#trying so hard not to be long-winded abt this (i know i failed!)

[xannerz]

Yeah! ^ While tags are meant for searching and organizing, I think the way the culture around them developed is what made the Tumblr user experience so unique. Like, in my like 10+ years of endless scrolling, I've really enjoyed seeing how the tagging conventions on Tumblr organically branched out and evolved. Tags still serve their actual function for searching and filtering content but are also a nifty way where you can add additional context or commentary. Kinda like footnotes/author's notes.

With that said, I totally get what you mean (and agree) about the lack of direct interactions thru rbs killing tumblr. People are generally more passive these days; it's a bad habit that's atrophying communities on social media, and makes it harder to chat with/meet others. Like -- speaking for myself here -- I do tend to ramble in tags personally, but I think the ability to connect w/ others can still happen through rbs, replies, and tags. Personal preferences/circumstances clearly may vary (ex: I obvs don't mind tag essays as much as you do, but I also think it's reasonable to want/expect people to be chattier in the dedicated channels for it), but I'm just very "both can be true/why not both?" about it. I wouldn't have met my gf if she didn't leave nice tags on my fanart lol; it's nice having pleasant interactions when you least expect it.

And re: what someone up the chain mentioned, that's also definitely a part of it. There's something to be said about people's growing anxieties about upsetting others (stares at growing use of tone indicators) or putting their foot in their mouth without meaning to. Like imo it's fair for an OP to ask people to take a long back-and-forth chain off their post (ex: can you please take this conversation to your own DMs), but it's also not uncommon to see hostility directed towards otherwise harmless one-off comments - and witnessing the latter ends up discouraging other users from wanting to engage at all. It was mentioned already but-- there are plenty of people who don't want to deal with potentially being put on the spot like that, so they (unfortunately) stay quiet. ("if someone's dragging you across the coals, block their ass" <- true and good advice!)

Not trying to be too granular or contrarian either! it's nice to see a push towards people actually talking to each other again LMAO even if i don't want to have a lot of conversations w/ others, I miss seeing more people talk/interact and being in an environment that encourages that.

If you want to reply to a post I've made, PLEASE reblog. Don't write a tag essay; those are difficult to quote. Don't answer in comments, those are only visible to people who've opened the comments section. Reblog. This is the reblog website.

[luimagines]

Could I pwetty pweashe have a scenario for each of the boys where reader is loopy with fever or from poison and the whole time they are just laying the compliments on real thick and going on and on abt how much they love their boys 🙏🙏🙏

Masterlist

Yeeesssss!!! Will do!

Here we go. Boys under the cut! Immediate Reader!

***

You were trying to go and find some food for dinner at Wild's request and found some interesting looking berries. They looked like blueberries from your world but there was purple thorns on the bush instead, with yellow trimmed leaves.

You grabbed a few and retraced and marked your steps to find your way back to the bushes. You thought that maybe one of the boys would be able to identify the berries and know if they were actually edible or not.

You stashed them away and grinned to yourself. It was a possibility that they were good but if they weren't- there was other ways to use the berries.

You still needed to find food that your group actually is able to eat if the berries aren't worth anything.

You hear your name being called and it startles you enough to take a step back and look behind you.

You trip on a root and crash against the forest floor- falling onto a separate patch of the same berries. Pollen and dew shoot up from the impact and you're forced to inhale it all in.

There's instant discomfort in your lungs and in your head, and you can already feel the multiple places where the thorns have pierced your skin and ripped your clothes.

You take a while to pry yourself out of the bushes, pain littered in all places you didn't even know you could hurt.

You cough and inhale more of the pollen that hasn't settled yet.

A massive headache begins pounding against your temples and back of your head.

You hear your name being called once more but this time in concern and blink away what you can. You groan and try your best to stand, falling to one knee in a coughing fit with pain and discomfort all throughout your joints and muscles.

You look up and smile despite it, a slight giggle of hysteria on your lips. "Hi Link! Guess what I found!"

Warrior "Oh sweet name of the three, what happened to you?" You see Warrior walk up to you and reach out his hand.

You giggle again and reach out to him. He grabs you and tries to lift you back onto your feet but your legs gives out from beneath you and you fall again.

"Hello~!" You lift out your hand and show him the berries. "You know if theses are good or not?"

"Nope." Warrior smacks them out of your hand with a backhanded swing. "Those are known for being highly toxic in.... depressant... components... Don't tell me you ate them?"

You grin and shake your head. "Nope! I didn't know if they were good or not...but I fell~!"

Warrior's face does that thing where he looks concerned but is only marginally capable of hiding it. "On the plant?"

"Link, you're so smart!" You get to your feet and fall nearly on top of him. Warrior is quick to catch you and hold you with his hands on your waist and you grin up at him, adoration pooled in your eyes. "That's what I did~! Man, you're so strong. You're stronger than I thought you were. Your arms are so toned too. I didn't think you had this much muscle."

"Ok. Let's get you to Sky." Warrior rolls his eyes and begins to more or less drag you away from the plants and back to where you think the group is. "Or maybe Four, this is his Hyrule anyway. Maybe he'll know how to get you fixed up."

"See, this is why I like you so much. You're always so fast to come up with a plan and you're so caring. You're so smart. You're so great." You giggle and try to follow his footsteps but find it really hard to put one foot in front of the other.

After what felt like a few seconds, (but was really ten minutes of Warrior fighting you and gravity (not successfully) to keep you upright), Warrior gives up on your non cooperative limbs and picks you up bridal style and begins to carry you away from the infested area.

"Link, I love you."

"I love you too." Warrior waves you off with a playful roll of his eyes.

"No.. but I really love you!" You insist, getting loud for no reason and place your hands on his face. You give him a squish and lean into his space. "You have to understand this. I would do anything to you."

"I know you would." He laughs. "I'd do anything for you too."

He shakes his head out of your hands and grins at you. "I think you're a little drunk from the plants toxins."

"Nuh-uh." You pout. "I'm too strong for that. I'm completely........ ok."

"I believe you." Warrior bites his lip trying to keep his cool before he absolutely looses it. He's both touched by your words and concerned for your well being. He supposes you're more or less drunk and loopey. It's not the most desirable circumstance but he's sure that those cuts on your skin and tears on your clothes can be handled more easily than the up coming hangover.

You fall silent after a second and look up at him. You poke his cheek and his nose and grin, hugging him close and snuggling into his chest and neck. "Has anyone ever told you that you're very handsome?"

"I think that's the more common compliment." He admits.

"And your eyes are very pretty and very blue and you have very long eye lashes and it's all very pretty. And you have a strong jaw."

"Do I?"

"So strong and sharp- it could cut glass." You say seriously. "And your hair always looks very soft and shiny and silky and I want to play with it but I don't want to make things weird. And you're so cool! You're so smart. You're so nice. And you're great with kids and people and everyone likes you so much, so quickly and it's so cool to watch you work and fight and-"

"You're going to keep going forever unless I stop you, aren't you?" Warrior swallows and tries to fight his upcoming blush. He had thought that you were joking for a moment but the more you talk the more it hits that you're being genuine.

You furrow your brows and hit him with the most innocent doe eyes you don't know that you have. "Do you want me to stop?"

Warrior almost trips at that way his heart skips a beat and he chuckles awkwardly. "Actually... No. It's ok. I don't mind."

"You deserve the world, Link." You say finally and go back to resting with your head in the crook of his neck. "I just wish that you could see that, you stubborn man."

"I'll... try my best."

"Good."

Time "Oh no." Time sighs and makes his way over to you. "What happened? Are you hurt?"

"My head hurts." You admit and drop the berries from your palm to cradle your temple. "I was trying to look for food... I think I found it but I also... don't."

Time kneels in front of you and places the back of his hand on your forehead. He hisses at the temperature and places his hand under your chin. "Why do you keep finding yourself in situations like this?"

"You boys keeping putting me situations like this." You mutter and try to stand. Your legs fail you and Time lurches in front of you in order to catch you.

"Do you see me as a boy?" Time raises an eyebrow.

"NOT that I'm complaining." You ignore his question and pat his face. "I love you guys, so much but like...This is what happens when I care about people. I end up in stupid situations."

"Maybe Four will have somethin to help out this." Time admits and picks you up without any further thought. "Let get you some help."

"Link, you're so great." You sigh and press your forehead against the crook of his head. His heartbeat is strong and he's cooler than you thought so you sigh in contentment.

"You're so calm and I always feel safe around you and you give the best hugs." You grin against his ear and Time has to stifle the upcoming chuckles from his chest.

"Do I?"

"The best hugs." You reiterate and snuggle closer. "You can ask Wind, he'll agree."

"I'm sure he will." Time let's a snort pass and he nods to Four as he passes. "They fell in a berry bush."

"Blue berries! With pretty leaves and thorns!" You cry out with an arm outstretched to the sky. "Not good for food, no no no, but good."

"Well... I'll start the antidote." Four sighs and walks away to his pack, immediately digging through it for the ingredients that will help you out.

"Four!" You sing and turn your head back into Time's neck. "Isn't Time the best? He's so strong and gentle and nice and he's so great."

Time lets more laughter fall from his lips as he places you on the ground next to his supplies. He says your name with a slight whine and begins to beg. "Please."

"Beeeeeesst hugs." You ignore him.

Four snickers from the other side of the camp and pulls out a bottle.

"I adore you Old Man. I don't think you get told that enough." You continue. "Like, you always try so hard to be a good person. You've gone through so much and you had no reason to start your adventure or to keep helping people and doing stuff but you care so much so you're here still and I think-"

Oh no, Time thinks, you're crying.

"Ok, ok, it's ok." time kneels next to you and puts your hair behind your ear. "No need to be upset. I'm here and everything's ok."

"But you've been hurt so much!" You pout, tears pooling in your eyes. "And yet you're still here and no one thanks you and you try so hard to watch over all of us and even then-"

"That's enough." Time frowns slightly and shakes his head. "I'm just doing what I'm supposed to."

"No one is making you." You pout and lay down on the ground. "You're not listening to me."

"Believe me, I am."

"Here." Four comes up to you and hands you a little bottle filled with viscous green liquid. "Drink this."

"I don't wanna." You pout. "I don't feel good."

"It'll make you feel better." Four tries again, before Time takes the bottle from his hands and uncorks it.

"Drink it." He says, in a tone which means there no room for argument.

"You're such a dad." You complain and grab it from his hand, placing it to your lips and begin sipping it slowly.

Time shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair. "What are we going to do with you?

Wild "Oh boy, I don't think these are good for eating." He says with a slight grimace. "We should probably not get near these. Let's go clean you up, yeah?"

"WIILLDD!!" You grin and reach your grabby hands in his direction. "Beautiful boy, how are you today~?"

Wild coughs a little and tries to hide his discomfort by avoiding eye contact. "I'm... fine... How are you?"

"Everything hurts~" You admit and look up at him with pleading eyes. "Carry me?"

"Oh boy, sure, why not?" He sighs and wraps around your shoulders and hooks the other under your knees, carrying you effortlessly through the thicket.

"How did this even happen?" He asks out of curiosity.

"I heard you call my name and fell."

"Fell where?"

"In the bush." You mumble with a pout and cross your arms. "It's all pokey and my clothes are ripped and I think I'm bleeding."

Wild bite his lip and hisses. "Sorry."

" 's not you're fault." You look up at him and pat his face. "You're too nice. I just wanted to help and got hurt like stupid me tends to do."

"You're not stupid." Wild scolds you gently. "You are incredibly smart."

"You're the smart one."

"Think so? I think some of the other will disagree."

"Well they can eat my shoes."

Wild coughs out a laugh again in a vain attempt to hide how uncharacteristically serious that was for you and how the unexpectedness of it made him lose it on the inside. "I don't think those would taste good."

"No.... But I need them so maybe they eat my hat instead." You nod to yourself in full serious before gasping slightly. "They should eat Legend's hat instead, then they'll really be sorry."

"Oh my god." Wild snorts and goes to cover his face before remembering that he's holding you.

He jostles' you in the process and the movement cause your headache to flare up. You whine and put a hand to your temple. "It hurts."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

Wild frowns and puts the information away for later. "We'll get you back to camp and figure something out ok, maybe you should take it easy for a little bit."

"Link, you're so good to me. I don't deserve it."

"I think you do- I say you do and I'm going to tell Time to keep you down until you feel better."

"Noooo."

"Yeeesss."

"But you're always doing something for someone else, who's going to help you with dinner?" You complain and flop your arms around- regrettably because your head ache flares up once more. "Oh, ouch, ouchies..."

"I think I'll be fine." Wild rolls his eyes. "I've done it before I can do it again."

You hum sadly and shimmy your way into his arm to get more comfortable. "You're a good person. You're so smart. I love hanging out with you. You know that? You're so fun to be around and talk to and you're always so.... good."

Wild looks down on you momentarily before returning to the the forest ahead of him. "Thank you."

"I wish..." You start and cut yourself off. "I wish there was more I could do help you. You help so many people- I think there's someone in every stable in your Hyrule that you've helped... not to mention all of Hateno Village and like- you built Terry Town... It's so good-you're good. I wish more people were good."

"Are people not good?" Wild asks you as he walks through the green.

"I like to think that some are. I don't get to meet a lot of them." You admit and settle your head against his shoulder. "My home's not as nice as here."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"I'm going to miss you guys."

"We're going to miss you too." Wild replies automatically.

"I think I'll miss you most." You hum and close your eyes. "Good people should get good things and you didn't get a lot of good things... Someone should fix that. I want to fix that."

Wild doesn't respond.

Twilight

“Oh!” Twilight winces. “I should have warned you about those. Four told me they’d be in the area and that we’d have to avoid them. You ok?”

“I fell... in the bush.” You pout and begin to sag your shoulders. Guess they weren’t edible after all.

Seems like they’re quite bad actually.

“I’m sorry.” You sniffle and try ignore the tears beginning to pool in your eyes. “I didn’t mean too. I’m in trouble, aren’t I?”

“Well no, not exactly.” Twilight rushes to your side at the side and brushes off whatever leaves and twigs he can see from your clothes. “Does anything hurt?”

“A lot of things hurt Twi.” 

“Can you be a little more specific?” He tries, with a small tilt to his head.

“My head... and I think there’s a lot of tiny cuts on my arms and back.” You try to stand again and Twilight is quick to help you with a stabilizing hand on the small of your back. “There’s more thorns in the bushes than I thought there’d be.”

“Ok, we’ll get those looked at ok. Four should have something to help you in the mean time.” Twilight takes a few steps with you, wrapping an arm over your shoulder when he realizes you’re more intoxicated than he thought.

You put your full weight against him without realizing it and place your head on his shoulder. “Twilight?”

“Yes?”

“I appreciate you so much.” You take a breath and sigh. “You’ve been the first person there to help me out with whatever this adventure seem to throw at me. You’re always taking care of others... like Wild and Wind and Legend and I know you look up to Time but so many of us are looking up to you too and I guess I want to say thank you. There’s a lot of good in your heart and I’m glad I get to see it.”

“I appreciate you too.” He says in reply.

“But I don’t do anything.”

“I’d beg to differ.”

“You’re too dignified to beg. I don’t think you’d ever have it in you.” You grin. “I admire the way you hold yourself and don’t let anyone talk down to you- like that guy in that old Castle Town- or where ever we were. And like, you can throw a good punch too. I thought you broke that guys jaw!”

“Admittedly... Not one of my greater moments.” Twilight hisses at the memory. Time gave him a nasty look for that one and he’s still working off the penalty for it.

“It was super cool though.” You cock your head to the side, looking at his profile as you stumble through the forest growth. “He totally deserved it, don’t let Time let you think otherwise. I was tempted to punch him too or get get Wild and let him go crazy against the guy.”

“Wild probably would have set him on fire.”

“It would have been funny.”

“No it wouldn’t have.”

“Not to the guy, maybe.” You giggle. “But see, you’re always thinking about others and how’d they react and how to go about things that makes you so smart and you’re so cool.”

“Thank you.” Twilight stops the two of you for a moment and readjusts his grip on you. “Are you feeling any better?”

“No. My head hurts.”

“Well, we’re almost there and then we can get started on fixing this ok?” 

“Ok.” You mumble and go back to mostly resting against the country boy. 

“You’re really great with animals too.” You say randomly. “I’ve never a horse that close with its rider or how all the cats just gravitate towards you.”

“The cat thing I’ll admit is special to me, but are you trying to tell me that the horses of your world aren’t treated right? Because they bond really well with humans and dogs alike.”

“Why dogs?”

“Uh-”

“Well everybody likes dogs, I guess that’s a given. It's not even a question really. I don't know why I asked.” You shrug.

“Yup. That’s what I meant.”

“And no, well I don’t know... I don’t see a lot of horses in my home world so maybe you’re right and I just have bad examples.”

“Of course I’m right.” Twilight says with a grin. “Horses are great!”

“You’re great Link.” You try to hide your laughter at how genuine and boyish he sounded. “I’d take you over a horse any day.”

“Well I’d hope so.”

Wind

"What is it?" Wind tilts his head and steps into your direction, trying to piece together what happened to you with what little information he has. "You look like you got in a fight... and lost."

"I fell the bush of these berries! Look!" You grin beyond the pain in your head and hold your hand out.

Wind walks up to you and picks one up between his fingers, twisting it around before looking back at you. "Are these safe to eat?"

"I have no idea." You answer honestly. "I was going to as Wild if he knew but then I fell in this bush and got hurt so I gotta go get myself checked out."

"Well that explains why your clothes are torn." Wind snorts a little and holds his hand out. "Do you need help?"

You hum and try to examine yourself from the inside. Your head is killing you but you feel loopey and uncentered.

Maybe some help would be nice.

"Yes, please." You take his hand and let him pull you up. "Thank you Link."

"No problem." He grins. "Can you get back to the camp on your own?"

You hum again and try to take a step forward. But your knee buckles from beneath you and you fall the ground again. "Ow."

"Ok, guess not." Wind is by your side within seconds and helps you back to your feet. "That's ok! I'll just help you get to the others and maybe someone will know how to fix you."

"Yay." You giggle and lean on the boy. "Have I ever told you how great you are?"

"No." Wind grins and starts to lead the way. "I don't think you have."

"That's a shame. Shame on me. Because you are one of the best kids I think I've ever met. Don't let anyone change you, ok? You are.... so fun to be around and I'm so glad I met you and I'm going to miss you when this is all over and I think I'm going to try-"

"You think you're going to cry?" Wind looks up at you.

"No no... maybe." You tilts your head and close your eyes, putting your full trust and weight on Wind's shoulders. "I just... you're so good. And you're so happy and excited to see all these new things and I wish I was like that when I was your age, you know?"

"Uh-"

"And I hope that you get to do and see so many amazing things, Link. You're going to change your world, I know it and I'm sad that I won't get to see it."

"Hey-"

"You can't let anyone bully you, ok? There's a lot of people that would want to break your spirit and your joy and there's a lot of things that we want to do to keep you the way you are but there's only so much we can shield you from. I know you don't like it. I know you think you can't take it. But you shouldn't have to. You should have never had to. You should have had a chance like all the other boys and girls to be young and have a childhood and just be a kid but I'm so proud of you." You say and stop the two of you for a moment, pulling Wind in what you try to be a crushing hug.

"You're incredible, you know that?" You lean back and put your hands on his shoulders. "Link, listen, no matter what any else will ever tell you, we adore you. I think you're everyone's favorite, ok? There's so many things I want to show you myself if the Captain would let me.... I doubt he will because there not exactly things kids your age should know. Like throwing knives and hand to hand combat... But I think we both agree that it's all waaaay past that point. So anything goes!"

"Will you really teach me?" Wind lights up at the thought and be jumps a little on his toes in excitement.

"If you're up for it.. I'm sure that others will try to fight me though."

"I'll fight them."

"I don't doubt that pirate."

"What are you two talking about?" Warrior steps up and places his hands on his hips. "We heard you talking but missed it. What is.... what happened to you?"

"I'm just telling Wind how amazing he is and how much I love him and adore him and how cool he is for a thirteen year old and how I couldn't even come close to that when I was his age so I'm a bit jealous-"

"They fell in some freaky looking berry bush and I think they're poisoned." Wind explains over you. "They're acting a little loopey."

"I am. ONE HUNDRED PERCENT OK." You shout and push yourself away from Wind, staggering on your feet and eventually falling on your butt onto the forest floor.

The sudden movement flares up your headache and your neck muscles stiffen around your shoulders, making it hard to move your head. "Oh, ow.... My head... That was a mistake. Mistakes were made."

Warrior hisses and sigh after watching you suffer for a hot second. "Alright, I'll go wrangle up some supplies. Can you take them back to camp on your own, Sailor?"

"I was already doing that." Wind raises an eyebrow.

"Alright then, then go back to doing that." Warrior smirks a little. "I'll be back."

He then nods a bit and walks away from your duo as Wind makes his way over to where you fell, pulling you back to your feet and wrapping your arm over his shoulders. "Did you mean what you said?"

"What did I say?" You try to twist your head around to loosen up your muscle and it only slightly works.

"Well... everything you said about me. Did you mean it?"

"I don't remember." You frown and furrow your eyebrows. "Probably... If it's all good things, then yes. Because you are good. And you deserve good things. And you might be the little brother I never had... but I wish you were my brother. You're cool. You're great. I love hanging out with you man."

Wind smiles softly and sits you down on a free spot once you reach camp again. "I can be your brother, it's ok."

"Awesome!"

Sky

"And what exactly did you find?" Sky raises an eyebrow when he sees you. He recognizes the plant but can't remember what it does or why he's seen it before.

"Hm... I don't think that's good." He sighs and walks over to you, picking you up with a sturdy hands on your elbows. "Are you ok?"

"A lot of things hurt right now." You admit. "Are the berries not good?"

"Let's assume they aren't." Sky smiles a bit and wraps arm around your waist to keep you from falling. "I think you should get someone to look at you."

"You have really long eye lashes." You blurt out and gently bring your hand to cup his face. "And I've never noticed how blue your eyes are."

"Ok, those berries defiantly aren't good." Sky snorts and picks your hand off of his face. "Let's get you back to camp, ok?"

"You're like... one of the nicest people here, you know that?"

"Well I certainly try to be."

"And you're always thinking of others and you're so good." You lean against him, putting your full weight onto his side. "I'm so sorry that you have to be here instead of your home. You're so important to so many people Link."

"You think so?"

