#there was so much good investigation shit but also so many funny moments

[crotchapple]

"The hot bard teacher I forget her name" made me laugh so hard I had to pause the episode before I pissed myself

[ckret2]

The second dimension has burned up, almost(?) everyone is dead, the ones that aren't dead wish they were, and this funny little yellow triangle the Axolotl met one time is some kind of god ghost party host tyrant.

Wanna make it even worse?? I know you do. Let's make it so much worse.

Here, have a fic. Last week's Part 1 is about Bill doing some kind of cosmic horror shit to the Axolotl; part 2 here is about the Axolotl trying to process the most horrifying thing he's ever seen while a bunch of the most annoying gods you've ever seen argue about building inspections and vandalism.

####

When the Axolotl tumbled out of the bloated pocket of reality where Dimension Zero's singularity was supposed to be, for a moment he thought he'd gotten turned around and flown straight back in, because here again was the yellow triangle's nightmarish party: the geometric rainbow of corpses and undead puppeted into dancing for their "magister," the flashing strobe lights, the hissing whispery white noise like the echoes of a Big Bang had gained sentience and started passing secrets to each other, the cacophonous music that seemed to be every song playing at once.

He had to shake his head to clear it and make sense of what he was seeing. No corpses, no dancing: all he was seeing was all the gods who'd gathered together outside the incinerated two dimensional wall to help deal with the criss, at least triple what there had been before he'd entered what-wasn't-Dimension-Zero. The flashing lights were the cameras and broadcasting equipment of reporters, cordoned off from the Apocalyptic Threat Task Force's main center of operations but still crowding as close as possible to see what the firefighters and ATTF were doing. The whispers were the buzz of activity among the emergency response workers.

And the music was only playing in his own head.

A few gods glanced at him as he emerged from the immense roiling miasma that had replaced Dimension Zero, but they had their own business to deal with and he wasn't part of it, so he was quickly ignored. He wouldn't know what to say if anyone had spoken to him. It was hard to think of anything but the dancing.

He should tell someone what he'd seen. Numbly, he looked around for the storm cloud with the ATTF he'd spoken to earlier, but couldn't pick it out from the crowd.

There was one "face" in the crowd he distantly recognized: a harried-looking vending machine filled with planets and moons—VENDOR, the Axolotl was pretty sure. Some politician. THEY were irritably shifting THEIR worlds back and forth on THEIR spiral racks as THEY spoke to one of the ATTF's many apocalypse cops; THEY'd already vended five planets that the apoc cop had cradled in their tentacles. As the Axolotl swam past the duo in search of the cloud, he heard VENDOR snapping, "—I'll have you know elections are coming up again. The last thing I need is Municipalitron suggesting this lackluster response to a gaping hole into Dimension Zero is MY fault! By the time those rubbernecking reporters make it around your flimsy barrier, I want to be able to report you've cleaned up this mess—" Was the incinerated Dimension 2 Delta even in THEIR district?

He saw THEM on the news from time to time at cosmic crises like this, providing temporary planets for refugees until they could be moved to other worlds (or, in dire enough circumstances—other dimensions); that must be what THEY were here for now. It tended to get THEM a lot of good press. The Axolotl didn't know how much of it was deserved.

To the Axolotl's further distaste, there were also cops here now—not the apoc cops, they were fine, but cop-cops: he saw one crablike being with red and blue mushrooms growing out from where his eyes used to be, and two interlocked fiery rings with a hundred distrustful eyes. They were talking to the hapless furred serpent the Axolotl had seen before he'd gone in to investigate Dimension Zero, the one who'd called in the emergency. She didn't look at all comfortable with whatever they were asking. Why the hell did a spontaneously combusting universe call for the police? Who did they think they were going to arrest? Who did they think they could blame for the fire? The fire itself?

Unless they thought it was arson?

There was the storm cloud: it was talking to another apoc cop, a floating flock of sheep with an ATTF badge pinned in their rain-soaked wool. The Axolotl headed their direction—but paused at the sight of the triangle's sun.

Before Dimension 2 Delta had burned, the little triangle's two-dimensional home planet had been illuminated by a sun shining down on it from the third dimension—a sun no one but the triangle could see. With 2Δ gone, the third dimension was slowly falling into Dimension Zero's nauseating threshold; and in the time the Axolotl had been talking to the triangle, his sun had fallen halfway toward the threshold.

He carefully picked it up and nudged it a safe distance back, then shook the sting of heat out of his paws. 

Someone said, "Hold on, you're the one who defaced the Department of Multiversal Vehicles' office!"

The Axolotl turned to look. VENDOR had apparently ganged up with the cops against the serpent. He groaned under his breath.

Looking between the trio with panic in her eyes and clutching her spray paint can anxiously to her underbelly, the serpent was saying, "Okay, okay, maybe I was out here to do a little graffiti—"

The Axolotl winced and muttered, "Oh, don't voluntarily confess anything." The cloud could wait. He hurried in their direction.

"—but I hadn't actually started anything when the dimension caught on fire! I mean—all right maybe I'd done a couple of tags, but only in vacuum, nowhere near any stars! And the fire started way off from where I was—"

"That sounds likely," VENDOR said.

"You've already got a rap sheet for vandalism," the crablike cop said. "Decided to try out arson—?"

The tentacled apoc cop who'd been speaking to VENDOR earlier cut into the conversation. "Lay off, we've already checked her out. The combustible material in a can of spray paint would only take out a solar system at most. Do you have any idea, any idea, just how much power it takes to burn a whole dimension?"

The dual fiery rings wheeled aggressively in front of the apoc cop. "You let us do our job, calamari. Just focus on doing your own."

"Don't mind if I do," the Axolotl said. He put himself between the accused criminal and the gods of punishment, gills flared and curled forward. "I believe this serpent was a witness to the fire. Is she under arrest?" (He could feel some of the mental numbness wearing off, the horror loosen its grip on his heart as he focused on doing his job.)

VENDOR took one look at him and scoffed. "Oh, you. I know who you are," THEY said. "I suppose this is one of your pro bono clients." All one hundred and two of the cops' eyes immediately snapped to the Axolotl.

Why did everyone think that today? "No," the Axolotl said exasperatedly, "she's not. But I do know her rights. Including her right not to answer any of your questions." (The serpent's jaw snapped shut.) "Do you?"

The cops both bristled. VENDOR drew THEMSELF up to THEIR full height (which was the same height THEY'd already been, a metal brick being rather inflexible like that) and prepared to retort—but THEIR internal camera caught on something just to the Axolotl's side. "Oh, no. Not her."

The Axolotl turned. Hovering in the void behind them, so small and translucent she'd be unnoticeable if not for the faint pinkish glow she gave off, was an astrally-projected mortal soul: a four-armed salamander-like woman with a robe and a string of beads wrapped around one wrist. She opened her eyes, blinking up at the Axolotl.

"Oracle," the Axolotl said, half greeting, half a surprised query. The Oracle bowed her head to him.

To the mortals she served, the Oracle was a priestess who received messages from a god: prophecies to help her people understand the divine and navigate the future. To the beings powerful enough to get called gods, the Oracle was essentially one in a long line of intern news bloggers that the Axolotl occasionally had coffee with to discuss local politics and court cases. His Oracles were almost always low-level mortal criminals who had gotten themselves involved in enough trouble to attract gods' attention, but whom he'd taken under his fin to help get out of that life before they graduated to crimes against reality. The Axolotl thought it was important to offer mortals help before they crossed a line they could never uncross, and important to keep an open conduit of information between higher and lower planes. He thought the people who had the power to shape reality owed transparency to the people living in the realities they shaped.

Not everyone agreed. 

"You smuggled your reporter past the barricade," VENDOR said accusatorially. (The cops visibly flinched at the word "reporter," the crablike one nervously clacking his claws and the ringed one's many eyes widening.)

"No, I had no idea she was coming." Which was unusual. Usually, the Axolotl visited the Oracle in her sleep to catch her up on his day's work and how it might affect mortal affairs; it wasn't often the Oracle sought him out first.

"Well, I'm not making a statement." VENDOR abruptly turned THEIR back to the Axolotl and his Oracle. "If anyone asks, no comment. I'm not commenting on the current incident." The cops also took the opportunity to quietly slink off. The Axolotl watched them go, making sure they didn't find someone new to bully as they left.

The Oracle shot VENDOR and the cops a puzzled look. The Axolotl said, "Don't worry about THEM. Why are you here?"

"Our seers have had premonitions. Could you enlighten us on their meaning?" the Oracle asked.

"Of course. What did they see?"

"They've received visions of an explosion in the... sky..." She trailed off, staring in wonder at the gap into Dimension Zero behind the incinerated wall. "Is... that the explosion?"

Before the Axolotl could answer, the storm cloud he'd been looking for swept past to loom over her. She flinched as her view of her god was suddenly blocked by a torrential thunderstorm, and flinched again as a sunbeam pierced the clouds to shine directly upon her and a serious voice boomed down from the tempestuous heavens: "Your people witnessed it?"

"There you are," the Axolotl said. "I was looking for you—"

The cloud pointed at him with a finger of lightning. "I'll get your statement second. Mortal's first. They don't last as long." (The Axolotl didn't think the Oracle was going to die of old age in the time it would take him to explain what he'd seen in Dimension Zero, but he didn't argue.) It said to the tentacled god, "Get those planets out to the flat worlders. The flock's already out there."

"On it." They tightened their tentacles around the worlds VENDOR had already passed over, and quickly scuttled off toward the line of blue light on the interdimensional horizon.

The storm asked the Oracle, "Can you describe what happened?"

"Uh..." She looked around nervously, trying to find the source of the voice, not realizing it came from the storm itself. "That's... what I came here to find out."

The Axolotl slipped his tail over her as an umbrella. (He needed the water, anyway; he'd been too close to too many fires today.) "Just tell it what your seers saw, like you were telling me. You may be able to help us."

"Help how?"

"None of us directly witnessed the 'explosion' your seers did."

Her eyes widened in alarm. "How do the gods not witness something?"

The Axolotl hesitated. "Even gods' eyes aren't all-seeing." He decided he didn't want the first thing he told his Oracle about the situation to be that all the gods that could have directly witnessed the "explosion" had been killed by it.

As the Oracle spoke, the storm cloud took notes in a damp notepad it kept steady with a current of air, burning the information onto the pages with a thread of lightning that meandered across the page like a Tesla coil. VENDOR, who'd backed out of "interviewing" range but not out of hearing range, partially turned to listen to her statement. (And while the other gods were distracted, the furred serpent quietly slunk off, trying to hide her spray paint as she did; the Axolotl didn't call attention to her. If the storm needed anything else from her, no doubt it had already gotten her contact info. Better that she go before the cops circled back to harass her some more.)

The Oracle said that her people's seers had seen a whole patch of the sky burning bright blue and collapsing together, the edges going black and the center growing impossibly bright, until everything sank into the center—and then went dark. Only once it was dark could they see what the light had been concealing: behind the collapsed patch of sky, there was a sea of seething colors. (The assembled group tried not to stare too obviously at the multicolored miasma that used to be Dimension Zero.) One seer had gone blind staring straight into the light, trying to discover anything about its nature.

The cloud asked, "And did she see anything important?"

The Oracle said hesitantly, as though not sure whether this detail mattered: "She said the light was... triangular."

A chill settled over the Axolotl. 

The cloud stopped, perplexed. "Huh." And then it dutifully burned that information down as well.

(Maybe it was nothing; triangles were very common symbols, lots of phenomena naturally formed triangles. Or maybe what she'd seen was whatever the triangle had done to try to save his people. Or maybe, maybe....)

While the cloud was focused on taking down its notes, the Oracle dragged her eyes from the tumbling colors of Dimension Zero and turned to the Axolotl. "We're worried about what these visions mean." She switched from interviewee to interviewer, all journalistic professionalism. "What did they see? What was this explosion?"

The Axolotl focused on the question to push the triangle from his mind. His eyes began to glow, as he recited:

"The multiverse is layered planes,

Stacked to bear existence's strains.

1D pillars, 2D walls,

3D rooms in 4D halls;

On a 0D foundation:

That's reality's construction. 

One wall falls into the basement,

It can shake the whole apartment.

But other walls can still load-bear

Until the gods can make repairs."

"Okay... Thank you. And—our plane is 3D?"

"That's right."

The Oracle took notes of her own: one of her four hands spun in loose loops, like an absent-minded conductor. In her physical body, she'd be holding a marker in a trance, copying down the prophecy the Axolotl had given her. No doubt it would be in the mortal papers on her world by tomorrow. The Axolotl thought it was better that the mortals know there was something wrong but that the people who had the power to do something about it were on the job, rather than just worry without answers. (Again, he was sometimes in the minority opinion. VENDOR was managing to give him the stink eye without a face.) "Is the multiverse actually structured like an apartment complex?"

"No," the Axolotl said. "It's a helpful visual metaphor." And it had rhymed with basement.

"But... this is something you can fix?"

"It is. There are gods of space and doomsday already here working to stabilize the foundation and repair the fallen wall." (VENDOR's lights flickered a bit brighter at the positive acknowledgment to the press.)

"Gods of doomsday?" She gave him an alarmed look.

"It's a misleading title. The ones here work to prevent accidental apocalypses."

"You're underselling the severity of the issue," the storm cloud muttered, not looking up from its notes. "This isn't your run-of-the-mill cosmic repair job. A second dimension's fully collapsed into the zeroth dimension. That's a plane packed into a point. That shouldn't be possible. It's destabilized everything built on top of the zeroth dimension—which means the entire multiverse." (VENDOR tried to shush it. It didn't acknowledge THEM.) "Plus, this fire is kicking our collective butts. One- and two-dimensional gods are getting incinerated, not even afterlives and underworlds are escaping the fire, reality itself is at risk of collapsing, we still don't know what's doing it—"

VENDOR let out a beep that was as loud as a car alarm. "Is there any reason the mortals need to know that!"

"Ehh... not that I can think of." The cloud glanced up from its notes. "They're powerless to do anything about it. It'd just make them worry about something that's out of their h..." Its roving sunbeams caught on the Oracle, still diligently taking notes on this out-of-control fire. "Oh."

Quietly, the Oracle asked, "You're sure the multiverse will be fine? If this fire even kills gods..."

The Axolotl paused. "I was more sure a second ago."

"It'll stand," the storm cloud said grimly, "but if we can't stop the fires, not for long. We've called out every god we can to help, but..."

"It should stand," VENDOR said quickly. "I'm sure the other walls are fine—I've personally seen to it that we're rigorous about maintaining our dimensions' structural integrity."

The cloud's sunbeam aimed ruefully at the missing wall. "Good work," it muttered.

VENDOR rounded angrily on it, "Well all the preventative cosmic inspections in the multiverse are useless if the inspectors didn't do their job right! Which they clearly didn't!"

The cloud raised a wall of fog defensively.

VENDOR paced in an angry figure 8 as THEY fumed, "It's incompetence all around! I'll bet anything it was electricians who miswired the laws of electromagnetism and shorted them out, or—or something! A properly constructed load-bearing wall imploding, much less dumping into the center of reality, just doesn't happen! And nobody noticed the danger?"

"We can't rule out the possibility of terrorism yet," the cloud said. 

 VENDOR rounded on the cloud to demand, "What terrorist would risk destroying the multiverse?!"

Angry lightning danced around its tornado. "How should I freaking know! A stupid one?!"

"Hah! That's all you've got?! The dimensions might have been burned by a stupid terrorist?" THEY turned on the Oracle. "Do not print that!"

Her hand froze mid-loop.

Thunder rumbled in the storm cloud. "Look, apocalypse Origin & Cause is still investigating, and the cosmic engineering inspector isn't here yet. If you'd give us five nanoseconds to do our jobs—!"

"What do you mean, isn't here yet! What's taking them so long?"

"I just put in the call—"

"That's no excuse, they ought to have been here before you called! Do engineers have time tapes or not!" VENDOR let out several irritated beeps as THEIR internal motors ground in irritation. "Probably dragging their heels because they didn't do their job properly before the dimension fell! Oh, I'm going to give them a piece of my mind." THEY charged off, still muttering, "I'll have the heads of the last inspector and the lazy subcontractors who didn't build this dimension up to code! If this does anything to jeopardize my reelection— You there, police!" (The crab cop, who'd attempted to make himself useful by eyeing the reporters still outside the cordon menacingly, started at being directly addressed again.) "I need your assistance! I need someone to hold up a phone for me."

The Axolotl gave THEM a wide berth as THEY passed. Even as a god who almost exclusively dealt with the dead, this level of devastation left the Axolotl stunned with horror. But VENDOR's biggest concern wasn't the loss of life? Nor the threat to public safety posed by the exposed and mutated Dimension Zero? It was a stupid election?

He made a mental note to look into Municipalitron's policies before the next election.

Quietly, the Oracle asked, "Are you safe here? If there's a fire that can even kill gods..."

When the storm had told the Axolotl about 2Δ's fire, it had said not even gods and ghosts made it out— The Axolotl's frills perked up. "Right, I came back here to tell it— Er, yes, I think I'm safe—but I need to tell—" He turned to the storm cloud, "I haven't told you what I saw yet!"

"Oh, right—I meant to congratulate you on coming back alive." It flipped to a new page in its notepad. "Congrats."

"You said that everyone in 2Δ died," the Axolotl said.

"They did. I can guarantee it." It grew its tornado to pantomime an expanding ring: "The readings Origin & Cause have gotten so far indicate that an enormous gravitational wave from the spontaneous combustion event's epicenter tore the universe apart. Imagine gluing a bunch of corn chips to a tablecloth, pulling the tablecloth tight from both sides, and dragging the tablecloth straight down off one end of the table. It'd shatter all the chips as they passed over the table's edge. Destroyed everyone and everything in that universe, on every plane. Landscape, mindscape, dreamscape..."

"Well," the Axolotl said, with the edge of triumph he got whenever he figured out how to rip a prosecutor's witness in half, "I found survivors. So how's that possible?"

He expected surprise. Instead, the cloud bobbed up and down in recognition, as though the Axolotl were confirming something it already knew. 

On the other hand, from half a solar system away, VENDOR shouted indignantly, "I beg your pardon?!" THEY leaned away from the phone the cop was holding for THEM. "How many?" THEY began rotating through THEIR internal selection of planets.

"Two or three million," the Axolotl called back.

VENDOR huffed irritably and switched to looking through their collection of much smaller, rockier astronomical bodies. "Hardly worth a moon, much less a planet," THEY muttered. "From Dimension 2 Delta, I assume."

"No," the storm cloud said. "Everyone in 2Δ is dead. He must've found the poor suckers getting dragged down from the other dimensions."

The Axolotl stared at it. "Dragged down from what?"

Before the cloud could answer, the flock of sheep it had been speaking to earlier called, "Boss?" They had clearly just come from the direction of the bright blue line on the horizon—and their fleeces was now stained with soot. "We're losing refugees even faster in Dimension 2 Epsilon, what's the new plan?" Dimension 2 Epsilon?

The Axolotl felt a chill wind blow off the storm cloud; but its voice was just as hard as ever as it said, "I'll check it out myself." Its sunbeam pointed toward the Axolotl. "Maybe you oughta come along, I can explain it on the way." it said. "Just you." And the beam drifted down to highlight the Oracle.

"Yes, I understand."

Its bright gaze turned toward the apoc flock. "Hold down the fort until we get back."

"Got it, boss."

The Axolotl turned to the Oracle and said quietly, "You should wake up. I'll contact you with more when I can."

