#to sever a loveless bond

[fletchingbrilliant]

To Sever a Loveless Bond Chapter Eight

Read the fic by @zaebeecee HERE!

Welcome to Fletch doesn't know how to edit down, part seventy-five-thousand

But I also don't regret it

By the way here's your reminder that I am an NSFW creator, but since I do Hellaverse ANYTHING that should hopefully go without saying. anyway. you never know.

We love Alastor having an asexual panic. Been there buddy.

The assistant talking to Angel Dust is named Wire, she's got a bit part in this chapter and I like her, she was really fun to design~

I love Rocky, justice for Rocky <3

See the other chapter artwork here:

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five pt. 1

Chapter Five pt. 2

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

[aemonds-sapphire]

Acceptance

Summary: It’s your wedding night, so why are you knocking on Aemond’s door?

Pairing: Aemond Targaryen x fem!reader

Warnings: NSFW. Virgin reader. Virginity loss. Friends to lovers. Consummation proof. Fingering.

A/N: You can most definitely read this as a stand-alone, but I do recommend reading part I, II, and III for some context. For those who have read each part, this is the final one. Hope you enjoy it!

Word count: 2.5k

To say you were nervous would be an understatement. You were absolutely terrified. But no amount of fear could deter you from the decision you had made.

You stood outside his bedchamber, the pit of your belly tightening in anticipation. Even thiugh there was still a tiny part of you that urged you to walk away, you didn’t.

Because you didn’t want to.

Your knuckles tapped the door twice and your heart lurched into a frantic pace as you bit your lower lip, attempting to keep your nervousness at bay.

It didn’t take long before you were met with Aemond.

He gripped the doorknob while his eye fell to your face first and then to your forearm.

“Did he hurt you?” he asked, clenching his jaw.

Realising the conclusion he had drawn from the bruise that tinted your skin, you immediately shook your head with a chuckle. “No. I… tripped on my way here…”

He wasn’t convinced.

“Aemond… he did not touch me.”

Gradually, the tension on his face faded away, but he remained unmoving.

“May I?”

He stepped to the side at once, eye still fixed on you as you walked in. Closing the door shut, he paced until he was in front of you, bringing your feet to a halt.

You swallowed hard as you glared at the beautiful man with whom you had shared so much of your life. Lines were crossed and blurred beyond recognition. The friendship you had once share had morphed into something you had craved and yearned for.

Until tonight.

Until another man took you as his wife and severed that bond.

“What are you doing here?” he asked seriously.

You stared at him dazedly, feeling a jab at your heart. “He won’t bed me. He’s too drunk to bed me,” you said in a low voice, wishing to match his level of deadpan.

Aemond stood in silence for a long while before he crossed both arms over his chest, the linen undershirt underneath wrinkling.

“No.”

“No?”

“No,” he repeated in a final tone.

Your jaw quirked angrily. “You do not know what I’m here to ask.”

Aemond heaved a deep sigh. “I already know,” he said simply. “You are not mine to take.”

“So you’d have me bed him?”

“He’s your lord husband.”

Your mouth dropped open in shock. In truth, you had considered the idea that he’d be reluctant in having you. He had done so many times before, but you had hoped this time things would go differently.

“I’m willingly giving myself to you,” you said, struggling to keep your voice steady. “My father will demand proof of consummation and…”

He held up a finger. “So that is why you’re here.”

“To give you my maidenhead? Yes.”

But Aemond saw deeper than that. “And proof of consummation.”

You stared at him long and hard. “This is the one thing I have control over as of right now. I was forced into a loveless marriage…” your voice faltered momentarily. “I’m married to a drunken fool who is too out of it to perform his duty.”

Duty.

The very thing that shaped Aemond’s being and one not easily broken.

“I will not take what’s not mine.”

“Please…” you said, realising how pathetic your plea sounded.

An empty silence weaved around both of you, only disrupted by the crackling flames dancing in the fireplace nearby. A warm hand touched your shoulder and you flinched away from his touch.

“I thought… you wanted this…” you said quietly.

His eye narrowed. “What I desire matters not.”

“It does,” you said, letting your robe slide off your shoulders and down your body. “You know I’m yours to take.”

You expected more resistance from him, but you could understand why he didn’t. After all, it was a feeling you knew all too well. Craving what is given to others.

He took a step towards you, eye roaming down the length of your body as you undid your nightgown. Aemond held out his hand to touch it before tugging softly until the sheer fabric came sliding down and pooling at your feet.

The exposure and cooler air had your nipples harden and you shivered as his hand traveled down your shoulder and arm.

“Please, Aemond…” you said, fighting back the urge to cry at how desperate you were. “Please…”

It was already appalling enough to be stuck in this situation, but you refused giving yourself to a man who meant nothing to you. Even if tradition called for it and had people marry each other out of pure convenience, you deserved better than that.

Especially when you had Aemond.

His hand came to rest under your breast and you felt his thumb caressed it slowly.

“You’re tempting,” he said as if talking to himself. “Too tempting.”

“Then take me,” you offered, bringing your own hands to rest on his chest, allowing yourself to feel his firm muscles heave underneath your palms. “I don’t give a fuck about my husband and I’m certain you feel the same way.”

He gritted his teeth. “Not even Vhagar’s fire would match the one flaring inside me when I saw you with him.”

Your fingers gripped the hem of his undershirt and he quickly got rid of it, exposing his torso to you.

“You should have killed him.”

Aemond’s lips turned into a smile. “A very alluring prospect, indeed.”

His hands were suddenly on your breasts and you bit back a moan as he caressed you. You couldn’t help but to have your own eyes travel down his torso, admiring how his muscles rippled under his skin.

“I’m sure Larys Strong will find a way.”

Aemond snickered. “Please do not mention him… it’s a sure way to ruin this.”

By ‘this’ he meant his restrained cock that had your nervousness turn into desire. Trembling fingers gripped the hem of his breeches, but before you could slip one hand inside he gripping your wrist.

“Tonight isn’t about me,” he whispered.

He ducked forward taking your lips in his and your eyes immediately slid shut with a soft sigh of pleasure. You could get lost in his touch for hours. A simple kiss shouldn’t be able to have wetness drip from you, but it couldn’t be helped. When you felt a nibble on your lower lip and his tongue lightly tapping it, you promptly parted your lips and deepened the kiss.

Without tearing himself from you, he took you in his arms, lifting you off your feet effortlessly as you wrapped your arms around his neck.

Aemond only broke the kiss once he reached the edge of the bed. He placed you on top of the soft bedsheets, bringing one knee to press down for support.

You suddenly felt very exposed and staring into his eye had a wave of embarrassment wash over you, breaking eye contact.

“Look at me.”

Sucking in a harsh breath, you did as you were told, pressing your thighs together to hide your desire for him.

Suddenly, he moved away from the bed and came back carrying your nightgown.

Confusion splattered across your face as dropped to his knees on the mattress and slid closer to you. He gripped both your knees and parted your legs slowly to reveal yourself fully to his gaze.

Without uttering a word be brought your nightgown to rest just below your entrance, tucking it slightly under your backside.

“You’ll need your proof of consummation.”

Oh.

Aemond then settled in between your legs, leaning into you to press a tender kiss to the corner of your lips, causing you to shift restlessly underneath him, very much aware of the weight of his body on yours.

Your back instantly arched your back as you felt his hard cock pressed flat against your folds, causing your clit to swell and throb in anticipation.

Aemond lowered his face to your neck, planting several open-mouthed kisses across your sensitive skin. Your eyes fluttered shut and a moan escaped your lips. His tongue slid over your pulse point, sending your hips to lift from the bed, further increasing the pressure his cock applied to your clit.

“Aemond… please…” you groaned, deciding you were too tired of waiting for him to finally deflower you.

But what you lacked in patience, Aemond made up for in incredible self-restraint.

With one hand he stilled your rolling hips. “You’re not ready.”

You huffed in annoyance, dragging your fingernails along his chest teasingly. But he was right. He was well-endowed and you needed all the preparation he was willing to provide — and you willing to go through.

After ensuring you remained still, he snaked his hand between your legs, raising his own hips to make room for his prying fingers.

He pressed a kiss to your lips before sliding one finger inside.

But you could take more than that.

And you were aware he knew once a second finger joined the other.

You gasped into his lips, breath shaking and wet sounds filling his bedchamber. The head of his cock would occasionally hit your clit each time he shifted on top of you, making your entire body shudder in pleasure.

He gave you one final peck. “Can you take another one?”

It was possible you could, but you didn’t want another finger. You wanted his cock to push through your maidenhead and have you be bound to him.

You immediately shook your head. “I need more than that… please…”

Instead, he curled his fingers inside while pressing your clit with his thumb, causing you to cry out, nails digging into his shoulders.

Aemond held himself above you, watching you intently as more head flooded your body and wetness spilled from you. You drew your eye open and realised his gaze was as a fire that burned down on your face

Your mind drew a blank and you felt your lower abdomen begin to twist into a familiar knot. It never failed to amaze you how easily Aemond could get your over the edge.

Knowing your body far too well by now, Aemond was quick to withdraw both fingers from inside just as your walls were starting to clench down frantically around him.

“Aemond!” you cried out in despair at the overwhelming feeling of emptiness.

He brought his fingers to your lips, smearing your wetness across them before tasting it in a searing and scorching kiss.

You moaned, rolling your hips into him once you felt him lower himself onto you once more.

He cradled your face in his hand. “Are you ready?”

You nodded right away in between gasps as he slid his cock along your slick folds.

Aemond heaved a deep sigh as he positioned himself at your entrance.

“Tell me to stop and I will.”

You nodded, your heart nearly bursting out of your chest.

With a slight roll of his hips, Aemond managed to get the head of his cock through the barrier. You gasped loudly you felt a sting of pain followed by the uncomfortable sensation of something rolling down.

Tears gathered in your eyes and you felt Aemond kiss each of the away with his lips. He wasn’t moving inside you and you were wholeheartedly thankful for his thoughtfulness.

The pain wasn’t unbearable by any means, but it was enough to have you sobbing lightly.

“We can stop here,” he said lovingly, pressing another kiss to your forehead.

You took a deep breath, mustering all the strength within you. “Keep going…”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

No.

But it didn’t matter. You had been waiting for this for far too long to back down now.

“Try your best to relax.”

Aemond kissed you again, but you understood it was mainly to muffle your cries as he sank deeper inside you. You tried to ease the grip around him, but it was proving itself to be harder than expected.

He broke the kiss with a growl, breath coming out in hot pants. “You’re too tight… I won’t… last long…”

Even through the pain, you managed to feel the weight of his words as your clit pulsed once again.

By the time he had buried himself deeply inside, you didn’t dare breathe for a few seconds, your body still trying to adjust to his size.

Your hands clawed at his back as you tried to ease some of the tension.

“Are you well?” he asked in between gritted teeth.

“Thought it would hurt more,” you breathed out, noticing he was struggling to keep himself steady. “Are you?”

He let out a breathy growl. “You’re squeezing too hard…”

It was clear that he wasn’t going to last long, so you squeezed one hand in between your bodies, applying a faint pressure to your clit.

“Move,” you urged him.

You needed to feel more of him and when the young prince slid out slowly and back inside, you felt the air in your lungs rush out rapidly. Your clit demanded attention and you didn’t mind to provide it, but Aemond would have none of that.

He pushed your hand away at once replacing it with his own, setting a slow and steady pace as your walls finally began to ease down around his cock.

