya to English translations are off, please let me know!)

Request: tbh it's my first time requesting something regarding the marvel fandom but can i request a namor x fem reader where they meet at the beach when the reader is painting the landscape of the ocean? if you don't understand or don't want to write this, it's okay &lt;333

Summary: You meet a stranger on the beach who takes an interest in your paintings, which somehow puts you in the position of painting the King of Talokan’s portrait. 

(Warnings: not a lot?, the kisses gets a little steamy, Namor is a little touch starved, WING TOUCHING!!!!!, no smut (nonnie didn’t specify and I didn’t want to deliver hardcore smut to someone who didn’t want it lol), reader doesn’t speak Namor’s language but loves the nicknames anyways, I think that’s it???) 

Translations:  

ki'ichpam artista – beautiful artist 

pétalo – petal 

ch'ujuk ch'úupalo' – sweet girl 

princesa – princess

The light reflecting off the ocean was a blinding blue, and you had been trying to blend your paint together to mimic the color for 15 minutes already. You grunted with displeasure as your paintbrush stained three shades too dark. Today was a day for painting. The wind wasn’t blowing too hard, the weather was the perfect mix of cool, but not too cold, and the tides were relatively consistent. When you’d walked out onto your back porch earlier this morning and laid your eyes on the little slice of the beach you owned, it almost felt like an invitation.  

Now, you were regretting your decision to lug all of your paint supplies out of your tiny studio and down the beach. You rolled your eyes, tossing the palette down onto the old blanket you used to keep any stray paint from spilling onto the beach. You dipped a clean brush into the tan color you had mixed earlier and began working on creating the right texture for the sand.  

The beach was mostly empty today, but even during tourist season, there wasn’t much foot traffic this far down the beach. Your grandmother’s house was a small, but cozy cabin-like home, nestled in a small cove that only locals knew about. You had spent many summers here, tucked away in your little slice of heaven, painting anything and everything you saw. When your grandmother had passed away, the deed of the house was transferred to you, and suddenly you were a homeowner.  

You had transformed the inside after moving in, turning the office into an art studio, and transforming the bedroom into a library. Your bedroom, if you could call it that, was actually the living room with tapestries hung up as makeshift walls. You didn’t mind, and neither did anyone else. Or they wouldn’t, you thought, if anyone happened to come by.  

You sat back on your stool, looking between the sand around you and your canvas. The texture was coming along nicely, and you grinned at your work. Landscapes had never been your forte – most of your commissions were oil portraits – but you had been working on expanding your skills over the last few months.  

“You are an artist?”  

An unfamiliar voice startled you from your concentration, and you furrowed your brow at the intrusion. You weren’t one to hog the beach, but you’re clearly a busy woman that didn’t want to be bothered. You leaned around the canvas, intent on staying silent and ignoring the man, but did a double take when you made eye contact with the man.  

He was undoubtably beautiful, and definitely not a local. His body was adorned with beautifully carved artifacts draping across his chest and shoulders, and the only actual article of clothing he wore was a pair of green shorts. You glanced down at the light flutter at his ankles, which had small wings sprouting from the sides of them. You brought your eyes back up, not wanting him to catch you staring, but the stranger hadn’t taken his eyes off you since you’d acknowledged him.  

“I’m a...what?” You asked, blinking. You’d been so distracted by his sudden appearance that you’d forgotten the question he’d asked.  

“You are an,” he nodded to the canvas in front of you, “artist. Yes?”  

“Yes.” You nodded, standing from your stool. “But I am not very good at landscapes.”  

He walked around you, facing the canvas and looking over it with a prompt shake of his head.  

“This is beautiful. You are very good.”  

“Oh.” You mumbled, ringing your hands together. “Thanks.”  

You could feel your cheeks heating at his compliment, and you didn’t want to know why his compliments were getting such a rise out of you. This man was a complete stranger, and his opinions on your art should not have gotten that reaction out of you.  

“You are not reacting to me the way I thought you would.”  

You stared at your half-finished canvas harder, refusing to look in his eyes again, as you mulled over his statement. Yes, this was definitely the strangest encounter you’d ever experienced, but you lived in a universe where Avengers seemed to be popping up in every city, so the idea of a man from the sea appearing on your beach wasn’t as farfetched as it sounded. He was clearly a powerful being, but you weren’t afraid of him, or his power for that matter.  