As strongly as he believed the mortals ought to be privy to whatever knowledge the gods had about the crisis, he didn't think traumatizing his Oracle wold benefit anyone.

####

Apparently, the Axolotl had only been told about half the situation. As they traveled along where Dimension 2 Delta used to be, the storm cloud caught him up on the rest. It had been telling the truth about everything in 2Δ being destroyed. It had simply burned too fast and too thoroughly, and it wasn't until the flames reached the edges of the universe and looped back to eat themselves that the inferno began to slow down.

Slow down... but not stop.

Why hadn't the Axolotl realized sooner? Why would there be so many firefighters on the scene, if the fire had gone out before the first ever arrived? What was the distant blue line of light he'd followed until he found the ATTF's center of operations, if not the light of still-burning stars? Why would VENDOR have come to provide new worlds for refugees, if everyone had been so sure 2Δ didn't have any refugees?

When the flames had reached the edge of 2Δ, they'd effortlessly incinerated the first dimensions bordering its edges, like a flame consuming a flash string in a magic trick, and moved straight across to the next second dimensions.

"Dimensions 2 Delta, 1 Gamma-Delta, and 1 Delta-Epsilon were completely incinerated before anyone arrived on the scene," the cloud said. "We lost 1 Alpha-Delta and 1 Delta-Zeta after we got here—it's a miracle the fire didn't cross from 2 Delta over 1 Alpha-Delta into 2 Alpha. 2 Gamma's over ninety percent gone; at this point we're trying to detach it from the closest first dimensions and hoping the flames will stop at its borders. And we're just trying to rescue who we can from 2 Epsilon and 2 Zeta, because every time we start to get the fire under control, it restarts itself."

The Axolotl felt sick. Five dimensions had been destroyed? Three more dimensions were still burning—one on the verge of being lost?

"Some of your survivors must've been dragged down into Dimension Zero," it went on. "Or into the miasma around it. I guess you must not have run into Zero itself in there, or else you wouldn't be here to tell us about it."

"I don't think Dimension Zero is in that miasma; I think the miasma is Dimension Zero. It had some properties of a spaciotemporal singularity... except it's... big. Big but—all in one place. And there's time happening, but all in one moment." He was in no fit state to try to explain this. He wasn't sure he even understood himself.

"Huh," the storm said. "Never seen anything like that before. I guess that explains where the rubble from 2Δ went, but—I have no idea how the physics in there must be working."

"I didn't see any rubble. Would there be any? If everything was destroyed—gods, souls, afterlives, dreams..."

"Subatomic ashes. The dimension's matter still oughta be somewhere."

He tried to remember if he'd seen anything that might be subatomic ashes. All he could remember was the three dimensional stars and stardust that had fallen in—and the party, and the bleeding. "If it was there, I wouldn't know how to sense it."

By the time they reached the edge of Dimension 2 Epsilon, and a 2D plane once more safely covered up the shifting border of Dimension Zero, the distant line of light had grown into a sea of pallid blue flame: the hydrogen of countless two dimensional stars burning as their universe crumbled and crunched up. In the distance, beyond the fire's perimeter, the Axolotl could see the still-unburned flat constellations and nebulas—and the divine firefighters chopping and hacking the universe in twain ahead of the fire edge. He realized that fire crews he'd seen nervously milling about earlier were just a skeleton crew: the real firefighting force was out here.

The flames seemed reluctant to lick up into the third dimension; they clung hard to the second dimensions, barely even radiating heat into the neighboring universe. There was an eerie focused calm to the gods trying to stop the fires below—all the devastation beneath them, close enough to touch, and yet not touching them. Yet. 

Even as many firefighters as were out here trying to get the fire under control, they couldn't cover the entire perimeter; and so the storm cloud lead the Axolotl right up to the fire edge along a span that the stretched-thin firefighting force didn't currently have covered. They were close enough that a few of the storm's raindrops fell on the fire, making it sizzle out in some small spots, only for the inferno to roar back to life a moment later.

The storm spoke for the first time in several minutes: "I can't begin to tell you how, but it's like the fire's fighting back against us. Every time the fire crews get even a little bit under control, it erupts again. We've had to start breaking off the burning portions of reality to keep the fires from spreading to the rest of the dimension," it gestured at the gods at work cracking off an enormous slab of existence from the rest of the dimension to create a chasm half a galaxy wide between the fire and the as yet still safe portion of the universe. The separated portion buckled and bubbled in the fire like a melting piece of plastic. "And... even that's not enough. Cosmic fires aren't my speciality—but I'm told breaking a dimension is guaranteed to stop a fire. But this one just keeps finding a way to... jump across."

"What do you mean, 'jump across'?"

On the safe side of the chasm, at least a lightyear away, a perfectly well-behaved solar system randomly burst into a geyser of flames.

"Oh."

Firefighters rushed to the newly burning star. Several planets had already blackened, curled up, and crumbled to ashes. The ashes rained down into Dimension Zero.

The storm cloud turned their path toward the new fire, the Axolotl following close behind. "They don't even always pop up near the fire edge like this." (As though a flame jumping an entire lightyear away could be called "near.") "Half a dozen popped up at random throughout Dimension 2 Gamma before we even realized how this fire moved. And as if that isn't bad enough, if the fire isn't targeting mortals, I'll eat my fedora."

This time, the Axolotl decided not to tempt fate by asking how a fire could target anything.

The firefighters struggled to contain the new fire with a line of 3D flame-retardant foam. They weren't even trying to put the fire out, he realized; they'd given up the solar system for lost. They were only trying to keep the fire back from one planet: a disc-shaped world, already cracked from the way the heat had warped and bent this dimension's surface, surrounded by billions of glittery flecks. People. His frills flicked forward in alarm.

Rescuers were using planet-sized planes to scoop the bewildered two-dimensional people off their endangered dimension, like spatulas trying to rescue a pancake from a skillet in the fires of hell, and handing them off to other rescuers to relocate to one of the refugee planets VENDOR had supplied. But as the storm and Axolotl caught up the fire somehow found a way past the solid wall of 3D foam to ignite the moon orbiting the hapless planet.

And as if that wasn't enough, it sprung up on the people, too. The screaming populations of entire towns spontaneously caught fire. To his horror, the Axolotl understood now what the storm had meant by the fires targeting mortals. Reality warped and bent beneath them, twisting, melting; burning people were crushed together by the distortions in reality and fused together into dozen-mouthed wailing bodies. The overburdened plane of reality ripped and disintegrated like threadbare fabric over a candle, and people fell screaming into Dimension Zero before they could be caught.

The storm cloud flinched back with a flash of lightning. "Shoot—it is getting faster."

The Axolotl automatically lunged forward to help them. A split-second wall of shrieking lightning blocked his path and a gust of wind pushed him back. "Don't," the storm snapped. "Leave it to the professionals."

"Sorry." The Axolotl backed up a safe distance with the storm cloud, stomach twisting. "Is there any way I can help—?"

"No," the storm cloud said quickly. "This fire can pop up anywhere—it's already caught four firefighters, and they're trained to deal with this stuff. We can't risk it spreading to the third dimension."

He hated not helping—but unfortunately, he understood. "How did you put out the fires on the firefighters?"

"We didn't. We threw them into Dimension Zero."

The storm was right; there was nothing natural about a fire that could kill gods.

"I've gotta go find out the latest," it said. "Can you stay out of trouble for a few minutes?"

"Yes. I promise." Although it might be the hardest thing he'd ever done.

The storm cloud left the Axolotl; and the Axolotl watched the fire.

####

It went against every instinct in his body not to reach out to scoop up the falling dead.

He'd worked for eons as a psychopomp before switching to a career that gave him more of a voice in what happened to the souls he escorted. He'd met billions of species with billions of different ways of dying; he wasn't squeamish around corpses, injuries, rot, disease. He was comfortable around death. Heck, he and death had each other's phone numbers for emergencies—they regularly crossed paths at professional networking events. 

But there were some deaths worse than others, and there were fates worse than death. As he watched, an oval with thin little arms plummeted into a direction it couldn't even see, its body burning up; and then its ghost burned up, too. It would never join the eternal dance party, and the Axolotl wasn't sure whether it was the lucky one.

As he watched, the Axolotl noticed something strange. Like any populated world, there were probably millions to trillions of different species around this one, although at a glance the Axolotl could only spy a handful. But although all of them were eventually caught by the flames, there was only one species that seemed to be victim of spontaneous combustion—and that seemed to be falling into Dimension Zero: the people that looked like living geometric shapes.

When the storm returned, it was quieter; even its tornado spun more slowly. The Axolotl got the sense it hadn't received good news.

But it didn't share what it had received. It said, "I've seen my fair share of apocalypses, but I've never seen anything like this before. Whatever this fire is, it's not natural." The eye of the storm watched one of the melting people falling like cinders into the center of the multiverse, until even its sunbeam couldn't pierce the miasma. "Ten to one, I'd bet you something intelligent is doing that."

"Your stupid terrorist?"

The cloud laughed ruefully. "Yeah." It watched a moment longer; then sighed out a long gust of wind and tried to rally some of its earlier stoicism. "So. Those people you saw in Dimension Zero must be the mortals from the dimensions around 2Δ getting dragged in by the fire. You can see how they've been peeling off their planes when the flames get 'em. I'm amazed they survived the fall into Dimension Zero."

"Survived" maybe wasn't the word the Axolotl would choose; but he didn't know how to begin to explain the horrors he'd seen down there.

He tore his eyes from the terrible rain of corpses. "Not all of them," he said. "I know for a fact at least one of the survivors is from 2Δ. I know him. I've met him before."

"You have." The storm managed to look dubious at this. "You're sure it wasn't an alternate of the same guy from a neighboring dimension?"

"I talked to him in Dimension 2 Delta. He remembered meeting me. It's him."

"Huh." The storm processed that silently. "Nope. I've got no explanation for that."

####

(Thanks for reading!! If the art lured you in and this is the first chapter you read, this is part 2 of a 5-or-6 part fic about the Axolotl in the immediate aftermath of the Euclidean Massacre. Here's part one if you missed it. I'm posting one chapter a week, Fridays 5pm CST, so stick around if you wanna watch the Axolotl slowly discover just how much of a monster that silly triangle he likes really is.

It's ALSO chapter 61 PART TWO of an ongoing post-canon post-TBOB very-reluctantly-human Bill fic. I'm gonna fix the chapter numbering once I know how many chapters this plot is. If you're not sold on the idea of a human Bill fic, I've also got a oneshot about normal triangle Bill escaping the Theraprism if you wanna read that.

If this is NOT your first time here and you already knew all of the above: nobody commented on the fact that I was calling Bill's dimension "Dimension 2 Delta" rather than just "the second dimension"—but I hope that, somewhere in your hearts, some of you were wondering what I had to differentiate his dimension from that necessitated labeling it Delta. :)

I think this is probably the least horrifying out of all the chapters. Because of that, I'm worried it's kinda boring, but that might just be because I'm comparing it to the undead corpse party. And also Bill isn't here.

It's also the least edited chapter because I may or may not have spent the last three days drawing the second dimension burning instead of writing and ran 30 minutes past posting time doing last minute rewrites lmao. So uh, lemme know if there are any typos, sentences that don't make sense because I changed how I wanted to phrase them halfway through and didn't notice, weird internal contradictions, whatever.

But more importantly let me know what y'all think!!)

[trashworldblog]

WATCHERINAS

GHOST FILES IS NOMINATED FOR A WEBBY AWARD

you know what we have to do.

VOTE HERE

come on, i saw what you guys did with shane sweep, now we can do it with an ONLINE AWARD

its important that we do this the right way!! dont try to vote a billion times, and dont vote too quickly. worth it, and the try guys' without a recipe is also nominated!! we dont wanna get our votes deleted!!

press read more to hear me talk about how much i love ghost files

I LOVE THIS SHOW SO MUCH!!

its the perfect mix of comedy and suspense, and all the new tools are so fun to watch. even as a true shaniac i get nervous watching the show (usually becuase i think theres gonna be a PERSON walking around these abandoned places, and not a ghost, but i digress)

the payoffs for the high anticipation is so good, especially when its one of them does something funny, or the ovilus gives a funny response is always so good. they got bullied by their equipment! shane fought a ghost! they met night time dan! they fucked around with a creepy doll head!! theres SO MANY GOOD MOMENTS !!

its the perfect ghost hunting show because it's the ghost hunting show for believers and skeptics alike, and all the different tools and techniques keep the hour long episodes fresh.

plus! they go all in on the solo investigation! and thats when some real insane shit happens. shane pranks ryan, ryan goes insane, shane lays on the floor and looks at dolls, ryan eats some popcorn, incredible stuff. 🤌✨️

[ofliterarynature]

SEPTEMBER 2024 WRAP UP

[loved liked ok nope dnf reread* (book club)]

Bryony & Roses • The Paragon Hotel • The Invisible Library • (The Magic Fish) • The Gathering • Paladin of Souls • Mislaid in Parts Half-Known • Red White & Royal Blue* • North Woods • The Empty Grave* • Barda • Lost in the Moment & Found • The Creeping Shadow* • The Spellshop • Lalani of the Distant Sea

* * * * *

Lockwood & Co - not much to say, but it was fun revisiting an old favorite! It's becoming clearer with age and rereads that there are things about this series that I don't like, but the things I like definitely outweigh them - the way it does ghosts and uses a casebook structure among them! Would highly recommend if you're looking for something a bit spooky and mysterious.

Lost in the Moment and Found - this book was very hard to get into, because as it warns you, the opening involves a child experiencing grooming and gaslighting from an adult, and it is tense. Oof. But that said, between this and Mislaid in Parts Half-Known, I think Antsy's story and the Shop Where the Lost Things Go might be my favorite place and narrative arc we've seen yet.

Barda - I was obsessed with Ngozi's Check Please! for a number of years, and I think she's a very funny person in general! I read this on the strength of that alone despite no previous knowledge of the DC characters involved. I do honestly think this needed to be twice as long to get the depth of story necessary for an outsider, but dang did she pack the emotions in! I can fully see why she's obsessed with these characters, even if I don't feel like I have enough info to get into it myself.

North Woods - honest to god I'm so glad I picked up a copy of this at the library book sale, because I don't know if OR when I might have gotten to it otherwise. I don't really have the words, but it's one of those slow, literary, speculative, books that you have to work to put together that I love to listen to on audiobook and just marinate in for a few days. I would highly recommend to fans of Emily St John Mandel.

Red White & Royal Blue - I'll be honest, I somehow found myself on a FirstPrince fanfic binge and eventually hit a point where I thought to myself, you know, I've only read the book once, maybe I should go check that out again. It was fun! Remarkably similar in tone to the fanfic, so keep up the good work yall ;D

Paladin of Souls - Y'all. I'm so mad it took me this long to get to this after Curse of Chalion. I've seen this recommended so many times independent of the first book and they were so right, I loved it. Character-driven fantasy, great world building, a middle-aged female character who's on a journey of self-discovery and also so done with everyone's shit (including the gods, lol).

The Gathering - a murder investigation in Alaska with vampires *sounds* cool, but... the vampires are people, they're sentient, they have a culture, but they're also deeply hated and treated like predatory animals and are designated a protected species? It's trying to say something, but I'm not sure it works. Definitely taught me that I don't like crime novels or thrillers, but some bonus points for being unexpectedly queer.

The Magic Fish - I've see this around, but tumblr finally convinced me that I needed to read it and I got it onto the book club list. It was completely not what I was expecting, it was so much better! The description really led me to think it would be a lot more YA-ish and be about the son, but his mom is just as important to the story! It's got fairy tales, it's got complexity, the art was incredibly beautiful, ah!!! I'll be needing to get my own copy so I can read it again and think about it some more.

The Invisible Library - tumblr apparently finds this book very divisive, and both times I've asked about it there's been a 50/50 split on whether people liked or hated it lol. SO I went in with very low expectations, and I thought it was fun! It's not a great work of fantasy, I will give you that, but I do enjoy a tropey alt/historical fantasy adventure on occasion, and this filled that niche pretty well. It also didn't lean into a romance plot like I was afraid it would, and as long as it continues to do so (or at least handles it well), I think I could have fun with the rest of this series.

The Paragon Hotel - this is somehow my third Lydsay Faye, and while I don't think I've particularly loved any of them, she can really write a very solid book! A good read, with queer identities playing an unexpectedly major part in the plot!

Bryony & Roses - I have so far epically failed in my goal this year to read more of T Kingfisher's fantasy backlist, but I saw this on hoopla and thought I could fit it in. A very good time as always!

DNF

The Spellshop (16%) - I've read the author's YA in the past and (mostly) liked it at the time, and have been meaning to read her previous adult book for ages. Unfortunately, I've been having terrible luck with anything recent being marketed as cozy fantasy. I put 2 hours into this on audiobook and my initial impression of the story was earnestly quirky, charming, and anxious. Perhaps better than L&L, but I wasn't feeling much more than a vague interest and decided to cut my losses before my feelings entirely soured.

Lalani of the Distant Sea (10%) - this book sounds really cool (yes I did love Moana), the mythology and worldbuilding in the bit I read was interesting, but it is very much written for a younger reader. If I had any in my life currently I would be happy to give this to them! Just not the right pick for me right now.

[mermaidsirennikita]

Too bad now you have to give recs of "hero goes down on the clueless heroine and she’s like wow thanks that was AMAZING, can women do that to men too? 🤔 " haha

I love the clueless heroine going down on the hero, she has no idea what she is doing but her eagerness makes it a 10, Best blow job of my life 🤌🏻

@hptriviachamp posts every time the latter thing happens with a very apt meme that makes me laugh every time (IT AIN'T MUCH BUT IT'S HONEST WORK)

I can't remember a lot of PARTICULAR moments, but for these moments or this vibe:

You should definitely try Elisa Braden for this vibe. Mooost of her heroines are virgins (honestly: too many of them for me lol, I do need a bit more variation) and they're often all "WHAT'S THIS BUTTON DO" about sex. Her Midnight in Scotland series is really good. I think The Taming of a Highlander is the one where the hero is like "THERE'S NO WAY IT'LL FIT. WE MUSTN'T." and she's like "la la la it grows exponentially bigger when I look at it, I suppose I shall attempt to stuff it in la di da" blase about it.

One Good Earl Deserves a Lover by Sarah MacLean, one of her best. The heroine's a scientist who initially gets the hero to teach her about sex only! Verbally! Before graduating to physically! Also! She's very "if he'd let me study his penis with a magnifying glass I would" in nature. I also really enjoy the scene where he eats her out, comes in his pants, and immediately afterward is caught when his buddy stumbles in like "hey where do we keep th--OH. SORRY."

The Duke Gets Desperate by Diana Quincy doesn't have this scene/a totally clueless heroine, but it does have a scene where the hero is like "my dick is trying to make friends with your pussy" so there's that.

And in the same sense, because I fucking know these authors are friends and there's no way this was a total coincidence... Frankie in Mila Finelli's Mafia Mistress & Mafia Darling is NOT a virgin by any means. But when she and Fausto make it official, they do immediately roleplay him deflowering her as if she has literally never seen a dick in her life and it's HILARIOUS. Like these are DEEPLY COMMITTED people going "oh no! what's that????" "it's my dick! it's trying to say hello!" and I. Die. Not only because it's very funny, but because it actually makes their relationship more authentic to me. That's the kind of shit you only do with someone you deeply trust lmao.

