#unfortunately people have been leveraging his looks and Not Being Man Enough against him for long enough that it would take a lot for him t

[weidli]

4.07 / It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester

i realize this is supposed to come off as haha dean likes pretty girls but like. what he's actually SAYING is that if he could pick any body to live in he'd pick one that looks like a pretty girl. which is not the same thing

[libraryofgage]

Meddling Kids

Part of: Steve Deserves Good Parents, Actually

Debbie and Fester Addams One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six Rick and Evelyn O'Connell One | Two | Three Harley Quinn One | Two | Three 10th Doctor and Rose One | Two Scooby Gang One (you're here!) Jedidiah and Octavius (from Night at the Museum) One | Two Queen Clarisse Renaldi One | Two | Three Leverage Crew One

From the girl that brought you that silly little Spicy Six Scooby Movie post (I've been thinking of making that post into one of those social media series things on Tumblr but imma let that cook a little longer actually lmao) is a brand new Stranger Things and Scooby Doo crossover

Anyway, we're here for good vibes and fluffy Scooby gang, so definitely don't point out any typos hfjkds

Have fun reading!

---------

People coming.

Steve freezes, looking at the possum that's scurried into the room and sidled up next to him. He takes a deep breath and forces his shoulders to relax. People have come to explore the abandoned lab before; usually, it's just older kids daring each other to stand inside for a few minutes. There's been that lady recently who likes dressing up as a weird rat-thing, but she hasn't bothered Steve or his friends. Actually, she may not even realize Steve is here.

"Is it the lady again?" he asks, his voice low as he places a hand on the possum's head. He feels its nerves flow through his palm, and it pushes its head against him, snout nuzzling against the 004 on his arm.

No. Four big ones and a beast.

Four adults and a dog, probably. Steve frowns slightly and gets up, carefully making his way across the dirty floor toward the window. He lifts the corner of the curtain and stares at the bright blue, green, and orange van parked in front of the building. Four adults are standing around with a big dog, which isn't looking too happy about being near the place. Steve can't blame it.

He slowly pushes the window open a crack, straining his ears to hear one of the adults say, "Okay, gang. Daphne, Velma, and I will look around downstairs. Shag, you and Scooby will take the second floor. We'll meet back in the lobby in an hour."

"Can't we just, like, not explore the creepy abandoned lab for once?"

Steve assumes this is the one called Shag, and he hopes the other man agrees to just leave. That would make his life so much easier. He hears the dog, Scooby, agree with the sentiment and hopes the other people can understand him, too.

Unfortunately, one of the women says, "C'mon, guys, the monster isn't real. Here, I'll give you some Scooby Snacks for the road."

And that seems to be the end of that. The man and dog accept the snacks, the people enter the building, and Steve resigns himself to hiding for however long they stick around.

He bunkers down, leaning against the wall beneath the window, and goes back to coloring the floor with markers. This entire room is covered in drawings that reach only a few feet up the wall. Steve isn't tall enough to go any higher.

Right now, he's drawing all the animals in the building. There are the ones that were there to begin with (mostly rats and rabbits) and the ones that moved in after the bad people left (possums and raccoons and cats and more rats). He doodles them marching across the floor, a relaxed smile tugging at his lips as he colors a cat purple.

He's putting the finishing touches on the final animal in the line (the very same possum that came to warn him about the people) when he hears a scream from down the hall. Steve blinks, looking up just in time to see Shag and Scooby throw open the door, slide into the room, and slam it behind them.

They lean against it, sinking to the ground, and finally notice Steve sitting against the opposite wall. "Like, Scooby, please tell me I'm imagining that kid over there," Shag says, his voice wavering and cracking near the end.

Scooby starts out looking as scared as Shag, but then he tilts his head. He hesitates for a few seconds before dropping low to the floor and slowly moving toward Steve. "Scoob, what are you doing?" Shag asks.

Not a ghost, Shaggy!

"Not a rhost, Raggy!"

Steve blinks, frowning in confusion. Scooby talked. Like, actually talked. He talked out loud and Shaggy (it makes as little sense as Shag in Steve's opinion) understood him. "There, like, can't be a kid here!"

By the time he says this, Scooby has reached Steve, looking up at him from the floor with hopeful eyes and an eagerly wagging tail. Steve holds himself back for all of two seconds before reaching out and scratching behind Scooby's ear.

The dog lights up and tries to squeeze into Steve's lap, licking his cheeks and covering him in slobber. Steve laughs, trying to evade Scooby's tongue and utterly failing. "Stop, stop!" he shouts breathlessly, still giggling even when Scooby finally gives him a break.

"Oh, man," Shaggy says, slowly moving from the door to approach Steve. When he's a few steps away, he stops and crouches. "What are you doing here, little guy?"

Steve blinks, glancing at Shaggy before turning his attention back to Scooby. He reaches up, scratching under Scooby's chin and trying to ignore his nerves about talking to another human after being alone for so long. "This is my home," he says.

Your home?

"Your rome?"

"Like, man, this is not a good home," Shaggy says, looking around at the dust and the cobwebs and the possum in the corner of the room. "Don't you have, like, parents or something?"

"Not really."

Can we keep him, Shaggy?

"Can re keep him, Raggy?" Scooby asks, his tail wagging hopefully as he looks at Shaggy over his shoulder.

"Gee, Scoob, I don't know," Shaggy says, frowning slightly as he finally sits down on the floor and hunches over. "A kid's a lotta responsibility, man. We gotta feed him and clothe him and, like, make sure he doesn't get sick."

Steve looks between the two and can't help a slight smile. Shaggy is nice, and Scooby is a dog, which automatically makes him good to Steve. He doesn't mind helping them out a little. "You're here about that lady, right?" he asks.

Lady?

"Rady?"

"Like, what do you mean lady?" Shaggy asks.

"The one dressing like a rat," Steve says, wondering how they didn't make that connection themselves. Haven't they already realized it's not a real rat-thing?

"Oh, man, I guess Velma was right," Shaggy says, a relieved laugh bubbling out of him as he slumps even more. "We gotta tell the gang, right, Scoob?"

Yeah, yeah!

"Reah, reah!"

"Are you trying to catch her?" Steve asks, looking between the two once more.

"Well, like, the rest of the gang's gonna want to."

"I can help with that," Steve offers, smiling reassuringly at the concerned looks that Shaggy and Scooby give him in return.

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

Hawkins is supposed to be a vacation. Sort of. There's a possible mystery in the town, but even Velma couldn't confirm for sure, and Daphne had encouraged them to just relax.

Steve is inclined to agree with her, especially when she buys them a house with a pool that Scooby immediately launched himself into.

Still, he can tell that Velma won't relax unless she gets a chance to look around, so he finds her to go on a grocery run. "Oh, you're right," she says when he points out the lack of food in the house. "We'd better get something before Shaggy and Scooby start chewing on the walls."

"We'll set up the bedrooms while you get groceries," Fred says, grinning at them from across the living room. He digs in his pocket and pulls out the keys to the Mystery Machine. After making sure Steve is ready, he tosses them over.

"Please just don't put me in that plaid room," Steve tells him, catching the keys and passing them to Velma.

"I think that would count as cruel and unusual punishment, Steve," Daphne calls, her voice coming from down the hall where she's no doubt started setting up her room. She pokes her head into the hall, smiles at him, and adds, "Don't worry. We'll put Shaggy and Scooby in that one."

"Knowing them, they'd like it," Velma says.

As if he was just waiting for his queue, Shaggy leans over the second-floor railing and shouts, "Dibs on the plaid room! It looks groovy!"

Steve snorts as Velma rolls her eyes with an amused smile. "Come on, Steve, let's get going."

The drive to the grocery store is quiet, with Steve paying more attention to the town around him and Velma focusing on driving. He notes anything that looks weird, like the lack of people walking around. They pass other cars, of course, but even when they drive past what could be called Downtown Hawkins, he doesn't see anyone walking around.

He tucks that away for later, seeing nothing else of note until they park near a pile of bikes at the grocery store. "They're not locked," he says, nodding to them.

"It's a small town, Steve," Velma says, unbuckling as she turns the radio down so their ears aren't blasted when they get back. "They probably don't feel the need to."

"I guess," Steve mumbles, hopping out of the van and waiting for Velma to round the front. He walks next to her and holds the door open when they reach it. "Maybe we can get sandwich stuff."

"We'll have to wipe out their entire deli section," Velma says, sighing as she grabs a cart and pushes it towards the produce aisle. "At least we never have to worry about food waste."

Steve hums in agreement, easily falling into their normal routine of Velma calling out items and him grabbing at least five of them if there's enough in stock. "What do you think about that mystery?" he asks, placing a bag of apples in the cart.

"I think that forest out there is prime real estate," she replies, leaning on the cart's push bar. "Get a watermelon, too, Steve. Anyway, demon dogs aren't the weirdest we've run across."

"They were demodogs. Not demon dogs."

"I still think that was just a typo. Either way, I'm sure we can walk around the forest later and, you know, learn what the squirrels have seen."

Steve crinkles his nose, glancing at her as they make their way towards the deli. "You know the squirrels are too flighty. We're better off with the raccoons. Or, like, the sparrows."

He looks over to see her smirking and realizes she was just teasing him. Steve huffs and grabs as many sandwich meats as he can, getting everything but ham since Velma can't eat it and it gives Daphne migraines.

"Well, whichever animals you interrogate, I'm sure they'll clear up this mystery in no time."

Steve hums in agreement, follows Velma into the cereal aisle, and is about to say they should consider focusing on field mice when a voice from the other side of the shelf says, "Dude, spray cheese isn't gonna help us against the demodogs."

He blinks, pauses, and looks at Velma. She tilts her head, holds a finger up to her lips, and waves off the smirk he gives her at being right about demodogs not being a typo. "Yeah, I know," another voice says, followed by the clatter of grabbing a few cans, "but I want Cheez-Whiz."

"That stuff is gross," a girl's voice says, her tone flat in a way that Steve almost recognizes. He frowns slightly, tilting his head as he silently places a few cereal boxes in the cart. "It tastes fake."

"That's the point, El."

"Shouldn't we focus on lighters and hairspray?"

"I mean, this is technically a spray, right?"

Steve glances at Velma, raising an eyebrow before gesturing to the end of the aisle. She nods once and starts pushing the cart in that direction, huffing in amusement when Steve drops in a few more boxes along the way. "You'd think we're feeding an army," she says, tone dry.

"We might as well be," Steve replies, feelings his shoulders relax at the routine exchange.

They round the corner to see three kids down the aisle, two boys and one girl. One of the boys has curly hair and a baseball cap while the other is wearing a basketball jersey, and the girl has short hair that falls to her shoulders. They're all looking at the shelf, but the girl glances over when Velma and Steve enter the aisle.

She meets Steve's eyes, and he wonders if he's met her before. Her eyes narrow slightly, more in confusion than anything else, and her gaze travels down. He feels it on his arm as she lands on the 004, and her eyes widen as she steps away from the shelf.

Steve glances down at her arm in turn, sees the 011, and feels like his breath has been punched out of him. "Eleven," he whispers.

Next to him, Velma shifts closer, placing a hand on Steve's shoulder. "I'm here," she says, her voice low and more reassuring than she'll ever know.

"Four," Eleven says, walking up to him without another glance at her companions. "Are you here to hurt me or my friends?"

Steve blinks. "What?"

"Are you violent? Kali, Eight, was violent. And angry. Are you angry?"

As she talks, the two boys move to flank her, looking between Steve and Velma with something between suspicion and confusion. "Is this one of your siblings, El?" Basketball Jersey asks.

"Yes. Four. He was...transferred a year before the Upside Down. Four, these are my friends Dustin and Lucas"

"I go by Steve now. And, uh, no, not violent. We're grocery shopping," Steve says, awkwardly gesturing to their cart.

"Steve? You can name yourself and you choose Steve?" Dustin asks.

Steve blinks and frowns. "I didn't name myself. I asked the smartest rat I knew to name me."

The two boys blink as El nods in understanding. "The rat chose well," she says.

"Dude, how many people are you feeding?" Lucas asks, seeming to finally notice the shopping cart.

"Well, one of them is a Great Dane," Velma says. "Hello, El. I'm Velma, one of Steve's...guardians, I suppose. How would you like to come by for dinner? El and Steve can catch up, and you can tell us about those demodogs you mentioned."

"Were you spying on us?" Lucas asks.

"You weren't exactly being quiet," Velma tells them.

Before Lucas or Dustin can start arguing, El cuts them off, "We will come by for dinner. I am glad we met again, Steve."

"Yeah. Me, too," Steve replies, smiling at El and wondering if they'll have to explain how Scooby can talk.

----------

Tag List (please let me know if you'd like to be added!)

@romanticdestruction,

[radical-sky]

I have nowhere to put this so. *throws this at you and runs*

**

The pitter-patter of small feet running on the floor is a sound Ilsa had never imagined waking up to.

She hears Ethan sit up with a tired sigh next to her, reaching down and tugging on a shirt before the door to their room crashes open in the darkness. The sound of light footsteps gets closer until she feels Ethan reach down with a groan and a warm, squiggling, crying weight is pressed between them.

Ilsa turns to hug the little girl into her arms, feeling her small hands grasping and clinging at her hair and shoulders. “Addie, Addie, shh, what’s wrong?”

Ethan flicks on the lamp next to their bed, and she can clearly see Addie’s face is red and tear stained. She’s trembling violently, sobs shaking her body. She’s always been a good sleeper; so rarely wakes up in the middle of the night that Ilsa feels a sense of unease in stomach. “What’s wrong?” Ilsa repeats as Addie presses herself into Ilsa’s chest.

“Scary— scary m—man, had— knife—”

Ilsa’s out of bed in an instant, unlocking the safe where she and Ethan keep their guns, grabbing a tranq and making sure it’s loaded.

“Addie, sweetheart,” Ethan says, sounding patient, but one look at him and Ilsa can easily see the fear in his eyes. He glances out the windows as he talks, keeping her voice low. “Where did this man go?”

She sobs again. “Out,” she whispers. “He was scary—”

“I know, sweetheart,” Ethan murmurs. “I know. Mommy’s going to go find him, okay?”

“Stay with her,” Ilsa says to him, tossing him a second gun, which he catches fluidly. “If it’s them, we don’t want her alone.”

Them meaning the terror group they’ve been fending off ever since a fateful mission three years ago, deep inside a ruthless organization holding hundreds of innocent families hostage and using them as leverage against targeted people. They’d been trying to let as many people out as they could, opened another cell and found: a limp body, a pale, shaking woman, and a swaddled baby clutched to her chest.

Ilsa remembers her voice—pained, pleading—as she held the baby out to her, Ethan guarding the door, begging, “Keep my baby safe. Please. Take care of her for me, please.”

“We’re going to get you out of here,” Ilsa had whispered anxiously, trying to lift the woman up off the ground, but she was shaking her head.

“I won’t make it far,” she rasped. “Please, her name is Adelaide, she was born a week ago, please.”

Ilsa remembers looking down at the baby in her arms, not knowing what to do but desperately wanting to fulfill the mother’s wishes. The woman pressed one last kiss to her child’s forehead, nodded at Ilsa with tears in her eyes before she whispered, “I promise I’ll keep her safe. I promise.”

They got her checked out at the hospital later, tried to place her into the local foster care system—but Ilsa was resistant. She wouldn’t let the child have the life she almost did, isolated and bounced around from family to family. “If I have to, I’ll take care of her,” she told Brandt, who was unfortunately managing this situation that no amount of coffee could have prepared him for.

He’d raised an eyebrow, held Adelaide and a stack of paperwork out to her. “Fine. Take her.”

Despite herself, she cracks a grin at the memory of Ethan’s face when she came home with Addie: extremely confused, then startled, then excited. He took fatherhood well, if she’s being honest, with the same dedication and passion he did everything else with. They’ve both had their share of sleepless nights and exhaustion, but they’re lucky—Addie was a peaceful baby, happy and giggly.

They’re also lucky for the fact that Addie looks enough like Ilsa that strangers don’t question whether she’s really theirs or not. As far as she knows, the office is still gossiping about how she “went her entire pregnancy without a bump.” (They plan to tell Addie the truth, eventually, maybe when she’s older and can understand the true gravity of their choice, but they’re saving the real discussions for the future, the ones about how they’ll answer her questions and her reaction.)

She steps out into the hallway, not turning on any of the lights, trying not to alert the intruder to her presence. She silently makes her way towards Addie’s room, trying to figure out where the guy is—or if he’s already left.

There’s a creaking coming from that area, and she raises her gun and slowly pushes the door open, trying to adjust to the moonlight filtering in from the open windows. She sees the shape of the twin bed against the wall, Addie’s stuffed elephant near the pillow—

A hand wraps around her torso, pulling her back suddenly and knocking the gun out of her hands. She strikes, twists out of the hold, trying to gauge her opponent as she swings a leg in a roundhouse kick towards his face. He grabs her leg, uses the momentum to push her to the ground and kicks her forehead straight onto the wooden edge of the bedframe.

She groans, stands shakily as she grapples with the figure. “What do you want?” she pants, after she’s just delivered a very nice punch to his stomach and taken advantage of his doubled-over recovery to take him into a chokehold. “Who sent you?”

“Just give us the kid,” he hisses, and she tightens her hold on his neck. “Give us the kid and we’ll never bother you again.”

“Never,” she whispers. “You killed her family, I’m not letting you get her, too.”

She kicks him hard in the side, making him groan, and reaches for the tranq gun she knows is somewhere nearby, making sure to pin the guy down on the floor before reaching for it and putting a dart in his back.

Once he goes limp, she ties him up securely and calls Brandt while doing a perimeter check to make sure there are no others around. “Brandt, they tried to get to Addie again,” she says bluntly as soon as he picks up.

He groans. “Again? Really?”

“Stop drinking coffee at 2am,” she scolds him, because at this point she knows him so well he can literally hear the coffee in his system. “Send someone to pick this guy up.”

“Will do,” Brandt sighs. “Stay safe. All of you.”

“Will do,” she replies, and hangs up.

It’s just after three by the time the extraction team arrives, dumping the guy in the back of a van and taking him off to God knows where.

She runs some gauze over her cuts and bruises, not wanting to bother Ethan. Knowing him, he’s tense and on edge, and she doesn’t want him to worry more than he has to. She makes two large mugs of hot chocolate, filling one up fully and the other halfway, dropping some of Addie’s favorite mini marshmallows in the lesser one.

She balances them carefully as she walks back to her bedroom, which is a bit tricky with her head spinning as much as it is. When she pushes the door open, she sees: Ethan sitting up in bed, covers up to his lap where Addie sits, hugging her against his chest and running his hand through her hair soothingly. They both look up as she enters.

Ethan’s face collapses from relief when he meets her gaze, and she nods slightly, letting him know she’s okay. Addie, for her part, jumps off Ethan’s lap and sprints to Ilsa as fast as her little legs will carry her, wrapping her arms around Ilsa’s knee and hugging her.

Ilsa crouches down, sets the mugs on the carpet so she can hug her daughter with both arms. “Mommy,” Addie whispers, “I was scared.”

“You did good, Addie,” Ilsa soothes. “You did the right thing, telling us. He’s not going to hurt you again, sweetie.” She pulls back, gives Addie the hot cocoa mug with the marshmallows. “For you.”

She takes it with a large smile, walking carefully in a straight line, trying not to spill it. Ilsa closes her eyes, tries to breathe as she processes—God, she could’ve lost her today—

“Ilsa, love,” Ethan call from the bed. She can see the worry in his face as he frowns slightly at her. “Come join us?”

She nods, takes the second mug and gets up off the floor with a wince. She makes her way over to Ethan, sliding into bed next to him. She takes a sip of the hot chocolate and passes it to him.

“You okay?” he murmurs. “You hurt?” He reaches a hand out, brushes away the hair falling in her face to reveal a blossoming bruise on her cheekbone.

She shakes her head; she doesn’t want Addie to see she’s hurt, doesn’t want to expose her to their brutal way of life so young. Ethan seems to get it, pulling her close so he can whisper in her ear without Addie hearing. “When she’s out, we’ll take a warm shower, ‘kay? That sound good?”

“Yeah,” she breathes, watching their daughter spill some hot chocolate down her chin, and she Ilsa reaches over and wipes it away as Addie giggles. “Sounds perfect.”

NO ANON DONT RUN I LOVE THIS!!!

I love the way you wrote them, and Ethan staying and protecting little Addie. This is such a different take on Ethan and Ilsa having a child but also incredibly in character for them and something I can totally see them doing (I hc that Ilsa was in foster care and it was not a good time). I adore this and would love to be able to bookmark it on ao3!

If you ever post it, please send it!! I’m going to call you/tag you ‘Addie anon’ if you ever come back!!

[kaidenya]

Getting Caught ✧ MHA

Description: Headcanons for getting caught in a intimate moment with Hitoshi Shinso, Tenya Iida, Mirio Togata, & Tomura Shigaraki

WARNING: NSFW, suggestive content NOTE: This is a repost of an old SHITPOST headcanon I had on my previous account so if this looks familiar I hope you enjoy it the second time around!

“Nobody will know...”

Shinso

Shinso would go to his grave claiming that you were to blame for this situation

But in all honesty, he had been allowing things to build for far too long

You two weren’t necessarily a secret, but most people just assumed you were bEsT fRiEnDs 🥴

It was an honest misunderstanding

You had decided to keep physical contact to a minimum after an unfortunate attempt at holding his hand left you believing he didn’t enjoy any forms of PDA.

Shinso had just assumed the same about you.

However, as the two of you grew more serious, you found it more difficult to keep your hands to yourself

It just so happened your boyfriend had been working extremely hard in the hero course and it s h o w e d

You had found yourself admiring his changing physique and in turn, found you weren’t the only one admiring your boyfriend.

You weren’t necessarily jealous— you trusted him more than anything, but he tended to be socially constipated

And nobody seemed to know about you. Thus giving the other interested parties an unintentional greenlight to flirt with him. And there was one girl that had stood out among the sea of suitors.

Each time you saw the second-year girl perch next to Shinso it made your skin crawl, but no lines had been crossed.

Until they were.

Your knuckles were gripping the strap of your bag so tightly it ached when you made your way to where your boyfriend was perched outside

The second-year didn’t even acknowledge you as she continued her flirtatious ways and you don’t resist the urge to roll your eyes as you settle into the place next to him.

He had flashes you a lazy smile before focusing back on his phone screen.

Then her hand landed on his upper thigh

Let me tell you: sleepy boy was shocked when she touched him, but he was EVEN MORE SHOCKED when you took her by the wrist and tossed her hand to the side

You waste no time threading your fingers with his, rising to your feet and all but hauling him from his seat

His amusement only grew as he realized just how jealous you had gotten, a smirk forming over his lips as he set to teasing you

‘What’s the matter, kitty? You don’t like anyone touching daddy?’

NO, YOU DO NOT

You have no idea how you ended up on your knees in a supply closet??

Shinso is feeling very sure of himself above you, using the hand that was gripping the back of your neck as leverage to hold you down on his length

k i n g of dirty talk 🤭

Absolutely cannot help himself when it comes to telling you how pretty you look choking on his cock

Honestly doesn’t last long, but what do you expect? Seeing your jealous and possessive response to the girl he had given little to no acknowledgment had lit a fire in his chest

He was desperate to get his hands on you, to remind you that he was just as much yours as you were his.

And when he does— oh MAN he makes you forget all about the second-year girl

He has one of your legs draped over his shoulder as he goes down on you, licking and sucking at you in a way that had you trembling

You accidentally knock over a pile of brooms and mops, neither of you paying them any mind as your head lulled in bliss

If only you had remembered to flick the lock on the door…

Kirishima really thought someone was banging on the door for help. It wouldn’t have been manly— or heroic not to make sure someone wasn’t in trouble

Besides, why else would someone be making so much noise in a supply closet if they weren’t stuck??

So when the door swung open and he locked eyes with you, still panting and moaning as an all too familiar head of purple hair buried further into your heat—

He let out the loudest shout he could muster. Apologies poured from his mouth as he fumbled to shut the door

However, your boyfriend made no move to let you go. Instead, he hummed against your skin, only leaning back to nip at your inner thigh before speaking in a heavy voice

‘Better make this fast, kitty.’

Iida

So you’ve tried to keep your relationship on the down-low bc Iida doesn’t want anyone to think he’s distracted

We all know he just doesn’t wanna be called out for his obvious favoritism

Before you got together you were constantly pushing him, breaking minuscule rules in favor of gaining his attention. Nothing too immoral, but enough to get under his skin.

Like slipping into class just seconds after the bell had rung, nearly avoiding Aizawa’s attention, but never making it past Iida.

Or when a class had gotten a bit too stressful, the room filling with hot air as tensions rose and you had to pop open a few buttons of your uniform top

Then there was your favorite offense; desk sitting. If there was one sure way to get a reaction from your stickler of a boyfriend it was to place yourself on top of a desk.

Which is what you found yourself doing at the end of an unfavorable week. The two of you hadn’t gotten a moment together outside of your studies and you were growing needy.

So with a few moments of free time before class began, you decided to chat with Tsu and Uraraka, settling atop the desk between them when you had grown tired of standing

The desk belonging to none other than Tenya

Your ankles were crossed as you leaned forward to speak with Tsuyu and he was beyond s h o o k

Immediate hand chopping.

He’s towering over you, ranting about how your behavior was improper while keeping his hands clenched in an attempt to keep from running his fingertips along your thighs.

When was the last time you were this close to him? It had to have been longer than he realized for him to have such a strong reaction— are you biting your lip??

Any response between you died off as Aizawa addressed the class and you were sent back to your seat, leaving Iida far more frazzled than you realized

The moment class ends he has you tucked under an empty stairwell to continue his lecture

Only he doesn’t get very far

Tenya Iida has an authority kink. I take no criticism.

When you look up at him from under your lashes, muttering the words ‘yes sir’ as he chastised you, his resolve was shattered

Has you pressed against the wall immediately, fisting your blazer as he dips to press his forehead to yours

‘Why must you push me?’

Doesn’t even let you answer before his mouth is covering yours, hips arching to grind his obvious arousal against you

Knowing he had been just as affected by your as you had him was enough to spur a moan past your lips and he takes the chance to slide his tongue into your mouth

Although he was MORTIFIED at the impropriety of it all, he couldn’t resist the sweet noises you made as he expertly worked against you

His hand eventually slides between you, pushing past the waistband of your bottoms and grinding his palm against you teasingly

‘Now, who do you belong to, darling?’

You you youyouyou—

Your hand was rubbing along Iida’s hard cock, his length straining against his pants to the point you’re almost worried they’ll rip

Somehow the two of you had been so lost in one another that you hadn’t heard the door open at the top of the stairwell

Denki and Mineta honestly weren’t creeping this time— they just wanted a snack from the vending machine adjacent to you!

Got a whole ass meal instead 👁👄👁

A moan tore from your throat, quickly being smothered by Tenya’s parted lips as you came on his fingers

You had barely made out the echoing sound of objects clattering to the ground through the ringing in your ears

But your boyfriend had heard

His lips separated from you in an instant, shocked gaze shifting into something closer to anger as he recognized your classmates

Denki began stammering out an apology, looking close to short-circuiting as his attention flickered between you

Mineta had let his gaze linger on you for too long. His eyes taking in the way your exposed chest— Tenya must have pulled the buttons loose

You cringe away from his gaze, post-orgasm haze™ spurring you to tuck yourself closer to Tenya to avoid their stares rather than snap at them

It was your obvious discomfort that had kicked Iida into gear, twisting to thread your button your blouse together before rounding on the others

If embarrassment wasn’t enough, the thought of them having seen you in such a vulnerable position had him seething as he began his lecture

Attempts hand chopping them into submission, but they kept disregarding his words in favor of catching another glimpse of you in a fucked out state

All fondness for his classmates had vanished as he stepped into their line of sight, shielding you from their gazes. His eyes almost daring them to continue

Whatever words lingering on their tongues died off, heads bowing in shame as they agreed to keep the entire situation to themselves

After all, the potential wrath of Tenya Iida was not something to be taken lightly.

Mirio

Mirio’s love language is touch, without a doubt, so it’s honestly surprising when he’s NOT trying to get handsy with you

He’s always defended his obvious displays of affection by claiming he had so little free time— he’d be a fool to waste the opportunity to touch you!

Mirio jumped at the opportunity to feel you against him. Whether it was a heavy kiss to your lips after walking you to class, a hand slipping under your shirt to caress your back, or his fingers trailing teasingly along your thigh.

However, as much as he was attentive, he was also forgetful.

It was because of that forgetfulness that you found yourself alone in your dorm. Countless boxes of takeout were lined up on your desk and a pre-planned movie was ready to play on your small tv.

After a few hours and countless delivered messages, you succumbed to disappointment.

The following day Mirio can’t seem to figure out why you’re avoiding him, but he refuses to give up without a fight.

Definitely thinks it’s a game of some sort and takes it upon himself to break your silent streak

It wasn’t easy being upset with Mirio. He had an uncanny ability to brighten any room he stepped into and being irrevocably in love with him only strengthened his effect

He’s always hard for you and loves letting you know just how you affect him— so why not place a hand on your hand, pressing firmly against your back when he slips past?

You always look so stunning— why not feed you compliments at every given moment?

How could he not look at you with the most iNTENSE GAZE undressing you with his eyes in front of everyone?

It’s when he realizes that you aren’t reacting to his teasing and flirtatious behaviorist that he caves.

He finds you between classes, stirring you away from the crowd, despite your wordless protests. It isn’t until you’re tucked away in an abandoned hall that he finally asks what was wrong

You had fully intended on dragging it out, allowing anger to push you on. But he spoke to you in the softest voice, looked at you with eyes filled with so much devotion that it was nearly overwhelming

He is shocked when you shove him away— were you tearing up??