"I know so." You pat his head with what little arm you reach. "You're at the start of this whole thing... You are... the whole reason Hyrule, as everyone knows it, exists to begin with. It all starts with you. Not everyone has that kind of legacy you know."

"Is that really my legacy?" Sky looks over to you and you grin brightly in his direction.

"Well aside from the stories of the hero I've always heard so much about growing up there's also like the hero lineage as well. Not to mention you also father... the whole Hyrule Royal Family Line. So I'd say you're pretty important. and your legacy is pretty big."

Sky stops abruptly and the suddenness of it sends you right onto the ground. "I'm the start of the line?"

"OOOWWW!!! SKY!" You whine and cradle your head with both of your hands. "That hurt! Why did you do that?"

"Sorry sorry sorry." Sky bends down and helps you back up, readjusting his grip on you a few times to make sure that even if he loses his grip again, he won't be sent careening onto the floor. "That was an accident. I did not mean to do that."

"That was mean."

"It wasn't on purpose I swear."

"Promise?" You rolled your head over and rest it on his shoulder.

"Promise." Sky bite his lip to hold in his laughter. "I'd never do that to you on purpose, not like this."

"Ok. I believe you." You nod. "I think if you really wanted to hurt me, you would have sent your army of birds against me or something."

"I do not have an army of birds."

"But you're building one."

"No, I'm not."

"You are though. Maybe not on purpose... Maybe you don't realize it. You do know that birds flock to you right?" You blinks your eyes up at him. "It's a crazy thing to witness. I think you could easily rule to world with nothing but cuccos by your side."

"What is it with you guys and the cuccos? What did they ever do to you?"

"I can't speak for the others but I say with full certainty that my Zelda has a wicked streak sometime and she was mercilessly attacked by them one day."

"Oh my goodness"

"I told her to leave them alone but noooo, she had to keep hittin' the poor thing and look where it got her. Those little things are ruthless and should be feared. She won't touch them with a ten foot pole now." You nod your head to your story as if you were telling Sky some age old wisdom.

"Does that mean the others-?"

"Most likely." You snort. "Serves them right."

"That would explain that."

"Sky, I'm really glad I know you... as a person and as a friend. I think you're really talented and great and good and I'm so happy you're here."

"I'm glad I met you too." Sky grins and waves over someone from the camp to come help him.

"You're my favorite ok, don't tell the others." You wink in his direction and let yourself be taken away from his side.

"Oh jeeze, thanks." Twilight snorts and picks you up bridal style, taking you further into the camp and laying you down by the small fire they've started.

"I'll take that secret to my grave." Sky smirks.

Twilight huffs a little and stands to leave. "You can take care of them then."

"That was the plan."

"Sky is a brave boy." You mumble from where you've been placed and reach out to him. "He deserves better than watching over a sick sack of potatoes. He's good at helping people. Someone has to make sure that he doesn't push himself too hard. He'll over work himself and then there would no more Sky and the world will be to dark to recover. There's no way we can lose Sky. He's too good."

"Have they been like the whole time?"

"Pretty much." Sky shrugs.

"I think I'm going to throw up." You mumble and try to push yourself upright.

The boys then scramble to try and manage the approaching problem.

It's going to be a long night.

Legend

"Oh for the love of- you look like you took a swim through the underbrush. What did you do?" Legend groans and comes to stand in front of you.

"I went for a swim?" You blink up at him, confused and a little disoriented still. "Is that what happened? I'm not wet... Am I?"

"You're joking." Legend raises an eyebrow and and places the back of his hand against your forehead. "Ok, maybe not."

"I can not believe the legend himself has graced me with his presence." You giggle and try to stand- not very successfully. "What a joyous day indeed."

"What on earth are you talking about?" Legend kneels next to you and takes one of your arms, lifting it up and wrapping it around his shoulders. "You're acting weird... weirder than usual anyway."

"But I love you Legend!" You cry and wrap your other arm around him. It's a clumsy hug and Legend almost throws you off. But considering you can barely stand on your own feet with his support, he supposes some more wouldn't hurt.

If he likes it then he doesn't say anything.

"I think you love the idea of me." He grumbles. "I'm not that great."

"See, you say that but it's not true!" You grin and nuzzle your head against his. "You put on this big tough attitude and your defensive but you love us and we love you and I know you sometimes slip more food onto Wind's pate when he's still hungry but he won't go for seconds. Or how you sneak potions and healing items into our bags when we're not looking and I know you gave Hyrule some of those magic rings of yours to protect him. Or how you banter with Warrior because you try to keep his stress levels low because he gets flashback of the war and we all know he feels responsible for us even if he has no reason to be. You're quick to point out any puzzles that Four misses... magic eyes and all that."

"Have you been watching me?" He snaps and tries to make his embarrassment with anger.

"Yes, because I find you interesting and I've been wanting to get to know you better but you're one prickly pear." You poke his nose and try to keep walking. "You don't let me."

It's difficult.

"I know you've been watching what weapons Wild goes through and keep track of what he's been using the most, what he's most comfortable with... I think you want to get him something..."

"I'm an apprentice blacksmith... I want to see if there's something that will survive that wild rat." He grumbles.

"Ooohh!! Even better! you want to make him something!"

"I hope your fever erases this from your memory... Make it into one big fever dream."

You laugh and try to hide the grimace from your pounding head. "I know you've helped Twilight with something- he seems a little lighter but I don't know what. And I know you've been watching how much sleep the Old Man gets and I know you've been helping him with it. I know you're watching how much Sky has been fighting and how much he travels and you're quick watch his health and his breathing problems."

"Should I be concerned that you've been watching me this much? Because if it were any other person I'd be fighting you and getting a restraining order. It's weird." Legend huffs and hoists you up a little more, trying to keep you from falling.

"You help so many people." You hiccup and groan, the pain in your head becoming a little more than you can hide. "You're always watching everybody else's back. You don't watch your own."

"Who says that?"

"You take care of everyone else but yourself." You whine and hide your face against his shoulder. "But I've been watching your back. It's ok. I know you wouldn't like it but I care about you too much to let you hurt yourself. Someone has to take care of you if you won't do it yourself."

"I can take care of myself!"

"But you don't."

"Hey!"

"MMmm... Don't yell please." You wince and grip his tunic tighter.

Legend stops for a moment and finally looks at your face. It's flushed completely red and you're beginning to have sweat roll down the side of your head. Legend bites his lip and hides the pause behind the pretend need to adjust his grip.

He can't tell if you've gotten better or worse but he's going to bet worse.

"I'll go get Time. Maybe we can figure how to fix this, ok?" Legend gulps a little and returns to dragging you across the forest.

"Ok."

"The things I do for you people."

"You're a good person."

"Hm."

"Link?"

"What?"

"Thank you." You mumble, right into his ear. "We don't say it often but thank you."

Legend feel the tips of his ears go a little pink and he scoffs. "Don't thank me for anything. I didn't do anything."

"You're a good person."

"I'll chock this up to the fever talking."

Hyrule

Hyrule hisses sharply and can already feel the ominous foreshadowing of the hours to come. "Did you get in a fight? Are you hurt? You're bleeding, that's a dumb question, don't answer that."

"Rule!" You reach your hand out. "Best booooy!!! Hello sweet heart, how are you?"

"What happened to you?" He kneels down beside you and begins to heal the miniscule cuts around your arms and your back. He can feel the magic go down your legs and heal what was torn there and come back up to work on the worst of it.

It's a little more damage that he'd like to admit out loud and he's a little worried that there's monsters nearby that would have caught the scent of your blood.

"I fell in the bush... trying to get berries to eat... I was supposed to find food for Wild to cook but I don't think I can do that any more. It's not good that there's not much to forage." You mumble, relaxed by the suddenness of your pain being relieved and the cuts you've sustained leaving your body.

Hyrule frowns and stops his spell. It's a shame he can't do anything about your clothes.

"I feel funny." You say and lean backwards, over judging the distance and force and nearly send yourself back into the bush behind you.

Hyrule snatches your tunic before you can do that and pulls you toward him. "Be careful... Did the bush do this?"

"I dunno." You shrug and frown as you feel the pain begin to come back. "Are you here to bring me back?"

"I might have to regardless. I think you've been poisoned by the plants."

"I feel funny, not dead."

"Well, let's hope that it doesn't come to that." Hyrule rolls his eyes and wraps your arm around his shoulders. "Come on. We need to get you checked out and see if there's anyway to help you."

He's trying to stay calm... but he hopes that it's mostly you being loopey and not actually in any danger. He doesn't recognize the plant- but he supposes that's a given since it's not his Hyrule and he doesn't know the scale of the dangers around here.

"I have a headache again." You groan and don't even try to help Hyrule in lifting you up.

"I... can't really do anything about that. Sorry." Hyrule sighs and readjusts his grip to lift you higher.

This time you do put a little more effort in standing up and slowly, you begin to make your way back to the camp.

"I'm sorry you have to deal with me right now." You mumble and lean against him. "There's so many others things you could be doing right now."

"I don't mind. I'd rather you be ok than do anything else."

"You're a good person." You roll your head back and look at his side profile. "I hope you get every good thing the universe has to offer Link. May your life be filled with peace and happiness and all sorts of good things."

"Like what?" Hyrule finds himself asking. It stuns him and for a moment and he wonders if he's asking because he doubts he'll have it or if it's merely to get you to elaborate more.

"Like many friends and family and holidays and puppies and kitties and candy and good food and good company and cupcakes and lemonade-" You begin to list off.

Hyrule looks back on his life and the people he's met and everything that's happened to him up until this very moment. Enough so that he ignores the rest of your list and only tunes back in when you've past onto a slightly different topic.

"There's so many little things to enjoy in life, you know. I know you're humble and underestimate yourself and I'm trying to change that because you're absolutely amazing and there's a lot you should be proud and show off a little more because you deserve it but I wish you'd let us show you that. " You roll your head around again and try to match your footsteps to his despite the fog in your brain.

You keep talking.

"It might be presumptuous to say this but I think this group may have been the best thing to have happened to you. And that makes me a little sad."

Hyrule stumbles a little and you follow suit. "Sorry, sorry."

"It's ok. You'd never hurt anyone unless they deserved it." You mumble and try to fight against the now pounding sensation in your head.

"Hurting?"

"Yeah... My headache got worse."

"I'm sorry."

"You apologize too much." You groan. "I can't wait to see the day where you do something completely outrageous and just own it, just unapologetically decide that this is the hill you're going to die on and fight every one else about it."

"That sounds like a lot of effort." Hyrule snorts and raises an eyebrow.

"I can't to see what is the stick that takes you there."

"I don't think that's how the saying goes."

"It is now. I said so."

"Of course. Naturally." Hyrule snorts.

"Link, we're friends right?"

Hyrule nearly stumbles again but catches himself this time. "Of course we are! Whatever made you think otherwise?"

"Nothing." You admit. "But I'd to be the kind of person that's on the list of good things your life. Like that list I was talking about earlier."

"I say you are." Hyrule nods to himself and sees the camp in the distance. Relief flows over him and he nearly sags from it. A smiles graces his face as he turns to you and lets you lean on him a little more. "And I'd die on that hill."

Four

"Oh no no no no no, not good, not good at all!" Four hisses and runs to your side. "Did you eat any? Please tell me you didn't."

"Are they not good?" You tilts your head and try to keep your vision on Four but it's kind of hard to focus on just one of him. You don't remember there being so many Fours.

"No! You're not supposed to eat them! They're highly toxic!" Four grips your shoulders and begins to look over your face and check your eyes.

"Did you eat any?" He asks again, stressing the question more than you think is necessary.

You shake your head.

"Oh thank Hylia."

"I feel in the bush though."

Four groans enough that it sound more like a subdued scream. "Why?"

"I tripped." You giggle and try to stand up. "I heard my name AND FELL~! Hehehehe.."

"Ok. This..." Four sighs and looks around your surroundings for a second. He doesn't find what he's looking for. "...is not ideal."

" 'm sorry." You say and feel your lip start to wobble a little bit. "I didn't mean too."

"No. It's my Hyrule. I should have warned you guys. This is my fault." Four scoots in your direction and wraps his arms under your knees and behind your back.

He effortlessly lifts you up bridal style and doesn't hesitate to begin carrying you back to camp. "Time is going to have my head for this."

"No, he likes you too much." You blinks away what you can and try to think beyond the simple thoughts in front of you. "Everyone likes you. you're a likable person."

"Well thank you, but believe me. There are people who don't me." Four says with a snicker.

"Who are they? I'll fight them. Just say their names."

"You don't know them." Four furrows his eyebrows and chuckles disbelievingly.

"I can find them. And then I'll fight them. How dare they not like you!" You shout to the sky and wave your arm around like it's nobody's business. "You're one of the coolest people I know! That I've ever met! And I've met a lot of people! I've met this group! And you're still the coolest! Tell me their names, Link. I won't stand for this."

"It's not a big deal."

"I'm about to make it one."

"I won't tell you their names." Four shakes his head. Mostly because they're gone already so who cares.

"Then point your fingers Smithy because I'll find them and you won't have to worry about them any more." You say with so much resolution in your voice that Four has to stop himself from laughing out loud.

"Believe me, I don't worry about them."

"Oh so someone else got to them then. Good good."

He loses and laughs anyway. "No, not like that."

"There should be only people who love Link! Link haters are not allowed or welcome! Begone with those thoughts!" You cling to him weakly and Four has to grip you tighter to compensate for your flailing.

"Hold still, you're making this harder than it needs to be." Four snorts and shakes his head. "I deserve this. I deserve this and everything that's about to come. I know it. This is completely my fault."

"It's not your fault my head's hurting." You argue and frown. Because it's true. Your head ache tat you've been sporting since the start of your conversation has grown and it's beginning to be impossible to ignore.

"It kind of is, considering that it's a byproduct of the brumble bush." Four sighs. "Luckily, the antidote is pretty easy to make. The down side is that I'm not sure if I have all the ingredients and we're a little too far away from town to get more. I wonder if Hyrule can do something with his magic to help out... or at least lessen the effects so that it wears off."

"Will it last long?" You mumble and cradle your head in your hand. "I don't like this, Link."

"I don't like this either." He says. "If you didn't eat any of it than you should be fine in a few hours and it'll wear off on it's own but I don't think you want to be like this any longer than you have to be."

"Man, Link you're so smart. You know so much." You sigh and rest what you canon his shoulder. "I'm so glad I'm your friend... that we're friends and I want to keep being your friend. Can we keep being friends? Is it possible to be friends throughout different lifetimes?"

"I don't know but we can certainly try." Four grins and makes it back to camp a little easier now that you're so riled up. "I'm glad we're friends too."

"Yay!" You giggle and lay on the ground with little fan fair and with little convincing. "There's no much we have to do still... as friends and as a group. I love you guys!"

"And we love you!" Four snorts. "Get some sleep- it'll go faster. I'll wake you up when I have the antidote."

"Ok Smithy." You let your head hit the ground and close your eyes.

Four looked over his shoulder to where you are and smiles a little wistfully.

Until Time make his way to camp and eyes your torn and slightly bloody clothes before turning to Four with a raised eyebrow.

Four hisses again and raises his hand. "I can explain."

"You better."

[cdroloisms]

haha your snippit abt the dispenser got me thinking.

Dream gets let out of prison and he talks constantly, whatever is on his mind. And he's positive all the time. To a fault where people walk over him. And it doesn't make sense because he was tortured right???? But after an incident they find out it's because he hates the sound of silence and needs constant reminders that other people are there. Also he was punished for any negative emotions in the prison so his default is happy now,,,

hi anon !! this concept makes me SO goddamn sad ,, the idea that he Has to be happy bc anything else would mean punishment im so *punches the walls*

this ,, ficlet is honestly. pretty ooc, not really related to the ask at all, and mostly an excuse for me to cry abt c!dream and c!punz for an excessive amount of time (technically the vote on twitter was supposed to have this as c!sapnap pov, but i just wrote one for him so i went for c!punz instead. mostly bc i wanted to write him LMAO). hopefully someone enjoys it despite *gestures vaguely* all of that mess

tw: trauma, disordered eating, implied torture/abuse, blood, injuries, unhealthy coping mechanisms, emotional distress, thoughts of murder/mercy killing, mentioned animal death, dark content

In the end, it’s all rather anticlimactic, the complete opposite of Dream’s vault and the whole fiasco of adrenaline and theatrics that had made up that day. Quackity ended up having one too many drinks, bragged about the wrong thing to the wrong person - Punz doesn’t know the specifics, only knows that one thing has led to another and suddenly Sapnap was screaming at his ex-fiancé, sword pointed at his chest and tears streaming down his eyes in the middle of the Community House floor, everyone else stood around and watching. A look into Quackity’s office said everything he didn’t - the chests and chests of used and new tools, shiny and sharpened and completely rusted over with blood and everything in between. There’s been a balled up shirt in the wastebasket, completely unsalvageable from how saturated it was with blood, more red than white, and perhaps most chilling of all the calendar, marked with X after X in red pen, going back months and speaking to their utter failure to see what had been happening all but right in front of them.

With Quackity down, Sam caved not too long after, and with his input getting into the prison was no challenge at all. The only thing holding them back were bad memories and the tense, worried edge to Sam’s jaw as he led the small group of them - himself and Sapnap, actually entering the facility, Bad and Puffy waiting outside - carrying them through winding corridor after winding corridor and lava pit after lava pit, until they’d come to stand before a chasm filled with flowing lava, slowly draining before the main cell.

“I- I have to warn you,” Sam had muttered, uncharacteristically hesitant, “it looks…pretty bad,” and Punz would’ve questioned him further, but the lava had fallen far enough to reveal the topmost edge of the cell, so they let Sapnap hound the Warden for information as they directed their full attention on the cell itself and holy shit.

Nothing Sam said could’ve possibly have prepared them for the sight - it was a complete fucking bloodbath, crimson painting the walls and smeared over the floor and splattered over every visible surface like some abstract art experiment gone wrong. The stench of iron and burning flesh and viscera was awful, even over the gap marked by the still-draining lava. Punz strained his eyes; at the very back of the cell, huddled, unmoving, was a similarly bloodstained shape that must’ve been Dream. They remember the crack of Sapnap’s knuckles meeting Sam’s face and breaking his nose, remember themselves chucking a pearl and feeling along Dream’s neck desperately for a pulse - everything beyond that became a swirl of voices and panic and crying that makes their head hurt to think about, so they don’t.

Recovery is…messy. The physical side had been bad enough - pulling Dream out of the cell, barely breathing, limp in his arms and far too light, all Punz could think about was a sheep he’d found a year ago, frail and struggling to breathe, one he’d ended up killing - quick and painless - with a sword through the skull because it seemed kinder than letting it suffer. Watching Dream struggle on the bed, laid up in Bad’s mansion because none of them knew if he’d survive going any further, body resisting the potions they’d slowly forced down his throat after being so over-saturated on them, temperature spiking and heat baking into his skin like the lava from the prison had been imprinted onto his body, Punz feels the same strange mixture of pity and unease, wonders if it’d be a hell of a lot kinder if they just put him out of his fucking misery.

Still, because Dream is a stubborn bastard, against all odds, he ends up surviving - his fever breaks, the potions begin taking effect, and a few tireless, aching days later his eyes flutter open, lucid for the first time in a week. Punz isn’t even in the room when he wakes, only knows that it happens because the too-quiet room suddenly erupts in noise and activity, muffled thumps and sounds of a struggle undercutting Bad’s frantic calls for someone to help, anyone, and they run into the room to find Dream thrashing on the bed, wounds reopened and blood dripping onto the sheets, eyes wild and wide as his head whips from side to side so hard Punz is half-afraid that he’ll straight up break his neck. Somehow, worst of all, not a single scream falls from his lips, nothing but muffled whines squeezing past his mouth, clenched shut, and for a singular, awful second they wonder how long it took before he realized that screaming was useless.

Fortunately enough for them, or unfortunately, it’s not like he can tell the fucking difference anymore, the panic and strain end up with Dream passing out altogether, and they trade uneasy glances with Bad before going to clean off the worst of his wounds. If everything they’re doing feels hopeless, dressing up wounds that’ll be torn open hours later when Dream is awake enough to feel fear but not much else because he’s forgotten what it’s like to not be afraid - well, that’s for them to think and everyone else to pretend not to agree with.

Weeks pass along the same vein - Dream wakes up, panics; they try to calm him down, fails; he falls back into unconsciousness, and they move on and pretend that they’re cleaning up wounds from battle and not from someone that’s literally been tortured for months on end. People stop by, occasionally; Puffy spends more time than not inside the mansion, but hardly ever enters the door into Dream’s room, Sapnap and George drop by occasionally with potion brewing supplies that the rest of them can’t go out to get; once, he’d gone out to the front door to find a chest with an enchanted golden apple, sender nowhere in sight. He knows that the server is busy; Quackity’s admission had brought more than a few secrets to light, and from what they understand, the political fallout has been pretty damn messy. Still, he stays in the mansion, and watches.

He doesn’t exactly know why he stays. They’re not a stellar healer, not beyond what they know to dress their own wounds, and spend most of their time doing odd-and-ends tasks for Bad, who looks more tired than ever. Maybe it’s because he’s seen Dream at his worst more than the rest of them, had been there through his entire fall from grace, watched as his eyes became clouded with anger and madness and a single, desperate hope that he’d chased at the cost of his world and himself. Maybe it’s because they have no ties to the rest of the server - not to Las Nevadas, falling apart under the scrutiny of the eyes that now fall upon it, not Snowchester, caught up in the chaos, not the Badlands, half-dissolved after the fiasco of the Egg and with Sam’s actions having just come to light. Maybe it’s because above everything else, he feels guilty.

They’d thought the prison was the answer. It’d seemed too simple, back in that Vault - a perfect answer, because everyone else was perfectly happy to watch Dream die another time and some part of them had clenched painfully at the thought even thought they knew it was for the best. The prison meant that he’d be alive, if angry, and at some point when he had the time or the nerve or the guts he could go and visit, and they would talk, and Dream would be angry but with time maybe he could even understand.

They hadn’t wanted this. He can’t imagine anyone wanting this.

“Punz?” They don’t jump at the voice at their back, they don’t, but Bad still has a tiny, tight-lipped smile when they turn around anyway, eyes creased in the corners and still not as bright as they’d been before the Egg. Bad looks at him knowingly, setting a bowl of soup into his hands. “For Dream, if you can get him to eat.” He shifts a pointed gaze towards the door. “Maybe you two could talk.”