Grace Callaway is gonna give you this vibe. Not all of her heroines are virgins, but the ones who are... often are precocious... and will like stuff their mouths with the hero's dick like they're doing the chubby bunny challenge.... The Duke Who Knew Too Much comes to mind because he's like "NO WAIT STOP THERE'S CRIME AFOOT" but she's already going for it.

Speaking of, Elizabeth Hoyt's Duke of Pleasure always deserves cred for the singular moment in which the hero and (virgin, grew up as a street rat dressed as a boy) heroine are investigating crime and some evildoers come upon them and he's like "quick just pretend you're blowing me" and she does start like, a mild actual beej while he's telling the guys "PLEASE LEAVE I'M GETTING BLOWN BY MY DOXY~" but after the guys leave he's all "so you can stop" and she's like "no no no I'm going somewhere with this". This one is special to me because he makes her spit into his fancy handkerchief after and I promise that even if he didn't know it that's when he decided to marry that girl.

I would say How to Marry a Marquess is one you should check out--by Stacy Reid. It's a classic "brother's best friend teaches me how to be sexy and then things get Really Outta Hand" book. I also really liked this one scene in it when his whole "let me teach you what dudes are into" thing leads to him like, eating her out in a moving carriage and when the carriage stops he does an entire "EGADS" jump off of her.

I need to reread The Lady Gets Lucky, but that's a rake meets virgin sex lessons book, and I have to think based off the scene I remember where he's like 30 seconds away from coming just from watching her lick her lips, there's a lot happening.

[wond3er]

I keep seeing tiktok influencers talking shit about Fairy Tail 100yq but for the wrong —and worst reasons like at this point the biggest problem isn’t coherence but the weird kinks included for fanservice. I couldn’t care less about living dragons in a universe where they’re all meant to be dead I could live with that, I don’t care about new dragon slayers appearing out of nowhere I can accept that too, but GRAY literally EATS Juvia ? this should be your main concern, not the fact that Igneel has a whole ass son or that FT became Dragon tail we dgaf.

Story wise (minus the FS) it isn’t great but it’s not as bad as some other canon spin offs imo.

Like I can’t count how many times I sighed reading FT 100yq chapters but at the same time I believe we were given some good things like the Erza x Laxus fight or a bigger insight on Jellal’s past which was nice too. We also got some funny moments like Gajeel and Juvia (my fav dynamic btw) investigating the new FT member and Gray calling out a misogynist (this was definitely not on my FT bingo list). All of that to say I don’t get why people continue reading if they dislike it that much (and i’m not talking about FS bc most of the ppl complaining are men who don’t care about the fanservice and dislike it for other reasons.)

While I believe everyone is entitled to share their opinion on media, I think there’s only so much you can do by complaining about a piece that can only carry on thanks to the initial material. Like…if it brings you more despair than joy you should probably stop reading and move on.

[thejojolands-moved]

I'm not big into Demon Slayer, I always watch a new season but I'm not hardcore. It's a very fun thing just to turn on, especially when I'm sick. But every single time I watch it I just get so taken back by the Shounen misogyny.

Like Season 1, honestly not that bad all things considered. There's a lot of women that all have their own interesting things going on, from swordswomen like Shinobu, to the nurses, and to the many demonesses (? Is that the proper term? No clue lol). They were interesting and got a lot of screen time. Women's roles were very much skewed to being nurses, which isn't the best, but it's a historical fantasy so I can understand there being more in that area with less in combat roles. Still, many had their own inner world and aspects outside of men in their lives. They are heavily involved yes, and Kano changing her whole life because of a man was good, but it's definitely had a stronger start than many anime. It is also fun to see some men have the same writing as a lot of stereotypical Shounen ladies and not have it shoved in the audience's face the irony. Zenitsu is unbelievably annoying, so it's not the best execution on a character so prominent, but shrug.

I don't have much on the movie, it wasn't the best either but far from the worst. There's more ladies here who are interesting but the combat focus isn't on them which is fine, not great but fine, for a movie, honestly. They need to hone in and it did a good job on that.

Season 3 is where it starts to get iffier. The focus is on geisha, shinobi, and a demon geisha. The male main cast even had to disguise as women to help investigate, fun stuff! The issues come in how those women are depicted. Most are pretty one note, with some that are moreso 2 note then fully developed. All stuff that made me want more clarification. It didn't help that all the women were notably weaker compared to the men. I get that the protagonists are mostly dudes, so that's the cost of them women, but most women on their side couldn't hold their own in the slightest. The main villainess being revealed to have a stronger villain brother who needs to be defeated is hypothetically fun but just makes it worse that all the women got their shit rocked so early on.

Then we get to season 4 and Kanroji who is very much billed as a main character but gets largely shafted. It doesn't help that she's very blatantly a "x trope but better and more ironic" character. It's played too genuine to be effective and it's wear all the previous issues really boil over. They do improve her combat, she's not getting obliterated immediately but shows up very late in the battle side of things to be effective. It really stings in a season that has less of the main cast to they could absolutely focus on her more. Plus the whole trope subversion that's too obvious. It was subtle, but annoying, earlier on. But with Kanroji it's all so tongue and cheek and could be very funny (being a waifu that horrifies everyone? Turning hair colors because she's a shrimp? Hilarious ideas!) It's all just played too straight to where it falls into the trope instead of subverting it.

Then there's Nezuko across all seasons. Man is Nezuko a ton of missed potential, especially since there is a character very much like her already in Shounen (what is Alphonse Elric?). Frankly, outside of moments with tanjiro (mostly in backstory and the end of season 4) and all the time with guys sleeving on her, she could just be replaced with a sick, super powered puppy and not much would change. It's always her and that damn box, where she's forced out of the story to hibernate until it's time to battle and get her ass kicked. It's just disappointing, honestly. Especially compared to other women in Shounen who are leaps ahead and especially characters like Alphonse who she has so much in common with. There's a struggle there and while yes it is of course difficult for Tanjiro, it's gotta be GNARLY for Nezuko. But it's barely explored. Hoping it gets better after Season 4, because there's so much there to be explored and to make her shine but so far, it's nada.

[voxblade]

SPOILERS FOR V3

Much of V3's cast has a "running gag". Kokichi is lying at every chance he can get, Tenko's racking up misdemeanor charges against men like whackamole points, Miu is horny on main, etc.. Kibo's gag is him being upset by things and declaring them "robophobic". While this seems kind of funny on a first glance, it has always rubbed me the wrong way, as in actual practice... it feels mean? Like actually kind of mean, the way the game implements it?

For reference, our little silicone friend here is as sentient as anyone else. By all accounts, he has as much personality and need for validation as any teenager, while possessing a kind soul, but... everybody is always disappointed by him. Why? Well you see, despite Kibo being a technological marvel (having actual personality, opinions, emotions, a working body capable of fluid movement down to even facial expressions, the ability to memorize lots of information, a good power system, etc.) he can't do awesome things like a mecha in shonen manga or whatever the fuck. He has a built-in camera that helps them during a case? Lame, it uses film! He records audio that helps corner someone when they're lying during a trial? Lame, anything can be a playback recorder! He has flashlights built into his eyeballs that help during an investigation in a dark place? Also lame, anybody can just pick up a flashlight! Seriously, the dude comes through to save everybody so many times, and they treat him like shit for it, constantly expecting him to do better when he's already the reason they're all alive during the trials and much more technologically advanced than almost any of them could even hope to make. Oh I'm sorry guys, did you happen to bring a flashlight to the crime scene that takes place under the floorboards and has no real light source? No? Then shut up!

This would be kind of annoying on its own, except the game goes even further. Many times Kibo experiences outright harrassment or is seen as a lesser person just for being a robot, when it clearly causes him distress. Part of his introduction is Kokichi asking point-blank if he has a robot penis, ffs, which makes Kibo clearly uncomfortable. During the lategame, despite having had him around for all the earlier chapters to bond with him, Himiko outright tells him to blow himself up to save them all without a moment's hesitation. Even sweetheart Gonta is easily convinced Kibo is less of a person and uses him like a fucking battering ram to open a tank of water at one point by throwing him at the glass!!! HE DIDN'T EVEN KNOW HE WAS WATERPROOF FOR FUCKS SAKE.

Nearly every time Kibo declares something is robophobic, it feels less and less like an absurd thing on its face, and more like an insecure teen trying to get his peers to stop being insensitive and bullying him already.

Oh yeah this isn't even getting to the end of the game. After all that, he's revealed to have been nothing more than a self-insert for the audience, and after being freed from having his free will temporarily removed in the climax, he basically commits suicide to make sure everybody else can escape the game. Yaaaaay.

Round 1: Left Side - Finn (Star Wars) vs. K1-B0 (Danganronpa)

[etherealluminescence]

op, p l e a s e do this one.

gn-mc is a great fighter according to their profile, but everyone severely underestimates them, since they’re kinda short and they’re thinking it’s to human standards. as soon as they come though the three (Diavolo, Barbatos, Lucifer) realise that the number of fights have gone down, and that RAD is a lot more quiet. Apparently mc had fought all the trouble makers or scary students on a whim, and has forced like 30+ scary demons into pacts, and plans to conquer RAD’s bad students. on top of that, they’re just like “one day i’ll beat the shit out of diavolo too fair and square, and conquer him as well.” for the brothers and undateables. bonus if mc said they only started their “conquest” because someone tried to bully Luke, so they decided to just conquer the demons for him like a good? older sibling

Holy shit OP this is what I signed up for when I started doing headcanons. Recently I’ve been working on my actual novel but I am still writing these out! I decided to answer this first because the creativity just HIT me.

The part that killed me is just how they did it for luke, I love him like my own son. Also side note the goth theme on tumblr hits different I really like. WARNING - a little bit of language, and violence.

Everyone reacting to GN!MC “conquering” RAD’s demons

Lucifer

He had chosen you and noticed your profile, thinking that is was almost cute humans would consider a tiny thing like you strong.

He immediately brushed you off when he saw how close you were to the chihuahua, thinking that you too, are just like a tiny chihuahua then.

But he soon hears less and less about fights going around, and even Diavolo investigates with him, and he is beyond shocked. He severely underestimated you.

He finds out because he forced some lesser demons to talk, and they were in tears saying you forced them to make a pact with you each time they lose, and by your order they weren’t allowed to fight students anymore, or else you’d punish them.

Although it was the truth he didn’t quite believe it, so they followed you around for a day before realising it absolutely was, you kicked ass so hard, the demon was crying and unrecognisable, and you forced him into a pact while snot was even coming out his nose.

He then sees you open the door behind you and take Luke’s hand before walking away from the bloody scene you had just caused. He was slightly angry and a bit intimidated, how did you, a tiny human do that?

When he confronted you about it, you just held onto his shoulders tightly, answering with “I’ll conquer you too, I’ll conquer Diavolo, I’ll conquer all of RAD, fucker. I am going to protect this child with my life.”

He was about to argue back, possibly attack you, but according to all the students investigated, you had well over 50 pact marks by now, and Diavolo found it amusing, so you were let off with that.

He swears he won’t submit to you, and has to stay on high defense because even at the HOL you will try to attack him with murderous intent to get the pact. 0/10, wants a new exchange students.

Mammon

He was the first one you made a pact with, and afterwards he started following you around like a dog, despite literally calling Luke a dog.

He knew you were a good fighter since you kept saying so, but he kept telling you demons were another level, and you should be glad to have him.

You and Luke hung around a lot, while Mammon thirdwheeled, and finally came the day of your first fight. Mammon was ready to defend you, but you ordered him to sit as you beat the literal fuck out of the demon.

Mammon couldn’t tell if that was a lesser demon or a dismembered corpse at that point, and covered Luke due to all of their screaming in agony. When you were done, you kicked their head into a wall and demanded a pact, making him slightly pouty but happy he’s alive:

Getting the pact, you left and gave a head pat to both Luke and Mammon, telling them that they’re safe with you. Mammon didn’t like it at first but then he loved it.

It didn’t take Lucifer long to find out, and when you told him with such confidence that you’d “conquer all of RAD, including Diavolo” he was like woah!! You’re going to die for that, but you’re amazing!!

And then you didn’t die, because Diavolo found it funny, and you were only serving justice to those who cause mayhem at the moment, so it was fine. He also accidentally finds out that you rival Lucifer in power, and absolutely won’t let Lucifer punish him, because in your words, “Mammon is my property now, whore.”

You were the only person to protect him, and he absolutely loves you, he may be weaker than you, but he loves staying by your side and saying he’d beat people up for you anyways.

Leviathan

Levi never really talked to you at first, nor found out about the incidents because he didn’t go to school, but when he heard Mammon talking about it he thought he was exaggerating a lot.

Even Lucifer said you were strong, but he refused to believe it at first, even denying the pact marks you had. Until you beat the life out of Levi during the TSL games.

He got angry at you and tried to kill you, so you ripped him apart, quite aggressively. He swore his tail had bite marks in them, and that he couldn’t see out of his left eye for a week. The icing on top was you demanding a pact from him. He finally believed.

After you calmed, he made a pact with you, and was now afraid of you, until you comforted and apologized to him, telling him he did try to kill you first.

When Luke comes over one day, you invite him into Levi’s room, no permission, and start to talk, and when Levi tries to make fun of him, Mammon shuts his mouth.

“Luke is the whole reason they decided to start their conquest, the whole school knows that by now!” Mammon shushed him, and Levi began feeling a little jealous that the chihuahua got more of your attention than him. But when he hears that you ALSO want to conquer Diavolo, he’s just like !?!!??? You’re crazy.

But more than that you’re like some over powered anime protagonist who got sucked into a different world with over powered plot armor, Levi thought, and he really liked it.

Begs you to come with him when he’s trying to buy stuff in lines, so anyone who tries to cut gets the life beat out of them when they do.

Satan

Absolutely member #2 of your fan boy club, Diavolo being the first one in it.

He thinks oh yeah, you can fight sure. But when he witnesses it he absolutely loses his mind. A human shouldn’t be that strong, but the way you force a pact mark from them, and even defended the tiny chihuahua before leaving, while being tiny yourself, he was interested in how your body worked.

But what really excited him and made him like you is when Lucifer entered the room and you sent a flying kick to him, putting up a harsh fight as well, before you break the table when you were knocked into it, calling it a tie.

“I swear one day I’ll conquer you and force you to make a pact with me. I’ll wipe that smug look off your face, fucker. And once I do that, I’ll beat the shit out of your prince, too.” You spat, getting up and holding your back.

So now you went from protecting the chihuahua to devildom domination? Basically asks you to make a pact with him so you can use him to fight Lucifer. When you tell him you want a fair fight, and that you’ll beat Lucifer yourself, he’s just so excited because you held your own for five minutes, and Lucifer can’t even kill you!

Literally tags along each time you decided to fight Lucifer and cheers you on so hard. Will purposely try to make you and Lucifer run into each other at the halls, so you automatically try to hurt him.

Please tell him not to eat so much popcorn, we know the show is good but it’s like he has boxes of them now knowing you’re hating? on Lucifer like him.

Asmodeous

Has absolutely freaked out and began cowering in a corner, shaking, begging you anywhere but the face.

He came to watch the show of you beating up a demon, not realizing it was you at first. When he did, he was so shocked and got closer to make sure.

You mistook him for the demon’s crew who made fun of look and tried to attack, seeing red. He held his own for a minute, before you almost rip off his wing in one swing.

He’s begging for forgiveness like the demons, despite not doing anything wrong at all. When you calm and realize it’s just human, you make the other demons unrecognizable and get your pacts, before making your way to him.

He’s just crying not his face, while you just say “Pact mark.” Pointing out you won fair and square against him, too.

He gives it too you beyond willingly, just not his face, he doesn’t even think twice. Nodding, you take Luke’s hand and leave.

He has to leave too for then next class, but then sees Lucifer, Diavolo, and Barbatos confront you.

Is afraid for you but then you literally punch Lucifer and tell him you’ll conquer him, and then turn to Diavolo and declare his ass as your own, making Asmo secretly swoon but worried.

Actively tried to avoid you while at the HOL for awhile, but noticing your docile nature when you’re not fighting, he felt a little comfortable with you, and right now his only concern is how many callouses your hands are getting from punching thick skulls.

Beelzebub

This man wanted to believe you when you said you were a strong fighter in passing conversation with him, but he just couldn’t. You were the tiniest creature he’d ever seen, and he was so sure you’d crush under one of his hugs.

He heard you were protecting Luke from the whispers of lesser demons, but he didn’t think it was through fighting.

This all changes when on his way to practice, he watches you beat up one of his teammates so hard they’re crying, they’re so huge, and yet lost to you, and the fact you sent him flying and cracked a wall, by one kick.

When you said you wanted a pact mark, he was shocked the rumors were true. On top of that, Luke was near by holding a cake he planned to give Beel as thanks for something he did for him earlier that week.

He watched you wipe the blood off your hand and pat Luke’s head, with a gentle smile. When he came in, Luke ran to him and gave him the cake, and he learned everything.

You were the one subduing the demons around here, big or small, and even protected Luke. He even learned that you challenge three totally strong demons, Lucifer, Barbatos, and Diavolo.

He totally believed you could do it now, with what he just witnessed. He’s seen his fair share of fights with egotistical demons thinking they’re so tough just because they play sports, and he’s seen guys at the gym, you were beyond that.

You had speed, strength, and great perception. Wasn’t even mad that practice was delayed, and began going to the gym with you, and will happily play with Luke too, another older sibling figure for Luke.

Belphegor

When he exited the attic and tried to kill you he watch his brothers grab popcorn from the sidelines, as they said to him enjoy dying.

He was confused at first, but then got the LIVING HELL beat out of him, oh how the turns have tabled. He intended to murder you, but you nearly killed him.

You forced a pact out of him as well, kicking him repeatedly where the sun doesn’t shine until he agreed, understanding why even Lucifer stood back. It’s not because they wanted you dead, it’s because they couldn’t stop you.

When he gains consciousness later, he finds out Lucifer is the only brother you haven’t made a pact with, and that you have over 80 pacts at this rate, and that you even planned to conquer Diavolo.

He thought it was stupid at first but after seeing you fight Lucifer, with no cheats just your normal hands for combat, while Lucifer was in demon form struggling, he understood he really liked you.

“Soooo... when are you beating the shit out of Diavolo?” He asks, and he also nearly makes the mistake of calling Luke a dog before Beel puts a hand over his mouth.

Jaw nearly drops and he loses his mind when he finds out you only started beating the shit out of people to make Luke happy.

Diavolo

This man just fucking cackles, like after watching you fight, he’s just in full tears from laughing. He’s just clapping, and telling you that’s amazing.

When Lucifer asked why you did it, you stood tall despite your short stature, and looked him in the eye with no fear. “I’ll beat each fucker who approached Luke, I’m going to defend him with all my fists got, and if you get in my way, I’ll do the same to you.” You said, before turning to Diavolo.

You walked up to him, and pulled his tie down so he could meet your eyes, and declared, “I’ll even beat the shit out of and conquer you too, one day, prince. I’ll be the ruler of this place one day. Prepare yourself for that day, until then, I won’t stop:”

This makes him laugh, not belittling you, but telling you he can’t wait, and he hopes that day comes soon, because he wants to fight you as well, and he hopes you hold nothing back against him.

He loves how strong you are, he loves how you want to protect Luke, he loves that you only did it to protect, and didn’t even bother to summon a demon, you did it with your own style. That took guts, confidence, and the fact you told him of all people with that confidence you would one day conquer him, his heart fluttered.

He would definitely start watching over you, and probably fan boy over you. The first person to ever force the prince of the Devildom to lower himself; and they even declared they would be the one to make him their’s, by forming a pact mark. It was honestly amazing to him, and he likes it.