“How did you think I would react?” You finally asked, peeking at him in your peripheral.  

“I am not sure. This is my first time approaching a surface dweller like this.”  

“Surface dweller?” You scoffed, finally meeting his gaze.  

He had a small smile on his face. “You dwell...amongst the surface. Do you not?”  

“I’m assuming you dwell amongst something else?” Your eyes flicked towards the sea and then back at him. 

“You assume correctly.” He dipped his head in a nod, adjusting his stance to face you. “I am Namor.”  

You tested the name on your tongue, repeating it under your breath. Your gaze ran across his broad chest, trying to gauge the colors of paint you would mix to paint the golden-brown hues of his skin. 

“Can I paint you, Namor?”  

The words were out of your mouth before you could stop yourself. He was just so pretty, and the artist in you couldn’t deny how beautiful the painting would turn out.  

“You want to paint me?” He furrowed his brows, but the grin on his face grew slightly.  

“Yes,” you responded quickly, nodding your head with vigor, “I would like to paint you.”  

He was silent for a few moments, before shrugging his shoulders in a very human motion. “Okay, ki'ichpam artista. You may paint me.”  

- 

Your portrait of Namor would take you a few weeks, maybe even a month to complete. You wanted to highlight his strength and the unbridled power he possessed, but you also wanted to emphasize his beauty. Namor would have to visit you many times for you to get every detail just right, and the thought of that sent an excited flurry of butterflies through your stomach. You thought about taking a photo of him, to speed the process along, but quickly decided against it. It’s not every day that a girl gets to sit with a God, let alone paint one. 

The first visit was mostly a sketch session, and you spent the vast majority of the time studying Namor’s features, sketching a few lines, and then erratically erasing different areas of the canvas. Namor sat patiently, watching you mumble under your breath as you captured the angles of his face. He wasn’t used to being studied so closely but being under your careful eye didn’t make him uncomfortable.  

“Why did you become an artist?” Namor asked as you looked between your canvas and his face.  

“Because I love art.” You murmured, squinting at the line you’d just drawn. 

Namor smiled, and you ignored the fluttery feeling in your chest.  

“I know that pétalo. I meant, why do you love art?” 

You glanced up at him, studying the way his lips curled when he smiled. You began sketching again before you answered him.  

“Art brings people together, you know? That’s super cliché, but I guess it’s true.” You shrugged. “Languages are complex. They cause confusion and barrier us from other cultures. But art is a form of communication that doesn’t have those boundaries. Everyone can look at a painting and understand it at its very core, even if they interpret it differently.”  

Namor nodded, leaning back on his hands in the sand. You had a sneaky feeling that not many people got to see Namor in this relaxed state and took a mental picture of it so you could sketch it later.  

“You have a very pretty way of saying things pétalo.”  

You blushed, focusing on the angle of his pointed ears on your canvas.  

- 

It wasn’t until your third session with Namor that he began opening up about his home in Talokan. He told you about his people, and how most of the world didn’t know of their existence due to his vigorous efforts to protect them. You had an overwhelming sense that Namor’s pride lay in the ruling of his people, and that he would do anything to protect them.  

While he described his homelands to you, you snuck another peek at his ankles. You’d have to ask him for a closer look eventually. The only way you could do them justice in your painting was by touching them, but you didn’t know how to ask. 

“You can...touch them, if you need to, pétalo.” 

You looked up, stiffening with guilt. You didn’t know what to say to that.  

“You cannot hurt me. I promise.” He nudged his foot out, urging you to touch them. 

You nodded slowly, softly setting your paintbrush down and standing from your seat. You kneeled down beside him, leaving a trail of featherlight touches along the inside of one of the wings. The texture was unlike anything you’d ever felt before, and you couldn’t help the second stroke you left across the back of the wing.  

Namor inhaled sharply and you pulled your hand away, looking up at him with concern.  

“Did I hurt you?” you asked, squeezing your hands together. 

“No, ch'ujuk ch'úupalo'. They are very...sensitive.”  

“Oh. Oh.” You stood up, swiftly turning to walk back towards your canvas, when his hand lightly wrapped around your wrist, stopping you.  

