#too many things in my head ouchy

[ro-bee]

pupigoat beastars au first meeting thing lol part two of this

i made this tags real lol

they talked all day <3

[mermervi]

a little party

✎ It's 1927 and the lights are glittering. You're a budding jazz chanteuse, everyone's sweetheart, and Leon, who's got you in his sights, is out to score what's in his mind.

cw: blood, death, oral (female receiving), uhmm idek what to add cuz my mind is not minding after this (this shii hit hard and it's like 9k) , intricate time-skipping from scene to scene, mayhaps?, not proofread ouchie, MDNI

The rain poured down from the sky like a mighty torrent of rage. That night, the cold that prickled through Leon’s soaked Hart Schaffner jacket, far from dispiriting him, only kept him going. Years of privation, every step he had taken to secure his very existence, had taught him the vernacular of the streets, but on that night, the streets were poised to betray him. 

This story of treachery wasn’t as bitter as life; Leon couldn’t refute that. 

He had witnessed a sequence of crime that perhaps a boy who had come to a city like New York from his rural village, a boy who couldn’t even calculate his steps precisely, should never have seen in those scenes in his ever-lasting life. It was true that these blue pairs of peepers had seen many people perish, but these were the deaths that came in their due time, like his mother’s death before she turned sixty, the Grim Reaper’s visit to his grandfather on a night like that night when the rains were drizzling over the sky. 

Only his father’s martial death could have rivaled the images he had seen that night. That may be it, he thought. After all, he had never had the chance to see his father choke on his own tainted and alcohol-laden blood in his frail, final moments. 

Back to that night, the man Leon saw in the car had a very different kind of dread. His eyes were huge sockets, and a bloody streak was running down his throat on his skin, visible through the placket of his dress shirt. 

That was the kind of sight that makes one’s heart sing. Otherwise, it must have been an appalling sight that made men and women wince and cower. Leon should have felt the former for himself. 

How could he have known the little trick that fate would be about to play? 

On that September night, on a corner, he saw a wounded man trapped inside a maroon Cadillac. On the man’s face, there was a sliver of hope mixed with absolute despair, just the kind of “too proud to ask for help but in need of salvation.” 

A faint spark flared inside Leon. 

He could recall his departed father’s words, that such men like those in those costly cars were indeed evils for no good deed. 

His past had to be repudiated. 

His father was perhaps cursing him that night—no, the old man was absolutely putting the whammy on young Leon. What a hell of a father. It was always the hardest thing for a boy like Leon to placate that lousy man. Even after his death it was all the more impossible to appease him. A ruffian of a man, Leon thought. 

He thought too much on that rainy Friday night. 

Out of pure, undiluted impulse, he acted without a plan at all to save the man; he only thought of taking one more step in that ill-lit road. When he set his eyes on that street, he walked with a foolish spunk, heedless of the gun barrel of the mobster shrouded in shadows. He neither thought about the future nor retreated. “If you bail someone out, someday you will be bailed out too,” he thought with childlike simplicity. 

He was cold and unsure. Somehow or other, he had slid out of the dusk and appeared behind the black-clad mafioso, who was pointing his revolver at the driver’s window and was about to blast the man inside with the hollow point of a bullet. 

The plot was grim. A gruesome story. For hours Leon washed his hands with scalding soapy water to rinse off the scum of the filthy man’s blood, or that’s how he remembers the aftermath of the chain of events. 

He had grabbed the man by the cord and bashed his head against the drywall, searing sounds that he could still recall in the innermost recesses of his ear, the gold inlaid revolver in his hand clattering to the pavement, airy-fairy. The wrangling of the man, his fedora plunged into the muddy rainwater pit on the tiled road. Leon would always remember the first murder, the one that lodged deep in the very core of his psyche. 

Beyond recall, Leon thrashed the man’s skull from wall to wall until he was sure he was in a stupor, and when the man finally slumped—coup de grace. Leon wailed out the air he had been consciously holding all those long, long minutes. Mouth hanging open, dulled eyes, and the pile of a corpse littering the floor at his feet. The lack of sleep from hours of working in the packing department of the Berwick shoe factory, some man’s brains imploding in the wall... Everything had drained the daylight out of Leon on that cursed night. 

When he met the gaze of the terror-struck man in the car, he met something much newer. 

He met himself. 

Or rather, his new “self.”. 

An absolute criminal.

He wasn’t shaking, nor did he feel like he might be sick. What was most pathetic was that he appeared to resemble his dead father in the wretched auspices reflected in the window of that maroon Cadillac. 

After that night, life kept rolling along. Days, weeks, and months. Ironically, Leon was no longer just another schmo slugging it out in the textile mills. Nobody batted an eye at the kid’s line of work with all that greenbacks stuffed in his pockets. The word on the street? He’s just a flash in the pan, a real fly-by-night type. But here’s the thing: an American, with blonde hair and baby blues, is always the cat’s meow, especially if he’s sporting a sharp suit with a label on it. Anything that doesn’t fit the mold? Forget it. No exceptions to the rule. And isn’t that the ultimate American dream? Gents with pockets full of dough, running the show. 

How your story comes along with this creepy-crawly backstory, with so many powerful men signing off on it, is pure happenstance. A story straight from the pen of God, really, to put it in a nutshell. 

It all starts on a Saturday night in March of 1927. 

Tin Pan Alley is kicking up its heels tonight, the joint hopping with the wildest kind of racket. The place is packed with middle-class folks from all corners of the city—newly minted millionaires who’ve made their pile and are now living it up. These cats have been rolling in dough so long they’ve got the smarts to throw it around like it’s sugar-coated. The air’s thick. Lap of luxury, and the whole scene is a real shindig, full of high-living gents and dames who’ve learned to spend big, laugh loud, and flash those fat pockets like it’s nobody’s business. 

“Get a wiggle on, gals! C’mon now.” 

From backstage, the sound of booming voices cuts through the air, unmistakably Ada Wong herself—barking orders and giving the girls an earful as she whips them into shape for the show. She’s a stunner with grit, the kind of woman you can’t help but notice. No one else is ever going to take her seat; this joint is hers, and everyone knows it. Ada doesn’t just run the joint—she owns it. She’s got her pretty fingers on the pulse of the city’s most daring and avant-garde talent, working with the best, the boldest, and the brightest minds the world has to offer. If she’s not at the top of the heap, she’s surely standing on it. 

What’s a woman like that to do with a gal like you? Well, there’s a rather simple answer to that. 

Pretty young things always find their way to the top. And that’s before we even get to ones with voices that could melt hearts, like yours. 

Ada’s the Queen of the downtown club scene, and you’re her darling young, white-hot vessel of treasure trove. Pretty girls always get their moment, but pretty girls with a lilting voice garner more than their share of attention. All in all, Wong knows what she’s doing, and you’re her ace in the hole. 

Yet there are some rules. Ada’s rules. Simple ones, really. “Slip into your Jeanne Lanvin, dazzle ‘em with that red lipstick, and keep your chin up—don’t fidget, don’t even think about mussing up that perfect coif.” 

And on the stage, do keep that smile for the crowd until you get the microphone—because after all, the crowd is here to see your legs, not to hear your troubles. They pay in bills; you deliver the thrills. 

Hot minutes before the show, you stare at your reflection in the mirror like you’ve never seen your face before. The same old script in the mind, the same fake smile stretched on your lips—too tight over a thousand unspoken thoughts. The eyes in the glass, observing you with a kind of critical hunger, just waiting for a slip. They can’t perceive the enmity in your head—the one that never takes a break, no matter how many gin rickeys you slug down. The booze? It doesn’t wash away the ache. The pills? Only another temporary fix to soothe the ache that burns brighter when the spotlight fades. 

Why are you miserable when the dough’s rolling in and the world’s at your feet? Why turn your back on the luxury that others would kill for? But hell, you don’t need an answer. 

You’re an oddity, a riddle wrapped in velvet and lace, sipped from a silver cup. The men and women, they all like you. The faces in the crowd—each of them gazing up at you with athirst eyes—are only loyal to you when the lights are on and the music’s blaring. Afterward, though, you’re just another pretty girl in a smoky room, holding your breath until they let you vanish again. 

Post-performance, Chris Redfield is the name that shields you from scrutiny (he quite literally interposes his humongous body between you and the admirers); he’ll pluck you out of the melee, hustle you into a quiet space, and shelter you from anything. 

Then you’ll sit in the corner, maybe sip a seltzer, and go over your numbers, rehearsing the songs they want to hear and shimmy your tush that they’re going to throw dollars at. All in those godforsaken high heels! It’s a devil’s game, this life of glitter and stage lights. But the lights burn so bright, you almost forget the shadows hounding you from behind. 

All this suffering, your illusions, the never-ending fervent hopes of that girl who had to run in those heels were perfectly channeled, and you were born. For years you have breathed in and out for a single purpose, in an intricate cycle called life, a circle of a powdery pink existence that is anything but powdery pink. 

It’s all diamonds. Dirty, big diamonds. 

“Miss, are you all set?” Chris’ voice slips into the air, stripped of any graspable pathos like a bad rumor. Those mother-of-pearl drop earrings—they’re starting to feel like anchors around your neck. 

“Sure thing, Chris,” you enunciate animatedly before getting up from your vanity chair. “Let’s take a stroll, huh? Like we own the place.” 

He does laugh, though rather silly. He’s a straight shooter, the kind who lives by the book. 

After a lackluster walk, you arrive upstage. The joint is packed to the rafters, the air thick with the perfume of incense, lavender, and a dash of orange, like a high-society boudoir on a Saturday night. Piers, who performed a little verse before you, is preparing to leave the stage to thunderous ovations. Naturally, he can’t scram from the joint until he’s put in the grunt work he’s got to handle. 

“Ladies and gents, hold onto your hats—here’s the name you’ve all been dying to hear!” Piers’ voice crackles through the microphone, sending a whitecap through the crowd like a match setting fire to velvet. He does wonders with the microphone, alright. 

One, two, three—out with it. You exhale that pent-up storm, and just like that, the stage belongs to you. 

Time’s up. You take that breath, the one you’ve been holding like a secret you can’t quite tell, and you step into the spotlight. 

You’re in. And the stage is yours—a damn showstopper of a stage, mind you. 

Your heels hit the floor with that familiar rhythm, each step measured, a saint’s grace—if a saint knew how to twirl in silk and steal the show. The crowd’s already on their feet, clapping, whooping, and hollering. The smile on your face is blindingly luminescent, even more dazzling than diamonds. God, you’re fake, but hands up, darling. You’re the queen of this palace. 

The air’s electric as you wave, your people calling your name like it’s the sweetest song they’ve ever heard. Your chest swells, a perfect mix of pride and thrill, the crowd hanging on your every move like moths to the flame. 

But then—just as the frenzy peaks—a set of eyes catches yours from somewhere in the haze. 

Something in that gaze. Something different. A new note in the symphony, sharp and clear. 

With all due respect, you know the dandies—the regulars who’ve been greasing their palms to get front-row seats for years. Those high-browed, underdressed gargoyles—each one plastered in a grotesque mask of makeup that’d make a saint blanch. And then there are the ones who are really in love with your voice, the ones who drop their dimes and bills just to hear you sing, all the way down to the final breath of your last note. Their eyes glisten like they’re listening not just to you, but to the very last song on earth. 

But then there’s him—the stranger in the crowd. He doesn’t quite fit into either of those camps. He stands apart like a shadow, as though he’s absorbed something from the city itself—electric, muted, with a trace of gunmetal dust in his eyes, something that caught the reflected light of a thousand lost souls. 

He’s not looking at the fellow beside him, not paying the slightest attention to the clamor or the chatter. No, his gaze is all for you. Wait a minute—what’s this? Is that Ada, standing just there by his side, or has your vision gone all soft in the haze of the lights? 

It’s Ada, alright. And she’s got you in her sights, sending you a thousand little daggers with those eyes of hers, as if daring you to keep singing, daring you to hit every note just so. 

Now, it’s not your style to stand around like some dopey schoolgirl, ogling every flapper and every fancy boy who drifts through the scene. No, you’re only a little giddy to see fresh faces, fresh crowds, and—well, a fresh crop of admirers, too. No harm, no foul. End of story, no need to dig any deeper. (Of course, that’s all just a tall tale.) 

But what about Leon? How’s he taking in this blurred picture of yours, with all its strange little twists and turns? 

“What a hot mess up there on that stage.” He mutters tacitly, his very first thoughts about you. 

He’s grinning like a Cheshire cat, finding the whole thing a delightful mess. And he knows—oh, he knows—that he’s right in the crosshairs of Ada’s death stare. Poor guy. He’s probably already picturing her giving him a good talking-to, the sort that’d have a lesser man crawling for cover. 

For now, though, your voice knells over the microphone, a golden oldie, ritzy and true, and the crowd falls into a hush like a room full of smitten children. The spell is cast again, and they’re all yours. 

Ada, meanwhile, gives you a nod—half maternal, half triumphant—as if you’re her very own creation, fretting and fuming along in a delicate harmony with the night. And Leon, well, let’s just say he’s still trying to keep his own amusement under wraps, but the grin’s playing all over his face. 

No doubt about it, you’re the star of the night—who else could it possibly be? The eponymous name everyone’s been whispering in esteem, the one Leon has heard mentioned more than once, all wrapped up in the honeyed sort of praise. 

Up on stage, Leon has you in his illusory blues, as everyone else contemplates you until your encore is at an end. There are certain things that should only be spectated; their splendor should be kept locked away in the heart and in a secret corner of the brain after peeping through the veils of the eyes. That’s you, for him. You’re that kind of beauty—too grand for the world to touch, too perfect to be anything but an ephemeral glimpse. 

“Oh, that chick’s the real deal, alright,” Leon breathes in awe. Turning now to Ada, when your performance comes to a sublime end, he has you up front in the applause, as does your crowd. He’s a part of your crowd now. 

To which Ada retorts with a cognizant luster, “What did I tell you?” she says, the glow of the cinch lighting up her face like the glow of a cigarette’s ember in the dark. “The best ones are always under my namesake.” 

Leon can’t argue with that—not when he’s seen you, not when you’ve got him bewitched, already half-dreaming that you might be some celestial being sent here just to voodoo the cosmos with your tongue. A star fallen from Arcadia, caught in a moment of earthly grace. In such a way that he should render himself a more open target for you. The thought flickers through his mind like a dangerous little inferno: maybe he should make you his. Keep you close, lock you up like the most precious thing he owns, the way he’s always hoarded only the finest nonpareils. Time’s done a number on him, sure—he’s spent enough hours in the smoke-permeated parlors of the city’s high society to become exactly the sort of libertine playboy who rounds up beautiful things. In this modern age, after all, it’s the ones who possess the rarest jewels who leave their names etched into history. 

And legacy—that’s all Leon really wants. To leave a mark. To be remembered. 

Ada gets the wind of that desire in Leon’s eyes the second he lays his zealous eyes on you. She tugs him by the arm and pushes him to a corner that’s secluded from the public eye so that his ear can reach her red-tinctured lips. “Don’t,” she warns, “don’t cross that line in your mind.” 

“Don’t get all worked up, Ada.” Leon’s voice slips out smooth and phlegmatic, like a man who’s seen it all and is hardly moved by it anymore. There’s something visceral about it, something that pulls him into the dark corners of the backstage when a woman like her—striking and full of fire—yanks him close. He has always adored women, sure, but there’s something about the ones who know how to take charge, the ones who’ve got the power to bend him to their will, that makes him stay just a little bit longer. 

Tonight, though, Ada isn’t the one who has his attention. You are. He plays the part of the good boy to Ada, with soft words and wistful smiles, but underneath, there’s a quiet conspiracy to take what she holds dear, her prized girl, namely you. 

This tendency is nothing new for Leon—it’s a trick he’s picked up over time, a survival mechanism he learned in the kind of world where charm and guile are the only things that keep him afloat. 

Ada doesn’t miss it. Her eyes narrow, and her brow furrows, the kind of expression that makes a man’s skin crawl. There’s no mistaking the mistrust there, like ice forming in the atmosphere between them. 

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she says, her voice abiding, almost too calm. “One wrong move, and Wesker’s on your tail.” 

Her words hang heavy in the air, a warning clothed in concern. Beneath her sangfroid, Leon feels a flicker of something deeper, something that he’s too foolish to fully understand—Ada Wong is afraid. In this world, in this neon-lit, soulless place, she fears losing someone she can rely on. Someone she trusts. 

Leon gets it, or at least, he feels the weight of it—but it’s nothing he’ll lose sleep over. He’s too simple, too self-absorbed, too headstrong. A fool, really. 

And that foolishness, that same reckless drive, leads him straight to your door. And standing in the way is Chris, his massive frame blocking the entrance like a standpat mountain. 

Leon’s voice takes on a resigned note. “Fine, fine. I’ll figure it out.” He knows he’ll have to talk his way through. He always does—always puts his life and tears on the line. 

“Come on, pal,” he says with a remiss grin, like he’s telling an old joke. “What’s one little party going to hurt? 

His words sound tired, worn from repetition, but his eyes are sharp, looking for any crack, any weakness in Chris’ solid stance. Leon knows this game well, but Chris? He’s not someone you talk past easily. 

“No entry, I said.” Chris’ voice is edgier and booming. Leon didn’t expect a harsh backlash from such a dim-witted man, even though he’s been grilling him for nearly half an hour. The pedestal, however, is clear: Leon wants to be heard, and he wants to draw your attention. He knows you’re in your room, and he doesn’t compromise since he always wants more. Even if he tickles a chance that he might end up getting beaten up, the risk, you are, is worth it. 

Leon shrugs, ever the picture of nonchalance, though his voice is silky with calculated charm. “It’s just an autograph, my good man. A trifle, really. You wouldn’t deny an admirer of the arts a simple token, would you? It’s hardly the end of the world…” Leon flaunts his mendacious excuses. 

For then, Chris inhales a long, drawn-out gulp of bile. Why is he going through this excruciating ordeal? This loquacious blonde has been clamoring to see you for minutes. Leon’s been at it for minutes now, talking a mile a minute—promising everything, offering bribes, flattering him to no end. And yet, there’s no movement. 

“When I say no, it means no. Get movin’ or I won’t be liable for what happens, young fella.” Chris’ last words are too caustic and are perhaps adequate proof enough to conclude the last point. Only a cheeky mite like Leon doesn’t understand how to leave high and dry. 