Barbatos

He really should of seen this coming, a new fighting student, who was clinging to Luke protectively, and suddenly all the bad demons were being silenced.

Guess there’s no need for his torture chamber anymore, you’re much more feral than whatever he does, he just needs to sick you on them.

Joking aside, he doesn’t really take it too seriously. It’s great you can get a lot of pacts, and defend yourself, and even want to conquer Diavolo by forcing him to give you a pact mark, but he knows you’re still no match for him yet.

To get to Diavolo, you’d need to beat him up, and he’s a bit of a harder fight than Lucifer, by that he means a lot, he won’t even flinch if you bite his tail when he grabs you by it and puts you out the room, with a smile on his face.

It’s become a game at this point for the both of you to try and fight each other, you trying hard to get a pact mark out of him. He even offered it to you at one point, but you told him you wanted to win it fair and square, and he’s just in love with you even more because of that.

He’s pretty much a dad to Luke, so he appreciates how kind you are to him, and appreciates how you have your own set of morals for fighting, making him know that if Diavolo were to ever make a pact mark with you, it would all be fine.

Solomon

“Hey... are you sure you’re not actually the demon?” Solomon asks you, looking at the sheer amount of pact marks on your body, one week after coming to the devildom.

He’s seriously impressed by you, considering how easily you beat up demons without any weapons, magic, or underhanded tactics. You simply use your fists and legs, sometimes your head, but you get the job done scarily.

He’s even more impressed when he finds out the reason, you were visiting purgatory hall and Luke was being rather loud. “I can’t believe that’s the 7th demon this week that fought with you! You’re just so cool, you’re so strong! Thank you for protecting me!”

Probably wants to try to enhance your strength with a potion, and offers it to you when you try to have your epic showdown with Diavolo, claiming he is the boss and Barbatos and Lucifer were his right hand men who dragged Luke into this mess.

You decline though, wanting it to be fair and square. Truly admires yet fears you. But then again, i don’t think you stabbing him would making him afraid of you. I don’t think this man can feel it at all, unless it was you dying.

Anyways, he’s delighted to ask the demons you make pacts with to make pacts with him as well.

Simeon

Nearly loses his mind at first. He’s so concerned if you’re hurt,, but then he’s just like wait what.

Luke had told Simeon all about it when he reached purgatory hall, about how you beat up a demon for him, and even promised to always protect him. Simeon is really distraught you may of been hurt protecting Luke while he was busy.

But then Luke tells him about how you forced a pact mark out of the demon, and you didn’t even break a sweat, and that is was the coolest.

He doesn’t tell Diavolo about this thinking it was just a one time thing, and tries to watch over you two more. But then he sees you and he’s literally just frozen.

Humans aren’t that powerful right? And when Lucifer Diavolo finally confronts you about it, he watches as you just stare him down and declare that you’re going to conquer him as well, to make Luke feel happy and safe in devildom.

Needless to say Simeon is extremely panicked about your well-being, but extremely happy Luke is protected by someone so kind to him. Probably doesn’t approve of the violence, but Luke adores you.

Luke

The first time you met him you told him not to worry about the demons, because if they ever bullied him you would beat the life out of them.

He thought you were just saying that, and he said that he too would protect you, which you found extremely adorable and nearly went “I’m taking this kid home with me and he’s my child now.” not that anyone could physically stop you.

He found out you were actually sincere about it when the two of you were alone in RAD’s hallway, trying to leave for purgatory hall since he invited you over.

You two were stopped by a demon, who tried picking a fight on easy prey, and it was quite frankly, the worst mistake of his life, ever.

You beat the LIVING SHIT out of him, and even told Luke to look away, because this man was beyond recognisable, because you were so small you could easily duck and move fast, so the demon didn’t even land one hit on you.

Just because he’s a demon, doesn’t mean his stamina is forever you figured, and beat him up, forcing him to make a pact with you. You had one with Mammon already, so you knew how it worked, especially knew you could have multiple due to Solomon.

When it was over, you told Luke he could look, and there was zero damage to you and he was just like woah!! You’re so cool! And from then on you stuck close to him, literally demolishing any demon he thought looked scary, or just stared at him for too long.

When Diavolo comforted you about it, you stared him dead in the eyes saying “I would literally beat the shit out of you for Luke, so you better hope he starts liking the devildom soon, fucker.”

Diavolo laughed and Luke insisted you didn’t have to go that far, but you just patted his head and said it was okay.

[whatifyoulivelikethat]

calculated iii, m | jjk

pairing(s): jungkook x reader

summary: You wanted to say that you were able to control yourself around him and not to have wild sex at school. But this is Jeon Jungkook we’re talking about. And what Jungkook wants, Jungkook gets. You wore that pencil skirt for a reason, after all.

warnings: rated M (18+) for language; intense smut (fem reader, semi-public sex, dirty talk, nipple play, choking, m-receiving oral, gagging, pussy spanking, fingering, penetrative sex); fluff; non-idol!AU - university!AU; dom!Jungkook x sub!noona!reader, ft Jimin once again, lol

–

part i | part ii | part iii | part iv

-

Career Week was somewhat of a nightmare.

So much running around, prepping tables, setting up presentations, helping the guests with their computers before their seminars, and you had to be dressed professionally too. Not just ‘nice’ clothes, but white dress shirt, slim black tie, tailored black vest, and matching fitted black slacks. It had to be monotone, it had to be hyper professional, and you had to wear heels.

Why had you agreed to this again?

Oh, yes, Kim Namjoon on his knees begging for help because he was overworked and they needed volunteers. And you, being far too responsible, accepted.

Not only were you also overworked, but Jeon Jungkook was staring at you across the auditorium.

In all-black – leather jacket, high-necked shirt, slim-fit jeans. Sharp jawline, tanned high cheekbones, piercing dark brown eyes, his black hair pushed back with a few strands on his forehead, revealing his clean undercut.

And he was smirking at you.

You highly doubted he was here to investigate prospective career paths. Actually, you were a hundred-and-ten percent positive that that was not the reason he was here and the soreness between your inner thighs proved it. You were willing to bet Park Jimin’s right nutsack.

Yeah, sorry Jimin, but you needed all your body parts.

For one reason, really, and that reason was staring you right now.

Who was going to hire him when he was dressed like that anyway? You certainly wouldn’t. Mostly because it was distracting. No one could work with Jeon Jungkook looking like that. You couldn’t, anyway. Well, maybe if his work was wrecking your–

Get back to your damn task, you scolded yourself.

You were setting up chairs for the cardiologist that was arriving soon. All the doctors always had tons of students listening, so the administration instructed you to pack as many seats that could be crammed into the space without causing a fire hazard. You unfolded the metal chairs, arranging them neatly, already knowing they would be an incomprehensible mess when the students left and that you would be the one cleaning up after them.

Sigh.

Come to think of it, it was all Park Jimin’s fault that you were being violently undressed by Jungkook’s eyes right now. If he had kept his trap shut and let you live in blissful ignorance, maybe you wouldn’t be trying to hide your wincing every time you bent over. You snuck a glance at Jungkook.

He cocked an eyebrow, highly amused.

Never mind, you probably still would have been accosted at Calculus I office hours, except instead of the door being closed and locked and having Jimin’s warning texts, you two probably would have been caught and expelled.

You grumbled and slid a chair into place, taking back your former thoughts and thanking Jimin in your mind. He wasn’t even here to witness your inner struggle.

Jimin probably would have found it funny.

You went back to your chairs, not addressing Jeon Jungkook’s presence anymore because if you looked at him again, you probably would have abandoned your post. And he knew it.

-

The next day, you already knew Jungkook would show up again. Mostly because he texted you a winking face of a semicolon and parenthesis, to which you didn’t respond, because you would probably get roped into phone sex in under twenty seconds, and you had to help this extremely riveting lawyer set up his laptop for the projector.

As in, you were ready to tape his mouth shut as he blabbed on and on about his work and how important it was to society, which it was, because defense attorneys were very important, but this guy’s laptop was a fucking hot mess of icons all over his desktop. This was a personal pet peeve of yours, as you liked to be neat and organized, with everything clearly labeled with dates. You didn’t care about most people’s personal habits, but it was annoying when you were trying to assist and the owner of said laptop was not shutting up and demanding noises of affirmation that you were listening.

If it wasn’t Jungkook demanding you to swallow his cock, you honestly couldn’t give a single shit–

You finally got his PowerPoint working and had him scroll through the slides to make sure it was the correct one. He thanked you and you realized the older man was looking at you up and down, the same way Jungkook usually did, except in this case you were not even remotely interested.

Guess everyone had the right to get a good look before they die.

You were wearing a white chiffon blouse with a black silk neck scarf, with a tight knee-length black pencil skirt, sheer tights and sleek black heels. You knew how good your ass looked in this skirt and you had worn it for a specific purpose.

“We will be letting the students in five minutes early to get settled,” you stated briskly, cutting the older man from his daydreams. “You will have forty-five minutes for your presentation, and then we’ll have a fifteen-minute question session, led by my associate, Kim Namjoon here.”

As if on cue, Namjoon appeared, cheerful smile with cute dimples, handing the lawyer a mic.

“Let’s test the microphone and the backup to make sure you don’t have any hiccups,” Namjoon instructed merrily, instantly captivating the man’s attention and diverting it from you.

You mouthed a ‘thank you’ behind the man’s back and Namjoon gave you the tiniest of nods as you excused yourself. Hmph. You knew people would notice – you were wearing makeup for once and would be around students and professionals all day, after all – but to be so shameless and gawk like that was annoying. Plus, the guy probably had a wife and kids.

You made your way to the bathroom to check your appearance. Maybe your makeup was a bit off or something. You had Jimin check you over this morning. Surprisingly, he knew a lot about cosmetics and how to look good in all lighting. Must be a dance major thing.

Ah, the door to the women’s bathroom. You hiked your skirt up a bit do you could use your damn knees to walk, because they had been suffocating for the past two hours–

Long fingers suddenly gripped your upper arm and yanked you around the corner, slamming you into a muscular body and black biker jacket. You nearly stumbled in your heels, but a second hand came to practically lift you off the floor and shove you into the wall.

“Good afternoon, noona.”

A clear, silvery voice.

You couldn’t possibly guess who it was.

“Why, fancy seeing you here, Jung–”

You were abruptly cut off by his lips crashing into yours, one hand grabbing the back of your head and disturbing your perfect bun. You whimpered, feeling him shove you into the wall again, your shoulder blades hitting the painted brick. His tongue slid into your mouth, exhaling into your throat and forcing you swallow his breath. Your hands clutched your skirt, moaning as his hard body pressed yours against the wall.

Jungkook drew back, panting a little. Looking so handsome with his slightly slicked-back hair, black strands around his right eye, chiseled jawline, silver hoops glinting in the hall light. He arched a sculpted eyebrow at you, smirking. His pink lips had a little red on them from kissing you.

“Now, you know you can’t be looking so delicious and not expect me to want to eat you up,” he purred, licking your lips. Your breathing hitched at the touch, unlocking your death grip on your skirt.

“What are you talking about?” you answered evenly despite your panties literally turning into Niagara Falls with the way he was looking at you like a carnivore at an all-meat buffet. “I have to dress like this for Career Week. Everyone has to dress professionally.”

Jungkook nodded, not believing a single word coming out of your mouth. His right hand came up, ink black tattoos against tan skin, and reached around to your bun, slowly pulling the hairpins out. Your skin tingled at the sensation of your hair gradually unravelling.

“A professional that I would hire to sit on my dick,” he mused.

You raised an eyebrow at him, your hair tumbling around your shoulders. “Subtle.”

Jungkook showed you the removed hairpins, opened his jacket, and tucked them in his inner pocket.

“I wouldn’t work for you anyway,” you added haughtily.

With each passing moment, Jungkook was becoming increasingly amused and aroused. You could tell by the way he was shoving his crotch into your thigh and by how wide his smirk was getting. The slacks he was wearing did nothing to hide his erection and you had a sneaking suspicion that he didn’t care.

“Oh? Why not?”

“I don’t know if I could trust someone younger than me to do a good job.”

He was unbuttoning your chiffon blouse now, humming. “I’m good at many things.” His dark eyes flickered to yours. “I think you would know.”

Your hands grabbed his despite him already having all the visible buttons completely open. Cold air drifted onto your heaving chest and white lace bra.

“Jungkook, we’re in a public place, again,” you hissed, narrowing your eyes at him.

“I don’t recall that being a problem,” he drawled, removing his hands from yours and squeezing your ass. “I’m beginning to think you like it.”

You sucked in a breath as his strong hands kneaded you through your skirt. Your hormones would absolutely let Jungkook rip off your clothes right here and let him fuck you, but the sliver of your brain that had any sense at all reminded you that you had to find a closed space. Jungkook slapped your ass, loudly, the sound echoing across the empty hallway. You nearly moaned, but bit your tongue, glaring at him.

“I have to get back,” you snapped. “And look presentable.”

Jungkook licked his teeth. “Hm. You have an hour before you have to appear to the public eye.”

Who the heck told him that? He smirked slyly at you as he saw your reaction.

“I could drag you to the bathroom–”

“At least give me more class than the woman’s bathroom,” you interrupted.

Jungkook looked annoyed that you had cut him off and also looked like he was going to remind you later. His fingers dug into your hips sharply and you gasped, back pressed flat against the wall. He inhaled a deep breath and began again, voice dangerously low.

“As I was saying,” he continued. “I’m going to take you into this classroom that I stole the key for.”

You frowned as Jungkook hoisted you up swiftly, princess-style, shirt still wide open. Fuck, what was he so strong for? He carried you down the hallway to the classrooms. You tried to close your shirt, but he growled at you, so you rolled your eyes and pushed the sides open, letting your bra-covered tits hang out. He seemed satisfied about this.

“Why would you steal a key?” you muttered as he deftly kicked the door open.

Jungkook slid through the door sideways. “So I could fuck you, of course.”

He dropped you and you had to catch yourself on your heels before you broke an ankle and ate shit. Half the lights turned on. You could hear him locking the door as you smoothed your skirt.

You turned to face him, saying, “You shouldn’t be a thief just because you’re horny, Jungkook.”

Jungkook turned around slowly from the now locked door. You were about to say something else, but your words died in your throat as you witnessed the overwhelming lust in his dark piercing eyes.

“I would be a thief, a murderer, and evade taxes for your body,” he snarled, advancing on you.

You pulled your blouse out of your skirt so he wouldn’t rip it, backing up into the desks. “You’ll get caught with the last one,” you said quietly, already removing your blouse and letting it fall onto a spare seat. “First two are acceptable.”

Jungkook grinned devilishly, licking his pink lips.

“Come here.”

You chewed on your lower lip, staring at his beautiful eyes, finding yourself already walking to him, heels clicking loudly in the empty room, but it didn’t matter, because he was the master now and you were the willing servant. Or slave. 

Take your pick.

He smirked at your obedience, placing his hands on your shoulders, stopping you. His dark orbs lingered down your body, focusing on all his favorite spots, pressing his fingertips into your skin.

“One day,” you said quietly. “We’re going to get in trouble.”

Jungkook’s powerful dark orbs shifted upwards, capturing yours. Time slowed down. You stared into his dark brown eyes, unable to look away, your heart beating in time with his words.

“You’re already in trouble.”

Voice haunting you, teasing smirk on his lips, and perfectly in command.

“From the second you let me have my hands on you.”

You gasped as his nails dug into your skin, scratching down your collarbones, leaving red marks. He snapped the straps of your bra, hard, and you whined, eyes pleading for him to take it off. His palms pressed into the lace cups, squeezing them roughly. Tongue dancing in between his lips as he felt your nipples harden, barely covered by the lace.

“You’re so dirty, noona,” he purred, lowering his palms and pinching your nipples through the thin fabric, smirking at your wanton moan. “Wearing such slutty underwear under these professional clothes.”

You whimpered as he tugged on them. “No one’s going to see them but you, Jungkook.”

He clamped your nipples between his thumbs and knuckles, dragging you to him. You sank your teeth into your lower lip, pussy throbbing as you collided with his firm chest. His breath was scorching hot against your skin, making you shiver.

“What if someone finds out? Some idiot like a perverted old man staring at your ass in this skirt?”

You snorted. “I’ll rip his head off.”

Jungkook snickered, flicking your nipples with your answer. “You wouldn’t let me do it for you?”

Your hips rolled into his, hands on his waist to keep yourself up as he played with you. “I’ll reattach it for you so you can do the same.”

He laughed, almost a little too jovially for the part he was playing, but then he was back, tipping his head close to yours, blowing soft air onto your lips. You frowned, glaring at him for the lack of kiss.

“If possible, you’re even hotter dressed like this,” Jungkook murmured, his forehead against yours. “So prim and proper, even with a cute gag tied around your neck,” he added, playing with the ends of your neck scarf. “You could be a CEO, and I could be the janitor fucking you on your penthouse-floor desk.” He was undoing your scarf now, teasing it apart, making you breathless. “Maybe fuck you against the window so everyone can see how good I make you feel, noona.”

“Give yourself a little more credit than a janitor,” you muttered, stiffening as Jungkook ran his fingertips over your throat, nails grazing your skin.

“True, I would rather be your secretary so I can follow you around and stare at your ass in this skirt,” he chuckled, lacing his fingers around your neck. Thumb under your ear, the other four fingers under your other ear. You made eye contact with him. He looked almost bored, one of his eyebrows raised, but he was watching you, predatory and attentive.

“I know what I’m doing.”

His whisper was so soft that you barely heard it, but the words were there.

His grip tightened around your throat.

You gasped, feeling the blood flow thinning, hazing your mind. Jungkook watched your expression, reaching around with the hand that was holding your scarf, unclasping your lace bra. You could feel it fall down your arms, but your thoughts were rapidly being clouded by lightheadedness and lust, Jungkook smirking at you as he lifted the silk scarf into your vision.

“J… Jungkook…” you choked out.

The mole underneath his lower lip winked at you as he grinned, brushing the silk against your hard, abused nipples, touch so light, and yet it made your whine, wanting more stimulation but unable to ask because you knew he was toying with you.

“What’s wrong?” Jungkook taunted. “Not intense enough for my naughty noona?”

He choked you harder and you couldn’t respond, eyes rolling back into your head as black spots danced in your vision, the sensation intensifying but still not enough, not enough, and you shoved your hips into his repeatedly, whimpering, hands clutching his black shirt, nails digging into his abs.

“So needy for me,” he breathed, feathery touches of silk against your nipples. “Are you only mine?”

He leaned forward, loosening his grip a little. The blood violently rushed back into your head and all you could hear Jungkook’s cruel whisper of your name, tearing a moan from your lips, a raspy yes, yes, fuck, Jungkook, I’m only yours.

He chuckled darkly.

Then he forced you to your knees, tits bouncing uncomfortably as you slid on your heels, knees hitting the tile floor. You clutched his clothed legs, panting, brain only half-functioning due to the lack of blood and the relentless teasing. You lifted your head back up to look at him, panting hard.

Jungkook cracked his neck sharply, a harsh pop. “I want to believe you, noona, but you’re dressed so fucking sexy that I can’t.” His dark eyes bore into you, tearing you up, and you were dripping onto your inner thighs. He emphasized his words with a raise of his eyebrow.

“Letting other people fantasize about this body that belongs to me isn’t acceptable.”

His hands reached down, fingers of his right hand playing with the button of his pants, tattoos dancing with his movement. He smirked as you watched him, eyes darting from his face to his hands. Shit, you were nearly drooling with anticipation. You swallowed as he teased the button free.