“About what?” The words come out harsher than they intend, and they take a moment to bite back the mostly self-directed anger that Bad doesn’t deserve to receive the brunt of. “I just-” he waves his hand in the air, trying to articulate the mess that is his relationship with Dream without the words to explain it. “I don’t know, man.”

“You don’t have to talk about everything,” Bad says, calm as always, eyes flicking down to the bowl of soup in his hands. “Just start with the soup.”

Punz sighs. “I’ll try.”

He enters the room in a single, fluid motion, mostly because he knows that if he were to stop at the door then he’d never actually make his way in. Dream flinches back when they enter, eyes going wide and stance going rigid, and the familiarity doesn’t make the sight any easier to bear as they wait, as always, for Dream’s eyes to clear enough for him to realize he’s in the mansion and not stuck in that same obsidian hellhole.

“I brought soup,” they say, finally, when Dream looks up. Dream’s lips twitch up in what he probably means as a smile; between the still-healing gashes on his face and the fear that flashes over his expression, still, it comes out as more of a grimace.

“Thanks.” Dream looks away. “I’ll eat it later.”

Liar, Punz thinks tiredly, moving closer to set the bowl down on the nightstand by the bed. They frown as Dream’s expression goes slack and distanced, again, eyes fixed to stare blankly at the wall once again.

“You should have some now,” he tries, careful to keep his words even. “You need the calories.”

“I’m good,” Dream says, automatic, just shy of sincere. “Thank you.”

“Dream,” they don’t quite succeed at keeping a displeased sigh from falling from their lungs, and bite back a curse at themselves when Dream pulls back with a silent flinch. It’s so goddamn hard, to talk to this version of Dream, both of them feeling around the edges of their relationship like walking on goddamn eggshells. A few months ago, he would’ve straight up called Dream out on his bullshit, get it through his thick skull that the whole ‘I’m fine and don’t need anyone’ act was stupid and completely failing to convince him. Here, they bite back another sigh, look forlornly at the bowl of the soup on the nightstand, sure to go uneaten once again, and force themselves to sound completely neutral when they speak again. “Alright. You’ll have to eat at some point, though.”

“Mmhm,” Dream hums noncommittally, once again staring at the wall. Punz stares at his hands. This is so fucking pointless.

“So,” they say after a few seconds, Bad’s words echoing in their head - they can try to make an effort to talk, sure. It’s just that Dream’s not going to cooperate. “How are you, man?”

The words come out stilted, awkward. He looks up to watch Dream’s expression, as the other man begins to gnaw on the inside of his cheek.

“I’m good,” he says, words deliberately light. “You?”

“Dream…”

“I’m fine.” Dream’s voice sharpens suddenly, breath hitching, before he shakes his head and turns his head away. “I’m fine.”

Punz looks at him incredulously. “Are you serious? Do we need to get into exactly how not-fine you are?” They wave a hand in his direction, jaw clenching when he rears back. “Do ‘fine’ people lose their minds from someone waving at them, now?”

“I-” For a second, Dream glares at him, eyes burning with a familiar, irritated fire that Punz knows all-too-well from having it directed at him a few too many times, before it suddenly dies and Dream is swinging his head back to the bedsheets, hands tightening on the cloth as he stammers. “I- What do you want?”

Punz breathes a soft sigh, regret blooming in the center of their chest. “Sorry,” he mumbles, careful to keep their gestures overly-telegraphed and away from the other man’s face. “I’m just- you’re not okay, man. No one’s expecting you to be okay after...all of that.”

“But why?”

Dream’s voice is small, nearly a sob, and Punz directs wide, alarmed eyes to where he’s hunched in over himself, knees pulled to his chest, hands staring at the sheets pulled over them. “Why?” he says, again, quieter, lip trembling slightly.

“Because you were tortured,” Punz begins, words slow as they watch Dream’s expression, trying to pull out the thoughts behind his averted eyes, “Because the cell was inhumane, and nobody deserves to be treated like that. Because you were hurt very, very badly because of what we did, and none of us are expecting you to be fine right after going through months of trauma.” He pauses. “You know that, right?”

“But I’m out,” Dream says, quiet, disbelieving, instead of answering their question. “I’m out of there. It’s over. It’s- everything’s good,” he whispers, more to himself than to them, hands curling into fists and then uncurling. “I’m- they said I would never get out. And I’m outside, and it’s not- not the cell, and I get real food, and Quackity doesn’t visit anymore,” he shakes his head, eyes squeezing shut as his breath catches in his throat. “I’m happy- I should be happy. Right?”

“Oh Dream,” the other man flinches back, breath quickening, and Punz’s hand stops short from where he’d almost let it fall onto the other’s shoulder. “You don’t have to be happy, man. Not- not after all of that. Not if you’re not ready yet.” Dream’s eyes, wide and wet, rise to look at their own, and they feel more than hear the soft, wounded noise that leaves their lips. “It’s ok to be hurt. It’s ok to be scared. No one’s blaming you, alright? No one’s gonna hurt you anymore.”

This, more than anything, seems to be the breaking point, because Dream collapses forward, hands flying up to pull at his tangled hair before Punz manages to ease them away and into his own hands, watching as he grips onto them until his knuckles go white. His breathing shudders, quiet, even his sobs muffled as to make as little noise as possible, and they murmur meaningless croons and hums as he cries into their chest.

“I wanna- I wanna be okay,” he hiccups, and Punz smooths his hair back behind their hand.

“I know,” he swallows around the lump that has risen in his own throat. “I’m sorry.”

[cryonme]

fallingforyou- calum hood.

word count- 1.5k

tw- drinking, smoking, cursing, a couple of tears. other than that just calum being sexy and also cute.

mentions- calum, fiona, luke, michael

a/n- hi! sooooo, this is the first part in my “series” of Calum and Fiona. this series will not have to be read in any order, just a bunch of one shots of Cal and Fi been cute. BUT this ons should be read first, as its the start of their relationship. im very excited abt this and I hope you all are too!!! also, i know a lot of my followers are from the HP fandom but I've been really wanting to branch out with my writing so here's this little number. I still write for HP, btw! not to worry. anyway, I hope u all enjoy this. I love it a lot and I worked very hard!!!! inspired by fallingforyou by the 1975. I recommend listening to the song for dramatic affect.

—

Calum sipped on his drink as his eyes danced around the kitchen that was filled with drunk and high 20-30 somethings, unimpressed until his deep brown eyes landed on her. Dressed in a little halter top and flared jeans, head thrown back in laughter at God knows what, she laughed at just about anything, especially when intoxicated. Her dark hair cascaded down her back and her lovely brown eyes squeezed shut, she looked like a goddamn angel.

He told Luke a million times that he wasn’t coming to this party, just like he had done with every party that rolled around in LA, but once Luke promised her attendance, he still declined.

But snuck in anyway 3 hours in, trying to go unnoticed by his 3 idiot friends.

His plan failed, of course. Why wouldn’t it? Michael had caught him at the worst time, 4 jack and cokes in, grinning at her like an idiot from across the kitchen island.

“She’s your friend, mate. You know you can like, talk to her.” He had said, nudging his best friend with his elbow.

Calum rolled his eyes, “I’m not 7, Mike. I’ll talk to her when I want.”

“You’re never gonna land a girl like Fiona if you don’t say anything.”

“Who says I’m trying to land her?”

Michael nearly choked on his drink, “Good one, Cal.” He patted his friend's shoulder and pretended to wipe a fake tear. “Hey, Fi!”

Calum had known Fiona since 2013 when 5 Seconds of Summer first toured with One Direction, when she was an assistant to their tour manager. She was the same age as the guys and they all bonded quickly, and to this day she still tours with them. She’s still just an assistant, says she doesn’t want to take on the responsibility of manager, she mostly just makes sure the guys are all where they’re supposed to be at all times.

Fiona turned away from her friends and smiled at the two Australian goofs, excusing herself from the group of girls and making her way over.

“Calum Hood? Enjoying himself? At a party? Insanity!” She smiled that radiant smile of hers and took Calum’s cup from his hands, treating herself to a sip.

“3 of those things are true, and I’ll give you a hint, I’m not enjoying myself.” Calum retaliated and Fiona raised her eyebrows at Michael.

“Hi, Fi.” Calum smiled and slung his arm over her shoulder.

She playfully rolled her eyes and leaned into Calum, “Hey Mr. Buzzkill.”

“I’m gonna go play pong with Luke, you know how he gets when I’m not his partner. Bye Fifi!” Michael rushed out and ran out of the kitchen, no doubt going to gush to Luke and Ashton about Calum and Fiona being cozied up in the kitchen.

“You look pretty tonight.” Calum said flatly, not making eye contact.

He could say those kinds of things to her, they had been friends for 7 years, but the drinks definitely helped him get it out.

“Don’t look too bad yourself, Hood.”

Calum brought her small frame around in front of him so he could look at her. She rested her chin on his chest and looked up at him with her doe eyes, and he made a vow right then and there that he would absolutely get to call her his one day.

This happened often. Calum and Fiona would cozy up to each other when drunk, hugging and touching, never once kissing, and nothing ever came of it.

“Like, you look really pretty.”

Fiona threw her head back again and laughed, “You, Mr. Hood, are drunk.”

“Yeah,” Calum took her hand and spun her around so her back was to his chest and rested his chin on her shoulder, “And you’re really pretty. Look at us stating facts together.”

Fiona giggled again and grabbed Calum’s cup from him, taking another sip.

Calum slowly snaked his arms around her waist and she held onto his arms with her hands, Calum swore he would have melted on her right there.

Fiona spun again and looked up at her friend of 7 years. She wanted to know what went on behind those intense eyes of his. Ashton, Michael and Luke confided in her with almost everything, she knew all about what went on in their heads, but Calum had never told her a thing. Not one detail. She had no idea that Calum was falling for her, on that night, in that shitty lighting, and he was falling for her hard.

“Beer pong?”

-

The two had been waiting for their turn in beer pong for 20 minutes and finally decided to sit down on a nearby bench and just watch. Calum pulled her onto his lap and she hummed happily, with her arms around her once more.

The brown eyed boy took his arms off of her for one second while he dug through his pockets, then put them back in their rightful place, holding a joint up to her lips. She gladly took the weed into her mouth and allowed Calum to light the end for her while she took in a drag.

She held the joint between her fingers and blew out. “You’re a good friend, Cal.”

Calum frowned at that. He had been drinking a little bit more than usual and the word “friend” made his heart drop.

“Don’t wanna be friends.”

Fiona snorted, “Shut up.”

“M’serious.” Calum mumbled against her shoulder. “I don’t wanna be your friend.” He turned his head so he could place her lips on her neck, “I wanna kiss your neck.”

“Calum…”

“I’m falling for you, Fi.”

“You’re drunk.”

“So?”

“So you don’t get to do that!” Fiona suddenly jumped up off of Calum’s lap and faced him, catching the attention of a few people, but no one seemed to care enough.

“Fiona-” Calum started and reached to grab hold of her thigh but she slapped him away.

“Fuck you.” She spat and stormed away. She was probably just going to sit on the front steps. She was too drunk to drive and she left her phone with Calum.

The dark haired boy sighed and hoisted himself up off of the bench to follow after her, at least to give her her phone. He made his way through the crowd of people and was stopped by Luke right before he made it to the door.

“I don’t know what you did, but fucking fix it.” The blond poked his finger into his chest so hard he stumbled back.

“Wha-” He started but by the time he could he finish the one syllable word Luke was long gone.

Calum shook his head and pushed the door open, finding his favorite girl slumped over on the steps with her shoulders shaking. He hurried so he could crouch in front of her and rest his hands on her knees, and refused to move when she tried to push him away.

“I know you’re mad at me but you’re crying and nothing hurts me more than that.” He said softly, trying his best to get the girl in front of him to stop shaking.

After a couple minutes of letting Calum stroke her knee gently with the pad of his thumb, Fiona finally brought her head up and Calum wanted to kick himself for making her cry like that.

“I have loved you” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, “For 7 fucking years Calum.”

Calum felt like he just got all of the wind kicked out of his lungs, but he didn’t move a muscle.

“I’ve watched girls who treat you like shit come and go and I don’t even get to pick up the fucking pieces because you don’t fucking talk to me, then one night you have a little bit too much to drink and suddenly you’re falling for me?”

“I love you.”

Fiona froze.

“Fuck, Fiona I’ve loved you for 7 years. Every girl who’s come and gone has been a distraction from you because in my head, you’d never feel the same way. I never opened up to you or talked to you because I was scared that if I did I’d let it slip that I love you and I’d lose you. Every time I see you my chest feels tight and I feel like I can’t breathe, every time you laugh I can’t help but smile to myself like a fool and whenever you cry I can’t look at you because I’m afraid I’ll cry too. Screw falling for you, Fiona. I fell for you.”

Fiona didn’t move, she felt like she couldn’t move. Calum had just shared more with her in 30 seconds than he had in 7 years, she was shocked.

“What the fuck took you so long.” Her question came out as more of a statement.

“I’m an idiot.” Calum breathed out before finally leaning in and kissing the girl he had loved for so long.

//pls remember to leave a comment or reblog if you enjoyed it, kind words mean a lot🖤and so begins the life of cal and fi, i can’t wait! hope u all are excited too. xx roxie

[kozutenshi]

FLOWERS & PEARLS—KEIJI AKAASHI

keiji akaashi x f!reader

collab: spring formal with hqhangout!

what: 1.3k of fluffy mutual pining in two different lives with a hint of hanahaki and angst.

Spring was around the corner, but the war hadn't ended unlike the cold days of winter.

The man with gunmetal green eyes held his lover close to his chest, giving them a shell, somehow like a telephone, with a pearl attached to its point.

His lover remembers the parting smile he gave before he went on to war with tough spirits, carrying the other of the pair of shells.

From afar, through the distances, he called and talked until his voice disappeared, swallowed by the pearl that had grown bigger overtime.

Three, four years later, his voice had disappeared and it was spring again. Believing that he will come back to his lover waiting for him, he visited the cherry blossom trees near his home everyday until the cherry blossoms grew in his body, with the sight of his beloved in another's arms, her voice restored.

Swallowing the pearl by himself to reclaim his voice, he cried and grieved about his lost love until he coughed up flowers, familiar white and pink petals covered in blood, and felt his heart stop.

Akaashi closed the book in his hands. He didn't know the reason why he even opened the book in the first place. The cover was a bit torn, the pages sure to become brittle soon and the golden letters that spelled "The Tale of Hanahaki" were barely visible.

But he felt drawn to it, as if the book was beckoning him to pick it up.

He sighed, wondering if it was real since science had not found an answer to Hanahaki's source yet. Even he knew that in every story, there is an inkling of truth.

He had watched people lose their voice, the first symptom, and recover shortly after they "confessed" to the people they liked and learn that they reciprocate those feelings. He watched some advance to the next stage of the disease with bloody petals in their hands.

Rationally, he couldn't believe it, but it was real, and the only cause they knew for the Hanahaki disease was unrequited love.

He had read books under the genre of romance, had seen movies, and even witnessed it in real life as he crossed paths with different people on the street insignificantly and held the significant ones close.

Is love real, or is it just a construct?

Finished, he made his way out of the library, on his way to his work to bump into you.

He recognized you as one of the workers in a cafe he frequently went to. Apologizing, the both of you walked towards the train station, you on your way to work while he's on his way to grab a cup before work. The cherry blossoms weren't growing yet, but the wind told him that spring was in a few weeks.

He didn't know that learning your name, and the small encounters whenever he goes to the cafe was a big deal until the reality hit him when he found him staring at you more, getting flustered, and feeling more than what friends feel. He wondered, in this early spring day, with the almost melted snow and budding blooms, do you feel this way too?

Was this what love truly is?

His feelings for you were no secret to his friends, nor was it to your coworkers. Maybe, you were just as dense as a brick to not notice them, or you were too focused trying to stop your own feelings from growing every time you meet his gunmetal eyes, when a smile creeps up his lips, and his protective stance whenever you two rode the train.

You didn't notice, until he came with you to the cafe, failing miserably in hiding his sickly pale complexion, and with trembling hands.

At first you couldn't convince yourself that his situation was real. After all, he seemed healthy the previous days. Yet, reflecting, you remember how he excused himself a lot whenever you're around, how he comes back with a smile that was trying to coax you to believe that he was okay, that his disease didn't exist.

And the same goes to him.

Years, months, days; he tried so hard not to fall in the same situation. Yet, here he was, trying to catch your attention with an order of a cup of coffee and playful, short banters. Here he was, falling down the rabbit hole of unrequited love like all those victims of the disease.

Why, of all the better timings, did it choose to come now?

"Let's go find a good spot and reserve it."

His voice was hushed trying to shield the fact that his voice was disappearing. You know it, with the way he shoots a short reassuring smile when he coughs, or when you just simply look at his direction.

Always so reassuring, ever reliable Keiji Akaashi.

Watching the cherry blossoms in full bloom was, yearly, your tradition. You used to stay only for a few minutes, visiting them alone and praying to famed gods for prosperity and happiness. Having him beside you, a picnic basket on hand, was new.

But you, oh you, could definitely get used to this.

With a nod, you followed him. The sun hasn't risen yet, but the moments before it were already fulfilling. Unpacking breakfast and eating it silently, laughing at the silliest arguments, and just being together in silence.

Akaashi smiled, bittersweetness flowing through his aura, as he re-reads the Tale of Hanahaki. Now, he feels how sad the tale was. Seeing their lover gone from their arms, growing flowers that he didn't desire to see anymore; the whole tale was just too unfortunate. He notices the similarities of the war veteran in the tale, and him, a simple human overworking himself with a cup of coffee on his table.

Would it end the same for him: alone, returning to nature through becoming one of the cherry blossoms you'll visit every year after he passed?

The sun started to rise, yet he found himself inching closer to you. His touch was tentative as he interlaced his fingers in yours, bringing them to his lips.

The slight touch of his lips on your knuckles made you feel warm, cozy, as he took you in his arms, pulling you closer to his chest. You watched the sunrise together, oddly familiar with his warmth, his smell, and overall presence. Butterflies swarmed in you, fluttering rapidly as you felt him press a kiss on your temple. Your heart raced as he whispered his next words, a sentence that you've waited on for so long, one that you would've said if he hadn't:

"I love you, I'm sorry."

"You don't have to answer, nor do I need it. I—" you shushed him with a tight squeeze on his hand. It was warm and sweaty, trembling from weakness and nerves. The hand you held was his, and he held yours.

"I love you too."

For a second, he couldn't process what you had said. After all, it wasn't what he was expecting. Have you known about it for a while? Was this your own way to console his stupidity in falling in love?

He didn't know, but he did know the genuine happiness, and the tears of relief that bubbled up your eyes.

And suddenly his chest wasn't so heavy.

There are a few things a human can do compared to their gods. Decide fates, create universes, and show how beautiful their creations are. It was a sad fact, but on that spring day, the only thing in his mind was the flutter of his heart almost like the delicate flower petals floating, taken by the wind and your mesmerized eyes as he holds you in his arms.

And he, oh he, could definitely get used to this.

footer: there's something so romantic abt the tradition of flower viewing for me :") i wish i can watch cherry blossoms soon too *dreamy sigh* reblogs are appreciated!

tags; @rendezvoi join the taglist if ur interested!

[kirishibi]

Nights Like These | Kirishima Ejirou

Summary: You’re having a rough night struggling with your anxiety and your long time crush, Kirishima, helps you through it

Pairing: Kirishima Ejirou x Reader

Warnings: pretty vivid and possibly triggering descriptions of the physical symptoms and racing thoughts that come with an anxiety attack, non-established relationship, pining, lots of Kiri comfort, so much fluff, very very mild cursing, spoilers abt Kirishima’s backstory, (y/n)’s pretty shy in this one oops

**this fic has a lottt of comfort and fluff in it after the first quarter, but if descriptions of anxiety are triggering for you please read with caution and skip over bits if needed**

Word Count: 2.8k

a/n: chef actually writing for once??? unheard of. anyway, i was struggling really hard this week, so i wrote some kiri comfort because who doesn’t want this sweet boi to hold ur hand and tell you everything’s gonna be okay when it feels like the world’s falling apart.i legit wrote this while crying bruv if any one of my fics is a window to my soul its this one

It began with that all-too-familiar pit of dread in your stomach, an uncomfortable rush of adrenaline in your upper chest that you desperately tried to force away. Trembling fingertips, wobbling knees, the sudden urge to crawl out of your own skin. All you did was get tongue-tied while chatting with Bakugou and a few of his friends, but your fumbled words wouldn’t stop echoing through your skull, the angry blond’s mocking gaze replaying over and over again in your mind.

You barely made it to your dorm before shards of your shattered confidence gathered to form a lump in your throat, and tears stung at the corners of your eyes. You threw open the door to your room, hastily swung it shut as you entered. As heavy wood slammed into its frame, a jarring bang echoed throughout the hallway outside. You physically cringed, brows knitting together and nose scrunching in disgust at your own actions. 

Damn it, you thought to yourself, everyone heard that, and now they’re all pissed at you. 

This happened more times than you could count: one minor mistake drudged up what seemed like hundreds of embarrassing memories from your past, and in a matter of minutes you knew you’d wind up a sobbing mess on your bedroom floor, gasping for air, convinced that the only thing you’re truly good at is being a burden.

There was a dam inside your mind; one that held all of your regrets, self-loathing thoughts, and most embarrassing memories. The multitude of cracks in its foundation threatened to give with every little thing you deemed a screw-up, and in that moment, the dam broke.

A half-complete exam sat before you. Your left leg nervously bounced beneath your desk as a pencil twirled between the nimble fingers of your dominant hand. The eraser of your pencil caught on the surface of your desk mid-twirl, causing the utensil to fling from your grasp. It arched through the air and thumped the boy seated in front of you, Ojiro, right between his shoulder blades. No amount of rambled apologies from you, nor sincere ’it’s okay!’s from the kind-hearted blond could stop that moment from searing itself into your memory. Just another reason you should never leave your room again.

Sinking into an unmade bed, you pulled your knees up to your chest. Feeble arms hugged your legs tightly as you desperately tried to shake the unpleasant thoughts from your own brain. “No,” you pleaded with yourself, “no, (Y/n), you’re not doing this again.” Fingernails dug into soft flesh beneath your school uniform’s knee-high socks, a momentary distraction from the sheer panic swelling inside your chest. Forehead pressed against bent knees, you hoped that if you made yourself small enough, maybe you could disappear entirely. 