The overwhelming heat and size of him filling the aching emptiness was something you never thought you needed. In no time, your muscles were clamping down around him urgently and the bedchamber whirled away into a blur as orgasm crept upon you, catapulting you straight into the middle of a storm.

“Aemond… Aemond…” you gasped repeatedly, feeling the muscles on his back flex languidly with each slow thrust.

Once more, you arched your back and your vision went dark. Spasms and contractions of pleasure washed down your body, centered around where where his body was connected to yours. Aemond had buried his face in the crook of your neck, no longer bothering to silence your cries of pleasure.

It took you a long time to realise he had pulled out of you and was coating your belly with hot streaks of cum, letting out the most alluring growls you had ever heard from him.

He slumped to the side, removing the blanket of warmth he had enveloped you in with his body.

You felt incapable of stringing words together for the longest time, merely trying to get your breathing to steady while feeling the rolls of his seed streaming down your sides.

Aemond was the first to move, gathering your nightgown in his hand, displaying a few drops of blood that had stained the fabric.

“I think I may have to kill your husband.”

[deathmetalunicorn1]

Today I come with a distressing idea.

What do you think of a polyamorous relationship (Thor x reader x Lü Bù or Hades x reader x Qín Shî Huáng) where they were already in a relationship and decided to include her because there was romantic and sexual tension, but for a while now she has felt them apart?

So, not wanting to bother them (feeling unworthy of being "the third option") she walks away and leaves, by the time they want to know what's going on, boom! It turns out that in the time he was gone we married someone else, a marriage of convenience.

(Maybe we are royalty, an important lady or something to make the arranged marriage work)

No happy ending, no consolation, just sadness on both sides; They understanding that they were wrong to forget that there were three of them (not anymore, there were two again) and we were living a sad and dissatisfied married life in the shadow of a husband married to his job (he doesn't cheat on us or treat us badly, but there is no love or affection)

PS: I missed you so much!

-Looking back on it now, had you known this marriage you had agreed to enter would be so cold, so loveless, maybe you would have waited for your previous partners.

-You were the third to join Hades and Qin Shi Huang, who started dating shortly after everyone had been brought back to life, as the two bonded first as friends, then grew into something more.

-You were friends with both of them, Hades whom you had known for years, being a goddess yourself, and QSH found you and he never left, but according to Hades, that’s how he was.

-After several months of playful smirks and winks, longing glances, and such obnoxious sexual tension that even Zeus was annoyed, you joined their couple.

-For a while, you felt so happy being with them, you felt like the most beautiful woman because of the way they treated you, all while falling more and more in love with each other at the same time.

-That’s when the whispers started, rumors and cruel words floating all around you, on how happy they were with each other, and you were just in the way. They were just jealous, wanting to be in your place, so they worked hard to sow doubt into your mind.

-It worked.

-You started shying away a bit from them, constantly questioning if they were happy with you being there with them, but unlike you, as this was serious to you, they just laughed off your concerns, thinking you were being silly.

-They weren’t laughing when you finally left, not wanting to get in the way any longer.

-They tried to plead with you, to talk to you, wanting to talk this out, now taking your fears seriously as they had heard others, those jealous pricks, and what they had been saying.

-You didn’t want to believe them, your heart was aching from the pain of them not believing you, and you lashed out, telling them that relationships were built on communication and trust!

-That’s why you married another god, a marriage of convenience for the both of you, there were no pretty words, no late-night talks, no presents or thoughtful surprises, and no love. It was like you were still alone, this time with a ring on your finger and a stranger in the next room over.

-Hades and QSH regretted every moment they had laughed off your fears, not taking them seriously, as they had lost you. You fled from them because you didn’t’ trust them, into the arms of another man who didn’t even love you like how you should be love.

-Hades buried himself in his work, trying to drown out his sorrow, which in turn led to more fights with QSH, as he was never home, and they never spent any time together.

-They realized they were losing each other because they lost you, and without you to guide them, they feared their end would soon be approaching.

[zaebeecee]

To Sever a Loveless Bond

••RadioDust Soulmate AU••

Part 5/?

First chapter | Previous chapter | Next chapter

Read on AO3

Chapter 5 art by @fletchingbrilliant: Part one, part two

•••

In which Alastor and Angel go dancing, and Velvette gets the beginnings of Doing Stuff™. Visual representation of all the references swing dance moves here.

•••

At precisely 9:35 PM, Angel Dust knocked on Alastor’s door.

There wasn’t an answer right away. Angel hadn’t actually expected one. However, this was the one time of day that anyone could be assured that Alastor was in one specific place that was actually accessible to the rest of them: his radio program finished up at 9:30, and he always went back to his room for Alastor-related reasons before tending to whatever business he had that evening. Since the radio tower was off limits to anyone who wasn’t KeeKee (even Alastor didn’t know how she kept getting in, but she just liked to sleep on the warm radio equipment, so he had stopped kicking her out), this was Angel’s only guaranteed opportunity to corner the Radio Demon until the next evening. He wasn’t going to give up that easily.

Angel knocked again, more sharply this time. “I know you’re in there, Alastor,” he called through the wood. Still, there was nothing, save for a shift in the shadows that looked like they were growing in the nearby corner. Angel put two hands on his hips and turned towards the corner, watching as the shadows wavered just a little. “Hi,” he said, drawing the word out as less of a greeting and more of a ‘yeah, I caught you’.

Out from the blackness emerged a familiar shadow, one that bore a shape that was almost exactly like Alastor himself. Alastor’s shadow was a creepy fuck, and Angel wasn’t really sure what was up with it, but it almost seemed to have a mind of its own. It had its usual twisted and janky smile in place, and it tilted its head at Angel as it slid along the wall near him.

“Look, I need to talk to him,” Angel said. “Do me a favor, big guy? Either open the door for me or make him do it?”

The shadow seemed to contemplate the two options, as well as whether it wanted to help at all, before its shoulders shook and Angel heard a distant and rumbling sound of deep, deep laughter. Then, the shadow dove through the crack between the door and the wall, and moments later, Angel heard a little click and the door itself swung open.

“Thanks,” Angel said to the darkness, taking a few steps inside and glancing around. It looked, at first, like a normal room: it was classy, and there was a lot of red and black and wood, and all of that was something he would expect from Alastor. It was what lay beyond the room that gave him pause. Of all the things he had expected to see, an entire bayou was not one of them, especially not one complete with the sounds and smells and humid feeling that came with it. Angel jumped slightly when the shadow closed the door behind him, but the thing didn’t re-emerge, so he seemed to be on his own to see if he could locate his wayward, reluctant soulmate.

If Angel listened, he was pretty sure he heard footsteps somewhere in the trees, so he headed in that direction, stopping at the edge of the wooden floor and testing the softness of the ground before he determined whether he could walk on it in heels. It seemed mostly solid, and he was light as hell, so he gingerly stepped into the grass and began following a thinly marked trail that wound its way through the trees and the tall brush. “Alastor,” he called, looking for any sign of the other demon. “Come on, I know you’re in here.”

The third time Angel called Alastor’s name, he heard a soft crack, and a few seconds later, Alastor himself emerged from the trees with a look on his face that… Angel actually didn’t know how to describe it. Surprise? Or maybe something closer to shock? His coat was gone again, his sleeves rolled up, a long switch held between his two gloved hands. He stared at Angel as though he was having to actually comprehend that he was there. “…hello,” Alastor said at length.

“Hey, Smiles,” Angel said, his hands on his hips.

“You are.” Alastor stopped himself. He considered his words. “In my room,” he concluded.

“Your shadow let me in.”

Alastor’s confused radio noises filled the air for a few seconds, echoing eerily in the seemingly endless stretch of wilderness. “…why?”

That wasn’t what Angel had been expecting. He tilted his head. “…because… I asked,” he said finally, wondering if this was some kind of a test.

Alastor opened his mouth. He closed it. He shook his head like an animal for a second, like he was physically clearing his thoughts. “That makes no sense!” he declared. “You were able to find the path. I’m surprised. You seem to have the eye of a tracker.”

“I got eight of ‘em,” he reminded Alastor, taking a couple of steps backwards as the Radio Demon moved past him and began making his way in the direction Angel had come. “What were you doin’, anyway?”

“Harvesting switches!” Alastor said brightly, turning his head dramatically and sharply swinging the reed in his hand. It made a sharp whistling sound as it sliced through the air. “Well, one switch, in any case.”

Angel followed him up onto the platform of wood that made his bedroom floor, watching as he held the switch in both hands and peered down the length of it. “Uh-huh. …why, exactly?”

“Miss Carmine has had quite a mind toward expanding her available weaponry, especially since the comparative success of the last extermination. She wishes to experiment with different materials and conceptualize new items, and to make a long and incredibly tedious overlord meeting story short, this is for her to examine.”

Angel whistled through his teeth. “Angelic steel switches. That’d leave a helluva scar.”

“Wouldn’t want your grandmother to send you to fetch one of those, that’s for certain!” Alastor flexed his hand and the switch disappeared in wisps of smoke-like shadow. “So, little spider, whatever could I do for you that would lead you to breaking into my room while you know I’m here?”

“I didn’t break in,” Angel reminded Alastor, watching him right his shirt sleeves and pull his coat back on. “You let me in.”

Alastor paused in the action of pulling his coat on, raising an eyebrow at Angel. “Is that what we’re calling it?” he asked dryly.

“S’what I’m calling it, I don’t give a shit what you call it.”

“My my.” Alastor chuckled, buttoning his coat. “So bold in your assertions. I can’t tell if you’re foolish, or simply more insane than I had first thought.”

Angel shrugged. “Bit of both. Not the point. I came here to ask you somethin’ and I knew you’d be here. In my defense, I knocked. You didn’t answer.”

“I was busy.” Alastor summoned his microphone and set the stand on the floor, resting both of his hands on it and tilting his head with a wide smile. “Well, then. What, precisely, is it that you want?”

Angel put one fist on his hip, furrowing his brow at the Radio Demon’s tone. “I wanted to ask you if you knew how to dance.”

It was rare to actually see Alastor caught off guard. Angel could have sworn he heard an actual fucking record scratch in the brief burst of radio static, Alastor’s eyes widening a bit. “Do what now?”

“Do you. Know how. To dance?” Angel repeated, eyelids lowered. “Simple yes or no question, Smiles.”

“I…” Alastor regained his footing, but he seemed less aggressive and more on guard. “I suppose it depends on what kind of dancing you mean. If it’s the type you do for a living, absolutely not.”

Angel laughed at the sudden mental image of Alastor attempting to twerk. “Oh, fuck no. I mean more swing. Y’know, jive, Lindy Hop, Charleston, that kinda thing.”

“Oh.” Alastor’s ears actually perked slightly. “I had no idea you were such a jazz man.”

“Little jazz baby, that’s me,” Angel said, grinning as the reference garnered a laugh. “I’ll take that as a yes. I’ve been goin’ out to this jazz club, Eternal Triangle, and I think it’d be just your speed. They got live music, a dance floor, and I hear their rye’s pretty good.”

Alastor didn’t answer right away, but he made that soft humming noise he did when he was considering someone or something. “You came here to ask me to go out with you,” he said.

“Well… yeah. Rosie said it’d be a good idea for us to spend time together, right? We both like jazz, we both like alcohol, and if you like dancin’, that’s three checkmarks on this club bein’ a pretty sure bet.”