“It’s okay, pétalo. No one has touched them in many years. It was a feeling I had forgotten, that’s all.” His eyes shone bright with ease, and the soft smile on his lips was comforting.  

You nodded, returning his smile. You noticed that he hadn’t let go of your wrist, even though it was clear you weren’t moving away from him anytime soon.  

“Were you born with them?” You asked, looking up at his tall frame.  

“Yes. And these, too.” He pointed at his ears, and you couldn’t help it when you reached forward, running a fingertip along their edge.  

“Beautiful.” You murmured under your breath, leaning in to get a closer look. Everything about him was beautiful, and you were finding it harder and harder to breathe when you were this close to him. 

Namor stumbled back, facing the ocean with such speed that you stumbled forward in his absence.  

“I must go. Something is not right at home. I am sorry to leave so quickly. It was just getting good. I will see you again, next week, pétalo.” 

You watched him walk back into the water, washing away with the tide, and just like that, he was gone.  

- 

The fourth session you were supposed to have with Namor was nearly ruined by a terrible storm brewing on the coast. You’d startled awake to the loud clap of thunder and watched through your window as the ocean violently responded. The rain came soon after, and just as you convinced yourself you wouldn’t be seeing Namor today, his powerful body trudged out of the water and onto the beach.  

You met him at your front door, ushering him inside as the storm raged above his head. He stood in your foyer/living room/bedroom and looked around. You froze with the realization that this was the first time he had entered your house. It was strange, you thought, seeing someone so ethereal surrounded by the familiar, but common, walls of your home. You hadn’t done the dishes the night before, and your bed was unmade, but his attention had been snagged by the light coming from your makeshift studio.  

“In here, then?” He pointed, gaze returning to you. 

“Yeah. I’ll be in there in a minute. I just have to get my sketches.”  

As soon as he rounded the corner, you bolted forward, straightening the covers on your messy bed and throwing dirty laundry into a pile in the corner. You ran your fingers through your hair, and finally joined him in the room a few moments later.  

He was hunched over, looking at the dozens of sketches you’d drawn of him. You face palmed and internally groaned as you realized that you hadn’t put them away before inviting him inside. This was an embarrassing secret, to say the least, but you couldn’t stop drawing him. Every time he sent you a new look or moved his body in a way that captured your attention, the urge to draw it in your sketchbook wouldn’t leave your mind until you finally gave in and sketched it out.  

“You are very talented, ch'ujuk ch'úupalo'.” he said, standing to his full height. 

“Thanks.” You mumbled through your hands, trying to hide the fact that you were blushing, again. You shifted your focus to the painting, which was nearing its completion. “I’m almost done with the painting. I think after today I’ll just have to do minor touchups.” 

“That is...wonderful, pétalo.” He plopped into one of the chairs you had set up around the room. You moved toward him and reached your hands out, intending to turn his head the way you needed it to finish the painting, but you hesitated. Your arms were frozen, stretched out in front of you as you met his heated gaze.  

He shifted forward, keeping his gaze on you as he slowly leaned into your outstretched palms. Your hands curled into hair, and he shuttered, eyes closing as he forcefully pushed his head further into your hold. You tried to ignore the butterflies his slight movement had spurred in your stomach, but the soft groan he let out as you ran your fingers through his hair ruined any chance you had of controlling your blood pressure. 

“It has been...a very long time since I’ve been touched so gently, princesa.” 

You swallowed, unsure what to do next, but he was quick to hoist you into his lap. You traced his jaw and couldn’t help but glance at his lips as you met his gaze. He wrapped his arms around your waist and tugged you closer to his body.  

“I did not mean to fall for you so entirely, ch'ujuk ch'úupalo', but you have not left my mind since I saw you painting on the beach.” 

His voice was soft, but his hands tightened around your waist as he spoke. He had to physically restrain himself from pulling your lips down to meet his. But he would wait, a lifetime if he had to, for a sign of consent from you before crushing his lips against yours.  

“I finished the painting last night.” You revealed, choking out a laugh. “I just wanted one more day with you before you left.”  

Namor let out a deep laugh, throwing his head back against the back of his chair. “What were you planning on doing all day, princesa?” 

You groaned, resting your forehead on his shoulder. “I was going to pretend to paint for a few hours before showing it to you.”  