“You gonna show me that you remember who you belong to?”

You nodded quickly, maybe too quickly, but it was doomed now anyway because Jungkook was lowering the zipper, pushing down his pants and underwear, past his muscular thighs. It was obvious this was getting him off as much as it was getting you off, because he was rock-hard, leaking, tip already a dark red. Jungkook grabbed the back of your head and shoved his hips into your cheek, smearing his pre-cum onto your skin, all the way up to your cheekbone. He hissed, using his hand to press the head against your temple, nearly into your hair.

Fuck, he was so fucking close to your mouth, but he wasn’t letting you have it.

Damnnit.

Your tongue snaked out and softly licked his balls, eyes on his face, watching him tip his head back and moan. You licked more, creeping your head closer, pressing your lips against his hot skin. He was letting you do it, holding his cock out of the way as you wrapped your lips around his balls and sucked, pushing them around with your tongue, pleading noises in your throat, begging him for his cock as you bobbed your head up and down under his hips.

Jungkook’s dark eyes shifted down to you, triumphant grin on his lips.

“You want to swallow my cock, noona?” he teased, smacking it against your face, leaving a string of pre-cum connecting your cheek to his cock. You narrowed your eyes at him, as if to say, no fucking shit, you punk ass bitch, and he chuckled deep in his chest. He looked past your head, down your back.

“Such a nice ass.”

You smacked his leg, aware that he was doing it on purpose to piss you off. He smirked knowingly, placing his palm on your forehead and pushing you off his balls.

“Swallow it all and don’t choke,” Jungkook snarled, shoving his cock into your open mouth.

Your eyes widened at the sudden intrusion, relaxing your throat muscles as Jungkook forcefully pushed into your lips, sighing with satisfaction as he buried himself to the hilt, his strong fingers tangled in your hair.

“Fuck, so good,” he moaned, making his cock throb into the roof of your mouth. You whined, hands on his hips, waiting for him to let you move. “Your throat feels so fucking good, noona. If only they knew how good you are, how perfectly slutty you are for me.” He snickered, releasing his hand, glaring down into your eyes.

“But they’re never going to know, because you’ll never service another cock ever again.”

You whimpered, nails digging into his thighs.

He ticked his chin at you. “Go on, noona. Show me how much you love my cock.”

You began to move, pressing your tongue against the bottom as you slid up and down his length, moaning at his taste. So good. You generated more saliva and ran it all over the head, sucking hard. He inhaled sharply as you teased the sensitive underside, tongue against the opening.

“That’s it,” Jungkook breathed. “Give it to me like you mean it.”

You gripped his thighs and began to bob your head back and forth, ramming the head into the back of your throat and squeezing it before arching your neck so it ran across the roof of your mouth and then back down so it hit your throat again. Was this going to make you hoarse? Probably, but you didn’t a single shit, because Jungkook moaning for you and telling you how good you were was much more important. The pace was slow at first, but you went faster and faster, tighter, your breasts bouncing with every movement, eyes closed to savor his taste and steel your concentration of not gagging because Jungkook was so big, so thick, so perfectly rough, and your tongue could feel him throbbing inside your mouth.

“Fuck,” he growled above you, nearly feral with desire. “Fuck, I’m going to cum down that perfect throat of yours, noona.”

His thighs tensed under your hands and you knew he was close. You increased the intensity, neck straining, already aching with how fast you were going.

“Drink it all and don’t fucking waste it.”

Jungkook grabbed you by your hair and thrusted his hips into your face, moaning lustfully as he shot into your mouth, hot creamy strings into your throat. You swallowed fast to avoid choking, gulping loudly as he gave you more, more, fuck it was so delicious that you gasped, swirling your tongue around his jerking cock and lapping it all up. Whimpering, you wrapped your lips around the head and milked it dry, rubbing your lips against the skin where the head and length connected.

“You’re so fucking good,” Jungkook sighed, running his fingers through your hair, pulling it away from your face. “So messy and dirty. I love it, noona.” He pressed your mouth down his entire length and held you there.

Your name drifted out of his lips, a sweet exhale.

He kept you there. You felt some of your spit drip down your chin and hit your breasts. You flinched at the coldness, still holding onto his hips. Jungkook finally looked down at you, chest heaving, panting. He looked like he wanted to say something. You shot him a questioning look, unable to respond, mouth still full of his cock.

He released your head, untangling his fingers from your hair. You drew your mouth back, rubbing your jaw and throat a little. Jungkook had a strange expression, lips parted, brows furrowed, the muscles in his neck tensed. He seemed a bit spaced out. You tilted your head.

Something felt off.

You stood up with as much grace as you could, knees aching, heels snapping to the tile floor. He still wasn’t looking at you. You backed up, to the desks, finding a study one.

“Jungkook.”

You smacked the wood loudly with your flat palm.

He whipped his head towards you, dark eyes flashing. Perfect. You smirked, placing your hands on your pencil skirt. Sank your fingers in, gripping the fabric. Jungkook’s voracious eyes watched your movement, each hike revealing more and more of your legs. A slow smirk formed on his lips. You yanked your skirt all the way up to your waist, revealing your white lace panties and sheer pantyhose, black fabric bunched around your waist.

Jungkook reached down and pulled his pants up, raising his eyebrows as he walked over, lower lip in between his teeth as he grinned at you.

“That’s a dangerous position to be in, noona,” he purred. “You know I love fucking you on a desk.”

You bounced your ass up onto the table, closing your legs, knees together. Placed your hands on your lap, pushing your tits together. Jungkook licked his lips, the predatory glint back in his eye. You kept your tone stern, with a hint if disapproval.

“Really? Because for a second there, I was beginning to think you lost your nerve.”

The menace in his eyes made your shiver with anticipation. You could tell Jungkook liked it too, your word selection, your tone, your defiance. He shrugged out of his leather jacket, and it fell to the floor with an oppressive thump. You sucked in a tight breath. The shirt was short sleeved, exposing his tattooed right forearm and his equally beautiful tanned left one. Some of his long black hair was falling down, brushing against his right cheekbone.

His eyes were so dark that you felt like they were devouring you.

Jungkook placed his large hands on your knees and vehemently shoved them apart, spreading your legs wide. He gave you a cold, expressionless stare as he placed a hand on your stomach, putting you onto your elbows, hips tipped up towards him. You were embarrassingly wet, juices soaked into your inner thighs, lace panties already molded to your soaked folds, the sheer pantyhose doing nothing to protect you from him and his hungry eyes. His voice was icy, making your pussy throb with need.

“Noona, if you close your legs, I’m going to punish you,” Jungkook warned.

Part of you wanted to know what the punishment was, but the other part of you really wanted to orgasm, so kept your snide remark to yourself and simply nodded.

Jungkook removed his hands from your knees and placed them on your shuddering breasts. Fuck. You hadn’t realized you were so horny until Jungkook touched you. A pained whimper strained in your throat.

The side of his lips curved upwards.

“Does my dirty, slutty noona want to be fucked?” His nails sank down, digging into your skin. “Do you want to be used by me, your tight little pussy stretched out and pleading for more?” Jungkook leaned forward, breathing into your face, growling whisper against your lips. He pinched your nipples and you moaned, wanting to kiss him, but knowing he wasn’t going to let you. He chuckled darkly, seeing your desperation.

“Do you want to be a slave for Jungkookie’s cock, noona?”

Fuuuuuuuck.

Your heart was beating so fast that your breathing was coming out in little gasps as he twisted your nipples harshly, rubbing the tips with his thumb. Your legs shook, threatening to close because the lack of friction was killing you.

“Y-yes, Jungkook, fuck yes.”

He yanked on your nipples and slapped them, making you hiss with pain, flinching as the sting shot up your chest. Jungkook reached into his back pocket and produced the silk neck scarf.

“Keep quiet for me noona or everyone will know how much of a slut you are for me.”

And then he shoved your own scarf into your parted lips, gagging you. Not a second too soon, because, without warning, Jungkook immediately spanked your barely clothed clit. You yelped around the silk, thighs quivering. He gripped one of your thighs, digging his nails into it, tearing the sheer pantyhose a little.

“Don’t move and take it,” he snarled.

Your back arched as Jungkook began to slap your pussy, hard, unforgiving, loud, and making you wetter and wetter, so much so his hand was slipping a little with each smack. You screamed around the scarf, hips trembling as they rose to meet each hit, flaring pain in between your thighs but so, so good. He clenched his jaw, dark eyes on your quickly reddening pussy lips that were sucking your panties deeper and deeper into your slit.

“Fuck,” he growled. “Fuck, you’re so hot and so fucking perfect for me.”

He removed his hand from your thigh and ripped the center seam of your pantyhose apart.

You started, eyes widening as you watched him tear through it, yelling at him through the scarf. You still needed to wear those! The small tears were one thing, but a full-on giant rip at the crotch was not going to be comfortable to wear for the rest of the day.

Jungkook smirked, raising a hand to his ear. “What’s that? Can’t hear you.”

You glared at him and was about to remove the scarf from your mouth to scold him, but his smirk turned into a roguish grin.

“Hm? Slap you harder and abuse your clit?”

You paled.

“My pleasure.”

You threw you head back as Jungkook mercilessly spanked your now only lace-covered clit, impossibly fast, towering over you and hooking his arm under your back, dragging you to him, arching your spine more, more, so your tits were straight up, bouncing right in his face as he changed from smacking your clit to rubbing it just as fast, rougher, so intense you were hoarsely wailing into the gag.

All of a sudden, your orgasm violently rammed into you, pleasure racking your entire body, amplified by stinging pain. Your pussy clenched around nothing, wetly squelching as Jungkook breathed hotly down on your nipples, still rubbing you through your orgasm, not letting up. You shook your head furiously, trying to tell him it was too much, that you were too sensitive, but you didn’t lift your hands to stop him, only spreading your fingers against the table, palms flat as your hips raised to his fingers.

You felt his hair brush against your nipples as he licked your cleavage, smirking up at your face.

“One more and then I’ll fuck you the way I want to, noona.”

Your legs were losing feeling from how hard you were locking them in place as you felt Jungkook pry your lace panties out of your pussy, shoving them to one side. Oh shit. You moaned as you felt him shove two fingers into you, eyes squeezing shut as he added a third, scissoring them as he smiled cruelly at you, eagerly watching your reaction.

“Such a greedy pussy, sucking in my fingers like this,” Jungkook drawled, your walls clenching around them, feeling every callus and every joint, all the way to his knuckles. “All mine, my beautiful, slutty noona.”

You would have asked Jungkook what the time was if your brain could still function, but your brain timed itself out, because Jungkook was thrusting his fingers into you now, filling you up, and feeding your need and desperation, assaulting your pussy with pleasure. The pain of your stinging, puffy lips rubbing against his hand added to the ecstasy, heightening it, your moaning now unintelligible behind the silk scarf that was saturated with your saliva. The sound was obscene, sloppy smacking sounds of your drenched hole getting pounded into the desk.

You threw your head back and choked out his name around the makeshift gag, throbbing pussy clamping down on his fingers. Thick, viscous liquid gushed out onto his palm, the back of his hand, dripping down to his wrist. It was so intense that your entire body jerked up into Jungkook’s face, hitting him with your tits.

If Jungkook was mad about it, he didn’t show it. He wrenched his slick fingers out and you whined, watching him with glazed eyes as licked them off, ferally growling at your taste. He released your back from his arm and you slid down, laying against the desk, panting.

“You taste extra delicious today, noona,” he chuckled. “Candy always tastes better in cute packaging.”

You barely had time to register that Jungkook had just compared you to a fucking convenience store snack before he yanked down his pants again, whipping out a foil packet and ripping it open. Less than a second and the condom was on, and then Jungkook shoved his cock into you, a startled gasp dying in your very over-used throat.

Jungkook moaned your name above you, softly and lustfully, pulling your hips closer to him so he was all the way inside you. You clenched around his length and he sighed, small smirk on his pink lips, eyelids fluttering.

“You’re going to kill me one day with how perfectly tight you are for me,” he mumbled.

Your eyes found his and he grinned, looking down at you through his lashes, his hair obscuring half his face.

Fuck, you could stare at him all day.

Jungkook placed your legs around his waist, finally letting them rest from the forced spreading. He roughly jerked his hips into yours and you whimpered, nails clawing into the desk. His fingers dug into your hips and he set his jaw, beginning a hard, fast pace, slapping your hips together, fucking you into the desk. It scraped noisily into the floor, but neither of you cared, you abused pussy lips rubbing against his crotch every time his hips met yours, carried to new heights of pain and pleasure, loving every second, every moment of Jungkook using you to chase his own orgasm, his cock swelling and dragging against your tight walls. So much. So full.

You could never be satisfied with another cock.

“Fuck.”

Jungkook hissed, grip on your hips tightening, bruising you with his fingertips.

“Fuck, noona, I love you.”

Your heart stopped.

And then your orgasm crashed down, overtaking you completely, your head smacking the desk and seeing stars, clenching around Jungkook’s cock and pulsating violently around his length, soaking his thighs with your juices, scent so strong you were sure whatever class that was going to use this lecture hall next was going to smell your cum splattering to the floor.

Jungkook gritted his teeth and rammed his hips into you, dragging you down to meet every thrust, intensifying your orgasm, ripping your pantyhose even more. Once, twice, three times, and he groaned, shuddering as he spilled into the condom, cock shivering inside you as he came. You could feel how much it was, pressing against your walls.

His long hair was all over his face, black strands clinging to his tan skin, sweat dripping off his chin, pink lips quivering, dark eyes roaming over your fucked-out form. Panting hard, matching your heavy, grating breaths behind your now saliva-drenched neck scarf. After a long moment, Jungkook reached down and held onto the condom, slowly pulling out of you.

Holy fuck.

Holy fuck.

You reached up with a shaking hand, pulling the silk out of your mouth. It came out in a long strip of fabric, smacking against your cheek as your removed it from your lips.

Holy.

Fuck.

You sat up, your body screaming at you, seeing Jungkook breathing hard, tying up the condom.

“Did you just tell me you love me?”

Jungkook’s ears turned bright red. He chewed on his lip, biting it hard before facing you. Dark brown eyes suddenly vulnerable, scared. It was the most uncharacteristic expression you had ever witnessed on Jeon Jungkook’s chiseled, handsome face.

“Uh… yeah.”

There was a moment where you realized both you two were mostly naked in a random classroom, clothes thrown everywhere, having made a mess once again.

“Sorry,” Jungkook added quickly. “It slipped out.”

You blinked at him. “Why are you apologizing?”

He rubbed his nose, looking away.

“Well… aren’t you just fucking me because you like to be dominated?”

You frowned. “No, I’m fucking you because I’m in love with you.”

You saw Jungkook freeze. He turned his head robotically, eyes wide and doe-like. “R-really?”

You looked down to notice that your heels were on the tile floor. When had you lost those? You grumbled, trying to straighten out your panties and the remains of your pantyhose. It was doomed. You shrugged, dangling your legs over the edge of the desk as you looked back at Jungkook and his surprised expression. You raised an eyebrow.

“Are you really that much of an idiot?” you muttered, your own cheeks burning, letting out a puff of annoyed air. “Yes, I love you. Why else would I tolerate you staring at me like I’m some kind of zoo animal? Why else would I risk getting in trouble by running around like this? Why else would I let you fuck me at school, in the middle of the damn day, again?”

Jungkook rubbed the back of his neck. “Erm… because I’m hot?”

You rubbed your forehead and sighed exasperatedly, standing up, instantly wincing. Jungkook took a step forward to catch you, but he almost tripped on his pants down his ankles. You caught yourself against the desk and raised a hand, shaking your head.

“Pack your damn dick,” you muttered. You yanked your tights down your legs, removing them and balling them up. They were useless now anyway. You found your bra and put it back on as you eyed your chiffon blouse. Good thing it wasn’t ripped. It only took you a moment to slip it back on, rebuttoning it and tucking it into your skirt. You pulled your pencil skirt back down, straightening it, thighs immediately sticking together from your own fluids.

Yup, still no more comfortable than yanking your pants back on after a session with Jungkook.

You noticed him putting his leather jacket back on and picking up the condom wrapper. He took the silk scarf from the table and shoved it in his back pocket. You went back to him to gather your shoes, but he knelt down, holding out your black heels as if you were Cinderella.

“I can just–”

“Step.”

His tone was sharp and you immediately obeyed, raising your foot and stepping into your shoe. First one, then the other. Jungkook stood back up, exhaling a little. You looked up at him. His chocolate eyes flitted about tensely. He opened his mouth to speak.

“Do you… uh…”

You cut him off. “Jungkook, if you cheat on me, I will personally castrate you with a spoon.”

He cringed. “Ouch.”

You took the used condom and the wrapper bits from him, shoving them into your balled-up pantyhose. You marched towards the door confidently, pain shooting throughout your body with every step. Jungkook called after you.

“Your hairpins.”

You turned your head back a little.

“You can drop them off at my apartment later.”

And then you unlocked the door and stepped out of the classroom.

Park Jimin waved at you, grinning. Plump lips curved into a mischievous smile, wearing a denim jacket and jeans. You almost jumped seeing him standing there. What the fuck is with this guy’s timing? He eyed your hand holding your ruined pantyhose and you put it behind your back, glaring at him.

“I told Namjoon you had a lady emergency.” Jimin wiggled his eyebrows at you before holding up your phone and black purse, the belongings you had left in the back room. “You took longer than you should have.”

You felt your ears burn. “Shit. I need to get back.”

“To Jungkook, yeah,” Jimin chimed teasingly, making you glower at him.

Of course. Jungkook had turned Jimin into his scout for your escapades. Fantastic. You suddenly felt a strong presence behind you. The door had opened and Jungkook’s arm snaked around your waist, yanking you possessively to his side. He placed his chin on top of your head, inhaling the scent of your hair.

“You wanna go on a date, noona?” Jungkook purred, his free hand playing with the ends of your disheveled hair.

You pursed your lips. “I have to get back and help Namjoon.”

Jimin waved a hand. “He’ll be fine for one day. Plus, you’re being kidnapped.”

You opened your mouth to protest, but Jungkook slapped his hand over your lips, marching you in the opposite direction of Career Week, Jimin skipping behind you two, cheerfully humming.

-

part iv

--

masterpost

[sammusbird]

figured it out its bc Emesis Blue has everything I like. observe.

Very tasteful handling of mental illness, addiction, and visible scars for a horror movie.

gahhhh speaking of. I LOVE stories that explore the terror of not being able to trust your own mind. “wahwahwah unpredictable guy what if he attacks me” more like “shit fuck I can’t tell if that was real or not >:|”

friends. they are all friends and care so much

NO JUMPSCARES. YES.

TWIST. after TWIST. and you can FIGURE THE TWISTS OUT and THEORISE AS YOU GO and it is SO FUN

usually I actually hate references but it turns out that’s just bc they are usually to movies and I don’t get them lol. Emesis Blue references???? classic horror literature + movies so well known even I got the reference. fucking awesome. I understand why ppl do references now that was rad. Barbie did this too I am so happy.

uhhhh fuck dramatic irony,,, oh wowie intense!!

took such a funny silly game and made it WAAAAAUWAAAUWAAWAUWAA!!! that is an instrument sound effect please pretend. I love when stories are like “this thing is innocuous. lets explore the implications” but don’t go overboard with ridiculous edge. it was very rooted in the game and every dark moment felt earned and deeply emotional

VERY clearly a labor of love. MWAH so good. you can feel the affection for the characters and love for the game. the animation stuff they used must have been so painful to work with and yet they made it so beautiful

SO beautiful. so many great shots…. cinematic. cinema. cinematography

the,, the. time loop,, caused his own mental anguish that led to him investigating this cursed ass place,,

The real villains were wealth & power -caused lack of care for human life, and the horrors we ourselves did along the way!