“A grave indignity, old sport. I only—” His words are broken off by the crack of the door parting open. The countenance he beholds is the one Leon covets. At the sound of the click of your heels, Chris turns in a dazed sort of way to acknowledge your presence. 

“Ma’am, this fellow here—” 

You interrupt him with a wave of your hand in the breeze. You don’t necessarily need to hear the whole story; you’ve already overheard the whole thing when you were changing your dress. 

“Chris, I and my... admirer will take it from here,” you assure your friend, and you do recognize your newest fan’s face, “You should go home now.” 

That’s how you seal a deal. 

The jazzy, twinkling blue mirrors in Leon’s sockets—reflecting fragments of light like stars caught in a lover’s gaze—seem to applaud you silently. “Look at this dame,” they whisper, “What a thing she’s done, dispatching that thug.” 

Chris’ stupefied gaze flies between you and Leon. Yet the look you give him signals that all is well enough, the quiet reassurance of a woman who knows exactly what she’s doing. Chris bears silent and moves a meter away, and then over a dividing wall. 

“You saved me, my dear.” Leon dashes in without wasting a second of his precious time. However much he can wow you, that’s as good as it gets. 

“Oh, don’t even mention it,” you reply, your voice airy but welded. “And please, do excuse Chris. Mr...?” You quirk your eyebrows and proffer his name, hand raised for a handshake. Leon’s only too happy to comply. 

“Leon. Leon Scott Kennedy.” 

You can’t quite place it, but there’s something vaguely familiar about the name, like a snippet of conversation overheard in a café or a name dropped casually pending a gossip fest. It lingers on the edge of your memory, refusing to settle in the space where it belongs. 

Leon can see the ululation echoing in your eyes, plain and simple: “What is it, doll?” He asks, beryls alight with oceanic larks. “Do you know me? Oh, don’t tell me you’ve heard of me. Everyone knows my name around here, you see.” 

How he can’t stop raving about himself leaves a tangy aftertaste on your tongue for the first impressions. Naturally on your face too. 

You smile, just a little too gaily. “I believe so,” you counter. “But I was more curious about what’s brought a man of such... renown to this particular corner of the world. After all, I’ve never heard of you before tonight, Mr. Kennedy.” 

Your words are relentless, and besides, there’s no harm in reminding this conceited man of his place in your presence. 

“Is that so?” Leon cross-examines. Now it’s time to watch his face shrivel up—figuratively speaking, since his face is too pretty to take a nosedive. 

“That so, gentleman?” You sort of ascribe to his intonation the same acerbic tonality and maybe a pinch of belittlement. It’s more genuine. Now why would you do it like that? Now that you’ve piqued his interest all the more, his already inherent infatuation with you attains a deeper level. Now you’ve got him hooked even tighter. The one that’s not an easy prey is always more desirable, and simple-minded people like Leon, men of a breed under the names of kind gents, take this as a rule of thumb. 

“Honey... That’s called cheating, see? Be straight with me. My name’s the talk of the town.” Leon’s counting on you to accept this absurd truth, his truth. The smile of implied expectation on his lips is a foreshadowing of its force majeure. He’s delivering the punchline of a joke no one’s laughing at yet. 

“Sir... I’m at a loss for words, truly. You’ve come all the way here to face Chris just for my autograph?” You do what you know, and your cockiness builds layer by layer. Watching the ferment on his face, the frowny set of his eyebrows, gives you a special sense of self-assurance. 

“Autograph. Ha!” Leon lets out a crow of laughter, like he’s just remembered something from way back. It’s big, brash, and loud. Passing dancer girls bustle around backstage, giggling at his fit of exuberance. It’s that you are making a toy out of him, and somehow, he can’t extricate himself from the predicament. 

“I forgot, of course,” he says, shifting into a more controlled drawl; he’s trying to smooth out the bumpy ride. He pulls a pen and a small notebook from his coat pocket with an exaggerated flourish. “But you can’t exactly blame me, doll. Your beauty’s done something to my head—messed with my mind, ya know?” 

Oh, he’s smooth, like the tingles left by the fingers tangent to your palm. 

“It seems to be your problem,” you riposte. Pen in hand, you carve your signature on the blank expanse of crisp white paper, and Leon follows the touch of the ink on the sheet of paper, heedless of your jeering remarks. 

“My problems never quite seem to end,” he expounds, not in a protesting way, but with a light touch of amusement tapping on his lips. You only respond with a whispery whicker of a laugh. You do laugh like God, Leon notices, if God is even real. 

That’s when Leon understands why people can be drawn to a simple voice as much as they can. You owe your fame to this elfin-singing voice, the batting of those cartoon eyes. As for your beauty, it must be a double blessing from God. 

Leon delights in deciphering you like a crossword puzzle, worships your littlest moves, the way the flutter of your lashes floats and the way you tuck his pen back into the pocket on his chest, your fingers brushing the fine wool. 

“There you go. I’ve solved the great mystery of where your pen belongs.” You intone with a quip, setting up a bittersweet closure for the end of your conversation. No sooner do you withdraw your hand than Leon neatly guides your wrist and then places your knuckles in the vicinity of his lips, dusting them with brief, aestival kisses. 

“Oh, so chivalry isn’t pushing up daisies after all,” you admire, a playful lilt that could make even the most cynical gangster crack a smile. When your cadenza echoes in his ears, he takes a step or two back and assents with a single nod. A small vignette of a valedictory farewell. 

“It never croaked, doll,” Leon’s exuding poise again. “And as long as I’m around, it never will.” 

Seeing the beatific smile on your face like the marquee outside the Cotton Club, in his defense, is worth being so gooey—it makes him feel just the right kind of foolish. 

“I wish you the grandest of nights,” he wishes you a generous adieu, tipping his hat in a farewell that’s both classy and just a speck visionary. Then, with a hindmost glance, he’s gone, leaving behind the faintest fume of his cologne—woodsy, something big-ticket, and just dangerous enough to match the man himself. 

This parting, though it may feel final, is no more than the ebb and flow of time. 

The morning’s bouquet arrives with violets, their soft, violet faces peeking from beneath a flourish of ribbon, accompanied by a silver card, its edges smooth and gleaming, bearing a name that was spoken only yesterday, inked in a hand that could never be mistaken for anything but deliberate, graceful. 

Leon. 

Each new day brings its own small ceremonial gestures—an exchange of flowers, bellflowers to accompany the violets, perhaps a box of bonbons in the afternoon—each offering bestowed as if to signify the passing of something eternal. You, by virtue of your place, greet them with the appropriate pleasantries. It’s a small thing, perhaps, but it stirs something within you. The feeling lingers. It is like the first breath of spring, though all around you is the stillness of winter. 

The exchange of blooms soon shifts from the morning to the evening, as the days drag on. And one night, when you return home well after the sun has set, weary from a day’s toil, you barely step inside before stumbling over a scattering of furniture, bags, and the daily clutter that seems to overtake your living room. The place is chaos, but your eyes catch the glint of something—an envelope, dark as the night, slipping from beneath the glow of the lamp. 

In the midst of such chaos, the gray Luna card peeks out in the darkness like a square, mini-moon. Leon Scott Kennedy, you see that signature. 

“Is he playing some cruel jest?” You grumble ringingly. Indignation and dismay pump a tumult of emotion into your bloodstream. 

How on earth did this man find my home? 

It’s one thing to trace the address, to acquire it from some list or chance encounter, but to walk right in—to gain such intimate knowledge—who is this Leon Scott Kennedy? 

You don’t know the answer yet, but you will have to. 

In the days that follow, the gifts come still, but their novelty has long worn thin. The flowers, yes, they remain—fragile reminders of something, but the jewelry and the fine clothes? A cheap masquerade, a vulgar form of generosity. They carry no weight, no warmth. You collect them all and send them on their way, delivered into the hands of some worthy cause, as if the giving itself were the only part worth remembering. 

The night presses on, and once again, you sit in the stillness of the dressing room, the buzz of anticipation humming just outside the door. The minutes slip by like forgotten memories, yet the weight of them, that heavy burden, never quite leaves you. Your chin rests in your palm as you study your reflection in the vanity mirror. Makeup perfected, hair arranged with methodical precision—everything is in its place, or so it seems. 

Everything is okay, except for one problem. A burden of distress that has been piling up inside you, which you can’t tell anyone about, and it’s directly stabbing you in the heart. 

Should you even be on that stage tonight? The question lingers in your mind like a ghost, but you can’t answer it. Your thoughts are in a terrible disarray, as though your mind has split itself apart at the seams. Paranoia gnaws at the edges of your sanity, clawing at the fragile thread that holds it all together. How could you possibly perform in this state, to feed the insatiable hunger of the crowd outside? 

But, of course, Ada would have no qualms about writing you out of here in the blink of an eye, and while the money tempts you, the thought of unemployment claws at your gut like a feral thing. Still, this job—the stage, the spotlight, the rhythm of it all—this is what you are in love with. It’s never easy, losing what you love while you’re still so deeply entwined in it, but sometimes that is the price you pay. 

And so it’s settled. You will go. You will step out there, and you will do what you’ve always done. The show must go on, after all. 

It’s only then that matters assume a different ontogeny. Two torpid taps at the door, clouds of heavy thoughts bite the dust. It’s absurd to ask who it could be. Has to be Chris. Take a deep breath and repeat the rituals you know, the ones that are now ingrained in your repertoire. 

Then, there’s a second round of knocks. A fourth, more insistent, more immediate, as though time is a cat on a hot tin roof. It’s not Chris. It can’t be. 

“Salutations, my dear.” 

To see the face that flashes you a foul grin when you open the door here again is the very last alternative scene you’d hoped for. On the spur of the moment, you even attempt to slam the door in his face, but he’s reflexively putting his foot on the threshold, rather faster than you anticipated. 

“Tch! Not so fast, honey,” comes that jaunty cadence again, infected with that same devil-may-care rhythm. 

The man at the door is none other than Leon himself—an unexpected and unwelcome visitor. He stands there, his presence somehow both imposing and unwarranted. 

“I can’t believe you,” you break into hysterical platitudes. The very notion of him—of this—is enough to rift the delicate shell of control you had carefully built around yourself. 

Leon can’t fathom the reason for the knitted brow and is forced to compromise the arrogant mien on his face. The sang in the cerulean blues adequately sums it up. 

“What exactly can’t you believe, ma’am?” 

The dazed stress in his question reveals that he doesn’t even realize the folly of his mistake. What kind of a joke is this? What audacity and idiocy? 

“I don’t buy it, sir.” 

The froth in your breath at odds with the urbane gentleness of your words. Ignoring this, Leon pushes the door open in a single dash, and you’re propelled through the door. He closes it in a blink of an eye. 

“Is your charade going to end or...” 

Before Leon can ask his rhetorical question, his eyes flick to the ultraviolet petals in the vases on your vanity table. So you kept everything, his floral tribute for you. Oh, it’s heartwarming, but... he still can’t cross the backhanded pinprick in your stance. 

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave my room, or I’ll have to fetch Chris here.” 

“You don’t say?” Leon is the same, overzealous. He’s irksome to the extreme. 

“Last time, I thought everything was splendid, darling,” he drags out, “I distinctly recall you favoring me with those dreamy little looks. Correct me if I’m mistaken.” 

Such gall. He has absolutely no idea how much of a headache and hell he’s been giving you. It’s better to remind him, but how you do it is up to your discretion. 

“Listen here, mister, had I taken your insolence to the authorities, you’d likely not be setting foot anywhere near here. You’d be—” a deliberate pause for emphasis, “breathing stale air behind iron bars.” 

“You’ll have to forgive me; I’ve been mixing grain and grapes, but what the devil are you talking about?” 

His smile falters then, only slightly. There’s no awning of shock, no mortification, no shame etched across his face. Instead, his expression remains a humdrum enigma; a challenge lurks behind his steady gaze. What sort of man faces such accusations without so much as a flicker of discomposure? 

You can’t take it anymore. 

“How dare you intrude upon my home?” The words cut sharp, like the honed edge of a razor. 

“I’ve never been in your house, doll.” He’s ready to mount a defense in mere seconds. In fact, he hadn’t been in your house, not directly. Indirect is more like it. 

“Leon... please,” you hold up your hand and project callousness as if you’re repulsing his words, sweeping away the ugly bugs, “your card was even in the room with your very name written on it.” 

This is the first time he ever heard his name from your cherry lips, ruby and ripe. A different gamut of sensations, it’s limerence. 

But back to the elephant in the room. 

Soon enough, Leon’s epiphany is added to the flow of events, and if he can take his eyes away from you, he will have a couple of revelations. Taking his eyes away from you, on the other hand, is a hell of an ordeal—a Sisyphean task. 

It really does scorch him on a physical plane. 

“Don’t get yourself in a twist, sweetheart,” Leon is honing his flirting chops. Smoothing your ruffled feathers is a sport he’s personally cultivated. 

The stunned confusion written in a chiffon calligraphy on your face only fuels his merriment, albeit the sheer umbrage gemmating on your face. 

“I must remind you, Mr. Kennedy, that you are brazenly invading my privacy.” The words spill out like pearls on a string, polished but sharp-edged. It never hurts to try again, even if it means shoving your own ineradicable truths and forcing your own phrases into that numbskull. 

“Sure, sure, sweetheart. Privacy. Trespassing. Let’s call the whole thing off.” His grin unfurls, shameless. 

Leon takes a tentative grip on your wrist and guides you toward the chair by the window. As you sink into the chair, borderline slumping over, a thought strikes you like the crack of a conductor’s baton: tonight’s gig. 

The stage, the lights, the hushed murmurs of the audience—it all comes flooding back with startling clarity. 

“I can’t deal with this,” you mutter, rising to your feet as a fresh wave of trepidation tightens your chest. “I’ve got a show—” 

“Oh, the big show,” Leon infringes on your words with a chuckle, waving his hand theatrically. “Let me guess. You’ll have the whole world eating out of your hand tonight, and I’m just the poor sap standing in your spotlight.” 

His hand finds your shoulder, potent and unyielding. He eases you back into the chair with a maddeningly adroit air. 

How rude. 

“All right, what’s the racket now?” you demand. Your eyes tote the lake of fire. 

“Don’t look at me like that, sugar,” Leon’s voice grates on your brain in just the veritable way; it’s tip-top dulcet. 

“I had a most discreet little chinwag with Ada Wong,” he prattles on. He pays no mind to the labored breaths that break the rhythm of his words, then, with an audacity that leaves you momentarily aghast, drops to his knees before you. 

“Oh, and darling Ada didn’t raise so much as an eyebrow as long as I promised to square her away for the greenbacks slipping through the fingers of your adorable fans.” 

He stylishly fuses the bevy of words with his… fancy lines as he speaks. His gliding hands on your legs awaken a surprisingly ruddy pallor. He seizes your ankle and sews it up, positioning your heel on top of his knee, cradling your right leg. The subsequent is tremendous. 

He slants the marrow of his blues on you, his chin tipped up, calculating how you’ll react. Ambivalent eyes are only on you. 

“If you want me to stop, I’ll stop, but if you want me to keep going, I won’t stop till you’re sick of me. It’s all for you, doll.” His voice lacks the sanctimonious hue you have come to memorize. It leaves a more mellow rumble in your ears. 

Leon, taking into account the fact that he has received no verbal confirmation yet no verbal rebuff, folds the hem of your dress until the silk fabric curves around your hips, the satin is a girdle around your waist, traversing the garter. 

“Give me a fair chance and I’ll make you forget all the pratfalls I’ve done.” His wintry breath strokes across your skin, soaking into your blood, his lips on your legs, camellia pink, lush. 

Up and up. 

High enough to boggle your mind, but not high enough to bore you. Up your calves, past your knees, and up your thighs beyond your calves. It’s not enough, and the peerless panorama you can behold before you soak out your veiled eyelids, beset by strands of blonde hair tangled in the white lace of your French knickers. The abject cold of March versus the waves of citrus fire pouring from the fireplace sizzle your skin like in the saying; March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. 

Leon is inexorable with you and the portent of antsy impatience on your face as he lingers between your legs and welds his tongue between your pulpy slit. 

For Leon, it’s all he can do not to get drunk on the tang of the nectar he’s been craving for weeks. He clamps his hands around your thighs and worships you, your lovely cunt, perhaps with the devout hunger of a believer after fasting all day long. 

Let your hips propel themselves against his nose, riding on the tip of his tongue. That garrulous mouth is at last put to some use, occupied, but his nose? The work his nose does is better experienced than spoken. 

An ephemeral passion infuses you with the lyrics of his tongue; your French-manicured nails are nothing more than paws on his scalp, and your fingers are nothing more than joints yanking at his tresses. 

What about your legs? 

They are a complete sphinx; you can’t even feel them. 

The words of adulation choke at the base of your throat, and your mind blanks out when you feel his pillowy lips pressing against your raw ribbon of sore nerves. A myriad of gasps tumbles down your rosy red lips; your body trembles as bolts of ecstasy rush through your synapses, white-hot to the touch with bliss. 

Lovely sounds emanating from the crevices of your lips grow louder, and Leon switches his weight to the outsole of his shoes, only ever paying attention to your glistening pussy. To quiet you down, he plants a brief, benign nip on your clit. 

Deep within you, that flash of rural thunderbolt strikes you anew, but you get the picture. Now your subdued moans beguile his ears; he licks and kisses and sucks on your plump clit; he’s near suffocation, but he carries on the rave, finger-fucking where his lips are each retreat to catch his breath. 

Right when you’re nearing the decadence, as ecstatic as he is, he flings his head back and refuses to let you sip that cocktail of hedonistic fumes. 

“Leon!” You yelp his name unabashedly in that frantic microsecond. Those twisted tufts of pleasure in your belly are torn to shreds, and yes, in the end, you are incapable of cumming. All this because of your douchebag new lover with his tinsel eyes who is all eyes and no eyes. 

“Sorry, love.” His voice is raspy, his eyes cryptic as he entreats for absolution. Emits all the sounds that got stuck in his throat after lovemaking. 

Tongue still laced with that sherbet of jawbreaker liqueur, the only thing he’s lost is the blissed-out zeal of ecstasy on your beautiful face. His plans are separate anyway; that creampie episode should be in his bed, and you’ll be stretched out on his cock, which is now straining in a Brooks Brothers suit. He’ll leave you hanging, wanting more of him. 