The Radio Demon tilted his head like a silent admission that Angel was right. “I’m not sure you’d like going out with me. You seem to be used to receiving a great deal of attention, and I’m afraid I’m something of a… deterrent.”

Angel remembered what Rosie said—he likes people, but they’re scared of him—and did his best to keep his face straight. “Yeah, so? I could do with an evenin’ where I don’t got horny sinners pawin’ at me the whole time. So do you got any other brilliant reasons why you can’t go out with me, or what?”

Alastor chuckled a little. Both of them knew that if he didn’t want to go, he would just say that instead of messing around with excuses. That meant Alastor did want to go, and that Angel knew he wanted to, and that Alastor knew that he knew.

“Very well,” Alastor said. “But I can’t promise you’ll have a good time.”

“Good times are my specialty.”

“And I don’t care that you’re taller. You aren’t leading.”

Angel snorted. “Babycakes, I never lead.” Alastor laughed, and Angel left the room, pleased to note that the Radio Demon followed him.

Angel had dressed in preparation for not taking no for an answer, and Alastor never wore anything different if he could help it, so there were no detours that let Alastor change his mind as they headed for the front door. There was, however, a momentary obstacle. “Angel?” Charlie called, quickly approaching as she saw that he was intending to leave. “Where are you going? It’s late.”

Angel sighed at the reminder of her curfew, the one he had only barely managed to get her to lighten up on because of his job. “Relax, toots, I’m not goin’ to wreak havoc. Just gonna go to a club for a couple’a hours, no big deal. I promise I won’t get in a lick of trouble.”

Charlie frowned in that deeply concerned way she had. “Angel, it… it isn’t that I don’t trust your judgment, but the last time you assured me you wouldn’t get into trouble, you, Cherri, and Husk nearly started a turf war with the entire home decor industry, and yes, it was kind of funny but it was also really inconvenient.”

“Don’t worry your little head about Angel Dust, Miss Charlie,” Alastor said, startling Charlie (who clearly hadn’t registered his presence) as he swept up next to Angel and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I will be with him and, as the hotelier, I will play chaperone and ensure he doesn’t get any of his many, many fingers into anything he shouldn’t.”

“…you’re… going out together?” Charlie asked, realization giving way to shock, which bled to mild horror, which then began to turn to an unreasonable level of excitement. “Oh! Okay, sure, that’s fine then! I guess giving you a bit of leeway on curfew would be alright. Have a good time!”

“Oh, I’m gonna make him have a good time if it kills him again,” Angel said with a smirk.

Alastor rolled his eyes dramatically. “The indignities I put up with in this place,” he sighed, as he and Angel headed for the door again. They weren’t even all the way through it when they heard Charlie running off, hissing Vaggie’s name repeatedly.

Angel waited until they were halfway down the drive before he spoke again. “The fuck was that about?”

“Oh, you know Miss Charlie and her bonding exercises,” Alastor said, spreading his hands. “She and I have had many a conversation that involved my social life and her concern that I don’t get out enough. I’m sure she is simply thrilled to know that I am out committing an activity with a member of the hotel.”

Angel grinned. “Hey, look at that, I’m also doin’ you a favor.”

Alastor squinted at him. “How, precisely, do you figure that?”

“You goin’ out, havin’ a normal time, not comin’ back covered in other people’s blood? She’ll be off your back for at least a week.”

“Hm. Hadn’t thought of that,” Alastor admitted. “I suppose this means I will owe you, then?”

“Nah.” Angel hesitated. “…well. Provided we can still stand each other by the end of the night, how’s about you come up with whatever we do next time we hang out?”

“Optimistic of you.”

“Hey, buddy, you want this bond broken, we’re gonna have to put up with each other. Might as well have a good time while we’re going it.”

“Point taken, I suppose.”

They walked—“Fuck no Smiles we ain’t shadow teleportin’ to a place you never been” “You’re no fun”—from the rather isolated path to the hotel all the way into the city, which was just as active as any other time of day. Immediately, Angel noticed a difference when he was walking with Alastor; in Cannibal Town, he fit in like one of the normal citizens, but it seemed that in the rest of Pentagram City he might as well have been a repellant magnet to the other sinners. People who either saw or sensed him coming quickly crossed the street, or dove into open shops or alleys, or (in one case) jumped into a dumpster and pitched out an imp that was already inside. In some ways, Angel had to admit it was kind of nice. He wasn’t used to being able to walk around without getting catcalled or propositioned, but when he was with Alastor, it seemed people didn’t dare even acknowledge him. Of course, beyond the sheer novelty of it, Angel could see it was a little… annoying. Alastor wasn’t doing anything except walking down the street, minding his own goddamn business. He wasn’t even talking to anybody except Angel. What kind of overreaction did they really think his mere presence warranted?

Yeah. Angel could see how this could really hurt even the most hardened of hearts, especially if you had to put up with it for nearly a century.

Whatever sympathy Angel felt was overpowered by a sense of pettiness and spite, and as a ‘fuck you’ to all the cowards they saw, he doubled down on his efforts to keep a conversation going. Strangely, Alastor seemed happy to listen to him talk, so Angel obliged him; he told Alastor about the time he’d seen a guy get a vending machine dropped on him at this corner and the time he’d bitten a rude john’s dick clean off in that alleyway, never giving enough sex details to make Alastor uncomfortable but giving him enough so he could appreciate the full experience… and appreciate it he did. Angel was pretty sure he wasn’t the kind of company Alastor regularly kept, which meant the sorts of stories he had to tell were new and interesting to someone so… well… naive in some ways, he supposed was the word.

The club was about as busy as Angel was expecting, but just the sight of him was always enough to get him past the line, and with Alastor at his side they were let through the front doors immediately. Angel didn’t even have to seek an employee this time, because apparently the bouncer had warned the staff in the three seconds it took them to enter the main part of the building. They were greeted by a terrified succubus in a yellow fringe flapper dress, and she immediately escorted them to a small table close enough to the dance floor to watch (and participate when they chose), but far enough back that the band wasn’t completely drowning out conversation. In a matter of minutes, Alastor had a glass of rye (neat, no surprise there) and Angel had a martini (he’d told her ‘give me something pink’ and damn, she had delivered, it looked like the inside of a glow stick), and the poor girl retreated to tell her coworkers about her brush with death.

“Damn, they don’t fuck around with service when you’re here,” Angel observed. “I should get you to come out with me more often.”

Alastor picked up his rye, examining it closely. “I suppose I’ll take terrified kowtowing over simply having to wait forever.”

Angel shrugged. “Eh. If I leave her and the bar a big enough tip, all will be forgiven.”

Alastor looked up. “You don’t have to pay.”

“It was my idea.” Angel smirked, resting his elbows on the table. “Come on, Smiles, you didn’t think I was askin’ you to take me out on a date, didja?”

Immediately, Alastor looked alarmed. “This is not a date?” It was half a statement and half a panicked question, and Angel couldn’t help laughing. “I fail to see what is so amusing.”

“Calm your tits, Al,” Angel cackled. “It ain’t a date, but it was my idea. That means I pay for it. I dunno what’s goin’ on in that radio-fuzz head of yours, but just ‘cause my fluff looks like tits in the right outfit don’t mean you gotta be the manly man when we go out.”

“I didn’t—” Alastor stopped himself with a mildly irritated sound. “This is far from my area of expertise. I didn’t know what was expected back in the 20s, I certainly don’t know what’s expected today.”

Angel spread his hands a little. “How ‘bout this. While we’re doin’ this whole… complete our bond thingy, we’re gonna be hanging out a lot. And you know we gotta, which means you ain’t got any choice but to actively participate. So… if an activity costs money, whoever’s idea it was pays. Fair enough?”

Alastor nodded after a moment. “Fair enough.” Finally, he took a sip of his rye. “…that is…” He frowned in thought. “…actually not terrible.”

Angel snickered. “High praise from the liquid snob.”

Alastor gave a short, surprised laugh. “What did you just call me?”

“Apparently you ain’t just a snob about coffee.” Just like at Rosie’s, Alastor made that same giggle. “What the fuck’s so funny?”

“It’s the way you say that word,” Alastor said, his grin larger than before.

“What word?” Angel frowned. “…coffee?”

“Eheheh. Yes. You say it like a yankee.”

Angel stared at him. “I am from Brooklyn,” he said firmly, his accent getting stronger because he was now thinking about it, which just made Alastor laugh again. “Ain’t my fault the rest of the country don’t know how to say it.”

Alastor raised his whiskey again. “What, coffee?”

“Yeah, cohfey,” Angel said, drawing out the word and overemphasizing Alastor’s transatlantic pronunciation. The Radio Demon snickered as he took another sip of rye. “Laugh it up, radio boy, you’d be singin’ a different tune if I made coffee for you.”

“Would I?”

“Dare anyone in Hell to make it better than I do.” Angel raised his martini and sipped it. He paused. He sipped it again. “…what the fuck…”

“Something the matter?” Alastor asked idly.

“I ain’t got no fuckin’ clue what flavor this is,” Angel said, mildly mystified. He took another sip that didn’t clear anything up. “It’s kinda like passion fruit or… dragon fruit… here. You taste it,” he said, holding it out to Alastor.

The Radio Demon actually physically leaned back as he stared at the toxically hot pink liquid. “Must I?”

“Yeah. It’s a requirement,” Angel said seriously. “Because otherwise I will annoy you all evening tryin’ to figure it out myself.”

“Oh… very well.” Instead of just threatening to leave (which was honestly what Angel expected), Alastor gingerly took the glass from him, his claws clicking against the delicate crystal as he avoided touching Angel’s hand. He stared at it with open suspicion before he took a very delicate sip of it. Angel pressed his mouth against his knuckles so he didn’t start laughing at the sight of him drinking something so downright colorful. Alastor set the glass down on the table and closed his eyes, his smile still in place even with his lips together. Finally, he said, “Star fruit and five spice. Elderflower liqueur. A touch of honey.”

Angel stared at him. “…that… is fuckin’ amazing,” he breathed, awed.

Alastor’s smile had an unusual quality to it as he pushed the glass back towards Angel. It was almost like he’d struck a chord with his choice of compliment, because if he didn’t know better, he would have said Alastor was a little embarrassed. “No matter what judgments Rosie may level about my palate, I know my way around flavor profiles.”

“Clearly,��� Angel said, still impressed as he took his drink back. “So why’s it so fuckin’ pink?”

“It enjoys the drama, I suppose.”

They drank and talked until a Cab Calloway song drew Alastor’s attention, and he got to his feet, holding his hand out to Angel. “I believe you enticed me here in the first place with the promise of dancing?”

“Fuck yeah I did,” Angel grinned, taking the offer and letting Alastor pull him out into the dance floor. If anyone noticed them or paid them any mind, Angel neither noticed nor cared. He was immediately enthralled both by the fact that Alastor’s five foot rule clearly didn’t exist while he was dancing, and that… well…

Alastor was good.

Angel had done a lot of dancing, both in life and in Hell. It was a great pleasure of his, and something he had always been exceptionally skilled at, which was the main reason he had agreed to make it half of his career with Val. It was always hard to find a dance partner who could keep up with him in both technique and in stamina, and Alastor was showing no problem in either department. The moment he saw exactly how comfortable Angel was with being thrown around, he didn’t hesitate, and the lifts and spins and wild but controlled movements between them quickly morphed into something that, to the outside observer, the two of them had been doing together for years. Alastor wasn’t even thrown off by Angel’s extra hands and arms, instead using them to help Angel achieve a deeper Titanic lean, a more dramatic cradle swap, a higher kick in their back to back. Alastor even had the dexterity and strength to flip Angel around the world three times in succession, which would have been impressive even if Angel wasn’t more than a foot taller than him in his heels.