Actually gets super defensive because he doesn’t realize HES the one that made you upset

Once you finally cave and remind him about the date he had missed it hits him like a freight train.

The two of you so rarely got time together and he had stood you up.

‘I’m so sorry, baby. I’ve been so busy lately— I didn’t realize I was neglecting you.’

Does not waste time making it up to you. He cups your face in his hands as he starts placing soft kisses on your face, cooing softly as tears roll down your cheeks

Did somebody say praise kink?

How can you stay mad at him when he’s telling you how sorry he is and that he loves you and you’re the only one his dick will get hard for??

It isn’t long before he’s pinned you between him and the wall, hitching your legs around his waist while coaxing you into a heavy kiss

His hips flex to grind against you, his hot length slotting between your thighs as he digs his fingertips into the curve of your ass

Mirio does not care that somebody could see— his quirk leaves him naked all the time and he’s shameless 🥵

But again he’s so forgetful—

And he was meant to go straight to class 1A to talk with them alongside the other members of The Big Three

So when he didn’t show up Aizawa had sent Tamaki and Midoriya in search of their future number one hero

How were you supposed to know they would turn the corner just as you arched from the wall?

Mirio had no idea anyone was there as he used the hand that was wrapped around your throat as leverage to grind you over the edge—

bOY were you embarrassed when you heard the two boys audibly g a s p

Midoriya’s embarrassment nearly gave Tamaki a run for his money. You were quick to turn away, immediately hiding your face in his chest as he greeted the duo in an overly cheerful voice

Absolutely teases the three of you over the incident FOREVER!!

Shigaraki

Shigaraki was obsessed with you.

There was no way around how infatuated he had become and it only seemed to grow alongside your relationship

He was touch starved. The moment you began giving him physical affection and attention it was game over

He had no shame, especially when it came to his desire for you, which is how you often found yourself perched on his lap no matter the company.

That being said, the leader of the League of Villains became intolerable when the two of you were separated for long.

And a recent spiral of events has prevented you from returning to the hideout, thus leaving the others to deal with him

You weren’t expected to return until the following week. Aside from texting Shigaraki endlessly (didn’t he have anything better to do?) and assuring Twice and Toga that you’d be returning as soon as possible, you hadn’t had much contact with the League

Shigaraki was wound up tight, lashing out at the others far more than usual. That was how he ended up sitting at the bar, Father concealing his annoyance as Kurogiri took over the meeting.

And suddenly you were walking in, muttering a quick apology before taking the only available seat beside Toga

Shigaraki could not keep his eyes off of you, something that doesn’t go unnoticed by the others. It was the most present he had been since you left.

Of course, that meant Dabi has also noticed and never missing an opportunity to mess with their ruthless leader he shifted closer from his place behind you, muttering small talk into your ear

There is no doubt in my mind that Shigaraki was staring at you both like 😠 behind Father

Luckily the meeting had been wrapping up upon your arrival and the group was dismissed, many leaving to handle their own business.

However, the moment you had leaped to your feet Tomura had vanished from the room

With a sigh you moved over to the bar, sliding into the seat that had once been occupied by your man and Kurogiri placed a drink before you

By the time you had downed the last bit the bar had gotten eerily quiet, though when you shifted to speak to the Misty Man he was already looking over your shoulder. With a single nod, he had left the room.

The moment he was gone leather artist gloves shoved under your top, your heart racing at the all too familiar feeling as a palm settled between your shoulders

‘I’ve missed you, pet.’

There was a harsh tone to his voice, but it was contradicted by the trail of open-mouthed kisses he pressed along your neck and shoulder

Your entire body arched against him, head craning back to catch a glimpse of him, smiling widely as you met his gaze and returned the sentiment

A scoff slid past his lips, though you could see the amusement dancing in his gaze as his hand reached around to wrap around your throat

Despite the gloves, he kept a pinky in the air

His mouth covers yours in a sloppy kiss as his hips jolt sharply against you, knocking you against the countertop

Absolutely cannot control himself as he ruts against you, wasting little to no time in pushing your bottoms down past your thighs

Heat pooled in your stomach as his free hand reached between you to pull himself from his jeans

His dick slid between your thighs, a throaty whine sliding past your lips and despite the slick from your arousal the thick head stretched you perfectly

You had been completely lost in him, moaning and whining freely as he continued to rut against you.

There was a click throughout the room, similar to the door handle being twisted and your attention was adverted to the source

However, Shigaraki was faster.

He grabbed the back of your head and using his hold as leverage to press your face flat against the bar-top while his other hand worked against your sensitive center. A loud moan that was undoubtedly his name tumbled past your lips

‘There’s my little slut— louder, make sure they know who makes you feel this good.’

Unbeknownst to you, the person he wanted to be sure knew you were his had entered the room, Tomura meeting his gaze with a smirk as you began chanting his name like a prayer

A harsh thrust of his hips sent you over the edge as you came on his cock, filthy praises slipping past his lips as his hot release rolled down your thighs

He placed another sloppy kiss on the back of your neck before parting from you.

The moment you lift your head and begin adjusting yourself you lock eyes with Dabi

Embarrassed didn’t even begin to explain how you felt as Tomura let out a loud laugh, reaching down to pull your bottoms up after he had tucked himself away

‘Go wait on my bed while I speak with Dabi and I may let you come on my tongue.’

You wasted no time hurrying away from the two, heart pounding from both excitement and humiliation as you rushed to do as you were told

[dudeandduchess]

Baseball Player!Kyōjurō x F!S/O: ❌📛🔞Locker Room Fun🔞📛❌ (Modern AU, NSFW Scenario)

Summary: (Y/n) visits her husband during training, and is in for a surprise when he makes the most of things… in the locker room.

Note: After a while of thinking, I decided to finally pick this back up. Also, I didn’t have much time to research, so the description for the stadium’s interior is based solely on my experience. 😅

Warnings: Smut, Teasing, Vaginal Fingering, Mild D/s Themes, Daddy Kink, Creampie, Hair Pulling, Loud Sex, Mild Sadism, Semi-Public Sex

***

If (Y/n) were to take a guess, she would say that Kyōjurō was doing what he was doing just to tease her. From the way that his ass looked so good in those pants, to the way that he would stretch his arms up over his head and show off his muscles— she had to admit that he looked scrumptious.

Tasty enough to make her bite down on her bottom lip, as she squeezed her legs together to alleviate the need building between her thighs.

But, as far as she knew, Kyōjurō couldn’t have known that she was there— since her visit was supposed to be a surprise. That fact made it so that Kyō wasn’t doing anything on purpose; he was just that naturally sexy.

Especially with the way that his uniform clung to him, and the way that a few strands of his hair peeked out from beneath the cap he wore. Everything about him had (Y/n) fighting back her lust, and she was barely winning.

However, when Kyōjurō spotted her in the stands, he gave her a cheeky grin and wave— as well as a saucy wink— that had her practically swooning in her seat. It was just fortunate that she was good at keeping a poker face, otherwise everyone would have known just how flustered she felt inside.

And with the way that he started stretching his legs, and squatting on the field… (Y/n) swore that Kyōjurō was really trying to get mauled, by her specifically. Unfortunately for him, his wife had more self control than he gave her credit for.

If anything, he was the insatiable one when it came to sex.

So, instead of outwardly feeding into his provocation, (Y/n) merely clenched her thighs tighter together; simultaneously wishing for Kyōjurō’s practice game to drag on, and be over already— because it meant she could either keep on ogling his sexy ass, or she could finally get the kiss that she’d been craving since after he left that morning.

An hour and a half later though, the game was already over with Kyōjurō’s team winning with a two-point lead. Cheers were thrown around, as well as friendly thumps on each other’s shoulders— yet Kyōjurō merely grinned at his teammates and threw a wave over his shoulder, before dashing towards the ground railings and lifting himself up onto the bleacher area with ease.

He even found himself taking the stairs two at a time— like that would help him get to his wife faster. Meanwhile, (Y/n) got out of her seat and met him halfway; arms wide open as her husband wrapped his own arms around her waist and hugged her tightly to his chest.

“I missed you, baby!” And without so much as a care about their spectators, Kyōjurō leaned in and slanted his lips against his wife’s delectable mouth. He even went saucier and opened his lips to snake his tongue between her lips— loving the way that she immediately gave in to his whim.

From below, they could hear whistles and cat calls, yet they paid it no mind. Rather, (Y/n) couldn’t focus on anything else except Kyōjurō’s lips sucking on her tongue, as well as his hands making their way down to her ass. And, unmistakably, she could feel his cock slowly getting hard against her.

“I can tell, Kyō,” (Y/n) answered with a cheeky grin, catching her breath during the reprieve that her husband had given her. “I can help you out with that… at home.”

“I can’t wait that long, (Y/n). I want you so bad,” Kyōjurō whispered heatedly, cupping her ass in his hands and pushing his erection more insistently against her body. He would have given in and just fucked her right there, especially with how tempting she looked from the moment he saw her, but he really wasn’t in the mood to be fined for indecent exposure.

So, as if a lightbulb went on in his head, Kyōjurō put a stopper on his overflowing need for his wife, and blurted out, “I have an idea… but we just have to wait a few minutes.”

“Why do I both love and hate the sound of that?”

“Trust me, baby. You’ll love it.”

***

And not even half an hour later, (Y/n) found herself getting dragged into the underbelly of the stadium; her footsteps echoing against the concrete floors and walls.

Everything was so wide and spacious, with carts going to and fro every once in a while. It was honestly a little daunting, which was why (Y/n) found herself hugging her husband’s arm; on top of already holding his hand.

Kyōjurō also smiled and waved at a few people, even going to accept a few hand shakes and pats on his shoulder from people they passed by. He was the epitome of a golden boy in baseball, that it was literally stated in his contract that he had to keep up a good rapport with his fans.

And (Y/n) couldn’t help but let her thoughts get the better of her— admiring her husband so much, that it made her want him so much more than she did before. Everything in her told her to pounce on him, like he had with her, and she was about to…

That was, until she and Kyōjurō reached a door that led off to a carpeted— and much quieter— area; away from the hustle and bustle of the people outside.

It smelled like disinfectant in there, and a little bit of sweat, which was why she was thankful that Kyōjurō practically ran with her deeper into the room; until they reached the showers. On one side was the communal shower area, and on the other— where her husband was pulling her to— were a few shower cubicles.

Kyōjurō wasted no time then, merely looking around to check if his teammates were already back from their cooldown workouts, before stripping his uniform off and heaping them in a pile right outside the stall.

All the while, (Y/n) could only bite down on her bottom lip as inch upon inch of her husband’s skin was revealed to her. And from the way that his abs looked, down to the way that his muscles moved— everything was making her so wet and needy.

Especially the sight of his big and hard cock.

Before she could stop herself, she had already pounced on him; wrapping her arms around his neck, while he lifted her up and held her up under her thighs. Thankfully, she had conveniently ‘forgotten’ to wear any panties beneath her sundress— as if a part of her just knew that it was going to happen.

Kyōjurō then pressed her back flush against the cold tile in the stall, making her gasp at the sudden temperature change, and making his cock twitch right where it was flush against (Y/n)’s pussy.

“Be quiet, baby, otherwise we’re going to get caught,” the young man teased with a grin, leaning in to kiss his wife’s lips, before nipping at her bottom lip with his teeth.

The action had (Y/n) chasing after the blond’s lips, making the blond chuckle as he gave in to her wishes; capturing her mouth in an open mouthed kiss, which she gladly reciprocated.

Until Kyōjurō inched his right hand higher up the underside of her thigh, pressing his fingers against her entrance and even pushing his ring and middle fingers inside up to the first knuckle.

That action, however, was already enough to have (Y/n) moaning in pleasure, all while she crossed her legs by the ankles— using that leverage to start rubbing her clit against the underside of Kyōjurō’s erection.

“Please, Daddy,” (Y/n) whispered in a plea, eyes fluttering closed as she felt his fingers going deeper inside her— scissoring within her walls, all to get her much wetter for something bigger.

“Please what, baby? You have to tell me what you want,” The young man teased, kissing his wife’s cheek as he felt her thighs clench harder around his hips.

And, as if to stir her up even more, he began to move his hips against hers— dragging his cock against her clit, in turn making her eyes flutter shut as salacious moans spilled free from her lips. “Please… fuck me. Fuck m-”

(Y/n)’s words were brought to a pause when she felt Kyōjurō’s fingers pull out of her, leaving her pussy feeling so empty; much, much needier. However, before she could even beg for more, her husband had already taken pity on her and lifted her up a little bit, if only to align his cock right with her entrance.

Then, he pushed in the barest inch— making (Y/n) moan aloud as her eyes rolled back in her head. Her breaths came in short bursts then, with her head feeling so heavy and her entire body getting so warm for him. It was as if an electric current passed through her, with how much pleasure she got from that one move alone.

Kyōjurō couldn’t help himself, he pushed in even more, gritting his teeth when he felt (Y/n)’s hands at the back of his neck— one of them scratching at his nape, while the other one curled into his hair. “Fuck, baby, I didn’t even eat you out but you’re this wet.”

“I’ve been wet since I saw you on the field, Daddy,” The young woman admitted through a moan, eyes hazy with delirious pleasure even as she tried to look right into her husband’s flame colored eyes.

At that, Kyōjurō claimed her lips in a kiss, letting it consume both of them until he moved his hips to begin thrusting against her. Every push of his cock inside her had her moaning against his mouth, all while her fingers kept tugging at his hair and gently scratching at his nape.

It only served to egg him on, to the point where a part of him didn’t care about how loud they were being; not when he was drowning in so much pleasure, and so much warmth in his wife’s arms.

Really, he’d already known that he was so lucky to have her— that moment was just reminding him of how much.

Every move felt like it was knocking the breath out of (Y/n), yet she held on tight and let herself sink into the heady pleasure she had been craving for. Especially when Kyōjurō pushed in really deep and brushed against her cervix.

Her legs tensed up at that, as a mix of white hot pleasure with just a hint of pain, ran down her entire body. “Deeper, Daddy! Deeper, please!”

Kyōjurō did as she asked, angling his hips to hit the part that made her absolutely crazy, only to be rewarded by her tightening her legs around his hips so she could meet him thrust for thrust. Her efforts weren’t doing much, but it was enough for him— given how he had her pressed up against the shower wall.

In the midst of things, he’d almost forgotten about his teammates— and how they would be done with their cooldown workouts soon— so, when the thought hit him, he began to thrust faster. He chased after his and his wife’s orgasms enthusiastically, not minding the noise they made since he was sure that no one other than them were in the showers.

If anything, them being so loud was turning him on even more. Especially with the way that his wife kept moaning his name in between kisses; he was loving every second of it, and wanted to prolong it as much as possible.

But slowly, he could feel the pleasure finally about to reach a tipping point within him. It was evident in his wife too, what with the way that her walls clenched down around his cock.

If he didn’t know any better, he’d have thought that she was trying to keep his cock in her forever. A hot thought, but definitely well within the realms of fantasy more than reality.

“Fuck, baby, I’m so close,” He whispered through winded breaths, keeping up with his initial pace before going for one last burst of speed— a move that had (Y/n) keening in pleasure, as she threw her head back and came around his cock.

It was the headiest thing that he had seen since the night before, when he’d fucked her much harder with her all tied up in their bed. And it also served to have him opting for slower and deeper thrusts, all so he could savor his own orgasm— and maybe wring out another one from her.

Her walls fluttered around his dick, adding to the headiness he already felt bubbling within him; pushing him closer and closer to the edge, until he couldn’t take it anymore and gave in— sliding his cock in to the hilt and pressing his slit up against (Y/n)’s sweet spot as he came.

He could even feel her shaking, as it triggered another orgasm from her.

And by the time that his thoughts were clear enough to make sense of what had just happened, he pulled back a little to look at how blissed out his wife was; feeling the corners of his lips tip up into a smile, before he leaned in to press the sweetest of kisses to those lips that he loved the most in the world.

“I’m so lucky to have you, baby. So, so lucky.”

***

BONUS:

“Has anyone seen where Rengoku went?”

Kyōjurō’s eyes immediately widened when he heard the voices coming down the hall— right into the shower area. And with a panicked look over his shoulder, then right at his wife, he had only realized that he didn’t even pull the shower curtain closed.

So, with his quick reflexes, he pulled the curtain closed just in time to hear the first of his teammates enter the shower area.

“Hey, Rengoku’s already here! His things are on the floor.” And those words had Kyō panicking even more, because there he was— with his dick still in his wife— in the team’s shower.

“We are not doing this again, Kyōjurō,” (Y/n) hissed under her breath, all while praying that no one would mess with her husband and open the curtain. Because really, they’d get more than they bargained for.

[yanderenightmare]

yandere bully ! BAKUGO KATSUKI

goodiebag WARNINGS: yandere, heavy dubcon, bordering on noncon, profanity, manipulation

TIP-JAR

PART ONE

SEVEN MINUTES IN HELL - PART TWO

TRUST ME

It's safe to say that Bakugo had gotten used to a certain lifestyle. 

Being top three in all years in the Hero-course, girls fawning, falling at his feet left and right, drooling, begging him to fuck them. 

Or… begging him to take them out on a date. 

But let’s be honest… no girls want to date him, they just want to ride his dick once a week. They just want to know what it feels like to be taken by a real man before halting, limping back to their clueless vanilla-boyfriends, all made up of soft smiles and warm hugs and nothing like Bakugo and how he spanks their girlfriend’s ass until blood leaks from popped veins and his name comes falling from their lips like tearful prayer.

Nowadays though, he’d had to kick more girls to the curb than he could count on both his hands without as much as getting his dick wet from the girl he’d picked for himself, the star that was once so bright and shining like a wild sunflower before he forced himself into her life. 

She seemed to have wilted, as she wouldn’t even spare him a second glance until he forced it from her.

Or… that was unfair. She was perfect, doing everything he asked, but… it wasn’t really willingly, now was it? 

All he needed was ask, but he knew she didn’t try to make him happy because she wanted to, she didn’t try and make him laugh because she wanted to, it didn’t come naturally as it did with others, she did it because she was scared shitless of what he would do if she didn’t.

It made him so unbelievable angry to see her laugh with others. Wrathful, vengeful even, when she buckled over and nearly fell, rolling on the floor in the pit of her humor, crying with how painfully she was wheezing. So furious because he couldn’t even blame her. He couldn’t blame her for preferring other people over him, other smiling laughing idiotic people, pleasant people as opposed to him and his aura of grumpiness. 

Some insouciantly greedy, almost evil, part of him whispered to him those times he saw her smile that genuine angel-bright smile, never with him, that perhaps if he simply took her, took her away, tucked her away more so than what he had already, that perhaps she’d have no choice but to share that light with his darkness, because supernova’s like her need things to shine for, they crave lighting people up, they’re just so fucking eager to please, and if he were the only one around to absorb all which she had to give, then she’d have no choice but to share.

It shouldn’t have been legal for him to demand more of her. 

She did everything he asked. 

She worked out with him, pushing herself to limits and extents she didn’t even know existed, almost until she barfed, almost until she collapsed, then praising his teaching-methods instead of admitting it was too much. 

She watches his movies, where she would contort the scary imagery of whatever horror or action movie Bakugo would put on the screen into the finest goriest comedy, cough up her lungs at the guts and brains leaking from sliced abdomens or cracked skulls, burry her face in his shoulder as she cried out laughter, instead of jumping into his arms like the scared little lamb she was supposed to be, begging him to turn it off and giving him an opportunity to slide his hand up her shirt. 

She studied with him, again gushing about what an amazing tutor he is instead of being honest by letting him know what an absolutely aggressive jerk he is, saying words she’d regret and have to find a way of apologising for, making it up to him in so many ways Bakugo lusted for, fantasised about when he laid next to her at night. 

She joined him with his friends, let him sleep in her bed, she even ate what and when he told her eat, dressed how he wanted her to dress, changed if he didn’t approve, cheered like his own personal perfect cheerleader at his battles, being probably the loudest person in the bleachers, making all the boys jealous of him, doing everything and more, and still, still it just wasn’t what he wanted, wasn’t what he needed.

And no, what he needed wasn’t her pussy served on a platter. 

What he needed was leverage. He needed reassurance, he needed her trapped, locked down, glued to him. He needed to know, to believe, to trust that he had her not just for now, but for as long as he wanted, forever. 

And having her in the most primal shameless way, showing her what he could give her, show her that he isn’t just a god on the battlefield but has those same godlike skills when it comes to making her see stars was how he intended to make her need him. 

Granted, he’s never actually made love like how she’d probably want to, but he’s fucked plenty of sluts to have confidence in saying that he knows the female body like the back of his hand. 

If he could just feel her melt beneath him, just make her unravel, wrap her around his pinky, just once and he would know, she wasn’t leaving him anytime soon, she wasn’t ever going to leave him, not unless she wanted her pretty pictures leaked.

Not that he would ever let anyone see her like that, that was just for him, but he doubted she would think too much of what he was willing to do or not. That’s the beauty of threats, they don’t need to be true for the outcome to be fruitful. 

Though, he really wished it didn’t come to that. 

No, once she gets a taste of what it feels like to be taken care of the way he would take care of her, when she wakes up from what fever-dream he’s given her with a mouthful of honey and the newfound realisation that with him is where she belongs, where she’s always belonged, where she’ll always belong.

Or...

Perhaps it was about the sex. 

He had been good, loyal, patient, understanding, boyfriendly. 

She wasn’t the only one making sacrifices. 

It’s unfair of him to hold that against her, and he knows that… most of the time… but no one can blame him for forgetting it when he sees her sitting next to him in that short school-skirt, so in-reach, so grabbable, with his bed taunting them from right behind his back, how easy it would be to just pick her up and throw her down on it, watch her bounce while looking up at him in a giggling fit. 

He can’t be expected to focus on doing algebra with that in his mind, he can’t be expected to tutor her when she looks at him with that apologetically hopeless clueless expression, laughing that nervous laugh that every time warns him about how completely lost she is to what he’s talking about.

Granted, it was him who told her he would be tutoring her, because god and every teacher along with him knew she needed it, what with how she daydreams or pranks each and every class away like the ditzy klutz she is.

“I… I- I don’t know?” Was her answer to yet another equation he’d poured out from between his grit teeth.

Plan A revolved around her wanting to repay the favor, give him a little present for helping her out. Tit for tat, eye for an eye, sort of thing. And usually she would, give him a little something in return, a chaste kiss to his cheek, a frisky make-out session that always ended just a bit too early, never fully what he wanted.

Plan B was to tire her out, creating an opening for him to suggest that they do something that requires less thinking. She usually gets distracted, sometimes she’ll even initiate it in hopes he’d let her off the hook with studying, she’d pout her lips, look at him with those large pretty puppy-dog eyes, coax him into cuddling, but she’d always fall asleep just a minute later.

Plan C was a spin off plan B. Where in hopes of making her the bad guy, he would be sweet, he has been sweet, offering his help to tutor her, she would grow tired like she always does, only this time he wouldn't allow her to rest, therefor causing her to snap, resulting in her saying something she’d regret, again resulting in her apologising, something he could mold into her owing him a favour, something that would end up with having her splayed out on the sheets of his bed, ready for the taking. 

He just needed an opportunity to hold something against her, an excuse, a favor to cash in, he needed her backed up into a corner.

Plan C wasn’t working though, unfortunately.

She never grew fed up with him, she never said anything foul. 

He was stupid to think that an opportunity like that would arise. She isn't like him after all. In fact, she’s the farthest thing from him.

Well, time for plan D then. Another spin off plan B.

Don’t hold it against him, but he’d been spouting bullshit for the last three minutes in hopes of making her frustrate over herself, where the former plan had evolved into something a bit more crucial. 

But, she’s insanely tolerant, reminding him of Kirishima’s sturdy quirk, though he had to admit finding her unfaltering confidence and dedication way more mind-blowingly impressive. 

He had been chipping at that composure of hers for the last two hours without breaching the surface. 

But there was still hope. 

Everyone has a breaking point after all, and he could sense she was getting fed up. Fed up with his tone, fed up of him treating her like a moron, fed up with him. 

It would only take one last blow now and she’d break.

Or so he thought.

He had impressive amounts of patience, but he was also nearing his breaking point and finally after one more of her soft-natured laughs, he was the one that had enough, he didn’t want to wait any longer.

And plan E was looking way more opportune by the minute.

“You think it’s funny that you’re an idiot?”

Her eyes widened and turned instantly glossy at his harsh words, looking like a kicked-puppy, before it contorted into an expression of something akin to anger but not truly as vicious. 

Yet, obviously taking offence, huffing as she got up to leave, proving how she too was done with playing their little fantasy, uncaring, or rather forgetting, that she wouldn’t be going anywhere without his permission.

“I think so too, I think it’s fucking hilarious.” He mocked, hand gripping her shirt and pulling her back between him and the desk. 

Already she was pushing at him, as he leaned in closer gripping her hips and gliding her onto his desk, wanting to feel her thighs and legs cradle around his torso. 

“But, you know what I find even funnier?” 

She opened her mouth to speak, but she was given no room to let her protest out as he raised his voice in warning. 

“What I bet you laugh your ass off at behind my back?!” 

Her annoyance turned ashen, faltering into that meek fearful look he didn’t realise until know that he’d missed. 

“Is how much of an idiot I am.” 

Her brows scrunched, hands placed on the thick stiff muscles of his arms as she felt him start to rub circles into her midriff where his fingers where digging into her soft flesh through her shirt. 

“I’ve been so fucking patient.” It was barely above a whisper, almost sounding broken, like a cry or a plead or an apology, but then his face split into a snarl as he leered at her, teeth flashed at her face making her jump slightly where she sat planted on the desk. “So fucking patient with you that it’s ridiculous.” 

His nose touched hers where she slightly bowed her head. His eyes were blood-shot, or perhaps it was just how they always looked. She wouldn’t know as she made it her unrelenting mission to never look directly at him. 

But now she couldn’t escape his stare, the stare she’d feared so much, pushed tight up against her, so tight she smelled his breath when she inhaled, so tight she felt the thin hairs on her upper lip dance as he huffed out his own growling breaths. 

“And no, I’m not talking about math.”

Her hands had moved to his chest as he hunched further and further over her, pressuring her to lie down on the desk. 

“Please, Baku-” She tried, adding slightly more pressure to her hold on him, but honestly... no amount of her strength would be able to fend him off, especially with the mood he was in.

“No!” He cut her off with a growl, finally forcing her down on her back underneath him, as he palmed the doughy flesh of where her hips connected to her ass, greedy and so very hungry, still keeping a firm hold on her with a thumb hooked on her hip, keeping her in place. “No more please, and I told you it’s fucking Katsuki.” 

She flinched as he spit the correction in her face, feeling something bulging slot and rub itself up against where her skirt had hiked up and exposed her thin panties. 

“No more pleas, no more excuses, no more teasing, no more jokes.” 

He spotted a tear dripping down her cheek, escaping with how hard she was squeezing her eyes shut to avoid his gaze.

She whimpered before she spoke. “I- I’ve do- done every- everything you- you asked.” She blubbered, her hands removed from their insignificant standoff with his chest and shot up to cover her face as she began crying, wiping at them as they fell, pathetic and broken and so pretty his balls hurt with how much he wanted to bury himself inside her no doubt tight cunt.

Desperate now, he bumped his erection into her heat. Trying to steal her focus away from the action by gripping her chin between his rough finger-pads, his lips brushing up her jawline, inhaling her perfume, the scent making another pleasurable shiver spring to his cock, again humping into her. 

“So, what’s one more thing?”

Her heart would have sunk by his words if it weren’t for the building intensity that spiked it to beat faster, hammering in her chest as she felt what she now had no doubt was him pushing into the scared place found between her thighs. 

She could feel her panic bubble up where she was pushed against the cold wooden desk, with her boyfriend’s unwanted heat radiated and seeping through her clothes to tickle her skin. 

She didn’t want this. She wasn’t sure if she ever would want this. 

Bakugo had told her so many times that this was something she needed, everyone needed, but as her heart kept pumping so profusely in her chest, as though it were some blaring alarm, she wasn’t at all sure if she liked the way the stubble on his shaved chin scratched as it rode up her neck when he planted soft open-mouthed wet kisses there, she wasn’t sure if she at all wanted his large calloused wandering hands to stroke and tamper with her soft skin as he pulled her shirt out of her skirt to touch and feel up her stomach and squeeze the soft flesh of her tits, and the more and more his threatening clothed cock continued in rubbing desperately against her own teased sex she fell short of understanding just what it was she didn’t want, if it was the intimacy or just him.

Her panic built like bile in her throat, wanting to burst, which it did. 

“I’m not ready- I don’t- can’t we just…” 

He captured her chin between his thumb and index finger, lips coming to shut her up, cut off whatever protesting excuses she was about to splutter out. 

She tried getting her words out, trying ever so timidly to shake from the kiss, yet however which way she tried turning her head, Bakugo simply followed to deepen it, turning more bruisingly passionate by the second.

Her hands were kept unsurely in their delicate touching on his chest, again in her fear of souring the mood she only barely pushed at him to get off, whereas his hands grasped and groped up her thighs, feeling her soft flesh up like dough, squeezing and kneading and just touching her, all of her, despite her small hums of discomforted surprise.

Large encompassing hands took a break from their pioneering and easily pried her smaller ones off his chest, interlocking his fingers with hers and pushing them down to her sides where they wouldn’t get in the way. 

The kiss then turned rough, hungry as he yet again rocked himself into her, a rugged groan escaping from deep within his throat as her struggles met him with her own type of delicious friction, kissing his sensitive bulge with little caution.

He was so sensitive from having to have held back his primal urges for so long, especially after being teased daily by the soft grabbable little mouse he slept next to throughout every night without being allowed to do more than simply hold her, being teased with her ass slotted against his crotch as they spooned. 