Accidentally interrupting someone during a conversation, tripping over your own feet while walking down the hall, getting anxious speaking to your redheaded crush and forgetting what you wanted to say altogether.

You couldn’t help but gasp for air, the angry burning of your lungs only worsening with every shallow breath as hot tears trailed down the sides of your face. There was no stopping the sobs that pushed past your lips, nor the self loathing thoughts that racked your brain. You pressed your back firmly against the cool drywall beside your bed with the vain hope that the sudden chill may keep you grounded.

Nearly spitting out your tea as Kaminari cracked a joke during lunch, not realizing you took someone else’s seat in the common room, bumping into an elderly woman on the train, dropping a handful of textbooks in front of your entire class.

A knock on the door momentarily pulled you from what seemed to be an inescapable frenzy of thoughts. You stumbled to your feet, stole a glance in the mirror beside your bed. Reluctant to allow someone else to see your puffy, red eyes and tear-stained cheeks, you forced yourself to speak up, “uh- uhm,” your voice wavered with every word, but you cleared your throat and continued on, “I-I’m sorry, now isn’t really a good time.”

“Aw,” a familiar voice pouted from the other side, muffled by the wall between you, “well, think ya could let me in anyway?” It was Kirishima, the guy you’d been head-over-heels for since the beginning of your freshman year. 

You refused to let him see you so disheveled, couldn’t bear the thought of willingly adding another embarrassing moment to your catalogue of painful memories. 

“I’m sorry, I- well,” you wanted to lie, to make up an excuse as to why you couldn’t answer the door, but nothing came to mind. “I just can’t talk right now. Do you need something?”

“Yep! It’s really urgent, can’t wait another second!” He eagerly pleaded, and you just couldn’t find the will to say no.

Hastily drying your wet face with creased sleeves and fixing your hair to the best of your ability, you made your way to the door and cautiously inched it open. 

The crimson haired boy stood before you with a box of your favorite candy in his hands and a warm smile on his face. His brows were knit together in concern, tender eyes wholly trained on you. He glanced both ways down the vacant hallway to ensure that no one was within earshot before speaking in a hushed tone, “you didn’t seem like yourself in class today. Like, you were quieter than usual, and then Bakugou was a bit of an ass earlier...“ He nodded to the cardboard container in his hands, “I’ve seen you eat this before and it always seems to put a smile on your face, so I thought maybe it could do the same today too.” His grin faltered for a moment, gaze dropping to the floor as if embarrassed by his own words. “It’s stupid, I know, but I had to do somethin’!”

Despite your best efforts, the happy facade you’d forced on for Kirishima fell, and your eyes welled with tears once again. Your bottom lip trembled as you tried to swallow the lump crawling up your throat. His gaze shifted from the floor, back up to meet yours, and he nearly dropped the container in his hands at the sight of you so close to crying. 

Without a second thought, he threw his arms around your shoulders in a tight hug, “What’s wrong, (Y/n)?” His voice filled with worry, further breaking your heart, “Did I get the wrong kind of candy?”

“N-no,” you whimpered into his shoulder, unable to finish before the words caught in your mouth and tears wet the thin cotton of his shirt . Your arms wrapped around his waist, unconsciously reciprocating his hug. His warmth reminded you of just how long it had been since you’d let someone be so close. Your knees buckled under the weight of your own grief, and before you knew it, Kirishima was scooping you up into his strong arms. He carried you to the comfort of your bed, kicking the door closed as he passed.

“I knew you weren’t okay,” he muttered into your ear, tone much softer than you were used to from the boisterous man. He carefully set you down on your plush mattress, grabbed the nearest blanket and wrapped it around your shoulders, then knelt on the floor before you.

“I’m f-fine,” you forced out, trying to steady your voice but failing horribly, “You can go if you wa-want. I don't want to-”

Kirishima silenced you with a tender palm rested atop your own. “I’m not leaving you, (Y/n). Whatever’s going on, I care about you too much to make you deal with it alone.”

Up until then, you had made it a point to keep your anxiety hidden from your peers. You worried that they would treat you differently if they knew, that they wouldn’t quite understand. But, something about Kirishima told you that he was different, that nothing would change if you opened up to him. Regardless of your fears, the look in his eyes and tender cadence of his voice made you feel safe, like it was okay to be vulnerable.

“I,” your eyes flicked from your lap to meet his worried gaze, “I can’t help but remember everything I’ve done wrong over the years and just hate myself. I hate every mistake, every failure, every moment I did something dumb and didn’t know how to fix it.” Your stomach clenched as yet another sob forced its way past your lips. “I have so many regrets, and I constantly feel like an awful person because of them.”

A calloused thumb brushed along your upper cheek, wiping away the tracks of fallen tears. He nodded along as you vented, as if he understood exactly where you were coming from. Then, when you went silent, he waited for a few beats to ensure you were entirely finished speaking before responding. “I’m sure it doesn’t seem like it, but I used to be someone I’m not proud of either, and, honestly? Sometimes I still don’t like the person I see in the mirror.” He paused for a moment, lips pulled in a thin, contemplative line before continuing, “can you keep a secret?”

You nodded, surprised and mildly confused by his words. Could someone as confident and lovable as Kirishima really struggle with the same anxieties that you did?

He chuckled at the quizzical look you gave him, took a deep breath to steady his own nerves. “So, I actually didn’t look like this back in middle school -- hold up, I think I actually have a picture.” Five fingers flexed around your own, holding you close as his free hand fished into his pants pocket and pulled out a red-cased phone. Within a few seconds, ruby eyes were locked with your own once again, a shy smile pulling at the corners of his lips. “Promise not to laugh?”

The redhead’s grin was infectious, and you couldn’t help but smile with him. Your worries hadn’t been entirely forgotten, but with every word spoken between you, every passing second with his fingers entwined with your own, a subtle calm began to wash over you. “I’ll try not to,” you responded. That seemed good enough for him, and with only a short moment of hesitation, Kirishima turned the phone’s screen toward you to reveal a photo of himself from a few years before. 

Long, black hair framed a round face, slender shoulders slumped and eyes downcast as he stood alone in the courtyard of what you assumed to be his old middle school. Your head cocked to the side, brows furrowed in disbelief as you looked from the photo to the person in front of you. For a moment, you thought he must have been kidding. The muscular, seemingly self-assured man that knelt before you didn’t resemble the boy on his phone in the slightest. “You’re serious? That was you?” 

He nodded, clearly amused by your reaction. You wanted to ask what changed, how he pulled such a total one-eighty, but couldn’t find a way to without sounding rude.

He seemed to read your mind, though, and answered your question without hesitation. “I realized that I didn’t like the person I was, and vowed to be better.” He powered off the device in his hand and tossed it aside, attention entirely back to you, thumb unconsciously caressing the back of your hand as he continued. “I’m not telling you this because I think you need to change. Frankly,” his eyes darted to the floor, voice lowering nearly to a whisper, “I, uh, I really like the person you are now.” He cleared his throat, a pink tinge dusting his cheeks as his gaze flicked back up to meet yours. “I’m telling you this because, like I said before, I’m like you in a way. I can’t help but cringe when I remember the way I used to be, and I still worry sometimes that I haven’t actually changed that much.”

“But you have. I mean, you’re a completely different person now.”

“Exactly. Here’s what I’ve learned: if you cringe at something you did in the past, that’s probably because you’ve matured enough to know you were being dumb back then. Being able to look at your past self and recognize your mistakes means you aren’t that person anymore.” His other hand moved to rest atop your knee, as if he wanted to hold you closer but found himself hesitant.

You felt a weight lift from your shoulders at his words, yet still one question continued to gnaw at the back of your mind. “But, what if I’m beating myself up something I did recently… like,” your voice lowered in embarrassment, “when I a-accidentally threw that pencil at Ojiro, for example…”

“I promise, you’re the only one who even remembers that.” Kirishima chuckled softly, “you’re sweet for worrying about those little things, but no one worth knowing is gonna judge you off small mistakes. I know how great you are, and so does everyone else in our class. You light up every room you walk into, I swear. It’s like you’ve got a second quirk or somethin’.” You giggled, and his smile only grew wider. “I mean it! How could anyone not fall in love with that laugh?” The boy’s face turned bright red, eyes widening in realization at what he had said, grip tightening around your own. “Shit, I mean- well-” he cut himself off, sharp teeth nervously nibbling on his bottom lip.

His words resonated with you, filled the anxious pit in your stomach with warm butterflies and heated your cheeks with a rosey blush. Still, you convinced yourself he was only embarrassed because his words had come out in a different way than he had meant them. There was no way he actually had feelings for you, you thought. He was clearly just being nice. “I-It’s okay, I know you don’t like me like that. You’re way out of my league, anyway.” You forced a nervous laugh, attempting to comfort him through words that burned as they passed your lips.

You thought he’d relax at what you had said, agree with your comment, and thank you for understanding. Instead, he rose to his feet, a look of bewilderment in his eyes as he pulled you up to stand with him. “Do you really think that?” He questioned, expression twisted in disbelief, hurt by your self-deprecating words. His hands gripped yours tightly as you stood only inches from one another. Heat radiated off of his tan skin, shielding you from the chilly air of your room and prickling your arms with goosebumps.

“Sorry to break it to ya, but you couldn’t be more wrong.” Kirishima lightly tugged you closer, closed the distance between your bodies without a second thought. You allowed your chest to press against his, listening carefully as he continued, “I was afraid of making you uncomfortable or scaring you off, so I didn’t say anything before. But, if that’s really what you think, I’ve gotta set you straight. Truth is, I’m absolutely crazy for you, (Y/n). I mean, you’re cute, and sweet, and witty -- It’s impossible to take my eyes off of you whenever we’re in a room together, and just hearing your voice makes me feel warm all over.”

Calloused fingers released one of your hands, traveled up to caress a now-dry cheek. He cracked another sharp-toothed grin at the realization that you were no longer crying. “Can you do me a favor and tell me next time you start to feel all anxious and stuff again? Regardless of if you like me back, I just want to be there for you, whatever you need. It’s not very manly to fall for a girl, then leave her hangin’ when she needs ya the most.”

An eager nod in agreement was all you could manage for a long moment as you stood entirely awestruck by his confession. All you wanted was to find your voice, to tell him how much his efforts meant to you, but the words refused to come. 

So, you did the next best thing.

The box of candies he had brought as a pick-me-up laid forgotten on your bed as tentative fingers gripped Kirishima’s broad shoulders and you rose onto your tiptoes. Without allowing yourself time for hesitation, you pressed pursed lips to a flushed-pink cheek. It wasn’t a large gesture, but in that moment it felt perfect. 

You’d never seen Ejirou smile as wide as he did in that moment, strong hands firmly gripping your waist as you pulled away -- as if to make sure that you wouldn’t stray too far from his grasp. “That settles it then! Tomorrow I’m asking you out properly -- with flowers, and chocolates, and way more than just one box of your favorite sweets… but you gotta promise me one thing.”

“What’s that?” 

“That we’ll take care of one another. I’ll never judge you, hurt you, or belittle whatever you’re struggling with, as long as you promise the same to me, okay? From now on ‘til the end of time, I’ve got your back unconditionally, and you’ve got mine. Promise?”

“Promise.”

[sachigram]

hi it’s me scrambled (=´∀｀) I think a one shot about highschool Shizuo and Izaya dealing with homophobia would be really interesting (saw it an ask on glaces blog abt it) and I can’t stop thinking abt it, sounds really interesting and kinda angsty (please don’t kill anyone,,,smh,,) but still sounds good! You’re amazing I stan you too hard I love your writing and I love everything about it <3

((Thank you! <3 So you...want me to write about someone with a death wish???? You want me to write someone being an ass to Shizuo AND Izaya? Ooh boy.))

Everyone at school knows about Shizuo and Izaya. They're kind of infamous, especially with the way Izaya spreads rumors around. At first, they just fought all the time, but most of the time they could wait until they were out of school to come to blows. Usually, they wound up being caught by Simon and then dragged into Russia Sushi for the remainder of the afternoon. Izaya would make scathing comments in Russian, and then Shizuo would launch at him, and then Simon would say something like, “Izaya only say he wants pickled radish! Why so mad, ShiZUo?”

To this day, Shizuo doesn't really understand what changed between them. He thinks maybe he caught Izaya, and Izaya kissed him out of desperation. Or maybe Shizuo kissed Izaya first. Once their lips met the first time, it didn't really matter who kissed who. They just kept kissing, and Shizuo thinks it's much better than fighting with Izaya all the time, though they do still fight pretty often.

Being in a sort of relationship with Izaya has many perks, actually, one of which being Izaya can help with homework. Sometimes Izaya is a real dick about it and he gets off on watching Shizuo struggle, but other times, like today, he's informative and indulgent. He's winding his fingers through Shizuo's hair while chattering away about some mistake Shizuo made on the English homework, and Shizuo is struggling to listen to what he's saying.

They're on their lunch break. They always meet on the roof, and sometimes Shinra and Kadota will come too, but today is one of those days where it's just Shizuo and Izaya, and Izaya is being touchy, and Shizuo forgets all about the past, present, and future tense on his worksheet.

“Are you listening?” Izaya asks. “You're going to fail.”

“Shut up,” Shizuo says. He presses his face into Izaya's neck and breathes him in, his hands going to Izaya's back. “You're distracting me.”

“Don't blame me for your short attention span.” Izaya sounds gleeful, and knowing him, he's distracting Shizuo on purpose. He'd laugh for hours if Shizuo failed his class.

There's no one else around, and it really wouldn't matter if there were. Even the teachers will struggle to separate the two of them when they argue in the hallways and inevitably end up making out violently.

“I don't think I'm gonna get it even if you keep talking about it,” Shizuo says into Izaya's neck. He lifts his head. “There's better things we could do.”

“You could eat your lunch,” Izaya says, but he's smirking in that way of his. Shizuo used to want to punch it off Izaya's face, but now he likes to kiss it.

“Nah, I wanna eat you,” Shizuo says, and he pulls Izaya's lips to his. Kissing Izaya is one of Shizuo's favorite things to do. It shuts Izaya up, and it always becomes a challenge to get Izaya so worked up that he becomes compliant. It doesn't usually take too long, but Shizuo refrains from getting handsy since they're at school. His parents have been indulgent about the whole Izaya thing, but Shizuo thinks it's because they'd rather Shizuo be fucking Izaya than actively trying to kill him.

He nips at Izaya's tongue, and Izaya shivers before crawling forward and straddling Shizuo's lap. This is dangerous— If they get too worked up, Shizuo doesn't think they'll be able to stop. Still, Izaya is persuasive, and he's tugging at Shizuo's hair, and then...

There's some annoying noise that's not either of them.

Shizuo growls and pulls away from Izaya, who turns and raises an eyebrow. Shizuo follows his line of sight and observes some guy he's never seen before.

“Takeda-san,” Izaya says smoothly, like he's not hard in Shizuo's lap. “Did you need something?”

“Who the fuck are you?” Shizuo asks, already pissed they were interrupted.

“He just transferred to my class,” Izaya says, and Shizuo grumbles.

“Uh, yeah, I was coming to ask you about homework. A girl in class said you'd be here with your...uh. Friend.” Takeda looks very uncomfortable, and Shizuo doesn't like the way he's looking at Izaya.

“Ah. I'll help you after break. I'm a little busy,” Izaya says.

“Is this like. Allowed?”

“Why are you still here?” Shizuo barks, and the guy narrows his eyes. It's been a long time since anyone at school glared at Shizuo like that. Most people are afraid of him, but Izaya just said Takeda is a transfer.

“What do you mean? Kissing? I don't suppose it's allowed, but no one is going to stop us,” Izaya says, and he grins at Shizuo playfully. Shizuo hugs him closer and noses against his cheek, growling impatiently. Izaya giggles.

“I'd just think you'd be a little careful, since it's... I mean, you're both guys,” Takeda says.

“So?” Izaya asks, and the look in his eyes changes. Shizuo recognizes it well. It means Izaya is about to make this kid's life hell.

“I'll just ask someone else for help. Sorry to interrupt your time with your boyfriend,” Takeda says, clearly not all that sorry.

“It's really no problem,” Izaya says. “I can—“

“No. I don't wanna talk to a queer.”

Izaya sighs, and Shizuo is up on his feet in an instant, carrying Izaya right along with him.

“Say that again,” he says, walking right up to the fucker. “I dare you.”

“Look, it's my first day. I'll just avoid you from now on,” Takeda huffs. He's looking Shizuo up and down as if he's trying to gauge how strong Shizuo is.

“No, you already opened your fucking mouth. So say it again.”

“Yes, Takeda-san, call me another slur. They really get me going,” Izaya purrs.

“It's just gross, okay? It's fucking gross, and you'd think the two of you wouldn't be in broad daylight sucking face like that. You should be ashamed,” Takeda says, and Shizuo clenches his hands into fists.

“Apologize to Izaya, or I'm gonna throw you off the roof.” Shizuo feels immense anger, but he also feels strangely calm. Usually when he loses his temper, he feels guilty about it because the other person might not deserve it. Now, Shizuo doesn't feel the least bit guilty.

“Fuck that, I'm not saying sorry to that—“

Shizuo punches him before he can continue. Takeda flies backward, but he's on his feet again fairly quick. He lunges at Shizuo, who punches him again, harder this time, and uses Takeda's dazed state to lift him by the back of the shirt and carry him to the corner of the roof.

“Dangle him upside-down,” Izaya says, and Shizuo gives him a look.

“Why?”

“Why not?” Izaya shrugs.

“Oh, good point.”

By the time a teacher makes it to the roof, Takeda is crying in fear, all the blood rushed to his head, and Shizuo is holding him by one ankle, threatening loudly to let him fall.

Shizuo avoids suspension when Izaya explains what happened, though he's still in trouble, and his parents don't seem pleased with him. He honestly doesn't care though. He never really considered people like that before, someone having a problem with Shizuo kissing Izaya just because they're both guys. It seems so trivial.

“Most people aren't like you,” Izaya says when Shizuo mentions it. They’re exiting the school together, hand in hand. “They aren't scary and strong. They get bullied.”

“Do you get bullied when I'm not around?” Shizuo asks.

“No. I have a reputation on my own.” Izaya turns and grins at Shizuo. “You protected my honor today, Shizu-chan. Heiwajima Shizuo, defender of gay rights!” Izaya shouts it right in the middle of the sidewalk, and other people turn to stare at them.

“Shut up!” Shizuo huffs, swiping for him. Of course, Izaya dodges him.

“No cops at Pride, only Shizu-chan!” Izaya sings, dancing around, and Shizuo grumbles before giving up and letting Izaya get whatever the fuck this is out of his system. It feels good to see him happy about something other than someone suffering.

“Want to come over?” Izaya asks after he finishes flailing around. “I'm sure you don't really want to go home right now.”

“Are your sisters home?” Shizuo asks warily. He likes the twins, but he doesn't like the way they keep pestering him for pictures of his brother.

“Nope. They have martial arts today,” Izaya says. He bats his eyelashes. “You have me all to yourself!”

“Lucky me,” Shizuo says, and though he means it sarcastically, it comes out sounding sincere.

[benevadeca]

Yet another needlessly long hamefura post by yrs truly. ♡ love you guys.

Been thinking at the ideal gerald - katarina dynamic endgame...and listen Nothing specifically against gerald/katarina (geokata??), as a Ship, but I genuinely don't get the popularity other than for the fact of him being the "main"/having the most screentime, when the idea of them staying as friends is on a textual level just a lot more compelling.

Like ig part of it is bc of how hard the author herself seems to be pushing it (and keith too, which is itself kind of a Whole seperate bag of worms I don't think needs to be explained bc I'm normal)

For gerald tho tbh part of my issue is how the further into the LN u get the less the novel stays a parody and instead just becomes a generic emulation of the same boring anime tropes, but still....listen the META of platonic katarina - gerald end game pls let me sell it to everyone:

The Best ending concept for gerald and kat's relationship is katarina turning him down, and they break their engagement and every1 else is like oh thank god, but then w that hurdle finally cleared they're free to become Best Friends and every1 collectively realizes that oh no they're insufferable together actually.

Gerald's Whole Thing as a character is he's been the perfect want-for-nothing prince, and so the reason he's so putting his eggs in katarina's basket, is she is very much the meet cute who defrosted his ice queen shell and made him learn to connect with other people. So on a certain level the depth of his emotions kind of stems from insecurity?

He doesn't want to lose the person that's kind of his safe space (which I would argue is the main catalyst / reason for most of the cast's love for her), that he feels most comfortable with being genuine bc he knows that she both sees him as he is, and accepts him for it. He doesn't want to lose her! And he feels the most unquestionable, permanent way to assure that is thru marriage.

And the 2nd thing abt him is that his biggest character trait is that he never fails at anything, so for him to "fail" in the sense that he does not get the desired result of his pining...the one thing that actually “matters”/he actually cares abt....it’s spicy. The potential for character introspection and growth, it’s a fertile ground scenario!

Just...the idea of him not getting what he wants / more generally, the whole "fight" for kat's love as treated or framed as this battle with only one winner, and the idea of her love being treated as a "prize", and all of these tenants/preconstructions never being analyzed or second-guessed by the narrative ....  get that shit out here!! Hell no!! Learning to accept that sometimes you don't get what you per say want, but I doesn't mean you lose! It doesn't mean what you do have is something lesser

This is being just a long-winded way to say that my idea geokata endgame is them both finally getting the catharsis they need from airing their grievances to one another (kat and her mild underlying fear, gerald and his view of how much she means to him/being more communicative abt his insecurities), realizing how much they value one another in their lives, the reassurance that kat won't just exit his life just bc she can't fill this expectation of being his queen/wife, and it getting thru to kat her value and affect on the people closest to her (that they won't just betray her, that she's not betraying them). 

And then finally letting down all the barriers they've built up inside themselves preventing them from just. Hanging out? Being friends? No more need for pretenses! They like each other and are secure in their place in one another's lives, as each other's oldest friends....compatriots....besties!!

Also they finally stop dancing around one another enough to shit talk. I want them to be a little bit gossipy together. Gerald gains the confidence to engage in Shit Talk to kat bc he's no longer trying to impress her/feels the need to always put on airs, and she's such a responsive audience u kno? Her stuffing food into her mouth and making all the right "Gasp!" and "No!" and "they Didn't!!" noises.