They had almost the entire center of the dance floor to themselves as Alastor spun Angel around, flipped him upwards so Angel was basically planking on one of his shoulders, and spun a full circle on the ball of his foot before he swung Angel back down. Instead of hitting the ground, Angel found himself tucked against Alastor’s side, one leg in the air and the other curled, his entire body dipped downward towards the floor, one of Alastor’s arms around his waist and his other hand cradling Angel’s head. “That move is called the angel, you know,” Alastor said with a smile that was almost sly.

Angel blinked twice, his own arms firmly around Alastor’s neck. “You’re good,” he said, lacking anything else to say.

“Thank you, sha. So are you.” Angel only realized the song had ended as Alastor lifted him enough to set him on his feet.

They alternated between drinking and talking at their table, and dancing whenever a song caught Alastor’s interest, until Angel realized he couldn’t actually sit up straight and was laughing at everything Alastor was saying, even when it wasn’t funny. He looked up from where he was lying his torso on the table, one hand pushed back into his hair, and saw Alastor watching him with an amused grin and a black cigarette held between his fingers.

Angel held a free hand up and said, quite elegantly, “Gimme.”

“I’m not sure you’d like it,” Alastor said, and not for the first time, Angel found himself wondering what the hell accent it was he was detecting under Alastor’s affectation.

Angel made grabby fingers at him. “I’ve smoked shit you ain’t never heard of. To reiterate, gimme.”

Alastor shrugged and withdrew a box, offering him a black cigarette. Angel pushed himself up enough to place it between his lips, and Alastor lit it for him. Angel sat back, took a cautious drag, and coughed almost immediately. “Fuck…!”

Alastor cackled. “Told you so.”

“You didn’t say how strong it was!” Angel said, trying for indignant but way too drunk to do anything but giggle. He took another drag, and this time, it went down a lot easier. “Shoulda figured you smoked clove cigarettes,” he said once he processed the flavor.

“Why’s that?” Alastor asked as he ashed into one of his empty rye glasses, and despite the alcohol haze, Angel had the very, very firm impression that there was an incredibly wrong answer to that question.

Hope it ain’t the one I’m about to give.

“You smell like clove sometimes,” Angel said. “And I mean, when there ain’t… y’know… kitchen clove smell. No clove smell in the… nobody was cookin’ with clove,” he said finally, watching Alastor’s grin turn more relaxed. “And I just figured… huh, s’weird, the Radio Demon smells… clove…y.”

“Cloven,” Alastor provided, and Angel buried his head in his arms, giggling uncontrollably. He only started calming down when he felt a hand on his shoulder. “C’mon, sha,” Alastor said with a faint slur to his own words. “Miss Charlie will be beside herself if you get home too late, and I think you’re a little…”

“Drunk!” Angel chirped.

“Yeah. Drunk,” Alastor agreed with a laugh.

“You.” Angel pointed at him with the fingers holding the cigarette, then raised his head enough to peer at him. “Are also.”

“Also what?”

“That. Drunk. You are.”

“Psssh.” Alastor waved him off, screwing his eyes shut for a moment. “No no no. No. Impossible.”

“Most very possible.”

“Can’t be. Never am.” Alastor took another drag of his own cigarette. “But… maybe the walk home…tel… is a good idea,” he admitted, starting to giggle himself.

“Hometel?” Angel snorted.

“Hazbined Hometel,” Alastor said with what passed for a straight face for him, though his grin cracked when Angel laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of it. “Come on. Outside. I can’t believe you’re makin’ me be the responsible one,” he added in a mutter.

Angel threw down what was definitely way more money than was necessary, but he couldn’t be bothered to count it, and the terrified waitstaff definitely deserved it after being traumatized by both Angel and Alastor being… whatever they were currently being. They left the club, Angel leaning on Alastor’s shoulder more than once as they encountered stairs, and it only distantly occurred to Angel that people had given them a wide berth to leave and were staring as they left.

For a while, the walk back was quiet, both of them finishing their cigarettes and allowing the bizarrely chilly night air of Hell’s current cold snap to drive some sobriety into them. “What do you think they’ll say?” Alastor asked when they had been walking in silence for about ten minutes.

“Who?” Angel asked.

“Why, the gossip rags, of course.” Alastor looked up towards the sky. “You and I are both remarkably well-known, and not just in this ring. I would be astonished if there weren’t rumors circulating after tonight.”

“Oh yeah…” Angel trailed off, then giggled to himself. “Ah, fuck, Val’s gonna be mad…!” That got Alastor laughing again. Angel shook his giggles off with a couple of deep breaths. “They’ll probably say all kinds of things. But hey, with your reputation, I doubt anything’ll stick.”

“And yours,” Alastor reminded him.

Angel nodded. “Yeah. Fair. And mine.”

The hotel was quiet when they entered, and they both stopped at the base of the stairs; Angel’s room was up, and Alastor’s was not, which meant they had arrived at their splitting point.

“So, Smiles,” Angel began. “How ‘bout it? Did I get you to have a good time?”

“You know… I believe you did,” Alastor said. “Unexpected, but not at all unwelcome.”

Angel grinned. “That means you gotta come up with our next fun whatever.”

“Oh, I have a few ideas.” He hesitated before he took Angel’s hand, and Angel immediately stilled as he wondered where this was going. “Well, I suppose all I can say is… you were right. So thank you, Angel Dust, for such an enjoyable dance.”

When Alastor kissed his knuckles, really nothing more than the smallest brush of flesh, Angel thought he forgot how to breathe.

“Uhm… yeah,” he managed, and that was all he could get out because he couldn’t think of anything else.

Alastor released his hand and nodded to him. “Good night, Angel.”

“…g’night, Alastor.” Angel watched him turn and go before he made his way up the stairs himself, only fumbling a little with opening his door and letting himself in.

He leaned against the door once he closed it, staring at Fat Nuggets, who had just emerged from the blankets at the sound of his daddy coming home. “Hey, Nuggs. Was I just on a date?”

The hellpig snuffled at him.

“Yeah. You’re right. That’s ridiculous.”

So why the fuck can’t I stop smiling?

•••

The email was titled “URGENT: OPEN IMMEDIATELY” and had an attachment that suggested a large number of photographs. With a cappuccino in one hand, Velvette debated between just going to bed—which had been the plan seconds before the damn email chime went off—and caving in to curiosity to see what the fuck could be so urgent at this hour.

After just a few moments, the curiosity won out, and Velvette began downloading the attachments as she downed the rest of her cappuccino with a tired wince. She didn’t get compensated enough for this, and the fact that Valentino never had to work this late was just a poisoned cherry on the bullshit sundae.

I’m gonna give Vox a piece of my mind tomorrow. Or maybe rip off a piece of his ass.

The download finished, and Velvette opened the folder, immediately greeted by a wall of photographs of varying quality. They were in groups that had all been taken in quick succession, and it all showed the interior of some tacky try-hard retro jazz club that she wouldn’t have been caught dead in. But it wasn’t the setting that caught her eye.

It was the artifacting in every image.

The very, very familiar artifacting.

Velvette knew what she was looking at the second she saw it. Alastor, the Radio Demon, was pretty infamous for his inability to be caught on normal cameras. The only problem with that (for him, anyway) was that the artifacting wasn’t consistent, and different aspects of his face were blurred or indiscernible in each shot.

Vox’s obsession with Alastor had tripped over ‘funny’ and driven itself head first into ‘sad’ a long time ago, but it had done one valuable thing: Vox had, himself, developed a special compositing program that could take either a rapid succession of photographs or a series of stills from a video and use them to create a single image with little to no interference. Velvette went to a random sequence of photos, selected them, and ran the program.

Two minutes later, she was looking at a photograph of the Radio Demon and Valentino’s favorite whore in each other’s arms on a dance floor.

“Well, well, well,” Velvette said, crushing the empty cappuccino cup in her hand as her smirk turned vicious. “My poor boys aren’t going to like this at all.”

•••

[acourtofthought]

I received two more anons which I'm adding below the "read more" button just in case anyone wants to avoid HOFAS spoilers (or the spoiler theories going around based off the book).

Seriously, how would that even work? Does he have to cut people in the chest to sever their bond? Ask them to try to find the thread that connects them (you know the one INSIDE of them) and play surgeon to snip, snip, snip? I said it in one of my last posts but the King of Hybern, who had access to the cauldron, was unable to break Feysands bond which Tamlin requested that he do. Which Feyre requested that he do (in order to save her family and friends). Amren confirms that "that sort of bond cannot be broken. The king is a fool, that sort of bond cannot be broken" and he couldn't as he he broke was the bargain. If the main big bad of the original trilogy was unable to harness the kind of power while using the actual Cauldron to mess with mating bonds, then how exactly could Truth Teller? Also, WHY would SJM create this super mysterious backstory for Truth Teller only to have it's super special power be that of breaking bonds? What would the fucking point be? Shall we just call Az the Anti Cupid? The Prythian Divorce Attorney because he's going to go around Prythian helping poor fae trapped in loveless bonds free themselves from it's shackles? This is what is said about TT with translation (not sure how it will read in English): "The Starsword is Made" "The knife can undo things." Done and undone. Matter and antimatter. With the right influx of power, a command from the one destined to wield them, they can be fused. And they can create a place where there is no life and no light. A place that is nothing. Nowhere." It's funny that the knife can "undo things" and they think that gives them carte blanche to have it undo everything, even that which was decided by a divine being. Bonds created by the mother herself? Truth Teller's got you covered! Humans turned Fae, Made by the Cauldron? Don't worry Elain, I'll unmake you in no time! Especially when the entire point of what was being said about the power of TT is that when fused with the sword, it can create "no life and life, a place that is nothing." Considering the conversation was talking about how the Starsword and TT were connected, wouldn't the more logical conclusion be that the as the sword is Made, the knife (it's opposite considering one is matter and the other antimatter) can "unmake" things, maybe objects? Like maybe the Trove which was made? Other weapons made by the Cauldron? Mating bonds are not made by the Cauldron but determined by fate / destiny. There's nothing to "unmake" as they weren't "made" in the first place. Bryce confirms that Az does not have the same shadows as Ruhn (Ruhn who has the same shadows as Rhys). Rhys confirms Az does not have the same shadows that he does. SJM CONFIRMS Az's shadows are not that of Rhysands. Rhys's shadows belong to him, they don't whisper to him or keep him company. The are an extension of him. Azriel tells us his shadows are his companions meaning they are not actually part of him. He says they keep him company, Rhys says Az learned their language. That all means that they are independent of him regardless of them being in sync at times or reacting to Az or whatever else they've done. As of the most recent book, his shadows do certain things with certain people / situations. They aren't very brave in the sunlight, all but one hiding while he steps into the sunshine. They reacted likes snakes ready to strike on two different occasions (one which had nothing to do with Elain). They are afraid of Koschei. They were curious about Gwyn and danced and sang in response to her her song / breath. I'm pretty sure they twirled around when he was interacting with Nesta too. Az confirms that they tend to vanish around Elain. Considering Az considers the shadows his companion, that they keep him company, don't you think he'd enjoy seeing them curious and playful and singing instead of vanishing or afraid of Elain's "light" that even E/riels admit to her having since they love the dark / light aesthetic?