Regardless, he can at least catch a glimpse of macules of mascara on your eyelashes and two mini teardrops splashing down on your lash cords. The saliva trickling out of your mouth and drooling over the brim of your lips tears at his very root, but the eyes are special. They will always tell the absolute truth. 

“I only want to be yours.” The rhapsodic promises spring out of his lips like a bolt from the blue. 

That’s the whole secret, and so he graves his head between your thighs like a lovesick animal, incapable of subduing himself. You foolishly dwell in this rollercoaster of amore. 

It would certainly not be a lie to conclude that things came to a healthier denouement after that night. The scant nights when you are absent from your apartment complex come on the heels of the days you stayed at his place and baked biscuits together in his kitchen. Those afternoons clogged with whispering of sins in the darkness. 

The city, blues, and jazz lovers, and the circle of all those people for whom Leon has who knows what kind of background, your name is the only topic of conversation, next to Leon’s. Your resplendent name, always written alone in big prints, is now next to a man. 

You are no longer alone, by all means. But then sometimes... some nights when Leon doesn’t drop by the house until the morning, your suspicions curdle into a black furor. Not a word of what the hell he was doing was ever exchanged between you; that’s what is slowly killing you. 

This uncertainty lingers for weeks and then for months. He somehow coaxes you into selling your apartment. It’s a seemingly ghastly toll—being bound to him, but his clarion rhymes always alleviate you. Strange. 

“My little angel, I just want you near me. Why do we need your apartment when I have my space and we have more than enough. Besides, a little party hurt no one, not you and me when we’re together.” 

Your protections are short-lived, because the kisses he lanced to your lips were usually loud enough to lull you into silence. 

He, Leon Kennedy, is hardly to be got to grips with. A charmer who never misses a trick. The best of everything belongs only to him and to you because you are his. You love dancing, but he doesn’t; he has to be a grumpy cat. Every time you stick a match to light your stogie, he winds up next to you, and he’s the one who lit your kindle. He hates the smell, hates it wholeheartedly, says that his hair reeks and so on, but he sleeps with his head in your lap, watching the smoke flitting through the air from your lips. In fond veneration, as a little infant would behold his mother's face for the foremost time since the hour of his birth. 

The addressee of every petty dispute, the hardest, was to love a man who never lagged behind, who always wanted more. 

“You want more,” a dejected sulk crosses your lips. “Why?” 

Leon takes two sips from his glass full of Lafite, and he peers over the rim of the glass, half-listening. 

“What does that mean now?” 

“The night we met... something... struck me.” 

“Oh.” He sets his pint down on the table and is all at ease. 

“I’m only talking about the time you confronted a bloke like Chris without hesitation just to flaunt yourself in front of me, darling.” 

“Oh, that one. I’ll give Chris props; he was a hell of a boss. You should consider bumping up his paycheck.” 

You shake your head in resentful disbelief and refuse to say anything more beyond his passing remarks. Any time you point out something about his behavioral pattern, he gets testy and does his best to bury the hatchet. And then comes a killer migraine. 

“I certainly will. Ah, perhaps your patron should be a good patron like me and not withhold some money.” 

It’s these words that are rattling around in your unconscious. A voice in your head taps on your skull that it would not be a bad idea to hold back, but your lips will not meet. 

“Simply inhuman, to be working from nine at night to six in the morning. He should make you a multimillionaire by now.” 

Leon blinks his eyes closed and unfocused, his intense metallic gaze boring into you from beneath his lashes. 

“You know I prefer not to talk about it.” There is a devotional twang in his timbre. 

“Leon. I am merely—” 

Your lecture, however, is bisected in half by the storming in of a blond man dressed in a black leather trench coat following behind one of the girls working in housekeeping. Lackluster and sketchy. 

Leon staggers from his seat to his feet as the ignoble visitor takes his first step inside. 

You’re as still in your seat, legs crossed. 

“Please forgive me, young lady.” Your guest's voice is veiled with pejorative politeness. He draws closer, as if Leon is not in the room, and whispers short, detached, and insensate kisses on your knuckles. 

“But your lover Leon himself was slacking off. For some weeks now,” he adds, then turns a short pivot to make sure his last words have reached the ears they are meant to reach. 

“I told you, pal, Ada and I have submitted our notice of dismissal, Mr. Wesker.” Leon’s teeth clench together. Oh, you know that look better than anyone or anything. 

The humble ignominy of failing to uphold you in front of a man like Albert Wesker is hideous for Leon. 

“Pah! I’d be a fool to lose my best recruits, Mr. Kennedy.” 

This man must be the boss, apparently. What chutzpah. 

“I’m not coming. I told you, Italy isn’t my business.” 

“Italy?” Now you’re diving into the spiel. Confused, what’s coming out of these two men’s mouths is beyond their ears. 

Leon pinches the bridge of his nose, this tangled headache, the revelation of everything he had swept under the carpet, wasn’t part of his plans for tonight. 

“Your girlfriend is very prying, Leon, but curiosity kills the cat.” This Albert bastard is blatantly blackmailing you and Leon with verbal cattle prods. 

“I must ask you to leave my house. Please, kind sir.” 

You’d be a fool to put up with this nonsense any longer. You stand up and tactfully point to the door to the man who might be the very incarnation of effrontery. His eyes darting to Leon, you, and the door, flux and reflux. 

“Sure thing. I’m not here to offend the little lady. See, I’ll find my own way out.” Wesker bids you his wee farewell and, one last time, delivers those paralyzing spells of paranoia to Leon. “You know the deal, boy. You know better than anyone what happens when you slip up.” 

Leon is more familiar with such words. Grim-rimmed eyes are no longer cavalier blues. 

“You still got an hour.” 

After the admonition, the man leaves the room, leaving only misdoubt in his wake. At least for you. Your lover... He’s in a very different state of mind. 

“Don’t tell anyone about this. Not a word. No one.” 

“I... What?” 

Your brain, which is still recovering from the shell shock, can’t even wrap up what you’re repeating.

“You humor me, will you. Get your head together, sweetheart.” 

It’s absurd that Leon still adores you like some baby when he's slamming the lid of the safe full of dollars, euros, and gold ingots. Only you don’t raise a peep; you simply gawk and watch the chaos around you. 

He’s been pacing the room for half an hour, tucking a flak jacket under his shirt and a leather gun holster into a Louis Vuitton utility belt around his waist. What the hell is this? Off marching off to war? 

When he’s done, he stalks you with quick strides, and you find yourself stepping backwards for no reason. Leon doesn’t have time for these flip-flops. He’s got one overriding objective in mind. To save you by any means necessary, but he’ll never tell you from what. Yet you ask him over and over again, ranting and raving. 

A tantrum and delirium. 

“You can’t leave me. No.” Your voice is harsh enough, but the stinging tears in your eyes are perfidious. 

Inasmuch as he can’t bear to look at them, he can’t heed their force. 

“I’ll be back. I guarantee it, love. This is just a little party; it had never hurt a soul.” 

He smothers your forehead in bittersweet caresses and spares your quivering lips along the pucker of your flesh. It’s all for naught. Nothing can be solved with these evanescent kisses. 

“Why are you running away from me? Why are you afraid of that man?” Your questions are clipped but unyielding. A single answer is more than enough, and you demand it, fight for it. 

That’s how pathetic Leon is. Can’t he face it? 

To be so weak that, for all that you’ve been through... It’s all teardrops on the fire between the two of you. 

You can’t quite read his eyes anymore; they’re not what they used to be, and he’s not the man he used to be. 

“Please, Leon.” 

It’s the most humbling feeling of near-death to close his deaf ears to your invocation. He can’t name it, name the thing inside him, but acridness suffuses his whole body. 

He’s back to that rainy Friday night. Flashes and strikes with lightning bolts, like a short vignette of that night when the pump of the nightmare was looping through his brain. 

“Leon!” 

For once, he doesn’t look back. He knows very well that if he does, he will never be able to leave the house, not even one foot outside. 

You are left stupefied on the stairs now, as he simply slides the door shut and drifts away into the evening of a drizzly Tuesday night. 

A second or two elapses, and you run to the door with a renewed willpower. No, he’s not leaving. You run, breaking the heel of your stilettos, barring you’re gravely late for everything. Every single thing. 

It’s Leon’s Auburn, and you watch as he revs up the accelerator down the path through your garden, past the streetlights, and into a void of alveolate twilight. 

The saga fades away as though it had never been indited for you with a special brush of pen. All that remains is the heavy diamond necklace on your neck, a souvenir from him; the chasm, he vamooses. 

You promptly called the police, despite repeated strident warnings from Leon. Instead of promising you that they would find him, they inquired about Leon’s possibly alleged behavior and conduct, which you highly resented. How could they frame an absolute angel like him? “He’s not a bad man. He was threatened and scared. I know him better than any of you constables.” You defended him, short-winded, because he needed to be remembered as the good man he always was. 

The Bluecoat was not as accommodating as you anticipated. 

So you did the only thing you could do. You waited for him. Every night, awake and alone in your empty and stone-cold bed, but the aria of this room was the nights when you kissed and fellated him a night or two before and then rode till you could not anymore.

But he never came. 

Two nights after Leon’s departure, on a Thursday morning to be precise, your eyes were as swollen and bloodshot as ever. Your slumber was ruptured by the rush of a newspaper headline brought to your room by one of the girls who worked at home. Breaking news, or as the Big Apple would say, hot topic. 

The name that crowded the headlines was none other than the name of the man you had in mind.

Broiling, hollow tears welled up in your eyes as you read the one headline stating that he had died in a car accident due to the soggy roads. The next words and the rest of the scoop didn’t matter to you at all; you knew it was all a lie. A big fat lie. 

A million interview requisitions came in, but who would waste time with that? 

Leon Kennedy did not die in a car accident. No one would believe you if you told them that. The truth is, your lover was already playing a dice game with stakes of death. 

He never needed to tell you; you already knew. Revolvers and gunpowder, the smell that assailed your nose right after his perfume on your skin, your clothes. 

It was an idiotic fairy tale in which you played a blinder. You were his nymph, and he was your guardian angel. You were jumping off the stage and hopping to evade the eyes that swept over your body like hungry maggots, and he was the first man to bail you out of that jam, to buy you diamonds and pearls, and to love you above the rest of the hordes of those pantywaists. You loved your cigarettes; he hated the aroma and the haze of smoke. 

You loved dancing and baking biscuits at home with him, and he loved hustling from party to party. Every single night when his landline rang, he left for his frivolous job that netted him a hefty sum of money—he was very fond of putting his life on the line. An even crazier adrenaline fiend than his love for you. 

You always detested yourself for it took you those torturous days after the breakup to finally decipher Leon. Always the latecomer to really know and love someone like him. His story couldn’t be passed on to anyone, anyone but you.

The story of a boy who came from an obscure hamlet and prowled the City That Never Sleeps to see things he hadn’t yet seen. A boy who always wanted to hang in the lights yearned for the freedom, just like you once were. And then you. Without him, robbed of the best party of your life.

[ohdeerfully]

hi! I have a request, I've never really done this before but I'll give it a shot. so my request is that Charlie is tasked by heaven to watch over a very special human soul via a device that is like a full 360 VR kind of setup and this soul just so happens to be Alastor's immortal wife (he didn't know she was) whom he thought had died with him during a bad event and wound up in heaven but she didn't and She stayed the same since the 1930s like her looks stayed the same and her love for Alastor stayed too she never once tried to move on even when her new friends in this time tried to get her a guy but she just refused still wearing the wedding ring her gave her

I hope it's not too much to ask it can be changed to whatever you see if you have full creative control over it!

thank you for your brain anon

theres a couple awkward POV shifts in the story and im super duper sorry about that D: im not good at those

An Eternity

alastor x reader (angst) TW: reader is female, reader gets a lil drunk and drives but shes fine(i do not condone this pls dont drink and drive im so serious), yearning goes ouchie ):

join my discord!

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Alastor rarely, if ever, talked about his time alive. He saw it pointless; a waste of time and energy. How could it benefit him if somebody else knew his history? If anything, it would only open up weak points. And, being an Overlord, he couldn’t afford that.

The only hint of his past was a band on his finger that he never took off. Even after decades in Hell, nobody saw him without it.

People often asked, of course, because how in the Hell did the Radio Demon get hitched? Even in life, he was probably just as unusual and off putting. These questions were always met with a dismissive wave and a laugh, but anybody who knew him—which wasn’t many, truly—would recognize the strain in his voice as he brushed them off. Whatever the story was seemed to only grow more painful with time.

He was deep in thought, humming absently as he trailed through the hotel. He ended up meandering by Charlie’s room, which was cracked open. He took this as an invitation to let himself in, cheerfully grinning as he saw the girl sitting on the edge of her bed looking extremely confused.

“Hello, dear!” He announced himself, standing up straight and fixing his bowtie with one hand. “What does this afternoon have in store for the Princess of Hell?”

“Heyy, Al,” Charlie responded, still frowning at the contraption in her hand. It was a rather bulky thing; an unappealing piece of new technology, Alastor decided. Still, he loomed from behind Charlie with a curious bend in his neck. Her shoulders were stiff, and he couldn’t tell if it was from frustration with the thing in her hand or discomfort at him watching her. 

“What is that peculiar thing?” He finally asked, since Charlie made no attempt at explanation. She seemed too focused to really pay him any mind.

“Something Heaven gave me to watch some curious soul they can’t control,” She murmured, fiddling with a couple buttons and knobs. “They’ve got me doing some ridiculous things. I mean, some human soul shouldn’t even concern me. But, they promise these favors will help with my hotel.”

Alastor hummed in response. He of all demons would recognize a manipulation tactic when he saw one—convincing a powerful demon princess to do your chores and promising to help her desperate project in return seemed like something the angels would do. He didn’t care one way or another, as long as Charlie’s naivete didn’t get in the way of his own goals.

He took a few steps back when Charlie stood, seemingly finished with setting up the box. He grinned, amused, when she pulled it over her head. It wasn’t the most flattering thing, and pretty bulky on her face. She looked ridiculous, honestly.

“Modern technology,” He sighed dramatically, leaning down onto his cane as he continued to observe her. “Only getting uglier.”

Charlie didn’t respond to his comment, looking around at what Alastor saw as nothing. She played around with the settings again, and adjusted the straps on her head again, before looking around again. She let out a successful sounding “hell yes” before pulling a remote of sorts from her pocket. She pushed on a joystick.

“What are you doing?” Alastor asked plainly, the building curiosity finally becoming too much. “Why do you have a box on your head?”

“It’s like…” She began to explain, trying to think of how to make sense of it to him. “Like… imagine you were looking through the eyes of somebody else, but still standing in the same spot..?” Her voice tilted at the end, unsure of her explanation.

Yeah, no, Alastor had no clue. But he dismissed it as unnecessary, as he often did with any technology he couldn’t understand.

“I’m seeing… Earth, I guess,” Charlie explained more. “Following around this girl.”

Alastor was only partially listening, humming quietly to himself as he just observed. He wondered if he should just leave—nothing interesting was happening. He was curious to see what antics Heaven was pushing on the Princess of Hell, though.

“Wanna try?” Charlie offered, lifting the headset up away from her eyes. Alastor immediately scrunched his nose up and narrowed his eyes.

“And look as ridiculous as you? Hah! No thank you,” He sat down on a chair near the wall, leaning against the back of it. He threw one leg up over the other. Charlie shrugged in response, and pulled the contraption back down.

Alastor sat for a while, absently thinking about what he wanted to do later as he waited for something to happen.

“Oh! Hold on,” Charlie suddenly said, causing Alastor’s ears to straighten to attention as she reached up and pressed a button. A holographic projection appeared out of nowhere, manifesting through some strange magic. “Forgot I could do that. This is what I’m seeing in here.” 

Alastor stood and walked closer, leaning forward on his cane as he studied the projection. It seemed like some kind of bar. He mused at how different modern bars looked from the speakeasies he would frequent during his own life.

“What heavenly task are you doing in a bar?” He joked, trying to find something interesting in the projection. It just seemed like generic bar business. Loud, flirtatious women and boisterous, over confident men. That, at least, was the same from his day.

“Like I said earlier,” Charlie explained, looking around the room. The projection seemed to follow her movement, and Alastor recognized that he was basically seeing through her eyes. How curious. “There’s some… soul they lost control of. And they want me to report to them about her.”

Alastor was very curious to see what kind of soul broke from control of literal heaven. He watched rather intently, leaned forward against his cane to watch the projection.

Charlie turned another knob, and the sound of tacky pop music and loud chatter began to emanate from the bar scene. Alastor wasn’t a fan of newer music, but he was often forced to listen anyway in the hotel lobby.

“Is it possible to turn down that dreadful noise?” He complained to her, announcing his dissatisfaction.

“No. I need to be able to hear what the woman is saying,” Charlie answered stubbornly. Alastor’s microphone of a cane began to obnoxiously play a song of his choice for a moment in retaliation, but died down after a few moments. After all, Charlie ignored his attempt at aggravation, so there was no point in keeping it up.

Charlie looked around the bar, searching. Finally, her gaze settled on a fancier booth with half drawn curtains. From her angle, she could only see a woman. She looked frustrated.

“---get out of your shell! It’s about time you start talking to some guys for once,” Charlie caught the tail end of the woman’s statement. She was gesturing wildly around, exasperation evident in the jagged movements. “I’m sick of watching you pine for somebody who’s been gone for ages.”

★

“Ten years isn’t ages, Mechiele,” You drew your finger against the table, making shapes with the rim of water that the condensation from your glass left. Nearly a hundred years, more like, You commented to yourself. You never told anybody that you were an immortal being. Nobody believed you when you did, anyway.

You sat your cheek against the palm of your hand and lifted your gaze to your friend, who looked at you with a sharp frown. You shot her a weak smile. 

“Can you just drop it?” You asked, nearly pleading. You didn’t want to cry tonight, being a little tipsy—you were an emotional drunk. You didn’t want to embarrass yourself blabbering about a dead husband.

“Come on,” Mechiele said impatiently, pushing your pleas aside. “There’s so many hot guys in here, I bet one would just love to take a piece of work like you home and-”

“Mechiele.” You hoped your tone was enough to shut her up.