And Also kat not being afraid to drag him by the ear and tell him off when he's being a bit too Much, or gently mock him when he's being so incredibly Fake. I just think kat has the right to bully gerald, just a little, as a best friends activity. Alan also joins in on this and it's literally gerald's worst nightmare he Hates how well they absolutely rib him.

[vacuousauto]

📃🎥🏳‍🌈

tysm for tha ask molli!! ill talk abt kny here bc its takin over my life rn qwq

spoilers ahead 4 tha whole series!!

📃 what is the plot of your hyperfixation? and is it a movie, game, show, etc?

kny is a manga w an anime adaptation thats had 1 season so far n a movies bein made of my fav arc!! (also this plot desc may not b perfect bc i havent read it in like 4 months)

its abt a boy called tanjirou whos whole family got killed by a demon, n his sister nezuko got turned into a demon (which fun fact: in kimetsu theyre man-eatin creatures w different powers called blood demon arts!!)

hes sent by giyuu (a demon slayer!) 2 join tha demon slayer corps so hell become stronger n mayb get a little revenge. as a treat (and also mayb find a way 2 turn nezuko human?)

as he trains he learns how 2 do water breathing (a sword technique taught by him n giyuus mentor, urokodaki) n his final challenge is 2 cut a massive boulder in half w his sword

its real hard 4 him (as u can imagine) so 2 kids in fox masks named sabito n makomo come n help him, but after tanjirou cuts tha rock n tells urokodaki abt him its revealed theyre dead???

@ final selection (basically a demon slayer entrance exam where u win by surviving on a demon-infested mountain 4 seven days) he learns from a real fucked up demon that hes exclusively been targetin urokodakis students n that not even sabito could slice its neck open?? (thats how him n makomo died)

after tanjirou kills tha demon n basically puts all tha water breath students’ souls @ peace he passes tha exam!! its been 7 days n now he gets his nichirin blade (the only kinda sword that can kill a demon, tha only 2 ways they can die is thru a slice 2 tha neck from a nichirin blade n sunlight)

turns out nezuko was turned by the strongest demon of all, michael jackson muzan kibutsuji, n so he sets out 2 hunt him down n try 2 kill him

but he aint so strong @ first so he needs 2 try 2 take down tha twelve kizuki first (the 12 strongest demons besides muzan)

another reason he needs 2 kill tha kizuki is 2 gather their blood for a demon named tamayo n her assistant yushirou!! tamayo can make a cure if tanjirou can gather blood samples 4 her (the stronger tha demon tha more of muzans blood they have so hes gonna have 2 aim high)

he meets a bunch more slayers along tha way, includin zenitsu (a scaredy cat thunder breath user who basically simps 4 nezuko n becomes a badass when hes asleep) n inosuke (a rowdy beast breath user who wears a boar mask n lived in tha mountains)

after lower moon 5 gets killed by giyuu, nezuko unlocks her blood demon art (exploding blood!) n tanjirou remembers how 2 use tha hinokami kagura, him n nezuko get captured by a slayer called shinobu qwq

turns out she n giyuu are 2 of the nine hashira, the strongest of all tha demon slayers!! but theyre all havin a debate over whether they should kill tanjirou n nezuko 4 goin against corps rules n travelin w a demon

eventually oyakata-sama (tha leader of tha slayer corps) comes in n tells em its ok, urokodaki sent a letter explainin that nezukos never hurt anyone n if she does, tanjirou giyuu n urokodaki all have 2 die basically

oyakata-sama also tells em that tanjirous met kibutsuji, at which everyone goes feral at (and understandably, none of em had ever even seen him before hes that elusive)

so they get 2 live bc theyre like. tha best hope the slayers have @ findin kibutsuji

the rest of the hashira are kyoujurou (flame), muichirou (mist), mitsuri (love), obanai (serpent), gyoumei (stone), tengen (sound) n sanemi (wind)

theres also kanao (shinobus pupil, flower breathing) n genya (sanemis brother, eats demons 2 gain power n basically become a demon temporarily, also He Has A Gun)

ive gone on a lot here so ill try 2 keep it brief now but i HAVE 2 explain infinity train or ill die (slight suicide tw but no one actually does that outside of dreams)

BASICALLY the lower 6 moons have a meetin @ kibutsujis infinity castle, muzan decides 2 dismantle tha lower moons bc they keep fuckign dying

all of em get their shit wrecked except enmu, who avoided death by usin muzans “dont tell me what 2 do” rule against him n beggin 4 death basically

so he gets a metric fuckton o blood n goes off 2 kill tanjirou

turns out he keeps killin people on his train n kyos gone 2 investigate!! the main gang (the kamaboko gang as the fandom calls it) are there too bc tanjirou needs 2 investigate what hinokami kagura really is (turns out its sun breathing, the og form and ones that only folks w the same mark on his forehead can use) n if anyone knows abt the alleged “fire breathing” as they know it rn its the fire hashira!!

so they get on tha train (inosukes lovin tha experience bc hes Literally Never Seen A Train Before) n kyo basically adopts the whole group

they take some tickets n promptly fall asleep HERES WHERE ENMUS DEMON ART COMES INTO PLAY!!! DREAM MANIPULATION BABEYYY

BASICALLY he can make people fall asleep in a buncha ways (the mouths on his hands, his weird eye thingies, the tickets) n once thats happened he n his henchmen can access said dreams (he can even control em!!) n if they find tha “spiritual core” they can destroy it n essentially leave em as an empty shell thatll never wake up!! yaaaaaay /s

he fails bc tanjirou realises a way out n its by cuttin his own head off in his dream, eventually everyones awake again n tanjirou finds enmu on tha roof(?) of tha train

after a while he does manage 2 decapitate him but surprise!!! hes not dead

turns out he literally FUSED WITH THA TRAIN n is plannin on eatin everyone inside, includin kyo n the gang

but he doesnt bc Main Protags Cant Die(tm) n dies while complainin that he wants a redo (sorry enmu, ily but u cant turn back time unless ur yoshikage kira)

also sidenote enmus tha only kizuki w/o a canon backstory as far as i can remember and????? H??

ANYWHO after that whole debacle basketball akaza (UPPER moon 3) shows himself!!! FUCK

n after all that struggle against the 8th strongest demon of all time now they gotta deal w tha 4th strongest????? damn,

so yeah it goes how youd imagine, its a tough fuckin battle n its Not Fun but it turns out kyoujurou fucking dies n i genuinely didnt realise until he said “kamado my boy, lets have one final chat” bc i was so in denial n lets face it i still am now

long story short idk how im gonna manage 2 get thru the movie w/o breakin down @ the end

anyway after that horrible horrible time tanjirou goes n meets senjurou, kyos little bro, who gives him kyos sword guard thing (its shaped like a flame!!) n i havent read it in a while so i cant FULLY remember but i think this is where he learns abt sun breathing??

after that they end up goin on a mission in tha red light district w tengen, his 3 wives are there 2 serve as spies (theyre kunoichi, which i think are ninjas of some kind??) n the boys have 2 find em

they do manage 2 find em but not after runnin into upper moon 6, who are 2 twins called daki n gyuutarou

after that fight tengen has 2 retire bc he got fucked up p bad from that fight n he wants 2 make sure tha girls are ok above all

so after that arc tanjirou n nezuko go down 2 tha swordsmith village (bc the guy who usually makes his swords is fuckin tired of repairin it) n run into mitsuri!! she tells tan that theres smth in tha forest thatll make him stronger

ngl this is tha arc i remember tha least abt so this desc is prolly SO inaccurate despite havin 2 o my favs in it)

but muichirou shows himself too n hes mean 2 tanjirou >:/ (he does get nicer eventually but 2 him specifically)

a 10 y/o kid named kotetsu shows tan this 6 armed trainin robot called yoriichi type 0 (based on tha first slayer 2 use sun breathin) n tanjirou breaks it by accident qwq

but he keeps trainin thanks 2 kotetsu but tha kids a harsh fuckin trainer ill tell u that

anyway so we have a whole buncha demons 2 deal w here except most of em are 1 demon split into different parts

hantengu n gyokko, upper moons 4 n 5 respectively!! mui deals w gyokko while mitsuri genya nezuko n tanjirou deal w hantengu

in these fights mitsuri n mui get their demon slayer marks!! these are marks that they get when they surpass the limits of tha human body n they look like tha marks demons have (muis looks like clouds on his cheeks n mitsuris is 2 hearts on her collarbone)

next up is tha hashira trainin arc!! everyone gets trained by each of tha hashira 2 try n unlock their slayer marks

each have a dif trainin style that focuses on dif stuff (for example gyoumei focuses a lot on physical strength n stuff like that, obanai is more abt accuracy) n this is where giyuus backstory gets revealed bc he doesnt think hes worthy o bein a hashira :((

basically him n sabito were absolute besties!! they both trained together n sabito basically told him not 2 die ever

but it all goes wrong @ final selection- sabito manages 2 take down every demon on tha mountain but one of em, that bein the hand demon that exclusively targets water breathers (theyre easy 2 distinguish bc of their blue haoris n custom made fox masks)

he manages 2 save giyuu n everyone else from tha selection except 4 himself (this is why giyuus haori is like that- its made from his sister n sabitos haoris)

giyuu blames himself 4 both of their deaths bc he failed 2 protect em n says that he doesnt deserve 2 have passed tha selection let alone b a hashira,, but tanjirou convinces him otherwise!! ^^

then one day while giyuus trainin w sanemi disaster hits- oyakata-sama, his wife n two of their kids just died

the 2nd to last arc- the infinity castle!! thingsre gettin real n muzans revealed himself

in tha infinity castle EVERYONES there but can u really blame em theyve been workin up 2 this 4 millenia

shinobu runs into upper moon 2- douma, aka the bastard that killed her sister as well as inosukes mum

she is. justifiably pissed. n she gives it her all but he kills her :(( douma ily but also FUCK YOU.

so perfect timing!!! heres her adopted sister!! as well as inosuke!!!! revenge battle time >:0

in the end shinobus poison is what kills him- her whole body is filled w wisteria poison thats deadly 2 a demon so he basically consumed her whole body weight in poison rip

but ofc word gets out via messenger crow that shes dead n its just a real sad moment tbh :( but theres no time 4 that bc giyuu n tanjirou just ran into akaza >:((

so tanjirous pissed as hell now n w their combined efforts they take down tha basketball lookin bastard (bastardball??)

meanwhile obanai n mitsuri (n yushirou iirc?? he uses his own art 2 control her @ some point tho i cant remember when) deal w tha new upper moon 4 (nakime, whos also shiftin tha rooms around w her blood art n makin tha fight super fuckign annoyin tbh) n muichirou genya sanemi n gyoumei deal w kokushibou (upper moon 1, also tha original sun breathers twin brother so he gets moon breathin >:3)

mitsuri n obanai fake their deaths w help from yushirou n muzan falls 4 it, which comes in handy later ;3

zenitsu also deals w his former bully, upper moon 6 aka kaigaku aka dickhead supreme who if zenitsu didnt kill i would personally kill w my bare hands

so after everyones taken down all thats left is muzan >:( muzan kills tamayo real early on n everyones goin all out on him

we also learn that he has multiple brains n hearts in his body eww

also the hashira have their marks now!! but all but sanemi n giyuu get killed n giyuu loses his arm :((((

genya also gets killed noo

eventually ofc the battle is won thanks 2 everyones relief, it took for fuckin ever bc the only way muzan can die is tha sun so they had 2 kill time n keep him out in tha sun 4 a long time

also nezukos been cured!! shes a human!! n shes comin 2 help!!

but OH GOD OH FUCK MUZAN TURNED TANJIROU INTO A DEMON N GIYUUS CRYIN N INOSUKES CRYIN THRU HIS MASK N ITS GOIN SO FUCKING WRONG but he gets tha will 2 turn back bc Fuck You Muzan, The Power Of Friendship Defeats All

the 2nd to last chapter is tha happy endin, the kamaboko gang visit tanjirou n nezukos house, giyuu cuts his hair n SMILES n tha hashira have their final meetin w oyakata-samas son kiriya

i cried readin it ngl their sufferin is finally over...... it cost a lot but now theres no more demons,,,

chapter 205 is set in tha modern day! kanao n tanjirous descendants are shown, as well as zenitsu n nezukos

everyone who died/never had kids get reincarnated (for example gyoumei is now a daycare worker, kyos reincarnation toujurou is besties w one o tans descendants n giyuu (giichi) is friends w sabito again!! makomos their friend too!!

ALSO KIRIYA IS STILL ALIVE hes the oldest man in japan!! this is huge bc the ubayashiki family dont usually live past 30 bc of a curse that was put on em when they had muzan

yushirou is still alive too but thats bc hes a demon n he paints tamayo for a living qwq

it just made me cry so hard bc waaah,,, everyone gets 2 live a demon-free life now,,, anyway typin this took me like an hour im sorry mint (as well as anyone else who read this)

🎥 do you have any favorite scenes from your hyperfixation?

tha infinity train arc as a whole tbh??? its basically enmu n kyoujurous big moment and. i care them sm. i cant wait 4 tha movie qwq except 4 their deaths ofc

🏳‍🌈 do you have any headcanons (lgbt, race, neuro, etc) that are important to you?

i have a lotta headcanons really!! outta my f/os favs tho i hc:

giyuu is trans bi n autistic

kyo is gay n has adhd

muichirou is nb n pan

mitsuri is pan

douma is gay

enmu is nb pan n autistic

[renaer-is-allegedly-hot]

actual session 8 notes

• I made a mistake

○ Mistake as in I came in late oops

• Anyways

• They're talking abt hair

• For sneak attack you roll 2d6 just a friendly reminder to yourself

○ oH IT TELLS U IN DNDBEYOND HOW MUCH FOR SNEAK ATTACK OKAY

• Now they're talking abt pranking ppl in the rides

• Now they're talking abt disneyland problems

• Now they're talking abt rollercoasters

• Jacob's fish ate each other

• Ok dnd time

○ "no worries" re: me being late s u r e ok nvm it's not depression time

• Passive perception checks and then we do smth idk

• Last session(s)

○ Downtime and then breakfast was bombed

○ Found out the attack was deliberate

○ Went to the one fancy villa house and got into a few fights

○ A nimblewright ?? Was responsible for the attack ig

○ We dipped and it's rainy

• The city is engulfed in thiccccc fog

○ Walking back to mirt's house

§ Lillian got prankt

• Lillian's sister has a guinea pig

○ Its name is buttercup

○ "buttercup dumpy tho" - jacob, 2020

• We're talking abt china's laws wrt eating dogs

• We're in the fog going to mirt's

○ Mirt's house is in sea ward, we're in north ward (a ward away)

○ If we just walk it's a half mile away

○ But there r streets so like a mile walk

○ Visibility is bad bc spring fog

○ Disadvantage on perception checks, visibility reduced to 30 ft

○ We're walking we get there

• Cel knocks

○ No one answers the door

○ Adam is making an investigation check

§ Does a short tour of the front, nothing out of the ordinary

§ Door is locked

§ Looking into the house there's an occasional candle burning by itself

□ Adam uses thaumaturgy to rapidly change the color of the lights inside to see if he can get anyone's attention

® Lights change color, nothing happens

§ Maybe we'll break in but cel will try the pebble on a window thing first

□ Throws, door opens and floon lets us in

□ Mans just got up

® We're a lil wet

□ It's abt 5am

• Short rest? There's no medium rest

○ I want cake I might make cupcakes after this bc I need cake sugar

§ I'll make cake after this and watch criminal minds bc it had me scream

○ We're taking shifts for keeping watch sleeping in mirt's living room w windows facing out onto the street

○ We're taking a long rest

• When cel is on watch she's just watching the door and windows

• Eventually renaer and floon get up n operate on a normal schedule

• Cut straight to wake up

○ Once we're all up it's raining

○ Hi jacob's dad isn't his name frederic ? Oh god I could b v wrong but I'm p sure bc when marguerite named the squirrel someone was like it's jacob's dad

§ "usually what I say should be cut off" - frederic, 2020

§ Aw bye jacob's dad

§ Jacob sounds exactly like his dad

□ Tb to the one time we were playing split the room on jackbox w my cousins and my dad and the choice was trading ur average newborn for an uber smart one or not and all of the cousins and myself said don't trade and mY DAD SAID TRADE

• It's pouring

• Mirt doesn't seem to b here but we can talk to renaer and floon

○ Gonna talk to them abt the mansion n ppl / things at the mansion

○ Oh a nimblewright is the one thing

§ Oops I accidentally googled it and turns out they're employed as bodyguards / assassins / spies

○ "renAer . Do u recognize this symbol"

§ He is indeed familiar w the crest

§ "well to me this looks like the house of grahlund (idk) ?? Or smth"

§ The houses of waterdeep

§ We're suss abt the book

□ We don't see any other black pages tho

§ Adam says the gnome was unfortunately barbecued

□ "trying to deliver the stone of galore" to us probs

□ Y would he deliver it to us

□ "bc mirt is relatively well known ,, this house is probs well watched"

□ The stone of galore v sought after by noble families apparenTly

□ The house ppl r embezzling that's y they want the rock

□ Had their robot blast our door for it

□ But now city watch probably has it

□ Theo remembers the one elven lady having seen someone run off

□ The zents want it, the nobles want it, the citywatch want it

○ So is the plan to go find a zent ??? Or what we'd learn if we went to the robot's location

§ I don't remember any frickin robot I'm just trying to pick up on context clues

§ Oh right grinda in mistshore ? 

§ We're gonna go find grinda

□ It's like around 4 in the afternoon

□ Sun not shining too brightly

□ Renaer not coming

® Ur leaving groot w renaer this time

□ Neither is floon, mirt mentioned he had to go do some business elsewhere

® Adam is currently suspicious of mirt

□ We need a ride

® We all dish out 3 copper for a taxi

® Dom dabbed and no one cares

○ Can u drop a message to the guy ?? Somehow ?? Somewhere ?? Just like ,, keep him in the loop ???? Ur confused

• Ok we pay

○ Adam is playing the uke

§ We're in the cab 

§ Imagine it's raining aggressively

§ A dwarf guild member picks us up

§ Ugh I want cake

§ Could I bake while playing hm

§ Cab driver has a rigging of sorts set up

§ I have to pee too

§ Any interesting looking ppl in the cab w us ?

○ A gnome w a fedora looking p drenched, dragonborn woman half sleeping kinda elderly, human man

§ Adam slaps the gnome, you stare at the gnome, gnome looks at adam and adam runs an insight check adam rolls 23, gnome tries to look surprised but looks like he's overacting

§ "there's not a lot of big ideas here"

§ "well that's obvious enough"

§ Gnome picks up on stare

§ You get the paper you flip it, you roll for insight gets 22

□ Takes the bait, looks at the paper; eventually human gets off

□ We're getting close to outskirts of dock ward, road is mud

□ At some point the gnome tries to start conversation

□ "say what's that you've got there"

□ "well I only saw him at the carnival that shows up every fall"

® Common in the autumn but not nowadays

® Would have to wait another summer

□ "are you a nimblewright fanatic sir"

® "all I'm saying is I like springtime rain as much as the next guy but when the wind season comes in it's kinda unusual"

® Gnome's name is elbridge

◊ Adam rolls for insight

} 25

} Looks like he's used to saying that name but it might not be his name

® "say I have some business to attend to so driver u can keep the tip just don't tell the guild" dwarf nods and slows the horses down, gnome gets off and dips

• Adam wants him to blow a nose

• "did he leave any little hairs" - marguerite, 2020

○ Cab driver shouts and says no stabbing on the cart

• We're in the dock ward, cart stops and dwarf leans over and makes us get out

○ Shakes his head and says we shouldn't go to mistborne

○ "is there any instruction you can give us for how to 'get there get there' because you're not 'taking us taking us'" - adam, 2020

• Aerana's leading

○ Dom sends a map

○ We're not standing on the muddy running water streets but on wooden planking

○ You have your dagger at hand

○ Beached ships but ppl living inside them probably

○ U can see there r some ppl peeking out of various doorways + shifty characters milling abt

○ Cel and adam r holding hands

○ Adam is sweating a lot but cel still holds it

○ At some point a dragonborn that looks like a sailor or smth w lots of battlewounds n tattoos looks p savage w dull brown color to scales, stands in front of u without saying anything

○ Ur like a lil shorter than humans and dragonborn r much taller

§ "I have business in mistborne what are you doing in my way"

§ Not so many city types

§ Adam mumbles smth under his breath

□ Asks adam what kind of business

□ "we're looking for grinda"

® Tries to appear jovial

® Says ah yes she lives here

® Dragon therapy

◊ He takes and puts to temple 

◊ U pay him 3 gold

◊ Grinda garloff

} Strange woman w a shed at the end of the dock

} Take a left here and follow the sounds of the waves

} Throws out a fourth

– Has many visitors w strange visitors

◊ Cel says she likes his tattoos

} "yes these r when I was sailing around the isle of chault"

• We follow his directions and eventually get to d1, we see ppl trying to set a fire

○ Walk down the dock towards d2, door to north of d2 has small assemblage of ppl

○ Can see up to 60 ft away some odd looking ppl

§ Four thugs bearing weapons; three humans w a dwarf barking instructions, attempting to break down the door to d2

§ Might b grinda's house but we really don't know

§ Adam spruces up the one fire of the dock workers

□ Cel lets go of adam's hand

□ They don't notice adam did it

• Adam tries to hear what the dwarf is saying bc it's rainy and doesn't hear anything

○ Lots of shifty ppl around

○ Some of them r watching the scene and also us

○ We approach the audience

§ Adam nudges the friendliest looking person

§ We all go up onto the elevated ship

§ Immediately ppl look at us suss

□ Confrontational almost and eventually a half-elf woman asks us if we're here to watch them string up grinda

® Cel makes persuasion check

® Isn't there another door ?