This is such a ridiculous argument they're spreading around. The Cauldron was "messed" with while the Daglan had it in their possession. They took what the mother once used to create all life and used it for evil. To create monsters, to create things that would serve them, to create evil weapons. But the second the Daglan no longer had possession of it, the Cauldron returned to it's normal state which is not good or bad. It just is and the only thing that determines what the Cauldron is is the person wielding it but no one can alter the Cauldrons essence for eternity. After the Daglan ruled, it was used to turn Myriam fae (used for good). Just like the King used to to bring down the wall (bad). Just like Feyre / Amren used it to unleash Amren (that turned out to be a good thing). Mating bonds are not determined by the Cauldron, as proven by Amren they can not be altered by the Cauldron, and if they were, then how did every single other SJM endgame couple with a mating bond end up with a fantastic one despite the Daglan "messing with it" yet ONLY Elucien's bond has fallen victim to the Daglans influence 15,000 years later?

[uwushitsuji]

"do you ship sebaciel?" I dont consider myself a sebaciel shipper. I used to, when I was a teenager, but I dont anymore. Not to mention as I grew older, I became more sensitive to some things involving minors, and explicit content of them makes me really uncomfortable.

For obvious reasons, I dont see them in a romantic/sexual relationship (I dont even think sebastian is even capable of feeling sexual desire nor love the same way we humans do).

However, I adore their whatever-they-have. It's probably my favourite fictional relationship ever. And I think it's that great *precisely* because is not romantic.

You can only truly love someone when you see the other as an equal. Ciel and Sebastian are pretty much the oppositte: it's the unhealthy power imbalance what defines their dynamic.

There's no real love there. They are not lovers, they are not friends, they are not (found) family. They are not (only) master and servant. They are just Ciel and Sebastian. They are nothing, but they're each other's everything.

There's no love there. But there are several layers of codependency, messed up power dynamics, desire, manipulation, addiction, emotional abuse, possessivenes, cruelty and, somehow, some genuine care, admiration and affection for each other.

There's no real love there. But I have never seen two characters share their level of intimacy, devotion and mutual trust.

Their relationship is ugly, loveless, abusive, dirty; but there's some weird, twisted beauty in it. It's as disgusting as fascinating.

For me shipping them is a disservice to the depth of whatever they have. There's nothing romantic between them because there's no love. But the bond they have is even stronger than love itself.

There's no romance, but the desire, intimacy, trust and need for each other is, somehow, way more romantic.

The relationship between them is so complex and unique that I can't ship it, because they don't fit in any ship "category". They're just their own thing. Just Ciel and Sebastian.

[rottenpumpkin13]

Sephiroth brings his little brother Chadley to work!

Sephiroth and Chadley

Let's say Chadley is tasked to gather Sephiroth-related data for a week. Sephiroth uses this as an excuse to have Chadley follow him around for a week so that they can bond.

*Cue the cutest montage you will ever read*

• Chadley in his office while Sephiroth does paperwork. Sephiroth grows bored and looks up how to make a paper airplane. The pair learn how to fold them, then make several that they launch from Sephiroth's office window, laughing as they do so.

• They steal Genesis's prized copy of LOVELESS from his office when he's not there. Genesis knows, of course. He sees them place it on a bookshelf in the lounge, but opts to feign blindness. He's just happy to see Sephiroth smiling.

• Angeal makes sure to take many secret candid pictures of the pair. He now has multiple polaroids of them laughing, messing around, and comfortably leaning against each other.

• They take a day trip down into the sector 0 streets. After learning that Hojo never provided Chadley with toys either, Sephiroth takes Chadley into a toy store. They're particularly interested in the giant, blue airplane in the window. They come out with loads of childish trinkets and the big blue airplane.

• A few turks including Tseng catch Sephiroth pushing Chadley on an office chair at full speed in one of the hallways.

• Chadley visits Sephiroth's apartment for the first time and is fascinated by Sephiroth's variety of textbooks. After almost falling asleep on each other while watching a nature documentary, Sephiroth remembers a contraption he keeps in his hallway closet.

• He pulls out a telescope! Chadley is excited, but mourns how they won't be able to get much use out of it in Midgar.

• But Sephiroth has an idea.

• He's set to go on a solo mission in Mideel and takes Chadley with him. Sephiroth could easily finish the job early, but decides to stall to buy them time. They camp out in the woods and take time exploring, Sephiroth teaches Chadley how to hunt, and they even go fishing! Chadley gets too excited while casting the rod and falls into the waters.

• Sephiroth rushes in to get him out and is surprised when a hand pulls him inside. Chadley has mastered the art of pranking. That was his plan all along, and now the pair are soaked inside the water and laughing.

• They go for a swim as the sun sets. As the skies, darken, they head back to their camp and set up the telescope.

• The pair spend the night observing the galaxy, comets, planets, and even a shooting star.

• Sephiroth recounts seeing a shooting star years ago in Wutai, back when he was Chadley's age and Genesis had explained to him that people typically wished upon shooting stars.

Chadley: That's a fascinating custom to adhere to. May I ask what you wished for?

• Sephiroth looks away with a cryptic smile. Genesis had insisted that wishing on shooting stars were a very real way of having ones wishes granted. Had that younger, naive Sephiroth known Genesis had been correct, he would've wished for a family member long before Wutai.

• The week of data collection comes to an end. Both Sephiroth and Chadley are saddened. They enjoyed seeing each other every day. Chadley promises to make time to visit him every week, but Sephiroth assures him that he'll come to personally retrieve him from the labs on a regular basis.

• Chadley turns to enter the elevator, but then he stops and lingers for a moment longer. Sephiroth is a breath away from asking him if he's alright, when he's hit full force with a hug.

• Sephiroth hugs him back, lifting Chadley off the ground as the two embrace.

Sephiroth: Dare I say you're experiencing an emotional response?

Chadley: I am! Although I'm unsure of what to classify it as. I know it's positive, my body temperature has increased, and I was overcome with a desire to hug you.

Sephiroth: You'll figure it out.

• And the two part.

[trashogram]

Little Octavia slowly realizing her parents can’t stand each other. She starts to feel their hostile energy whenever they’re in the same room together and it upsets her. It’s frightening. She can’t stop hearing their screaming matches echoing down the hall. She tried to stop them once, running in with tears streaming down her face. The crying only made them more vicious toward each other, blaming each other for upsetting her.

Little Octavia becoming meek and docile, leaving behind her innocence just to pacify her parents and keep them from being toxic to each other because it’s scary and makes her tummy hurt. She doesn’t know it but she’s developed an anxiety disorder.

Octavia listening to her mother’s ranting and raving about how awful Stolas is, and they bond through a common enemy whenever he’s not around. Octavia soothes her father as he mourns his own life and bitterly jabs at Stella. Octavia never stops smiling even when it hurts. She’s the victim of parentification and if she isn’t helpful, the guilt and shame will eat at her mercilessly.

Octavia begins to feel exhausted every day despite getting enough sleep. The thought of another day drains her so much that she can barely get out of bed. Her parents show some concern, but are too wrapped up in themselves to be there for her for very long.

Octavia hates the way her parents treat their staff. Everyone is so much smaller than her parents and their friends. Octavia is so much smaller. She starts to feel sick when an imp is tossed aside like trash, or a Hellhound protecting them goes unacknowledged. Why are they so thoughtlessly cruel?

Nothing tastes good anymore. Octavia always feels nauseous, and has for years. She would prefer not to eat, or even drink sometimes. She just wants to stay in her room with the lights off and the curtains drawn. She wants the music to drown out her racing thoughts and the memories that creep up like ivy.

Octavia feels like daggers are piercing through her heart even though Stolas hasn’t said anything, just looks dismayed. She’s tried this grimoire spell several times now and it’s not working. The magic doesn’t flow from her claws like it does for her father. His reassuring smile doesn’t reach his eyes when he tells her that it’s okay.

Octavia fights the tears that threaten to fall as her mother huffs disappointedly when she stumbles through her curtsies and her dances with other Goetia lords and ladies. Stella waves it off and kisses Via’s cheeks later, but her affection is half-hearted and mired in discontent.

Via’s peers give her funny looks when she speaks, because she’s been silent and standing at the edge of the group like a haunting specter all this time. She makes a tiny mistake and the embarrassment is so strong that she can feel panic invading her lungs.

Octavia cries quietly in her room. A thought comes in the midst of her self-loathing — she wouldn’t be so stupid and incompetent if her parents taught her how to do these things instead of expecting her to know it all already.

Octavia cries harder, ashamed of herself.

Her father is caught sleeping with another man and Octavia feels her heart stop. She knows that Stolas and Stella can’t stand each other, but it’s still a shock. The betrayal feels like a physical blow, like Octavia stood shaking with this household on her shoulders all this time and now it’s crashing down. Everything splinters and scatters, glass shatters, and the rot in the walls and hiding underneath the floor starts to reveal itself.

Her parents are divorcing. Her father is happy for the first time since Octavia can remember, and her mother is sulking but still has her machinations. They stomp on the remains of the house she tried so hard to keep together as they go their separate ways.

Octavia feels something deep inside of her break as her father shouts that she is the only reason that Stolas and Stella have remained in a loveless union. She is the reason that they were forced to be together, miserable.

Octavia thinks that if she didn’t exist, none of this would have happened.

She’s numb everyday. Hell keeps burning, but Octavia can’t care. Her parents pick up on the change when she can no longer pretend to agree with them or feed into their delusions. Their confusion, their anger, their concern — it can’t hurt her anymore. She’s dead inside.

Little things get past the murky glass that contains her. She looks at her mother one day and thinks ‘I can’t stand you’. She listens to her father prattle on and thinks ‘you’re not capable of love’.

There’s a date on the calendar that was marked with a promise long ago. Octavia blacks it out before she tears the calendar into pieces that she then sends flying out the window. She only needs the bag in her closet with her whole life inside. It won’t stir any attention when she leaves and never comes back.

[ask4mycashapp]

"i love you, y/n." "i love you too, nahoya."

"i love you, y/n."

nahoya means these words with his entire being.

nahoya loves you more than the world its self. he loves you more than the moon and all her stars. you are nahoyas whole world, his everything.

before you came into his life it was so dull, loveless. but you make him feel things, good things. love, happiness, excitement, glee, carefree, all of the above. nahoya has you to thank for all his joy now.

you saved him from the road of self destruction he was going down. he was picking fights with people five times his size hoping for a thrill, a rush. now that your here you give that to him freely, without a fight.

youre perfect in smileys eyes. your personality, your style, your tastes, your face, your body, all of you, perfection. ethereal, majestic, those words can only begin to describe you.

nahoya used to believe he couldnt be in a long term relationship, nahoya used to believe no one could tolerate him long enough to date him. you proved him wrong, very wrong. youve loved him for 5 years so far, and are going to continue doing so, forever. now youre happily engaged.

you changed him for the better, bringing out the best aspects of him in the process. nahoya "smiley" kawatas smile is more geniune now because of you.

you complete him. you are his life. you are his meaning,

and he is yours.