“If you wanted to spend more time with me, princesa, you only had to ask.” Namor was grinning wide, running his fingers along the curve of your waist.  

“Don’t you have important kingly things to attend to?”  

“Yes, but nothing that can’t be rearranged, ch'ujuk ch'úupalo'. You are also important to me.” 

You smiled, cradling his face between your hands. His expression turned molten as you leaned into him, parting your lips in anticipation. He cupped the back of your head, pulling you the rest of the way down to meet his lips. The kiss was both sweet and lustful. His tongue dominated yours, begging for more as he ran his hands over your waist.  

He pulled away from you abruptly, squeezing your waist. You were about to crawl off of his lap and begin profusely apologizing to him, but his words stopped you.  

“You said you finished the painting. Can I see it?”  

“Of course.” You jumped off of his lap and ran to the closet you’d hidden it in, suddenly excited to reveal it to him. You’d been keeping it a secret until it was finished, and to say you were eager to hear his thoughts on it was an understatement.  

You set it on your canvas stand and stepped back, allowing him to fully see the painting. It had come out better than you’d hoped, and you’d known by the time you were halfway finished that it would be your best portrait yet.  

He leaned in, marking the tiny details you’d spent hours polishing, and smiled.  

“Ch'ujuk ch'úupalo', I have seen many paintings of me over the years, but none come close to this. You are so talented, princesa.”  

“Do you really like it?” You asked, clutching your hands into your chest.  

“I love it, my ki'ichpam artista. If I could take it with me and hang it for all my people to see, I would.” 

“Really?” You squeaked, trying not to tear up at his declaration.  

“Do you like it?” He asked, raising an eyebrow at you. 

“I think it’s my favorite painting I’ve ever done.” You breathed, glancing at it. 

“You should keep it, ch'ujuk ch'úupalo'. Hang it in your home as a reminder of me, for when I have to attend to those kingly duties.”  

You thought it over for a moment, and then smiled. “Okay.”  

Parting with that painting was something you’d been dreading since you’d started it, along with the idea of not seeing Namor on a regular basis, but he’d just relieved your doubts in one sentence. You got to keep the painting and you’d be seeing him again. 

“Okay.” He repeated, pulling at your waist until you were situated in front of him. He leaned down, planting a soft kiss on your lips, and you finally gave into those damned butterflies, wrapping your arms around his neck and pulling him in for another kiss. 

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[the-s1lly-corner]

Pocky game w/ various HH characters part 1/3

I want pretzels so bad rn it's not even funny

Characters: charlie, vaggie, angel dust, husk, sir pentious

Notes: read is GN for everyone but vaggie and angel, Angel's reader is male, vaggies reader is fem, bonus hcs of what i think their favorite flavor would be- take it with a grain of salt because admin has only tried the og flavor and the cookies n creme

CWs: edit

CHARLIE

oh she loooooooves stuff like this and shes definitely going to bring it up if you dont bring it up!

very understanding if you tell her you dont want to play the game, she doesnt want to force you- however she is over the moon if you agree

meets you in the middle and gives you a kiss, probably does a little "mwah!" sound to add to the general light heartedness of the activity

excited and she loves sweets so she might eat her portion a little faster than you

likes all the flavors but always finds herself coming back to the original, can never go wrong with a classic

VAGGIE

not much of a sweets person but if she doesnt have anything going on shes likely to do a game or two with you

is aware of the game but has never played it, at least if this is a timeline where she doesnt date charlie because charlie 100% would get her to do it with her

unsure if its supposed to end in a kiss but she does keep that in mind when playing the game- neither works too slow or too fast on her end- she doesnt want to come off as too into it... not that shes not into you of course! she just doesnt want to come off as desperate if that makes sense

does it for you most of the time because she knows it makes you happy and it doesnt bother her

i think she would be an almond crush enjoyer!