If she wasn’t careful with her movement he might just become a pathetic mess and cum in his pants with how pent up he was.

His other hand made to slip under her skirt to feel up the lace of her panties, wanting nothing more but to slip his finger inside her no doubt tight little hole and work her up until she’d be dripping drenching his hand with wetness, wanting to hear those panicked whimpers turn into ones of pleasure instead, but she was making it impossible with all her troublesome wiggling. 

His fingers forgot their quest between her thighs in favor of picking her up and moving her to the bed instead. 

She tried pushing, but it was so weak that he could pretend to not feel it. 

He wouldn’t be stopping unless she flat out screamed at him, and even then, she’d have to be brutally clear or else he’d take it for screams of pleasure.

He made sure the fall was soft, placing her down on her butt first before his hand cusped the back of her head as he pushed her down onto her back with him hovering on top, deep kisses aiding his quest in pressing her and keeping her beneath him.

She jostled under the entrapment of his weight when his digits stroked up over her panties, rubbing and dipping into the warm tender skin found beneath. 

Her hands pushed at him then, only a little, though it should have been enough to get her message across, but as she realized it wouldn’t she turned her head to the side, freeing her lips from his attacking ones and allowing her to speak her protest, or… more whine than speak.

“Katsuki…”

He shushed at her from where he was nuzzling in her neck, seeming almost lovesick like a frenzied pup as he began to lightly hump into the mattress, his teeth nibbling at the thin skin of her throat. 

“Don’t worry… I’ll make you feel good.” It was a drawled-out mumble, but it told her of how he had no intention of stopping.

“But-” She tried, but was quickly made to shut up as her chin was once again captured and dragged to make her look up at him, his lips again pressing into her, seizing all words.

Soon his antagonizing finger hooked under her underwear, rough-textured fingertips quickly making their way to rub over the sensitive lips found at their disposal. 

Her struggles grew then, her chest jutting forward to try and lift him off her, to allow her to speak, but it was as though he was glued to her, his fingers nearly marking their presence into her cheeks as his wet mouth and even wetter tongue continued exploring the insides of her mouth. 

She whimpered at the feel of his fingers pushing through her folds, gliding up and down the slit. Jolting once too violently, Katsuki laid all his weight down onto her, trapping her there completely, quenching the harshness of her struggles and subduing them to what felt like she was trying to meet his desperate humping.

“Trust me.” 

He should have whispered it, he should have tried making it sound less aggressive as he cuddled with the lips of her pussy, sticking one finger inside her warmth, followed by her squealing in surprise against his lips. 

Her fingernails marked their presence into his skin as she held onto his arm, still not allowed to protest, still only barely allowed to breath.

He couldn’t help but growl at the feel of how tight she was, or… at the feel of how unprepared she was. 

She whimpered as it was no doubt uncomfortable being skewered onto his thick finger without being at all wet, but he was determined to make that change. 

His thumb pushed into her clit, starting to rub slow carful circles into the hooded and hidden pearl, wanting it to pucker out to meet him. And soon, at the hands of his experienced fingers, and perhaps encouraged by her virginal thrill of having something touch her for the first time, his wishes were met. 

The finger buried inside her began squishing in wetness, allowing him to add another one at the expense of her gasping against him, her hands relenting slightly in their need to push him off, a soft uncertain hum simmering against his lips, making him smirk, gloat and bloom with cocky bliss.

Working her tightness with his digits, coating them in slick, he began curling them, feeling the waves of her tensing and melting beneath him. Parting them, scissoring them inside of her plushie walls, his thumb rubbing tight patterns into her bead.

Encouraged by her struggles subsiding he began pumping the digits in and out, feeling her wetness coat his hand. The actions finally earning him a moan, a sweet trembling breathy moan, one that got right to his head as his grin widened against her lips. 

“You see?” He asked, lips still barely detaching from her, breathing the words into her. “You were just scared…” 

Their eyes locked and he was happy to see her orbs large and glossy yet cotton-flavored and blissful as she looked up at him. 

“You don’t need to be scared with me, just let me do this for you, trust me…” 

He kissed her softly now, no brutality or forcefulness, but lightly and sweetly and tenderly, so much so she almost forgot it was Bakugo. 

“I’ll make you feel good.”

But it was Bakugo. 

It was Bakugo. 

Bakugo who’d forced her into a relationship. 

Bakugo: her self-proclaimed boyfriend, her self-proclaimed roommate, her tutor, her guard-dog, her warden. 

Bakugo, who was now persuading her into giving him her virginity.

She was about to answer, but as though he precepted her growing trepidation he met it all with a sharp hooking of his fingers, making her arch her back up into him, her knees trembling where they were pushed up over his thigh next to his hips. 

“Just relax…”

An open-mouthed uncontrolled moan escaped her then. “Katsuki~” 

She felt her hips buck back into his hand, letting him know that he had her completely wrapped around his finger, just as figuratively as it was literal.

“That’s right…” He spoke softly, maintaining the aura of safety, wanting to keep her exactly like that, all soft and sweet and vulnerable for him. “You just focus on me, babe.” 

He placed a tender kiss to her jaw, contrasted with how he now rubbed vigorously onto her swollen bud, feeling her tremble, quake at his hands. 

He knew he had her right where he wanted her, chasing that high he was giving her, her legs instinctively wrapping themselves around his torso, reminding him of his own arousal, but he couldn’t pay himself any mind. 

Right now all he needed to worry about was sealing the deal.

An excited jumpy hitched breath left her lips, precious as it was sweet, chest rising above the bed and pressing against his own in such a soft expression of gratitude, just as her legs squeezed tightly around his waist, keeping him close, pussy clenching around his fingers so tight he could only dream of what it would feel like wrapped around his cock, as her eyelids started to flutter, squishing to a close, but not before he saw her eyes cross, reaching towards the light, a light he ignited for her.

She was left a panting mess, her walls fluttering around his digits, happily sucking on them as she spilled.

But she wasn’t left blissed out for long as she hurriedly scurried back to herself, hands covering her face as she hung her head in embarrassment, feeling that dreadful feeling wash over her, that draining shame feeling like death’s embrace. 

“I’m sorry.” She squealed, words muffled beneath the cover of her hands.

His brows scrunched as he perceived her, trying to spot her face from beneath what shield she’d made with her hands.

“I- I made a mess…” 

It sounded as though she were about to cry, so ashamed her body began to shake, her thighs pressed together, hiding where she cocooned herself in the bed in front of him.

His hand trailed soft fingers up her forearm to wrap around her wrist, gently prying her hand away from her face. 

He sighed, heart clenching at the sight of her glossy shameful eyes. 

“You’re so fucking adorable…” 

There was a slight chuckle attached to the statement, his lips kissing her temple before they brushed against the shell of her ear. 

“Why don’t you make a mess on my tongue next?”

The question left her shell-choked, her lip quivering at the promise of his mouth kissing her down there in the same manor he kissed her lips: brutally, passionately, with teeth. 

“M-Mn-No…” She spoke bashfully, still anxious.

Too cute for her own good.

His hand, the one soaked with her essence, ascended to his face, his fingers disappearing into his mouth, lips enclosing around them as he sucked the juices clean off, giving a groan at her taste as well as her shocked but curious expression, smirking once he let his finger go with a kiss.

His hands moved front and centre, beginning to tamper with the buttons to her uniform. 

“You’re safe with me.” He repeated, knowing it was something she needed to hear, especially as he began opening button after button, revealing her precious pearly-white bralette, where under was found glory in the shape of soft warm pillows. “Trust me.” 

He shoved her shirt off her shoulders, bringing it out of her reach, not allowing her the freedom of covering herself if she were to change her mind and snatch it back from his hands. 

She hummed in unease as though to ask if he had to go any further, to which he answered by kissing her forehead, a gesture that made a shiver run up her spine, unsure if it was of pleasure or something more eerie. 

His finger running, dancing around to her back, tickling the skin where her bra was held together. 

He felt her tense up, but ignored it and continued in his quest, pinching the clasp and taking hold of the straps to pull the annoying thing off, leaving her bare and beautiful.

Taking a second to admire her as her nipples perked at once at the hands of her embarrassment, he held back the urge to pinch, forcing himself to be soft, soft and sweet and safe, something he needed to remind himself of. 

Hands moving carefully to hold one of the mounds, a careful squeeze followed by a careful rub of the nipple between his thumb and index finger.

“Lay back down.” His voice was so warm, so warm it left her perplexed, unable to tell that the words shaped a demand as he placed one large hot hand in the space between her breasts, adding slight pressure to ease her back down into the bed, all the while her curious yet terror-wide watery eyes looked up at him, falling prey to his dominant crimson ones. 

His head followed hers, lips pressing one soft kiss to her wet ones.

There is something about being bare in front of someone fully dressed. Something so dominating, something so frightening. But, surely the fact that he looked at her as though she were the world made everything safer, surely it evened the scales, surely… she wasn’t completely powerless.

“Let me prove just how much I love you.”

He could feel how terribly fast her heart was beating as he kissed down her neck, over her collar bone, careful to not bite too harshly, giving into simply nibbling or grazing his teeth, fighting the urge to mark her up so prettily. 

Mouth moving to suck at the exposed sensitive skin of her tits, forgetting himself as he made to grind the protruding nib between his teeth, being met with a squeal from the girl beneath him, her hands instinctively pushing at his shoulders. 

But again, her racing heartbeat and impulsive struggles were subdued, Bakugo making to squeeze her cheeks between his fingers, squishing her plump bloated reddened lips together, whispering upon them as he leaned in close. 

“Don’t worry, babe, you know I won’t hurt you.” 

She nodded, but still he felt her shiver, heard the tremor in her breathing, the soft sniffles she couldn’t keep at bay, just as pathetic as they were adorable and mouthwatering for him to hear.

Once he reassured himself she wasn’t about to roll out of bed and stagger towards the bathroom, running like a spooked hare, he placed a chaste kiss to the side of her mouth before peppering a dozen more down her neck, over the nipples he’d played with, going further down and lower and lower until he was all the way down to kissing the space found just beneath her bellybutton, his ears shifting to listen to how the bed creaked upon her shuffling, yet those anxious movements where seized when his hefty arms wrapped beneath her thighs, pulling her all snug and personal, lining her up perfectly with his face, all for him to see what gorgeous mess he’d made of her, all glistening and blushed with arousal. 

He couldn’t wait any longer to give her a taste, feel her melt on his tongue, hear her moan as he buried his face into her.

He flicked a light kitty-lick over her budding clit, felt her quake in his arms, looking up yet still down at her where he couldn’t quite place what emotion terrorised her face the most, whether it was mostly anxiety, discomfort, shame, embarrassment or pleasure. 

It didn’t discourage him though as he made the same movement again, only now twirling his warm textured tongue around the pearl, swirling around it, circling it like a shark, before his entire mouth enclosed it, devoured it, sucked on it, his tongue placed flat on top of it as he dragged it over the sensitivity again and again, sucking fervently, feeling her panic at the intrusive pleasure, yet being held steady in his arms with no way of getting away.

He let up, letting go with a wet pop before running his tongue deeply down the slit, plunging into her weeping hole where it wormed its way inside. 

She wiggled as his nose bumped into her ravaged clit, all sensitive with tender swelling.

She was all shaky breaths, no sound too loud, no sound too brazen or wanton. 

He needed to change that. 

He planned to go slow, but had wanted it to be a surprise, and so, instead of lightly grazing his teeth over the silken bud he gave into biting down on it, gnawing it lightly between the rows of his teeth.

She shrieked, hands pushed with force against his head to get him off as she climbed higher up on the bed, away from him, yet the movement was soon stilled, or rather reversed with the strength of Bakugo’s arms coiled around her thighs, dragging her back to meet his hungry mouth. 

“Don’t move.” 

Carmine eyes stared up at her from down in between herself, and she felt her knees go weak as they shook at the terrifying growl that accompanied his threat. 

“Just… trust me.” 

She didn’t. 

She didn’t trust him, she feared him, feared his marred and mauled hands, those scars running up over the great juicy muscles of his arms, those deadly arms themselves, capable of both withstanding and giving destruction, proof that he can and has survived far greater than what she could ever hope, proof that she was no match, no equal. 

She didn’t trust him, she feared him, feared how his thumb now rubbed over her clit, creating such godsend friction that had her unraveling, melting into his mouth, and that mouth itself, that tongue, those teeth, how they devoured her for everything she was worth. 

She didn’t trust him, but she found... falling suited her, and chasing the fires had unknowingly become a feeling she rather cherished than feared, a little less like dying, and more like... coming home.

By the time she came to, reeled back into reality, yet still remaining far away, succumbed by bliss, her eyes were opium-blown as she blinked dumbly, not realizing how Bakugo had placed himself on her side, eyes full of awe as he watched her, leg tangled with legs, heart to heart, hand held lazily on her hip, drawing small patterns up and down her side, watching her flushed face drowse into the pillow until those pretty chaste eyes met his again.

His boxers were sticky. 

She’d been too busy, too distracted with the feeling of his lips and tongue and teeth abusing what found between her legs to notice how he’d been humping the mattress while eating her out as though he were starved and crazed and feral with lust. And even though she felt him groan and growl, the reverberations that tremored at the roughness of his gruff timber was enough to make her eyes cross and forget, even forgive them from ever happening.

“How about making a mess on my cock next time?” 

His hand stroked her cheek after pulling the covers up to drape her naked body that now had begun to shiver in the crash of coming down. The thoughtful action a stark contrast to his cocky suggestive tone, eyes glinting wickedly at the little lamb he’d lured into and onto his wolf fangs, still tasting her essence on his tongue, watching as those skittish brows erupted into that beautiful panic that somehow resembled hope as she looked at him wide-eyed, smitten with plead and all things soft. 

“I’m joking…” 

He gave a smile, soft but in a different way, admiring what was his. 

“Or, not really… but whenever you want, whenever you’re ready.” 

The thumb stroked over her cheek once again, before his lips pressed a long firm kiss to her forehead, hinting for her to nuzzle into his neck, where his smell had become like ritual, something she wasn’t meant to go on without for too long.

She thought she’d made it clear she wasn’t ready for any of this. What makes the next step any different? Still, with the defeatist thought, she did like the defeatist she was, timid hands coming to hold onto Bakugo’s fire-hot skin, slotting herself tight against his body. 

She didn’t trust him, but she trusted his love, she trusted his lust, she trusted he would never let her go, and that perhaps those arms of his weren’t too bad. Perhaps if she thought of how safe she was she could more or less forget or rather forgive that they were there to keep her trapped, perhaps if she spent enough time believing she was kept safe by him, then she’d forget all the reason as to why being trapped with him was the farthest thing from safe.

TIP-JAR

PART ONE

[delimeful]

nothing in this world (i wouldn’t do) (3)

warnings: misunderstandings, OCs, mild drowning/hypothermia, violence, one instance of self-inflicted injury, attempted self sacrifice, cliffhanger

-

Virgil laid low for a while after his encounter with Roman, avoiding towns and taking winding paths far from the main roads. Every passing moment, he half-expected a maniac with a sword to descend upon him out of nowhere.

Isolating himself probably made him seem more suspicious, an easier target, but he didn’t want to risk getting caught in a crowd. Demon slayers were an odd bunch, rumored to have supernatural senses to counter a demon’s, and the last thing he needed was to be outed in front of everyone.

The rumors about the ‘Hooded Demon Slayer’ had shown him that gossip spread in unpredictable ways, and he didn’t want to have that unpredictability turned against him.

So, yeah, no towns.

Unfortunately, that plan hadn’t accounted for the people living out in more rural spaces, the way his own family had once.

And now he was here, in a silent standoff at the shore of a frozen lake with a stranger who was staring at him with far too much alarm for his liking.

He held up a hand in an awkward wave. The stranger threw a handful of salt at him, made a sign to ward off evil, and then twisted on their heel and bolted.

Virgil blew some salt out of his fringe, nonplussed, but didn’t move after them.

Either they’d noticed his eyes reflecting eerily the way they sometimes did when light caught on them, or they really hated social interactions. Regardless, who was Virgil to stop their frantic flee to safety?

There was an ominous cracking sound from the direction they’d just run off in.

That could be anything, Virgil told himself stalwartly.

As if in retribution for the thought, there was a splash, as though perhaps something approximately human-sized had been abruptly plunged into the waters of an icy lake.

Virgil was sighing even as he hurried onto the ice after them.

Sure enough, the stranger was scrabbling at the edge of the brand-new hole they’d made, eyes wide and breath coming in tiny little gasps as they clawed at the ice.

He stepped closer testingly, and the ice pinged in warning, hairline fractures spreading under his feet. The stranger let out a half-sob, probably thinking that an evil demon was taunting them or something.

Virgil pulled off his cloak, brushing his fingers over the clumsy stitching of the patch closest to the neckline for good luck. He really hoped he wouldn’t have to patch it up further after this.

His ears catching every minute noise the ice made, he leaned forward as far as he could and tossed one end of the cloak in front of the stranger’s grasping hands.

They latched on with surprising speed, maybe due to cold shock, and Virgil tugged them up.

The ice in front of them broke the moment their weight was leaning on it, and he hissed through gritted teeth. Didn’t this person know anything about escaping thin ice?

He struggled to speak, and only growled, the noise low and half-choked. Somewhere between his mind and his mouth, the words became tangled and refused to form. He would guess that horrific man-eating monsters didn’t deserve to talk, but he’d witnessed other demons chattering away, so maybe it was just something in his brain that had been scrambled. Figured.

Giving up on words, he instead slowly lowered himself until he was flat on his stomach, now eye level with the stranger. He forced his hand into a flat shape and laid it on the ice several times, hoping that they would catch on.

Gradually, they did, though they looked as though they could hardly believe they were listening. They stretched their arms out and kicked their back legs in the water until they were as level as possible, though their movements were growing more sluggish.

Virgil reeled the cloak towards him, providing the leverage needed to help them propel themselves onto flat, unbroken ice. He relaxed slightly in relief.

They immediately tried to get to their knees, prompting a creak from the ice beneath them, and Virgil snarled so viciously that they went right back down like their limbs had given out, terrified eyes locked on him.

That was one way to tell them not to stand, he supposed.

As quickly as he could, he shuffled back to solid ice, towing the stranger along with him over the smooth icy expanse. Once the ice beneath them was solid against even a few elbow jabs, he rose to his feet and gestured for them to do the same.

Apparently being dunked in life-threatening waters had taken the fight out of them, because they followed without protest, trembling from the cold or fear or both. They were still clutching tightly to the cloak, so Virgil used it to lead them along the ice until they reached solid ground again, mindful of their slow, stumbling pace.

All told, they hadn’t been in the water very long, perhaps under a minute or two. Still, Virgil knew better than to leave them to their own devices. One didn’t grow up on an icy mountain range without knowing what the cold could do to people.

He sniffed the air, the dip in water thankfully muting the scent beside him, and easily caught the trail that the human must have taken. Hopefully, it would lead to an actual building as opposed to some campsite in the woods.

The stranger seemed to be about Thomas’s age, though they currently looked more like a drowned mouse than anything else, and Virgil had been able to lift Thomas up into a fireman’s carry even before he’d gotten the supernatural strength of a demon, so he had no problem scooping them up and beginning to run.

They kicked and flailed for a short moment before seeming to just… give up, letting their limbs go limp and heavy, their only movement the full-body shivering that was still tearing through them.

Shivering was good, Virgil reminded himself, shivering meant they weren’t at lethally dangerous levels of cold or shock yet. He should feel reassured about that, but he couldn’t ignore the terror that was practically coming off the stranger in waves.

He couldn't shake away the memories of carrying a younger Thomas around in the same hold, either. The gleeful shrieks of his kid brother being toted around overlapped with the taut, tremulous silence of this stranger, painful nostalgia twisting in his chest.

Once again, the world proved that he was right to have left Thomas. Even the idea of his little brother like this-- drenched and resigned and terrified of him-- was enough to make his stomach roll. He didn’t want to imagine how bad it would feel to face it in reality.

He bit down on the inside of his cheek and kept moving, hoping that shelter was nearby.

-

The upside was that Virgil had found a small house, saturated thickly enough with the stranger’s scent that it had to be their home.

The downside was that there was someone in there.

The other downside was that as soon as he got within sight of the little home, the drowned-kitten stranger found a reserve of energy apparently dedicated to trying to smack the shit out of him.

He grunted in annoyance as another swing thwapped against the back of his head, their other hand frantically attempting to grab at his ears and throat with surprising vehemence. It was about as effective in actually harming him as a kitten’s pounce, but he tilted his head away anyways before they could get too close to one of his eyes. Sure, his eye would probably heal from any damage human hands could inflict, but superhuman regeneration didn’t mean he couldn’t feel it.

Calm down, he tried to project, but the few throaty chirrups that curled out of him weren’t exactly reassuring to a human.

They continued to struggle, not subsiding even when Virgil’s annoyance turned to literal growling, and he eventually just gave in and crouched to shift them off his shoulders.

Rather than try to struggle to their feet and bolt for the door, they plunged a hand into a pocket and came out with-- Virgil’s irritated rumble spiked up into an alarmed snarl, but he was too late to keep them from putting the carved whistle to their lips and blowing hard.

The piercing noise was enough to make him shift back, and two heartbeats later, the door of the cabin slammed open, revealing the silhouette of a new stranger.

Next to him, Drowned-Kitten was making a motion with their hands over and over, but the new person barely even glanced at them before running directly at Virgil, pulling a knife from a sheath with vicious intent.

The dagger’s blade practically glowed, even in the dark of the night, and the hairs on the back of his neck rose up the moment it got in range. He jumped backwards, but Stab-Happy just kept coming, matching his ‘back-off’ growl with a shattered human snarl of her own.

Slayer-knife or not, this human didn’t have nearly half the trained grace he’d witnessed from Roman, and so he was able to trip her up and grab her wrist mid-strike, ignoring the way being so close to the blade made his skin crawl.

He twisted, forcing her to drop the knife, and the moment it hit the ground, he dragged her back toward the open doorway, ignoring her vicious swearing as she struggled to break away.

Drowned-Kitten made a choked-off sound but was barely able to move, let alone stand and stop him.

The interior of the cabin provided what he needed, and he yanked a blanket from the mat on the floor and shoved Stabby into a chair, swiftly wrapping the blanket around her until she could only snap her teeth and kick her legs, the rest of her swaddled against the chair back.

“Get back here!” she screamed when he turned back to the door, the anger in her voice cracking into something close to fear.

Drowned-Kitten had crawled a few paces from where he’d left them, and they’d grabbed the fallen blade. Virgil grimaced as they pointed it at him with trembling hands, looking frantic enough that they seemed more likely to injure themself with the jittering knife than him.

He couldn’t tell exactly in the dark, but it seemed like their hands were turning the shiny red that heralded frostbite. They needed treatment. Why did people have to make everything so damned difficult?

A moment passed in this silent standoff, Stabby’s angry shouts still going strong, and Drowned-Kitten’s gaze strayed past Virgil to the doorway before their gaze went firm and hard.

They tightened their hand on the knife hilt-- and ran it clumsily over their other palm, opening a thin red line.

Virgil was there in the next instant, wrenching the knife away before they could try again for a less shallow injury. They shuddered but didn’t recoil, tucking their face away like they didn’t want to see what happened next.

The smell of blood turned thick and cloying in the air, and Virgil swallowed the sudden welling of saliva in his mouth with no little irritation.

Snarling, he grabbed the back of their shirt with his other hand and yanked, using the shirt as a makeshift scruff and stomping back inside. He dropped them on the mat, pulling the satchel he’d restocked at the last town from his back.

“Don’t you dare touch them, you monster!” Stabby yelled indignantly, and Virgil ignored her entirely to press a pad of gauze against the cut and breathe very carefully through his mouth.

Drowned-Kitten watched him wind thin cloth bandages around the gauze with wide eyes, like they weren’t quite sure this was real. More of those hand motions-- signs?-- and even Stabby grew quiet, thankfully for the headache beginning to pulse behind Virgil’s eyes.

The two of them were eerily silent as they watched him poke around their cozy little home with bated breath, dragging any extra cloth he could find to drape over the one who’d fallen into freezing waters and stoking the fire stove until warmth suffused the room.

Drowned-Kitten’s breathing turned strained almost immediately, the increasing temperature likely feeling much too hot on their skin, but they grit their teeth through it and didn’t try to shed any of the blankets after Virgil just insistently pressed them back on.

He crouched in front of them and held his hands up, moving his fingers through the slow stretches that would help ease the near-frostnip that had blistered Drowned-Kitten’s fingertips red. This, at least, was something he was familiar with, having done it frequently for passing travelers back when he apprenticed under the town’s doctor.

Back then, he’d mostly helped neighbors with colds or bruises and ran delivery errands, rarely seeing the doctor perform actual large-scale treatments. How was it that he was only getting more experience with medicine out in the field after becoming a demon?

Seriously. He was pretty sure that having a monster tending to them was freaking people out.

Case in point, the silent, secretive conversation that the two teens behind him were trying to have, made slightly less discreet by Stabby’s occasional hissed answer. He added a bit more charcoal to the stove, and rose from his squatted position to stare at the two of them, feeling fairly satisfied at the way Drowned-Kitten no longer looked as though they’d been dunked in freezing waters.

It had been an annoying detour, but at least he could say that he hadn’t yet managed to drive someone to death-by-lake just by walking past them.

Dawn would come soon. He unraveled the knotting keeping Stabby in the chair and ducked through the door back into the cold night air before she could fully untangle herself.

He took the knife with him.

-

Naturally, because the fates weren’t fond of him, the pair found him curled up in a cave the next day.

Drowned-Kitten-- or Harley, as Virgil would learn-- could smell demons, and had followed his trail, DW-- also known as Stabby-- right behind them. He hadn’t bothered to hide his scent trail because he hadn’t caught wind of another demon for miles, and foolishly assumed that he was safe. Which had led to him being cornered and interrogated by two teenagers.

Yeah, he’d been less than pleased.

Still, he could snarl and snap until they stepped out of his cave, but he couldn’t exactly get away with the sunlight bright overhead. So, he grumpily conceded to the questioning.

Surprisingly enough, they seemed to believe him when he shook his head ‘no’ to ‘are you going to eat people’. They hadn’t outright expressed doubts, at least. It was kind of concerning that they took his word for it.

DW had demanded the knife back, at least. Smart kid.

He’d attempted to shoo them off afterwards, but Harley had been very insistent on ‘repaying their debt’, wary in the way that meant someone had given them kindness before, but with strings attached. DW had eyed him with more blatant suspicion.

They didn’t owe him anything. Debts, deals, returned favors... Those were for people, not monsters. Virgil had dragged a hand over his face and wished he could say as much.

And then he’d paused.

He’d jabbed a clawed finger at the little hand signs that Harley made, the ones DW had been translating the entire time, and tried to mimic them sloppily until the two cottoned on to what he was asking.

Lessons in hand-speech.

Maybe there was still a way for him to speak after all.

-

From there, they settled into routine.

Virgil spent his days in the shadiest corner of their little house at the urging of Harley’s puppy-dog eyes, and at night, after their daily work was done, he would slink out under DW’s wary gaze and learn how to angle his hands into the proper shapes and flick small motions full of meaning in the right directions.

He picked up on the structure of the language surprisingly fast. Harley was a patient teacher, and DW was always willing to provide extra details on where Virgil had gone wrong.

He’d half expected them to usher him out the door once he’d had the basics down, but the season began to turn and still, they allowed his presence. The blatant trust was enough to make him worry, though any attempts to convince them to be more careful around demons earned him a confused look from Harley and a derisive snort from DW.

Hopefully, Thomas wasn’t being so reckless.

Since he was staying, he insisted on carrying their heavier goods down to the market in the nearby town, heading out with them in the early-morning dark and making sure they didn’t fall into any more lakes on the way there. He spent those market days waiting in a dark spot, his nerves frayed, until evening fell and he could meet them at their agreed rendezvous point.

As he adjusted to the sudden presences around him after so long traveling alone, the two adjusted to him as well. He hadn’t realized just how many noises he made aloud in substitute for his thoughts until Harley showed him all the signs for different emotions, and matched each of them with a soft imitation of Virgil’s growl, or huff, or even, embarrassingly, that cat-like purr that got started when he was particularly pleased. DW had laughed hard enough to make her side cramp up.

He could admit it. It was… nice. To not be feared. To have people to look after again.

Naturally, though, his occasional presence at their side couldn’t go unnoticed forever, and once one person knew, practically the whole town was guaranteed to hear about it. If Virgil had been paying better attention to anything but the two teens under his protection, he could have had advance warning.

But he hadn’t, and so he wasn’t ready when a polite knock came at the door, unusual considering how remote their little home was. He wasn’t ready for the sudden foreboding that washed over him as the three of them exchanged glances.

He wasn’t ready when DW opened the door to the sight of a smiling stranger with a sun-bright sword at his hip.

[tarnished-garden]

Say hello to the Tarnished of the garden!

So Going from left to right

Rosa (she/ her, 5'6 167cm)

Before becoming Tarnished she served as a “battle maiden” to a dualists Colosseum, where she tended to the wounds of the victor and also served them in other ways… this is a time in her life she does not like talking about. After returning to the lands between she quickly found a friend in Varrè as they shared in their love of slaughter and bloodshed. Since Maple has become the vessel for the Elden Ring she has pledged to be his personal guard. Once a helpless maiden she is now a capable warrior. Though she still revels in her femininity and looks.

Vestelle (he/ him, 5'10 177cm)

From a young age he was told stories of his father whom he had never met, a grand champion with flowing red hair. Upon her deathbed his mother finally told him who his father really was. Radagon who was now the Elden Lord. This led Vestelle to Leyndell where he wished to finally meet his father after all these years, but was denied, believing he was a raving lunatic they simply killed him and had his body discarded far from the capital. He now after becoming Tarnished seeks to reunite his family; the rest of the Demi gods. As he yearns for the loving family that had been kept from him for all his life.