You should’ve known better, honestly. Mechiele was already abrasive when she was sober, but with the amount of drinks she’s had tonight…

“No, no, no! You bum! Get your ass up right now and get out there! And take that ring off while you’re at it!”

Mechiele quickly lunged at you, a much too playful look in her eye considering how pissed you were right now. You yanked your arm away from her grasp, cupping your hand protectively with the other, shielding the golden band on your finger from her.

“Fucking drop it!” You snapped at her, standing from your seat. “I’m going home. You’re too drunk. I’ll drive.”

“You’re so fucking lame,” Mechiele droned, falling back into her seat. She wouldn’t budge when you urged her to stand and come with you. “He’s fuckin’ dead! Get a new man, already! Alastor’s not-”

Mechiele stopped abruptly when you smacked her. It wasn’t an incredibly hard smack or anything, barely enough to leave a red bloom on her cheek, but it was enough. She looked at you through narrowed eyes. You returned the same expression.

You left the booth and stormed off, cursing under your breath about it all. About Mechiele, about this stupid bar, about the tipsy feeling in your head, about Alastor—

You folded your arms together as you briskly walked to your car, yelling in frustration at your heels and ripping them off your feet. The ground was a little wet and cold, but you didn’t care. After making it to your car, you threw yourself in an switched it on.

You thought for a few moments. You were lightheaded after a few drinks, but you really didn’t want to wait for a taxi. You’d probably be fine, yeah? Sure. Against your better judgment, you began to drive.

It was a long drive, but it gave you some time to think.

You missed him. You pined for him. Nearly every night was agony, missing the presence of the only man you’ve ever fallen in love with.

You cursed whatever higher power there was for making you this way—immortal. How cruel it was, to make you live forever to suffer this longing. You didn’t even notice when you ended up in your room, but you let yourself fall face first onto your bed, curling up into a ball.

Even more, you cursed yourself for ever falling in love. You should’ve known it would only lead to an endless torture of heartbreak. You would never love anybody the same; although, you don’t think you’d want to, even if you could.

You were born to suffer. To spend an eternity in life without him.

★

Charlie continued to watch in shock for a few moments, her mouth dropped at the mention of the Radio Demon’s name. The previously hidden woman stepped from the bar, a furious look in her eyes as she stormed away. Mechiele was left with stubbornly folded arms and an empty glass of alcohol.

“Heyyy, uh, Al, how common is your name..? Do you know…” Charlie asked a bit awkwardly. She got no response. She lifted the headset, and realized he was gone. Even still, there seemed to be a lingering feeling of intense static, and the air somehow felt a bit heavier than before.

★

This had to be some cruel, sick joke, right? Heaven had to be toying with him, finally finding a way to torture his soul. His wife—she was dead. It had been nearly a hundred years since he died, and even if she had lived till she was old—

Alastor was pacing his room, ears pinned and eyes wide in frantic thought. Oh, how he yearned for her. He had managed for so long to push the memory of her away, to lock up his loss in a tight cage as he climbed the ranks of hell; it had all come rushing, barreling, torrenting back when he had seen her—or, no, somebody that looked like her—step out of those curtains. It was only a coincidence that that woman looked like his wife, and only a coincidence that she had a dead husband that shared his name.

His wife was in heaven, no doubt; which was where she belonged, of course, but Alastor had spent the last decade pining for somebody who he could never see again. If given the choice, Alastor wasn’t so sure himself if he was kind enough as to not tear her soul from Heaven and down to Hell by his side. Alternatively, even if Charlie’s idea of redemption were to work, Alastor was truly irredeemable. It was all wistful thinking, anyway.

Alastor’s claws dug into the curtains of his window, staring out into the streets of Hell in an attempt to concentrate on one steady stream of thought.

When billions of people touch the Earth, it’s only natural that coincidences like this rise. Right? He tried desperately to convince himself of different possibilities. It just made no sense.

A knocking at his door made Alastor’s grin curl in deadly malice. He really wasn’t in the mood.

He paced to his door, opened it just enough to fit his body in the frame, and glared down at Charlie. She was wringing her hands together nervously, and only seemed to grow more timid as the heavy, almost palpable ambience of his radio static filled the hallway she stood in.

“I’m busy,” Alastor said bluntly. His lips were curled in a sneer.

“I can tell,” Charlie responded. "I know you don't like talking about yourself-" She began to ramble on about him talking to her about his feelings and whatnot, but Alastor didn’t listen as he shut the door again.

Though, the interruption did give his mind a chance to slow. He sat on a chair in the corner of his room, and opted to fiddle with the radio on the drawer next to him. He tuned it—or, more just magically infused it—to play some jazz to try to keep his head level.

It would take some time to rebuild the dam that held back the memories of his wife. Even just the mere thought of her made him feel weak, and he hated it. The only soul he was capable of falling in love with—gone, forever.

Alastor never took the whole “eternity of damnation” thing seriously, considering the power he held and how comfortable he really was in Hell. However, when he remembered her—

Hell truly was torture. And he was cursed to spend his eternity in death without her.

[bunji-enthusiast]

One Whole, Became Two

Note || this took me so long to write, but I love this stupid idiot platonically. Chapter three my sleep-deprived folks 👍🏻

WC || 3,312

<(part 1)><(previous part)><(you are here)>

Sypnosis || you bring back a dear old dead heart to a wounded dog.

If someone ever told you that you would’ve come back to a desolate factory full of death and damnation you would tell them that in what world in which would that happen? You never would’ve heeded their words.

Oh, how wrong you were.

You hated being wrong.

Yet, many things may have happened, some of which allowed you to get in some exercise… you also gained some new friends. They are very near and dear to you, despite the small numbers you retain in your ragtag group of allies. You preferred the terminology friends, you’ve gotten close with Kissy Missy and Poppy, even DogDay too!

Speaking of which, this accursed Playcare was still a little too dark for your liking. You needed more power, more light to go the right way necessary. A light chuckle breaks you out of your thoughts, “A-angel, do you need some help?” DogDay inquired, watching as you had tried to remember which way he had pointed to the medical station.

You shook your head egregiously, trying to affirm your belief as you spoke, “I got it… I swear I know which way it is!” Your shoulders slumped as you let out a defeated sigh, having to hate asking him for help.

Asking for help wasn’t necessarily your most favorite thing in the world, in for the most of miniscule of things. You thought it was ridiculous, insipid to do, in no way would you ever ask for said help unless you really were struggling.

Apparently as of right now, these were one of those moments that you were truly struggling, and it was with directions as well. You couldn’t be any more ashamed, “Could you m-maybe tell me where it was again?”

DogDay let out an amused bark, not merely in making fun of you. He thought you were just cute, the way you were embarrassed, though DogDay will never actually admit this feeling to you. “Okay, Angel, you see that sign over there? It points to the direction of the medical station.” Your large companion points to the sign in question, you sorely cannot miss it no way, his paw was big. Actually, it’s nearly the size of your head.

“Ah, focus!”

The pathway was riddled with broken cobblestone and dirt, but do-able to make your way through. You just hated broken paths, no trouble still.

You nod to let him know you saw it, walking over to the sign that was now a few pacings away from you. The silence had now settled in place for the lack of conversation, it was seemingly getting awkward enough as is. Suddenly, a new voice interjects on the radio of your walkie-talkie.

“Oh there you are! I wasn’t able to connect to you on that side of the dome!” His light voice carried an undercurrent of worry. “No ouchies or lost body parts?”

DogDay raised a brow as you two had continued making your way to the medical station. You nodded your head curtly, as if angling your head to signify you’d explain the kid on the radio at a later time. You spoke out in reply, knowing full well you weren’t in any real danger at the moment, “I’m uh, I’m fine Ollie. Just taking care of a friend, they got hurt… real bad.” A wince left your throat at the tone you carried within your words, you didn’t expect that.

A thought rushed into your head, “Why’d I word it like that? I guess I’m just worried about revealing DogDay to Ollie just yet.” DogDay patted your leg as to reassure you, eyes gleaming as if they were smiling down upon you. 

“Alright, you can introduce me later,” Ollie paused, as if he were hesitating to get the words out of his mouth. As if something was holding him back from doing so, “Take care of them first then I’ll tell you what to do next. See you!”

Then, the radio was now silent. You let out a breath you held in your lungs, sometimes forgetting to breathe reminds you to even breathe manually. An odd habit but nobody will nitpick that for the life of all there is to know and exist. 

An abrupt cough shocked you out of your thoughts, you immediately became concerned for DogDay who had been patiently waiting for your dilemma and conversation to end. You knelt down and checked over his body, “No need to worry.” You lodged his resistance in the back of your head, looking for any external wounds beside the most obvious ones. 

“I shouldn’t have stopped.” You murmur, gently picking him up. There was no way you’d let him drag himself along the floor, not until he was in a better state.

“We’re alright Angel,” DogDay sputtered, you were unimpressed, not phased by his words. “Really… but who was that if I may ask?” 

Steadily, you continued walking–the stupid medical station finally in reach. “Ollie, apparently sometime after I dropped down here he told me he was an ally of Poppy.” You then trailed off, not sure if you wanted to mansplain the entirety of the story down right to when you came across DogDay. Sighing, you begrudgingly open the door to the station.

The room was messy, akin to the state of many other locations in Playcare. But in your modest opinion, you truly did not care about that. You just really needed to fix up DogDay, and he was the focal point of your attention right now. “Angel, you seemed to be incredibly bothered.” 

DogDay shifted on the weight of his body as you began setting him down, if you were being truthful, you couldn’t refute that very fact. Yet you felt too angry to get the words across, “I know, I.. I guess this stupid factory just has me all on edge.”

Then a silence settled into place, as neither of you were unsure of what to say next. Everything and nothing was happening all at the same time. You walked over the ruined carpet, it looked as if it was made in the 1980’s. Some doors seemed to be torn off of it’s hinges, but at least the supplies were barely stolen. There was enough to treat DogDay properly, as much as you can manage within your knowledge anyway.

The hard part would be treating DogDay, (as you unfortunately didn’t have enough knowledge medically) and getting him his legs back so he could walk on his own as well. 

Gently, you opened a door to a closet, full of bandages and gauze. 

“Perfect timing, guess I didn’t need to look that hard.” You thought to yourself, your hands already grabbing the bandages and gauze. A small smile graced your cracked lips, carrying a genuine air with you, “Hey, DogDay I found some supplies. Looks like they left this place pretty untouched.” You waved at him, holding the aforementioned supplies in hand. 

DogDay perked up from where he had been looking at some stray medical papers, most likely files of every patient to come in and out of the station. “Oh!.. Thank you greatly. You really are an angel my friend.” You become bashful at his words, an embarrassed chuckle leaving you as you scratched the back of your head. Standing up you walk back over to the large dog, motioning for DogDay to position himself to where you can get to all the spots correctly.

You sighed, having to take a moment in order to set yourself into focus, this was important. You didn’t want to screw up something so crucial to DogDay’s health, “Ok, This might hurt a little so bear with me.” You warn, crouching down as you laid out the supplies.

“I have no doubt you will do fine!” DogDay encouraged you, settling down to be calmer for you. Fine, yes you can do fine. Okay well enough maybe, you just need to be careful!

Why was this so difficult?

“Stupid brain, Stop giving me all these thoughts!” You groan lowly, setting into place to mend his more major wounds with a contemporary suture. First off, you needed to clean the suture, to which you had quickly done. 

You gently pressed a wet rag to the most prominent area, cleaning it out of any debris that might be left behind in the wound. DogDay was simply listening and quiet upon your actions, clearly a little too impressed for your liking. You swabbed the wound with water then threw away the rag a few meters from you, you internally winced at that. 

Injuries are a major case for you ever since you stepped foot into this factory, you just never expected to be having to treat another person (or toy for that matter). 

“Angel?” You let out a hum in reply, suturing the wound as he spoke. “You seem… incredibly bothered, maybe you should try to talk about it.” DogDay shifted slightly, wincing a little as he had done so. Concern washes over your expression as you went to hold him, he held out a hand to reassure you he was fine.

“Well.”

You sat back on the heel of your foot as you thought about it for a moment, your brows knitted together. It was practically hurting your head, giving you a headache to be thinkin about every little thing that was running through your head.

Your lips pressed together in a thin line, unsure of whether or not to air your concerns. But it seems you weren’t gonna have any other chance to talk about it then right now, you just didn’t wanna dump everything on DogDay all at once. 

Practically would seem like a lot. Far too much to say and too little to be sure of. 

“I guess I’m just concerned over whether or not I really can trust Poppy,” You signal, having a habit of talking with your hands. “And this, Prototype guy… didn’t you say CatNap worships this thing like a god?”

He nods, “Yes, I didn’t join the Prototype. Which is why he had deemed me a heretic.” You frown at his words, nobody deserves that type of treatment. Making it even worse, you would assume the two used to be very good friends. 

“Oh dear,” You echo, recoiling suddenly in embarrassment for voicing something you didn’t realize slipped out of your mouth. DogDay laughs at this, waving his hand as he sits himself upright so as to not slip onto his back, “You are very much correct Angel.” He nods, “If anything, he’s no longer the old CatNap I’ve come to know him as.”

You shrug, a little unsure of the situation right now. Then a thought you finally needed ran across your mind, “Hey, would you happen to remember where your legs are or if… any spare ones laying around anywhere?” You motion around the room as you spoke, voice trailing off as you sat back, and awaiting DogDay’s response. He appeared to be deep in thought, clearly thinking about your question.

“I believe they have some spares in a storage room at this station,” DogDay gestures at the specific door he thought of in mind. “But Angel, I might be wrong. Don’t trouble yourself for my sake beyond this.” His voice strains, as if pleading. 

You chewed your lips, nodding your head once more as you headed to the door of origin. You quietly crept into the room, seeing how dark and dank it was. Slowly but surely your eyes had adjusted to the light. 

“Now, where are you… stupid legs.” You mutter, taking notice of some poppy gas that laid in wait in the corner, not to mention how badly scratched this room was in particular. Probably the work of CatNap or some other toy. On instinct, your legs drove you forward as you stepped into the gas with a gas mask inset upon your face. You certainly didn’t feel like dying from the gas, or passing out for that matter.

You had a debt to pay.

Your eyes wandered aimlessly as you palmed around for the supposed legs, feeling around for each and every inch possible that you might miss. 

Suddenly you felt a fuzzy feeling run up across your arm, you jostled in surprise, a happy squeak leaving your throat when you pick up the legs. “Thank you, sweet baby jesus.” You huff in reprise, feeling accomplished at the place of convenience.

If you could laugh right now, it would be possible, heaven sure as hell wasn’t a place for angels anymore. Not even you, but you still had to follow through, you came here in the first place anyway.

A small sigh left your esophagus as you turned, walking back through as you made careful note not to trip walking back too. 

Something had your mind occupied, demons infested this place. Elliot Ludwig had created this place, and if he so proclaims to want to bring joy to thousands upon thousands of children around the world then why would he permit the experiments. All those children and the elderly… your heart couldn’t help but ache at the mere thought. 

You shake your head to get your mind out of the unilluminated gutter, DogDay lit up upon seeing you in his sights once more. “Angel, you are alright.” He mentions, paw held to his chest as if he were breathing a sigh of relief.  

Your nose was scrunched as you gutted a snort, “You say that like it’s so surprising DogDay.” DogDay shrugs, as if he was now expressing the vulnerability of being embarrassed at the prospect of his own words. 

“Ah I’m just joking with you,” You wave him off, DogDay remains silent at this, not having any thought at what to say back to you. You were right though, he shouldn’t be doubting you for what even anyone in particular is worth. Being freed for what feels like the first time in forever had been leaving him with brand new thoughts, even though he had been thinking and left well alone for nearly over a decade now.

One door closes, infinite more are open. One must beware the foreign class, otherwise you may as well see yourself dead. 

“I truly do apologize for Poppy’s actions… we all mean well.” DogDay begins, trailing off into nearly an inconceivable silence. You set down the legs, to which DogDay is delighted at this brand new aspect, yet still left without room to be uncouth. You didn’t speak at all, pressing between the fine line of the truth and his own words. 

“We must, break the circle.”

What?

“Angel?”

“You all are chained, if whatever happened all those years ago were true…” You sigh, rubbing the nape of your neck as you find yourself in an air of awkwardness. “Then I am also at fault for the way you guys are right now.” 

DogDay’s brows drew together, upset that you feel guilty for the entirety of this fortnight. At least it had felt that way for you, you sincerely had lost track of time since your watch had gotten destroyed. You tried keeping up with the time on the clocks you pass by, but you just generally had lost the energy and motion in doing so.

“Hmn.” He muttered to himself, then got up to hug you, which had clearly surprised you as you felt yourself being enveloped and wrapped in a very fluffy hug. You sigh and decompress after a few moments, the shock finally leaving your body.

“Thanks… DogDay,” You motion, patting the fluff resting upon his chest. “I actually really needed that, hugs are a rarity.” You admit, blush burning on your cheeks as you look away from him in a manner of speaking. You hear a chuckle interrupted by a cough, “Don’t thank me, you seemed to really need it Angel. Being exhausted is one thing, but no hugs?”

DogDay drew a paw to his chest as he spoke dramatically, “That is absolutely unacceptable!” Your hand crossed over your mouth, trying to stifle a laugh at what a drama king DogDay was posing as at this very moment. 

“You kinda remind me of someone I know.” You motion, then sat on the heels of your feet as you immediately went back to work in fixing up DogDay. 

“How so?” 

“You're pretty bright, act like a drama king sometimes and you even can be a little mean…” You wag a finger as you see him begin to protest at the mean comment, “I don’t mean like in a rude manner, just like in a brotherly way. You kind of act like a big brother sometimes.” You shrug with a hint of finality, fixing up his other injuries and repairing them with a gentle hand, even if the suture seemed to betray the tremble displayed. 

After silence had continuously settled in once again, you sigh, angling at the fact on what to do in order to mend DogDay’s very obvious injury with his lack of legs attached at the bottom of his torso. For a moment, you meander with the decision.

“Right, I’m gonna try my best to reattach them to you.” You spoke with a benign tone, more so displaying your own distrust of yourself. You hated that, you practically hated everything so why is this any different.

You just have to do it scared. 