ANGEL DUST

it should come as a shock to absolutely no one that hes going to use this as an excuse to try to flirt or tease you; even more if you clearly show some feelings for him or if you two are already in a relationship

sighs.. he would make it a point to nibble on the stick in a way to try to get under your skin in one way or another.. its like when people get freaky with popsicles

game ends with a kiss, hes well aware of it when you take the pocky out and he is READY

comments on how nice it tasted, likely winks, can see him asking to do it again

i feel like he would like the strawberry flavored ones.. though im unsure if thats because of his color palette making me think that or if he would actually be a strawberry enjoyer.. maybe a crunchy strawberry enjoyer

SIR PENTIOUS

has no idea what the game is so youre going to have to explain it to him, he gets way too into it because of what it implies- if you were suspecting he had a crush on you this is kind of a confirmation because theres no other reason he would jump at the oppurtunity

all talk until the game actually starts, he kind of just freezes up or slows his tune a lot... didnt actually expect you to agree, or think about what would happen if the game actually started

barely meets you in the middle due to his nerves, and i can honestly see him pulling away at the last minute

its not like he doesnt WANT to meet you in the middle, its just that its a little overwhelming! and this would technically be his first kiss with you! if its going to happen he wants it to be more special!

dork... but it doesnt help him in growing the nerve to approach you to ask you out

has never heard of pocky so im unsure of what flavor would be his favorite

HUSK

i dont think he would be all that interested, he might think the game is a little dumb actually.. on top of that i dont personally see him as being much of a sweets enjoyer so its more likely for him to turn you down

while derailing from the posts prompt, if you were to substitute the pocky with something thats more up his ally he might be more inclined to give it a try... though im unsure of what you could replace the pocky with and keep the basis of the game intact

actually, he doesnt really partake in games like that- the ones that can lead to something thats typically romantic. its just not his cup of tea

i can see him being a bit of tease, but i dont think this meshes well with his style... might do it to humor you though

does NOT eat much of the pocky, and he prefers the bit with no chocolate- might take one nibble to please you but thats it

if you two are already dating, though, hes going to lean into the kiss

no favorite flavor due to the above mentioned "hes not a sweets guy"

[calamarikitty]

Hazbin Hotel Redesigns - Part Two!

the hotel staff are done and ready to give you mediocre room-service and amenities! individual pngs and design notes under cut!

Niffty - She/her, cis woman, straight

wanted to make her significantly more buggy! she's not really based on any bug in particular but i did kind of opt for some ladybug theming!

with her more buggy aspects comes extra legs and arms. she skitters around the floor like a little cockroach with her teeny broom!

i honestly think niffty's original design is very cute, so i didn't change too much. her color palette is the only thing i really had qualms with, so i made her more of an orangey pink since i think it fit her better. also, bug features on her are just really cute and were totally a missed opportunity in her og design. she looks so cute!

she's scarily perceptive and has great hearing

Husk - He/him, cis man, idk but bro isn't straight

i removed his bird features and made him just a cat. sorry to everyone that liked his wings and tail but i just don't really get his bird theming???

he has so much and so little going on at the same time so i simplified him a lot while still adding that grumpy cat bartender charm.

he's short and stout, only a couple feet taller than niffty!

he has all of the suits in his design, because i think it's really fun! wanted to make him look like some kind of retired magician

he couldn't be bothered to wear his suit jacket or tie his tie, it's a miracle they got him to wear his nametag

i overall just wanted him to look a lot older and more grizzled. husk's og design is really busy but in my opinion tells us nothing about his character. i hope this communicates more about him

Alastor - He/him, agender, aroace, gay

monochrome with pops of gold and red! he's a classy guy.

doesn't talk through his mouth, and can only speak through his microphone. he has it on him at all times, and this makes adam breaking his microphone a lot more consequential. he's constantly 'on air'

more obvious deer features! he has a tail and hooves because it's fun, sue me

i also gave him much larger antlers because his antlers are barely noticeable when he's not in his full demon form in his og design, and it doesn't make any sense to me why they're not. surprisingly, his antlers do get much larger when he's in his full demon form, even though they're already very impressive

he has two eyes i just left one out for stylistic reasons

the x on his forehead is always there, not just in his full demon form. however, it does glow when he transforms, and his other stitches become much more noticable.

he cannot stop smiling, and also cannot open his mouth. a terrible punishment for a gluttonous cannibal

he's extremely polite (he never, ever curses) and a neat freak despite his murderous tendencies. he's very touch-averse but has no issue getting in everyone else's space. he's still a manipulative asshole, but is extremely good at hiding his emotions

he's definitely one of the more interesting characters to me and i feel like has a lot of potential, which is why i thought so much abt his design haha