Maple (he/ him, 6'3 190cm)

Born into a tribe of fire monks, living a relatively peaceful and mundane life before the shattering. The specifics of his death are unknown as it is something that he does not like talking about with anyone, though one can assume that he may have died of frostbite due to his fingers and toes being permanently blackened even after his revival as a Tarnished. He is a man who wishes for equality throughout the lands between and seeks to unify the demigods, leading him to teaming up with Vestelle. After he takes the Elden Ring, becoming its vessel, he begins his work of reformation. Soon him and his Consort adopt a child together, a tarnished omen by the name of Magnolia.

Magnolia (she/ her, 4'7 139cm)

Maggie was found by Maple in the Siofra River after his battle with a strange grafted beast that had taken residence there. and she was brought to Leyndell where she was taken care of by the Lord and his Consort. And while she was wary of them at first she soon warmed up to them, and allowed herself to be adopted into their family.

Hemlock (he/ they/ it 6'1 185cm)

Unfortunately for Hemlock he does not remember much of his life before becoming tarnished, as the poison spores that now run through his bloodstream have done quite a number on his mind. He is in a constant battle with himself at all times fighting the urges he feels to kill others and spread his spores. He does not want to hurt his fellow tarnished but he also does not trust himself to always follow the right path, so he follows others. Doing what they say is right, rather than trusting his own sense of right and wrong. Hemlock is a very nervous man, afraid to open up to people and give them any weaknesses to use against him. so he closes himself off, choosing solitude over being betrayed, but he's learning slowly to be more trusting.

Clover (she/ they 5'3 160cm)

A very materialistic woman Clover is, so richness she sought out. One way or another it led her to Godrick, his obsession with the golden lineage gave her just enough leverage to worm her way into being close to the Grafted Lord. And oddly enough she found that she was not repulsed by the gruesome art of grafting, instead finding it intriguing. Soon enough she discovered why, Grafting suited her needs, her desire for affirmation. While she had always been treated like a woman sometimes she looked in the mirror and did not feel one. As if her body was not good enough for womanhood. So she asked her lord a favor, "I bring you grafting material to aid in your affirmations, and you aid me in mine. And from then I will forever collect more for you." and to her surprise Godrick agreed. So she began her work, of collecting parts for her beloved lord, but when she returned she found a bloody battle field and an empty throne. So she set out for Leyndell, praying that he had finally returned to his home of gold.

[sxfik]

Helloooo. Lemme start by saying how awesome fantastic amazing your fics are. I have a solhwi ask/prompt if it's not a problem. What would the study group's reaction be to established solhwi + bonus for prof kim and yangs reactions. Any headcanon or fic you can write about this please.

wicked love, leaves me blind

read on ao3 • masterlist

a/n: aaaa thank you so much for the kind words and the request! there's slight canon divergence in this and i decided on a more head canon format for this fic. this turned out kinda longer than expected but AAA my mind really ran with this prompt lmaooo. without much further adieu, i hope you like this <333

it's been 2 weeks since joon hwi confessed to her, running to her house in the middle of the night, panicked and afraid after the news of lee man ho hunting down professor yang

after the man had run from the scene, joon hwi was sure that he'd come back to his house, not afraid to hurt anyone on the way there. and in an instant, he started running, taking off towards her house without a second thought

by time he had reached her house, he was drenched in sweat, his heart thundering out of his chest in panic, in fear and in hope, that she was all right. he knocked frantically on the door of her house, hoping, praying that she was alright.

and to his relief, sol opened the door, her hair put up in the familiar messy bun. she yawned as she opened the door languidly, still wearing the hanguk law school sweatshirt he had once loaned her during a sleepless night of studying.

"han joon hwi? what are you doing here, it's lat-"

he lunged for her without a thought, gathering her in his arms and pressing her close to his body. she's alive, she's okay, chorused in his head as he shuddered out a breath of relief. she let out a soft oof but relaxed into him, her arms coming around his waist in a familiar way

he pulled away after what seemed like not long enough of a hug, and maybe it was the adrenaline, or the pure euphoria of finding her safe and in one piece that pushed him towards her lips, kissing her with fevor.

and after a shocked moment, she kissed him back, drinking him in, tugging him closer, desperate for more, more, more

and the rest was, well, history. it didn't take long after for the two of them to confess to each other, understanding that they needed each other in their life.

so it's been 2 weeks since han joon hwi confessed to her. really, they meant to keep their relationship secret. in the midst of their fight against assemblyman ko, the case against lee man ho and the mystery of what really happened the night of the hit-and-run case, they agreed that it was easier to keep it under wraps

after all, it was a new relationship to both of them. it wasn't like they hadn't dated other people, but what sol and joon hwi had was a carefully built friendship that was founded in trust and care for each other. and making it public, could only do them more damage as they become leverage against each other if their case goes south.

they only had one, very, very small, problem.

they were awful at keeping their hands off each other

alone time was very scarce for the both of them. with joon hwi being highly ranked, he was always pulled into every study session and every discussion in the school. not to mention, he had his own studies to maintain, alongside working at the legal clinic and helping professor yang with the mystery that had plagued the school.

kang sol's case was no different. she had to slave over her assignments, spending every spare moment at the school library, pouring over her text books. the moment not spent there was split between working to gather money for her mother and byeol, the legal clinic and assemblyman ko's case. not to mention her digging into kang dan's whereabouts as much as she could.

every single time they had together, there were too many people around for their tastes. during their busiest days, they had settled for subtle touches and stealing glances at each other whenever possible

so they spent their spare moments, huddled in the corridors, catching up on each other's days, making out and getting some time alone.

they'd make all kinds of excuses to leave early or walk each other to their dorm rooms, trying to maximize all their time with each other. every time they made to each other's rooms, they'd linger at the entrance, trying to see each other for just one more second.

and it was no wonder that when they first got caught, sol was pinned against the stairwell wall, joon hwi's lips buried in her neck. his fingers ghosted the hem of her shirt as she was pulled him closer to her and then...

clang!

the two broke apart, startled at the noise, their faces red. joon hwi's usual bangs were disheveled, sol's messy bun now loose and her hair cascading down her shoulders.

the two of them turned their head towards the noise only to find ye-beom and bok-gi, the latter's mouth gaping open like a fish. ye-beom on the other hand, stopped sucking on his lollypop, eyes wide as they looked at each other then looked back at the couple who were caught red handed.

bok-gi's hands were still frozen as the plate that fell from his hands lay at his feet and for what felt like eternity, there was absolute silence.

and then chaos.

"you two- when did you- how- what-" both of them started firing their questions rapid-fire.

the couple, who's faces were strawberry red, shushed them the best they could, looking around frantically to ensure no one else would here the commotion.

it took around 10 minutes for the boys to calm down, still reeling from what they witnessed

slowly, the couple explained that they were dating, and satisfying some of their curiosity before letting the boys go, with the stern warning of never repeating any of this information to anyone.

predictably, their whole study group knew about sol A and joon hwi the very next day.

of course, while ye-beom and bok-gi were huge gossips, they made sure the news didn't reach outside their sphere.

the next day, sol and joon hwi were the first ones to walk into the hideout, attempting to put up their "we're best friends! no relationship here!" facade up early, while the rest of the group quietly shuffled in.

they were good for the first 5 minutes (in reality they didn't last even 2 minutes) but joon hwi just can't keep his eyes off of her, especially when she's working through arguments for the case

the lovesick display lasts about... 10 minutes before Sol B stands up from her chair abruptly, causing everyone to jump in their seats.

as always, her face is neutral, but she spins to face ji ho, as the boy adjusted his glasses on his face so he could look up at her

"you own me 20 dollars" she simply stated at him, her hand outstretched

"what, no way i'm paying that" ji ho moved back, his face shocked that she even remembered

"you bet that they would take 3 months to confess, and i bet at 6 months— "

"it's been way longer than 6 months!"

"mine was closer"

"i think," ye-seul interjected as she took her seat at the table, heading back from her project work for professor kim's class, "that you both owe me 20 dollars. from what I remember, i bet that they would take longer!"

a chaotic clamber erupted as each member argued who owed who money, who bet on what,

"yah, ye-seul, how could you bet on me like that!" Sol interrupted the clamor, spinning to look at her best friend in shock and disbelief.

"sorry, unnie. it was too tempting of an offer for me to turn down" she replied, not looking the least bit apologetic.

joon hwi grinned at sol A as she looked around flabbergasted at their friends, before he grabbed her idle hand and held it up.

"just so we can fend off any confusion, sol is now my girlfriend. sorry we didn't get to tell you earlier, but to make up, we'll treat you to a dinner after all this mess is offered."

their group cheered at that, never being the one to turn down an offer for free food

it was bliss for the couple after that, and relief too. they could both agree that keeping a relationship under wraps was much harder than they could handle, with so much of this being new to them alongside the chaos of their lives

telling their friends took the pressure off, at least allowing themselves to indulge in each other without having to be extra careful of who was watching.

theirs was a blinding love. it was blinding bliss, it was peace.

bonus +1:

professor kim was a busy woman, but she always had the time for her students. taking the time to know each and every one of them was something she took pride in as a teacher.

but out of all her students, the study group lead by han joon hwi consisted of her favorite students that she taught. as a result of professor seo's unfortunate death and the reveal of everything that assemblyman ko had orchestrated, professor kim found herself around those kids more and more.

nevertheless, it was another day, another case to navigate at the legal clinic. it was a busy afternoon at hanguk law school, and professor kim's star students, sol and joon hwi huddled together trying to find the best way for the property case at hand

she had always had a soft spot for those two, ever since their class first semester when sol A blurted out a judgement and joon hwi, out of nowhere supported her. of all her years of teaching, she hadn't found a duo that was more hardworking, passionate and loyal than the two of them

Sol A was not her brightest student but she had tenacity and passion that more than made up for it. She could spot the hardworking girl, hunched over her textbooks hours after every other student had left.

Professor Kim had always found that some of the brightest students in her class would make for the worst in the field. because, being a lawyer wasn't about memorizing the codes or adhering to the rigid structure that many assumed the law to be. it was to offer kindness, compassion and understanding that they were humans first, before they could be judged by the law

and she knew that Sol A was one such girl who had that. She had watched as she defended Yang, even when the detectives and prosecutor were trying to close up the case and force him down as the perpetrator. even when joon hwi was accused, Sol stood by his side, pursing every route possible to prove his innocence. At every turn, she stood up for those who needed sympathy and kindness from the law; for those that the law would have hurt.

Joon Hwi was no different. the first time she saw him, she assumed him to be a cold, callous genius who had no time for anyone but himself. but oh, how wrong she was. Joon hwi was quiet the opposite. Even while being a generally reserved student, he had an inviting energy surrounding him that made every one like him, despite the intense competition at school

from the first day, it was clear he wasn't here for the marks or the validation of his teachers: it was passion and self motivation that drove him. it was clear that he was built to practice law, his mind was always sharp for legal terms and loopholes. but joon hwi always went the extra mile for his friends, always gave an extra hand to help, even when they didn't necessarily need it.

she could see it in him during Ye-Seul's case, eager to help her. she could see it when Ji Ho's father's suicide case came out, how eager he was to help and comfort his roommate.

but most of all, she could see it with Sol A. she wasn't sure when she had noticed their closeness, but she could see them walking the halls together, a smile spread across both their faces or them arguing across the table at the legal clinic, trying to work out the best method.

she could see it in the way Joon Hwi watched Sol, an almost lovesick smile on his face when she smiled or when she finally got the answers she was searching for. Professor Kim also knew, from her years of watching professor yang and prosecutor bae dance around each other, that it would be rare if they confessed to each other

so it was very odd when she looked across from her stack of papers to find joon hwi holding sol's hand as he flipped through the case file in front of him, both of them hyper focused into the details

maybe it was pure curiosity, maybe it was a taste for chaos that motivated her to call out "oh, are you two finally dating?" expecting their flustered and embarrassed reactions

but instead, she was met with a beaming smile from Joon Hwi that answered all the questions she had. Kang Sol on the other hand was left glaring and sputtering at her new boyfriend.

it was funny and gleeful, watching two of her favored students find a new life together, forging a new path.

and it was also pure relief for her, that she wouldn't have to deal with another professor yang and prosecutor bae situation

bonus +2:

the cold wind whipped around them as the couple accompanied professor yang back to campus. another night, another mystery, another trip to the police station to give witness statements

tonight was no different as the truth of the hit-and-run case started revealing itself, and the professor had accompanied the two students in silence, contemplative of all that has happened, the puzzle pieces slowly clicking together

professor yang was never meant to be a professor, in fact he hates the title itself. what he was meant for was to interrogate, to dig up clues and find out exactly who the culprit is and use the law to prove why they were guilty. for him, one's feelings did not matter, it was always about the evidence presented in front of him and how it could be interpreted.

it didn't mean he didn't care about his students, quite the opposite. it just meant that he wasn't the nurturing type as professor kim was. the one to always meddle in student affairs or keep track of how his students were doing outside of class

but with the two students walking beside him, they were the ones that he wanted to see succeed. they were the ones he was the most proud of as they presented their cases in public, finding their own ways to fight against injustice.

he was proud of them and in his heart, he knew it reminded him of a certain set of school mates, ones that were attached at the hip, a regret he has carried with him until he met her again on the court floor.

so maybe it was the deliriousness of all they had went through together or pure stupidity that made him pause in the tracks. his students continued on for a moment but then paused in their tracks, turning around to see what had stopped their professors.

"Kang Sol A." he nodded towards her.

"Han Joon Hwi." he nodded towards him.

"Congratulations on your new relationship"

he paused after, looking up at his students, both of them wide eyed that Professor Yang of all people, congratulated them on this.

and then, as if making it worse, he smiled.

Kang Sol's mouth dropped open, her hands reaching up to her eyes to rub them as if she was hallucinating what she saw.

Han Joon Hwi was incredulous, blurting out "Professor, have you been taking methamphetamines again?"

"Professor Yang has taken WHAT?" Sol whipped her head around, the sight of her professor expressing glee was already too much for her to handle but the news that he has taken meth just drove her head into overdrive.

the two were stuck in their positions, as their professor moved forward, brushing past them as if this event had never happened.

[ohmygeese]

Hi! Welcome to our new segment called "The SMP has morally gray storyline so stop treating it like everything is black or white: Rant Edition"

The reason why Tubbo was compared to Schlatt in the first place was because he didn't inform his cabinet of his decision of exiling Tommy. This is a valid reason for his cabinet to be upset but unfortunately, they took the situation as an opportunity to manipulate Tubbo to do their bidding.

Knowing the full story, Tommy had no right to call Tubbo "a monster" but looking at purely Tommy's perspective, he was pretty valid in saying so (allegedly kicking Wilbur out of NLM, putting Phil in house arrest, planning to execute Techno, and of course, his entire exile). Same goes to the times Tubbo called Tommy "selfish and a liability." Both are unfair portrayals of each character's actions but are completely understandable since their relationship has been tainted by miscommunication and "hear-says" from biased/unrealiable sources.

During the El Rapids storyline, Dream had the right to call Quackity a terrorist although we know it wasn't purely because of the fake strike and the siege of the throne but as a political tactic for his own benefit. However, Karl also had the right to call Dream a tyrant because why else would you get yourself involved in an affair of two nations of which you aren't even a part of and go as far as to speak over the king and use your godly powers as a threat. Like :D

Tommy, Tubbo, and Ranboo are the only ones who actually care about maintaning peace and justice in the server. I could not stress this enough: "The fate of the entire server rests on their hands." Quackity? On a power high. Fundy and Niki? Running away from their problems and building a new country to sastify their own desires. Phil? Protecting Techno is his #1 priority, anything else nada. Techno? On a revenge arc and owes a favor to a person who goes against the very core of his anarchic (?) ideals. These three are the only ones willing to call out bullshit eveb if it means a loss in power or comfort but, currently, they're all facing difficulties to do so. Tommy is literally overloaded with trauma and is questioning the world as he knows it. Tubbo is being manipulated by Dream and his cabinet. Ranboo has memory issues, is easily peer-pressured and is isn't really taken seriously by the wide majority. The SMP is fucked if they don't pull their shit together.

Tommy has the right to say that nobody cared about him during his exile because he has said multiple times in passing how depressed and tired he has been since living in Logstedshire. He even has mentioned Dream's manipulative tendencies multiple tomes. But even after all that, Ranboo was the only to actually recognize and do something about it (Sapnap as well but he's too pre-occupied with El Rapids). Not even his own father did.

Canonically, Phil is a terrible father and grandfather. He calls out bullshit but never makes an effort to fix them. Old man disowned his furry grandson for wanting to kill Techno but doesn't explain to him Techno's reasoning with the war crimes in the first place. Old man also did nothing to save Tommy from exile even after witnessing the shit his son is going through. (I know its not in the script and I respect that but we gotta call out bs. Hope they give Phil redemption other than being a good pal to only Techno :D)

Both Pogtopia and Techno are at fault for the government clash incident. Pogtopia has expressed multiple times of how they want to reclaim L'manberg. It was Techno's mistake to not infer that it included the government especially since the heads of the operation were the ex-president and vice president of the nation. Additionally, Techno kept saying stuff like "We'll burn the bridge when we get there," whenever he gets asked on his opinion about the revolution. And that is called miscommunication at its finest. However, this does not discredit the fact that Pogtopia did use Techno as a literal weapon without further inspecting his stance whatsoever.

On the topic of Pogtopia and Techno, in the moment where its revealed that Techno is going to betray Tommy, don't say its karma. They were both used as weapons during that era, Tommy far beyond that. He wasn't even the one to institute the government when they won, it was Wilbur. Think of it as Tommy as the handle and Techno was the blade. It fits perfectly to their dynamic during that era. Also, don't try to reason out manipulation wth.

Last point, to the people who were disappointed that Tommy never got to "learn his lesson" after he escaped from Dream, do not become parents. Just don't. You really expect a literal teenager who just escaped from an abusive relationship to think about that? Bitch, Tommy never had time to even think about his trauma and you expect him to be like "ye, i was irresponsible," in a snap? If anything, the exile just showed him that he and his discs are being used a political leverage (he even said that he's the only one Dream is scared of) so of course, Tommy is going to try to take his discs back as a way to end the bullshit he and everyone he holds dear has gone through. We don't even know if he's going to put it in an e-chest or burn it (probably the latter). Guys. Please. The child literally went through hell and back. Give him therapy before lecturing him about being "selfish." (Again, you have no right to call him that in the first place.)

Appreaciate the storyline for what it is and stop trying to fight each other over who was right and who's in the wrong like please. The only redeemable (by redeemable i mean saints amongst men y'know maybe should not have used that word to begin with but ahhhhhh) characters here is Ranboo (Edit: Also Niki haha woops, thank you for reminding me) if I'm completely honest. (I am going against everything I stand for to not include Tommy and Tubno in that sentence but I said what I said.)

/dsmp /roleplay /nm

[mithrilwren]

I really, really wanted to contribute something to Essek Week​, but unfortunately with two essays and a novel chapter due by Monday, I didn’t have the time or mental energy to write anything new. Cue me remembering that I’d actually started working on an Essek-centric shadowgast Pirate!AU last summer, that never saw the light of day! Though I did a whole bunch of research for it, summer ended before I could get farther than the first couple chapters. Still, I’m very fond of the premise, and I’d like to finish it one day. I can’t guarantee I will (life’s too busy to commit myself to another Big Fic Project atm) but in the meantime, here’s a little taste in the form of the first chapter.

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

For @essek-week Day 7: AU

Courts of Silk (Chapter 1)

Essek startled from his trance to the crackle of blistering thunder overhead.

Mind bled of all drowsiness in an instant, he unfolded his legs and slid off the berth, drifting to the center of the room and tilting his ear towards the boards above. 

A storm…  but the skies were meant to be clear for days, and he trusted Avus to know it. Could the weather have turned so–

Boom.

Essek’s eyebrows flew up as the deck visibly lurched below his feet. 

Not thunder.

Cannon fire.

More sounds now, hurried ones – an erratic tempo of feet pounding through the corridor outside his little room, the floorboards creaking dully under the weight of the crew scrambling over the deck above. He flinched as a louder noise pierced through the commotion: the rattling of a heavy fist falling against the door of his cabin, hard enough to shake the wooden frame. 

“We’ve been boarded!” Zel’ra’s guttural shout startled him out of his confused stupor, and he flew to the door and flung it open. The quartermaster stood outside, her snarling jaw dripping with whitish battle foam, the kind that bugbears of Rosohna so seldom have occasion to sport within city walls. “Come on, magic boy, time for you to earn your– Shit!”

Then she was gone, and Essek was left staring dumbly at the empty corridor, as Zel’ra raced back the way she came. A moment later, there was a yelp, and the grisly crack of metal hitting bone. Then there was no sound at all, save the rocking of the ocean’s pulse against the hull, and the thump of confident, unfamiliar footsteps, coming closer and closer to his open door.

He had only a few moments to make his decision. The fight might still be going on above deck, but if intruders had already made it below, there was little hope of a favorable outcome for the crew of the Barren Bow. He hadn’t thought the Empire would be brazen enough to attack a diplomatic ship in open waters, but there were soldiers of all ilks on the open sea, and no government to hold them to account so far from land. He would not put it past a Dwendalian crew to sight a Dynasty flag on the horizon and decide to take the matter of revenge in their own hands. If so, there was no telling what treatment they might expect at the hands of their attackers. Rage was rarely tamed by abstract rules of engagement, and he doubted anyone would care to ask what the nature of their mission was, once the killing began.

But perhaps…

Quickly, Essek drew aside his sleeve and materialized the leather–bound contents of his wristpocket into his hands. His spellbook lay beside precious components in their embroidered fold, and there, at the bottom of the pile: the folio. He whispered a quiet word and the paper folded apart, revealing its damning – and perhaps, in the right hands, lifesaving – contents. 

The letters. 

If the tides were so unfavorable that he could not fight, perhaps that might be enough to–

He vanished the whole affair back into the ether as two shadows fell across the door. 

From the darkness of the hallway, two figures stepped over the threshold. In front was a young woman: human, with swarthy skin made darker still by the weathering burn of long days at sea. Her hands were tucked beneath bare arms and her hip turned out to an unconcerned jaunt, adorned by a sash of deep blue. Behind her, and looming so tall that she had to hunch to fit through the frame of the door, was a giant of a woman. Taller even than Zel’ra, her bare shoulders glistening with rippling muscles and sweat, pale as moonlight – or as the steely glint of the broadsword at her back. The younger woman swept him over with piercing eyes, her confident grin not quite masking the focused gaze beneath. Though she bore no weapons, Essek could feel the stain of threat in every taut sinew of her body. He held still, waiting to see who would make the first move.

Her eyes finally paused, centered on the floor beneath his feet, and her grin dropped into something more like a startled ‘oh’. Too late, he realized his mistake – that his levitation, as natural and instinctive as standing on his own two feet, had just given him away. 

“Mage!” she sputtered, and her hand was gripping his arm and twisting it behind his back before he even realized she’d moved. Essek dropped the levitation spell, hoping to get enough leverage from the sudden height difference to slip out of her grasp, but before he could so much as shuffle to the left, the taller woman was at his right, clutching his other arm with a grip strong enough to break bone. 

“Shit,” the first woman spat as she stepped back, allowing the second to take both of his arms into custody. “Who the fuck did we just board?”

Essek kept silent, staring at her, searching for any sign of weakness and finding less than nothing. If he had just had his hands free for a moment longer… but that didn’t matter now. There weren’t many spells without a somatic component at his disposal, and cantrips wouldn’t save his neck, should the giantess move quicker to snap it than he could speak. 

Without a means of immediate escape, he looked next for any way to identify his captors. They were human, but their loose, subdued dress – for the younger woman, a vest of blue cotton, the other, a braided grey tunic, and frayed ribbons in both their hair – was nothing like the silver and crimson finery of the Righteous Brand. 

If not from the Empire, who were these people? Hired thugs? Mercenaries?

“Are there more of you skulking down here?” 

He didn’t ask the woman to clarify, though he wasn’t sure exactly what she was asking. More drow? Yes, but he was not about to reveal the nature of the delegation travelling under his protection to her. More mages? No. As always, he had convinced the Bright Queen that his effort alone would be sufficient. For the first time in a very long time, he wished he’d been a little more conservative in estimating his own skills. Given the current situation, someone else’s power at his back might actually be welcome, rather than distracting. 

Her burning gaze made it clear that he had to say something, and soon, but for once, the right words did not come. The truth did not matter: he knew that any unfavorable answer would be taken as a lie.

Still, Essek would not panic. The only way to regain control of the situation was by carefully gathering information, finding something that he could use to shift the balance of power at a more advantageous moment. That was his particular specialty. 

“I do not know,” he answered coolly. “For I do not know who is above and below deck at all hours of the day. I can only speak for myself.”

“Beau! Fjor– fuck– Captain Tusktooth wants you on deck!” A new voice, its timbre high and grating, like glass against cold iron, echoed from around the corner. The woman – Beau, he filed away – turned her head and shouted back out the door. 

“Just a second, we’ve got one more!” Then, “Tell him to get Caleb over here, we’ve got a goddamn mage to deal with!” 

The giantess at his back leaned down, so close that her dreaded locks nestled amidst the silver chains that hung from tip to base of his pointed ear. “You aren’t going to give us any trouble, are you?” she murmured, and despite every ounce of training he’d undergone for exactly this sort of intimidation, he still couldn’t help the way he shivered at her dark tone. There was a deep quality to her voice that sung of violence, for violence’s sake, and though he wasn’t yet truly afraid, he had no wish to provoke her.

“How could I?” Essek gently flexed his arms in her grasp: not enough to challenge, but enough to reassure her of his helplessness.

Her lips curled back, and… yes. There was a little fear gathering there, in the back of his throat. A good kind of fear – the prudent kind. It would keep him alert, and focused, and ready to strike back when the moment was right. 

When she started pushing him forward, he followed her lead willingly, and the two of them shadowed Beau into the corridor and up the steps that led back above deck. Essek winced as the bright noonday sun slipped into view, already anticipating the stinging burn that was sure to follow. He’d managed to avoid the deck for most of the voyage, much to the chagrin of the Assarian crew. He was not born into a body made for manning rigging, and certainly not under an unrepentant sky determined to scorch his face and hands and neck and leave him itching and miserable for days without relief. His better use was below deck, planning for the engagement ahead, and his hours of fresh air better taken in the evening, when the gentler light of the moons was merely a prickle beneath his skin, rather than a flame. 

Everywhere he looked, he saw mismatched bodies. Though Essek hadn’t met the entire complement of the Barren Bow’s crew, he had to assume most of the scattered orcs, goblins, and bugbears belonged to their side. Most of the ones on their feet were being held in the shallow recess at the centre of the deck, where great cannons might have been lodged on a more modern ship. A handful of unremarkable humans, each equipped with a rapier – or, in one man’s case, a salt-encrusted retort – stood above them, keeping watch. Amidst all that humanity stood a wild–eyed goblin in a blaring yellow dress, hefting a crossbow composed of whirring gears and levers of an intricate make that rivaled Waccoh’s own craftsmanship. She was currently in the process of shouting threats down across the heads of his cowed compatriots. Some were clutching broken arms or wiping blood from contusions and burnt welts. Lying at the center of the group was an unconscious Zel’ra, the goose egg at the back of her skull already angry and red. 

Finally, he spied the remainder of the drow contingent clustered by the ship’s rail. Diplomats, all of them, bound for a parley at sea and not trained for conflict beyond what it took to hold a dagger right-way up. He was the only one among them battle-tested, and even then, his means leaned more towards subterfuge than outright combat. Theoretically, the Assarian crew was meant to be their main line of defence in case of attack. Clearly they had not proven up to the task. 

Essek would be filing a very unfavorable report with their commanders upon his return, if any of them survived the day. 

“Captain!” Beau shouted, and a tall half-orc stepped away from the railing, his wide-brimmed hat only partially disguising the many scars that littered his face. 

“Weather’s turning,” he said, casting his eyes towards the – as far as Essek could tell – clear horizon. Those same yellow eyes flickered up, above Essek’s head, and for a moment seemed to narrow before turning back to Beau. “You finished clearing the hold yet?”

“Didn’t make it that far.” Beau jerked her head, and Essek was thrust into the sunlight all at once. The glare was blinding, and apparently not just to him. The giantess’s hands jerked around his arms, like they wanted to fly up and shield her eyes as well. That was all the opportunity he needed. 

With one quick motion, he jerked his arms from her grasp and drew his hands together, tracing familiar glyphs out of nothing but muscle memory as his mouth uttered an incantation, and the world exploded around him. The giantess was flung back against the doorframe, wood splintering beneath her weight, and both Beau and the half-orc slammed into the deck and began to hurtle towards the side of the boat. Forcing his eyes to stay focused amidst the chaos and the harsh light, Essek caught the glitter of a cutlass skittering along the boards as he took stock of his position on the newly reborn battlefield.

Nearly all of the boarders were in a concentrated area in front of him, and the rest of the Assarian crew were protected by the lip of the recess in the deck. The terrain could not be more advantageous. Essek allowed himself a small smirk as he raised his hand and prepared a vacuum blast that would level the whole of the upper deck, and deliver them all to safety in one swift stroke. 

How arrogant, that this petty group of mercenaries thought they could capture–

“Counterspell.”

The magic sizzled and died in his hand, and Essek whirled, searching for whoever had spoken behind him. Thugs he could handle, but it was always best to deal with a mage first, when they could do such infuriating things as what had just occurred. But once he turned, he found himself facing an empty doorway, and an empty deck above that. No trace of whoever had cast the counterspell. 

The giantess was gone as well.