^^^ seriously it is very clear with this messaging the whole time and sticks to it sharply. plays with how fucked up a respawn machine would actually be and why ppl would use it anyways (capitalism)

um I really like cartoon violence and blood. not violence in live action bc I always get worried the actors got injured irl. but in cartoon? teehee.

also I really liked translating the little German phrases to my friend, and pausing to comb through video cassette titles in that one scene and seeing if we had read / watched the short stories and classic movies there, and looking for repeated and referenced dialogue throughout the movie… so much attention to detail and cool things to look for

imagey sick as hell I loved when Scout went through the same thing as the main character in one creepypasta that still knocks my fuckin socks off with fear. lots of spooky tropes I don’t get elsewhere yaya

free on youtube I love free stuff

I already said the tropes but FUCK it expertly explored many scenarios I rarely see in fiction and it was just so cool to see. titilating even

anyways in conclusion *kisses you on the cheeks 3 times back and forth you know the deal* you need to become an expert on tf2 lore and then watch Emesis Blue. I don’t know how to become an expert, my homie explained stuff to me as needed and also we’ve watched a million hours of epic tf2 funnies. I guess just watching the comic dubbing and some ytps. I believe in you

rrrgggggahhhh I watched Barbie, which probably will be remembered as the best big movie of the decade, and left with a migraine and the thought that it “was really fun but too clumsy in its messaging and themes.” And today I watched Emesis Blue, a fucking horror movie fan animation of Team Fortress 2, and found it so beautiful that I’m laying in the dark just thinking about the kickass themes and symbollism….. IT’S SO GOOD??????????

[bbg100]

okay fandom of 2 shit going on so here’s my many thoughts about nate from meddling kids (by edgar cantero) it WILL contain spoilers but if i don’t blast this i’ll die.  okay.  listen.

Nate is literally the personification of too little too late, he admits to fucking with the necronomicon several years after the fact, trades being indirectly responsible for peters death for being indirectly responsible for peters death (INCREDIBLY funny), and spends most of the book looking at walls and trying to hold onto his sanity with two hands and half a bottle of probably stolen prescription meds.  He checked his own ass into the psychiatric hospital and it’s genuinely narratively unclear if he’s definitely off his shit or if some method of magic means peter is for real there and not just a part of his subconscious making him responsible for everything. While Andy and Kerrie are having lesbian drama and shaking in fear while metaphors about hair float about, he’s looking at the book and trying to fit into the ONE thing he feels like he’s good at- being the weird guy, the cult one, the one who knows weird shit.  Not smart like Kerrie- he actively shrugs off his own research into historical traces of the Wheezers- not a leader like Peter- he refuses to make a decision MULTIPLE times within the mines- and not strong like Andy- He runs as fast as he can to escape the island before he comes to.

He is SOOOO shit-scared of having any more depth than he needs to, too scared to be one ounce more than exactly what he thinks others need, than what he thinks makes sense for a crazy guy like him.  And peter- god, is he the manifestation of guilt, or the last trace of his soul left behind?  Peter gets SO few actions in the story that are most definitely his and not brain-peters.  And the part off screen- where was the moment of realization? how long did that shotgun stray before zombie peter put him in the damn closet?  And the fucking- stomp.  Stomp.  A guillotine to the closest thing to a reanimated bestie possible, a decision he made, that he had to make, that andy TRUSTED him to make.  Im shaking the bars of my cage, holy shit.

And of course nate is my blorbo- i love my blorbos hallucinating smarmy assholes (squip, anyone?).  But let’s not overlook andy, and her steadfast trust, how she stepped up as leader more and more as time went on, navigating situations and directing both nate and kerrie so their respective brain power could be used without hurting them in the pursuit of knowledge.  Let’s not overlook nate- throwing dynamite- kerrie- yelling about co2- tim- probably fuckin barking idk.

IM NOT GOING TO TALK ABOUT TIM THERE”S JUST TOO MUCH TO UNPACK.  GOOD PUPPY.  THE OTHER PART IS FOR ME TO MEDITATE ON.

anyway if you read this far please read meddling kids.  If you liked ANY teen investigating dramas (nancy drew, scooby doo, what the fuck ever) and have ever enjoyed some crazy shit happening (until dawn, the walking dead, also scooby doo but the live action movies) it’s worth checking out.  But unfortunately this post isn’t for you the viewer.  its for me, with visions.  I am glowing and levitating and shit.  SHOUT OUT TO THE TRIPLE TRANSGENDER QUEEN! LEGENDARY!  I am kissing her metacarpals.

[letapollojusticesayfuck]

"the way you flirt is shameful." Klavier (klapollo) and ema ?

"short fics," I said, like a liar.

anyway please enjoy almost 2k of Klapollo Nonsense.

Send me a random line of dialogue and some characters, and I'll write a short fic!

---

Another grey morning, another lukewarm cup of coffee. Apollo pulls his coat a little tighter around him, scowling at nothing in particular. It’s just his luck, isn’t it, that this week’s defendant is a fisherman, accused of murdering their boat’s captain out on the docks.

It’s also just his luck that it’s March, and he hadn’t even thought anyone would be out on the water this early in the year. Shows how much he knows about the fishing industry.

He jumps when an arm lands around his shoulders, and has to fight to keep his awful beverage from sloshing entirely out of its styrofoam cup. With an irritated huff, Apollo turns to reprimand his unexpected company, but the words die in his throat when he looks over to see Klavier Gavin—and, more specifically, the woolly hat perched on his head. It appears to be lovingly hand-knitted, in a shade of purple he’d swear he’d seen in scraps of wool lying around the office in previous weeks. It also happens to be emblazoned with Gavin’s ridiculous logo, the angular G as distinctive as ever.

“Uh…” he says instead, eyebrow raised in what he hopes is a skeptical, yet bewildered expression. He’s not sure he succeeds with that, though, considering the way Gavin’s casual smile crooks up at the edges into a more genuine grin.

“Ja, Herr Forehead? How goes the investigation?” Lazy curls of steam rise from the stainless steel travel mug clasped in his hand, dissipating into the pervasive fog that’s blanketing the docks. Typical. Apollo considers asking him if he’d like to swap drinks.

“Cold. Damp. And is this a good time to mention that I’m allergic to shellfish? I think that’s probably an important detail, considering….this.” he replies, poking an errant mussel with the point of his dress shoe. His dress shoe that he’s for some reason wearing to a crime scene out by the harbour, because Apollo has misplaced ideas of professionalism, apparently.

“Ach, it’s not that bad! For one, you have my company to brighten up your day! And for another thing...I have news for you about the case.”

“Really. And it’s not just going to be something that you’ll immediately rescind in court tomorrow?”

“HerrForehead, what kind of prosecutor do you take me for? We’re on the same side, you know—both seeking the truth.”

“That’s cheesy as anything.”

“But correct! Anyway. FräuleinSkye has just uncovered something tangled around one of the fishing lines on the boat, and she’s attempting to piece it back together. If you hurry, you might get a glimpse before it goes straight into the evidence dossier.”

Apollo hmms, considering. He’s not sure he wants to just take Klavier’s tip-off; it could be seen as collusion under some circumstances. But he’s really not accomplishing anything on his own, and any new evidence could help him prove Annette Sloop’s innocence.

He also realizes, belatedly, that Klavier still has his arm around his shoulders, and that he’s been unconsciously leaning into the warmth of the taller man’s down jacket.

“Okay, sure—it’s gotta be better than anything I can find here,” Apollo decides, and tries to subtly extricate himself from Klavier’s grasp without drawing attention to the fact that he’s actually found some kind of comfort in their proximity, that he’s really not particularly enthusiastic about losing his human space-heater.

Luckily, Klavier realizes that he’ll have to grant Apollo his freedom if he wants the shorter man to be able to take advantage of his newly-gained intel, and drops his arm back to his own side. Apollo stifles a shiver as the cool, damp air rushes back against him, clinging to his skin with a pervasive chill.

He’d assumed that Klavier had business to take care of on the dock, so the fact that the prosecutor follows him as he boards the fishing boat takes him by surprise. What also takes him by surprise is the intensity of the fishy aroma around the vessel, something that Apollo really should have considered as a factor beforehand. He wrinkles his nose and tries to breathe shallowly—and when that doesn’t work out, he buries his nose in the collar of his jacket.

And that brings with it its own set of problems, because somehow the short amount of time his jacket was in contact with Klavier’s own was enough to allow the other man’s sandalwood cologne to seep into the thin fabric. Apollo wishes this wasn’t his life. Isn’t this the kind of stuff teenagers write about?

Luckily, his panicking is cut short by Ema Skye clearing her throat from the other end of the deck, midway through spreading fabric scraps onto a plastic folding table. She appears decidedly unimpressed, but waves them over.

“Justice. I take it you were informed of the recent developments by the fop here?” she remarks, as disinterestedly as possible for someone who’s practically vibrating with the excitement of being able to do something actually forensically significant.

“Er...yeah, Klavier told me that you’d found something?” Apollo replies, trying to look as though he understands more of the situation than he actually does. He thinks he pulls it off. If not, Ema doesn’t comment on it.

Klavier, however, smiles impossibly wide at Apollo’s words, and it takes him a moment to realize that it’s because he’d called the man by his first name, as opposed to his more professional title. A slip of the tongue, nothing more! And yet…

If it’d get a reaction like that, Apollo might start using Klavier’s first name significantly more often.

“Oh, come on, do neither of you actually care about this T-shirt I found? This apparently-bloodstainedT-shirt?” Ema taps her foot against the plank wood of the ship’s deck. Apollo breaks out of his thoughts with just about enough time to look marginally interested in the new evidence—which he hopes is convincing.

And it’s not that he doesn’t want to solve the murder! It’s really just that—well, Klavier is just there, being distracting, like he always is—except it’s worse, recently, somehow. Apollo swears he used to be able to spend time focusing on other things, that he wasn’t always this preoccupied with what the prosecutor was doing, where he was standing, if he was looking at--

“Oh, for God’s sake. The way you flirt is shameful,” Ema says, entirely exasperated. She also seems to be looking at Apollo, for some reason.

“Are you talking to me?” he asks, confused. The detective rolls her eyes and sighs dramatically, visibly resisting the urge to throw up her hands.

“You, him, both of you! This used to be almost funny, you know, watching Gavin be all glimmerous in your direction and seeing you shut him down. But recently you’ve been playing into it and—you know what? I’m done! You don’t get to listen to my stunning forensic breakthroughs until you’ve sorted your shit out, because I just can’t be doing with this. It’s ridiculous. Why can’t you just act like adults?”

The outburst is followed by Ema Skye whirling around, the sensible shoes she’s wearing clacking against the ship’s deck. Halfway to the door to the crew’s quarters, she remembers that she’s left all her forensic materials spread out next to where Klavier and Apollo are standing, and backtracks with increasingly evident frustration.

“You know what? I’m not leaving! You two—off my ship!Go figure yourselves out, and I won’t tell you about this case-changing evidence until you’ve stopped acting like this.”

Apollo’s a little taken-aback—not the least because he doesn’t think that he’s been doing any flirting, especially not with Klavier. He’s been hiding his feelings far too well for that—right?

Klavier looks at him and shrugs, motioning with his head that they should retreat the way they’d arrived. It’s not necessarily the most dignified thing, climbing off a boat in shame after being reprimanded by the detective on the case.

Once they’re back on “solid” ground (as solid as one can call a fishing boat’s dock, anyway), Apollo turns to Klavier.

“So, what was that about? I’ve never seen her that angry.”

Interestingly enough, color rises to Klavier’s cheeks. “Well...I think that, perhaps, she’s...misinterpreting the situation?”

And if Klavier’s strange statement hadn’t been enough to tip Apollo off that maybe something strange is going on here, there’s the familiar pinch of warm metal against his left wrist, his bracelet constricting at the taller man’s fib.

And—they know each other well enough, by this point, that all Apollo has to do is level an unimpressed stare in the prosecutor’s direction, and deadpan “Klavier” with all the air of a man who is taking no bullshit for an answer, for him to deflate and give up, shoving a hand in his back pocket awkwardly.

“Ugh. Okay. Erm. So, HerrForehead, this wasn’t...exactly...unprovoked. It’s possible that FräuleinSkye has been on the receiving end of many conversations about how I would like to….uh…”

It’s quite something, seeing Klavier at a loss for words. Apollo hadn’t thought that the former rockstar could look as awkward as he does now, the hand not trapped in his pocket fiddling with a loose strand of his hair.

He really, really tries not to think about how endearing it is.

Klavier seems to have reached a point, however, where he���s just decided to say things and worry about the consequences later. So Apollo’s contemplations are brought to a screeching halt when the man sighs, flips his hair, and stares at him straight-on, enunciating with perfect clarity:

“Apollo Justice, would you like to go out with me? On a date? Because I must say, I’ve been trying to find the best way to ask you for a while now, but unfortunately all I’ve succeeded in doing is, apparently, annoying the FräuleinDetective until not even Snackoos are a valid enough weapon.”

And—this isn’t the setting Apollo had pictured, in his often-hastily-repressed daydreams about Klavier asking him out. For one, he’d not quite imagined the quantity of fish, or the less-than-steady footing. But Klavier looks so earnest about his request, and Apollo can’t deny the way his heart’s skipped a beat, the way he’s almost petrified to say anything just in case this isn’t real—and so, he takes a deep breath, steps forward, and twines his fingers with Klavier’s.

“You know what? I’d love to. I’ll go anywhere you’d like—with the exception of a sushi restaurant” Apollo smiles, hesitantly at first, and then more genuinely as he sees the softly disbelieving expression on Klavier’s face.

“Really?” the prosecutor asks, and isn’t that incredible—that Klavier Gavin had been worried about being turned down. Apollo can’t quite believe it himself, yet.

“Yeah, really,” he says, smiling up at Klavier, who beams down at him in return. He feels the other man squeeze his hand briefly, and can’t quite contain the impulse to lean in closer to him, consciously this time, sharing both warmth and physical contact in a meaningful way.

When they return to the fishing vessel, Ema takes one look at the two of them and narrows her eyes, proceeding to mime nausea at the way they’re still holding hands.

However, she does follow through on her promise—and by the time they’re ready to leave the crime scene, both Klavier and Apollo are fairly certain of the next day’s trial’s outcome—as well as of the location of their post-trial dinner date.

[stxleslyds]

NIGHTWING #81

UMM... HOW ABOUT NO. 

Ever since Tom Taylor took over Nightwing I have only made a post about one issue of his (I will leave it here Nightwing #78), that issue was beautiful, it was a solid start and the little things that made me feel a bit icky were not mentioned in the post because the issue was good.

Then the issues felt like connectors or just very bland story wise. I had problems with the book also feeling like a Nightwing and (fake) Oracle book instead of just Nightwing. There were many instances where Dick alone could have gotten himself out of situations without Barbara, but because she was there the opportunity to show that he can do things was taken from him. I guess what I am trying to say is that the book has disappointed me but I didn’t feel like making a post because it was too early and this is an ongoing book that Taylor said he planned on continuing for a while, but now I can’t not make a post.

A few days ago, I finally read the Red Hood story in Urban Legends (I have a review for that one too I will link it here Red Hood part 4) and I couldn’t stand how OOC and disappointing the story/characterization has been. I am saying this because I am only reading these two books at the moment, ONLY these two, and all I have gotten from them is shit.

I know it’s still early to say that the Nightwing book is bad but…I hated this issue, I hated it with all of my heart. But now that I am a bit calmer, I have come up with some ideas of what is truly going on with the Melinda situation.

Anyway, let me give you my thoughts.

There are big Wilson Fisk vibes coming from both Blockbuster and Melinda Zucco. Those two will lie, manipulate and be evil every chance they get. They are working together to make Nightwing disappear. I know it. The whole “make us all much wealthier and to extend your power beyond the city” idea does not include Nightwing.

Melinda might not want to burn anything down but she sure isn’t a hero. This woman accepted the position of Mayor after watching Blockbuster kill the former mayor. I understand that talking with the BHPD isn’t the best idea but this woman feels way too comfortable in the presence of a killer.

She is cunning and she has plans, I strongly believe that she might be a villain and that she will betray Blockbuster and take all the power (if it reaches that point) to herself.

Heartless is just another weirdo, he tricks both Nightwing and the reader into thinking that he has a soft spot for kids but surprise! He doesn’t. There isn’t much to say about him, he just has very complex gadgets and doesn’t know how to fight. I don’t even have any ideas about who he might be.

What I know though is that there was absolutely no need for Dick to think that he had “underestimated” Heartless, my love you threw your stick at him while he was looking directly at you, there was a 50/50 chance of him catching it. I swear I don’t understand the need to write him thinking that mostly because Taylor then has Dick swiping the floor with the guy, not only is it a simple fight (for Dick) but it’s also boring for him. Taylor’s writing is so annoying sometimes, he just loves to write extra things that are out of place like the “Tim Drake. Thought of by many as the best Robin” why the fuck did he put that there? Honestly, what was the point of having Dick say that, I don’t read a Nightwing book to have Tim Drake praise. If it doesn’t offer anything to the story that is being told then keep the thought to yourself Tom...

Moving forward the scene in the pier was quite nice, mostly because it’s Dick’s quick thinking that gets everyone to safety, he knows exactly what to do and how to contact the Maritime distress channel.

He has hope for his city, he knows there is good in it and he believes help will show up when lives are about to be lost. I loved that, just like Heartless said, Nightwing IS Bludhaven’s Guardian Angel. Once again, I am having Daredevil vibes from Dick (like from the show)

After the fight we get to see consequences of Dick not healing properly from a shot to the head. He loses his consciousness which is extremely dangerous but luckily Tim is at arm’s reach to help him out of the pier.

There are many things I want to talk about from the scenes that happen after Dick wakes up in his apartment so here we go.

First of all, Bitewing is adorable, she loves Dick the most and was happy to see him awake once more, what a good girl!

Secondly, Barbara, honey, you do not have three names, you aren’t Batgirl anymore, you are a grown woman that needs to move on from a mantle that has other people that can do something else/better with it. And we all know that this Oracle is just the ableist version of Oracle. So yeah…all I ask is for Barbara to move on from Batgirl, Cass and Stephanie are right there, enough is enough.

In these panels we have Dick, Tim and Barbara being kinda dismissive about the homeless kids, and it has been happening for so many issues, what is the point, Taylor? You made Dick a millionaire and you just can’t have him say or think for a second that he will monetarily help those kids and make sure they are put somewhere safe? You are really going to wait up until you have Dick running for Mayor or something to help the kids? I just don’t get it. Kids living on the streets and each time they are mentioned the three heroes of the book act like it’s normal and doesn’t need fixing. What the fuck.

Then we have the gang finding out that Melinda Zucco is the new mayor, the woman has an FBI file and a redacted one! This makes me think two things, either things are like I thought in the beginning of the post (she is evil and very good at it) or this woman is actually FBI and she is undercover (this one is less likely because of what happens at the end of the issue).

What we can see from the file that Barbara found is very little, but in these two pictures we can see that maybe she was put in foster care and x age? Also, she was apparently investigated in April of 20xx, the investigation must have been recent, why would the FBI investigate a minor or college student? What if these files were implanted by Melinda for someone to find them, and for her to have some sort of proof of her lies? If the file is about her being left in foster care or something while would the file be redacted? I don’t know, everything about her is shady and I don’t trust anything from or about her.