"i love you too, nahoya"

he gives you confidence. nahoya makes you feel like the prettiest girl in the world. smiley gives you princess treatment.

nahoya makes sure to shower you in compliments, he makes sure you know how much he loves you. nobody loved you as much as he does and youre thankful to him for being the first.

smileys always there for you, no matter what you need. you could need a hypeman, you could need a shoulder to cry on, hell you could need someone to open a jar. no matter what nahoya will always be there.

you always feel like nahoya understands you. it was scary to you at first, since nobodys understood you before, but with him it just feels so right. nahoya always is able to see and understand your feelings.

nahoya always knows how to make you feel better, too. you had to cut off a friend? come on, he'll introduce you to some of his and you can all get icecream. you cant focus on work? dont worry, he made you a playlist to help you concentrate <3.

smileys love for you is unconditional. no matter what you do he will always love you, and vice versa.

you, y/n "n/n" l/n soon to be kawata and nahoya "smiley" kawata are a match made in heaven. soulmates that will be together forever. you both have an emotional connection that can never be severed. your souls are soon to be bonded, your weddings next month <3.

hiii, dont mind me js projecting my dreams and aspirations here.

masterpost

[soubiapologist]

DOES ANYONE ELSE THINK ITS INTERESTING does anyone else think it’s FUCKING interesting that loveless sets up the whole soulmates as biological reality thing, your one and only predestined person who gives you Power, and then turns it into a social construct. in a series about Power and the deconstruction thereof. we are taught that being with your structurally ordained One And Only gives you power and IN UNIVERSE IT ***LITERALLY*** does…. we see other characters comment on how being with someone other than the person you are Predestinated to be with is disgusting and shameful, and it literally lowers your power in universe from what we understand. and this is used to abuse and isolate and manipulate people. we see children making these comments…. and reneging on them when they realize that it doesn’t really matter, because what matters is trying to be a good person. it’s soooo interesting that the soulmates thing is kind of set up as like a Cool Power but the series in general is pretty condemnatory of power structures and power in general. and also we’ve seen characters have this bond severed by ways other than death. hm 💭

[fletchingbrilliant]

To Sever a Loveless Bond Chapter Seven

Catching up so slowly, especially feels sad since this chapter was so short XD''' help i wanna draw so much but time and energy are so hard to come by

Read the fic by @zaebeecee here!

And here's the precious chapters' artwork:

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five pt. 1

Chapter Five pt. 2

Chapter Six

[cliozaur]

This chapter provides a good opportunity to discuss critical thinking. However, considering Marius' upbringing, it's understandable that he had no chance to develop such skills.  

While he did have a small rebellion against his grandfather, it was so subtle that M. Gillenormand remained unaware of it. The only way to sever the faint bond between Marius and his grandfather was to change Marius' political stance. Furthermore, after long years of loveless life, Marius has become obsessed with his deceased father. He passionately loves and idolizes everything about him (which reminds us of someone, doesn't it?). But where is Marius obtaining this information? We now know for sure that his “friends” were imaginary since he "did not know anyone," so no one could instruct or guide him in his pursuits. Therefore, he turns to the library and reads what is available, such as the official revolutionary, and later Napoleonic newspaper Moniteur. He becomes swept up in the propaganda, as "the first effect was to dazzle him." Marius is a self-taught political enthusiast, albeit a rather uncritical one. Additionally, he is driven by strong and novel emotions, which only intensify his fixation. While he may have learned a thing or two that could potentially be useful: “he beheld each of these groups of events [the Revolution and the Empire] and of men summed up in two tremendous facts: the Republic in the sovereignty of civil right restored to the masses, the Empire in the sovereignty of the French idea imposed on Europe; he beheld the grand figure of the people emerge from the Revolution, and the grand figure of France spring forth from the Empire.” But, of course, most of what he read was an impudent propaganda. No wonder he had an urge to shout “Long live the Emperor!” into the darkness of the night.

Hugo himself identifies Marius' biggest mistake as his failure to recognize the problem with using violence to achieve idealistic goals: “Fanaticism for the sword took possession of him, and complicated in his mind his enthusiasm for the idea. He did not perceive that, along with genius, and pell-mell, he was admitting force, that is to say, that he was installing in two compartments of his idolatry, on the one hand that which is divine, on the other that which is brutal. In many respects, he had set about deceiving himself otherwise. He admitted everything.”

Marius is in the process of discovering and exploring new emotions, going beyond mere love to much stronger variations: “on the one hand he admired, while on the other he adored,” he is also experiencing grief which is much stronger than just a grief: “Marius had a continual sob in his heart,” this feeling of loss of something he had never really had.  Poor Marius why should everything be so complicated for him?

Once again, we observe the generation gap between Marius and his grandfather. While M. Gillenormand belongs to the generation of "the first sexual revolution" and constantly thinks about his grandson's love affairs, Marius (like many characters in this novel) shows no interest in his own sexual life, at least not yet.

We finally see Marius interacting with his aunt: “When his aunt scolded him for it, he was very gentle and alleged his studies, his lectures, the examinations, etc., as a pretext.” At least he is not rude with her.

And now he is wasting his time searching for Thénardier!

[vftheflesh]

𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐬𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞𝐬 / CAMILLE HUNTER-CHOI.

𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒔

NAME: camille andrea hunter-choi NICKNAMES: cami or cam, occasionally called mom AGE: fifty-five DOB: april 26th GENDER: cis female PRONOUNS: she & her ETHNICITY: 1/2 african-american 1/2 korean-japanese SEXUALITY: lesbian MBTI: esfj ZODIAC: taurus FORMER OCCUPATION: nonprofit ceo POSITION: leader of the mountain sky hotel commune. HEIGHT: five-foot-eight HAIR: dark and curly TATTOOS: bay leaves alongside her right arm, a "j" on the inside of her left wrist, an oak tree on her back, ravens flying on her left bicep NOTABLE CHARACTERISTICS: from her left shoulder up to her jaw and ear she has mildly severe burn scars that have made it hard to hear out of that ear.

𝒃𝒊𝒐𝒈𝒓𝒂𝒑𝒉𝒚

camille isn't wanted - she knows this from a very young age. the hunters are a loveless family built on the bonds of old money and marriages of convenience. she watches her mother's face wilt with age and feels she is the only person who understands how truly miserable everyone is. she's expected to fall in line slotted easily into the lineup of happy, perfectly rich siblings. she spends her summers in ibiza attended by nannies and cousins and then her other seasons in swedish boarding schools. it is not a happy childhood by any length. it drowns in loneliness and she learns very quickly to rely on herself alone. by the time she hits eighteen she's given up any hope of repairing a relationship with her family. she packs up and takes what's left of her trust fund to travel. she spends a year in thailand, another in brazil and then settles back in the city. she becomes the kind of boots-on-the-ground woman she always wanted to be and distances herself from the memory of a rich girl yearning for love. almost like an accident she falls in love. her marriage, whether out of desperation or sheer delusional hope occurs and for twenty-odd years she is a wife. the weight of it rests on her - the idea that maybe she never wanted to be one in the first place. somehow she ends up back in the same gilded cage of wealth she'd been born in. she escapes through work with her nonprofit and spending summers in guatemala building houses and wondering how she ended up here. the affair is a natural consequence of it all - it's brief only half a year at the end of a dying marriage but every request for a divorce is carefully rebuffed and before she can put her foot down the world ends. then it doesn't seem that important anymore. in the early days her home burns down and her wife is gone and she's left with nothing more than the scars. she makes her way to valdez through sheer tenacity and cares for the community like they were her own children. camilla is a tough, but fair leader. she endeavors to hear out every resident of the mountain sky hotel but rules are rules. the decisions she make - no matter how hard - are made to keep everyone safe.

𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒚

many describe camille as warm and maternal. she attempts to lead mountain sky fairly though takes every failure personally and can be discouraged by her own attempts to do good. she has a natural magnetism to her that makes her open to listening and caring. but her pride is stubborn both her failures and her successes she owes to herself. while she never had children of her own she regards many of the members of mountain sky hotel as family. to her, her duty is a protector and a guide - she has no desire to be an almighty ruler rather to work together to create a community everyone can be happy and safe in. she is sometimes blinded by her own idealism - too focused on trying to do the best for everyone that she can't do well for even one person and often defers making harder decisions to her second and third in command. the responsibility of her position weighs incredibly heavy on her and sometimes it's called into question whether she can handle it. she sees things in a very practical manner only focused on long-term goals which occasionally causes lapse in short term necessities.

[zaebeecee]

To Sever a Loveless Bond

••RadioDust Soulmate AU••

Part 2/?

First chapter | Next chapter

Read on AO3

Chapter Two art by @fletchingbrilliant

•••

Dawn broke dim and distantly cold the following morning, red sunlight weakly filtering through a thick cover of clouds that promised a storm before the end of the day. Angel Dust watched the light slowly creep along his carpet from his bed, stomach down on the mattress and his face half mushed into the blankets that gathered around him in a nest of pink and white fabric that had accumulated from hours of tossing and turning. Angel drew a long breath and let it out in a groan as he closed his eyes, feeling as though his entire body had manifested a massive stress headache from the night before.

He wasn’t used to being awake this early. Despite his best efforts to comply with Charlie’s plan for redemption, some habits were harder to break than others, and that meant Angel was usually awake until four or five in the morning. Because of that, he was lucky if he was out of bed before two in the afternoon, and nobody usually saw him until at least four. But the events of the previous night had sent Angel to bed a few hours before midnight, and the subsequent hours of tossing and turning punctuated with fifteen minutes of sleep here and there had apparently led to Angel seeing the first sunrise he could ever remember seeing in Hell. It was creepier than the sunset, somehow.

Angel turned his face into the blankets and groaned again, begging the darkness to just take him into a second death already. The moment he did, however, he regretted it; he could see dilated pupils in garnet-flecked red eyes, he could hear soft and staticky white noise pitch and whine like someone was turning the knob on a radio to search the channels, and he could smell dead flesh and blood and clove cigarettes.

And above it all, a single word that echoed dull and hollow, tainted by a thick layer of radio filter that distanced the speaker from the listener in every way possible: no.

Cringing, Angel sat up and rubbed at his face until he saw spots behind his closed eyes. He then lowered his hands, blinking colors from his vision and looking down at Fat Nuggets as he burrowed further into the nest Angel had made. “At least someone’s having no trouble sleepin’,” he grumbled, but smiled just a little when his words were punctuated with a tiny grunting snore.

Sleeping wasn’t going to happen. Angel didn’t need to be a genius to figure that out. Leaving his room was out of the question, too, because the last thing he needed was Charlie getting all excited over the idea of him being up ‘bright and early’, or worse, asking him a bunch of questions about why the hell he was awake. Angel imagined the delicate ways she would try to ask, all while Vaggie hovered at her elbow with accusatory and suspicious looks, and decided that staying in his room all day was looking very appealing.

It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that Alastor was out there somewhere. Why would it? People were lucky if they saw the Radio Demon twice in the same week, even living in the same building as him. Angel wasn’t worried about running into him. That would be dumb.

Fat Nuggets blinked sleepily when Angel retrieved him from the blankets, and soon he was snuffling and wiggling with excitement at being faced with a new day all for him. “Come on, baby. Bath time,” Angel said, carrying the little hellpig into the bathroom to give him a good scrubbing.

Even with Angel taking his time to thoroughly pamper his pig, as well as letting Nuggets play with the bubbles in the tub for a while, he realized that the whole ordeal had only eaten up about an hour. Angel dried Fat Nuggets and sent him back into the room to explore, then began preparing a sand bath for himself. He closed off the drain of the tub, dried it thoroughly, and filled the bottom with coarse white sand before finally stripping his clothes off to face the part that he knew was inevitable but had been dreading for hours. Angel folded his clothes, sat on the edge of the tub, and looked down at his knee.