He heard the click before he could parse what cold and heavy thing was tugging on his wrist, but he was horribly aware of what was happening by the time his other wrist was wrenched behind his back and small hands clasped the second iron band shut. A stomach-churning wave of exhaustion passed through him from scalp to toe, and he staggered, only barely holding on to consciousness. Head lolling towards the floor, he saw two soft-soled boots landing lightly on the deck in front of him.

With great effort, he managed to drag his head up from his chest, and found himself staring into blue eyes and dusty freckles, lips pressed into a thin line, all framed by tangles of copper-red hair. 

“Good work, Nott,” the man said. His accent was one Essek had only heard once before, though through the mire of exhaustion he could not remember where.

Behind Essek, the half-orc groaned and pushed himself up off the deck. “Next time you have a brilliant plan for subduing the prisoner, maybe let’s try not putting us all in the line of fire, hm?” 

The man ignored the sarcasm, still looking all too carefully at Essek.

“Are you finished?” he murmured, and though his body was lithe, his soft voice sung of as much violence as the giantess’s darker growl. 

With a sigh, Essek let his shoulders drop. He could still feel the pulses of magic coursing through the iron bands around his wrists. Even if he got his arms free again, the cuffs would not be easily slipped, or broken. These people, whoever they were, came equipped to handle wizards like himself. Was that what they were, then? Assassins in disguise? Privateers? The blunt instrument of some government or another?

Not that it made much difference now. Whoever they were, he was at their mercy. 

“Spin him around.”

Essek felt himself being maneuvered away from the man’s incisive gaze. Through bleary eyes he caught the looks of frustrated disbelief from the four drow delegates, lamenting their crushed hope in silent, huddled unity. He was meant to be their protection. Now that Essek was taken, what else could save them? Not one of them was brave enough to attempt it themselves. A shiver of disgust ran through Essek, as heady as the self-recrimination it concealed at having allowed himself to be captured so easily.

The half-orc strode up to Essek, the sword in his hand now replaced, though Essek hadn’t seen the man move to retrieve it. It was a silver cutlass, fine enough to cleave a person clean through and leave one half still propped up on the other. Too rich a prize by far for a simple mercenary – he must have come by it dishonestly, or been given it as boon or bribe. Neither prospect boded well. 

The hand that gripped the sword told an equally foreboding story, for only the thumb was composed of green flesh. The rest of the fingers were severed at the third knuckle, and replaced by metal imitations fixed to the wrist by a harness of leather cords. Still, he held the hilt with all the confidence of a trained fighter, and the surety of his grasp left Essek little doubt as to its effectiveness, mechanical augmentation or no.

“My name,” said the half-orc, “is Captain Tusktooth.” A hint of bright teeth flashed from below the wide brim of the hat. “And this ship is mine now. Its cargo, mine too.”

The answer about the identity of his captors, at last, became clear, for what little good it did him.

Pirates.

“By whose authority?” Essek shot a harsh look at the foolish dignitary who had chosen this moment to find their courage, but Tusktooth only grinned harder.

“By my own.” Behind Essek’s back, Nott and Beau slipped back through the splintered doorframe and down into the depths of the ship once more. “Now, my crew is going to finish taking a look through your cargo. I trust that your captain has been honest about the contents of your hold. Are there any other surprises I should be warning my people of? Anybody else looking to make trouble?”

Would that there were. “You will find little of value to take. We travelled light.” He spoke the truth, having no more useful lie at his disposal. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, and another wave of exhaustion teased at the edges of his mind. He fought it with all the strength he had – which was growing less and less by the minute.

“So your captain told me. But that wasn’t my question.” Tusktooth’s voice grew as keen as the blade in his hand as he lifted it and placed the edge to the shallow of Essek’s throat. “Are there others like you aboard?”

He did not flinch. Torment and torture were old friends: his own cherished instruments. He did not fear what this man would do to him, any more than he feared death itself. At least, that is what he told his errant heart, as sweat began to bead at the nape of his neck.

“No.”

Tusktooth stared him down for a minute longer, and Essek held his gaze as best he could with the sun still searing his eyes. But at last, the sword withdrew, and Essek’s breath came a little easier. “Then let’s call this an exercise in… mutual trust.” He smiled once more, and Essek returned the expression with a vague twitch of lips.

The tense exchange was followed by ten excruciating minutes of silence, during which Essek did his best not to fidget in his heavy robes, even when his exposed skin grew so heated he felt liable to burst into flames. As they waited, the redheaded man pulled Tusktooth aside for a private conversation, and Essek sweated, and watched, and tried to formulate a plan.

The pirates would find nothing of value to steal. The Barren Bow had provisions for the voyage, but anything else aboard was the purview of the Assarian crew, who had planned to head back towards the shores of Igrathad as soon as the parley concluded. There were no scheduled stops for trade, and thus, no trade goods in their hold. There weren’t even guns to offer. Essek would never dare to admit it aloud, but the Dynasty lagged sorely behind the rest of Wildemount in outfitting its fleet with the relatively new technology of cannonry, at least of the type that lacked a magical component. Firearms had only entered the sphere of weaponmaking some thirty years prior, and with Xhorhas primarily landlocked, the navy hadn’t been high on the priority list for refurbishment. 

His best hope was that some of the crew had hidden stashes of coin in their quarters. Otherwise, there would be nothing for the pirates to take, and without anything to satisfy them, well… he did not want to be in manacles when that news was delivered to a man who’d already put a sword to his throat. 

If only to convince himself he was not totally beaten yet, Essek watched Tusktooth and the redhead carefully, seeing what he could glean from body language alone. Their conversation was hushed but tense, and every few moments the redhead would turn his eyes towards the drow delegation, and then to Essek himself. He made sure to drop his own eyes before they could meet again, not wanting to spark another confrontation by appearing insolent. As for the pirate captain… there was confidence, yes, but the unwavering edge of confidence seemed to drop away from his shoulders as he spoke to the other man. His arms moved more wildly; his words were more rapid, and at a higher pitch. Perhaps his earlier confidence was not so unshakeable as it at first appeared.

At last, Beau and the goblin re-emerged from the staircase. “We got shit all,” Beau said, tossing down a half-empty sack by Essek’s feet. He winced as a few bruised tubers rolled out across the warped deck.

“...Shit.” Tusktooth ran a hand over his mouth. “Shit. Nothing?”

“Nott and I checked every inch of that hold, the crew quarters, everything. No money, no timber, no – fuck, I don’t know – fine silks or–”

“No cannons,” Nott added mournfully. “No black powder.”

“We went through all this for nothing?”

“Maybe someone’s holding out on us,” Nott said, brandishing her crossbow. “I could make ‘em talk for you, Captain. Make them squeal–”

“Oh–kay, Nott,” Tusktooth said, “let’s take it down a notch.” But despite his placating tone, his look was thoughtful. Again, he turned to Essek. “You never never did say what you all were doing out here, so far from home. You don’t look like a sailor to me.”

“Yes, friend,” said the redhead, stepping up to Essek from Tusktooth’s other side, alarmingly calm, and placing altogether too much emphasis on the second word to be trusted, “what is it you do here?” Essek took a half-step back, not liking the feeling of being pressed in from all angles, and walked himself straight into the chest of the giantess. 

Nowhere to hide. And with his hands bound behind his back, no way to levitate up to a level where he didn’t feel every inch of height his captors had over him. Which, at his firmly average height for a drow, was many.

Focus, Thelyss. Focus.

“Why should I answer your questions,” he sneered, “when you have not done me the same courtesy? Who are you, to board a vessel commissioned lawfully by the Bright Queen herself?” It was a dangerous ploy, but a considered one – a hastily calculated risk. If the pirates could not be convinced there was nothing of value to be found, they might decide to punish the crew for concealing their rightful prize, and when even a beating couldn’t drive his compatriots to forfeit non-existent gold, the pirates might well scuttle the ship and leave them all to drown at sea. He doubted simple brigands would care much for the particulars of a diplomatic mission if there was no treasure involved, so there was little harm in broaching a subject that might be far more dangerous to discuss with more educated captors.

But apparently, some aspect of Essek’s logic had failed him again, because the redhead immediately shot a wide-eyed look at Tusktooth, before looking back to Essek. “The Bright Queen?”

Essek gave a little bow. His head swam as he dipped back up – the handcuffs, no doubt, though it could just as easily be the beginnings of heatstroke – and he had to swallow twice to find the fortitude to speak without slurring. “Essek Thelyss, Shadowhand of the Kryn Dynasty and ambassador of the realm.” The last part was an… embellishment, and if he chanced a glance over at the true ambassadors, he imagined there would be many offended looks. But thankfully, all attention was solely focused on him. “I assure you, you won’t find the prize you’re looking for on a diplomatic vessel, gentleman. Your friends have already given you proof – we carry nothing beyond our own provision. Unless you have a particular taste for the delicacies of Xhorhasian fashion, I’m afraid we have little to offer you.”

Nott snarled, but the redhead put up a hand. “Captain,” he said slowly, looking at Tusktooth. “Might I… make a suggestion?” 

“You may.”

“It’s not something I’d usually propose, but times being what they are…” Tusktooth nodded grimly.

“We haven’t got many options left.”

“Precisely. I believe that our friend Mr. Thelyss here has lied to us.” He could laugh for the irony of it all; this was the most truthful Essek had been in years. “There is indeed something very valuable aboard this ship.” His blue eyes pierced through Essek, and it was only his determination to keep the – now violently pitching – contents of his stomach where they belonged, that stopped him from speaking up in his own defense.

“And that is...?”

“Himself.”

[sweater-daddiesdumbdork]

Feeding The Flames: Thank You

Summary- 1.8k Johnny Storm x You. Sometimes being a superhero isn't enough to always save the day. You do your best to remind Johnny that he’s also the only man who could have done what was needed. He’s just a man, Your man. 

This is written for @imanuglywombat​‘s “Is That Even A Sex Position” Weekly Challenge NSFW, 18+ Sexual Content. Divider made by @firefly-graphics​

Masterlist

You had just stepped out of the library with a stretch, blinking in the warm sunshine dappling on your face as you stepped from the shadow of the building. After an hour of studying in a stiff chair, you relished in the fresh air. But it was worth it since you were feeling confident for your upcoming test, which was happening in the next couple hours. Long enough for you to go off campus and grab a bite, your hand pressing against your rumbling stomach. Just as you were going down the library steps, digging out your keys from your purse, you heard your name getting called in a hurried way. 

Your friend rushed over, a bewildered look on her face. “Y/N, have you seen the news? Or talked to Johnny?” 

A confused look crossed your face. You hadn't talked to Johnny since leaving the apartment that morning. You always turned your phone off when studying since it was too distracting for you otherwise. “No, why? Is Johnny okay?” You abandon the search for your keys to grab your phone, but your friend held hers up for you to see a local new channel playing. The newscaster solemn as it turned from the newsroom to a disastrous fire in the city. 

“Local Firefighters were unable to quell the flames this morning as a local apartment building went up for unknown reasons. The heat became too much for any to enter but member of the Fantastic Four team- Johnny Storm. Unfortunately the building became unstable and even our local superhero was unable to continue searching for people. So far the casualty count-” 

You stopped listening, seeing the camera had turned to Johnny who was streaked with ash, being held back by the fire chief. You could see the look of loss on his face as he panted tiredly, the struggle to need to go back in for people, but clearly unable to. A background blast sounded and Johnny's head dropped to his chest in defeat, the chiefs hold loosening on his while he patted at his shoulder sympathetically before turning away to shout orders to his crew. 

“When was this?” you asked shakily. 

“A couple hours ago, it's been on a loop.” She stated while turning the phone off. Dialing Johnny's number, it went straight to voicemail. He too had turned his phone off. Your chest clenching, you sprinted away. 

“I gotta go…” You excused yourself and rushed to your car, knowing you had to get home as fast as you could. 

When you finally got back and let yourself into the apartment, it was so quiet when you first stepped in. Holding your breath you glanced around to see no movement, no sign of Johnny anywhere. “Johnny?” You call out softly while dropping your keys on the counter as well as your bag. Yanking off your sandals, you padded softly through the house, searching for him. “Johnny? Are you here?” Poking your head in the living room and the kitchen. Nothing. No sign of him anywhere. 

Continuing down to the hall to the master bedroom, you happened to see the light on in the master bath. Making your way towards that, you could hear the soft patter of the shower hitting the tile and the steam escaping the room. Expecting to see Johnny in the shower, you were caught by surprise by what you actually saw. 

“Oh Johnny…” You said softly seeing him kneeling on the floor, his head in his hands with silent sobs escaping him. He had managed to peel out of most of his clothes. Opening the door, you stepped in to lower to a kneel in front of him, sliding your hands up his tense biceps and over his shoulder, squeezing lightly. “Are you okay?” 

He lifted his head then and you moved your hand to his face to brush away the moisture on his cheeks. So many never saw Johnny like this, for all his bravado and good nature, he took these things right to his heart. “I couldn't get them all out Y/N, fuck I tried. I should have been faster, tried harder...” 

You shuffled in closer, kissing his forehead. “Johnny, you saved so many. You did all that you could, more than anyone else was able to.” trying to reassure him, one hand dropping to his bicep to give a slight squeeze, rubbing up and down the tense muscle. Bracing your other hand in the spot between his shoulder and neck, massaging your fingers there, trying to do anything to relax him. “You did everything possible Johnny.” 

"It wasn't enough" he countered and you shuffled closer till you straddled his lap, his head pressing against your collarbone and taking a shuddering breath in. 

You let your cheek rest on top of his head, softly saying. "Johnny You are one man, you did everything possible. Killing yourself wouldn't have helped anyone." 

Johnny knew you were right, but the hollow ache that had settled like a sickness in his chest just grew, guilt that he was even able to withstand the uncontrollable fire and others couldn't. His fingers tightened at your hips, dragging in deep breaths of your perfume as you pressed against him, so unwilling to see any failure in him, and he saw so much. 

Seeking a more physical comfort, he tilted his head to press needy kisses to your neck, warm and soft brushes of his quivering lips that made you sigh with appreciation when he traced up to your jawline, leaving you almost breathless at the simple move. "Johnny we don't-" 

A flick of his tongue swept over your racing pulse and his hands slipped to your lower back, pressing you down into him, the desire to forget and get lost in you emptying his mind. 

"Please… let me Baby." He pleaded while crossing over your face to catch your lips. He pulled at you, drawing any protest of concern you might have given heatedly. Warm against you, any touch he gave was a sultry warmth that heated your desires. Saying no to him all but died on your tongue when his tangled with yours, hurried kisses meant to make you ache for him. His hands still grasping you to feel him hard under you, straining to fill you. 

He was making you need him physically and became the one relief to save you. 

You could give him that right now. 

Breaking the kiss, lips swollen as you panted against him, moaning out. "Get rid of them Johnny, I trust you" then you tilted back into his lips, lapping at the roof of his mouth. 

This Johnny could control, his own fire. He let the flames stream through the fibers of your clothes, but never let the flames lick on your silken skin hidden away under the layers. Layers you wanted gone, as well as he did. Wisps of your clothing fell away, leaving the both of you skin to skin, arching so that your breasts could press against the planes of his chest, arching up with Johnny's guidance. 

Reaching between you, you wrapped your hand around his cock, stroking him while his hips rocked up, gliding himself in your hand with a hiss from him, pressing his lips to yours, simply groaning. 

“Can you fill me up Johnny?” You pressed the crown of his cock against your entrance. “Only you can make me feel this way.” Nipping at his bottom lip, sliding your tongue along it slowly, asking for more from him. 

Fingertips pressed deep in your skin just as much as his cock easing into you with shallow thrusts nudging you. Your head tilted back feeling him opening you, thick and the throbbing vein tattooing in your channel, velvet walls grasping around him, slick enough so that it was easy for him to claim you. 

Your thighs tense while arching up and down to ride him, grabbing back on to the back of his neck for leverage. His hold dug in more, dimpling your flesh in a needy way to take over, bring you to that place. You gave into him so easily, but with Johnny he always made it easy to love him. Heated spirals raced through you, and you honestly didn't know if it was Johnny's touch or your own body betraying you, but you loved the fire racing through your body. 

“Just like that Baby?” Peppered kisses flowed down your collarbone to your bouncing breasts, nipping the top to leave bruising marks that you were more than happy to have littering your body, a heated palm left the small of your back to grasp a breast, kneading it till he could get his mouth on it, wet heat enveloping your areola and making you arch into him for more. 

“Yes, fuck yes Johnny, just like that.” You cried out, moving faster now to reach an ending. 

For Johnny it was about giving his girl what she needed. And for you it was about giving Johnny purpose only he could provide. 

Heated passionate huffs and gentle chanting from you begging and pleading for him to finish you filled the kitchen as bodies arched together coming together in bliss. You tightened around him, wrapping your arms around him while he pounded his seed through you with stuttering jerks of his hips while tightening his arms around you as well, crashing you onto him. Burying himself so that he could hold you as long as possible. 

Your heart started beating against your rib cage like a bird fluttering against a cage, your body slacking into Johnny's with your head on his chest, breathing in the humid air. Johnny rocked a few times sluggishly before sagging back against the bathroom cabinets behind him, his hands rubbing up and down your back, nudging gently against your temple. “Y/N? You okay?” 

You inhaled deeply, rubbing your face against his shoulder before lifting up with a nod, still feeling yourself throbbing around him, or was he throbbing inside of you? It was just hard to tell. Sated you smiled at him and pressed your lips to his before pulling away with a nod. 

“I’m okay Johnny, thank you for being here with me.” You slid your hands against his chest and his blue eyes gave you a knowing look, about to speak but you pressed a finger to his lips. 

“I said thank you Handsome, all you do is say you’re welcome.” 

Giving a slight quirk of a smile, he nipped on the tip of your finger between his teeth before letting go. “Yes Miss, always liked it when you get bossy you know.” 

You grasp his shoulders and push yourself to a stand, Johnny following along behind you. “You just like the discipline.” You teased back and Johnny opened the shower door, testing the water. 

“More like the other way around sweetheart, I like you getting sassy then I work on making you sing a different tune.” He tugged you into the shower and backed you against the shower wall while quieting you with a lust filled kiss, making you giggle slightly. Johnny's foot kicked out against the shower door, closing you two off from the world for just a little longer. 

[datsrightbby]

David + Dwayne (TLB) x Fem!s/o!Reader

Just Having A Little Fun  

Warnings: NSFW/Smut, cursing, voyeurism, Dom!David + Dwayne, David’s sir!kink and appearance of his daddy!kink. Not edited very well because ✨depression✨

"Hurry get on the back!"

You ran to catch up with the boys, quickly joining them on their bikes and speeding off into the night, giggling like lunatics as the store clerk ran out yelling at the three of you. Wrapping your hands firmly around Marko's frame, he sped up his bike, sending a vicious roar into the darkness - 

"Holy shit - didn't know you had it in you (y/n)."

"You guys are a bad influence."

He looked back with a playful grin, knowing that he and Paul were, in fact, a bad influence on you. Though you didn't blame them, you did agree to participate in all the mischievous activities they got up to throughout the night. They’d convinced you to get into trouble with them, you stole a few comic books, had a sprinting race along the boardwalk, played pranks on people, and though this wasn’t your usual idea of fun you did enjoy spending time with them tonight.

Unfortunately, David and Dwayne had stayed in the cave, with questionable reasoning, and sent Paul and Marko to pick you up from the boardwalk, but the last thing they were expecting was for the three of you to come back after hours of "fun". And it was safe to assume, from the not so happy looks adorning their handsome faces as you arrived, that they weren't okay with you being so...chummy, with the two charming blondes. 

You giggled, bumping your arm into Paul’s as he helped you down the steps of the cave, where you greeted your brooding vamps with an excited grin -

"Hey, I misse -"

"Where have you been? She was supposed to be back here hours ago."

Marko surrendered his hands up -

"Hey relax! we were just having a little fun with her."

David didn't like that, not one bit, where David bore a dangerous snarl, Dwayne opted for a more relaxed manner, but he silently glared at the boys, which told you enough -

"Seems like our mutts have been influencing our girl a little too much. Go sit down.”

They did as told, whilst you waited, awkwardly standing in the middle of the cave, as David leaned down talking low enough for them to hear, possibly Dwayne too with his vamp hearing, but with your human hearing you didn't quite catch on to the words uttering from his lips -

"You..."

David stalked towards you, stopping inches from your lips as he grabbed your neck in a rough grip, you rubbed your legs together, immediately feeling the throb between your legs at the action of dominance he displayed - 

"Who do you belong to?"

"You sir."

"Good Girl, whose else?"

“Dwayne."

"Good, that's what we like to hear. Looks like I’m gonna have to show you your place once again, hm?”

He toyed a finger along your parted lips, leaning down to give you a ghosting kiss that lasted less than a second - 

"We're gonna give those guys a little show kitten, show them who you really belong to, you up for that?"

You nodded in silent permission, your body reacting faster than what your mind could catch up to. He walked back over to his wheelchair, pulling a cigarette from his pocket and lighting it on a nearby candle, being successful in his attempt, and then promptly looking over to Dwayne and nodding his head in your direction as if to say "you first". 

Dwayne approached you with gentle hands, placing them on your hips and whispering in your ear -

"Is this okay?"

You hummed and leaned back into him he started peppering kisses along your shoulders, his hands wandering around your stomach and dipping into the waistband of your jeans, rubbing languid circles on your clit, while David took to watching the two of you intensely with the cigarette he lit loosely hanging from his lips, his gaze wavered to the terror twins whose mouths were agape in, what could only be deemed as, surprise. Your heart hammered away in your chest at the thought of having an audience, especially knowing you were gonna have to see their faces again after the night was over, though your thoughts soon scrambled together in nonsense as Dwayne's fingers played with you. His actions ceased and you whined, which only earned you a smug grin from the man whose attention you craved - 

"Strip for me princess."

Shakily, your hands went about undressing your form. Keeping your eyes locked onto Dwayne's, knowing that two extra pairs were in the room only causing nerves to build up. Once you were down to your underwear you looked over to David, who gave you a silent nod in permission, and, avoiding the gazes of the two blondes currently residing on the couch, you undid your bra and shimmied out of your lace thong, which you must admit was chosen appropriately now that you were in this situation. 

Dwayne was on you instantly, hands going around to grope at your behind and the other immediately back to toying with your clit in a pleasurable taunt. Whether he admitted out loud or not, Dwayne took utmost enjoyment teasing you and you'd be lying to yourself if it didn't have you rubbing your thighs together in anticipation -

"I want you over my knee."

The statement had you frowning until Dwayne took a seat on a forgotten chair, your mind soon caught up to his and you almost inclined towards saying no, but you'd come this far and you were in no danger so, albeit, with a little hesitance, you resided yourself over Dwayne's lap. Your ass was exposed to everyone in the room and he ran his hands over the flesh and playfully slapped it, grinning when you jolted against him and sent a glare in his direction. Your mind went hazy as his fingers lined up with your entrance, the indulgence of them entering you having you whimpering. One hand worked inside you while the other helped prop you up, taking off some of the pressure of your weight. His pace was fast set, fucking you on his fingers with an angle so deep you were a stuttering, moaning mess. Possibly, had you not been so caught up on the sensations he was making you feel, you'd be embarrassed being so exposed in front of two people you considered friends, but you couldn't focus on anything over than the wetness from your arousal slicking Dwayne's fingers -

"Ugh - please Dwayne."

You didn't know what you were asking for, anything. Dwayne seemed to have something in mind as he curled his fingers inside you and added another one to the mix, your eyes squeezed shut and you elicited a moan - 

"Feel good, princess?"

You nodded frantically, moving your hips back to meet the thrust of his fingers -

"I'm gonna cum, I'm gonna cum - oh god -"

Your lips spilled mantra's and curses as your climax built until you went rigid and hot, the only thing on your being the snap of pleasure soon to come, and before long it broke inside, waves of pleasure stemming from your core throughout the rest of your body like a wash of hot flashes. Your skin felt warm and tainted with sweat and arousal, your body fell relaxed post-orgasm, and your mind turned back to reality, gathering your thoughts back up in time to pay attention to Dwayne’s fingers hovering over your mouth -

“Taste yourself sweetheart.”

You did as told, lapping Dwayne’s fingers with hunger and moaning at the taste of yourself on him. From the other end of the room you heard the boys muttering curses as they watched you taste your own arousal. David had walked over, cigarette long gone, and hoisted you back on your feet, effectively removing Dwayne’s sinful fingers out of your desperate mouth. He moved your hair behind your ear, leaning down to place a gentle kiss on your lips -

“You still okay with this kitten?”

You nodded, and he gave you a sigh -

“Imma need you to see say it loud kitten.”

“Yes sir I’m okay with it.”

“Good girl.”

With your confirmation, he walked you over to the couch where Marko and Paul were sat, though they didn’t move from their places as you approached, and you could see they were trying their best not to openly stare at your naked form. David bent you over the end of the couch, you were inches away from Marko, and you felt one of his rough hands make it’s way into your hair while the other undid the zip of his pants, pulling them down and stroking the tip of his cock against your entrance -

“Ugh fuck...”

You moaned David’s name, watching Marko physically snicker at the sound of it, and within an instant his cock was inside you, the thickness so deliciously stretching you out you dug your fingers into the fabric of the couch for leverage, you were thankful for being prepared to take so much of him all at once, your walls tightening around him. He set a pace so brutally rough you were sure there were gonna be evident bruises on your body the next day, your mind and body whirled in ecstasy, and your moans filled the room in echoes - 

“Who do you belong to (y/n)? Tell them.”

“You sir ugh...”

A harsh thrust had you reaching and grabbing Marko’s thigh, though you were much too far gone to take notice of it and he didn’t seem to mind. With your previous orgasm leaving you sensitive another one built up quick, you were shuddering and tense, goosebumps littered your skin...

“Are you gonna cum kitten? Gonna cum around daddy’s cock?”

The use of the nickname left you whining and writhing as your second orgasm hit you. White spots entered your vision as you squeezed your eyes closed, trying to process the sheer amount of pleasure you felt as David continued using his cock to lead you through it. He thrusted you through the aftershocks until his own seed painted your walls and his body grew tired, lifting your limp body up against his chest and watching as his cum dripped out and down your thighs, a heated blush crept up along your cheeks and you avoided the stare of the two blondes. Soon your curious eyes betrayed you, shooting the boys a quick glance and taking notice of their pleading, needy eyes and hard cocks under the confines of their jeans -

“Don’t look so shocked boys, we were just having a little fun...with our girl.”

[roguishredaxion]

My BnHA AU List

Sorry for the length. Fics that are currently available to read have links. To those of you mentioned in this post, I wanted to make sure people knew where the ideas originally came from. (And you’re all awesome anyway!)

Can't See The Forest For The Trees - Genderbent Midoriya Izuku who became a vigilante known as the Forest in Musutafu. Has been operating for five years dealing mostly with information gathering and dispersal and some smaller situations that crop up on the streets. Todoroki Shouto is on patrol in the area and takes an interest in the unknown vigilante after she helps out with a situation where he got in over his head. AO3

A Piece of Patchwork (Improperly Placed) - AU where Izuku and Aizawa swap places in canon. Izuku fights the hero system to become the first quirkless hero, graduating alongside Present Mic. He gets called in to help in a situation where the villain has the ability to steal quirks, five years before the start of canon, providing part of the back-up team for All Might. Part 1 is the battle against All for One, part 2 is an alternate ending to the fight. Part 3 is Izuku learning to use One for All, which was forcefully given to him by All Might at the end of the battle. Part 4 is the other half of the role swap, where Aizawa grows up alongside Bakugou and is trying to get into UA. AO3

The Fallacy of Greatness (AKA Tenth, in my files) - AU where the whole first year class of UA in canon is born 4 years later than in canon. All Might encounters a 10 year old Izuku who asks if he can be a hero. Even after rescuing Bakugou and proving his heroic spirit, All Might elects not to give One for All to a child as young as Izuku. Izuku, desperate for someone to believe in his dreams, realizes that he has to be his first believer and decides to take matters into his own hands and prepare for a future in heroism on his own. AO3

The Capture Scarf Caper - Based on an idea from @terrible-my-hero-academia-aus Izuku finds Aizawa's capture scarf discarded in an alley and takes it home. He figures out how to use it and becomes so proficient that it accidentally gets mistaken for a quirk. Deciding to capitalize on the strange bias he's come up against, he uses the capture scarf to get into Class 1-A. Unfortunately, this means his teacher is the original owner of his scarf. Suddenly his deception is a lot more desperate and precarious. Meanwhile, Aizawa is trying to figure out why his instincts are telling him to pay such close attention to this anxious kid. AO3

The Better Part of Valor - Suspected Traitor Izuku AU a la @gentrychild. After Aizawa discovers one of Izuku's hero analysis notebooks, he drags Izuku to an interrogation room trying to get him to confess to being the traitor in UA. Izuku comes to realize that several of his classmates were also made aware of this theory and have been feeding information on his movements to their teacher for a while. Betrayed, he starts to pull away from class, falling back into some of the same habits from middle school to go unnoticed and fall off of people's awareness. At some point, his classmates realize that he's no longer staying in the dorms, they only ever see him in class, and All Might is the only person he will voluntarily interact with.

Civil Disobedience - All Might doesn't track Izuku down after the slime incident, but Bakugou's parting words cut far deeper after the day he's had. Realizing that everyone talks about how great of a hero Bakugou will be, Izuku comes to the conclusion that he wants to be the exact opposite of what Bakugou is. He elects to become a villain who goes after and exposes corrupt heroes. Adopting the username Wasureta for his villain work, he collects information on heroes who aren't performing their job as they should and releases it to the court of public opinion, taking away the support that has kept them from being exposed before this. As he digs deeper into the cesspool of rotten heroes, he manages to collect enough information to rake Endeavor over the coals and ends up with an interesting new follower. Dabi, meanwhile, is shocked by the ruthless but polite teenager he found when he tried to find Wasureta and he's not sure if he's impressed by what the kid has accomplished on his own, or horrified by the scope of what he controls.