This could be a complex and very interesting character but Tom Taylor and DC really love to do stupid shit for shock value (more of this later).

All the new information (the Maroni, Blockbuster and now this very shady Mayor) has Dick saying that it is a bit too much for him and yeah, it is too much, you know who could help? Red Hood. I am of course not talking about current DC comics Red Hood, I am talking about the Red Hood that I would love to see, just yesterday I had an ask about who would I like to see working with Jason and I said Nightwing because Dick puts a lot of responsibility on his shoulders so it would be nice if they negotiated and each could work on different crime areas in Bludhaven, if only DC would hear me…

Anyway, now that we come to the end of the scene let’s talk about Barbara’s shirt.

That was unnecessary and not funny. That’s all it was. Yeah, I know it’s a meme and I know it was included for funny ha-ha purposes but I am not laughing. Bruce has been written as abusive towards his kids for so long, Jason, Tim and Dick have been physically harmed by Bruce and writers use it as just something that happens, there are never repercussions for the Bat. And this shirt sucks because Dick was Robin there and he was a kid, so having Barbara or anyone wearing a shirt with Batman hitting Robin!Dick right in front of Dick is just disgusting. What if someone wore a shirt that had Joker beating Jason with a crowbar in front of Jason, would that be a funny ha-ha too? What about Dick wearing a shirt with the Joker shooting Barbara, is that a funny ha-ha? The answer to those questions is no, it’s not funny.

The idea of that shirt shouldn’t have been pitched, drawn or included after the editor took a look at it.

The picture is a meme in our world, not in theirs. And the readers aren’t laughing.

 Back to the issue, Dick is left alone in his apartment to rest (seriously? You think the man that showed up to help Bruce in Gotham with a knee brace is going to rest?) but he can’t, he just found out that Mayor Zucco might be trouble for Bludhaven and might be working with not only Blockbuster but the Maroni family. He is not waiting one more second to have a chat with her.

Dick is obviously still concussed so of course he grabs a mask that has a camera that Oracle can view, and of course he enters yet another window without being careful.

Melinda and Audre were obviously waiting for him.

But here is where the real bullshit begins. Dick is unmasked.

I am so mad; it’s been four issues and Dick gets his ass in a trap and is unmasked by a villain? Are you kidding me right now?

But that’s not all, after Dick breaks free and accuses Melinda of being the daughter of the man that killed his parents, she pulls out a uno reverse card and says that her actual father is John Grayson, and that she is his sister.

How about no. Absolutely not. Go away.

Let’s re-visit Melinda’s appearances in the book so far so we can start theorizing about her real intentions or if she could be saying the truth.

Back in issue #78 where she is first introduced to us, after Melinda watches Blockbuster kill the mayor, she goes home and tells her Audre that she is now mayor because Blockbuster did what he does, so she knows that this guy is trash and a killer. But that’s not all, Audre asks her if she came across Dick Grayson to which Melinda answers “I am not ready for him yet”. Audre suggests she talks to him sooner rather than later because she might not have “another chance”, and the issue ends with Melinda agreeing with her while she is looking at a Flying Graysons poster with a red circle framing Dick’s face.

That whole thing? Shady. Melinda, obviously, wanted to talk to Dick Grayson, probably to tell him that she is his sister, but why is there a time limit, why is Audre telling Melinda that she can’t wait too long? Is it because her undercover work is ending soon? Is it because it’s not real at all and she needs to tell that lie in order to move forward with some sort of plan? I don’t know…

In issue #79 Melinda (and Audre) are out in the open with Maroni and they are talking about her becoming the next Mayor, Nightwing was watching from afar so this is his first contact with her. And it might be the first time that Melinda and her friend see Nightwing in action too. I cannot tell if she is aware that Nightwing/Dick Grayson are the same person here.

In #80 she doesn’t make an appearance.

But now in #81 she is taking her place as Mayor of Bludhaven, there Commissioner McClean takes her somewhere she didn’t expect to go (she is shown not knowing that Maroni and Blockbuster were in the next room over). Once in the room she refuses to take the cash from McClean but she will take the money as a transaction (for a second I thought she wouldn’t take the money but she did because she is very corrupt) and talks to Maroni once more. Before I talk about what happens with Blockbuster let me say this, she acts so distant to Maroni, she calls him Mr. Maroni every single time and she comes off as cold and feeling no type of way while talking with someone that is part of the family that actually raised her, and this is not because she is in a room full of other people, she did it too in #79. It seems weird that she acts that way with someone that took her under his wing since she was eight years old.

When she sits with Blockbuster he says “tell us your plan for my city” to which she says all of this: “My plan, Blockbuster, is to make us all much wealthier and to extend your power beyond the city. But to do so in a way that builds on the good work you’ve already done I have no interest in burning anything down.”

At the start of the post I said she gave me big Wilson Fisk vibes and that right there is why. She is shady, she has plans on top of plans, she calls Roland Desmond Blockbuster to his face but says that he has done good work for Bludhaven, which is weird because Blockbuster destroys Bludhaven a couple of times a year…

As I said before whatever she has planned does not include Nightwing, and here is where I kinda start theorizing a bit more, what if Blockbuster told Melinda Nightwing’s real name, he used to know who he was once upon a time…

Later in this issue when Nightwing is going to Melinda’s place Audre is already waiting for him right next to the window (with a sword), so, was he making an insane amount of noise or were they told to be ready for him?

Melinda traps him and takes his mask off, she barely seems surprised about Nightwing being Dick, she barely reacts when he jumps at her. She is in complete control of the situation and proves that by disarming Dick, as fast as he accuses her of being Zucco’s daughter she tells him that her real father is John Grayson.

She is in complete control. She has to be lying, she put a stop to whatever Dick had to say and do in seconds. This woman is trained and she is manipulative as fuck!

And if she isn’t lying then fuck DC and fuck Tom Taylor, this woman is either younger or the same age as Dick, John Grayson was not a cheater, the man is dead, has been dead for so long, don’t throw dirt on his name at this point. I refuse to believe this is true.

I honestly think that she is evil, and knows more than we are aware of, her first appearance was shady as fuck, let's suppose that she didn’t truly know that Dick was Nightwing, why on earth did she have a Flying Graysons poster with a red circle on top of Dick’s face? That doesn’t seem like something a sister would do! And why would this be information that is so important that she NEEDS to tell him in a certain amount of time?

It’s fucking insane. Tom Taylor, if she is actually Dick's sister then shame on you. Disgusting, what is with writers and cheating, what the hell is going on? Dick doesn’t need to think back to his parents and see a cheater in one of them. This better be Melinda being a cruel and vile human being that is trying to emotionally hurt Dick/Nightwing so she and Blockbuster can do whatever its they want to do.

That’s all I have to say.

[golbrocklovely]

way to wait until last minute to write a review, angelica. sorry about that yall. and especially the anon that wanted to know my opinions.

here's my reaction to snc's fifth season one video

aka "ALONE in DUNGEON of Haunted Hospital | Fairfield Infirmary"

the video was good. the end.

just kidding i'll write more lol

i really like when sam and colby work with haunted nights. i think their energy mixed with snc's works really well. plus, i think to some degree they bring snc's energy down a peg or two, which is always for the best.

also, having nate in the video was a lovely choice as well. i love when he tags along with snc.

and this was the video that included lexi! she was a lovely addition to the video. i know she told me that she was nervous, which is why she seemed so calm in the video, but honestly??? it worked super well. every time it cut to her just stand there, staring at snc, was hilarious. bc it really makes you realize snc are super over-dramatic lmao

also, her telling me (and us) that colby was trying to help her up the hill bc of how slippery it was and that nate was extremely invested in learning about her when they did have down time.... omg, i love these ppl so much.

now about the building they were in, i always feel so sad when they go to mental hospitals and whatnot. something about places like these, to someone with actual mental disorders (me), always makes me kinda want to cry. the amount of torture and lack of care that happened at these places, when all anyone needed was help just breaks my heart. and then to have a literally room all the way at the top that was used to chain ppl up... disgusting.

side note, the scentbird ad... what the fuck were those outfits??? also why did colby think it was the right idea to spray the perfume into his face lmaooo

i hate them so much ksksks

okay onto the investigation:

adam, the tour guide, was fantastic. he matched their energy very well. also he's in today's video too so i'm excited to seem him again lol

how did i know that the moment they would show the chains on the wall, i just knew colby would say something sexual???

the on running joke that nate doesn't bathe was so funny.

the idea that ppl were doing secret seances at the place is so creepy to me. also... why doesn't that man just get rid of all the evidence lol i would not keep that on my property.

also the fact that there are so many buried bodies on the property... that's insane. i'm surprise it's not polterguise-y up in there.

something about snc buying a body cover is hilarious to me. and then poor nate having to be their volunteer lol

nate: this is the weirdest thing *long pause* well, not the weirdest thing i've ever consented to, but it's up there.

😏 what you talking about, nate? care to share with the class lol

everything that happened in the morgue was really cool. i guess it was good that they used nate as a trigger object in a way. but they clearly were communicating with something in there, which was so interesting.

can i be honest, and maybe i'm an outlier here, but dolls aren't creepy to me. even the ones that are purposefully made to look creepy. they just aren't to me. maybe it's also bc i grew up playing with dolls or something but like... dolls are scary to me, even if they are old and falling apart haha

i think snc need to get a stronger or loud spirit box. the one they have, it is so hard to understand wtf it's saying whenever they use it.

those steps that you can hear while they were in the yellow room was crazy.

lexi seeing that shadow figure... omg no thanks

the evps they caught, especially that help one, scared the shit out of me. it was so loud !!

when lexi chose sam to be chained to the wall, yall don't understand the laugh i let out. the cackle. that shit tickled me pink, ngl.

highkey tho, props to sam being handcuffed up there bc that wouldn't an couldn't be me ever lol

side note, i had a feeling nate would be the type to know latin, or at least a bit of it. god he is so hot.

the estes method was insane, like always. i will say tho, the attachment part of this whole... attachment series is starting to wear thin personally. while i feel like it is true, if they aren't going to do anything about it, why keep bringing it up? why not have one of the episodes be going either back to the sallie house to return the spirit or going to someone that knows how to remove an attachment and getting rid of it? it just doesn't make sense to me.

also, if i was sam in this situation, i would have to have some form of light with me. or at least that was an arms' reach away or in my hand, that way if i got scared i could turn it on. i don't like pure darkness. i just... can't deal with it. also i have terrible eyesight so i already see shit that's not there to begin with since my eyes are garbage.

and as i've talked about on here, maybe don't whistle back to a possible spirit that's whistling at you, sam. probs not for the best.

overall, i think this episode was actually really fun. i liked it a lot and i think the addition of lexi was fun as well. i'm happy she got to go and got to talk to me on here about her experience. i would rate this episode like a 3.8/5. it was a lot of fun and the evidence they caught was so cool. hopefully today's episode is good as well.

[charmed-henry]

Coming-of-Age, Come And Gone | Henrose

Date: 11 August 2022, late night Featuring: @thehuntress-rose Warnings: Mentions of blood, major injury, medical/stitches

Henry visits Rose in the hospital and breaks some news to her. They come to a realization— and make a promise.

HENRY

Rose was alive, and that was all that really mattered right now. The Order had fallen, the Knightley home burned to the ground, Augusta was talking to the police, Henry would do the same soon too, his whole family was somewhere in the Balkans, Eric was dead, Ashleigh didn’t love him, Candace and Pacifica and Ollie would have so many questions, and yet— Rose was alive. And that was all that really mattered right now.

Because there had been a moment when Henry had really thought she was dead. When Henry thought he had finally done it— he had failed another friend, left her to die at the Order’s hands, and even all the ways he had changed wouldn’t be enough. He made the same mistakes and suffered the same consequences. 

But they told him Rose was alive, and as soon as Henry was allowed, he rushed to her side. She was resting, and Henry didn’t disturb her— he just hoped she would wake up soon. 

ROSE

During her slumber; Rose saw red and silver and fire. She heard Phil and that werewolf, Toulouse Bonfamille. She heard Henry. Everything whirled together in her state of limbo. Time didn’t pass, it didn’t even exist. Rose didn’t feel fear or pain as soon as she slipped into unconsciousness in the cobblestone walls of Thornwood Hall. She just felt peace amongst the chaos. 

Rose’s eyes fluttered open and she winced away from the fluorescent lights of the hospital room. It was a stark contrast from the darkness she’d been in for some time. There was a constant beeping, which she could only assume was her tired heart. She was alive despite all odds and wearing a tacky hospital gown dozens had worn before her. The girl glanced around the room, gauging where she was. Henry sat on one of those notoriously uncomfortable chairs merely inches from her bed. She wondered how long he’d been there. Who else came to grieve? Her friend looked worse for wear with his under eyes darkened and a seemingly permanent frown. 

Rose muttered out a hoarse, “Well, you look like shit,” and tried to sit up. She let out a groan in discomfort as she did so. The hole in her abdomen was patched up, but the muscles were still tense and weak from the trauma. Still, even in her state, Rose would always try to make a joke out of a terrible situation. 

HENRY

Henry opened his mouth to protest, on instinct— and then he stopped, because Rose was alive, and she was talking to him, and she was making fun of him, and there was something bursting open in his chest now, filling him with a new lightness. He looked like shit, Rose looked like shit, they both looked like shit. But they were here. 

He laughed, because it was kind of funny and also because he was just so relieved, and maybe a little amazed. It still kept hitting him. Rose, alive. 

Of course, another thing hit him in that moment. Rose was alive, but they didn’t have much time left together. Soon, Henry would go back to the investigators like he had promised to, like he was legally obligated to. He would tell them everything he knew. And then his fate was in their hands, and he might not see Rose again— at least, not like this— for years.

He didn’t have to think about that just yet, though, right?

“I’ll work on that,” he said, amused. “Though I think you ought to look in a mirror yourself.” He said it gently, teasing without really meaning it, different from the defensive tone he might have taken under other circumstances.

He scooted his chair closer to the hospital bed. “I’m, erm— it’s good that you’re feeling a bit better. I was… worried.” 

ROSE

She smiled despite everything. Her jokes didn’t always land (because they were always inappropriately timed) and she wasn’t sure if he was only humoring her because she almost died, but she’d take it. Waking up to the one person she’d allow to see her like this, so vulnerable and human, almost made her forget about what landed her here. The smile faded. Rose looked down to her clothed abdomen where she laid a hand over where the sword pierced her. It felt sore and tender still. The phantom shock of the sword ripped through her, Rose remembered exactly how it felt. And she wondered, if she nearly died… what else happened. Did they win? Did Thornwood Hall turn to ash like the wizard said? Did everyone make it out?

She looked up at Henry, “You don’t need to worry about me.” The worst ones always make it out okay, she thought. “Is… is everyone else okay? Is it…?” over? The unasked question lingered between them. 

HENRY

“It’s all over. Everyone’s okay. We won, Rose,” Henry said, smiling, a strange shine in his eyes like he knew he was supposed to be happier about this. He was happy, he supposed, that everyone had made it out alive. That he no longer had to worry about the Order coming after him or anyone he loved. 

But everything came with a cost. And even if Henry had turned on the Order and done his best to try and avenge Eric, it didn’t change all of the terrible things he had done and all of the terrible things he had enabled. So if there was someone to bear the cost of the victory, Henry knew it had to be him.

He was dreading this moment, but how much longer could Henry put it off? He didn’t know how much time they would let him have with Rose, and he had to tell her himself. It felt important.

“Rose… there’s something you should know,” Henry said, swallowing hard and leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. “And promise you won’t try to change my mind about it. I’ve already decided.”

ROSE

The words filled a void she’d felt for years. It was a guilt she hid away in the pit of her stomach every time she followed through on a mission for ‘the greater good.’ Rose let her eyes close in triumph. The Order was gone, the Huntsclan would hear of her betrayal and mortal wound and mark her as inactive. The RAS would work out a deal for them so that in time they could repent for the sins they committed in the name of their fathers. The cage Rose was confined in was gone, Henry’s too. They were free to do whatever they wanted, she didn’t have to marry some prince who… was probably dead now. Henry and Rose made it out alive, they had a future that wasn’t colored red with bloodshed.

Then the pit opened wide once again. Henry’s tone shifted. It wasn’t light, relieved, or humorous anymore. Rose opened her eyes and they were swimming with dread as she looked at him. “I can’t promise you anything…” she shook her head. 

“If you’ve already decided it, then whatever I say doesn’t matter, right?”

HENRY

Henry sighed and shook his head. He trusted Rose as his comrade, as his fellow soldier, but mostly– as his friend. She was smart and strategic, and she also knew things about Henry that most people didn’t know. She understood things about him that nobody else could, simply because they’d grown up in parallel worlds, similar only in all the ways that mattered. For almost anything, he would at least have considered her advice.

But in this case, he knew that she would insist he take the deal. And that was what Henry wanted to do, but that was precisely why Henry wouldn’t do it. He had been selfish for long enough. Someone had to pay for his family’s crimes. And if everyone else was going to run, well, Henry supposed it would have to be him.

“They’ve offered me a deal, Rose. These people who work for– I’m not sure, it’s some kind of agency, I think. I’m sure they’ll offer you the same one, so I won’t get into the details of it, you’ll hear it soon enough. But the point is that they want to help me get out of going to prison.” Henry steeled himself. Saying it out loud would make it real. There was no turning back, even if he was scared. 

He looked at her for a moment and then tore his gaze away, too scared and ashamed to look her in the eyes. “I’m not going to take it, Rose. I can’t.”

ROSE

And then the pit swallowed her whole. As she fell into it, she realized that it not only housed her guilt; but her grief, and despair, and that feeling when you leave your childhood home for the last time knowing you’ll never see it again. The hope she felt waking up in a world where she wasn’t the Huntsgirl vanished. 

Rose lost her home. She lost her family. But it didn’t matter because she’d trade it for a new life, a life she could have now. But she didn’t want it without Henry. Every time she imagined living a normal life, he was there next to her. They would go to museums and hang out with their friends and life would be good. No more thoughts of inferiority, no more weight of a father’s disappointment. The trauma they shared would be past, and their present and future would be something they made together. Rose couldn’t imagine her life without him anymore. 

Did it take two years or two minutes to realize just how much she needed him? Her face expressed confusion and hurt and everything in between as she stuttered out, “Wh— why? Why wouldn’t you take it, Henry? We have the chance to be free of all this, and you’re just gonna leave me? You can’t. You can’t leave me here, I don’t know how I’m supposed to be— I don’t know what I’m gonna do without—“ 

HENRY

Maybe, Henry thought, he shouldn’t have told her. She had been through so much, mentally and physically, and he shouldn’t have upset her. Maybe Henry could have lied. Told her that they didn’t offer him the deal in the first place, that he didn’t have a choice. Maybe it would hurt her less. 

But Henry couldn’t lie to Rose. He had done enough lying these past years to last a lifetime. He especially couldn’t lie to Rose, who had every right to be angry with him now. Wasn’t he supposed to be choosing what was right over what he, selfishly, wanted? So of course he had to be honest with her. Even if it hurt.

“Rose, I’m sorry—“ Henry said, reaching for her hand to steady her. He took a deep breath. “Rose… I promise, it’s not— you’ll be fine without me. You will.” He smiled, even though he really didn’t feel like smiling at all. Tears welled up in his eyes. He squeezed her hand. 