Familiarity reigns over your heart as you see his large paw lay over your own hand, you sigh, sensations shuddering your body as you keep yourself calm. You silently thank DogDay as you gesture that you were okay now, you can be fine on your own.

You push the legs to his upper half, just barely enough that it would appear as if the legs were there and back again already. Your hand wanders over to the middle line, your eyes glaze over with forlorn worry taking your very worried brain. You sigh as you begin stitching, taking careful caution as you notice him flinching quite a few times throughout the process. At a leisurely pace, you notice by the influence you had made by taking care of him how much better he looks physically. 

Soon enough, you manage to completely stitch his legs back to right where they belong. “Well done, I knew you could do it Angel!.” DogDay shook with excitement, reassuringly glad at the prospect of being able to actually walk again. You swear you could collapse at the relief, you hold out a finger before you let him get excited any further, “I still need to bandage it all together, extra precaution if you catch my drift.”

Your large dog companion nods in understanding, shifting about so his body parts don't get sore from sitting in one place for too long. 

From before, grace was high in patriarchy, now then you were sure it was something high to fall from. You could climb to the top (bottom to be literal) and rip the Prototype off of his high horse, and free all the surviving toys. 

You shook your head, trying to calm yourself at the buzzing excitement that had resonated deep-seated into your heart. You quickly went to work on bandaging the middle line of his torso, carefully curating it enough so the bandages would cover the stitches completely. 

“There, now we are done and good to go!” You look up at DogDay, offering him a soft smile. “Angel really… thank you so much.” He gestures for you to come closer, so you oblige and go in, suddenly you feel yourself being hugged by unabashed warmth. You yelped as air bloomed across your skin, seeing as you are now in the air quite a few feet off the ground.

DogDay really was hugging you with the whole of his heart, so you melt into his touch, relenting as you found defeat–yet also peace with your furry friend.

[ourtearsofrain]

Slow It Down (D.R.W/S.F.K)- Chapter 13

Pairings: Danny Wagner x Sam Kiszka, (barely a mention of) Josh Kiszka x Male O.C.

Genre: angst, brotherly fluff, hurt/comfort

Word Count:  2.1k

Warnings: Josh reality checks Sam and gives him lore about himself that is ouchie

--------------------------------------------------------

August 21st, 9:49 AM

“Hey, man.” Josh prods Danny in the ribs after he doesn’t respond, having been zoned out staring at the small tray table before him, his legs folded uncomfortably in the small airplane seat so that his knees were touching the bottom of the table. “Danny?”

“Hm?” He rips his eyes from the surface, turning his head slowly until Josh’s face twisted with concern comes into view.

“Are you ok?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You aren’t acting like it.”

“I’m just tired, didn’t get good sleep last night.”

“Bullshit.” Josh says the word louder than he intended, receiving an angry look from an elderly woman across the isle from him. “I know you snuck off with Sam last night, and he came back at like three AM with red, puffy eyes. He wouldn’t tell me jack shit though, and he- he didn’t get up to say goodbye to me or Jake before we left.”

He didn’t even say goodbye to his brothers? “Fine.” Danny’s voice cracks as his memories of the night before flood his mind, tears beginning to brew at his waterline. “He told me he loved me.”

“What did you do?!”

“I told him I loved him too and- and we kissed.”

“That’s fantastic!” Josh smiles wide before his mind catches up to him, wiping it from his face instantly. “Why was he crying then?”

“He- he told me we could make long distance work. I can’t do that, not after already waiting all these years to just hear him say those words. I begged him to come with me to New York, but he chose Frankenmuth over me.”

“Oh…”

“Yeah.” Danny puts no emotion into his tone, his voice flat to prevent his tears. “I yelled at him, said so many mean things but- but we both knew that I wasn’t wrong.”

“Talk to him, please.”

“No, Josh. I tried that and look where that got us. Besides, I told him not to bother calling or texting cause I was blocking him.”

“Have you?”

The question completely blindsides Danny, his eyes wide as he looks at Josh before an expression of anguish passes over his face. “No. I’ve tried so many times but I can’t- I can’t bring myself to do it.” He dissolves into a fit of tears as his hands move to his face, muffling his cries on the packed plane.

“Oh, Danny…” Josh moves immediately, putting the arm rest between them up to wrap his arms around the other man and pull him into a comforting embrace. His hands move up and down Danny’s back as he holds him, saying nothing more and letting him shed all the tears he needed. Finally, Danny pulls away, his face red as he wipes his cheeks dry. “Do you want me to talk to him?”

“No.” Danny shakes his head frantically, his hands gripping one of Josh’s. “Please, please don’t. We- we had our final fight, and now I need to move on. I can move on now, but I can’t do that if he’s still in my life.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Alright… I promise I’ll stay out of this, I won’t call him about it. I’m- I’m sorry it ended this way, Danny.”

“Me too.” The pair say nothing more for the rest of their flight, barely speaking a sentence or two to each other as they leave the airport in New York. As soon as Josh locks the door of their apartment behind him, Danny’s already escaped to his room, his own door closing quietly as Josh’s shoulders drop.

What the fuck am I going to do about this?

--------------------------------------------------------

September 19th, 1:20 PM

It had been four weeks and two days since Danny had spoken to Sam. Four weeks and two days since he had felt fully whole. And four weeks and two days full of regret. Danny didn’t regret saying what he said to Sam. In a way, it was as if a weight was lifted off his shoulders. This time, it wasn’t his actions that he regretted, it was Sam’s.

Every time he saw something that reminded him of Sam, he felt a pang in his chest, like he had left his heart behind in Frankenmuth. This ranged from having his day soured from his professor barely mentioning Star Trek, to cursing himself out when he passed a small boutique he knew Sam would love; a loose silk button up in the window that just screamed his name. Danny finally snapped when he ran home to sob in his room after he spaced out on the subway and ended up under Grand Central’s ceiling of constellations. In truth, Danny was barely keeping it together, motioning through his lectures and assignments mindlessly. If he allowed himself to think, his mind always wandered back to Sam.

Through all this, he hoped and prayed that Sam felt everything he was feeling a thousand-fold. He hoped that Sam couldn’t leave his house without crying as he passed the Wagner house, looming over him like a dark cloud every time he had to walk past it. He hoped every time he brought a cigarette to his lips, he would think of the one they shared camping. That he would taste Danny’s lips. He wanted to follow Sam for the rest of his life as a reminder, a ghost, of what he almost had. What he could have had. Danny knew one way or another that he would never be able to fully get rid of Sam, he could never make himself forget no matter how hard he tried. He just hoped that one day, his memories wouldn’t hurt this much.

--------------------------------------------------------

September 23rd, 12:33 PM

“Josh, I fucked up.”

“What happened to, ‘Hello, O brother of mine, I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye before you left again even though we spent every day of the summer together’? And yeah, you did. What’s wrong with you? Why’ve you waited over a month to finally talk to one of us?” Josh’s voice is flat, trying to keep his frustration at Sam out of his tone.

“I’m sorry about that. I needed- I needed time to process everything. And Danny told you?”

“Yes, Samuel. Danny fucking told me. What were you thinking?!” He spits, trying to keep his voice low, afraid that Danny would hear him across the apartment. Technically, Josh wasn’t breaking his promise. Sam had called him first, not the other way around. And for once in his life, Sam was the one to start the conversation topic even though it was so personal and serious, even if it had taken him over a month.

“I don’t know! I didn’t expect him to actually reciprocate feelings and I- I thought we could make long distance work…”

“Sam.” Josh lets out a frustrated sigh, bringing his hand to his temple in an attempt to keep himself calm. “I know Danny already ripped you a new one, so I won’t yell at you.”

“Thanks.” He can practically see Sam rolling his eyes over the phone, knowing that even though HE had been the one to call Josh for help, he was bound to get annoyed at his advice no matter what.

“Wanna know what I think?”

“Please do enlighten me, Joshua.”

“Cut the sass, I’m trying to help. If you didn’t want my opinion, you shouldn’t have called me. Anyway, I think you need to grow a pair and leave Frankenmuth. And fucking apologize to Danny. Face to face.”

“Jesus Christ, again with the leaving. You both know I can’t.”

“Why?” Josh doesn’t try to hide the frustration in his tone this time, not caring enough anymore to keep his feelings from Sam for his sake. “Give me one good reason that isn’t just ‘I can’t’ and I’ll never try to convince you again.”

“I-” Sam cuts himself off, his words failing him as he tries to find any reason, any reason at all, to stay.

“That’s what I thought. You’ve never had a reason to stay, Sam, you’re just too goddamn stubborn to change your opinion after all these years.”

“I thought you said you weren’t going to yell at me.”

“I’m not yelling, you don’t want to see me yelling. I’m just giving you a reality check. Why do you keep refusing to leave?”

“I- I feel bad. Leaving mom and dad, everything and everyone I’ve known. And I’m scared, what if I fail, what if I don’t like it and I’m just not cut out for the real world?”

“Did I ever tell you how it felt when I left? When I got into an out of state college before Jake did?”

“No? Why?”

“Of course I didn’t.” Josh takes a deep breath, preparing to tell him something he had never told anyone else before, not even Jake, Danny, or Austin. “I cried myself to sleep every night in the months leading up to leaving. And for months after I moved here too. I felt like I was abandoning everyone I loved most. Jake, Danny, mom and dad, and- and you. I felt like a horrible person for knowing I needed to get out of Frankenmuth. I hated myself for so long, Sammy. Every single goddamn day until I realized that no one was mad at me. While you all may have been upset and sad I was gone, I knew that- that in the end, you all would be happy I took that step. And I realized that I did the right thing, no matter how much it hurt. As much as I love Frankenmuth, I knew that I would never have a future there, a career, a life. I feel like you know that’s true for you, too. If I hadn’t moved here, I couldn’t have found a major that I loved, and that’s setting me up for an amazing job here. I wouldn’t have gotten so unbelievably close with Danny, and I wouldn’t have met Austin.”

“Do you have any regrets?” To Josh, Sam sounded utterly broken, his voice worn and uneven as if he had been crying for hours. Josh knew that his words finally made Sam understand that he needed to leave, and he knew from experience how that felt; like his entire world was collapsing right on top of him.

“No. I’m broke, still looking for a job I can apply my degree to, and I will probably never be able to afford housing alone here. But I’m happy. I’m- I’m so happy here, Sammy. I’ve made this my home, I’ve found a family. I have all I could ever want, and I know that it’s more than I could have ever found in Frankenmuth.”

“What do I do?” Sam’s voice breaks as he begins to sob, sending a lump to Josh’s throat as he listens to his little brother’s pain, trying to keep the tears from his own eyes.

“Take control of your life, Sammy. Live for you, not anyone else. If you want to move to New York, then we’ll be right here for you. But make that choice on your own, not based off anyone else’s opinions of where you’d be happiest. This is your life Sam, you have control of where it goes. And you need to start living, not just existing or surviving.”

“Ok-” He takes a heavy breath, sniffing before the sound of rustling filters through Josh’s speaker, as if he were moving around to dry his tears and pull himself together. “I- I need time to figure it out.”

“Of course. This isn’t something you can just figure out overnight, take all the time you need. And I’m here for you, whatever you need. I’m always gonna be here for you.”

“Thank you. Can I- can I visit soon? Stay at your place? It might help and- and I need to apologize to Danny, face to face like you said.”

“Please do. Whenever you find time, we’ll make it work. I’ve been wanting to show you around the city for so long, introduce you to Austin. You’re gonna love him, Sammy.”

“I bet. Ok, I’m- I’m gonna go think, work out a way to get to you and when. I’ll text you when I figure that out.”

“Sounds good, like I said we’ll make anything work.”

“Thanks. And Josh? Thank you, for everything you said. I needed it, it helped more than you can know and I’m- I’m so grateful and lucky to have you as a big brother.”

“Oh, fuck you, I was holding it together until now.” Both men laugh through their tears, letting themselves fully feel this calm after the storm for a moment longer until the reality that Sam had major decisions to make sets into him, stifling his laughter as anxiety creeps into his mind.

“Alright well, I should go, like I said I have so much to think about.”

“You got this Sammy, it’s not as scary as it seems. I’m here if you need, any time, any day.”

“Thanks again, I love you, Josh.”

“Love you too, Sammy. Hope to see you soon.”

--------------------------------------------------------

taglist: @gretnavannfleet @aioba1503-sdm @jake-whatthefisgoingon-kiszka @milojames16 @sanguinebats @theres-a-tvjoe @jakekiszkapunchmeintheface @currentlyfangirling10

[skulls-soul]

Luigi being parental gives me life it’s just so cute so here’s some ideas that I think Luigi would do

I don’t know if you guys have seen that Tumblr post about how the Kooplings would make baby alligator noises but I want you to know that I have 100% adopted that head cannon cause it is too cute not to

So imagine with me Luigi and Junior are in the library because Luigi was there hanging out and Junior decided to join him since he had nothing else to do 

Everything is fine and dandy but then suddenly luigi hears a loud slam and then Junior crying out Luigi of course very quickly makes his way towards Junior asking him what’s wrong

Junior Merli points at a book that seems to be quite a hefty size and then points at a shelf that is just out of Junior‘s reach Luigi immediately puts the puzzle of the pieces together

Poor Junior was just merely trying to get a book, but it ended up falling on his head instead. Luigi will ask Junior if he could take a look while gently moving Junior‘s hand away from the top of his head where he assumes the wound is. after checking to see if it’s bleeding and realizing that it isn’t logically there’s nothing that Luigi can do to relieve the physical pain but that doesn’t stop Luigi from saying a small nursery rhyme

“pain pain go away don’t come back another day” while saying this Luigi will rub the top of Junior‘s head and then very dramatically act out a motion of throwing something away. that something being the pain after that Luigi will then blow on the wound

Once Junior stops giggling Luigi asks if he feels any better Junior simply nods in response

I imagine that Junior would then tell his siblings and his dad about what Luigi did saying that “he magicked my Ouchi away ” this ultimately leads to Bowser going to Luigi by the end of the day asking if he knows any magic

Luigi would say that no he doesn’t why do you ask once Luigi finds out that Junior was the one who told his dad that he knows healing magic he simply laughs saying that no that’s just an old nursery rhyme that my aunt used to do for me and Mario whenever we got a couple of cuts and bumps.

(bowser of course thinks that’s absolutely adorable but would probably keep that to himself)  also another thing that would happen is that juniors siblings will probably still think that Luigi can actually do magic and would go to him for small wounds like scratches or bumps and Luigi would do the same thing that he did for Junior although he now carries a small first aid kit with him wherever he goes just in case it needs a little bit more than his Italian touch

Also I imagine one day Bowser would have the same thing happen to him in where something falls on his head and The kooplings Witnessing this Would immediately drag bowser to Luigi asking Luigi to do his magic

And Luigi without hesitation because he’s done this so many times before only merely asking what happened before he continues to quietly say the nursery rhyme in the little Toon that it comes in and blows on the spot where the pain is

It’s only once Luigi was done with the whole ritual in where he realizes what he’s doing and once the realization hits he’ll very quickly take his hand away from the top of Bowser’s head looking away blushing like the tomatoes he uses when he makes him and Mario pasta

by some miracle he manages to say “feel better?“

Bowser just stares at Luigi while his brain is currently trying to process all that is happening

Now depending on whether or not Bowser and Luigi are thing(aka in a relationship) is what happens next

if they’re not a thing Bowser is probably going to be like oh my goodness that was absolutely adorable I mean not adorable what am I saying this is Mario’s brother I’m talking about he can’t be adorable I won’t allow it?!? 

Following those Train of thoughts he’ll then look away and notice that his kids are patiently waiting for an answer the younger ones have a worried look while the older ones have a Knowing smirk bowser then says that he’s doing better and as quietly as he could possibly go he’ll mumble a thank you to Luigi and if Luigi wasn’t paying attention he would’ve missed it thankfully though, he was.

Luigi will when Bury his face deeper into the book he was reading earlier (before the kids dragged bowser over) not wanting to look at bowser when he says it’s no problem.

IF THEY ARE A THING  bowser would definitely take this opportunity to flirt he would look at Junior saying you know what son I think you’re right then he’ll look back at Luigi to say it seems green bean does know some magic this would cause Luigi to bury himself in the book he’s reading waving a hand at Bowser telling him to stop your being silly I don’t know any magic

With either of these options it could lead up to the same results and that’s a couple of weeks later  Luigi would be in the kitchen cooking for the youngest kooplings junior, Larry, Morton and wendy a small snack .

 The kids were merely just roughhousing when one of them bumped into a counter  causing something to fall and hit Luigi‘s head he didn’t think nothing of it merely just running away the pain saying in Italian how “that’s gonna bruise”

He looked at the kids and noticed that they were all looking at him really worried he very quickly lifted his hands up saying that he was all right but that seem to only make things worse because in doing so a small triple of blood went down his face the kids all start to panic and start to cry/chirp? Luigi tried his best to calm the kids down but to no avail

Bowser hearing several of his kids calling for him he very quickly makes his way to where the noises are.

he passed through the doors asking “what’s wrong?!? what happened?!?” when he noticed all the kids surrounding Luigi

Junior looked at Bowser and pointed up at Luigi saying that they’re sorry and they didn’t mean to. It was only once Bowser looked at Luigi that he noticed a small triple of blood. it was nothing too serious just a bump with a tiny cut

Bowser sighs relieved that the kids were ok  bowser makes his way towards the kids picking up Junior saying I’m sure you didn’t mean to and I’m sure Greanie knows that too you’re not gonna get in trouble so don’t worry about it, all of you.

Bowser assumed that the kids were crying because they were afraid of getting in trouble but when they all shake their heads Bowser just tilted his in confusion. that was when Wendy muscled out between sobs “but he’s still hurt and that they don’t know how to heal him”

An idea sparks in Bowser‘s head and he places a hand on Luigi‘s head rubbing it gently saying the same thing that Luigi has done over and over again for him and his kids “pain pain go away don’t come back another day”  finishing it off by gently blowing where the wound is

There feel any better? Bowser would ask Luigi and Luigi in return will shyly look at the kids not wanting to look up at Bowser and say “Yep much better”

(Note: so y’all remember that post I made in where to celebrate getting like I shit ton of subs I asked y’all to pick a number for 1 to something well…. this is draft Number 3…..so sorry it took so long to (the person who picked the number sorry I forgot who it was and looking back will take some time so until the this will be here) I hope your happy with what ya got





[okkotsugf]

Chapter 6 as a tumblr post with embedded images because ao3's image system is broken no matter what i do lol . all text is the same

Note: this is not a real chapter, and was meant to be an author’s note at the end of the last (final) chapter but went a little too long, so I added some further lore context to some choices made in this fic. I would not usually do this at all, but in the spirit of Laios, I believe infodumping about my interpretation of monster lore to people who don't care is possibly the most canon-typical thing I can do. 