Hunting Prometheus - There is another quirkless student attending Aldera Middle School, but she wasn't born that way unlike Izuku. When she was seven, her quirk was stolen from her by a man with a smooth voice and a forgettable face and she's been existing in a state of carefully cultivated rage since that day. Before, she never even considered becoming a hero. Now her only goal is to become a hero so she can find that man and punch him in the face. (OC fic, obviously)

Lost Stars in an Indifferent Universe - Leverage AU, five parts, origin for each member of the team. Izuku is told to be realistic and he tries to be following his disastrous encounter with All Might. But realistic means that he has already exceeded the life expectancy of quirkless individuals, acknowledging the fact that no amount of studying or work will let him join a remotely helpful career, and he is stuck living with his mother while he wastes away as a janitor at a nearby middle school following the completion of his high school education. When he returns to a tall building he hadn't managed to convince himself to jump off of yet, he finds that the abandoned space has been taken over by a black market of sorts and gets folded into a world of grey morals and an underground economy based on merit instead of quirk. When he becomes aware of an illegal quirk experimentation operation and tries to blow the whistle, several attempts are made on his life in order to shut him up. Instead of disappearing, he gets angry and decides to collect a team to strike back and prove the shady shit the lab is up to. (Izuku=Mastermind, Shinsou=Grifter, Hatsume=Hacker, Shoji=Hitter, Eri=Thief)

Love and Other Things Not Bound By the Laws of Time - Mr. Peabody and Sherman AU. Nezu adopts a young Midoriya Izuku whose mother died shortly after he was diagnosed as quirkless. Determined to show his new son that one's quirk or lack thereof means nothing in the grand scheme of things, UA's principal develops the WABAC machine to travel through time and prove just how capable people were before quirks manifested. He indulges Izuku's passion and curiosity, encouraging him to look into as much or as little as he wants on any subject. It becomes clear that, while not supernaturally intelligent, Izuku is a genius whose ability to make connections and strategize is by far his greatest asset, especially as he still holds onto the goal of becoming a hero.

The Quiet Revolution (collab w/ my sister) - The Todoroki siblings need therapy. Instead of getting that therapy, they decide to meet up for dinner every Saturday night, begin a tradition where they burn their father in effigy each week, accidentally start a highly successful Minecraft YouTube channel, and generally cause the downfall of the existing hero system through the power of networking.

You Can Tell What I Am By The Lines In My Skin - BnHA/Naruto AU. Naruto dies in his own universe and is reborn into the My Hero Academia Universe as Midoriya Izuku. He remembers who he was, but his chakra, which followed him into this life, is always out of reach. He trains as best he can to keep up his regular ninja skills but can't break through the barrier separating him from his chakra. He still meets and trains under All Might. When he receives One for All, however, the sensation that fills him is entirely familiar. It breaks through the barrier as though it isn't even there, and settles inside like it's always been there. Honestly, he had been missing the angry furball anyway, so he was glad Kurama managed to follow him to this world. With access to his chakra again, the world is about to discover just how effective one shinobi can be in a world of heroes.

War Games - (Inspired by RogueDruid's Hero Class Civil Warfare and others similarly inspired by it.) A year-wide hero class exercise is announced. Bakugou is announced as the Hero leader while the villain leader's identity is kept secret. Izuku knows it's him before the letter appears in his room. The students are allowed to pick whichever side they want, but most choose the hero side, which has won the exercise every time it has been run. This year is no different. Todoroki realizes that Izuku is the villain leader and signs up with him. Izuku goes and recruits Momo and Monoma to his side. Then, after consulting the rules, he folds in Shinsou and Hatsume as well. Monoma plays decoy villain leader and attempts to collect a few more people, but they've already signed up for the hero side. Izuku, without explicitly saying that he's signed up with the hero team, gets folded into the hero strategy sessions since no one expected him to make a different choice. He proceeds to get "taken out" in the first villain assault, and most people don't realize what's happening until it's far too late.

Life's A Game (And I'm Player One) - AU in which Izuku realizes that he does have a quirk but can't tell anyone about it because a) he can't prove it and b) it could be dangerous if he talks about what he can see. His quirk, which he privately calls Stat Check, freezes time just for him in order to open up what looks like a video game character bio that explains a person's quirk, as well as containing vital statistics. It only works in person or on unaltered photographs with a person's face or a distinctive enough feature to identify them. As he gets older, more tabs are added to the bio, and he starts to notice signs above certain people's heads telling him what level he needs to be to fight them (he stops seeing these after receiving OfA, until he sees AfO in Kamino Ward). In pictures, only the first tab is available unless he took the picture while time was frozen, in which case all the tabs are accessible. Because of this, he has accordion folders filled with photographs of people instead of analysis notebooks.

Of Unpainted Fences and Raw Ingredients - Smart Izuku AU. He has been writing essays about hero society, morality, and several other issues since before UA, but he doesn't realize how much people are paying attention to them until the essays start becoming required reading for certain classes. Meanwhile, the teachers are desperate to get in contact with him, not expecting that the essayist they have been gushing over is sitting near the back of the class, trying not to blush.

In A Mirror Darkly - Aizawa is out on patrol with Shinsou and Midoriya when they are attacked and the boys are apparently obliterated by an enemy quirk. The rest of the class attempts to help Aizawa, but he blames himself for their deaths. It doesn't help that he keeps seeing flashes of them in the mirror out of the corner of his eye and could swear he heard one or both of their voices in the middle of the night. Meanwhile, Shinsou and Midoriya are stuck out of sync with the rest of the universe and can't communicate with anyone except Aizawa, and only through mirrors. Izuku figured out that they have maybe two weeks before they waste away since they can't interact with anything being stuck in this in-between space. The only way they can get out is for Aizawa, who was there when they de-synced, to touch them and bring them back in sync with the rest of the world.

Guerilla Tactics - Vigilante Class 1-A AU. After the slime villain debacle, Izuku runs away from Bakugou and the heroes. He literally runs into Todoroki Shouto and they commiserate about how the heroes have failed them. Realizing a bit late exactly who Shouto's father is and why he's trying to run away, Izuku offers to come up with a plan to help him get away cleanly. (This is sort of the worst timeline, where most of the good teachers aren't employed at UA, Nezu is not the principal, and the HPSC is in charge of almost everything.) The plan they come up with involves Shouto failing the recommended exam, then disappearing the day results arrive home. Izuku, meanwhile, attends the regular exam and sees how the whole points system benefits those with flashier quirks and easily aimed egos. He gets to talking with a lot of hero hopefuls and sort of steals them out from under UA when their applications are rejected. They move into an abandoned sector of outer Tokyo and start working as vigilantes. Dadzawa makes an appearance, as if summoned by the horde of teenagers with no form of parental guidance to speak of.

No Rest for the Wicked (Or The Damned) - Person Of Interest AU. Instead of apologizing to Izuku when he asked if he could still be a hero without a quirk, Inko points out the other ways he can be a hero, by building the things they would need to fight crime. Figuring that one of the main problems with villains is that no one knows when they're going to attack, Izuku creates an intelligent program that can assess a high volume of data and extrapolate when and where a villain attack will take place, and who the villain will be. When his mom is killed and he's badly injured in an attack his AI predicted, Izuku realizes that no one is taking his information seriously because he's quirkless. He decides to take matters into his own hands and reaches out to an unlikely helper. Dabi doesn't know why this kid decided he was the best option to stop a lot of the more violent crime he somehow knows is going to happen, but he promised and then delivered Endeavor's fall from grace, so he's willing to see where this goes.

Binary Stars - Slight Megamind AU. Before their respective planets were destroyed, Izuku and Bakugou were placed in small space pods and sent towards Earth. Bakugou's people were warriors who looked enough like humans that they intermarried (unbeknownst to humans), thus bringing about the first quirks. Izuku's people, however, are survivors. Their planet was populated by predators so their greatest asset was their ability to camouflage themselves. As Bakugou's people often hunted Izuku's people, they gained a sort of sixth sense for them, which is why Izuku's very presence pisses Bakugou off. (All for One is from Bakugou's planet. He was exiled for stealing power. The last power he stole was what he gave his brother, and the brother always resented him for getting them both sent away.) Izuku still receives OfA, and is the first of his species to have a quirk/power like that.

The Wings of Icarus - Spy AU. Todoroki Shouto works for Yuuei, an espionage agency run by his father. He's been training practically since birth, no thanks to his father, and is second in the spy business only to a person known as Icarus. When something goes wrong on a mission, he is rescued by a short man with freckles and deep green eyes shortly before he passes out. He is found at one of the entrances to Yuuei with a note from Icarus to the tune of "I think you lost this", making Shouto the only person to have actually seen Icarus. Meanwhile, Nezu is running a small but successful info brokerage out of a bakery with three kids he picked up off the streets years before: Izuku, Shinsou, and Hatsume. Codenames: Icarus, Psyche, and Daedalus, respectively. Nezu is known as Zeus.

Dark is the Night (Momo is Batman: version 1) ​ - Based on an idea from @terrible-my-hero-academia-aus​ . Momo loses her parents in a villain attack when she's eight. She throws herself into her studies in earnest, determined to be a hero. In the meantime, however, she has a hard time ignoring all of the hardship she sees on the streets, all of the crimes that go unanswered.  However, to duck the vigilantism laws and disguise her identity, she wears a suit that covers every part of her body (think Cassandra Cain as Batgirl) because no one would assume that someone with a creation quirk that needed exposed skin to function was under it. She produces everything she needs at home. Aizawa notices that there's someone off about Yaomomo, something fake. It isn't until he runs into her on patrol that he figures something out.

Used to the Darkness (Momo is Batman: version 2) - Based on an idea from @terrible-my-hero-academia-aus​ . Bruce Wayne was reincarnated as Yaoyorozu Momo. She remembers everything about her previous life, but she has adapt all of the fighting training she knows to her new female body. The intelligence and detective skills are useful in this new world, especially since a good portion of logic and deduction has fallen by the wayside for the majority of those in law enforcement. The quirk is something else to get used to, but it's highly effective at producing materials of various things needed for vigilantism. She's interested to see how far she can take the limits of the superpower this universe had given her. At the very least, she's more than capable of recreating the gear she had. Even though her parents haven't died in this universe, she still ends up going out at night and trying to help in whatever way she can. Upon meeting and befriending Todoroki Shouto, she realizes the good she can be in this universe. She attacked the corruption in Gotham wherever she could. Why shouldn't she be able to do the same here? The night is still dark and the people who hide in it are the same cowards they've always been. It's about time someone reminded them that the dark hides more than just their actions.

A Rose By Any Other Name (AKA the Haruhi AU) - Based on a prompt found on @rayshippouuchiha‘s blog. Midoriya Izumi is having trouble staying in uniform after starting middle school because her bullies have decided to step up the abuse a little bit and keep burning them. She had three sets of uniforms, and all three are burned by the third day of classes. What's more, the nurse doesn't have any spare girls uniforms and her teacher insists that she needs to be in uniform and not in her gym outfit. Since the nurse does have a boys uniform that would fit her, Izumi elects to follow her teacher's instructions and shows up in a boys uniform as she doesn't care as much about the clothes she's wearing as she does about following what her teacher said. Cue a gender identity crisis. AO3

Nothing But The Truth - Izuku is hit by a truth quirk while out on patrol and Aizawa is made to babysit him until it wears off. Although he tries to avoid more sensitive lines of questioning, Aizawa asks about his analysis notebooks and ends up accidentally learning about One For All, Izuku's life prior to receiving it, and what his Problem Child's true goals regarding heroism are. (Might become a series with this as a oneshot, or a multi-chapter story as originally planned.)

Panacea - Izuku has a hidden quirk his whole life, one that people didn't even consider could be a quirk. He has a super-powered immune system, and it can and will treat damaging quirks as an infection to fight. His burns from Bakugou's quirk heal faster and faster, emitter quirks used on him start to be less effective after the first couple of times until they don't work at all. He has the ultimate cure in his blood and no way to share it. And then he receives One For All, a powerful stockpiling quirk with a secondary aspect that makes it capable of passing from person to person regardless of heritage. Izuku doesn't realize it, but his invisible quirk got a free pass to start changing the world, one touch at a time. (Possible Dad For One) (Just had the stupid thought that Izuku's quirk is basically Cure For All)

Prototype - While getting scolded after the Slime Villain incident, an underground hero known as Prototype shows up and forces the other pros on the scene to back off. They then walk Izuku home (accidentally forcing him to miss All Might's offer). During the walk, Izuku confesses that he is giving up on his dream of being a hero since everyone says it's impossible. Prototype points out that Izuku was the only one on the scene who was thinking about a solution from more than one angle, which is a useful skill for an underground hero to have. They offer to take him on as their apprentice in the underground, promising that if he still wants to be a hero, an apprenticeship would be more flexible and faster than trying to become a hero through one of the heroics schools. They advise Izuku to think about it and discuss it with his mom, since he would probably be spending a lot of time training out of the house and not every parent is willing to let their child basically move in with someone they barely know. Izuku, after talking things over with his mom, decides to go for it, embarking on a totally different journey to being a hero than he ever expected.

Yesterday's Sunshine (A Storm On The Rise) - Based on @hey-hamlet's End of An Era AU in which the mind of a 19 year old Izuku fighting a losing battle against Paranormal Liberation Front and the League of Villains is sent back to his 14 year old body, a mere month after he started training with All Might. He is traumatized and trying to hide the fact that he is shocked to see the people he knows died walking around again, untouched and whole. He's determined to make everything better this time, to keep his loved ones from dying or betraying him in the worst ways. He also needs to try and stay ahead of the people around him, who are trying to figure out why this child who shouldn't have encountered many villains in his life, is so terrifyingly good at putting them down hard. (I'm considering adding an aspect of DFO.)

Searching for Tododeku - Or Five Times Shouto Tricks Midoriya Into A Date and One Time Midoriya Asks Him Instead. Featuring semi oblivious Izuku, Shouto stealth-competing for the title of supreme memelord with Kaminari, and a cameo of Endeavor's crippling addiction to tabloid magazines.

Planar Shift - An All For One-Izuku body swap just weeks prior to a fight that would have left AFO and All Might both greviously injured. Izuku is quick to realize that the person he ended up in doesn't seem to be a nice person (and he tries not to think about what it would mean if the person is in his body around Kacchan) and has a lot more quirks than a person should have. His childhood doctor is there, as is a strange boy with delicate skin, a disintegration quirk, and a love of video games but little else. Then there's the purple mist person who reads as both alive and dead to one of Izuku's new quirks. When he figures out that All Might is trying to track this villain down (and will probably think it's a trick if Izuku tries to explain his situation), he decides that he should get himself, the kid, and the not-dead-but-not-alive person out of there. He doesn't know how long he's going to be in this body, but he wants to be the hero those two need, even if he's technically a villain.

Environmental Damage - Hitman Izuku AU. When Izuku's mother is killed when he's young, he manages to track down the killer but the police won't take him seriously because he's quirkless. Neither will any of the heroes he approached with it. So instead he goes back to the criminal underground where he found most of his information and talks to an assassin who had a soft spot for him. Izuku agreed to become the man's apprentice so he can take out the person who killed his mother himself. After that, he starts selling his services to people who can't get out of bad situations, offering a much reduced rate compared to other contract killers. Then a kid his age with red and white hair approaches him about killing the Number Two hero.

Summertime and Seaglass - Aizawa keeps running into this mute homeless kid on his patrols. He's not sure what to make of him, except that he needs someone to care for him, especially as the nights are getting colder. Treating the kid a bit like an abused and feral cat, he starts taking food with him to offer the kid when they meet up. It's more or less an accident when he learns the kid's name is Midoriya Izuku, a child thought to be dead and burned three years before when he and his mother were caught in a villain attack that was ended violently by Endeavor. Aizawa wants to give Midoriya and all of the other victims of Endeavor's carelessness the justice they deserve, and maybe by the time he's done the kid will let him bring him in from the cold.

The Importance of Being Batman - (Based on an idea from @terrible-my-hero-academia-aus​ .) Izuku spends a lot of time on forums for quirkless people, getting support and advice from other people like him who don't have a quirk. He gets the attention of an old Admin, Toshinori, and they talk about heroics, pre-quirk comic books, and the importance of representation and symbols in modern media and culture. After failing to get into heroics in the entrance exam, Izuku shifts his focus slightly. Batman didn't have any special powers in the comics, but he was one of the best heroes in his universe. Izuku decides that if he can build the skills, knowledge and (most importantly) money to become his own version of Batman, that would be almost like being a hero. It's time that society learns that 'useless' is a matter of choice, not birth, and even someone who doesn't have a quirk can do incredible things.

[greenninjagal-blog]

Deja Vu pt 7

Hey guys. Been a hot minute. If it makes you feel any better this was supposed to be a short chapter and it ended up being 25 pages long. :) If you’re new to the story, you can check out the first chapter [here] or if you need a refresher check out the previous chapter [here]!

Summary: Dee takes on The Prince in a fight, and Remus takes on the Prince’s sidekick.

Word Count: 12029

TW: temporary character death, blood, teargas, guns,

Read on Ao3 || Hero Worship Series || My General Writing Masterlist

Remus is twenty-one and he doesn’t think he’s ever been as terrified before in his life as he is the second he sees Dee launch across the stage. 

He’s been scared before though: scared from the moment he saw Roman hit the asphalt at eight years old and there was so much blood outside his body and Mom wouldn’t stop cradling the body even when the EMTs were trying to help; scared from the moment he stood in the gas station bathroom miles and miles from what he’d thought had been his home and trying to tell himself that that was going to be the last time he chose to look at a future where he tossed himself into the jaws of death; scared from the moment when he was laying in Dee’s lap with a million lies stuffed in his throat and still was choosing to tell him the truth about this stupid ability of his that only ever ended with him alone and forgotten and not missed at all. 

Remus has been scared out of his mind, scared in his mind, scared far beyond the way that he thinks that any other living person could understand. He’s been walking with one foot in the grave since he was eight years old and eleven minutes younger than Roman and people still-- since that was still-- since the first time it started mattering to him at all.

He’s been scared.

It’s still nothing compared to the horror that grips his heart in an icy fist as Dee throws himself mindlessly into a fight Remus can’t see the end of.

It’s stupid and Remus doesn’t quite know how it got to this point even though he had been listening so hard to what Dee was saying. Dee is smart. He’s brilliant. He’s the type of kid that grew up excelling in everything he touched and he liked touching everything. He does math in his head like the numbers work for him, he speaks French like his tongue had never known another language, he lies and steals and uses people without them ever knowing they were puppets in his show.

Dee is a genius among idiots.

And somehow Remus is still watching him pitch himself into a physical fight with The Prince despite how he spent the previous three days saying that physical fights weren’t his forte and that their best bet was to humiliate and discredit the man on stage instead.

The Prince is smart and fast and most likely expecting the attack, but even he doesn’t have a chance to dodge against the agility of Dee aided by a surplus of invisible animal speed traits. Dee is moving for less than a second and--

--his claws are morphing right there in front of Remus’s eyes, too slow to make out, too fast to miss and Remus is beyond time and space as he stands there feeling more stuck than he’s ever been before. Dee’s nails are sharp with hatred, with protectiveness, with a selfish defense that Remus had only ever seen in spurts before. The Prince’s throat is soft and fleshy and weak.

One hit would take him out, permanently. One hit could have him covered in his own red blood, one hit could remove him forever and Remus would be in love with a murderer.

Dee lunges for The Princes throat, but at the last second he dips down and aims for an upsweep of his claws, cutting clean through that sash, shallow, painful, but not deadly because Janus is not a murderer.--

--One hit would take him out, permanently. One hit could have him covered in his own red blood, one hit could remove him forever and Remus would be in love with a murderer.

Dee lunges for The Princes throat, but at the last second he dips down and aims for an upsweep of his claws, cutting clean through that sash, shallow, painful, but not deadly because Janus is not a murderer?--

--shallow, painful, but not deadly because Dee is not a murderer.--

--Dee is moving for less than a second, but The Prince is expecting an attack and raises his arm in a flash of green light, and rolls to the side. Dee’s fist misses his face by inches, but it’s enough for the superhero to stumble off the stage which is not right, which is not what Remus saw, not what is supposed to be happening. 

His head is screaming so loudly he can’t piece together a single thought. His stomach lurches up his esophagus, leaving him choking on something that might or might nor be real while Dee fights up on that stage. 

The police bodyguards nearest to the shapeshifter swing into action, with guns or tasers or whatever-- it doesn’t matter because Dee’s body turns to a golden jelly like substance and absorbs the bullets and negates the electrical charge with a near maniac grin.

((And god, is it alluring to see Dee go absolutely feral even when Remus thinks that his own body is trying to kill him. He’s always so posh, so sophisticated, so in control. This is the side of Dee that he hides under a pleasant smile, the part that matches the scales and the fangs and the claws, the part that is half animal and doesn’t care about empty words.))

The crowd screams, chaotic and messy and dangerous and it turns the atmosphere into a thick soup of confusion and desperation. Remus feels one of those stupid fucking signs crash into his shoulder blade as someone gets shoved or hit or slammed or run over-- Remus isn’t sure because his focus is only on Dee, only on The Prince, only on the absolute anarchy that is playing out on stage like a theater production.

Remus remembers suddenly that he’s never made it through the intermission of a theater show, never made it to the second act and never made it to see the lead actors take their bows. Remus always left early.

He can’t leave early now. 

He doesn’t even want to, not really, not in any way that matters. Remus’s lungs are burning and his heart is slamming against his ribcage like it’s trying to break out and taste the world for itself. He grips the crowd control fence, so hard he’s not sure anything short of a nuclear bomb can get him off of it-- there’s a cold feeling stroking his spine, a voice in his head that tells him he needs to go and go now or he’s going to end up in one of those futures he promised his seventeen year old self that he’d never go through with. 

He can’t move.

Call him a captive audience but Remus is on the edge of his seat, off his seat, one breath away from joining the actors on stage and ruining everything. 

Dee lunges forward at the police line while The Prince crawls back up to his feet in a stupid daze, too slow, too dumb, too much like someone who couldn’t actually believe this was happening and too thick-headed to keep up with the actions. 

Dee never told Remus that he was an acrobat, that he was as flexible as an Olympic Gymnast, that he could twist in the air and remove his own bones and make use of every breath between him and his enemy. Remus thinks of every time he’d counted the feet, inches, centimeters, between the two of them and for the first time he thinks that Dee might have been counting them too, thinking of every way in which he might be able to use that space as leverage to pin Remus up against the wall--

Dee said he wasn’t good at fighting. But Remus watches him grow claws that slice right through bullet proof armor and then flip in the turbulent air and drive his heel into the soft of someone’s neck. A bullet misses him by a hair’s breadth and Remus catches sight of his fangs dripping with blood or venom or something as he hisses at the unfortunate soul who shot at him, missed, and lost a bullet to the dissonant crowd.

The techie with the bright purple hair stumbles back to the van pressing his hands to his headphones and squeezing his eyes closed like he can make all the bad things go away if he pretends hard enough. Remus wants to laugh at him; can’t he see this is too real to be fake? 

Someone barrels into the side of him, knocking Remus nearly through the crowd barrier. His head rings at the collision, sending sparks of stars shattering over his vision that he thinks match the pattern of tire treads on an eighteen wheeler that once ran him over.

Someone with another ability lets it loose and there’s an explosion from down the street, sending more people running towards the stage and the battle up there. The winds twist unnaturally, ripping the confetti papers into the air again and throwing them straight up into the air along with any loose accessories not pinned down. 

A girl screams right in his ear, an arm jostles into her throat to make her stop and Remus isn’t entirely sure it’s not his arm. Her face is gone in the shifting crowd before Remus can even figure out what she looked like. People shove and jostle and move and tear apart so quickly that Remus can’t keep track of it. 

There’s so much noise Remus can’t think. Gunshots, screams, the screech of metal and whirl of the wind-- it’s so much and Remus is so small against it. He feels the world moving around him, feels the time breathing through his skin, detaching him from reality and yanking him into something else, somewhere else, somewhen else. He’s not breathing, his heart isn’t beating, he’s not moving and his vision is flickering, flashing, fleeting: there and then it’s not and he can’t stop any of it. He can’t figure out what to do, what he needs to do, what’s supposed to be--

There’s a coin in Remus’s hand, pressed in his palm cutting into this numbed skin and he clings to it like a lifeline. There’s a Barney in his hand, the Barney from the night he met Dee, the Barney that means nothing to Dee and everything to Remus, the Barney that represents a decision Remus made when he caught it in the air three days ago.

Who gives a fuck about what’s suppposed to happen? Remus stopped Roman from dying thirteen years ago and the universe is going to have to live with it because Remus is not going to get Dee die, either.

He’s somewhere in the crowd, coming into his body, unsure when he left it, and there’s something thick in his throat he swallows away before he figures out what it tastes like. An arm is in his gut, a body slams into his shoulder. The force of the crowd is tearing him back from the fight, and Remus can’t go against it.

The sky is tinged with a low hanging cloud; something grey green and the screams are largest near it, the people shoving vigorously forward and away as it sweeps over--

--them like a wispy wave. Remus feels it pass over him too, a force that he’s barely aware of for a second because it's so quick and then nothing happens at all. It's hard to see anything, hard to hear, hard to focus. Why are they screaming?

Remus opens his mouth and it’s a mistake, a mistake, a mistake. It smells like vinegar, sharp and pungent and it fights its way down Remus’s throat when he breathes it in. His skin burns and itches and smolders where the smoke touches, where it seeps into his clothes, where it floods over his eyes. He screams as his lungs warp and twist in on themselves, tight, tight, tight and he can’t breathe through it.

He’s dying, he’s dying again, he’s dying and he doesn’t know what he did--

--them like a wispy wave. Remus feels it pass over him too, a force that he’s barely aware of for a second because it's so quick and then nothing happens at all. It's hard to see anything, hard to hear, hard to focus. The gas is everywhere and Remus can’t see where he’s going and if he stops whoever is behind him will run him over.

He shoves forward burying his mouth and nose in his sleeve, but it's not enough. His heart is exploding in his chest splattering across, bursting so hard it shatters his ribs but not enough to break his skin. He claws at his chest certain there’s blood there even though he can’t see it. He dead and dying and he can’t even gasp an apology to Dee he’s sorry Dee please he’s sorrysorrysorry--

--them like a wispy wave. Remus feels it pass over him too, a force that he’s barely aware of for a second because it's so quick and then nothing happens at all. It's hard to see anything, hard to hear, hard to focus. He’s trapped, caught in a gaseous net of tear gas that lives up to its name because he’s sobbing at the burn that he’s sure is the worst death to have survived. He doubles over, and he’s gone and done and dead because he can’t do it a third time. 

He doesn’t have enough sense to brace himself before there’s someone else’s panicked foot on the small of his back. Remus curls on himself covering his head in the chaos to protect himself, but the agony over his body is shredding his insides like razor blades that could pass through anything.

He can’t breathe. He can’t think. His eyes flicker trying to catch an understanding of anything around him, but his tears make it hard to make out anything up close and the smoke obscures the world he knows is past that.

Someone is screaming something, but Remus can’t make out the words.

This is the exact thing Dee did not want to happen, he thinks as his body convulses, as a guy with horns trips over him and several more people without powers descend on him with signs and fists and whatever else they have. Remus’s tears are streaking down his face and he weakly raises an arm towards them like he can help anyone when his own body feels like it’s dying. This is the exact thing they were trying to avoid.

It doesn’t make sense, Remus curses as someone steps on his ankle and he feels the bone do something it probably shouldn’t and his throat cremates the air in his lungs. It doesn’t make sense. Dee is smart. He’s brilliant. He’s clever and witty and always seven steps ahead.

Dee was the one who said a fight would cause a riot in the crowd and it would make everything bad. A fight was the opposite of what they wanted. Dee had even said that if he couldn’t get The Prince to agree with him, he’d back off and find another way. 

“It’s not so much for The Prince,” Dee had said. “It’s about getting the message to the people.”

And Remus is twenty one years old and can’t think of what Dee was expecting to happen when he launched across the stage like that when his own head just got kicked again and his lungs are a birthday candle away from engulfing him in flames.

What The Prince was saying was stupid, but it wasn’t something that Dee would have let get on his nerves. Dee was better than that-- Remus had seen him be better than that. Remus had said things that were more annoying, more irksome, more cutthroat than The Pitiful Prince could have thought to say. Dee had been shot half a million times in futures that didn’t happen and Remus had plucked him from the jaws of death every time.

Dee trusted Remus to keep him safe and informed. Even against The Prince.

Dee shouldn’t have been attacking at that point. 

Someone kicks his stomach again, and Remus tastes the dregs of Dee’s latte wander back into his mouth with a burn that reminds him of his worst nights except this is worse than all that. He feels like he’s one open flame away from igniting which doesn’t make sense because fire needs oxygen and he’s not getting any. Something happened to Dee, something wasn’t right-- Dee wouldn’t have attacked unless The Prince did something to him. 

Remus thinks that if he gets up he’s going to put The Prince in the ground, permanently. His earpiece sings with noises from the fight: Dee’s grunts, his huffs, his ha’s. Remus latches on to the sound of them, of Dee being alive, of Dee being completely in the moment rather than his usual twenty steps ahead of it. He’s not sure if the terror is from the shoe that slams into his spine at that moment, the ache of being unable to help, the fear that the teargas is going to kill him, or the idea that whatever The Prince did to Dee is still happening.