“There are things— do you know what my dad used to do for a living? He would get people out of going to jail. Bad people. Murderers and thieves and— not desperate people who had to resort to that, rich people who could buy their way out of consequences if they wanted to. If he were here now, I guarantee he would have gotten me out of this. Because I’m exactly his clientele. I’ve… I’ve killed—“

Henry squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t want to talk about this, but Rose had to know. “Not just Eric. There are others who are dead because of me, because I was selfish and cowardly and— and there would have been more, if not for— other factors.” He thought of Ashleigh. But he still couldn’t tell her secret. 

“You’re not like me, Rose. You’re better. You deserve this. I don’t. I’ve got to pay for what I’ve done. For what my family has done for decades. If they’re not going to face consequences, someone’s got to.” 

ROSE

Rose bit her lip and forced the tears that were starting to hold until it wasn’t physically possible anymore. She blurted out, letting them go and clutching his hand like it was what kept her heart beating, “We’re all killers, Henry!”

A ragged breath cut between her words, “I’m not any more deserving of forgiveness than you. We’re the same. Our fathers raised us to be what we are, they told us monsters were real and we had to kill them. They just left out the part that doing that makes you one in the process! We’re the same!” 

She had never said words like this out loud. She never cried like this in front of someone before. It felt too raw and real and overwhelming. The heaving in her chest pulled at her wound, sending a piercing pain up to her heart. Or was that just heartbreak? The monitor beeps picked up as she continued, clutching her own chest, “We’ve all killed someone we loved, by accident or not. But just because worse men have not had to pay, it doesn’t mean you have to pick up the tab.” 

“Fuck ‘em. We can be happy,” she added meekly as she came down from her brief hysteria. 

HENRY

Rose was crying hard, now, struggling for breath. It hurt to witness. Something feral and entirely inappropriate in Henry wanted to crawl over next to Rose and put his arms around her, to tell her it would be okay, to make it okay. But he couldn’t. Partially because that would be entirely inappropriate, Henry told himself, and partially because he couldn’t make it okay. Because he was the reason Rose was crying. And the only thing that would make it okay was if he did what she wanted him to do.

And Henry couldn’t do that. He couldn’t do what she wanted him to do. Because it was what he wanted to do, too– he wanted to do this program with Rose, to face the world knowing he wasn’t the only one, to be there for her and let her be there for him. He wanted… he wanted…

What Henry wanted had only ever gotten him in trouble. His desire was a monstrous and destructive thing. The rest of the world needed to be protected from it.

He shook his head. “You will be happy,” he said softly, emotion welling up again as he imagined her life the way it could go without him. Rose, ordering takeaway with Pacifica or going to the movies with Candy. Rose, beating Phil at Scrabble and lording it over everyone for the rest of the night. Rose, getting a job, buying a house, adopting a bunch more dogs, meeting some faceless guy and falling in love with him (and why did that make Henry ache?)

Rose, finally free of the Huntsclan’s hold on her life. Henry was happy for her. He wanted that life for her. But he knew he couldn’t have it.

“You were always braver than me,” he added. “When we were going after the lake monster, it was you and Eric who didn’t want to kill it. I did, because I was scared. I was so frustrated with you, but now I see. It’s who you are.” Tears sparkled in Henry’s eyes.

ROSE Rose was so tired. She didn’t have it in her to fight anymore. Whether it be a vampire, a demon, or the boy in front of her. There was something so exhausting about arguing with someone she loved, someone just as stubborn as her. Maybe if her body wasn’t so weak from healing, Rose would have continued to fight him on it. But now she just looked at the clock and back to Henry. 

She bitterly didn’t want to be happy. She didn’t want to be brave, not if she had to brave a new world without him. It was selfish of her to want him to stay on her behalf though. If it cleared his conscience and things could go back to the way they were… maybe it was for the best. Rose couldn’t make herself believe that. She still wanted to be selfish.

Rose recalled the night on the row boat with Eric, the black water and the mermaids. “I was scared too, but not that it would hurt other people if we let it go… but that it would hurt you if we didn’t.”

She looked back to the clock and it had only been a few seconds but she felt like time was running out. Time was running out and she had so much more to say with no idea of how. How was she supposed to express this yearning for a bond they already had? She wanted him to stay and be her friend, but her heart ached for something more. She couldn’t put it into words or even wrap her mind around it. So instead she just asked, “How much time do we have left?” 

HENRY

Henry frowned at that. What did Rose mean? That she had only gone out on the lake that night because of Henry?

It was a sobering thought. It had been a dangerous mission. Eric had almost died. And in retrospect, Henry wished he hadn’t asked his friends to come with him at all. But Rose had come anyway, and it didn’t have anything to do with protecting the town, it was just… him?

How many times, though, had Rose done ridiculous and illogical things because Henry had asked her to? Or sometimes he hadn’t even asked her, she’d just done it anyway. Sometimes it was perfect. Fighting with mini golf clubs on that yacht over spring break last year. Indulging Henry’s Eurovision obsession. Making room for him in the group Halloween costume when his original plan fell through. 

He was really going to miss those things, Henry thought achingly. 

But it was for the best. That night on the lake was proof of it. Rose had put herself in terrible danger because of Henry, and now they were both in such a fragile place, and Henry didn’t trust himself not to lead her somewhere dangerous again. Never intentionally, of course– but Henry never intended any of this, for any of these people to be hurt by him, and it happened anyway.

“I don’t know. Not long,” Henry said quietly, looking down at his hands and then up at her again. “Rose, I–”

What? What did he want to say?

What did you say when you thought you saw someone die, and they were right in front of you, alive, and you couldn’t do the one thing they were asking you to do? What did you say when that person happened to be Rose, who was fierce and and wickedly funny and brave even when she was scared, who was sometimes terrifying and sometimes tender and always beautiful, who would probably tell Henry off if she knew he had thought that and somehow still the thought made him smile– but he didn’t really mean it, right? Maybe he did. Whatever it meant.

Anyway, it wouldn’t matter. Rose would move on with her life and meet people who were good for her.

He took a deep breath and offered a small, sad smile. “I just think you should know that I– I think you’re really bloody brilliant. I’ve… always really quite admired you, Rose, even if I’ve been– well, you know. I think you’re going to do brilliant things now that your time isn’t going to be taken up with my nonsense. Or any of this nonsense. So I want to hear about it, alright?” 

ROSE

Rose didn’t know if ‘not long’ meant minutes or hours. Days or weeks, nothing would be as long as she wanted. Because the years she wanted to spend with him, he’d be wasting away. She would too, but in an entirely different cage. 

How poetic, to escape one and end up in another. 

She smiled sadly back at Henry. Rose didn’t deserve any praise, any hope. Still, she fiddled with his fingertips with her own and reassured, “I’ll tell you everything, I promise.” 

Rose had broken so many promises and oaths lately, she lost count. But in this hospital room, just the two of them, this was a promise that mattered. She wanted to paint a picture of how she felt about him, but art was never her thing. It was his. He was better with words and feelings and expressions. Rose fumbled over soft topics like heartbreaks, and loss. She wanted to say that after all this time she thought she understood what she felt about him. It was silent and subtle. Unassuming, even. Two years ago, he was just a boy she met in class. Then, he was an ally when she had so few. A friend who could see behind the veil they both wore in front of everyone else. The veil shrouded them from the world and maybe something else bloomed behind it. Something more than a kinship forged in bloodshed. Rose never trusted the people she fought with until Henry was at her side. That level of comfort made her stomach twist now. Facing it felt like losing an extension of herself.

After her long pause of grasping for words that weren’t ‘I love you, don’t leave,’ Rose said, “I don’t know how to miss you… I’m not ready to.” 

HENRY

In that long silence, Henry didn’t look away. It was as though Rose was saying something without saying anything– but that was what had always made them a good team, wasn’t it? That they could follow each other’s cues, that they didn’t really need words. 

Words were supposed to be Henry’s thing. He was romantic and melodramatic and overly sentimental, and what he lacked in pragmatism or practicality he made up for in flowery language. Just like the bumbling knight he had been from that silly dream. But both in the dream and in life, that particular quality was never really useful with Rose (Henry was beginning to wonder if it had ever been useful at all). Rose was no-nonsense, straight-to-the-point. She said what she meant.

And when she didn’t, that was where their silent language came in.

Henry didn’t know what she was saying in that particular silence, though. All he knew was that desire that wouldn’t go away, to reach for her and never let go. 

“Neither am I,” he admitted. “Rose, I thought I’d lost you back there. I really did. And it made me realize…” Henry trailed off, words failing him again. “I don’t know what I’d do. I don’t know what I will do. It’s just– you’re important to me, Rose.”

ROSE

If losing me is so hard, then don’t do it. Stay. She wanted to scream. It seemed every time he shared a tender word she looped back through all the stages of grief, forever bargaining, forever angry, forever denying the truth. 

She loved him and the minute she realized it was the very same he said he was leaving. Rose didn’t look away either. It was all she could do to express how much she cared that wasn’t screeching at the top of her lungs how stupid he was. “You won’t ever lose me, Henry. I’m far too stubborn to die.”

And then Rose did something uncharacteristic, something tender and brave in the way that Henry was. Something vulnerable. She scooted away from him, wincing and missing the warmth of his hand already, and patted the space she made. If he didn’t feel the same way, he’d still lay with her just to appease her at this point. At least, she hoped. “If you’re leaving me, I don’t want to be awake to watch you go. Can we just… lie down?” 

Rose felt an ache in her chest and belly from the stress of this all. The pain medication took the edge off but the dull piercing still stung. She fought the haze she felt to stay with Henry, every moment counted when your time was limited. 

HENRY

Henry was about to tell Rose not to move, not to irritate her injury, and then he realized what she was doing. Making room for him. 

That urge he had pushed down was crawling back up again, and this time, Henry wasn’t sure he could fight it any longer. He wasn’t sure he should fight it any longer. He was leaving and Rose had almost died and nothing was ever guaranteed, and Henry was so tired and Rose had this strange look on her face Henry wasn’t sure he had seen before. 

He glanced over his shoulder, but nobody was around. The curtains were drawn and the lights were dim and, for once in his life– maybe for the last time in his life– nobody was around. Nobody except Rose, and right now, that was all that mattered. The only thing holding Henry back was his own hesitation. But in forty-eight hours, he would be gone, and really, what did he have to lose?

“Okay,” he said softly.

Carefully, a bit awkwardly, trembling, Henry climbed over the side of the bed and tried to take up the least amount of space he could. It wasn’t very comfortable, but Henry supposed he should get used to uncomfortable beds. That wasn’t really the point of this, anyway.

Nervously, Henry turned to meet Rose’s eyes, and when he did, his hesitation disappeared. What was there to be afraid of? It was just Rose. The same Rose he’d always known, the same Rose who had saved his life and vice versa, too. The same Rose who teased him, who won and lost and cried with him. Like in a mirror, she looked different up close.

ROSE

Rose wasn’t surprised that he made himself as small as possible. It wasn’t a new trick he’d learned. She could see he was worried about her and her comfort, but she was never concerned with her own. She didn’t care if her stitches opened up and stained everything red between them. Because she felt like she was already an open wound, gushing all out of her stoic body. The huntress would willingly be stabbed again to just keep this moment with Henry on repeat. 

She pushed his shoulder down to the pillow, forcing him to be more comfortable. Rose laid there, scared she was forcing him. She thought she selfishly wouldn’t care, but she did. She wanted Henry to want to hold her. The retired Huntsgirl was always bristled and sharp, and she melted away from physical affection in the past. It’s all she’s ever known. But now, she was declawed and yearned to be soft. “You have permission to do whatever, Henry, I’m not gonna stab you.” 

HENRY

Henry smiled. It wasn’t that he thought she was going to stab him (now that would certainly irritate her injury, so he would hope not). He just suddenly felt… a little bit shy. It was one thing to grab someone’s arm to pull them down a corridor as you ran from a horde of men with swords. It was one thing to huddle close to someone as you crept through a secret passageway. 

This was another thing entirely. There was nothing standing between them, even in a literal sense, Henry realized, as he inched the slightest bit closer. 

And then a lock of blonde hair had fallen across Rose’s face, and for once, Henry gave in to his impulse and gently pushed it to the side, his heart seeming to beat impossibly loud now. His hand froze behind her ear. Had Rose’s eyes always been so blue? His stomach fluttered.

He blushed. “It was in your face,” Henry said, stating the obvious. And, well, there were other obvious things, too, that he was not stating. 

ROSE

Her cheek tingled where his hand brushed it, and Rose felt a wave of heat rise to them. She moved a hand into the mess of her curly hair, feeling a rush of embarrassment. “Ah, my hair is probably so fucked up right now…” 

Why did she care? Rose didn’t usually put stock into superficial things like that. And Henry has seen her looking much worse before. Well, this was a different type of low even for Rose. A single clock tick passed and Rose had a surge of impulsiveness. Henry’s soft brown eyes looking down at her willed her to spill her guts. She should just tell him everything now, because who knew when she would get a chance to again. Saying ‘I love you’ on the phone felt hollow. So, Rose blurted out, “When I thought I was dying, I thought about you. How I was scared but only because I didn’t want you to be alone… You know that I’ll be here when you come back, right?”

HENRY

Henry chuckled at the comment about her hair, which she never really worried about— at least that Henry knew of. It never looked like something she worried about, always in some sort of practical, easy style. But it always sort of caught the light, even in the dingy hospital room. 

He sobered when she brought up what had happened at Thornwood, though. Henry remembered the way he had felt, then. He had thought, too, that he would be alone. But it wasn’t just about that. 

“You don’t have to— you don’t have to wait for me,” Henry said quietly. “If you’re worried about me… I’ll be fine. I always have been. I was… honestly, I was devastated when I thought I’d lost you. I actually don’t think I have the words for it, I— well, I don’t have to get into it…”

Henry took a deep breath. “It wasn’t that I was afraid of being alone. It was… well, you.” Henry paused. “I couldn’t imagine… no you. So I guess the point of saying all that is— you don’t have to wait around for me. Unless you really want to.” 

ROSE

“You’re the only person who sees me for what I am,” Rose admitted. 

She spent decades hiding in scarier men’s shadows, until she had one of her own. It was all encompassing for a long time. The only other person she thought could see her in the darkness they shared was Tom, but a knight in shining armor was never what she needed. Rose wanted to settle in and get comfortable, and Tom gave her that for a time. But Rose didn’t need to be comfortable or stable, she needed to be seen. They always skirted around the horrible things they did and how their actions created a pit inside them. Henry saw the chasm Rose put between herself and everyone else around her. And then he built a bridge. It was the only thing Rose would never burn in her own wake. 

“Now that it’s all over… I don’t think I’ll open that box again… you’re the only person who will ever know me, really know me. Henry, I–” her hand scrunched his shirt, “I want to. I’ll wait for you. I’ll call you. I’ll complain to you about whatever shitty job I have to get now that I don’t hunt mons–people, for money… It’ll be like you never left.” She swore with a resurgence of hope. They couldn’t keep him forever, in the end he did the right thing. They never keep the ones atoning forever. There was going to be a light at the end of this tunnel. Rose would make one if she had to, because they didn’t escape this cult with their lives only to be spending the rest of them apart. Rose leaned forward, keeping his gaze with a look of determination that was synonymous with her name.

HENRY

Henry wasn’t sure he agreed with that, completely. This was Rose. Brilliant Rose. Fierce, funny, clear-eyed Rose, who had a bigger heart than most people realized. Of course people were going to be there for her, even if they learned about her past. How couldn’t they be? 

But she had a point. They had been through something together that nobody else would understand. And for the first time, hearing Rose talk about it, Henry could see a light at the end of everything. It would be hard, but they would make it through this. Maybe, finally, they could forgive themselves. And even if they couldn’t, they would still have each other.

They were inches apart now, and Rose was drawing even nearer. There was a determined look in her eyes. Henry recognized it, though it had never been directed at him before. It was, maybe, Henry thought, when she looked the most beautiful.

Henry gave the smallest nod.

And there were a lot of ways Henry could overthink that tiny thought that had popped into his head, and maybe he would later (he would have a lot of time to think later) but, for now, he was only thinking of the light at the end of this. He leaned forward and closed the space between them and, then, gently, he kissed her.

ROSE

Rose froze for a single moment, eyes welling with tears as their lips met. And then she closed them, letting the sensation move through her. It was a bittersweet, ache. The most satisfying, yearning quenched. Her hand raised up from his chest to his cheek, begging him to keep kissing her. But the moment was as fleeting as it was tender. 

Rose pulled away and searched Henry’s eyes for something, a sign that this meant more than a goodbye. Was his heart beating as hard as hers? “Hen…,” Rose whispered breathlessly. She was speechless. 

HENRY

Henry blinked. He couldn’t quite believe he’d done that. Maybe he should not have. He’d never really thought about his feelings toward Rose before, not when she was with Tom, not when he was with Ashleigh, but it all felt so strong now, a burning in his chest that was brighter than anything else he’d felt in these dull days ever since the battles with the Order began. Rose had always been his friend, had always been his comrade, but how had he never seen it before?

Maybe it was a mistake. He had to go now, it was beyond him at this point, and Henry no longer believed that love could conquer anything (if that was what this was, love). He couldn’t go back on his word. He had to see this through, the consequences of his choices. But perhaps…

Perhaps it would be like Rose had said. When he was free again, they would find each other again. And it would be like he had never left.

“Was that… alright?” Henry asked nervously. “I’m sorry, I’m making this harder, aren’t I? I… didn’t think it through. It’s just– it’s what I said. You’re important to me.”

ROSE

Rose never believed that love could conquer anything. Lovers were fools and destined to be unhappy. She was cynical when Henry was always the one who spouted off silly professions of love and persevering. She had seen love lost, and she guessed after that Rose stopped finding the good in being so weak. Henry made her weak, and that was okay.

“Nothing you say or do can make this any harder.” It was already too hard. Rose ran her thumb along the days old stubble on his jaw and kissed him again. Her eyes felt heavy when she closed them, her heartbeat was loud but steady. Rose was fading again, but she wanted to fight it. She wanted to savor each second she had to just be with Henry. 

The clock was ticking, but she laid her head on his shoulder and just reveled in the warmth. “I’m sorry, too. You’ve always meant so much to me, and I never even thought about it like this. You were just my person. I didn’t think I would— well, I’m just sorry, too.”

HENRY

A moment ago, Henry had been cautious and uncertain, kissing Rose on a whim and fearing that he’d ruined everything– but now it felt like the most normal thing. Maybe it was because everything else was so uncertain. By comparison, this made perfect sense.

And why wouldn’t it, Henry thought, reaching an arm around Rose’s shoulders cautiously, careful not to move her too much or pull at the stitches. They had been so many things to each other– first classmates, then friends, fellow soldiers, and– well, whatever this was going to be. For once in his life, Henry had no idea what would come next. At least this new thing between them– it was one good thing Henry had.

“No, don’t be sorry,” Henry said, leaning his head on hers. “Let’s just– we don’t have to overthink it. Goodness knows I’ll have plenty of time for that.” He chuckled to himself. “Let’s just… be here a bit longer. Before I have to go.”

Eventually, he would have to leave the hospital. Eventually, he would make his way back to his house and get his passport and give it to Belle, and eventually the authorities would come for him, and eventually he would be gone. But right now, he could only see light. The light Rose had talked about, at the end of the tunnel or whatever else they were calling what loomed ahead.

The end was looming, but, Henry thought absently, gently tracing Rose’s shoulder with his thumb, this really felt more like a beginning.