The real truth is somewhere between the several options laid out by Kabru and Laios himself. 

Number one: Laios IS still a monster, because I subscribe to the “he just shape-shifted back human and doesn't have enough mana to be animalistic” school of thought. The book specifically mentions that the monster can shape-shift. His monster doodle page also debates angular snake heads vs round ones but his final form has a rounded/goofy snake head (see below), which are usually not venomous. 

The past few decades have seen a growing interest in understanding of the origins and structure of morphological diversity. As form, function and ecology are often interrelated, shape diversity can be expected to have functional consequences and/or to reflect the ecology of organisms (e.g., habitat, diet). However, this relationship is not always straightforward as demonstrated by the phenomenon of many‐to‐one mapping of form to function, with different morphologies giving rise to similar levels of performance.”* Source: Segall, M., Cornette, R., Godoy-Diana, R., & Herrel, A. (2020). Exploring the functional meaning of head shape disparity in aquatic snakes. Ecology and evolution, 10(14), 6993–7005. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6380 *Certain citations have been removed from the original text because this is a fanfiction on ao3.

I really struggled with deciding if Laios’ deal is venom or poison. Since Kabru ingests it orally/tastes it, it’s poison, BUT it is also injected in the initial bites. I chose to categorise it as venom as it only occurs specifically when Laios bites down/’injects’. Though debatable (see the discussion on blood at the end), the venom in this case is an adaptive trait taken on when Laios turned human post three-heads. Overall, it is mostly comprised of hemotoxins (blood ouchie) with neurotoxin (nervous system ouchie) capabilities. In other words, for any vampire-esque monster, it makes perfect sense to keep prey alive yet unwilling/unable to run: eg, paralytic poison. For Laios specifically, the poison works as a semi aphrodisiac, in that it amplifies desire specifically. Kabru already kind of wants to eat Laios, and him really wanting to taste Laios creates a representative desire that Laios can eat. K tasting/drinking it makes it have a different effect than when it's injected into the wound (increased desire vs. an agent that breaks down platelets). Again, all monster traits have a function: in this way hunger-prey gets more bloody, sexy-prey gets more sexy.

Backtracking to other physical aspects. Chilchuck is half-right here. Laios’ horns and tail have been fully discarded. Unlike Falin’s more predominantly present sharp teeth (see below), Laios’ similarly positioned fangs only appear and lengthen in preparation to eat or in moments of severe emotional or physical distress. While latent, his regular canines are simply doubled, but Chilchuck doesn’t know enough about tallman anatomy to decode that. In essence, Laios kind of ended up with his wisdom teeth in place, despite not being born with them. He doesn’t have extra teeth, per se.

Laios’ eyes follow the dragon!Falin format of the extreme slits, but they do kind of even out to a regular round pupil when he’s stable + it’s bright daylight, which is why it’s not immediately apparent to non-Kabrus. 

I've definitely exaggerated the Laios/Kabru size difference in this. In part because I find wide men personally attractive but also bc Laios has gained a fair bit of mass post dungeon (also canonical).

Lorewise speaking, Laios’ big strong monster aura is powerful enough to keep every other monster at bay (see below), which is why Kabru is sometimes so primally afraid of him in this fic. HOWEVER. Kabru (half incubus) remaining in his presence for so long has had the effect of cementing him, subconsciously, as an extremely strong monster as well (even though it's his human cluelessness that's the reason). Therefore it’s essentially an equation that goes [strong monster + not part of diet + in vicinity = potential mate/equal]. On some level this is hinted to with Kabru’s intense power kink paralleling it, but tbf it’s also just how I see Kabru. He is not part of the diet due to wasps being generally wayyy too small for a body as large as Laios’ monster.

Why did this become a problem so abruptly? The Kingdom’s taken this long to reach a relatively stable plateau, and much like other biological processes being halted by extreme stress, so has this one. In addition, purely headcanon, but I believe that monster breeding seasons tend to work somewhat opposite to animal seasons. The passage of time becomes significant again, given that as a monster he's “matured” biologically and is entering his very first. sigh. ovulation? rut season? it's NOT omegaverse it is just laios. 

The blood consumption is a side effect of iron deficiency (endless stomach edition) + food curse + mister King not understanding whether he wants to eat kabru or fuck kabru. The blood (see below) is kind of serving the same function as the desires (food) have to the Lion (addicting with an endless appetite). 

Again, Laios isn’t being stupid here: blood is the driving force of life itself. It’s about as close to magical vagueness loopholes as one can get. It’s not entirely right, as Laios still needs to consume desire itself to feel anything other than 40% full, but he’s on a fairly reasonable track. 

Also, goes without saying: Laios drinking that amount of blood from a 100% human would have been very different, in that they would have passed out due to the venom 5 minutes in and promptly have needed to have their stomach pumped before they had a stroke. K is just built different. 

ALSO, kept vague and you can debate this according to your interpretation, but Laios is still very demisexual. he only wants to drink from kabru because kabru is the only sexual option. again, the blood consumption is partially borne from Laios being unable to catalogue sexual feelings from platonic, hence him deciding it'll only work with friends, which may or may not be true.

Thank you for tolerating me! This is the first multi-chapter I've finished! If you've read this far I may as well ask which of the following options I should work on next:

delgaal!yaad/laios Sr. idk these old men can yaoi I'm confident 

lighthearted laios/kabru royalty au prince × best friend moment, where both are kind of petty assholes 

the winged lion in laios’ body/mithrun (please someone do this. need more cakes) 

the winged lion in laios’ body/kabru/fake mithrun 

dungeon lord marcille/regular falin

the one unhinged dream i had after first finishing the manga that’d be a really risky psychological horror longform that starts with comphet

[obetrolncocktails]

In regards to this supposed theory about WAYL...

So I wrote parts of a fic based on Waited All Your Life with Jake in a hospital a month or two ago...so if you want ouchie, here's a snippet.

Warnings: Hospitals, sickness, sadness, anxiety.

Josh would simply refuse to exist without Jake. Listening to the whirring and beeping of the machines above his brother’s head was becoming nauseating. 

“Honey, why don’t you take a break, maybe grab some coffee?” Karen, the twins’ mother suggested. “Jake is fine. No need to tie yourself up in knots right now.” Josh shook his head, waving his mother off. 

“No, I’m fine,” He said, ruffling his hair, which had gone one-too-many days without washing. Josh’s eyes were ringed with dark circles, and his skin had grown pallid from worrisome days of having no appetite. 

“No, you’re not,” Jake said, his raspy voice croaking softly, but with great effort. “You reek.” Josh’s lips curled upward with a mischievous grin. 

“You’re lucky I don’t have my armpit in your face,” He warned, standing up from the hospital recliner. 

“That would surely stop me from breathing,” Jake retorted morbidly. Josh was definitely unenthused. 

“Son,” Kelly said to Josh, stepping in front of the hospital bed, looping his hands around the handles at the foot of the frame. “Go shower and get something to eat. Jake is stable right now. I promise we will call you if there’s any update.”

“But,” Josh argued, crossing his arms as he looked down at his brother. 

“Go,” Jake said, nodding upward toward the door of the hospital room. “I’m okay.”

“Okay, but please keep me updated,” Josh pleaded with his parents. “Where’s Jita?” He asked. 

“She went home a while ago. We told her the same thing we’re telling you. You can’t be there for Jake if you can’t take care of yourself, honey,” Karen said, stepping over to rub Josh’s back. 

“Okay,” Josh resigned, stepping toward the door. “I won’t be gone long, Jake.” He looked at his brother with deep concern, and he wasn’t wrong to do so. Jake had been diagnosed with ‘Risk Class IV pneumonia,” and his oxygen saturation levels weren’t increasing as quickly as the doctors had wanted. Jake was wheezy, and it was obvious to everyone in the room how difficult it was for him to breathe evenly. He was in stable condition, but for how long was anyone’s guess. His hands were poked with several IV leads, and his face was pale in pallor, which was frightening for Josh to see. Growing up, he couldn’t remember a time when he and Jake had ever been this seriously ill. Jake had broken his arm when he was younger, and it required surgery, but sickness was something new for Josh. He’d never spent too much time worrying about it, but now with his brother sick in a hospital bed with something far more serious than anything he’d ever experienced, Josh began to let his mind wander to the darker, intruding thoughts. The drive home consisted of Josh tapping nervously on the steering wheel, unable to focus. When he arrived at the red light where he needed to turn left, he decided to continue straight, heading for Jake’s house. He needed to be with Jita. She understood; being Jake’s other closest loved one, she would understand the weight that he bore on his shoulders. He also knew that she’d be the last to judge his appearance.

[callieponders]

Okay. So. The Candy Jams episode, Girl Fest. I have so many thoughts on it, good and bad. This is gonna be another long thoughts post, so let's get into it. (Under the read more because this is Really Long)

On principle there isn't a bad message here, in fact, to this day it still has relevancy. Plenty of female singers playing faux feminist when they are more than willing to put other women that work alongside them down in order to raise themselves up, rather than trying to cultivate a good community, especially in regards to younger fans. This is definitely not new, same in regards to male singers that promote toxic masculinity to their own audiences.

My issues stem from, of course, the usual "errrrm, isn't it funny how we act uncertain if Laney is a GIRLLLLL, lawl!" ass humor. Like god that shit is garbage I'm glad we mostly phased that type of shit out. Yuck.

Not just that, of course, that's more of a Grojband, "this is from the real early 2010's" issue in general. I also take issue with the approach it takes touching upon the whole "this idol can't actually be trusted" thing. I understand it's watered down to be a little easier to understand, babies first feminism and all, as well as it being a little more niche in the addition that it's someone proclaiming to be all punk rock while in reality being a poser. That isn't a problem in theory, but in practice, I definitely think it came out clunky...

Which message wise, is a little rough. However, it actually comes off as a much more interesting character read of one of the most important characters, Laney, and even TRINA to an extent.

To understand what I mean, we gotta go down the list of things we find out about Candy Jams first. Keep in mind she is promoted to be this 16 year old (assuming she's the same age as the other older teenagers in the show bc it'd be weird if not since she dated nick) punk chick who doesn't take crap from anyone, acting condescending towards the male members of Grojband, and even going as far as to tell Trina she needs to be in charge of her own feelings— "You should be the voice of your own soul, girl!"

Candy Jams appears calm and collected about Nick. She even says she broke things off with him for making her too soft. This is shown not to be the case almost immediately, as while they're not dating, she clearly still has an infatuation for him.

Secondly, it's revealed she's very enthusiastic about clothes. I know, what a revelation, but keep in mind being fashion crazy is often a stereotype used negatively against women as a means of calling them shallow.

Her lyrics are written by her manager, who is an adult male (the adult part really isn't important unfortunately, because I feel like it should've been).

Finally, she says that lyrics with harder words in them make her head hurt (she calls it brain ouchie btw), which is... I guess it's calling her stupid? Not as smart and a thinker that she says she is? I mean, common thing to say to indicate a character is dense, but it just feels weird to tack on. I guess it enhances the fact she doesn't write her own lyrics since she says the last song he wrote had too many hard words for her to sing.

Alright, so, we went down the list... now, there is like... so much to unpack. First off, I don't dislike the ideas here, I definitely don't, because all these things show hypocrisy in Candy Jams branding (except maybe 4 that might just be like, her being a teenager still learning things lmao). It's a pretty classic "don't meet your heroes" situation for Laney, who looked up to her, now feeling shattered because she did not live up to expectation. However, what kills it for me is the already present misogyny shown in Grojband consistently.

Laney is misgendered for comedy constantly because she doesn't present herself as traditionally feminine, nor acts traditionally feminine. Like. It kind of bitters the damn message if you go "respect women in rock, unless it's funny, then don't" in the episode about... recognizing female talent in the rock scene and criticizing the posers sending bad faith messages to their younger audience.

However, despite all this, this episode is REALLY good to dig into Laney's character, and additionally, Trina's, as they both are fans of Candy Jams.

Laney herself is shown to be infatuated with Corey, not to the extent Trina is with Nick, but regardless of that she holds a massive spark for him. We can often see it in her face how she feels about Corey, finding herself at a loss of words when he gets as much as near her at times. She's also into extremely hyper-feminine things, decorating her room with frills and being into things that she would otherwise roll her eyes at— in secret.

So, in other words... she's a poser. She does the exact same things that Candy Jams does, if not being worse for doing it, as she calls Candy Jams out for her behaviors while doing the exact same thing to an even YOUNGER audience. Let's not forget that Grojband's two groupies are young, elementary school aged girls. Laney is just as much an influence to them as Candy Jams is.

Now, am I saying exactly that she's a poser? Not really, no, but you get what I'm saying in pointing out the fact she has far more in common with Candy Jams than she would be comfortable with. It's most certainly due to internalized misogyny at that, especially in a scene that doesn't recognize or respect female voices to begin with unless they denounce anything feminine, either about themselves or other women— Corey himself had to be shown that "lady rock" is in fact, legit.

Keep in mind this is during the early 2010's, so it isn't the same situation now as then exactly, and I'm definitely not saying critique towards traditionally feminine culture isn't valid. It ABSOLUTELY is, but this isn't about criticizing it, Candy Jams AND Laney both outright hide the parts of themselves that enjoy it. Candy Jams because she's an industry plant, and Laney because of her shame in indulging in it at all. Maybe Laney saw herself in Candy Jams a little too much, and was deeply ashamed of what she saw, due to previously having projected herself onto Candy Jams's exterior persona.

Now, where does Trina come into play? Well, similar to Laney, she hides parts of herself that are more vulnerable to others, parts she is ashamed of. She's an intellectual, both with math, literature, and writing. Her being adept with writing is, admittedly, if you count her diary being so well written it can be used as lyrics for songs that in universe, are GREATLY well received. Unfortunately, due to nerd culture being shown as undesirable, ESPECIALLY for/towards women, she only indulges in academic pursuits covertly as an entirely different persona. Additionally, she changed her name just to fit her new mean girl, cute and popular chick lifestyle, and with it her kindness.

Like Laney, she too saw herself in Candy Jams, specifically in her songs. She found herself spoken to in regards to her love for Nick Mallory in one of her songs (and Laney likely did as well), and was equally upset when Candy Jams revealed it WAS about Nick. It made her feel like she didn't own her own feelings, which is something that is far more devastating for Trina than you'd think on a base level alone. She HAS to be in control of her own feelings, she has literally hand carved herself into the person she is today by regulating exactly what she feels, how she conducts herself, and who she hangs out with.

Makes you wonder how she'd feel if she knew that Corey was using her feelings to make his songs.

All in all, though, this episode is pretty surface level and not even the worst I've seen, it's definitely one of the more interesting Grojband episodes. For a feminist message? It somewhat does it's job, especially for 2013. I, for one, think it does an even better job at looking into the thoughts and feelings of the two most important female characters of the show.

[pbandjesse]

I don't know why but I felt absolutely horrible for most of today. It honestly scares me. Like I just want everything to be okay in my body. I want the person I'm growing to be okay. But I feel horrible so I am also just scared. We go to the doctor tomorrow so hopefully they can give me some answers or comfort?

Most of today was still good. I tried to push through how bad I felt to enjoy my day with James.

I didn't sleep good. I almost threw up a few times last night and hurt my throat. When James got back they tried to take care of me but I was just really upset. It wasn't fun.

I woke up a lot. And when I woke up this morning I just did not feel good. I would get up and took a shower and tried to feel better.

I really liked my outfit. James would come lay with me for a little bit. Helped me chose shoes and I chose these orange loafers because I need to break them in and we had a few minutes of laughing and being silly trying to get them on my feet. They actually would be really comfortable but would cause a blister on my left foot. Ouchie.

We decided we would go to breakfast at a pancake house we haven't ever been too. And then we would go to the zoo. Then errands. And even though it was a little rainy and drizzly it would actually be a really nice time.

The pancake house has terrible vibes. It was very classy formerly a club? The layout was very bad. But the food was actually really good. James got a coconut waffle and I got avocado toast. My only bad thing was the soda was a bottle and not a fountain soda but I lived. And I really enjoyed my breakfast.

We were overhearing the conversation next to us. About a tattoo shop and James didn't say anything until we left but one of them was a football player??? Neat!

After brunch we drove over to the zoo. And I'm so glad we went today. We had umbrellas but we barely needed them. The drizzle was pleasent. And we got to see so many amazing behaviors from the animals!

We were mainly there to see the otter, Nora, before she moved to Virginia. But we saw so many other great things.

We started with the penguins. The volunteer over there chatted to us about the BMI and how he wants to donate some neat stuff he has. And then we meet inside the penguin building and one of the penguins was in the water and I was running back and forth with him. It was great.

The flamingos were fighting?? Just yelling at eachother. So many animals were out and about and it was awesome.

At the monkey house we got to see so many chimps up close. And at one point they all yelled and the two babies went to their mom's to breast feed?? It was so special to see that.

We were surprised how many squirrels were in the outside lemer enclosures eating their food and the lemers looked so concerned.

When we did finally make it over to the otters we had to run back and forth to catch them but finally one of them swam up to the tank and twisted around and it was an amazing encounter. Just so wonderful. I felt really lucky. And I was excited that James got to see them. They love the otters.

I was losing a little steam. But I held it together. My stomach was not feeling good but I was still having fun.

I liked seeing the snakes and frogs and bats. We went to look at the goats and pigs and alpacas. And then we decided that we had seen just about everything and headed out.

The walk out was a little hard on me because it is uphill. And the rain had picked up. But James held an umbrella over me and called me a princess. I love them so much.

We got out of there after stopping at the gift shop. Didn't get anything. But we did stop at the big sign outside when another couple asked us to take a picture and they took ours. It was very sweet.

Another couple asked us if it was a good time in the parking lot and we told them to make sure they go see the otters. And then we were off again.