He tries to sit up, but someone jumps over him just poorly enough to kick him in the side of the head as they go. Remus feels the sting of wet concrete at 3 AM shock through his body again, stupidly. His brain screams something about windshields and rain and Remus tells it to shut up because Dee was in trouble and Remus had made him a promise to stick around all those lifetimes ago in that Casino where they’d met, on the balcony when he’d been stuck rather than gone, when he was laying in Dee’s lap in their hotel room saying all the words he’d never told anyone else ever before.

There’s wind. Remus blinks hard, choking on a sob that claws through his esophagus far more effectively than glass from a windshield ever did. There’s wind and it’s moving like a storm front, a physical force, direct, and purposefully. The wind is twisting through the crowd and catching the greenish tear gas in its invisible hands; Remus watches in delirious disbelief as it funnels upwards with the remains of confetti and signs, hats and papers, trash and abandoned items, upwards and out of his lungs, upwards and saving his life.

He breathes in a breath that feels like his ribs are going straight through his lungs, and desperately scrubs the memories of things that he swore weren’t going to happen from his mind. Another foot slams down inches from his face, and loose gravel sprays up into this face.

“HEY!” a voice yells. There are hands on him, Remus realizes in the next second, someone helping move him out from under the current of people that are in too much of a panic to help him. “HEY!--

-- “Are you okay?” the person says, and Remus has to squint to make him out against the tears in his eyes. At first glance Remus thinks he looks like someone important, someone familiar: a teacher he had once, a youth pastor from a church that his family only went to on holidays, someone in the community that all the other kids flocked too, except that they had to be the same age, so Remus’s marks that as his brain spewing nonsense again. He’s got glasses with smudges on the lenses, freckles that dance across his cheeks like a dot-to-dot for adults, and a smile that looks increasingly stupid compared to the background setting.

“You’re going to be okay, sir!” the man chirps right as another round of gunshots go off to their left as the armed guard fires one someone in the crowd and the winds shrivel up and die in response. “We’re going to be okay!”--

 --“Are you okay?” the person says, and Remus has to squint to make him out as his eyes ache and burn and he can’t scrub them. At second glance Remus thinks he looks like someone inconsequential, someone familiar: a college student who came here to follow the rules and trust his government, a guy who is in over his head, a kid who doesn’t know what he’s doing, and Remus hasn’t seen any sign of a power at all. He’s got a blue polo on speckled with dust, and bruises and scratches up his arms, a solid footprint on his abdomen that Remus doesn’t need two guesses to figure out where he got it from.

“You’re going to be okay, sir!” the man chirps, but Remus is busy spinning around just in time to see the armed guard fire at a civilian in the crowd and the winds overhead shrivel up and die because they lose whoever was telling them to move in the first place. “We’re going to be okay!”--

-- “Are you--OOP!” the person says as Remus throws himself up and bonelessly tackles that guard before he can fire his weapon. His throat is ragged and strangled and the noise that comes out of his is not even remotely human. His eyes are flashing with the futures he doesn’t want to see and he thinks for a moment if he stops moving he’ll forget which future is the present.

Dee should not have attacked. But he did, and every death that happens now is going to be pinned on him, on them, on anyone who isn’t the government and every plan Dee made will settle into ashes and fall through his fingertips.

Remus is twenty one and knows all too well that he can’t change the past. But he’s going to save the future, their future. His and Dee’s future.

The gun goes skidding across the ground and under the crowd barrier out of reach and out of touch and Remus’s head spins trying to orientate himself. Blood drips down his chin and spatters on the visor shield of the man under him, the would-be murderer, the all-to-willing homicidal maniac. Remus’s heart pounds in his throat, making its way to his mouth, until he’s not sure if he’s biting down on his tongue or the pulsating mass that keeps him alive and the tang of vinegar won’t leave him alone.

People stumble around the both of them, tripping over Remus’s legs, and someone stomps on his captive police guard's wrist so hard Remus feels it snap more than he hears it. The man lets out a yowl, as his eyes roll back and he gives in to the pain of it. 

The guy who does not look familiar in any way that Remus cares about is just a step behind them, grabbing Remus’s armpit as if to pick him up, but his focus is on the person in the crowd controlling the winds. Confetti screws through the air, a sign slams into the face of someone who gets too close to them and the two kids crouching behind them. They’re making a barrier. It’s for protection. They saved everyone who hadn’t been able to to get away from the teargas.

((They’re beautiful, Remus thinks, almost deliriously. The power and control and the fierceness. It’s like watching dancing, like watching pure strength, like seeing a miracle in first person. Remus never thought about other people with powers before, never thought about powers being a good thing when his ruined his life, but now he’s staring at this stranger with burning eyes and one foot in the grave, this stranger who is half wind and all power, this stranger who makes him think he might understand why Dee is so passionate about mutants like them.))

Remus is twenty one years old when he sees out of the corner of his eye, the man in the blue polo’s face screws up in concentration as he throws an arm out at the person controlling the winds and pale white light flickers from his fingers right next to Remus’s face. 

There’s a moment between Remus’s heartbeats where the sound disappears and Remus doesn’t need to breathe and time doesn’t pass at all. There’s a moment where Remus is frozen in place, half standing, half on the ground with his blood making him want to vomit. There’s a moment where he’s staring at the man right next to him and he thinks don’t you fucking dare--

But then the moment is over and Remus is watching the winds drop everything they’re carrying: the accessories, confetti, all of it that had been between them and the armed guard, falls to the ground and Remus watches the surrounding crowd descend on them like a pack of wild animals. His head rings with words that don’t make sense and he thinks that the smile the man gives him has a cold edge to it when he turns back to Remus like he’s expecting a thank you.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Remus jerks the man’s hand down, rasping where the words grate on his sandpaper throat and shoving him away. “What is wrong with you?”

He blinks and tilts his head at Remus like he’s not sure where the question is coming from, why Remus is asking, like he didn’t see what just happened right there at all. “Let’s get you somewhere safe, okay? I think you might have hit your head a little hard.” He says, “Wait… Do I know you fr--?”

Something soars overhead, and Remus rolls to the side and hunkers down as Dee’s draconic form sweeps over the crowd and nearly decapitates everyone still standing. Piercing screams echo in the crowd so loud Remus doesn’t hear whatever else the man says.

The man who helped him up, the man who looks like no one to remember, the man who just did something to that other person that made them not use their power, that man shoves both his hands into the air toward where--

--Dee is and Remus watches in horror as Dee’s fierce expression flips to a confused one. His glorious golden wings flap, once, twice, and then they vanish without a trace.

He’s been confused before, he’s been terrified before, he’s been scared. He’s seen Dee get shot, get run over, get hit until he bleeds. He’s seen Dee laugh at broken bones, seen him choke on his own body fluids, seen his eyes good dark and empty and lifeless. Remus has been scared, but that’s nothing compared to his feelings when he watches Dee drop like a stone through the air.

Remus knows what that fall feels like, he knows how his stomach swoops at the sudden empty air, how the air feels like daggers, how dreadterrorregret fills his lungs until he can’t even take that last breath. He doesn’t want Dee to know. Please, he can’t know, please Remus needs to stop this, fix it, please pleasepleaseplease--

--Dee is and Remus moves before he even knows what he’s doing. His blood is pumping so hard he thinks it's amazing that all his blood vessels don’t pop on him. He swings his elbow back with everything that he has in him, everything he can spare and then the stuff he can’t, because that was Dee and Remus would do anything for him. The man’s glasses shatter under Remus’s attack and he stumbles backwards several steps in shock. Remus follows him with a kick to his stomach that throws the stranger who can take away the only thing protecting Dee at the moment to the ground.

“DEE!” Remus shouts, glancing up because he has to make sure that he’s still in the air.

“You!” The man chokes on his own breath, looking up at Remus with something that might have been betrayal. “You’re with him!” 

And then--

--from behind him something sticks into his back, barbed enough to go right into his jacket and pinches there touching his skin. Remus inhales just as he realizes what it could be and then there’s white hot electricity coursing through his flesh. Remus feels every joint he has lock up, feels pain wrack through his body and ricochet around his bones like the worst game of pingpong, feels the tortured scream carve out of his lungs as he falls forward and his skin bubbles and melts around the prongs of the taser that does not have a safety setting engaged.

He head hits the asphalt and his vision fades and Janus is screaming his name in the worst way possible--

--from behind him something sticks into his back, barbed enough to go right into his jacket and pinches, hooking on his skin, and Remus lunges away, but he’s not fast enough. There’s white hot electricity coursing through his flesh. Remus hears the crackling of violent arcs break through his skin, hears the way that his scream terrorizes the air far worse than that time he dropped a toaster into the bathtub with himself, hears the way that Dee screams his name and lands on the ground next to them.

He head hits the asphalt and his vision fades and Dee wrapping his arms around him in the last embrace he’s going to get--

--from behind him and Remus twists to the side before something sticks into his back, barbed enough to go right into his jacket and stick there. He wants to vomit, but he’s more focused on throwing his body forward and tackling the police officer who just killed him twice and will not get the satisfaction of doing it again. Remus snarls as the man tries to bat him away. 

Remus might not have any intensive training, but he spent four years homeless, learning about the world from the streets of it. He spent more than his fair share of nights sleeping in alleys before he realized that he could use his power to find an empty hotel room for the night, a sucker that would give him money, an odd job that would get him off the street. 

He’s been in fights. This is nothing compared to those fights. 

He feels woozy, flighty: like his bones were replaced with helium and lead at the same time. He doesn’t dare let that stop him. He survived a 3 AM that never ended and he’ll survive this too. He didn’t need to see the future for that.

His knuckles hit the bullet proof padding, hard enough to send jolts through both of them. The officer swings an arm out, but Remus ducks under it and kicks his foot around the man’s ankle. There’s blood on his chin, screaming in his ears, the scent of burning flesh in his nose, and Remus grins as he shoves his palm into the officer’s face. Before the guy knows what is happening he’s on the ground again and Remus is slamming his heel into that visor so hard it shatters. 

He thinks he might be laughing, wheezing, as the blood welds up over the man’s nose and his eyes roll back. Remus brings a shaking palm up to his mouth and smears away his blood as much as he can, because it feels like he’s choking on it again. His eyes are searing and he’s almost surprised he’s not bleeding from them too.

Dee uses a brick wall of a building as a launch board to throw himself back at The Prince in the middle of the blocked off area. He flips mid flight, and whips his tail out of nowhere to land a blow that Remus can’t see if it hits or not.

“Motherfuck--” Dee’s shouts through that earpiece Remus forgot he’d been wearing. He hisses, with a stinging edge that matches pitch to the ringing in Remus’s head. “Do you know what this suit cost, you ingrate!”

Remus can’t breathe and is breathing too fast at the same time. He spins around searching through the chaos for something, someone, he doesn’t know-- what does Dee need from him? What is he supposed to do here? The man in the blue polo is gone and Remus can’t find him which means that he can’t see, not that he can see regularly, not that people aren’t still running around, screaming, the water pipes in a building didn’t burst and the metal of a few lamp posts isn’t warping, there aren’t trampled bodies everywhere he looks.

“Dee,” Remus coughs, choking on ragged words. “Hold on a moment. Let me get somewhere…. where I can... fucking see. Fuck!”

“That would be lovely dear,” Dee says although it sounds like he just ate asphalt and didn’t really hear what Remus said. “The Prince is being disagreeable.”

“I can’t...imagine why,” Remus says. “Personally, I love getting my... throat torn out.”

“We’re going to have a lovely conversation about your masochism, darling,” Dee says, and spits out whatever else is in his mouth and then grunts and swears again. There’s the startling sound of metal on asphalt and Remus’s brain tries and fails to configure the scene playing out where they are.

“It might be a pain kink at this point,” Remus says as he dodges between unfamiliar and panicking strangers he can barely see. He’s afraid if he wipes the tears from his eyes he’ll get whatever of the gas that’s in his jacket in them again. He can’t let that happen, not now, not when Dee needs him, and he knows that he can’t stifle the panic if he does. He sends a kick to the back of another armed policeman in the middle of aiming a taser at someone else.

Dee growls something at The Prince. Distantly, Remus hears what sounds like someone or something slamming into a car, and he thinks he sees the roof of the news van jostle along with the new round of screaming. 

“I would love to know all your kinks,” Dee manages after another second. “Fuck-- how is he doing this?”

Remus ducks out of the way of a blue post office mail box sailing through the air, missing him by inches, but taking out a police officer he hadn’t noticed before. He doesn’t get to see who threw it, but he thanks them, whoever they are. 

He needs to be closer to the fight again, closer to that eye of the hurricane that’s blocked off with crowd controlling barriers, closer than he is now so that he can do something. He jumps over a body, nearly tripping on an abandoned purse. A large shadow sweeps the area again, and Remus catches sight of Dee in the air, with his arm at a terrible unnatural angle. Remus thinks he feels his blood catch in his body freezing all at once despite the rapid pace of his throat bound heart.

Dee doesn’t seem to see him at all, his gaze is stuck solely on where Remus assumes The Perfect Punchable Prince is. There’s a shattering sound of gunshots from somewhere that echoes off of the walls of the surrounding buildings, but Dee remains in the air alright and fine and holding his shattered arm carefully.

His expression is contorted into something awful, something bad enough that even from the ground Remus can make it out perfectly and hates the sight of it-- the amount of pain he must be in, the pain that he never should have felt, the pain that Remus would take on wholeheartedly without a hesitation if he had the ability to sap it away from Dee. But before he can say anything Dee’s arm warps, twists, snaps back into place, and Dee snarls as he rolls his neck and flexes his fingers again.

“Did you just heal yourself?” Remus asks breathlessly, almost certain that his itching eyes are playing a trick on him. 

“Surely this came up in one of your futures before, darling,” Dee says without taking his gaze off his opponent.

Remus doesn’t say that in all of his futures Dee is too dead to show off, dead before Remus can get to him, dead before there’s even a hope for him to think about healing himself, dead, dead, dead. He doesn’t think it matters. There’s a feeling in his chest that blossoms and blooms and fills him like helium in a balloon threatening to take off with him. Dee’s wings flap powerfully to keep him in the air and Remus wonders how they would feel under his fingertips. Leathery, maybe? Somewhere between vinyl and bare skin maybe-- Remus doesn’t know enough about birds, bats, wings in general to know the answer. 

“Serpent!” The Prince shouts from somewhere on the ground. Remus thinks for a moment he can see the man through the crowd, but it's too much of a blur. There’s smoke in the air now, a fire from a nearby building, and Remus feels it burn acridly in his throat, heavy flumes of it sweeping through the crowd and obscuring the ground around them. Remus can almost hear the sirens in the background.

“I hope you aren’t referring to me, Prince,” Dee says with a bit of a hiss.

“Don’t you see what your actions have caused?” The Prince yells and Remus thinks the sound of his voice is grating. His knuckles crave to jam themselves down the superhero’s throat and rip out his voice box, just to make sure he stops talking forever.

“Me?” Dee says. “You are the one who wanted a crowd and a ceremony and a fight. I shouldn’t be surprised. One can’t pretend to be a hero without making someone else the villain!”

“You started this fight, Wyvern,” The Prince shouts back. “Crashing onto the stage and then attempting to kill me.”

“If you’re going to call names like a child, use my actual name,” Dee says, “Basilisk.”

The name sends shivers down Remus’s spine, and he isn’t sure if it's the good kind or the bad kind. His blood is pumping so heavily he thinks it should have drowned out all the other noise. 

Basilisk. Like the Casino where they had met. Like the mythical animal that could kill with a glance. Like a warning and a threat and a challenge. Remus swells with an emotion that’s so bright he’s not sure he can put a name to it, he just knows that he’s never felt it before: so proud, so happy, so thrilled. Dee chose his name and the rest of the world will know it.

((Part of Remus wonders how long he’s had it picked out, how long had he whispered it under his breath when Remus wasn’t there to hear it, how long Dee had thought about having his name up there in the lights outshining The Prince’s.))

“Basilisk,” The Prince snarls. “What type of person answers to the call of a monster’s name?!”

“The King of Serpents,” Dee shoots back. “The killer of foolish knights, and even stupider princes.”

“Now who’s name-calling like a child?!”  The Prince yells. 

It would have been comedic really, if it weren’t for the smoke and the screams and the gunfire. If it weren’t for Remus’s heart beating out of his chest and his mouth tasting like vinegarcopperasphalt and his ankle crying in a pain he can’t afford to actually think about. He thinks about leaving, about running away, about escaping alone but Dee’s life is on the line and Remus needs to make sure he makes it through this because he doesn’t know what he’ll do if Dee dies.

((That’s a lie. Remus does know what he’ll do if Dee dies because he’s seen it a million times before, in a million other places, with a million other feelings and still no one there to mourn whoever he was and whatever he could have been. Remus is twenty one and he knows that if Dee dies there will be no more reasons not to break that promise to his seventeen year old self. He knows, he knows, he knows.))

He’s closer to the fight now, back to where he had been before the riot chaos. Most of the crowd is gone, leaving smokey forms that Remus only semi recognizes from his nightmares. The crowd barriers have been shoved, there are bodies on the ground, the news van is jostled and the crew abandoned it in favor of maybe not ending up with their blood all over the place.

All of them except that techie in purple with the headphones and the face mask. 

“Hey,” Remus says, slamming against the van next to him. The techie stares at him like he’s lost his mind-- and to be honest, that’s fair. He’s got more blood outside of him than inside, and he’s pretty sure the imprint of him is plastered on the side of the car now: a red silhouette to go with the station logo. His eyes are red rimmed, his smile twisted and pained, and it’s only his own inertia that was holding him up. “Don’t mind me.”

The guy is holding a phone peaking, around the corner of the van, dutifully filming Dee barely dodging getting shish kabobbed by The Prince’s rapier and he looks very much like he minds  Remus’s presence within 10,000 feet of him, but is too terrified to move.

Remus doesn’t blame him; where would he go anyway? Into the disassembled crowd where the horror movie screams come with real blood and tear gas was just used on hoards of innocent people for no reason with no warning? Into the arena where The Prince and Dee were taking turns causing massive destruction to public property without a care in the world? Remus doesn’t blame him from hunkering down behind the cover of his news van and praying for this hell to end.

He is a bit curious as to who’s watching this video he’s taking, though. 

Dee twists in the air dodging The Prince’s attacks on his wings, by a hair's breadth. Remus swears for a second that the silver shining rapier slices through Dee entirely, but Dee’s back in the air the next moment, fluttering back out of reach and catching his breath for both of them.

“You fight like a coward!” The Prince yells from the ground, swiping his sword in a motion that is illegal in Fencing. His red mask gleams like blood, but Remus can’t see a speck of it anywhere else on him, not even a scuff from where he fell off the stage moments ago.

((Was it moments? Remus’s head rings with the question. Was it moments? An hour? Days? Lifetimes? He died, Dee died, the strangers in the street died-- how long ago was it that none of that ever happened?))

Dee looks scratched and scarred to high hell by comparison: his suit is in tatters, slices through his left side and his right shoulder, tears in both sleeves where he gave up human hands for scaled claws and sharpened talons, and he was missing a pant leg at the knee, as well as both his shoes that he loved so dearly. Despite his apparent healing abilities blood was trailing from scratches not fully closed up around his elbow, his shoulder, one cheek.

The two of them had to have been fighting this whole time but Remus gets the sinking, sickening, drowning feeling that Dee hasn’t landed a single blow at all.

Which considering the bodies of unconscious police officers piled around them all like lifeless dolls, seems incredibly unreal. Remus saw Dee fight. There’s no way. It’s not possible.

“It’s not fighting like a coward to use your own advantages over your enemies,” Dee says, to The Prince. He steadies himself in the air, his wings and scales glowing gold. “Surely you’re familiar with that idea? You have all the marks of her other training.”

The Prince steadies his stance, shifting his weight around on the toes of his feet like he’s considering the pros and cons of launching himself into the air. Remus hopes he does it just to see Dee catch him by the throat and send him hurling back to the ground hard enough to create a crater he can’t dig his mortal bones out of. 

“If you are trying to suggest something,” The Prince says, “your cryptic theatrics are getting in the way, villain.”

“You think you’re the first Hero she ever trained?” Dee asks. “Think your something special? Going to make all the difference in the world? She’s playing you like a fiddle!”

“You’re one to talk, Janus,” a voice says and Remus swears it comes from everywhere around him. His lungs seize so hard he chokes on the air, the shearing pain in his throat tearing at his vocal chords. The voice sounds like thunder, like a foghorn, like a car alarm at 3AM waking everyone who was previously enjoying their evening.

But Dee doesn’t shift like he heard it at all, and the The Prince doesn’t even look around. Remus’s heart hammers in his chest, stretching his skin, his muscles, his insides as far as they’ll go and the only thing he gets from it is the techie twisting glance at him with a semi raised eyebrow, before he turns back to the standoff in front of them.

Janus. Remus knows that name, doesn’t he? It’s on the tip of his tongue, the edges of his mind, the fog of futures he’s seen and hasn’t seen. He knows that name, he knows who that is, he knows--

--but he doesn’t have a chance to figure it out because Dee is lunging downwards at The Prince, so fast that Remus thinks if he had blinked he might have missed the movement entirely. One moment Dee is in the air, the next his heel is slamming into The Prince’s sword arm shoulder, and from the way that the superhero’s body crumples Remus can bet that his whole foot had shifted into something that was probably lethal. 

The Prince hits the ground with a satisfying smack, letting Dee bounce off him and land another five feet away with a self satisfied, deeply relieved smirk. The Prince cradles his arm, his white outfit soaking with red, his face gnarled with painangerfear as Dee turns around methodically. The hero fruitlessly claws the ground for his rapier but Dee snaps his tail and knocks it out of reach. 

“Give up, Prince,” Dee tells him. “Unlike you, I don’t want a fight. That shoulder needs medical attention and there are people other there that need you.”

“A hero never gives up!” The Prince says and Remus swears that he’s heard that voice before, that tone before, those words before in a way that’s beyond time. They ring in his head, hollow and cold and empty: ghosts made of memories that Remus hated and couldn’t get rid of and that taste like a brother whom Remus once killed.

“She is using you,” Dee says stepping forward until he’s towering over the hero. “Don’t you see that, my prince? You’re worth more than being her puppet.”

“She saved me when I was at my lowest,” The Prince spits back.

“She probably put you there, too,” Dee says, clinically. “Dragana Witchall is not your friend. She’s not a savoir. She’s not a good person, no matter what she’s told you. She doesn’t want what's best for anyone other than herself and the moment you realize that she will do everything in her power to silence you. I’ve seen it happen before.”

There’s a twisted look on The Prince’s face, and Remus’s heart thumps in his chest, near to bursting, his tongue tastes like blood, and his eyes burn with the need to close them and never open them again, but he doesn’t want to miss a second of this.

“She…” 

Dee shakes his head. “Come with us, my Prince,” Dee says oh-so-softly, offering a hand to the Prince. “Shake off her lies and let us save the world before anyone gets hurt anymore. We can do it… together.”

The Prince stares at the hand and Remus, for all that he wants to punch the guy in his teeth, wants to rip out his vocal chords, wants to bury him alive, exhales giddily with Dee when the superhero takes Dee’s hand.--

--but he doesn’t have a chance to figure it out because Dee is lunging downwards at The Prince, so fast that Remus thinks if he hadn’t known it would happen he might have missed the movement entirely. One moment Dee is in the air, the next there’s a flicker of green light and Dee’s fist is--

What the fuck.

Remus hits the side of the news van, choking on blood that’s pouring from his nose and puddling in his throat where oxygen should be. His vision dances with static, buzzing in and out of focus, but he knows what’s going on: Dee’s fist came down on The Prince swinging with a velocity that might have killed a lesser man, but there was a flash of green, a slight side step, and suddenly Dee was on the ground grunting through the pain of a broken hand.

The Prince raises his rapier to Dee’s neck, millimeters from his skin, and Remus’s breathing shallows so sharply it gets clotted up with the blood as well. The Techie inches forward, his hands shaking as he tries to catch every moment of this nightmare. 

“Surrender, villain,” He says. “You cannot continue to heal yourself at this rate.”

Remus feels the scream trapped in his lungs, crushing against his ribs until he’s certain it will shatter outwards. He doesn’t… this isn’t… He didn’t see this. Why didn’t he see this? Why did Dee attack with his fist? How did the Prince know to side step? 

He can’t… It doesn’t make any sense. His palms tingle with the memories of futures that didn’t happen four years ago: shoving a body down the stairs, shattering a snowglobe against a temple, wrapping around a neck and squeezing for so long that his hand print follows Roman to the afterlife. Futures that didn’t happen based on a conversation that had but shouldn’t have. 

Remus’s head pounds, shooting pain from right behind his eyes, that mixes in with the ache from the tear gas. What happened? Why did it… why didn’t it...

“She is using you,” Dee spits up at the hero. “Don’t you see that?”

“You are blinded by your hatred and jealousy--”

“Oh please,” Dee hisses out. “As if I would deign myself to a motivation so cliché.”

“Snake,” The Prince says, but whatever else is drowned out by a strangled yelp when Dee shoves his injured hand up and catches the blade of the sword with enough force to knock it away from his neck. There’s a clattering of scales against metal that Remus thinks he heard once in a movie about slaying a dragon and Dee hisses out in pain as he vaults away to put distance between the two of them again, getting rid of his wings in favor of sharper claws.

“Darling,” Dee says, and it takes Remus a moment to realize he’s the one being addressed. “Enjoying the show?”

“If you aren’t careful... MARVEL is going to be stealing rights for this action sequence from under us,” Remus says, bringing a hand up to clutch at his chest and wondering for a second if it would make sense to tear open his ribcage so that his lungs would have better access to oxygen.

“Disney is a greed based cooperation that’s next on my list to take down, right after the FBE,” Dee says.

The Prince inhales sharply, angrily, offendly. “You would destroy Disney, you monster? I was going to have mercy on you but that’s too far!”

Dee spreads a hand towards the streets around them. “There are people in trouble, possibly dying out there and the thing that makes you upset is Disney?”

The Prince, at least, looks uncomfortable about that. 

“Re,” Dee says, “Lead me.”

The Prince steadies his blade, “I don’t know who you’re talking to but--”

--Remus doesn’t wait for him to finish. “Rush him while he’s talking, go low, and strong arm his legs from under him.”

Dee is moving almost before the words are out of Remus’s mouth and, god, does Remus never get tired of that. Of Dee trusting him, of Dee not hesitating, of Dee believing in Remus. Dee soars across the road, taking The Prince in a razor sharp slice: Dee’s left arm laid out and sweeping under The Prince’s sword to take out his feet. 

The Prince slams forward and hits the ground so hard that Remus thinks his face imprints on the asphalt.

Dee picks up the rapier and lowers it at the hero’s neck just as he rolls over bleeding from every orifice on his face. “It’s over, my Prince. Give up.”--

--Remus doesn’t wait for him to finish. “Rush him while he’s talking, go low, and strong arm his legs from under him.”

Dee is moving almost before the words are out of Remus’s mouth and Remus is so caught up in the jubilee of being heard that he almost misses the flash of green that flickers around The Prince.

“WAIT--!” Remus yells, but The Prince is jumping in the air doing a perfect flip over Dee’s attack that he shouldn’t have ever seen coming and definitely shouldn’t have been able to dodge.

Dee lands with a roll that brings him back to his feet. “Re, what was that?”

“I don’t know,” Remus says, spitting blood from his mouth. “Shit.”

The techie swivels to look at him again, at the blood trailing down Remus’s chin, at the unsteadiness of Remus’s stance. If it weren’t for the headphones the guy would have been able to hear everything already, and Remus isn’t sure if he’d run away screaming, or drop into a dead faint. He wasn’t even thinking about what the guy’s recording was picking up.

That’s a problem for another day. Assuming they make it through this one.

Dee lunges backwards out of the way of The Prince’s next attack, avoiding it without Remus’s help, and part of Remus is grateful for that. He can’t tell which is the terror of Dee being in a fight with The Prince still or the panic of not being able to see what’s happening anymore but he knows he’s drowning in both in a way that’s unhelpful.

Dee rolls under--

--The Prince’s swipe, millimeters away from an unwanted haircut. Remus can hear the heavy huffing of his breath, of the ache of Dee’s bones, the shake in his limbs from exertion. He kicks a foot to force the hero back, but the reprieve is short. The Prince’s charismatic stupid smile is gone replaced with a determination that makes Remus’s teeth grind together.

The Prince lunges forward, blocking Dee from escaping with a motion that swings upwards and across and reminds Remus of how he drew 7’s before his kindergarten teacher verbally humiliated it out of him. Dee’s face snaps to the side glistening with a new cut that digs through his scales and leaves him hissing in pain.--

--The Prince’s swipe and Remus’s mouth is moving as fast as he can: “He’s leaving his right side wide open. If you duck you can get the back of his calf and decrease his range of motion.”

Dee makes a noise that Remus thinks is grateful, hopes is grateful, prays-to-gods-he-doesn’t-believe-in is grateful. Dee is slower than Remus would have wanted him to be, but when The Prince drags his rapier through the air, it sails over Dee’s head and Dee’s claws slice through his calf muscle as Dee slips away.

“Mother of Pearls!” The Prince shouts, stumbling. “How did you…?”

Dee heaves several breaths, flexing his claws dripping with patches of scarlet. “Finally.”

“Villain!” The Prince snarls.

“We’ve been over this, honey. It’s Basilisk,” Dee shows off his fangs. Remus thinks the relief is hysterical, a gulp of fresh air after he’s been underwater for so long. 

The Prince snarls, something animalistic and Remus wishes he could show the whole world it: this is your Prince, this is your fake hero, this is the idiot in charge of everything and look how angry he is over a little cut. Remus has had worse than him and he’s never complained about it!

“ZEAL!” The Prince yells to the open air, “A hand, please!”

“Just one?” A voice responds from across the area, and Remus feels his blood go cold, his knees go weak, his mind go silent in a way it’s definitely not supposed to.