For many years, the mark on his leg had been completely ignorable. It blended well enough into his markings that most people didn’t even realize what it was, and Angel himself only knew because of how well he knew his own body and that these shapes were decidedly not him. But in the very least, it had always been pink, soft, and easy to hide.

That was absolutely no longer the case.

Nothing about the shape had changed, but the color was deeper, angrier, the pink of his striping fading into the reddish color of the burst blood vessels in a new bruise that now dominated the shape of the stag’s head. Angel’s fingers touched the mark and he gasped gently, sensation traveling up his thigh and straight into his pelvis with a sudden sharpness that made him snap his hand back. It wasn’t just supremely sensitive, but it felt slightly raised, almost like a welt, before the color bled back to pink and his usual striping continued.

How the fuck am I gonna hide this from Val?

Angel banished the thought. He couldn’t do a damn thing about it now, and it was his day off, and he had too many things to worry about without also panicking over how his boss would respond to the knowledge that Angel knew who his soulmate was. Instead, he focused on his bath, sinking into the sand in the tub and scrubbing it through his fur to remove the strange feeling that being awake in an unpleasant way all night had given him. The scratchy sensation of the sand against his skin felt good, though he had to be very careful with his leg because he was pretty sure the sand against his raised mark would feel like utter garbage.

He took his time, relaxing as much as he could and half hoping he would doze off in the warm sand, but he had no such luck. Finally, he got out of the tub and grabbed his brush, slowly and carefully cleaning all traces of sand from his fur before he cleaned up and went back to his room to get dressed. All of that, and he’d only killed another hour and a half.

This was going to be a very, very long day.

Angel didn’t remember the last time he had sequestered himself in his room because he actually wanted to, and it was difficult to find things to do with himself. In order to avoid the temptation to just doom scroll all day, Angel rearranged his entire wardrobe, then his vanity, then got his supplies and gave every one of his sex toys a more thorough cleaning than he usually did. He tossed a couple of them that were getting too worn, ordered some replacements, reorganized them in the closet, then reorganized his bondage and had to reorganize the toys again because with the bondage in a different configuration everything looked weird.

Throughout his tasks, Charlie came by four times in total. The first was to see if he was awake, and each subsequent pass was to check on him, but the final one was weird even by Charlie’s standards.

Angel was oiling down and rubbing out some of his leather shackles when he heard the tentative, rhythmic knock on his door once more. “Hi, Charlie,” he called, a little resigned. “I’m still here.”

“Oh, hi, Angel,” Charlie said. She sounded off. “Just… coming to check on you! Making sure everything is okie-dokie and you… y’know… are fine?”

Angel lowered the leather to his lap and looked at the door, almost expecting to see Charlie through the wood. “I am both okie-dokie and fine,” he said suspiciously. “Is something wrong?”

“What? No! Nooooo,” Charlie said in her most convincing casual voice. “No no no. Nothing is wrong! I’m just seeing how you are… making sure nothing… happened?”

Angel frowned. “Nothin’ happened, sweetheart. I’m fine.”

“Okay, well… if you need anything, I’ll be right downstairs.”

“Noted.”

“Doing some inventory.”

“Good for you.”

“Just hanging out.”

“Charlie!”

“Okay okay I’m going, sorry,” she apologized, and Angel heard her scurry away from the door faster than she usually did.

Angel stared at the door for a few moments longer. “…that was weird,” he said to no one, but Fat Nuggets grunted at him anyway.

Despite Angel’s determination to stay up in his room all day, the one necessity he didn’t have access to was food. It was still evening, but his stomach was grumbling in irritation at him and he knew it would only get worse… plus, he really had run out of things to keep himself occupied. He left his room quietly, and he could hear the clouds had made good on their promise as violent gusts howled at the walls and rattled the windows all through the hotel. Angel shivered a little at the draft and hurried downstairs, heading straight for the kitchen.

He wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved that he didn’t run into anyone. It meant no interrogation, sure, but the fact that he didn’t see anyone also kinda made him feel like he had wasted an entire day off for nothing. The kitchen was empty, but the idea of cooking was supremely unappealing after a restless night combined with the memory of the previous evening. The only premade food in the fridge was Alastor’s jambalaya, and the idea of eating that felt wrong, somehow. In the end, Angel just stood at the open fridge and ate individual sandwich ingredients without bothering to build anything.

The food sat heavily in his stomach but also, somehow, made him feel a lot less like he was going to throw up. The feeling of accomplishment that came from completing a basic task of self-care was fleeting, and Angel left the kitchen in something of a haze, debating between texting Cherri and bugging her into going out and just… going back to his room and trying to actually sleep. He pulled out his phone, caressing the dark screen with the pad of his thumb as he wandered, weighing the pros and cons of both until a decision was made for him.

“Hey. Kid.”

Angel looked up and realized he’d wandered into one of the places he absolutely didn’t want to be: the bar area. Husk wasn’t looking at him, his focus on a drink he had just started prepping, but Angel knew he had the other sinner’s full attention otherwise.

“What?” Angel asked, a little more clipped than his voice usually got. Ever since they had severed the tension between them, Angel considered Husk to be his good friend—maybe even family, like an uncle he didn’t mind seeing on holidays—but that didn’t mean he wanted to put up with his pseudo-fatherly intense concern sage advice bullshit.

If Husk noticed his hesitation, he didn’t show it. His eyes raised to lock on Angel’s, and he nodded at one of the bar stools. “Sit.”

“I don’t feel like it,” Angel said, rather than just refusing or walking away.

“Too damn bad,” Husk answered, unbothered. “I got something I need to talk to you about.”

Angel groaned. There wasn’t anything stopping him from just leaving the bar and going back to his room, he knew that too well. Husk wouldn’t do shit about it, and while Angel would have to deal with this conversation attempt crap again, he could at least postpone it for a day when he didn’t feel like he’d been run over by a car. Instead, he stepped forward and flopped onto the stool, leaning his arms on the bar top and slumping forward so dramatically that he had to look up to see Husk’s face. “The fuck do you want?” he asked without heat.

At first, Husk didn’t answer. Instead, he placed his index finger on the rim of the lowball glass he had been making the drink in and slid it to Angel. It was an almost clear, gently yellow color, and it smelled like lemon. “Here.”

“I don’t got any points for alcohol,” Angel said, not moving to touch it.

“What Vaggie doesn’t know won’t hurt you,” the bartender said evenly. “And I’m guessing you need it. You look like shit warmed over.”

“Thanks, asshole,” Angel grumbled as he picked the glass up and took a sip. He had a brief second to appreciate the flavor—sharp, lightly sweet, bright, definitely lemon—before the alcohol kicked him in the back of the throat and he coughed. “Holy fuck…!”

Usually, any evidence of alcohol throwing Angel off got a laugh out of Husk, but his expression didn’t budge. He just waited for Angel to set the glass down, his hands on the bar top. He looked, if Angel had to guess, like he was trying to figure out what he wanted to say.

“Spit it out, Whiskers, I’m tired and I wanna go to bed,” Angel said as he leaned his cheek on his fist.

The nickname went ignored, and Angel knew then that whatever this was, it had to be serious. “Did you and Alastor get into a fight?”

“What?” Angel sat up. “Why?”

“Just answer the question, kid.”

“No,” Angel said. “It wasn’t a fight, it… it wasn’t… look, it wasn’t anything, now why?”

Husk’s frown was a little darker. “Because he was weird today. And I mean he was weird for Alastor. He asked about you.”

Angel froze. Something in his stomach felt like it was sinking. “…he did? What…” He cleared his throat, and Husk’s ear twitched. “What did he say?”

“Asked if anyone had seen you today,” the bartender said, his voice still steady and unreadable. “Charlie said you hadn’t left your room. He immediately went on some kinda rant about you missing a beautiful day, then said he needed to leave, all of it a single sentence. Don’t think he drew breath once. Then he just left.”

Angel frowned. “…and you think… we got into a fight?”

“Look, kid, I’m struggling to come up with another reason that he would be acting like that.”

Husk wasn’t saying everything he was thinking—Angel knew he never did—but something told him that the cat sinner was asking this out of genuine and actual concern. Maybe it was for Angel himself, but Angel thought it was for Alastor, too. Not that Husk would admit that or that Angel would dare suggest it, of course.

“…we talked for a while yesterday,” Angel said. “He was in the kitchen. I helped him cook. It didn’t end well. That’s all.”

Husk raised an eyebrow. “Something ending poorly with Alastor, in a kitchen, isn’t usually the kind of thing you tack ‘that’s all’ onto.”

“I got all my body parts, chill,” Angel said. “I don’t know if I should… …look, Husk.” As he changed tactic, he heard his own voice grow serious, and he could tell Husk heard it too by the way his ears twitched. “I’m serious. You don’t wanna know.”

Husk drummed his fingertips on the bar top for a second. “I know it’s none of my business,” he said at length. “I just want to make sure you’re okay. And that, whatever it is, it’s not going to come back and cause trouble.”

That was pointed. “Why would it cause trouble?”

“Because you have a tendency to avoid talking about things you need to talk about, and it doesn’t go well.”

Angel winced. “…that’s low.”

“Truth ain’t always harsh, but it ain’t always pretty.”

He couldn’t argue with that. Angel took another sip of his drink, and then a third, letting the sugar and alcohol fortify him. Husk waited with an alarming amount of patience for a sinner who usually couldn’t wait to get to the point. “…you got an activated mark, Husk?”

“An activated mark?” Husk asked, his eyes narrowed in confusion, before they widened a little. “Do you mean a… a soulmate mark?” His expression shifted again, his ears turning outwards and lying back just a little. “Angel. Please fucking tell me you’re completely changing the subject.”

Angel opened his mouth to answer, but no sound came out. So, he closed it again, then shook his head.

“…are you trying to tell me that Alastor… activated your soulmate mark?”

Angel nodded.

“You need skin on skin contact to do that.”

“I know.”

Husk closed his eyes, then turned, grabbing one of his personal bottles of whiskey. He uncorked it and tossed the cork onto the bar top, taking a healthy swig before setting it down with a heavy thud and gesturing for Angel to continue.

“It… I was helpin’ him clean up,” Angel said, hesitating only a little at the false start. “We both lost track of where we were, and then I was kinda in his space, and he didn’t have his staff, so he…” He mimed pushing someone away. “…my shoulder, y’know? Like a reflex. And he wasn’t wearin’ his gloves, so…”

Angel trained off, and the silence settled over them like a thick blanket. “…fuck,” Husk said at length. “And he noticed?”

“Oh, yeah, he noticed,” Angel said with a soft and sarcastic laugh, a burning sensation rising behind his eyes. “He wasn’t happy. He left.”

“Fuck,” Husk repeated, the word still a soft declaration. He took another drink of the whiskey. “You’re not gonna do anything about it, are you?”

Angel stared at him. “What kinda anythin’ could I possibly do?” he asked, incredulous. “Al hates being touched. He’s made his views on any intimacy at all pretty fuckin’ clear. And if he actually did have a type, any type at all, it’s pretty obvious it wouldn’t be someone like me.”