My feet hurt very bad. I kept my shoes off in the car. We had made a pretty solid list for target. And when we got there we did a pretty good job just sticking to that list. Some toiletries. Some food. Some hangers for James's hats. I was starting to not be able to hold it together anymore. My stomach isn't hurt to much. It was time to go home.

When we got back here we brought everything inside and I came upstairs to lay down. James would bring me some candy. But soon I was fast asleep.

I woke up not feeling much better. Eating dinner would help a little. But I was just absolutely feeling bad today. James would hold me and try their best to help. I would get very upset with them later when I was asking for something and they weren't understanding and then I felt really bad for getting so mad.

I would take a bath. And it helped a little bit I still don't feel good. I really hope tomorrow they can give me something or at least reassure me that I just have to power through.

I'm going to go brush my teeth and try and sip water. And hopefully fall asleep easy.

My appointment is first thing in the morning. I am not going to lie. I'm very scared that something is wrong. But I really hope that it's a positive appointment. Send me good thoughts. I love you all. Good night!

[feralkwe]

FOR THE FANFIC ASKS

23. fics you wanted to write but didn’t

and

15. something you learned this year

OH AND ALSO GIVE US YOUR FAVE FIC YOU'VE WRITTEN THIS YEAR PLS AND THANK

23. oh so many! i am chasing a fic with kit and estinien having some real talk while doing jock things. i know they get on, i know he would really really be able to dig into her in a way she needs and just be the best bro about it.

i've had an itch to do a fic from ryne's pov, but doing that is gonna require me to ng+ a good portion of some things that i'm unwilling to commit time to right now.

and...the sheer amount of ascian on ascian violence i want to write. i turned over a couple for elidibus week and just did not manage to do it this year (seriously i'm outside the window pawing the glass on this event).

my canon reset kinda threw that all into a loop lmao.

15. i have (mostly) learned to embrace my inner yolo. idk why i am reserved about ffxiv in ways i never was about my dragon age fic. i was explaining my da canon to someone the other day and, man it's so fucking unhinged. they pointed out i really could benefit by applying that to my xiv stuff. i'm... getting there lol.

GLADLY I WILL SHARE: IT'S A TWO-PARTER.

selfish, which was a prompt from @yamisnuffles where kit doesn't let themis go die after pandae, and that finally put the truth in my head that, well actually, kit really, really truly wants elidibus. her heart was never gonna let go of him, no matter how hard i tried to shoehorn it back on the course of what i was working with at the time. idk if that's what yami intended me to work out by giving me this prompt, but it's her fault. so i backed up and wrote

i knew you were trouble when you walked in, because FUCK IT. she's gonna fuck that ascian in shb and fall in love with him and it's going to ruin her life and everyone is gonna have to just watch me melt down over it. it has some of my favorite passages i've ever written in it. i've learned an awful lot about kit through it, and have had a ton of fun and some big ouchie moments too!

thanks for the ask!

[blackjackkent]

OK, back to Hector adventures. Everyone seemed to like the ouchie drabble from yesterday. <3 Hector is fundamentally, after that conversation, in a pretty rough place emotionally, so what better person to talk to than Lae'zel, who is ALSO in a pretty rough place emotionally.

"It is done. There is no going back. As long as the Undying Queen reigns, I am never to soar unbound over the Astral Sea, never to cross the One in the Void."

Her voice is low and hoarse and very tightly controlled. "As it should be. Better a short life built on truth than immortality woven of lies. Better to unite the githyanki under a prince who would free their minds and honor their bodies."

A pause. Her eyes flick away from him into the middle distance with a sudden flash of frustration. "So why do I feel so bitter?"

Hector is silent for a moment or two, considering. There is some relief, he feels, in considering Lae'zel's struggle rather than his own. And he would help her, if he can. But she is complex - one of the most complex people he has ever known.

[INSIGHT] Consider Lae'zel's past and present. What is the true source of her resentment?

Narrator: Vlaakith has upended Lae'zel's whole existence. Everything she knew to be true, every plan and aspiration she ever held, has been painfully ripped away. Lae'zel's bitterness is born of sadness. She is mourning the loss of the person she once was, and can never be again.

Hector draws a slow breath and lets it out. A sad, rueful smile touches his lips. Who would have thought, when we met, that I would see so much of myself in you?

He understands that feeling all too well. He has been feeling it very strongly himself of late - the knowledge that he has been changed fundamentally by this journey and will never be able to go back to the simple life of books and faith that once consumed him. He is a traveler in dark places now, which will be darker still when Karlach is gone...

"You're grieving the future you'll never have," he says gently. "Vlaakith took everything from you."

Lae'zel gives him a look of mild surprise, her head cocking a little to one side. "How well you've come to know me," she murmurs thoughtfully. A pause, and then her shoulders square, her back straightening. Her eyes are fixed on him, and he feels a flash of warmth as he realizes that after so many months of her considering herself above him... she takes strength from his presence now.

"But in truth," she goes on firmly, "she didn't take everything. I have what I have gathered for myself. I'm moored to a new regent, a new land, and new allies. Vlaakith cannot unmake she who no longer exists."

Her fists clench at her sides. "And so from the old battle cries is birthed another: Ch'mar zal'a Orpheus. Mha stil'na forjun inyeri! Orpheus's will above all! May the Comet blaze my path forward!"

Hector raises one eyebrow with a slight frown. Lae'zel, he has come to realize, is a woman who identifies herself by a place in a hierarchy; for all the dominant aspects of her personality, she feels she needs a leader to follow. Vlaakith was a false god, but there is no certainty that Orpheus is anything better. They know nothing of him at present - except that he is not Vlaakith.

"You've been quick to pledge yourself to Orpheus's cause," he says carefully. "What about your own needs and wants?"

"Orpheus's freedom *is* my want and my need," she snaps back. "To deny his freedom would be to deny my own." Perhaps he is imagining it, but he thinks he sees a flicker of uncertainty, quickly suppressed. "There will come a time when I can think about myself beyond the lich queen who enslaves the githyanki and the prince who would liberate them. But that time won't come until the Prince of the Comet flies again."

Hector nods slowly. As with so many things lately - these aren't decisions that he can make for her. But he will be keeping an eye on this new loyalty of hers, because he feels very certain that it would not be hard for her capacity for loyalty to be taken advantage of again.

[nephilimeq]

Frosthawk Fic Recommendations

@delyth88 you asked for some fic recommendations, so here we go!

I had to pick through my bookmarks to find the ones that would be good for someone just starting out with the ship, but I think these are some good ones that aren’t too traumatic (LOL, there’s a lot of dark ones out there).

The “By Your Side” Series I particularly enjoy because of how it shows the similar temperaments of the two of them and how their personalities balance each other out. It’s much lighter than most of the fics that exist for this ship.

I’m Not Heartless gets to me every damn time. Just under 30k words and really gets into the characters and their psychologies. It’s one that I have read several times, now, and love going back to.

“Converge” by Hephy -- This one is rated E for eventual sex, but the lead up is phenomenal. It’s genuinely in character and goes from enemies to reluctant allies to friends to lovers. Highly recommend it.

If you want something amazingly in character, full of angst and heartache, dark, and has some of the best sex scenes I have ever read in my entire life...then “The Ouchy Verse” Series is for you. It’s epic-long, but split up into shorter fics. (it’s still not finished, but worth reading and re-reading! they are in the process of writing more for it) [side note: Desade and Eviscera are the best at writing for these two, read them!]

...and now I am going to shamelessly plug one of my own fics. I just wrote it last week and I am really happy with it. It’s called I Told the Stars. It’s a light canon-divergent fic that I wrote that is supposed to be therapeutic for our two most angst-filled characters. 

Now, just a warning: there are a lot of dark fics for these two. I have read most of them -- and they will mess with your head if you’re not into that sort of thing. I am working on writing fics for them that showcases the more positive aspects of the ship and not the non-consenting aspects that so many others focus on. The ones I have recommended are the ones that I go back to the most.

I would advise reading the first two that I recommended...and then using your best judgment to figure out how to read the rest.

[abominationvault]

Session 56: Sat 2 Nov 2024

Well it’s been a few weeks, what did we do last time? *re-reads notes* A battle with a seugathi and a destrachan? I’m pretty sure we won… Sprocket has opened another Teleportation circle, Skabb found a Wand of Status, and for my own information, Nadia has made some bombs. Greater Redpitch ones, too! We went to have a kip at Hotel Mitflit, and can have all our HP back.

Discussion about Skabb’s home-made stew and who might chance trying it. The phrase “slice of urine” is spoken; fortunately I miss the context. Hartvig is feeling better, so our cleric (“I’M NOT A FUCKING CLERIC”) is good to go. Let’s Dungeon some Dra- I mean, Find some Paths!

Jorg’ath is nominated to do the recap: There was a guy who was a worm, and he had a notebook, and we were heroes! And the lizard suplexed something into a hole, I miss the rest. He gets a Hero Point for the recap. Skabb drew an arrow on the map pointing us toward the door we chose last week, so we charge on through.

Jorg’ath takes the lead. This corridor looks like it’s seen a lot of use; there is sand in here from the floor of the arena. He gets down and wiggles on his belly to remove any lice. (There weren’t any; Skabb already checked him for snackables.)

Skabb thinks Nadia should shoot Jorg’ath, but only with a tangle-bag. (Again, I missed the context.) Jorg’ath: “You leave my dangle-bag out of this.” He wins a Hero Point.

Skabb makes a Perception check: dirty 20. There is no pattern in the sand, but it looks as though it’s been trailed around the corner to the west. She wants to make a Nature check to see if she knows what kind of beasties might live here: Green 32! She isn’t sure. There are too many tracks; some look bipedal, and others look left by things with no legs at all, and some like widely-spaced circular holes. Something many-legged. Giant spider, or Drider maybe. (Hartvig: “So not only are we fighting giant spiders, but also Wizards of the Coasts’ IP lawyers?”) Jafaki, perhaps...?

Jorg’ath knocks on the door to the south. No response. He wants to kick the door in: Athletics check 33. “I am so athletic!” There are two big things in there…

He sees something that might be Jafaki. Books, glass bottles, on shelves. Dissected remains of creatures, a severed morlock head, still alive and screaming. Luna and Skabb use their readied attacks. Luna does damage, Skabb’s sling-bullet bounces off the not-a-drider.

It shoots a fireball at us. Luna: “Stop drop and roll!” We make Reflex saves; Luna and Nadia take half damage, Skabb, Sprocket and Hartvig fail hard enough to take double-damage. Sprocket is vulnerable to fire damage, so he takes four extra for a total of 52, ouchies.

Then something else gets a go on us. Because Jorg’ath is extra-medium, is he big enough to block the attack - no, no he’s not. Grabby makes a belated save against the fireball, and ends up with 'one tasty hit point' left. What about her goblin-dog? He’s a coward so he’s at the back and can’t be killed unless Skabb is.

Jorg’ath makes a Will save, DC 28 - he rolls a 27. “Ah, what?!” He Hero Points for worse and is Confused. That was an attack from Jafaki, it turns out…

Initiative!

Sprocket goes first. He casts Haste on Jorg’ath, and has Augustus cast Shield.

Hartvig next. He looks at his friends that he likes, and tries to see which one looks the grossest; who has the worst injuries? It’s Skabb, so he does a big Heal on her. Resentfully. 24, plus 14 HP back for her! He uses his last action to stride confidently around the corner so if there’s another fireball he won’t get roasted. “You’re doing a great job, well done,” he calls to us as he disappears from view.

Confused Jorg’ath rolls a d6 - odds he goes to us to attack, evens to the baddies: 2! He does a big gozz on the Dride- er, spider elf thing. It saves and takes half damage. He has an action left. “Let’s smack it real hard.” 20 to hit and it’s flat-footed! He makes another Will save - 17, no. Still Confused.

It’s Jafaki’s turn I think. He casts Phantasmal Killer on Nadia - she crit fails her save and must make a roll to see if she dies right there on the spot. Wait! Hero Point! Still a fail but not a crit, so ONLY 8d6 mental damage and she is Frightened 2. Inspired by our wafty little not-cleric, Jafaki disappears around a corner. Real nice.

Luna is up next. She does her traditional hide-and-shoot combo for a hit with a 32 against the not-drider, which is flat-footed so she gets her Sneak Attack damage as well. She makes an Occultism check on the thing but only gets a 5. We have seen one before though, so she knows what it is. And that it’s big and ugly and she doesn’t like it. 24 hits again, and then she ducks bravely around a corner.

Skabb casts Sudden Bolt on the Drider - it makes a Reflex save, green 35. She uses her last action to give Grabby two, and Grabby skedaddles up next to Hartvig to bosh a potion.

The not-drider goes next. We try to convince it to play cats cradle with itself, or throw healing potions at us, but the DM is not convinced. How about a full 3-action apology? It throws an acid arrow at Augustus instead, and hits him for 24 damage, and 5 persistent. Sprocket: “Well it’s going to be a short game for me.” Then it attacks Jorg’ath, who is conveniently standing right there. Green 33 for 18 slashing. “I'd like to throw this out there: that’s really rude.” It’s a crit, so Jorgy takes 53 damage - on the plus side he can roll a flat check to recover from the Confusion. 12! Success!

Nadia, Frightened 2 and hands shaking, raises Alkonost and uses one of her Greater Redpitch bombs on the not-drider. 31 hits for 3 fire damage, 3 piercing damage, and 11 persistent fire damage! She shoots with Bluebird, misses, and that’s her turn. She reduces her Frightened condition by 1.

Sprocket Summons the Moss Sloth! We all start chanting. Using his magical sloth abilities, Randy can walk on walls and ceilings as if they were difficult terrain, smelling rancid as he does so. He climbs up to the drider and really slowly reaches out and does a wooden claw attack. It misses; Randy falls asleep. Augustus has nothing in his inventory that will help, so he goes around a corner and looks a little worse for wear as a free action.

The DM shows us Jafaki:

Hartvig is up: he pops out from his side corridor and gives Jorgy a Heal. 44HP back! And with that Jorg’ath is up, and no longer Confused. He eyes the drider up - how is he looking? Perception check 24. It looks badly injured. Jorgy would like to add to it please. A few slashes with the greatsword and howdydoodis! He sticks the sword into the drider’s belly and stirs until its insides fall out like porridge. He strolls over to quote “twat Jafaki around a bit”, but misses.

Jafaki attacks him with a rapier, critting with a 39 for 14 plus 24 damage. The rapier is venomed, it turns out, because Jorg'ath knocked on the door before booting it open, alerting Jafaki to our presence. (Hartvig: “… I just MADE those hit points!”) Fortitude save for Jorgy: 28. “Ha! Take your venom and stick it up your…” Well, that was attack #1. Jafaki bites him but misses. Jorg’ath is quite hard to get purchase on, it turns out. Rapier attack, and that misses as well.

Luna is next, but is AFK (snoozing) so Sprocket wakes her up. She sets about Jafaki with her own rapier and hits, then stops and has a think. Occultism 10. "Oh well. Stab!" She misses. (Jafaki counts as flanked going forward, as he’s cornered.)

Skabbins. Can she see Jafaki? Yes. She shouts at Jorg’ath to watch out, not that he can move. She casts Lightning Bolt anyway, even though he’s in the firing line. The DM rules that it will miss him since he’s not directly in line, and then Jafaki crit-saves against the spell anyway and takes no damage. Skabb is annoyed.

Nadia comes in to the room, and spots the bombs on Jafaki's belt in glass vials. Would it be a feat to make a called shot on one of those...? Yes, it would sadly, and she doesn't have it. So with nothing else she can do, shoots at Jafaki and misses. But! She’s now no longer frightened!

Randy crawls slowly across the wall - and makes a ranged strike at Jafaki with some fruit he has… expelled. He crits! 7 bludgeoning plus 6 crit damage. It was a nectarine, slightly rotten. The stone goes into one of Jafaki’s eyes. Jafaki is suitably disgusted. Randy does it again, and crits again! 5 bludgeoning and 12 critical damage. He smiles. It turns out Jafaki is resistant to bludgeoning damage, so the DM has to give him back 10 hit points. Sprocket, growling: “I will not soon forget this.” (Augustus has de-manifested, I think, but I’m not sure why.)

Hartvig. “… Hartvig indeed. You may well say. Because you are correct.” He waffles for a bit longer, and then stops for a think. "The dolly is nearly dead, right?" Yes. He charges in and Heals Jorg’ath for 28HP, presumably while receiving a Look from Sprocket.

Jorg’ath would like to do Intimidating Strike, in hopes of not only wounding Jafaki but also shattering his confidence. 28 hits for 17 slashing damage and 4 something else, but he is immune to mental effects and is therefore not Frightened. Jorgy goes for a cuddle - 21 Athletics which Jafaki beats by 1 and wafts over away from him.

Jafaki throws a bottled lightning at Jorg’ath - 24 misses! Which means he still takes the splash damage, as does everyone within 20 feet. Since that was a miss, he goes for the Cloracle (Cloracle! We all love that, that’s staying) and crits. Hartvig is down… but he gets a posthumous Hero Point for healing everyone else but himself. “Yay! I want to be buried with it!”

Luna next. There’s nowhere for her to hide in here. “I’m just gonna shoot it.” She misses all her attacks…

Skabbins is next. Blazing Dive! Jorg'ath is most proud. Jafaki crit-saves against her attack, for his third crit-save against her. It's starting to feel personal now. He does take the 6 additional damage from the attack, however. She bites with her Grill of Abomination Bane and hits - and Jafaki, it turns out, is an Abomination! Can she take a worm-type creature out of her pocket and eat it slowly in front of him? she can, and she does.

Nadia shoots a redpitch bomb at Jafaki and hits for 8 piercing, 2 fire, and 6 persistent fire, and then hits with bluebird as well. She gets a Hero Point for not running away! (This game obviously doesn't have Poor-Decision Points.)

Randy the Moss Sloth crawls along the ceiling above Nads’ head, showering her with what she hopes is only dandruff, and bolts another rotten nectarine at Jafaki but it misses. Sprocket then summons a Soul-Bound Doll to Heal Hartvig with, giving him back (I think) 11 hit points.