® Adam goes to cushiest looking person and asks y they're after grinda

◊ Old grizzled halfling answers adam and says grinda took smth she wasn't supposed to have

◊ "we're here to make sure that grinda doesn't escape unharmed"

◊ "we're pretty tough as well" adam says

◊ More ppl come over closer to us

◊ Adam asking how much it would be to outbuy

◊ "that depends on how much you're asking oh wrinkly one"

◊ Halfling confers w fellows

◊ Halfling appears to be a ringleader

} Says 15 dragons

– 19 for insight

w Confident guy, lived a tough life

w Ppl put their trust in him

w Halfling says 15 is bargain price

w Unsuccessful try to push the price down you all cough up 3 dragons

– They start distributing dragons

w Not used to containing excitement

○ After distributing money asks if we have a bone to pick with the xants

§ Adam's gonna play them a song and plays it so hard it casts shatter on the dock the thugs are standing on

□ Constitution saving throws for everything

® Two of the bandits and the dwarf fail their saving throws, other two succeed

® Tl;dr the dock - two of them r shocked so hard they're either dead or unconscious

® Dwarf Is particularly affected

® Dock they're standing on collapses

® Door blasted off inwards

◊ "that's a little trick I learned at bard school"

◊ Ppl on the boat have moved away

® Humans and dwarves screaming

◊ 3 left

} We're not killing them just going into the house

} Go to the side entrance

– V small room w all bare necessary fixtures

– Strange safes n intricate bolted locks

– Hanging talismans from the roof

– Nvm went too fast

w Aerana jumps and runs into a wall but you run into a cabinet

w 3 damage

w Human woman looks unconscious

w Adam casts healing word

w Resuscitates her

w Has mismatched eyes, one yellow other dark green

w V gray hair

w Doesn't look particularly old just has gray hair

w Startles when she wakes up trying to assess our intentions

w Adam tries to convince her the thugs outside tried to blow up her door

w 18 for deception

w Lie works

w "who are you people?"

® Theo asks if she knows anything abt this *pulls out paper*

◊ Affirms we're not w the xants

◊ "I appreciate what you did my name's grinda"

◊ Doesn't look used to talking to this many ppl at once

◊ Stands up and busies herself w putting the room back in order

◊ Looks like she had been barricading the door w stuff before everything was knocked over

◊ "you're telling me you just happened across this place and drove off some xants for some odd purpose"

◊ "actually we were looking for you" - theo

◊ Were told she might have smth to do w the paper

◊ "all the homies hate xanathar" - adam, 2020

} "I've had my dealings w the xanathar before…" admits she was in over her head

} Looking at the paper "so this nimblewright was instructed to drop off an artifact I was supposed to hold for the xanathars

} She got greedy bc she's a treasure-seeker

} The artifact is worth a lot

} "it's just what we do lady" - adam, 2020

} Adam is gonna charm her

– Adam tries to flex "what exactly what was the dangerous item that put a poor, poor, well-facially featured woman like you in danger" what is this jacob

w 17 persuasion

– Her expression changes a little

– It's the stone

w "I was attempting to attune with it but I was unable to in time"

w She put it in a hide hole

w Adam offers to trade hidey-hole locations

w She has a rat familiar and instructed it to take the stone to the city of the dead

w "can you tell the rat to bring it back"

• The city of the dead: mass cemetery where ppl of waterdeep bury their dead within city limits

○ Almost like its own ward

○ In the garlock? Garlof? family mausoleum

○ Adam gets her to pull out some of the items she's collected; some resistance

§ She comes back w a brass ring

□ Once one is attuned to it you are rendered invisible

□ "hold on to that for me hun and I'll come back"

○ Aerana is aware there are guards posted at night but it's a vast open space

• To the cemetery we will go

• Summary

○ Successfully dispatched the thugs

○ Gradually learning more abt the alleged horde of dragons

[whetstonefires]

While i was rifling thru your fic tag like a half-starved raccoon in a cake tin I found your clone Damian's fic & i'm in LOVE! And like, do u hav anymore meta on that verse? like how do the rest of the fam find out? how do they REACT?! how does Damian? does the heretic clone still exist? Just reading abt tim with a bunch of tiny dami's gave me heart palpitations. Thank you for this gift.

(In reference to this post.)

Why thank you!

It’s vaguely inspired by some meta @cerusee and @audreycritter did about what if Damian was one of several identical clones, but I’ve been fascinated by the character potential suggested by Damian having been cloned since Talia first revealed it, so.

Let’s see.

I don’t think the Heretic still exists, not in the form we saw. This story fragment sort of assumes Talia went less crazy than they made her for the whole Leviathan storyline; she doesn’t regard the clones as sons the way she does Damian (she totally relied on cloning to get him perfectly matched organ replacements, like that spine) but she’s not “sons are born to die in battle” “let’s grow him big inside a WHALE” levels of whacked out.

She hasn’t fully committed to having them compete to be selected as the official Damian #2, either, because she’s still attached to the original, though the growing prospect of that was a lot of the reason they ran for it. One of them might have wound up as the Heretic, in another timeline? But it was a timeline that diverged long before they fled the League.

So they make it to Tim’s emergency van without being intercepted, and get as far as his secure site on city limits, but they have to fight their way through the last leg of that trip and to make it inside the bunker, and it’s supplied for a siege but not really big enough for eight people, even if seven of them are small, and also staying there and being besieged would draw the attention of the Bats, which defeats the whole purpose of not making for the Cave/calling reinforcements.

So he calls his friends for extraction, and they all wind up in Kansas.

Tim puts off contacting the family until the clones have with his guidance sorted out exactly how they want to present themselves.

Unfortunately, the last stage of the ninja battle was showy enough not to be overlooked, so his absence was noticed much sooner than he expected, and regarded as more worrying. On the second day Dick calls Kon to see if he knows where Tim’s gotten to, and Kon fails to lie adequately.

Dick can’t pressure Kon as easily as he can most people because last time he asked Kon for a favor Kon came to the North Pole and died for him.

Which is the kind of thing even Nightwing isn’t veteran enough not to take seriously.

But he still calls his bluff and asks a bunch of questions, and winds up very suspicious and worried, so at this point Tim and the Damians have to hurry up and figure out how to announce the situation or go on the run from the Bats as well as the League, which would be. Not smart.

Tim explains the situation over videochat with the Cave before having the cloneboys join him on the feed; this spares them the worst of the yelling.

Bruce, Dick, and Damian all respond pretty badly. Bruce because he doesn’t like change and he’s reflexively suspicious, and having eight Damians to raise is a justly horrifying notion. Also anti-clone prejudice. It’s unfortunately an established trait of his, though not like. A strong one.

Dick because he’s really defensive of Damian, and perceives this first and foremost as an emotional threat to his bab’s fragile identity.

Damian because he knows exactly how he was raised to react to someone being in a place he wants, and he knows how many opportunities his father’s household policies gave him to take shots at Tim, and they may be six years old but there are seven of them. He is going to die.

All things considered, Damian’s being the most rational here.

He’s wrong though. The clones were raised as disposable ninjas, not princes; they’re perfectly well aware killing him would gain them nothing, and they have very little sense of entitlement.

Bruce and Dick do try to be nice to the kids once it’s finally settled they will be staying at the Manor at least for a bit, because they need to be somewhere safe and Bruce can’t leave them at Clark’s house forever. Even Ma Kent has her limits.

But Bruce blows bewilderingly hot and cold and Dick kind of makes a point of of not being too warm to them, because he’s loyal to his demon brat. Damian starts staying at his place a lot and consequently working with Nightwing instead of Batman.

Bruce has no idea what to do about this or if he even should do something. Damian’s thirteen, right? Teenagers are supposed to rebel??? This is a pretty harmless way to do that?

But he misses him.

This does lead to making more time for the Seven Identical Six-Year-Olds.

Their sense of morality revolves around having made the breakthrough to valuing on another’s lives; they aren’t as opposed to not-murder as Damian was but they’re also a lot harder to coax into seeing things his way because they don’t need as much from him, emotionally.

This makes them ironically less terrifying for Bruce, even if he’s still having trouble actually bonding with them the way he normally does with his kids.

Barbara meanwhile is cautious. She always takes a while to warm up to new people, and she doesn’t have Tim’s history with clones to get her over that speedbump. She tries very hard to be fair, but she’s not really welcoming. She’s Reserving Judgment.

Jason thinks this is the funniest thing ever and goes out of his way to tease Damian about it. Privately he’s super creeped out, but as that wears off he starts getting mad about Bruce and Dick making the kiddos feel unwelcome and at some point does a rant, and after that is vaguely protective in a useless sort of way.

He enjoys being a bad influence. The septuplets also enjoy this. They think he’s funny, too, and he’s easier to communicate with than most people around here. Achieves a fairly high tier on the Favorite Non-Clone Brother list they aren’t exactly keeping.

Cass is super about these kids. She can relate to them even more than to Damian, because they weren’t raised as heirs to anything and don’t have the sneering put-down form of pride going, and also she’s actually around to meet them at the crucial getting-to-know-you stage.

She thinks sparring one-on-seven is an excellent sibling bonding activity. There are assassin-child puppy piles once they’re all worn out. Many photos are taken.

She’s doing much better than Bruce at getting them to extend their nascent sense of empathy beyond one another, without actually making an effort. It’s not like they’re actually much behind their cohort when it comes to social development, they’ve just got murder conditioning flattening their affective empathy. (And are ahead of cohort intellectually, which contributes a lot to the dissonance.) Cass’ accidental therapy involves butterflies.

Tim continues to be around, a lot more than he has been for a while because he’s kind of obligated to see this through. The septuplets trust him, which is more than they do anybody else for a while, so he winds up with a lot of childcare duties.

Since this amounts to ‘showing them where to find soap’ and ‘being in their vicinity’ rather than i.e. brushing their teeth for them and making sure they don’t steal each others’ snacks, he’s fairly okay with this.

Sizdahum sticks especially close, which is fine because he’s not a big talker; he winds up getting a lot of absent lessons on detective work.

Tim gets yelled at for having murder scene photos open in front of him; both of them and Haftum, who happens to be there at the time, roll their eyes a lot throughout.

Tim’s friends also visit the Manor a few times specifically to visit the kids, since they already met them. At one point the Damian clones, Tim, Kon, Wonder Girl Cassie, and due to rumor mill Anita, Cissie, and Greta all have a picnic in a rare afternoon of sunshine on the Manor grounds.

Alfred packed the picnic so it has ludicrously expensive cheese, a fruit salad featuring freshly pitted cherries, and thermoses of milkshakes in the favorite flavors of everyone who got one, even the ones he’s never met before. In response to this bounty Anita threatens to come to visit every time she can get babysitters for her parents.

Then she considers introducing her parents to the clone kids. They’re turning out almost as weird, even if in theory they don’t remember their previous lives. We’ll see how that turns out.

Bruce got used to how all his sons’ friends know his secret identity over a decade ago, it’s…fine.

Steph thinks they’re creepy but she’s far enough from ground zero to laugh about it, especially about their occasional appearances as Tim’s row of ducklings, and also she trusts Cass’ judgment.

Everyone does, to a certain extent; it helps the septuplets’ cause incredibly over the course of the first few weeks. It wins Alfred off the fence about them after about three days, which is quite a coup; even before that he was fast catching up with Tim in the ‘learning the differences between the septuplets’ sweepstakes.

(Cass is the only one who can even semi-reliably tell them all apart if they’re not wearing their nametags, or catch them switching, but learning things like their individual preferences in weaponry or cake is arguably much more important.)

Speaking of names, it’s a difficult issue. Bruce would (with considerable angst and self-doubt) be willing to name them all if asked, and they’d probably be open to it if he offered, but they’re not quite comfortable naming themselves and he’s too insecure and weirded-out to suggest anything else.

The other members of the family are varying degrees of not okay with the numbering system. Steph’s main issue with it is she has trouble remembering them precisely, because she doesn’t speak Farsi and learning seven unfamiliar similar-sounding words at the same time doesn’t play to her strengths.

Damian has a tendency to call them by their numbers in English, which only some of the clones actually mind but it offends the hell out of Bruce.

The necessity of keeping them secret until they have actual public-ready names and a story has been settled on wears on everyone’s nerves a bit. The issue that there exists no story more believable than the actual extremely weird truth stands in the way.

Barbara actually crafts an entire cover about rescuing the products of an illegal cloning operation by people planning an overly complicated ransom scheme for Damian, and Bruce going ‘well dammit they’re my kids too,’ which doesn’t get deployed for a while because:

1) everyone’s still hunting for something a little less weird and

2) they have to review the entire body of legal precedent relating to clones to make sure this won’t put the kids in jeopardy down the line or undermine Bruce’s chances of getting custody somehow.

Meanwhile, Bruce absolutely forbids the clone squad from getting involved in vigilante fighting. Because they are six. They’re not quite on house arrest but they have strict supervision and a curfew. They mostly accept this; they’re used to discipline and they did come here for refuge.

He tries to take away all their live weapons. Because they are six. This fails to stick. It threatens to become a serious bone of contention.

Cass, Tim, and Damian (somewhat unwillingly) wind up having to broker the issue; explaining to Bruce that the kids think he suspects them of plotting murder, and to the kids that Bruce doesn’t think they can be trusted not to hurt themselves with sharp objects is. Fraught. On all sides.

Why does Bruce never get any kids for whom normal responsible parenting guidelines are fully applicable?

[bladekindeyewear]

Boots Reads Homestuck Epilogue(s) Part 15 - Candy Page 34

==>

John finally decides to let the relevance of his story end, and enjoy that he’s made at least some of his other friends happy with his choice.  Time to read Page 34...

VRISKA: Pfft, yeah, wh8tever. I’m basically Immortal, bitch.

Preeeetty sure you’re confusing yourself with one of your parents.

Pff, actual healthy kismesis with a Tavros?  Wow, we’re getting all sorts of redemption by not-really-Vriska proxy here.

HARRY ANDERSON: he’s always getting all weepy whenever i talk to him anyway. HARRY ANDERSON: i don’t think i could have taken another round of him choking back tears while apologizing to me about “what happened with me and your mother, harry.” HARRY ANDERSON: i mean, god. he’s not even fucking DRUNK when he does this. HARRY ANDERSON: that might actually be the most embarrassing part.

.......

Okay, having grown up with a father who suffered from serious depression and would break into tears embarrassingly easily, uh.  I can relate?  But also fuck you, that’s inconsiderate.

--Dammit, new Vriska is catching wind of old Vriska.

Vriska and (Vriska) both start shrieking at a pitch John’s only ever heard one time before. It was a sound that once accompanied the end of everything. A sound once heard the night he dreamt in anime.

Oh that’s brilliant.  If the entire Candy arc ended here it’d be great, though I know it’s not quite over yet.

==>

...Oh shit, we actually get to see what happens immediately next.

Interesting introspective thoughts!  Or, trying her best NOT to be introspective and failing.

Oh my god, SHUT UP Gamzee.  Vriska, just kill him already??

PFFF HE SENT A PIC OF IT TO KARKAT :D

Pfff.  Yeah, Vriska, TRY and ignore what just happened and how it was almost entirely your idea.

(Vriska) is so furious, she has no way of pinpointing the exact moment her intent stopped being intimidating him into silence and started being guaranteeing his silence, forever.

Thank FUCKING goodness, PLEASE kill him.

YAY he’s dead! :D  (Even though he’ll probably revive anyway because bullshit.)

Heheh. NOW we get a cross-Vriska heart to heart.

==>

Alright, a bit more John moping.  Man... this Candy section is a whole lot easier to swallow AFTER Meat than I imagine it would have been before.

.....heck.  EITHER of these epilogue branches are really fucking hard to swallow the first time around without the other’s context.

Oh huh, it’s his house from the Medium then?  Relocated and stuff?

Jake, hm.  Is Jake going to try and leave his son with John like that failed kidnapping in reverse or?

Jake snaps the elastic on his pair of red underpants. It’s the only thing he’s wearing.

Oooookay then.

JAKE: She had a certain way she liked me kipped out and well, i didnt want to bring anything that belonged to her when i left. Nothing she er, might miss. TAVROS: You took me,

Jake winces.

TAVROS: And,,, you took you,

Jake’s wince deepens.

Oh, so that’s what this is!  Jake fleeing with his son from an abusive relationship.  About gosh darn time.  .....geez, how bad did it get for JAKE to finally muster the gumption to do that himself after all these years???

Jake is one whole wince now

I know THAT feeling.  Or at least feel like I do.

John you dedicate your life to keeping this child happy

JOHN: it’s just been kind of a rough forever.

:C

JAKE: Maybe you should blame me? JAKE: Maybe i need someone to blame me. For once. JOHN: ...huh? JAKE: I think im starting to realize that ive been going through life with the mindset that nothing has ever really been within my control.

YES.

This is how Vriska broke Tavros way back in the comic, by constantly denying him agency.  Jake’s been battered down the same way too, and it’s not too late to pick up the reins.  He’s already DONE that by finally leaving his genocidal wife.

There’s a bit of Page of Hope-yness to this whole disastrous Candy timeline, come to think of it?  People fulfilling others’ desires out of obligation constantly, doing what they think others want?  Roxy, Jake, Dave and Karkat... all fucked over at the aggressive whims of more active folk, rolling over when they really shouldn’t have?  Or in Roxy’s case, her CHARACTER basically SHOULD NOT HAVE IN THE SLIGHTEST?

JAKE: Havent you ever wanted to let someone make the tough choices for you?

Huh.

Or maybe he is doing exactly what Jake has always done. In a certain light, isn’t ascribing all this mess to some unconscious influence he might have had over the metaphysical shape of reality just a way to brush off his simpler failures as a man and a father?

Yes.  You can act and change this too, John.  You almost did with the kidnapping before!  Go and take down the new Batterwitch.

Hm, Hopey thing?

JAKE: John. JOHN: yeah? JAKE: Take my hand. JOHN: what? why?

Oh shit.  Are they going to be able to FIX some of this BS with some sort of hopey thing??? :D  Probably too much to hope for but still!

Being flung from Jake’s orbit of Hope and Change

Pffff.  Had to throw in an Obama didn’t you.

...Oh.  Oh wow.  Oh we get to figure out what the fuck was up with Roxy all this time.  Oh boy.

JAKE: So what if it doesnt change anything? Wont it matter to your family to see you care? JAKE: Wont it make you feel better to try?

:D

Heheh, Hope aspecty stuff.  The ability to believe that something matters even when you “know” it doesn’t.

==>

...Yeah, it’s pretty easy to relax on a dead Gamzee.

Oh cool.  These Vriskas are alike enough to bond!  New Vriska is still in her teenage unbalanced go-for-it stage, and old Vriska has been knocked down a peg by the clown incident, putting them on a close enough level to not want to instantly disown each other, unlike old Vriska and ghost Vriska.

VRISKA: The Mayor’s dead, dude.

HOW did the Mayor die?!??  Did I just FORGET that from the end of Homestuck or something??

(I mean, probably.)

Callback to the clouds in that first Jade dream John had.

(VRISKA): Or may8e the truth just makes me kind of nervous. VRISKA: What “Truth”? (VRISKA): Don’t tell him I said this, 8ut, I think John is just an extremely powerful 8eing. Even when he sucks. (VRISKA): And he certainly does appear to suck in this reality. (VRISKA): And yet, the uneasy feeling is there. (VRISKA): It’s a vague feeling I’ve had in the 8ack of my mind for a long time, 8ut it really hit me when I was talking to him earlier. (VRISKA): It’s distur8ing to think a8out that much power 8ottled up in one stupid nerd who’ll never understand it. VRISKA: What Power are you even talking a8out? VRISKA: Like, lame Wind Powers? (VRISKA): No, I mean... (VRISKA): The power to shape reality. Even without intending to.

FUCK did he really cause all this??? Even the Roxy shit?!???  D:  D:  D:

It’s being left vague but it IS sounding like John was actually RIGHT about all that stuff.  FUCK, if the “villain” who messed up Roxy is actually just John’s subconscious...  :C

Even if the epilogue ends right here, though, with John about to call Roxy, I can imagine it working out, though.  It’s on a right enough track there.

(VRISKA): I’ve spent so long caring so much a8out what other people thought of me. Mainly that they saw me as important, or making a “difference.”

Mhmm mhmm.  Light n stuff.

Yeah, realizing that importance isn’t ALL that’s “important” is really, um.  Important.  Ahem.

Hm, other Vriska, that smile had seven pairs of dots, not eight.  :?

(VRISKA): The POINT is, I was so mad at her. (VRISKA): That happy ghost version of myself, who was free of everything. (VRISKA): I was pro8a8ly mad 8ecause she got to 8e who she really was, without stressing a8out it, which is something I never felt like I was allowed to have.

Indeed.

(VRISKA): I guess I mean there’s someone specifically I fell out of touch with, who it feels like I’ll never see again.

Too bad, only ghost Vriska got her reunite with ‘Rezi.  :P

(VRISKA): On some level I knew she was right. She was happy and honest with herself. And that’s what made her... (VRISKA): A version of myself who was actually worthy of someone I cared a8out.

Yyyep.  As I said.  :)

VRISKA: You’re just talking a8out The Girl You 8linded that one time, aren’t you? (VRISKA): Ummmmmmmm.

Heheh.  Yeah, you’re not going to hide that sort of thing from your sharp near-clone.

Oh cool!  She gets to see all those messages and feel turboguilt or something.

...oh shit.  Is a message going to actually get to her?  It-- oh shit.  Didn’t Terezi have her phone buzzing in her pocket and ignored it in the end of Meat or something?  Or at SOMEONE did and I thought it conspicuous but it didn’t get addressed in that side of the story and-- FFFFuck is she eventually going to see it or??!  D:

She’s GOT to have seen it before running all the way off with villain Dirk, right?? D:

==>

Okay.  You seem to be thinking clearly, Roxy.  What’s going through your head? Give us some answers.  Don’t fuck this up too much, John.

but she knows by now that it’s not her job to make him happy. That was something she gave up on years ago. But wanting to? That feeling is still as fresh as it always was.

FUCK was this all just a placid feeling of obligation to make John happy for all he did to ensure victory or something??? D: D: D:

She’s still working through what she feels about distancing herself from Jane

Yesssss

If he’s truly about to be real with her for the first time in forever,

Gosh fucking DARNIT John, you could have fixed all this DECADES AGO if you had a real talk with her ONCE!!!!!

ROXY: the more i thought abt it the more i figured holdin on to that one thing made me lose out on some other shit ROXY: u might relate JOHN: haha, you got me there i guess.

:c

JOHN: i’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how things got to be like they are. JOHN: i guess i’ll just come out and say it. JOHN: i completed fucked up your entire life. JOHN: i’m not going to pretend like there are two sides here. it’s my bad, totally. JOHN: like, not just what happened to our marriage, though it’s also true that that’s completely my fault. JOHN: but even before that... JOHN: i think i fucked up on just this massive, fundamental level, and it’s what i did— JOHN: or, well, what i didn’t do— JOHN: that caused every stupid bullshit thing about the way this world is.

...Huh.