Husk’s expression was complicated and Angel didn’t want to decipher it. “…yeah,” he said, and it didn’t sound like he was talking to Angel. “Good,” he added. Angel went back to his drink. “I just don’t want to see you do something you shouldn’t. Alastor’s made his opinion on soulmates pretty clear to me and Niff.”

“Oh, yeah?” Angel asked. “What, he threaten to eat his if he finds ‘em?”

“Something like that, just… he was way more graphic.” Husk shook his head and looked away. “He’s not a man who likes to deal with distractions. He toys with them and then he gets rid of them.”

“…right.” Angel suddenly had the very visceral feeling that Alastor wasn’t just talking about killing his own soulmate when he told them that. Why would he kill Husk and Niffty’s? Why would he care? …another piece of the puzzle that was the three of them, he supposed. “C’mon, Husk, even my stupid has limits. I ain’t gonna go askin’ the Radio Demon to go steady with me.”

“I know,” Husk said. “Just make sure you don’t start wanting to.”

Angel stared at him. Husk just picked up Angel’s empty glass and turned, starting to clean it. There were so many questions Angel could ask, and he realized… every single one of them had an answer he didn’t want to know. So, instead, he just knocked his knuckles on the bar top a couple of times as acknowledgment and slid off the stool, heading back towards his room.

I don’t want to.

…I don’t, do I?

Angel had no idea. He wasn’t sure he wanted to ever find out. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know why Husk was so positive it would be a problem.

It wasn’t until he was almost asleep, at long last, that Angel realized Husk hadn’t answered him about whether or not he had an activated soul mark. It was a personal question, but somehow, Angel didn’t think that was why he had dodged it.

Angel was pretty sure he dodged it because the answer was yes, and if Alastor knew, whoever it was would be in danger of becoming a member of the radio chorus.

•••

[theweirdspacejellyfish]

alastor x angel dust fic recs

wandering eyes by PoutyBats - 1,606 words and oneshot

whatcha got there? by Mega_purplezebracorn - 2,066 words and 2 chapters, complete

to sever a loveless bond by ZaeBeeCee -99,605 words and 18 chapters, incomplete

What a mess by Mega_purplezebracorn - 3,483 words and oneshot

Proper class and style by orphan_account - 1,338 words oneshot

Radiodust : the soap opera by Umbra_Writes - 1,220 words and oneshot

Punishment by betawhitewolf - 4,190 words and oneshot

Turf wars by SilverFliesInBlueSugar - 455 words and oneshot

Two sick idiots by EverlastingPetals - 5,402 words and oneshot

Bad bait by xBooxBooxBear - 1,671 words and oneshot

Who knew spiders molted? By EverlastingPetals - 2,806 words and oneshot

[im-not-here-im-dead]

perhaps.... flowey and/or undyne?

(very tempted to ask about asgore but)

hi! this is several months late! i apologize!

ask game

anyways, i’ll start with flowey

first impression

not too different from most of the fandom’s impression of him. little more than a weird two-dimensional villain character. i didn’t even realize that he is not a separate person from asriel for a good while. like, come on. there was a whole dramatic twist and everything. it should not have taken me as long as it did. (the fandom didn’t exactly help though -_-)

impression now

he is my favoritest boy in the whole entire world and, in my opinion, the best character in the game (though chara is still my personal favorite). it’s sad to see him get watered down to just “evil flower” and “poor little goat kid”, cause there’s so much more to him. he’s a fantastic character and he means so much to me.

favorite moment

i can’t chose between these:

“…why are you being……so nice to me? I just can’t understand…”

“I’m not ready for this to end. I’m not ready for you to leave. I’m not ready to say goodbye to someone like you again…”

in the true route you don’t have to forgive him, but you can still comfort him

when he talks to “chara” when you try to reset after the true ending, showing that he truly cares about frisk and the others and that he’s grown as a person and that he’s ready to say goodbye to his lost sibling

when he takes care of toriel in the ruins

matching red scarves

idea for a story

sometimes i wonder what would happen if he ended up being the sole surviving dreemurr and the king of the underground… hmm.

on a more lighthearted note, i would really like to see him form a sibling bond with undyne as well as frisk. it would absolutely melt my metaphorical heart. big sister undyne my beloved <3

unpopular opinion

flowey is NOT emotionless! where the heck did people get that idea???

hello???? he is THE MOST emotional character in the game!!

him staying a flower isn’t a bad ending for him. and not being able to feel love doesn’t make him any worse or less of a person. he doesn’t need to be ‘fixed’. he needs support and guidance. the only thing i think could happen if he suddenly returned to his original form is cause him to panic because he’s not ready to let anyone else (especially his parents) know who he is. i don’t think either ending is worse exactly. they both have a lot of potential that often sadly falls by the wayside because of common perceptions of ‘flowey’ and ‘asriel’ that wouldn’t be so pervasive if people had a better understanding of his character. so anyways, yes. it is okay that flowey doesn’t feel love. —signed, a real life loveless person

i think the loss of his soul and him being reincarnated as a golden flower is a metaphor for how his grief/trauma/actions/etc. have changed him as a person rather than him. literally being a different person. others have said it better than me, but, like, the only time he kinda separates himself from his past identity is in the true route, and i think he does it mostly out of shame. he wanted ‘asriel’ to be remembered fondly and put to rest because he can never again be that same sweet, innocent, loving, little boy everyone knew him as. if his parents found out who he was and what he had done, surely they’d be devastated and disgusted with him. if chara was alive to see what a disappointment of a friend and brother he was, surely they would be too. why would they not? he can never redeem himself. he can never be worthy of mercy. (he just can’t understand). so he plays the villain, the sinner, the good-for-nothing, the miserable creature, the one who came back wrong, because he just can’t reconcile himself with the fact that he’s still that same person, just changed and evolved over timelines. frisk has seen who he is. the good, the bad, and the ugly. and yet they still see him as a person, worthy of mercy and a second chance at life, despite everything (it’s still you)

favorite relationship

i’d say the ‘relationship’ between him and the player (aka: me specifically because flowey is already supposed to mirror the protagonist, but he and i have so much in common it’s scary so that makes things really interesting) but i dunno if that counts, so i’ll say his friendship with papyrus.

favorite headcanon

one of my favorite flowey headcanons is that the first soul rebellion in the omega flowey battle was staged. it just adds a whole nother layer to fight.

also the headcanon that he needs glasses. the world needs more pictures of flowey wearing glasses.

now undyneeeeeeee

first impression

i always thought she was cool, though i wasn’t as invested in her character because i was more focused on other characters (papyrus and chara to be exact)

impression now

she is totally awesome and definitely one of the coolest characters in the game, but i’m starting to realize and appreciate more and more that she is not larger than life. she has her own flaws and insecurities that make her complex and real. it took me while for me to get a feel for her character, but this fic series certainly helped a lot. it’s one of my all time favorites and i highly recommend it (heed the warnings though. it gets pretty rough)

favorite moment

ah. this is. another really hard choice.

that moment of cognitive dissonance when frisk gives her water after she collapses from the heat

the scene where frisk visits her house and she slowly begins to realize that she might be wrong about them and lets her guard down and opens up to them

at the end of the undying battle when she’s on the verge of death but still smiling triumphantly

those are just the ones off the top of my head. there’s probably more that i’m forgetting. she’s got a lot of great moments

“Don’t ask me what a grooty is!”

idea for a story

i really want to know her origin story. where did she come from? who were her parents? what was her childhood like? i am putting my hands on her shoulders and i am shaking her like a rag doll. i want to know. everything.

unpopular opinion

she absolutely should have been the fan favorite instead of sans. i don’t know what happened but i am very confused as to how she isn’t way more popular than him. no hate to sans by the way. he’s a great character and he deserves to be popular. undyne is still outrageously underrated and i will never not be mad about her getting overshadowed and watered down by the fandom at large.

favorite relationship

man i dunno. i’m stuck between papyrus, alphys, and asgore (i also think her and toriel’s dynamic has so much underutilized potential).

favorite headcanon

my favorite headcanon about her is that she’s autistic. because she is. so autistic. and you cannot convince me otherwise.

yes thank you i am grateful for any excuse to talk about asgore

first impression

i didn’t really think about him all that much, but it always made me sad when i saw people hating on him or treating him like a joke. i knew he wasn’t the greatest person, but he wasn’t a bad person either. i always liked his design too. very nice and fluffy.

impression now

………this man has been plaguing my adhd-ridden mind for the past year and BY GOLLY has it been a miserable experience for all parties involved. if i’m being completely honest here, out of all of the characters from undertale and deltarune, asgore has had the most emotional impact on me. haha. you’d THINK it’d be chara, or flowey, or… hell, even berdly! BUT NOOOO, KING FLUFFYBOY HAD TO CAUSE ME MORE EMOTIONAL DAMAGE THAN ANY OTHER FICTIONAL CHARACTER BARRING GOD HIMSELF. and, yes, most of that emotional damage was because of that one scene from that one neutral route (which i’m still not sure if i’m ready to talk about directly), but also because of literally everything else. literally everything about this guy makes me want to burst into tears. and part of what makes his story so painful for me is that i relate so many of his struggles. i’ll spare you the details, but i just see SO MUCH of myself in him, and it means so much to me to know that he gets better. pain and suffering aside, i just think he’s a really fascinating character and i care about him a lot.

favorite moment

okay, at first i thought of the moment where he destroys the mercy button (which is still a phenomenal moment) but, then i took a good look at another scene.

in his regular battle, he bows his head, hiding his face in shadow, resolved to kill or be killed, but giving frisk every chance he can think of to ensure that they are not the one who is killed.

but in his lost soul battle, frisk looks him in the eyes and promises him that they won’t hurt him. no matter what. that moment shakes me to my very core.

idea for a story

i really want to explore what would happen if frisk were to absorb his soul and cross the barrier to find a way free monsterkind peacefully.

unpopular opinion

asgore is not a Hawaiian-pattern shirt guy. he is a floral-pattern shirt guy.

favorite relationship

him and chara!! (him and frisk is a very close second) i LIVE for the parallels.

favorite headcanon

i like to think that he became king at a really young age basically right after the war happened and his parents left huge shoes to fill. i mean, his tendency to laud his children as the hope for everyone’s future when they weren’t ready for the responsibility had to have come from somewhere, right?

(i don’t think he was a child king, but i can’t see him having been more than a young adult when he was coronated. old enough that it would have been legal, but young enough that he was still grossly underprepared and largely depended on others for guidance in executive decisions. writing laws and giving orders had never been his forte. his strengths lied more in giving speeches, helping with manual tasks, providing moral support/comfort/encouragement, connecting with his people personally. he was always very good at being part of a community, but he was never an excellent ruler)

okay i’m tired byeeeeee

i really want to explore what would happen if frisk was to absorb his soul and go to the surface in search for a way to unite humans and monsters and break the barrier. i have a whole bunch of ideas for this, but unfortunately i have so many other works in progress that starting on this now will just add to the ever-growing pile

Unpopular opinion

asgore is not a hawaiian pattern shirt guy. he is a floral pattern shirt guy. i said what i said. feel free to unfollow me for this /joking

Favorite relationship

him and chara (him and frisk is a very close second). i live for the parallels

Favorite headcanon

i like to think that he was became king at a young age pretty much right after monsters had been imprisoned underground and his parents left huge shoes to fill. i don’t think he was a child king, but i can’t see him being more than 18 or 19 when it happened. i mean, his habit of lauding his children as the hope for everyone’s future when they weren’t ready for the responsibility couldn’t have come from nowhere, could it?