Remus doesn’t know how the man in the blue cardigan who looks like no one at all got all the way over there, but there he is crouching next to a fallen police guard checking for a pulse. He stands up at the call, looking vastly out of place in the scenery.

“Well, if my prince requests it!” He says with his voice drifting like a dream in the chaos. “I’ll give you both of them!”

“Dee, move. Move, NOW!” Remus yells just as the character raises their hands and white lights begin to flicker on the fingertips. They look like stars, like spheres of sunlight, like little harmless rays that probably would feel nice, but Remus can still hear the sound of Dee’s body hitting the ground in a future that he stopped, a future he prevented, a future he does not ever want to see happen again. 

Dee throws himself into a back handspring and twists himself over the beams of light, and Remus can’t catch his breath anyway. 

“Do I want to know what those did, dearest?” Dee puffs out. 

“Bad,” Remus says.

“Delightful,” Dee says, taking another step back, except that he’s sandwiched between the Prince and that guy-- god the partner. Remus can’t believe they forgot about them, the mysterious person only alluded to, and never seen, except that now Remus is seeing him and can’t look away. Of course it would be someone who can take away powers. Of course it would. 

Remus is going to vomit.

 If Dee turns his back to the Prince he won’t see the sword, if he turns his back to the partner, he won’t see the angle of the rays; Remus has a sinking feeling in his… everything all of a sudden.

“I’m running out of patience, Dragon,” The Prince says.

“How hard is it to remember the term Basilisk?” Dee prods.

The Prince sets himself for another attack. “You’re trapped. There’s no way out. Come quietly and we can get you medical attention and discuss whatever it is that you deemed necessary to harm hundreds for.”

“Will that be before or after Dragana Witchall has my head removed from my body?” Dee asks. 

“If you just talk to her--”

“Heh.”

Remus feels the inside of his ears pop from pressure he didn’t know he was experiencing. That voice-- coming from everywhere and nowhere and why doesn’t anyone else hear it? 

“--most of my life actually,” Janus is… no that’s Dee. Remus knows that’s Dee talking. Who is Janus? The pain in his head is sharp, like a nail driving directly into his cranium, like brain surgery without putting him under, like dying but without the death part. He doesn’t know Janus.

Does he?

“She’s not who she says she is,” Dee finishes. “She’s--”

“I’m growing tired of your stubbornness,” The Prince says in an astounding moment of pure irony that twists Remus’s intestines into knots and loops them around his neck like a noose. “Surrender with dignity, snake.”

“We don’t want to hurt you,” the partner, Zeal, adds.

Dee doesn’t say anything to them. Remus focuses on the sound of his breaths, on the movement of his chest, on the phantom feel of Dee’s lips on his own from so long ago. Remus’s brain whispers about rain on a balcony, about fire in a mall, about gunshots in a casino, but he reaches past that, past everything, past the past itself.

His domain is the future. 

“Are you at your limit?” Dee asks him. “I can do this by myself if I must.”

“What’s a limit?” Remus says. “How much blood is a human supposed to have again?” 

“More than that, dumbass,” that voice says, and Remus blinks because Dee’s head tilts and he looks like he heard it too.

“Virgil,” Dee says in a tone Remus can’t describe. “Come to play?”

Remus is vaguely aware of the techie in purple shifting forward, leaning towards the fight, still shaking from every limb. For a moment, he thinks that maybe this mysterious voice is coming from him, but it’s too clear, too loud, too calm to be from someone wearing a face mask and shaking the way this guy is so far away from where Dee is having his standoff.

“You made a friend,” Virgil, whoever he is, from wherever he is, says. 

“I got lonely,” Dee says. “And bored.”

“Bored enough to become public enemy number one?”

“Enough, Basilisk!” The Prince yells, “Give yourself up! You’re surrounded and you have all of this carnage to take responsibility for! Your partner may continue to hide in the shadows, but you can tell him we will find him and bring him to justice as well!”

“Or her! Or them!” Zeal tacks on. “Or xem-- we’re all inclusive here.” 

“Right!” The Prince says, self righteously. He looks a lot like he does on TV and Remus’s fists itch to punch the screen all over again. “Surrender and end this.”

“You know what will happen if you do,” Virgil’s voice says.

“If the peanut gallery could please keep out of this,” Dee hisses. “That would be nice. I’m thinking.”

“Thinking just like you were when you leapt across that stage?” Remus asks. “Or actually thinking this time?”

Dee makes a face that’s vaguely affronted, a dusting of pink over his ears that Remus might have thought was from exertion if he didn’t know better.

“Do you want an apology?” He asks and Remus is only semi thinking about saying yes you motherfucker, when we get out of this I’m going to strangle you myself because somehow you don’t know what you mean to me at all and you just keep dying and cannot handle watching that again, how did I ever do it the first several billion times? 

“I think an apology is a good start,” The Prince says.

“I was not talking to you,” Dee snaps. 

“I’m giving you fifteen more seconds, snake,” The Prince says, anyway. “Put your hands up and get on the ground or I will put you on the ground myself.”--

-- Dee doesn’t answer, still mulling one of his brilliant plans, or maybe waiting for stage directions from Remus who still hates the theater and everything that comes with it. The hero shifts as the seconds tick, inaudible and yet unmissable. Then The Prince sighs in disappointment and levels his rapier. 

“You leave me no choice,” he says. “Zeal.”

The man in the blue polo grins again at the call and flicks his hands towards Dee, with balls of white light dancing on his fingertips. Dee launches into the air with his wings flicking out, but the Prince is behind him in the next instant jumping and plunging his blade through the thin skin layers between the bones. 

Dee lets out a scream as the blade tears down and out of the wing, like a knife through a sail, like scissors through fabric, like an earring being ripped out of an ear. He flings downwards and hits the ground again and before he can think of moving a soft beam of white light hits him. 

Dee convulses, he yelps, he tries to get up, but the Prince’s boot is on his chest pinning him down again and Dee’s out of tricks.--

--Dee doesn’t answer, still mulling one of his brilliant plans, or maybe waiting for stage directions from Remus who still hates the theater and everything that comes with it.

“Zeal is going to shoot a beam, if you take the sky the Prince gets your wing.” Remus says.

Dee nods, and then without giving anyone any warning he launches towards Zeal, who doesn’t loose his stupid smile at all. He raises a hand like he’s going to high five Dee, and those white lights come out and suck away Dee’s transformation immediately. He lands on the ground at Zeal’s feet, with the asphalt tearing through his human flesh like it’s butter. --

--Dee doesn’t answer, still mulling one of his brilliant plans, or maybe waiting for stage directions from Remus who still hates the theater and thinks he hates it even more now. If he ever has to see another theater he’s going to set it on fire.

“Zeal is going to shoot a beam, if you take the sky the Prince gets your wing. Don’t fucking get near Zeal, dumbass.”

Dee nods and then without any sort of warning he lunges at The Prince, who parries him with his blade. The scales meet metal again and Dee hisses like he might spit venom, but the superhero grunts and forces him back with brute strength and not even Remus screaming give him enough time to prevent The Prince from shifting them around so that Zeal’s white beams of light hit Dee’s back.--

-- Dee doesn’t answer the hero.

“Can’t you turn into a beetle or something? Fly out of this,” Remus says. “Please.”

“That hopeless?” Dee asks him. “Okay.” And then he takes a deep breath and his form ripples and waves and pulls in on himself, like the reverse magic trick of pulling a rabbit out of a hat. 

“ZEAL!” The Prince shouts, and the white lights are flying towards him, even as Dee turns into a beetle and takes to the air. Remus screams as Dee is hit, even in such a small form, even at such a far distance, even against those impossible odds.--

--Dee doesn’t answer and Remus feels like throwing up. They need to win this, they need to get out of this, they need to escape, but Dee can’t and Remus can’t make him and… and... 

And there’s a glint of metal in the corner of his vision.

“You leave me no choice,” The Prince says, and Remus barely hears him because he’s staring at a glock of some police guard long lost and long forgotten and long waiting with the safety off already. 

This is a bad idea. Remus knows this is a bad idea. Its a bad idea, bad idea, bad ide--

-- Dee doesn’t answer and Remus is twenty-one years old with nothing to lose if Dee dies.

“Take The Prince, he’ll parry, but you’re stronger.” Remus says lunging for the gun on the ground because he’s insane and courting Death as much as he’s courting Dee. He's never held a gun before. It feels bad in his hands, feels weird, and strange and not at all like what he thought it was going to feel like.

Dee nods and lunges towards The Prince and Remus points his new glock at Zeal. The trigger practically pulls itself. Isn't that crazy?

The kickback is a shockwave that flies through Remus’s arm making it numb and the sound explodes just like his heart does in his chest. The shot goes wide, but it’s close enough to Zeal that he lets out a scream and his little rays of white light sail over both Dee and the Prince. Remus slams back into the side of the van out of sight of the heroes while his body shakes and his face pulls into a grin for a reason he can't explain. The techie is on the ground, covering the muffs of his headphones to press them tighter to his head.

“PAT!” The Prince shouts. 

“Was that you?” Dee asks. “What the fuck, Re!”

Remus shoves his hands over his nose, stifling the blood flow as much as he can, teargas be damned. His head is thrumping with pain, and Remus wants to scream. His vision is blotchy and patchy like the world’s worst video game. He can barely breathe between the metallic taste in his mouth and the liquid flowing out his nostrils . It’s like throwing himself at a brick wall and expecting a different outcome; he’s at his limit, that limit that Dee told him not to cross, that limit that he’ll gladly ignore if it means that Dee will get out of this safe and sound and--

And he can see a flicker of green light and Dee gasps right before The Prince manages to get under his distracted guard and haul him up in the air. Then there’s green light flickering, dancing, flashing and fading and Dee’s body hits the ground so hard it forms a crater around him and--

-- The Prince steps forward gracefully, gallantly. He walks like he’s standing on the air, filled with an energy that Remus thought only came from drinking five Five Hour Energies and besting Death at hand to hand combat even with that torn up leg. His rapier sways through the air pointing down at Dee’s body.

“Tell your partner to surrender,” the hero commands. “Now.” 

“I didn’t... expect him to do it either!” Dee says and it’s funny, Remus almost thinks that Dee is mad at him. That can’t be right! 

“Give up, Basilisk.” The Prince says again, “Before someone gets hurt.” 

Dee spits a mouthful of blood on the hero’s shoes. “People are already hurt! You are leading them to be hurt more, Prince! The FBE won’t help anyone!”

The Prince hesitates, maybe even uses that rusty brain in his head. “I…You truly believe that? Why can't you just trust me at my word?”

“What is the worth of your word?” Dee shoots back, scales glittering on the side of his face. “Anyone can go back on their words!”

Remus clings to the side of the van with white knuckles, tasting blood on his tongue and in the back of his mouth and on his lips. The hero is thinking, he’s thinking, and Remus thinks that maybe he can cross the distance quick enough to tackle the hero away from Dee and he’ll have a chance to escape.

“That is true,” the hero says. “Perhaps a sign of trust is then in order, then.”

Remus freezes.

The Prince reaches up slowly, plucking at the mask.

He should look away. Remus can’t look away.

Because he knows…he knows that face. He recognizes it. He’s seen that face a hundred million times before. He knows those lips, those brown eyes, that crinkle between his eyebrows and those unruly curls. He knows those cheekbones, and that jawline and the way that head tilts back when he laughs, and curls forward when he cries. Remus knows that face because he’s seen it every time he’s looked in a mirror, he’s been haunted by it for years now, been terrorized in the nights by that face. He’d seen that face covered in blood, that face gasping for air, that face crying and begging and anything to get him to stop, that face staring at him with a hateful vengeful ugly expression and saying “You can’t see the fut--”--

Remus leaves a bloody handprint on the hood of the news van as he vaults it and the techie in purple. His lungs scream in agony, but Remus can’t hear it at all. His heartbeat is thunderous, yet even that is nothing compared to the bloodlust washing over his mind.

Dee’s head whips up, his mouth moving in some type of exclamation, but it doesn’t matter.

Nothing matters other than the rage in his head, in his body, in his veins that floods his limbs with the need to move.

The Prince hears him coming and his rapier comes up in an offensive attack, that Remus blocks with his left forearm. The blade sinks into his flesh and blood pours down Remus’s elbow and on the asphalt and the only thing he can think is that falling off the balcony, that getting run over on highways, that falling asleep in a motel bathtub with bloody keys in his hands, all hurt a hundred times worse than this itty, bitty little scratch.

He laughs.

"Hey Roman!" Remus says in a parody of a delighted tone, and The Prince stumbles back. "It’s been a while!"

[Chapter Eight]

[philliamwrites]

killing me softly with his song | (Childe / Reader) [chpt.02]

Fandom: Genshin Impact

Pairing: Childe / Reader

Tags: #fem!reader, #from childhood friends to lovers, #reader is a fatui agent, #slow burn, #unresolved sexual tension, #mature language, #forbidden love

Words: 3.5k

Summary: "Lybuov zla, polyubish i kozla,“ sighs your sister as she wipes off the table, but that makes you feel even more miserable. Falling for a goat might save you from an actual heartbreak by Tartaglia’s hands.

Notes: Part 1

Masterlist

Chapter 2

At the barracks’ canteen reigns the unspoken rule that no one is allowed to cook borsch, and trying to do so is punished by cleaning all windows with cold water only in the middle of the night. Can’t see anything because the nights at the outskirts of Zapolyarny are blacker than out in the taiga? Tough luck. There are so many different recipes as there are families out there, and everyone has their very own way to make it. Fatui agents have brought each other to the hospital wing over fighting which recipe is the best, therefore a couple of years before Tartaglia and you enrolled, this rule was established.

Sitting out in the cold of Jaroslawk at four in the morning, you’d kill for a hot bowl of your mamochka’s borsch—the best in Morepesok even though Tartaglia begs to differ, but the only problem with his claim is that he is fucking wrong.

Through your binoculars you see everything is quiet and dark on the other side of the compound, which is a good sign. Unfortunately, good also means very boring. You’ve been lying in the exact same position for nearly three hours now: on your belly, elbows slightly propping your upper body to see the Baron’s estate that’s embraced by a forest like a mother cradling its child. Tales have it if you make even one little mistake inside those cold brick walls, Baron Igor would personally see to it that you don’t leave these woods alive and whatever his hellish guard dogs don’t finish eating up, his servants would send to your family as a small parting gift and warning to get as far and fast away as possible.

If only he were as thorough covering his tracks as he is scaring people, but Baron Igor has never really excelled at multiple things and now, months after the first little bird brought some interesting insight, you can’t wait for Baron Igor to finally slip and confirm the rumours about him selling information on one of Il Dottore’s gun research labs to a spy from Sumeru. Intel has it exchanges usually occur once every full moon and with the orb now hidden behind thick, black clouds, this is the last chance to get some evidence before the ship leaving to Sumeru carries whoever deserves a knife in their windpipe back to their God of Wisdom.

Baron Igor has messed up, got too arrogant, and now you and your team are here to make sure he eats up his mess. It wasn’t easy to infiltrate his mansion. Mitsuki only passed because you took out two of the other contesters for one of the Baron’s favourite restaurants down in Nowobirsk. That man bows to greed and when introduced to the place’s new maître d’hôtel—the best of his kind, the most exotic to own during their flimsy ceasefire with Inazuma—Baron Igor acted swiftly and hired him. Mitsuki had gagged at those words while lieutenant Scaramouche had shown the patience of a man barely holding himself back from violence. Two days later, Mitsuki took his position as spy and head waiter of the Baron’s personal restaurant taking up the whole second floor in the right wing of his stone mansion.

“Fuck me, I look like a penguin,” Mitsuki had said on the night before his work began at the estate, glaring at himself in the mirror dressed in a sharply tailored tuxedo.

“Then we know who to call if Baron Igor decides to open a zoo,” Mikhail had said, but he was in no hurry to turn away his appreciative gaze from how tight Mitsuki’s black pants tugged his slim legs and ass.

That’s the team, Mitsuki, you and Mikhail—Lock, Shock and Barrel, one of your fellow division’s comrade likes to call you for unknown reasons, simply laughing to himself and shaking his head as if trying to get rid of a good memory. Though for all that Scaramouche is concerned, to him you’re triple double and a clusterfuck he doesn’t want anywhere near him or so help him Her Majesty the Tsaritsa, he’ll stake your heads and scatter your remains to the seagulls terrorising the coast of Port Odessa.

“He loves us,” Mikhail likes to joke, even though you aren’t sure the words love and Scaramouche should be used in one sentence.

“One day, he’ll kill one of us with his bear hands and feel nothing,” Mitsuki commonly remarks, sounding like whatever you’d do to receive such a punishment is probably ghastly enough to justify being murdered.

“His hat is pretty neat,” is usually your only contribution and they both look at you as if you’re crazy.

“Any movement?” a voice asks from your right. Mikhail shakes still fresh snow from his head and shoulders as he dugs under the narrow doorway, looking like a puppy trying to shake itself dry. Now that a year has passed since a Geo Vision user crushed his right arm and healers had to amputate it to save his life, he’s adapted pretty well to only one arm and hand at his disposal. He’s balancing a cup in his palm while holding two paper bags with his fingers and somehow makes it look easy. He rejoins you at the window, carefully placing the steaming cup and one bag in front of you. You hand him your binoculars so he can see for himself, and inspect your breakfast. “Do I even want to know where you found,” you peak inside the bag, “pirozhky at a time like this?”

“Couple of blocks down there’s this place. Really nice lady, gave me one for free and added a little extra to our coffee.”

You take a sip, and instantly begin coughing and pounding your chest as it goes down burning. “Archons, that’s disgusting. Who in their right mind puts Fire-Water in their coffee?”

“I know, right?” Mikhail beams. “It’s genius.”

It’s ghastly. You take another sip. Horrible, really. But it keeps you warm and awake. So maybe it isn’t that bad at all.

While Mikhail observes the area, you dig into your beef and onion pirozhky. There’s nothing fun about pulling an all-nighter but sometimes sharing a cup of coffee and eating warm food helps to get through them. Also knowing someone suffers with you. Sharing pain is gain, after all.

“Well, they sure like taking their sweet time,” Mikhail mumbles, getting a little more comfortable on the cold stone ground. He puts the binoculars away and digs into his own food. “What are we gonna do if nothing happens today?”

“Then we’ll come back next month and do it all over again.” Hopefully you don’t have to. Fyrva’snezh was two weeks ago but this winter started off particularly brutal. Two out of three units are still missing from their outskirts training and you don’t want to be in the poor lasses’ and lads’ shoes who are still at the infirmary recovering from severe hypothermia. “What worries me more is that Mitsuki might lose his sanity if he stays there another whole month.”

“Well, what doesn’t kill him makes him stronger,” Mikhail says, wiping his greasy fingers off his pants. “I just want to wipe that smug smirk off the Baron’s pig face.”

He and probably every citizen populating Jaroslawk. “Once Mitsuki locates the communication point, we’ll go in and neutralise the target if we can’t catch him alive,” you say. “Baron Igor will try and weasel his way out of it but so far all evidence stands against him. The rest is up to Her Majesty.” And the Tsaritsa is known for many things, but mercy isn’t one of them. That will show anyone else trying to make business behind her back.

“Do you really think Mitsuki will endure another month in that stupidly tight uniform?” Mikhail sounds like he very much wished for another month out in the cold like this if it meant Mitsuki would bless him for a while longer wearing his uniform.

You stretch your leg and kick him in his shin. “Don’t jinx this, Nozhyalensky,” you say. “No matter how good his ass looks in those pants, it isn’t worth freezing your own ass off out in this cold. If we have to extend our mission, I’m going to steal your coat and own it for the whole time.”

“You don’t care if I freeze to death?”

“I really don’t.”

He puts his hand on his heart in mock despair. “That’s harsh.”

It would be his own fault, no hard feelings. You sit in silence, sharing your scalding hot coffee. In the mansion on the other side, a light flickers on in the east wing. Mikhail shifts and makes a disgusted grunt. “I did not want to know the Baron is banging the Duchess of Pavlovich.”

“Might be good leverage in the future.” You quickly dot it down in your notebook, squinting at the barely illuminated page. “Especially if the Duke refuses to pay his taxes again. I’m sure we can get to him through her.”

More minutes pass in silence. Mikhail continues his watch while you start to mindlessly doodle a little Foul Legacy Child in the corner of your page. You wonder what time it is in Liyue. Is Childe also out on a mission or tugged in and sleeping well in a land that knows nothing of harsh winds and freezing nights. Does he spare a thought of home? Is he missing you as much as you miss him or has he already filled the gnawing void with faceless, warm women that comfort him at night?

“Heard anything from our comrades in Liyue?” Mikhail asks nonchalantly, but he’s always been the poorest liar of you three and it’s pretty obvious where this conversation is going. Part of you hungers for that conflict.

“They still can’t find whoever killed the Geo Archon. But Lord Childe might have located the Gnosis and has begun his infiltration.”

Chances are good he might succeed in another month or so, though from the letters you’ve received so far, it sounds like he might succeed fucking the consultant of Wangsheng Funeral Parlor before that. Tartaglia has never started anything serious with guys before, safe from occasionally drunk making outs, but new cultures could change a lot in you and it’s Tartaglia’s first time staying for so long in Liyue and meeting a man like this so called Zhongli.

Mikhail clicks his tongue in disgust. “I can’t believe this guy is over there for three months already and is still nowhere near finishing the job.” He spits at the ground and twists his mouth in a very familiar manner of annoyance—only usually this expression is meant for initiate Fatui members who can’t tell a shotgun from a sniper rifle.

“How can you still be mad at him for handing you your ass three years ago,” you say. A man’s ego is such a frail thing, thank the Tsaritsa for being a strong, independent woman.

“This isn’t about that stupid fight,” Mikhail splutters, red blotches creeping up his neck. His inability to lie is abysmal. “I don’t get how you stand that guy. His arrogance needs its own giant room to fit inside. Someone needs to knock him down a peg or two and maybe beat out this need to whore around as well—”

You move in a flash. Mikhail doesn’t have any time to react before he finds himself on his back, pinned down by your weight with a knife to his throat. “Mikhail, I love you like my own kin and you know I’d take a bullet for you any time,” you growl. “But speak another filthy word about Childe and I will cut off your tongue and feed it to street dogs while watching you bleed out like a slaughtered pig. Are we clear?”

You feel Mikhail’s chest rising and falling under your spread hand, his body warm, proof of his life. How easy it would be to take it from him, to warm the cold, dirty ground with his blood.

Mikhail’s dark eyes don’t give away anything. He’s holding very still, like a cornered animal faced with its hunter; don’t move and maybe it thinks one is dead. Eventually, he says quietly, “If you could see what an unlikeable, unpleasant person he really is, maybe...” He doesn't finish. There is no need to. You know very well what point he’s trying to make.

“I don’t need your supervision,” you say. “Or your pity.”

Mikhail barks a loud, humourless laugh. “Lassie, if I had an ounce of pity left for anyone else than myself, I wouldn’t be very good at this job, would I?”

You shift your weight. Mikhail groans as you put pressure on a wound a Pyro Vision user inflicted on him a week ago that hasn’t fully healed yet—a favour for Mikhail to prevent him from following his train of thought. You don’t know what is worse: His unrequited love for Mitsuki or Tartaglia and you knowing what you both want but can’t have.

Mikhail quietly says your name and gently lowers your hand. The sharp knife has bit into his skin just enough to leave a fine, red line on his throat. “All I’m saying is, I am not the bad guy here.”

He is right, of course. But that makes it even worse, because without a bad guy, who could you put blame on? Who would be the target of your frustration and your scorn? Who would pay for countless sleepless nights wasted alone or in a stranger’s arms?

If there is no good, no bad side, no villains or heroes to put blame on, what does that leave for you? Just the law. It is hard, but it is the law.

There is no one but yourself who carries the burden. Even knowing Tartaglia goes through the same doesn’t soothe the pain steadily growing in your heart. You’re like two stars gravitating to each other, seeking the sweet collision to finally become one and create something bigger, the most exquisite light in the endless black galaxy, but whenever you manage to come close to each other, other forces pull you apart.

You shift your position from towering above him to slumping back on Mikhail’s lap, your anger deflated like a balloon.

“Arguing with you is no fun,” you mumble, sheathing the knife back in its place inside your boot.

Mikhail arches one dark brow. “Learnt from the best. You don’t want to get into an argument with my mama.”

“Are you two leaving me out from a team bonding session?” comes a static voice from your left.

“Darling, we would never leave you out from a potential threesome,” Mikhail says back, a wicked grin flirting with his mouth.

“Blergh,” you groan in disgust and roll off him, grabbing for the plastic piece from where Mitsuki’s voice has sounded; Il Dottore’s newest invention, a voice transmitter agents use for long distance communication.

“So, how’s it cooking, good looking?” Mikhail asks, ignoring your eyes rolling back. “Anything new at the front?”

Mitsuki is silent for a moment. Somewhere, a dog barks. “I think someone might have tipped the Baron off.”

Immediately, you feel Mikhail's body tense next to you. “Do you need us to come in?”

Oppressive silence fills the room. Mikhail jerks, but before he can jump to rash actions, you grab his arm hard enough to bruise. He freezes, and you both stare at the voice transmitter in Mikhail’s hand.

A moment later, static crackles, and Mitsuki says, “I received a note on the caviar shipment. Roads are all clear, it should come in around seven in the morning.”

Mikhail relaxes, but a sweat bead rolls from his temple and disappears behind his black turtle neck sweater. He sags against you, exhaling very loudly.

A couple of years ago, after you three had been working together and hadn’t tried to kill each other as often as other teams, you guys had decided to come up with your own secret language for times like these. Mikhail had first complained about the hours put into learning it the most—the semantics always changing depending on what line of work you’d infiltrate—but eventually even he had agreed it was a pretty neat trick. What Mitsuki has said simply means all is in order and the mission is proceeding smoothly.

“Little fucker,” Mikhail grumbles, ruffling his own hair just to keep his hand busy. You agree. It feels like you’ve aged five years in those last five minutes.

That relief is short lived. A small explosion from the right wing inside the mansion lights up the night like a firework show. Mikhail is out of the window in a flash. You grab your rifle, keeping an eye on him as he crosses the street in a flash and climbs over the iron gate.

Two shadows tumble through the hole in the second floor. You sway your scope, laying eyes on Mitsuki as he wrestles with a cloaked figure. Purple sparks fly, clashing with crimson flames that rise skyward and turn into black smoke. At least something is according to plan even though your Cryo Vision would be more effective.

You watch them fight for a moment, unable to get a clear shot as both are short distance fighters. Mitsuki moves quicker than a flash, whirling two hatches over his head, parrying a deathly bow from the Sumeru’s Claymore. Mitsuki is smaller than most of his comrades. People like to underestimate him, but that’s part of the fun, according to him. Proving people wrong. He dodges another swift strike, rolling out of the way and giving you a clear sight at your target. But over his shoulder, Mitsuki catches your eyes and gives the tiniest shake of his head. Not yet.

You wish he could see the stingy eye you’re giving him right now. You’ve waited long enough out in this cold and your whole body shakes with the need to move, the need to fight. A quick look to Mikhail shows he’s fending off two of the Baron’s guards himself. Luckily, they can’t really hold their stand against a fully trained Fatui agent. He quickly takes out his opponents, closing in on Mitsuki and the Sumeru agent. Mitsuki has driven him to the edge of the forest. So that’s his plan. You wait until the spy is right beneath a long, thick branch, then pull the trigger. The shot is muffled by the silencer, slicing through the air with infused Cryo power. It hits its target, cutting the branch off. The Sumeru spy is too slow. When the branch buries him under its weight, Mikhail finally catches up to Mitsuki, and through your scope you can see him patting Mitsuki down for injuries. Mitsuki pushes him away, not hard or in a mean way, just enough to signal this isn’t the time. The job isn’t done yet.

Mitsuki advances the spy and kneels, looking for signs of life. He looks up, his dark eyes searching your scope. He holds your gaze, picking up his voice transmitter.

“I have good and bad news,” he says. “The spy is still alive, so we’ll get our answers. But now I’m pretty sure the Baron knows what’s going on.”

“Then don’t just stand there, someone go after him, quick!” you yell in your transmitter.

Before Mikhail dashes off, you hear him curse. “Lord Scaramouche is going to kill us.”

He will, considered this was supposed to undergo without the Baron noticing anything.

* * *

Dear little tygress,

forgive my horrible handwriting. I am still shaking from all the laughter your last letter gave me. Zhongli-xiansheng was actually worried for my wellbeing because I had choked on air and almost died. I swear, you will kill me one day, little tygress.

Speaking of little and potential lethal beasts, I’m surprised Scaramouche didn’t use your head as a toilet plunger. I really do think he's fond of you, little tygress. Any other team would be six feet under by now. You have to tell me your secret once I’m back. Scaramouche still doesn’t know I broke his favourite, ugly cup with the bear on the front from Fontaine, and I want to be prepared once he knows.

Everything is the same in Liyue, and at the same time, everything is changing. Rex Lapis’ murder is still unsolved, and I do enjoy watching the little traveller boy run around looking for answers. Once I return with the Geo Archon’s gnosis, dinner will be on me.

How are things at home? I hope Tonia hasn’t finished all mooncakes by herself again and saved some for the rest of the bunch. I can’t bear to hear Anthon cry again about me only sending sweets to Tonia and Teucer. Has the old man gotten in touch with you? He still doesn’t reply to me, but mama says he’s reading the letters. Maybe a bottle of Liyue’s Baijiu will loose his tongue, or hand for that matter. It’s almost as good as Fire-Water, promise.

Till next time and don’t get too much on little ‘Mouche’s nerves, otherwise there will be no room left for me.

Yours, Red Fox

__________________________________________________

please drop by my ko-fi if you enjoyed my writing!