That may not actually be true, and Roxy might be about to prove how self-absorbedly reductive that is.

ROXY: oh nah ill stop u rite there my man

Okay YES.  If this wasn’t him, then SET HIM THE FUCK STRAIGHT.  :D

She knows more than he does, and she doesn’t need to hear it.

TELL US TELL US TELL US

YES TEAR INTO HIM he’s wanted that for so long stand up for yourself and tell us what the fuck happened and why

He’s been looking at her, really looking at her, and she doesn’t want to blink, just in case that shatters it.

Yes because he was looking for the real Roxy that would call out his BS

JOHN: i used to be so angry that you wouldn’t tell me what you really thought, before. JOHN: not like i wanted to FIGHT fight, but like. JOHN: i’m just not used to this flavor of roxy. ROXY: hm ROXY: sounds to me like u just disproved ur own hotshot theory then genius JOHN: huh? ROXY: you wished i was one way the whole time we were married ROXY: but i wasnt

YES!!! Yes his theory’s disproven!  He never WANTED Roxy to just act that way, he wasn’t the cause of this, I was hoping for that!  :D

ROXY: i was bad at standin up for myself then and im learnin to be good at it now

D:

That’s....... sad, if that’s the explanation.  But it’s better than mind control I guess.  :(

JOHN: but... JOHN: you were never like that before i... ROXY: dude ROXY: where tf do u get off trying to decide what is or isnt me being “like me” enuff ROXY: do u think ppl stay the same their whole damn lives or what

Oh wow.  Now Andrew’s slamming SLAMMING of fanfics.  He’s saying “who are you to know for SURE that they wouldn’t act that way”??  That’s pretty good.

ROXY: i like the way things turned out just fuckin fine ROXY: so maybe u could stop wastin precious eternity thinkin ur so special that its ur fault everyones not perfectly happy

:’)

Mhmm, and they’re free from the heroic design arcs or what have you.  Or... were, until Dirk tore them back in again.  Tossed aside their fucking victory with his selfish... ugh.

Mhmm, Roxy’s the perfect person to explain that not being in a canon, Light-filled timeline isn’t really a bad thing.

ROXY: i just do things the best way i think to do em and then shrug n hope it works out?

Roxy thinks about time and the spirals of choice that hang just outside her periphery, and the vertigo grows.

Good advice, and hm.  Maybe there’s some Void sight kind of playing into this as well, making it easy for her to get paralyzed by indecision and she’s had to learn to work through it.

...Ooh, that was a really cool non-binary gender diatribe in the narrative text.  That’s some nice stuff.  I felt like that was missing from the Meat side, glad we got it here at least.  :D

JOHN: there’s literally nothing to do but keep moving forward. JOHN: i may as well not be a big fucking downer about it if i don’t have to be.

Thank goodness.

YES, JOHN SHOWING HIMSELF STRAIGHT-BACKED FOR HIS SON!!! :D

Man, I wish my dad had done that instead of all the other shit he did.  At least he’s dead.  :)

(Here’s a hint in case you’re wondering why I was relieved when my Dad offed himself.)

But that’s off topic.  Let’s wrap up this epilogue already!!

==>

Page 39... only three or so pages left, right?

Pff, Karkat’s keeping them safe.

Heheh, more shitty Liberty statues.

Heheh, using them for weapons caches.

Gosh I hope they actually love each other and are mostly happy.  Jade seems happy, at least.  :(

Dammit, there go the doubts.  He wouldn’t have had those doubts with Karkat. :C

He’s standing in the Oval Office of the White House.

Oh heck yes.  Please tell me...

And over there... is something he doesn’t quite recognize. It doesn’t seem to fit in. He steps closer to investigate, wiping away at the layers of moss and dirt to reveal a surface he most certainly does recognize. It’s a transportalizer.

YES

Dave doesn’t waste any time. You don’t find something like this in the Oval Office and start agonizing over whether or not to use it. He steps on the platform, and in a blink his surroundings are completely different. The centuries of overgrowth are gone, and he appears to be in some sort of crypt, boxed in by walls of smooth, golden stone. At the far side of the room, something is hanging on the wall, encased in a sort of display. It’s a mounted god tier costume, about the size an adult male would wear. He recognizes the symbol. It’s the same one Jake used to wear when they were teens. It is the symbol for Hope.

HELL FUCKING YES

YES OBAMA

OBAMA: Hello, Mr. Strider. OBAMA: I’ve been waiting a long time for you to show up.

Dave’s jaw hangs open. The legends have been confirmed. As well as several key headcanons of his. Without thinking, he drops to one knee and bows his head.

DAVE: m... mr president DAVE: its an honor sir

Man, forget my past stomach clenching.  Forget my hesitations, my turbulent emotions, all the ups and downs the various facets of these Epilogue chapters have given me.  THIS is the best.  THIS makes it all worth it.  This is the best thing to have ever happened, and if I ever feel any regrets about ANYTHING that transpired in the Epilogues, I’ll feel infinitely better the moment I remember it gave us THIS.

The most beautiful scene I’ve ever witnessed.  All my liberal, economy-ranting hopes and dreams confirmed.  It’s glorious.

OBAMA: Come on now, Dave. We can’t be having that. OBAMA: I’m nobody’s king. I’m a democratically elected representative who took an oath to serve his country and his people. People like you, Dave. OBAMA: If anything, I should be the one bowing.

OBAMA.  I MISSED YOU OBAMA.  I CAN HEAR YOUR VOICE THROUGH YOUR TEXT AND ITS SO COMFORTING AND UPLIFTING

DAVE: mr president what i mean is im a huge fan of yours and i hope this doesnt sound fucked up but on some level i feel like ive been waiting my whole life for this moment?? OBAMA: I know, Dave.

Yes, yes you have.  Yes, we can.

OBAMA: Most people thought I was gone. But I was keeping an eye on events. OBAMA: Wouldn’t miss it for anything.

I, too, would like to have the feeling that Obama is still out there, keeping an eye on things.  Watching, smiling... providing some last background of Hope as things seem so temporarily sour.  That feeling would be amazing.

...I mean he’s still alive IRL, sure, but not Obama watermark smiling lovingly from the sky or anything like it should be.

Yes, back to reading.  Back to this glorious, definitely canon moment.  The moment we learned that Obama was with us the whole time.  :’)

DAVE: sorry if this is nosy but if you didnt die when you disappeared then how did you die OBAMA: Most of that is classified, Dave.

Pfffffff  :D

OBAMA: When I was a boy living in Hawaii, on my thirteenth birthday I was visited by a mysterious stranger. OBAMA: He was an older man with a mustache. Kind of a corny, old-fashioned, adventuring type. He tried to convince me we were related. Of course, I thought he was full of shit. OBAMA: To this day, I’m not sure about that. Maybe he was. I didn’t think much of his tall tale at the time, but what did pique my interest was his story. OBAMA: He was voyaging all over the Pacific looking for a mysterious island, which supposedly had all the answers he’d spent his whole life searching for. OBAMA: During his travels, he set up outposts all over the ocean to help with his search. Such as one near where I lived as a boy. The outpost had a laboratory, an archeological dig site, a network of underground tunnels, the works. OBAMA: One time, I snuck in there and did some exploration of my own. Somewhere in the maze of underground ruins, I found a transporter pad, just like the one that brought you here. OBAMA: It sent me to a new realm. A place they called the Medium.

Grandpa Jake of Earth A, thank you SO much for bringing us this gift.  The gift of Obama.

OBAMA: Hey, why don’t we take a walk. You’ll have a chance to collect yourself. And there’s something I’d like you to see.

:O :O :O

I am shivering with anticipation.

Ah, leave it to Obama to help Dave with the final steps of his character arc.

OBAMA: Are you sure that’s all he is, Dave?

FIX THINGS OBAMA!!!! :D :D :D

Wait, what if Obama can turn things into an actually legitimate DaveKatJade?  That would be a miracle only a god of Hope could pull off.

OBAMA: I’ve had my share of doubts about all that, just like any other man. OBAMA: And I’ve had plenty of the same kind of struggles as you, Dave. DAVE: wait DAVE: you...

Obama nods, smiles wistfully. Dave arches his eyebrows high above his shades. They stare at each other, and in the look they exchange, they seem to say all that needs to be said between two grown men on the matter.

:’)

OBAMA: Believing is the key to understanding the truth underlying the words, the truth underlying the ideas they represent, and the truth underlying who we are as individuals. OBAMA: The power of belief, the power of Hope, that’s what endows that which is intangible, ephemeral, or uncertain with a sense of reality. OBAMA: It brings focus to the insubstantial, the mirages of the mind, the multiplicity of what is possible, of what could be, and isolates it—concentrates it—to turn it into that which is. OBAMA: And the result of that, Dave, is what we call truth.

I didn’t think we’d be learning more about the Hope aspect straight from the mouth of Barack Obama.

OBAMA: He taught me about many things. Combat, philosophy, life, love... DAVE: love??? DAVE: hold on are you saying DAVE: that...

PFFFFFFFF :D :D :D

OBAMA: She’s settled happily into the specific. That’s her path now. OBAMA: All of you have embraced that life, in this safely sequestered version of planet Earth. OBAMA: All of you until now, Dave. OBAMA: This is why you’re here. OBAMA: I believe you’re ready to wake up. DAVE: ...

:O

...this is suddenly possibly going to be getting slightly sad isn’t it.  D:

--Oh shit, so THIS is where Davebot came from.

How is he going to break things off with Jade though???  D: D: D:

...Oh my GOSH he’s just going to suddenly vanish and abandon her isn’t he.  D:

...alright, merging with his other selves, et cetera...

It defers to its greatest knight, risen anew.

Yeah that’s nice but am I supposed to pretend you’re going to say goodbye to Jade offscreen or

--ah that’s why the bot didn’t have shades, gotta use the genuine Stiller ones

==>

Page 40, and the start of this sounds a lot like the Postscript.  But we’re getting more this time, thank god.

ARADIA: when i watched as everything broke apart ARADIA: and got swallowed up by the black hole ARADIA: which is where i ended up too ARADIA: that black hole... ARADIA: thats basically you right JADE: yes. ARADIA: and when you speak of your brother ARADIA: thats lord english JADE: yes. ARADIA: and hes dead JADE: not just yet.

Oh shit.  John’s final blow didn’t kill Lord English did it.  Alt!Callie is going to strike the very last killing blow herself isn’t she.

JADE: lesser beings have so much trouble perceiving divinity in the uncanny.

Divinity?  Like, Lollipop-style divinity?  I mean, I guess this IS the Candy branch...?  But what made this so “perfect” to begin with?

JADE: this world, unlike the canonical horrors from which it is hermetically insulated, will always fail to meet the combined criteria for truth, relevance, and essentiality that would endow this realm with any real gravity. JADE: its own naturally occurring supply of gravity, rather than the artificial supply i have given it. JADE: as such, what transpires here is characterized by experiential frivolity. JADE: physically, it is cordoned off by the black hole’s event horizon. it is safe. untouchable. JADE: inescapable. ARADIA: that sounds ominous

Oh.  So this outside-of-canon timeline-verse whatever that Candy takes place in is like a trap?  For Lord English to be trapped in forever, inside not just his OWN story like we thought before but into a place where he’ll be forever irrelevant, while, like... the “Prince” and others following him for pursuit or camaraderie reasons manage to escape somewhere even different?  --No wait those people are OUTSIDE this place, in the “real” timeline/universe of Earth C. So Dirk’s destination is somewhere completely different; oh, and alt!Callie is the only one with the power to escape the black hole, to bring Davebot and Aradia with her back to quote-unquote “canon” or the closest thing to it to bring bastard Dirkbro down.

Or... something.

JADE: one could describe it as a phantasmal projection confined within my horizon. JADE: it was created by a choice that made it possible for that horizon to expand infinitely, to consume infinitely. JADE: and since that choice could not coexist with canon events, this place manifested to here to support its consequences. JADE: if this world were capable of anything either essential, relevant, or true in some stable combination, then it would perpetuate a corrosive paradox. JADE: as such, insulation from what is out there, and the inescapable well it rests in, is what protects all it holds inside. JADE: and since i am the embodiment of the black hole in which it rests, JADE: i am the one protecting this world.

Oh huh.  So when we saw alt!Callie creating the black hole out of the Sun, she was actually using John’s “choice” and his timeline split to engineer the paradox that drove that singularity’s expansion?  And so she’s going to be the lord and safeguard of all that is Non-Canon, and also seek to guide the heroes trying to save what IS Canon?

Hm!

JADE: physical destruction is one thing. JADE: obliteration of the entire canvas for all of reality over a given cosmic span is another. JADE: and yet there are even more insidious forms of destruction and subversion of life to consider. JADE: methods that are difficult to grasp for those on your plane.

Yep, destroying Heart.  Destroying Soul.  Destroying the uniqueness that drives individual agency and choices, and suborning people completely to your will and ideals without their consent or choice.

Hmm....

JADE: but longer stories have the power to draw consciousness into them. they possess arresting and hypnotic qualities which can be used by their tellers to alter the awareness of the listener.

Yep, like a biased narrator with their claws on the > prompt for characters.

JADE: i brought to your attention that the story you were listening to had a speaker with a specific identity. JADE: and where there is an identity, there can also be an agenda.

Yep yep.  And by commandeering the story to his own agenda, Dirk’s been robbing everyone of a fundamental right to their own existences.

JADE: this is the sort of corruption i now must dedicate my existence in this new body to ending once and for all.

Heck Yes; returning the narrative to as objective a speakerless-ness as can be attained or simulated, and divesting the bias from agenda’d narrators that can wrest all control from the participants in a story, enslaving them and making them the author’s puppets instead of true to themselves as characters, people, etc.

--Oh my GOSH, was Dead!Jade eating the remains of Lord English at the end of that Postscript???  She was, wasn’t she?  :D :D :D

That’s pretty fucking awesome.  And a pretty fucking fair fate for him to get cannibalized by his sister.

JADE: consume his body. JADE: absorb his essence. JADE: and then using this host, i will generate enough power to move beyond the staggering pull of the event horizon encasing this world. JADE: a prison of my own making, which can be escaped only through the supreme unification with my other half. JADE: it is crucial to the cosmos that i succeed. JADE: the prince of heart has to be stopped.

:D :D :D :D :D

Pretty awesome!  A decent setup to a story that probably shouldn’t be told, the implied sequel that Meat invites up or whatever.  And... oh phew.

Oh PHEW.

OH FUCKING PHEW. HOLD ON.

So.  The very last line of the epilogue, the last bit:

The hole leaves behind an absence in the sky so calm that continuing to call it a sky wouldn’t seem to do it justice. It’s a perfectly neutral expanse into which anything one can imagine might be summoned. And for a while, anything was. But not anymore. Where the hole gaped just moments ago, there now exists an imaginary line.

Above this line resides all that matters. Below exists all else. Never again the twain shall meet.

Okay!  :D :D :D

So, when I read that last line, I was INCREDIBLY disheartened.  I thought that Andrew was declaring that canon would never interfere with anything again, that this was the FINAL WORD on Homestuck and everything to do with it as far as canon was concerned, and that Dirk’s crimes and such would forever go unresolved and left to the imagination.

But that’s not what the line meant.

What’s INSIDE the singularity, and thus “under” the imaginary line, is everything non-canon, all the possibility and fanfiction and dead ghosts and such who are trapped in this safeguarded realm alt!Callie created to protect them, away from the influence of any future plot danger beyond the mundane issues they create for themselves.

And what’s OUTSIDE the singularity, above the line, is canon.  A canon which actually continues, and which this line doesn’t necessarily cut short.

I don’t know if Andrew will ever continue this nonsense, maybe to show me a Rose who’s actually happy as a robot or something?  But... er, that’s not the point.  The point is that even though the story “isn’t over”, it’s left so it CAN continue, so that the final state of these ISN’T a permanent cliffhanger to be left forever unfulfilled intentionally.  I’ll still be traumatized by the state some of these characters are left in, until Andrew maybe possibly chooses to resolve some of this nonsense with later content, which he probably won’t.  Heck, this actually might be easier for him to create a new work with, given how much baggage has been left behind on old Earth and in the singularity, so all you have is a much relatively smaller cast of characters on a chase to wherever Dirk is planning to go?  But, like.  When I read that Postscript, I stopped believing anyone I saw suggesting we’d get anything after this.  Any sort of work of... you know... continuing, er, Homestuckiness from Andrew, no matter what it was.  But even just... leaving it open even if he isn’t going to DO anything about it, and having that final line NOT be an aggressive cutoff?  Is just nice.  Nicer, anyway.

And this singularity is kept safe for us to enjoy ALL of the old stuff, the multitude of possibility that the in-singularity version of Roxy glimpses out of the side of her eye.  That--

Oh my Gosh.  THAT’S also what the final line means.

Above this line resides all that matters. Below exists all else. Never again the twain shall meet.

Homestuck fanfiction is now COMPLETELY FREE FROM CANON.

Within this singularity, nothing has to stay true to absolutely every underpinning of the earlier comic.  Nothing has to make sense.  Nothing has to be narratively consistent with anything else, though it’s obviously more enjoyable if it is.  Truth, essentiality, and relevance may all be FLEXED as much as any individual fanfic writer needs to!  And... and earlier, before this epilogue.  When we would get Snapchat stuff of the story on Earth C.  And even before that when all we had was the ending flash.  There was still a FEAR on many parts that there was more to canon that Andrew wasn’t telling us, that whatever was in our imaginations about what may have happened was “wrong”, that any fanfic you wrote was liable to be disproven formally.  But that’s not the case anymore.  Because with that line, with alt!Callie sealing off this realm and taking just a last few soon-to-be canon-impactors out of one of its timelines, Andrew has left ALL of the earlier trappings of Homestuck, of Earth, of all these characters and ghosts and fragmented possibilities, permanently free from canon influence from the rest of time.  Meaning no Homestuck fanfic that takes place in this singularity-granted realm may EVER be busted by Andrew’s future work.  He’s done what he first aspired to do when he declared all fantrolls in existence canon.  He’s finally “killed the author”.  He’s made the very FACT of an author an enemy, to be pursued in its own canon story outside of all this.  He’s set EVERYTHING free.

Wow.  So that’s what all the point of all this was, huh?  :D

Let me read the last few pages of Candy anyway.  Where was I again?

Oh, about to click the last page.  ==>

Oh my GOD.  This Postscript is about the end of MEAT, where the Meat Postscript showed us the end of CANDY!!!  :D

Let’s hear where this shit is all going!  I’ve been wondering what realm Dirk is actually heading towards to try and start fucking up.  Reading...

...Oh, okay.  I thought I glimpsed someone mentioning something about Rose “doing Dirk’s laundry”, and I thought I just missed some narrative comment on laundry made when Dirk took Rose out of the apartment on that final trip out to Jake’s for a spaceship?  But I guess this was the scene they were talking about.  Fuck you, Dirk.

One of her more reckless shipmates chipped a tooth trying one, despite repeated warnings to stay away from the stuff.

So Terezi IS there?  And probably received that final message from Vriska to think about.

It’s a stray ruby slipper. The other is about ten feet away, down the hall. No sign of their owner anywhere.

Yep, that’s definitely Terezi.

...Oh cool, Rose’s body isn’t quite dead?  She could be returned to it or a souped-up version of it if she’s ever brought to her senses outside Dirk’s corrosive influence.

A new planet is within sensor range. She studies the millions of statistics all pouring in at once.

They’re heading for a planet?  Somewhere else in Universe C?

It’s an M-Class planet. The right size, right age, right distance from the sun. There’s no advanced life yet. It’s exactly what they’ve been looking for all these years.

Shit, a NEW planet?  For all this shit to go down on?  Maybe I don’t need to see what happens next, that sounds potentially a little boring.  The future adventure this story entails COULD just be implied and never followed up on.

Once the new race has established

What race??? Human, hybrid?? It’s not TROLL, y’all would have brought Aradia if that was the case, right?  Or is this why there are tons of trolls in Universe C that Caliborn and Calliope’s parent trolls got to incinerate ages later, seeded across planets by these assholes?

The ones who get the chance to play what will arguably be the most important session in the history of Sburb?

Ahhh.  Okay.  So this may INDEED be something interesting, something worth seeing.  A new session, one where Dirk is the villain, Rosebot is enthralled, and old heroes are on their way to help see him thwarted.  Along with the mystery participants of a session we’ve yet to see.

Enough time goes by that she begins to wonder if he’s asleep. But no. It’s just the irritated silence of a man who knows he isn’t currently dressed well enough to attend to something important.

DIRK: Are my fucking pantaloons ready yet?

Yeah, fuck you and your anime pantaloons straight in the Yaois, Dirk Smartass.

Okay!

So that’s the end of the epilogue.  BOTH epilogues.  And... I like it.

I don’t know why.  I mean it was all excellent before, and my stomach’s still a BIT clenchy, but I like it now.  I misinterpreted things from the Meat ending, and now everything... everything makes a little more sense.  Some things seem resolved, others earned...

And... in a way I feel like I could actually oddly accept, even if there’s never anything that touches on this ever again...