Hartvig would have made a death save, but now he doesn’t have to! He is back - but wounded. (Sprocket: “SozRoflLol.”) Hartvig could heal himself, or he could throw all the needles at Jafaki? (Jorg’ath: “Spoil yourself!”) He decides on Spiritual Armament instead, swinging it at Jafaki with a 24, which misses. He still has an action, so if he Sustains the spell, he can attack with it again. 9 is also a miss.

Right Jorg’ath, what you got? (He puts his hand on Hartvig’s shoulder. “You’ll do some damage one day.” Hartvig gives a big shaky sigh.) Jorgy hits Jafaki for a bunch of damage, then a miss. “At least I didn’t drop it.”

Jafaki takes 6 persistent fire damage at the top of his turn, then attacks Jorg’ath with a 29 rapier attack, and forces a Fortitude save - Jorg’y crits. He’s going to stab him again. “I wish he wouldn’t.” 28 hits for 15 damage and another save - Jorgy fails, and is envenomed and Stupefied 1. Jafaki wants to have a third attack - 19 misses, luckily.

Luna is AFK, so Sprocket has her jaunt over to flank Jafaki and stab him with her rapier. 27 hits for 7 piercing, then 17 misses. Wait - Howdy doody? Howdy doody!!! She plunges her rapier into the smuggest bit of Jafaki, up to the hilt, and stirs. The bits of jelly fall out into Skabb’s mouth.

Combat over, Nadia goes for Jafaki's unused bombs and gets a bottled lightning and an acid flask, while Skabb rummages for potion ingredients. Randy disappears; chorus of “Bye Randy”.

Skabb finds a +1 rapier, which she gives to Luna, a Wand of Gentle Repose, a wand of second level magic missi- er, whatever the non-Wizards one is called. Force Barrage, that’s it. He also had a set of keys and some Expanded Alchemist’s Tools.

The Drider had a +1 Composite longbow, 20 arrows, and a glaive; we snaffle all the useful stuff.

Jorg’ath approaches the screaming morlock head and tries to smother it, but it’s being kept alive by the machinery. Hartvig makes an Occultism check - 23. He manages to disconnect the morlock. The head dies, and the machinery is broken. He spits in it for good measure. He looks at the notes next to the head - it was destined to become a flesh golem and would have hunted us throughout the whole dungeon if he hadn’t put a stop to it.

We find all the pieces for an Expanded Alchemists lab, some expanded healers tools and a superb toolkit? I think? 2 vials of anti plague, a crafter’s eyepiece, and something else. (Nadia discovers she already has an expanded alchemists tool kit in her backpack, and asks the newly-resummoned Augustus if he minds carrying the new ones. He sighs.)

Jorg’ath hacks Jafaki’s head off so we can take it back to Sprocket’s new Mummy-Daddy, AKA. Chuffcum. (Mummy, because... undead, bandages, you get it.) We toddle off, avoiding the other door for now as we think that might be where we left the enormous monster that time we didn’t have Sprocket and Luna with us.

We do some healing before we go, as Skabb doesn’t trust Chuffcum and wants to go prepared for a fight if need be. She heals Jorg’ath, Hartvig, and Sprocket, and Jorg’ath heals Nadia. Hartvig heals Nadia and Jorg’ath again, and Skabb slaps some mud on Luna before she realises what’s happening. To Chuffcum!

The DM zips us to Chuffcum’s cupboard. We find him packing up his papers; he is off to Assyrium. (sp?) Were we successful, Chuffcum asks? Jorg’ath drops Jafaki’s head on his paperwork; he is delighted. He draws us a map of the level we’re on, including all secret doors, and how to disable a trap we’ve already disabled with our squishy bodies. The DM tries to disable the fog of war on Roll20, and ends up obscuring all of the map except the room we’re in. “Hmmm.” He tries again, and WE SEE ALL. Including monsters! The piece of paper he’s written it on also includes the spell Freedom of Movement for anyone capable of learning it. Skabb is initially put off by all the words, and then remembers she can just feed the parchment to Grabby Cat.

Chuffcum looks at Sprocket, and sets about teaching him the spell Create Undead. OoooOOoooOO! We can feed Augie with this, by animating already-dead creatures, thereby making them into something he can eat.

Mummy-Daddy wishes us the best and leaves to spend his days performing various acts of evil. Sprocket says he will come and visit. (Skabb seems befuddled; she is having an internal conversation with herself about trusting people.)

Jorg’ath wants to kill the big thing first because it’s SO FAR to walk to the little monsters. He is overruled and asks to be zipped back to the pub so it’s not as far to walk. Nadia immediately goes to the bar for wine, and we call it there.

[who-is-shades]

raz dnd 43

parsleys trying to shop in this small town, looking for ingredients! zen goes with :3 backseat cooking! teya's going to a very small library and wheatley follows. androids just chilling. senna and papyrus just walk around.

not a lot of books here. one of sunnies books is here lol its very dusty. wheatley dusts it off. teya presti's it :3 wheatley is looking for a recipe book? "thinking of helping parsley?" "No." pfffft. foraging manual cool.

leather bound book? wheatley looks inside! homemade recipes :3 nothing of interest for teya sadly. some books are supporting a table lol.

parsley buying spices nice. bulk barn need seperate storage containers. zen says he should get some garlic xD parsley shoots him a look. the girls are fighting~ DIY italian herb mix pog. zen seens some parsley herb and points it out lol. deep long suffering sigh XD zen stop judging his spice choices!

parsley says hes doing something with meat. just meat? more judging with zen honestly im with him. wheres the starch? teya uses sending and says theres no porn here lol. parsley tells zen that XD

wheatley goes to look for senna lol and teya looks for parsley. papyrus just telling his cool tales as they head back toward android. teya looks at parsley and goes 'fucking wild right?' wild indeed says zen xD more spice arguing XD they swear to god and robogod shows up for a second and asks to not be included in this lol.

wheatley hears teya call zen soup boy xD lets go soup boy!

senna and papyrus are having an indepth convo about shoes xD he makes a lame pun about shoe soles and senna groans and says he takes after his brother lol.

as we walk off, it starts to get very hot. whyyy is it hot. not so many plants, all dried up. parsley is thinking its very easy to set a fire lol. god its such a dry heat ouch. the ground is black and the cracks are glowing. parsley dares teya to stick her hand in it. NO DONT DO THAT. teya sticks her skeletons hand in there. theres a jet of intense heat and scorches her hand ouchie.

lets never come here again please xD senna casts ray of frost and it dissipates very fast. well shit. the ground shakes beneath zen so he makes us stop moving and a BIG thing of fire pops up. oh no. paths gone. parsley lost his eyelashes lol. zen shows him in a mirror ohno. senna offers to buy him a spa day when this is over XD

zen asks how were handling the heat. teya and parsley are drenched in sweat, sennas fine :3 he searches in his token and gives them a potion to help them bear the heat. wheatley runs past them and they feel a blast of hot air lol. zen also gives us some water.

we notice a large hill? and a cave! in we go! we hear a gigantic roar and behind us is a fully grown red dragon. IN THE CAVE NOW GOGOGO! wheatley keeps lagging behind? parsley tries to grab him but remembers hes very hot and yells at android to grab him. just picks him up and books it.

the dragon blasts fire breathe at us! teya and papyrus get hit pretty bad jesus. the rest barely avoid it. some of papyrus armor melted too F. he heals teya quick! wheatleys fans are spinning really fast. this cave is brutally hot wtf.

sennas feeling the heat now oof. android tries to figure out whats wrong with wheatley. hes loopy lol. can we put wheatley in the token to cool him down? parsley comments he wanted to put android in the token lol. teya tries to cast a spell she doesnt know?! ohno. she tried to summon a mansion but fucked it up and its small and broken down.

parsley groans and tries to make the door bigger? my guy? he notices the inside smells like mold ewww. as soon as parsley tries to make it bigger it retaliates and he has to book it so he doesnt disappear with it wtf. teya is exhausting herself doing this. its even worse a nat 1. its a mouse hole.

robogod has an idea! rouge aint doing so well either lol. android looks around and says somethings strange. something about the walls? senna notices the cracks arent jagged. they flow in smoothe lines?

its ready! zen pulls out a suit? like a hazmat or mr freeze?! some of the tubes have to go through him. portable coolant xD parsley asks zen if theres anymore of the potion for rouge. of course! and one for senna so she feels normal lol. wheatley holds her hand lol.

androids trying to be nice lol holy shit. senna checks on papyrus. into the cave! stop getting hotter you asshole cave. one of the smoothe cracks glows and bursts into fire in front of everyone. wheatley instincly yanks senna behind him and gets a headpat lol. the fire is very bright and takes form! fire elementals!

we kill them nice yay! papyrus does his classic victory pose. keep moving its cramped. twists and turns all over and suddenly it goes straight up? broken through? huh.

giant fucking chasm holy shit, can barely see the ceiling?! senna whistles and chucks a pebble into the room lol. lots of air blowing. parsley says we gotta gtfo. agreed.

senna android and zen see strange formations on the ceiling. senna points up for everyone to see. very strange. weird indents going whoop in a straight line. on the side theres big curved pillars along the walls all in a row.

everyone but wheatley and teya notice theres slow movement?! weird giant rock formation that shrinks and grows and we hear air move with it. senna says dont wake it up. android says its lungs?!?! GET US TF OUT OF HERE. the pillars are ribs wtf is this.

its shaking nope nope nope. fire bursts out, it feels familiar to teya? PRIMORDIAL FIRE HOLY SHIT. parsley has no eyebrows fuck. its making a giant golem fuck we gotta go. it burns away magic. WE NEED TO RUN.

parsley tries to fly but his wings hurt too much ouchie! at least the golem is slow. wheatley is fucking fused to teya cause he grabbed her like a dumbass so when she flies he goes with her. and hes also hanging onto senna. great. shes being partially dragged.

theres a big opening in the side! zen casts fly on everyone with his lute! the ground beneath us sorta looks like a person as we get into the sky. lets not spingledorf about this.

we land outside the desert area thankfully. senna carefully removes wheatleys hand off of her then carefully helps teya. extremely bad senna healing words right on the hand. presti wheatleys hand as much as possible thank god.

time to set up camp everyone needs a goddamn nap. zen tries to comfort wheatley. teya is fabricating some gloves for herself lol. parsley is sitting on the ground with his head in his hands. senna helps set up the tents and stuff. no one tell sunnie.

zen checks on teya, yeah shes not ok lol. he checks on parsley, he grumbles he fucking hates caves. "are you claustrophobic?" yeah he is lol. he pours water on his wings trying to help lol. it does seem to help neat. zen chases him until parsley takes it himself and flips him off lol.

androids lost in thought. senna helps papyrus fix his armor a bit. android asks teya about that first camp with zorbolts bots and them messing with the energy stuff. no way zorbolts THAT stupid...right? haha....how the hell did he even take that things heart???

yeah we gotta...somehow...stealth this. fun. so. parsley. still gonna cook? wheatley is isolating himself. parsley finds a raptor wtf. guess thats for dinner??? teya goes to wash herself cause shes stinky.

zen shit talking parsleys cooking decisions xD zen stop backseat cooking! teyas back nice. everyone wants to backseat cook xD wheatleys gone someone should go get him. parsley tells zen to make a non-soup side dish.

teya sits by wheatley. hes disassembling some of his armor to make himself some gloves. hes not having a good time. teyas not mad at you my buddy calm yourself. wheatley says we arent like him. hes disconnected from everyone cause we have families and he really doesnt. he shouldnt even be here anymore. hes gonna outlive all of us.

buddy were all gonna die. live in the moment.

food! zen made potato soup on the side wtf xD parsleys pissed. senna comments she had dinos in her zoo wtf. their argument is unhinged. android tells senna he gets way worse about soup lol.

senna also implies they ate the zoo animals when they died? zen tips the meat in the soup the little shit. teya says they should fuck and get it over with xD senna messages both of them and lies and says theirs was better XD

teya says not having soup is a nice change xD android says ohno. zen is going on a soup rant holy shit. parsley grabs a bowl of soup and attempts to dump it on zens head?! android says thisll be entertaining.

zen turns around and stares at him. he tugs parsley close and starts walking toward the meat! he rubs it against his face! This feels dirty somehow. He smushes soup on teya wtf why. He yells at senna for soup slurping. Wheatley shoves zen and android gets tf out of the way as zen chases him.

senna asks teya if she should contact robogod xD teya and parsley go bathe lol. senna cleans up the mess with presti. later, both zen and parsley have terrible sex while senna and everyone else play shogi in the woods.

sorry my notes are all over im sleepy and dizzy oof

[s-tillmonster]

THIS IS SO GOOD AND SO SWEET ICBBBBBBBB

I literally got to the end and I was like.. HUH ??? This was written so well and so fun and easy to read like I was so surprised that I read 12k words omggggggg..

I have too many good things to say about this fic.. The characters were so well written and I loved kinda being in both of their heads as well !!! It was so fun seeing Jay written as like not this super smart guy, I feel like I never see that in fics so this was super refreshing to read.. and I loved that reader was like .. actually mean like she did not rate him at all and I love that her dialogue actually expressed how she felt about him and about sports and just her having opinions that she voiced with no filter, another thing that was super refreshing !!!

I also love that he drank that full carton of milk and his bones healed quicker like that was so funny and silly and amazing and I adore the way you wrote this 😭

You did a really good job at building a life around the characters too and with such a short word count oh my god like.. admirable.. like with Jay's parents and YN having a boyfriend THAT SHE BROKE UP WITH BEFORE GETTING WITH JAY.. UGH THANK YOUUUUUU !!!!!!!!!!!!! Also the boyfriend being Heeseung.. kinda ouchie but I love this fic sm that I'm willing to accept what happened 🙏🙏🙏

That scene with Jay's leg healing and him yelling with excitement while Riki's just sitting there CRYING .. and it felt super realistic too with her reaction, I loved it I l adored it..

THE KISS .. GOD THE KISS AND EVERYTHING THAT CAME AFTER.. LIKE JAY BEING LIKE " As I was making my way to the lockers, this girl—a fan, I’m guessing—blocked my way and started to confess.." UGHHHH 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 this was too good omg.. they were both so funny and well written and just beyond sweet <333

I had the best time reading this fic and I can't wait to devour your masterlist basically .. ALWAYS WITH YOU RB COMING SOON !!! spoiler: I really enjoyed it

Thank u sm for starting, finishing and posting this fic.. I'm so so so beyond happy that I was able to read this and I can't stop thinking about it.. 100/10 LET'S GO JAEYUNVERSE NATIONNNNNNN ‼️‼️‼️💪💪💪🥇🥇🥇

study lessons

PAIRING(S) | park jongseong x fem!reader

GENRE(S) | fluff, angst, strangers to lovers, slight rivals to lovers, mutual pining (kinda), high school au, jock x tutor au

WORD COUNT | 12344

WARNING(S) | profanity, childish bickering, mentions of medical terms, mentions of infidelity (no one cheats so don’t worry!!), jay has a few dark thoughts, mentions of self hatred, reader mocks jay for not being academically bright, jay and reader both have a mild superiority complex, reader is kind of a jerk, and last but not the least, a fluffy kiss ♡

SUMMARY | so jay got piss drunk at jungwon’s party, lost his balance, tripped, and fell off the second floor balcony. now, he’s got a broken leg, a plummeting social status and a doctor’s note that orders him to abstain from all upcoming football matches till his bones mend. too bad he doesn’t possess the power to superheal and won’t be able to play when a recruiter from the college of his dreams comes to watch. left with nothing but regret, broken dreams and a shitty gpa (because why would he study when his coach told him he was guaranteed a sponsored ride to indiana university), he’s forced to bury his nose in textbooks and finally learn what the fuck integrals are. it’s a good thing the school was considerate (and sympathetic) enough to assign him the best tutor on the entire campus—you.

the small hiccup in this arrangement? you hate jocks, but jay thinks you look cute.

BASED ON | axl and cassidy’s story from the american sitcom called “the middle.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE | i’m posting this so impulsively LMFAOO i just realised i haven’t put out any fics for a while now so i thought why let this catch dust when i could repost ?? i hope you guys like this oneshot! feedback is always appreciated ^_^

masterlist

Jay’s legs were killing him.

First, he’d been hobbling through the crowded school hallway and bumping into people every ten seconds. Then, he realised he had forgotten to lock his locker, so he had to backtrack to do it. Then, he realised the school elevator was out of order, so he had to jump on one foot while carrying his backpack and crutches in the same hand as he limped down two floors. And right now, he was standing in what seemed to be an impossibly long line, waiting for his tutoring schedule to be handed to him.  

He probably should have asked for help, but the remainder of his pride had gotten in the way and prevented him from doing just that. He’d already lost his scholarship because of his stupidity; he could not bear to lose his last shred of dignity.

To say what happened at Jungwon’s house had been tragic would be an understatement. 

Being the designated driver, Jay wasn’t even supposed to drink during the party that night, but he had taken one look at the table lined with booze, and every rational thought had flown right out the window. Not even half an hour later, he was stumbling upstairs in search of a toilet to relieve his alcohol-filled bladder. 

Too bad he opened the wrong door and was tipsy enough to have hallucinated an entire fucking toilet in what was actually a balcony. Feeling a migraine approaching, Jay decided to sit on the toilet seat to clear his head first. 

The toilet seat being the thin, metal railing that people usually installed so they didn’t fall off the balcony, of course. Clearly, it didn’t work in Jay’s case because he fell off the moment he tried to sit on it. 

The fact that there was no one to witness his accident had been a small act of mercy on God’s part. When people rushed to the backyard to see what had caused the loud thud, Jay twisted the story and omitted certain parts to save himself from the embarrassment. 

“I was drunk and searching for a place to clear my head. The balcony seemed like a good option, but I didn’t realise how much I had and tripped.“ 

An hour later, he was lying on a bed in the nearest hospital, his leg wrapped up in a cast. His parents were sitting beside him, unspeaking. They didn’t yell at him for getting drunk and being so reckless—not after hearing Dr. Choi, his assigned orthopaedist, say that Jay was lucky to even be alive. She said that considering the way he fell, they should be thankful he suffered a blow to his leg rather than his head. 

Jay, however, wasn’t feeling particularly thankful and didn’t think he had lucked out. 

“What do you mean I can’t play?” he demanded immediately, repeating what Dr. Choi said to him not even moments ago. His chest heaved and a feeling of breathlessness washed over him as he realised what her words meant. 

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