It doesn’t seem “over”.  :)

[tomiyeee]

I associate Tim/Aurelia with Fallout's Where Did the Party Go? What song do you associate with them?

huh! interesting, cool song choice! i can see that :3

(gonna do the two of them separately and put it under a cut cuz it gets kinda long)

Tim:

Fav thing about them: he’s fun to play (he and lia are the only two vh’s i’ve ever gotten above 60), esp now that i’ve found out how to do the magic slug glitch, and his lines are cute/funnyLeast fav thing about them: it’s hard for me to really think of him as his own character w/o comparing him to jack. it’s kind of like instead of just saying “i like him”, it’s always “i like him, but i like jack better”. that’s mostly why i make fun of him so much lmao (“discount jack”). i know it’s kinda unfair but it’s hard for me to really think otherwise bc he’s got such a strong association with jack–i mean his job is literally to be him. despite my love for aurelothy, i’m honestly…p neutral towards him as a character. i want to genuinely like him, but it’s hard when everything he says/does is just kind of a reminder that he’s trying and failing to be a copy of my fav character. i know it’s harsh but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯Fav line: “you don’t know…my name! [high-pitched squeal] we did it folks, yah, we did it!” because what the fuck timbrOTP: ??? i honestly don’t know…he and the digi-jacks maybe (an actual serious answer btw, cuz i like when fics portray them as having actual personalities)OTP: aurelothy~~nOTP: timh/elm and rhy/sothy (even tho i do still reblog/like some art of the latter, it’s more of just the art is nice. i tend to avoid reading fics of them)Random headcanon: post-ps, jack scarred him similarly to how he was scarred in the vault, but jack’s scar is blue bc of vault magic, like his bl2 model, while tim’s is just red scar tissue, like his “and jill” head.Unpopular opinion: i kind of don’t like drawing him with traits differentiating him and jack visually (like freckles or drawing jack in his bl2 outfit and tim in bltps). the whole point of the body double thing is that they’re indistinguishable, and i prefer using context to differentiate the two (like their dialogue or who they’re paired with, etc) rather than going against canon and what jack would probably allow. it’d just seem out of character for tim to be physically any different than jack.Song I associate with them: (i’ve got two aurelothy songs so i’ll just split it between the two of them lol) “I Wouldn’t Mind” - He Is WeFavorite picture of them: hff it’s 2am and i have school tomorrow, i don’t have time to look for a pic of him sorry! i spent long enough doing the rest of these, oopsies lol

-

Lia:

Fav thing about them: im so gay (also since i love being op in games, her elemental build + the machine is so fun for bosses)Least fav thing about them: she doesn’t have op health regen like tim and maya :(Fav line: “Oh bloody hell, it’s Alistair.”brOTP: ??? none currently but (i don’t ship this but) i feel like she and jack would have gotten along p well if it weren’t for jack’s spiral into insanity. they did have a lot in common when they first started out and it’s kinda interesting to think about…OTP: au~re~lo~thy~~nOTP: her and nisha is the only other ship i’ve seen and i don’t really like nishaRandom headcanon:oh boy a chance to talk about my headcanon/story/plotline for them! so basically when they were working for jack, lia saw tim as a servant/personal butler (she prob did for all the vh’s). even tho their relationship was more like co-workers, lia thought of it that way and tim was like “i’ve got enough bs to deal with, this might as well happen” and just kinda went along with it. lia found him particularly entertaining (and a good servant) and they both kind of enjoyed each other’s company and maybe low-key developed crushes on each other, but neither would admit it, esp lia. fast-forward to end of pre-sequel, tim continues to work under jack and lia goes hunting on epitah and other planets. they naturally start to drift apart, but it still feels really lonely and dull without the other, esp for lia, who is not keeping busy working for handsome jack like tim is. they meet up again tho when the sanctuary vh’s are gathering them all up (gaige/axton find lia and tim either gets found by sanctuary as well or somehow winds up there on his own after helios falls, idk), cue happy reunion and happily ever after, etc. i mean it’s pretty simple of a story and more of just like how their relationship would be woven into canon than it is a story of its own, but it is basically the plot i’ve been following with my art of them. also hc abt lia specifically: she totally spoils timUnpopular opinion: i kind of wish they’d shown more of her mean side in game. a lot of her npc interactions chose to focus on her polite, high-society side, and as a result she actually appears nicer than the other vh’s in some cases, like with custm-tpSong I associate with them: “Symphony” - Clean BanditFavorite picture of them: im gay~~ (also any of sinfullyhandsome’s art of her bc…oof…)

[cleocazo]

Alt alt alt 😘😘

im abt to throw it right back w this one cause ,, even tho she was rly badly written w a rly bad concept, CHARLOTTE WINTERS my TWENTY TWO year old WEREWOLF is forever in my heart. charlie was sixteen yrs old when i created her in 2012 for a buffy the vampire forum rp - considerably younger than all the other characters there, which reflected my situation too. everyone in this rp, aside from one other guy, was like.. 25+. most were in their thirties. i was thirteen turning fourteen and they all KNEW this, but … none of them had any issue ? in fact they all rly took me under their wing and taught me the rp ropes so to speak, so charlie mightn’t be great, but she comes with some pretty neat memories. i don’t remember a lot of her backstory, tbh. i know her home life was rly bad, to the point where like… her dad. who was someone high up in the reopened initiative ( villains in the buffy universe who experiment on monsters ), performed a lot of experiments on her after she was bitten, which resulted in charlie not only turning on full moons but also likely to turn whenever, if her heart rate rose. she was kinda supposed to be a villain when i brought her in, fitting in to a need the rp had for “double agents” who were working for the villains but reporting on the heroes - but plot twist, that wasn’t what actually happened. the first part of the plan went off without a hitch: this little runaway wolf pulled the heartstrings of this older wolf, danna, who’d also had a rough childhood and run away, and she took her back to her house w her boyfriend michael and insisted on becoming her guardian. but then the og plan went to shit cause charlie grew to rly love danna, and when michael dropped the suspicion and got close to her, he became like.. big brother and father figure all wrapped into one for her. they introduced her to the rest of their pack - oz, cole & their young ward, chester ( charlie’s future love, bc they were the same age in similar situations and also, michael hated him, so it was a great dynamic ) - and everyone decided to accept charlie in. she was supposed to like. kill them, ig. and instead she deflected bc they gave her all the things she’d never had before ( love, a family, all the gooey stuff ). she softened up and started going to school w chester in like. ‘15. and she even saved his life after an attack and opened up and told everyone the truth abt her, and why she’d originally come - and everyone forgave her bc she’d never hurt them or tried to and it was just. super cute. i miss her everyday. 

SEND ME “ALT!” TO BE INTRODUCED TO AN OLD CHARACTER / ONE I WANT TO PLAY / ONE I’M PLAYING  !!

here u go, hannah, another free promo for sidekickhq - right now i am playing a phoebe tonkin fc named MONICA “NIKKI” BARTON, and she is the actual love of my life. nikki is the TWENTY THREE ( almost twenty four. its coming soon ) year old daughter of BARNEY BARTON, otherwise known as hawkeye’s trash brother who’s mostly a villain, sometimes just stupid - and outta every oc i’ve made in the last few yrs, i think she’s gotta be my fave. she’s totally human ( no special powers here ), and she’s had the worst life, so allow me to try n unpack it all: her dad’s an alcoholic and her mom was addicted to drugs, and after 3 yrs together they split up, her mom dragging her across state and away from permanent mess, barney. he didn’t have contact w her up until she was seven, coming back into her life w a court order and proceeding to try and make awkward conversation during every scheduled meet up. at eleven her mom fell of the wagon and overdosed - nikki came home, couldn’t unlock her bedroom door, and called her dad. she waited on the porch steps while he broke down the door and found her mom dead. the cops took her away and stuck her in the foster system, and for another three yrs her dad tried rly hard to get legal custody of her. that failed, so he just. kidnapped her. from the playground. great parenting, barney! they traveled for a lil while but eventually settled back in the rly rundown house that nikki had spent her first 3 yrs, and life was a whole ass mess from that point onwards. her dad kept drinking, she kept having to bail him out, she eventually dropped out of high school so she could make money to actually, y’know, survive, this led her into being a drug mule, and from there, can u believe, it actually gets worse. her boss was p paranoid, used to hit her if he thought she’d skimmed some product to feed what had now become a personal addiction, too, and her dad was still p nonexistent. she completed her GED and did some online courses but she was pretty stuck, ‘til she ended up in JAIL - this is another long story, but her boss got it in his head she’d stolen money that he had actually just not gotten, and drove to her house w all intent of killing her. in the resulting fight she hit him over the head w an iron doorstop and realizing he was dead, called the cops and waited for them on the porch ( some nice lil mirror imagery, there ). she’d only completed like. four yrs of her sentence, when her uncle clint finally got wind of what had happened and cut her a deal with shield - if she gave them info on her dad, who was still at large, then they’d let her go free ( tho free meant going to a monitored academy and not stepping outta line ). she agreed, the rest is history, i stan nikki barton so much. she’s SUCH a typical phoebe tonkin character i own that so u don’t have to drag me, but she’s rly also so good - and my fave thing is that her arc isn’t about her finding that goodness, or anything. she already knows who she is. her arc’s all abt slotting back in with family, and trying to find her footing in a world she feels she got cut off from, and tryna work out what she can do when up til now, she didn’t have any chances. she finally has a shot at some sort of good life - and i’m rly loving writing that. 

and now, a character i have created but am yet to play - BEATRICE ANNE HALLMAN, commonly known as BIBA, is a TWENTY THREE yr old human who’s just rly out here. living her life. biba suffered from a ventricular septal defect at birth, and though she survived the surgery she went through to fix that, has had some health issues for most of her life because of it. this could have led to her being someone afraid of . u know. pretty much everything. but it didn’t! she has dreams and she wants to achieve them, but she’s stuck for the time being cause. even tho she was a fighter, who survived a literal hole in her heart - she got kinda used to things getting handed to her cause of that ( #spoiled ), and she expected to get into the college of her dreams without putting forward much effort. she didn’t, so now she’s gone into windows shut down mode which is... give up and don’t do anything bc one thing didn’t go right and that means that she’s a failure who will never amount to anything. that’s not true, obviously, but she’s fairly content to believe it, and has spent the last couple years working as a bartender and taking part in productions put on in her local theater, which isn’t hollywood, but.. it’ll do! nothing is enough for biba and my fave thing about her is that even if she’s stuck right now it’s not gonna last forever and she will go to college and achieve something, she just needs to get her head outta her ass first and realize that even if she can’t do what she wants, it doesn’t mean she won’t get to where she wants to be, eventually. i stan!

[izzy-b-hands]

In the weirdest fucking headspace today over two very intense dreams I had (that utterly fucked up my sleep last night, hence why I'm waking up at 12 in the fucking afternoon when I had an alarm set for ten lmao.)

Warning in advance that I'm on mobile and this post will be long, my apologies but I need to get this out now or I'm not even gonna be able to roll out of bed. TW for parts of the dreams which feature: a funeral, a funeral procession, issues with family, drowning/death via being swept out to sea, and also some odd romance/implied sex because sure why not apparently.

The first woke me up at like five, and was v weird but distinct:

Mum and I were getting to her car, that for unexplained reasons was parked at a local funeral home, which for some reason was on a hill (we don't have many hills here, v flat place, but in the dream it was all hills, almost mountains.) The implication I got in the dream was that it was the only parking spot left which is weird but sure I guess.

We didn't actually attend the funeral going on inside, but it finished up as we were trying to leave, discussing usual stuff we do before we go home like do we have the cash/feel lazy enough to get fast food on the way home instead of cook. And before mum could back out of the spot they started loading the hearse and ppl were all over the lot which pissed mum off, so she drove OVER THE FUCKING SIDEWALK AROUND PLANTS IN CEMENT PLANTERS ON THE SIDEWALK to get past them!

Which was half pointless anyway, because my grandparents were in their car right by the entrance/exit and made fun of her for doing that and for not wanting to be in the procession to the cemetery. Grandpa specifically told her 'theres a word for ppl who do what you do, we have a saying about you' and laughed at her, but wouldn't explain that further.

This next bit had me legit looking up funeral procession laws when I woke up. Because mum did get caught somehow behind the hearse even tho we'd left the lot well before it did? And was somewhat understandably flipping out because we weren't actually meant to be a part of the procession, we'd only parked there because there was nowhere else to. And if we looked back you could see my grandparents laughing at us for panicking, so finally mum broke the procession and headed up this v hilly road, winding, again almost mountainous. The last thing we saw was my grandparents looking at us and glaring. Mum kept freaking out abt how it wasn't her fault she'd had to break the law and break the procession, but she wasn't going to lose her job over all this (no idea what in the fuck that has to do with it all frankly, but she said it in the dream.)

I kept trying to calm her and said we could turn around, or pause in someone's driveway (the roads were all lined with familiar houses we've driven past irl) but she wouldn't calm, and the last thing I remember before I woke up was her turning the wheel harshly and hearing the tires skid on the edge of the very high up mountain road.

So needless to say that fucked me up and I didn't sleep again until abt eight, because I went to shower and try and chill out before crawling into my bed in my room, before I'd been passed out on the couch.

Only to then have this dream before I woke up just recently:

No family in this one, only band members from bands I like and their family (which is just my brain making a good casting decision I suppose lol.) Specifically, Queen and Avatar.

The issue was...odd. We were stuck very near the seaside, near a boardwalk that looked alarmingly similar to the one in GTA/that tbh you would see in any game modelled after the West coast. In a building that Brian (though in the dream, it was hard to know it was him?? Like him and Bri and Freddie and John kept switching ages, one minute it was 70s Bri, then suddenly Bri now, and it was hard to follow for some reason) knew and explained to us was an old boarding school building, often used for safety for folks during times of flooding.

And in the dream I just went sure yeah okay because I had no reason to believe otherwise, and also a storm was raging outside and had been for the entire dream. Like we could hear waves hitting the building constantly.

Which was extra dangerous, because the Avatar lads and their family members (I was told all their families were there, like Henrik's wife and kids plus Paky and Jacob with Johannes, Tim's pup was there, but I only saw them randomly for the rest of the dream after being told by John (Avatar John, to clarify lol) that they had brought everyone with them) were up on this balcony that we had been instructed (by who, no fucking clue, but we trusted them implicitly apparently) was the safest place in the building and measuring from it and the iron rod fencing around it that matched the same on the building across from us would ensure our safety more (if the waves hit with a certain strength on buildings too far apart, the buildings would both be washed out to sea. Does that make logical sense? Probably not anywhere irl, but it did in the dream.)

So the entirety of Avatar are up there trying to make these measurements, arguing with Bri and Rog especially over this even being helpful to do when

And you can laugh at this, because I did too when I woke up.

There were canoes we could rent (RENT. As if we would be able to bring them back lmao) downstairs instead!! In like a surf shack thing that was in the fucking school building apparently? And bless them for a bit they really thought we could ride out the storm in them (Tim offered to share one with me and his dog. It was v sweet lol.)

Unfortunately, we then immediately (all of us now somehow crowded on the balcony which was way too big for a balcony tbh) watched a bunch of ppl outside the building try to do just that. And they failed. Miserably.

We didn't see bodies, but you just knew they were dead. Paky was crying, John (Queen, since we had two Johns to deal with in this lol) was v upset and kept talking abt how that wasn't a baptism that would get them into Heaven.

So the canoe idea was abandoned even tho the salesdude kept calling up to us and offering what he had left. Nice dude, immediately got swept out to sea by the end of the dream.

Cut back to us on the balcony, panicking. Tim keeps thanking me for holding his dog so she doesn't jump into the sea (she had no intention, and spent the entire dream in his arms, mine, or Jonas's, snuggling and whimpering and it was Honestly Heart Wrenching.) I remind him we're in this together and it's no problem. He pulls me aside for what I'm going to politely censor and just call a v weird and frankly ill-timed makeout session (then again, maybe being about to be swept out to sea is the best time for that?? Idk, but I digress except to say he was a wonderful kisser, but also we both kept crying abt realising we were going to drown, so it was A Lot for both of us I think.)

When we return, Brian has let everyone know that the final calculations are that we will certainly be swept out to sea, but so long as the building stays upright?? We won't drown and die. How does he know this? No explanation was given.

I end up hunkered down with Freddie and Jim and Tim and his pup (the cats for Freddie and Jim I never saw, but heard yowling in their crates so. As safe as can reasonably be???) My Nisha apparently didn't get to go with me for this dream, because I did look for her at points, but couldn't find her (Tim cried with me over that too and helped, v supportive, and now outside of the dream may I say v kind of dream him to do that for me.)

And we just...waited. Knew death was coming, and could do nothing abt it. The only comfort we could reach was that it would be like a museum at the bottom of the sea. Freddie and Tim reasoned that the Titantic, if you could walk in the ruins, might be like that. All old clothes and bones and ppls stuff. And so the school building we were in would be like that too, and we all agreed we liked museums, so maybe it wasn't the worst way to go.

Then the wave actually hit though, and it was just fkn chaos. Tim hanging onto his dog and my waist, myself hanging onto Freddie and Jim by the loops on their jeans (how tf that didn't just rip my fingers off, no idea. *Dream Magic*)

I realized horrifically that as we went down, the building was literally falling apart, bricks and iron work bars flying around us. And all I could see were bones when I looked down into the water, bones from every era but particularly Victorian by the clothes on them for some reason.

What was particularly cruel in this dream was that it ended with a false awakening. I 'woke up' to Tim's arm around my waist, and his nose nuzzling at my neck, asking me wtf I was dreaming abt because I was kicking him and could I pls stop? (Fair request, that's honestly an irl problem that my legs apparently have always tried to fight off bad dreams on their own, much to the bruises and regret of anyone who shares my bed.) And just as I turned around to answer him and tell him how fkn scared I was and how grateful I was he was there and ya know, not dead and drowned,

I woke up for real, alone, in my actual bed.

So now I'm feeling extra lonely, fucked up, and honestly peeved that the dream interpretation dictionary I usually use isn't helping much to make sense of any of this.

[everythingelseisspokenfor]

Hi! I love thiam.Can u write sumthin abt how the other pack members just assume they're dating;while liam defensively denies? Thanks!

Okay. So I started writing this story long ago but couldn’t finish it. But I finally did!!!! And also, anon, THIS WAS SUCH A CUTE PROMPT!! And so in character tbh! So thanks a bunch! Here’s my take on this AMAZING prompt! and @ilovethiam I’d love to read a 100 thiam fanfics too!!! but here’s one.

Don’t ask me to lie

Liam was so done with these people he had for some reason decided to call friends. Most of them were forced into his life, thanks to Scott, but in the end, he still chose to call them friends because they always stuck together, and always had his back. He knew he could count on them the same way they could count on him. But right now, he was starting to maybe regret that decision. It had only been 2 days since Scott and the others started college and they were already dealing with a crisis. He had to assume the role Scott left behind. As if that wasn’t enough there were all these people assuming he was with Theo.

“Why do you want me to talk to Theo? Why do you think he’ll listen to me?” He asked shaking his head.

“Oh, you know why,” Mason answered. “Come on Liam. This is kind of important. This is a chimaera, and he’ll know what to do.”

“Well, then you go ask him,” he whines plopping down on one of the library chairs.

“I did. He said ‘cool’ then walked away. You’re dating him, that should give you some free reign, right?”

There he goes again. “I’m not dating him,” his voice slips into an automatic defensive tone.

“Yeah, okay, just talk to him.” Mason waved his hand dismissively.

“I am not dating him,” he repeated.

“Just talk to him. Please.” Liam sighed in defeat narrowing his eyes at his supposedly best friend.

“Fine.”

And Theo did come to help. He would have for anyone who hissed at him. It wasn’t about Liam, Theo was just a hardass who wanted people to assume he didn’t care. He would have come around eventually anyway. Liam talking to him just sped up the matter, that’s all.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Nolan was sitting next to Liam in the locker room after a game of lacrosse. Their team had just lost. Theo and his stupid team of obnoxious snobs won. Nolan wasn’t so bad when he wasn’t trying to get him killed.

“Aren’t losing control yet, are we?” Theo asked smugly walking out of the shower. Liam resisted the urge to snort and punch his nose. He stuck to giving Theo a glare. “Oh, come on,” he tilts his head to a side, “Everybody knows you’re a sore loser.” Liam stood up standing inches away from the other boy hating that Theo was slightly taller than him.

“I swear to god, go away. Right now,” he hissed through his teeth. Theo’s lips lifted to form a crooked smirk that permanently etched his face anyway.

“How does it go again. Oh yeah. The sun, the moon and the truth Liam. Say it with me.” He steps away motioning his hand, “The sun, the moon –” And Liam landed a hard hit on Theo’s face which still failed to wipe the annoying half smile of the chimera’s face. Theo’s thumb grazed his lips wiping away the blood that was starting to drip.

“Well, at least you didn’t wolf out,” he said then promptly walked away.

“Wow,” Nolan said still sitting on the bench where he was. “You guys have such a weird relationship. Good thing your boyfriend can heal quick, coz that blow was… Oof.”

Liam turned at the comment glaring. “He is not my boyfriend!” His voice came out higher than he’d expected it to.

“Of course,” Nolan replied shaking his head with sarcastic enthusiasm.

“He. Is. Not. My. Boyfriend,” he repeated enunciating each word controlling his voice this time.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Things had been going quite smoothly these past few months. Nothing earth-shattering happened. Liam still had to deal with rogue werewolves and not to mention the fact that some people were still just growing accustomed to the entire ‘existence of supernatural’ thing. And Scott, Malia and Lydia were back for vacations. Stiles was still out in Quantico doing his thing. And why oh, why would their lives ever be easy for more than a few weeks. The first day his alpha came back they had to deal with a member of the wild hunt who got left behind or something. Liam didn’t really know, they had a game and Scott took care of it. They were all at the McCall house now just catching up. Malia and Scott were sitting together in the corner of the couch, Lydia was hunting the kitchen to find something to eat, and the others were trying to find more blankets. The first normal teenager-y thing he’d done in so long. A movie night. He just found his place in one of the Sofa’s when his phone pinged. He grabbed it from his back pocket double tapping it to check why.

“Ooh! Theo,” Alec cooed arriving just behind him.

“Theo?” Scott asked, “Why isn’t he here yet?”

Liam shrugged. “I don’t know maybe he lost his way or something,” he said shrugging again, he looked down at his phone again opening the message. Malia’s scoff made him look up again.

“What?!” Liam hissed.

“You’re telling me that your boyfriend doesn’t know the way to Scott’s. Think of a more believable lie.”

He scowled. “For the last time. We are not dating.” He looked back his phone. “I’m going to get myself a blanket. You have some in your room, right?” he directed his question to Scott who nodded. He quickly typed something into the phone and started walking up the stairs. He opened the door and a gush of wind hit him along with a soft laugh.

“That was entertaining,” Theo commented. Liam shook his head.

“Oh please! Do tell why?”

“You know how defensive you sound when you say we’re not dating? It’s very entertaining.”

“Why? I don’t know why people just assume you’re my boyfriend!” Liam looks up, annoyance clear on his face.

“Well, am I not?” he asks smirking. A smirk Liam knew by now was just a cover for his insecurity. He rolled his eyes and kissed the smirk off his face. Theo replied in almost no time. The first time Liam had kissed Theo it took him forever to kiss Liam back! FOREVER! But he was learning. Theo’s hand slipped into Liam’s hair when he pulled back.

“But they don’t know that yet!” He whined.

“WE DO!” He heard four voices shout. Scott, Malia, Alec and Corey. Liam buried his head in Theo’s shirt, and the other boy laughed. Liam could feel his face turn red.

“Might as well go down,” Theo suggested. “Now that we know that the pack knows. Don’t have to lie to anyone anymore.”