#you can play fast and loose with the laws in this au

[dyinggirldied]

Undereage Superheroes On The Rise: A Morally and Ethically Cause of Concern?

It's supposed to be another clickbait news but it comes at the time when the existence of ghost was recently proved factual at a small town in Illinois along witha its dead teenage superhero, when the heroes of Paris and by large France accidentally revealed they weren't adults at all, not even close, when Spiderman was unmasked to be 16-year-old Peter Parker, when the Young Justice was wounded in a large scale attack.

Most of the people involved and not involved are not having fun.

(This is inspired by the Miraculous fanfic The Growing Pains of Child Soldiers by BloodWolf13, a fic which I recommend you read since it is very, very good. Hits all my whump and angst points)

[carpehistoryandthepens]

Legacy (what is a legacy?) Part 18

It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see I wrote some notes at the beginning of a song someone will sing for me

Hamilton, the world was wide enough. LMM.

one, two, three, four, Five, six seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen

Summary: Mike is 13. Born May 2009. Sid didn’t know he had a son. All Mike had was hope and a prayer for his and his half-sister’s safety.

(Sid is a dad of a teen he didn’t know about AU) Sidgeno.

Warnings: (for the total story) post-child abuse (all off-screen but it affects things and is spoken about often), learning how to parent, panic attacks, anxiety, based on the 22-23 season, that said last season when i wrote these tags originally, but hey, it takes me a LONG time to write, so now its no longer last season, OCs?, the realization about sexuality. Post breakups. Desperate lack of in-depth research for CPS in both PA/CA, melodrama?, kidfic, angst, slowburn, playing fast and loose with the law for drama/storytelling purposes.

-

Sid's lawyer was intimidating, and Mike wished he wasn't in her office. The office was much bigger than Mike had ever imagined from TV shows and movies. It was just as dark, though, with a lot of dark wood and leather-bound books. The woman wore a suit that looked more expensive than Sid's gameday suits. Her glare was more potent than his mama's when he got in trouble. She had this no-nonsense look that Mike was terrified of.

While she smiled politely at them and shook Mike's hand when he, Marisol, and Sid entered, it did not get Mike's nerves to settle down.

Sid's agent and Helena arrived just afterward. Helena had been very upset that Sid's agent would be included in this visit but hadn't been able to convince Sid otherwise.

Mike was worried but tried to put it away as none of the adults in the room lied or tried to talk down to him. They treated his words like they mattered; if they couldn't do what he wanted, Mike could ask and was then told why. Helena wasn't great at it, but Sid was. Sid's agent - Pat? - was the best.

It was so different to living with Aunt Cynthia and her husband that it was stunning. Knowing why something was happening was so novel. As much as he loved them, his parents didn't tell him why when he asked either often, but Mike had nearly been thirteen when they died. Maybe that would have changed as he grew up; Mike didn't know.

So much of their new life with Sid was so much… more than Mike's fear-driven wild dreams could provide. His dreams kept him going while traveling on Greyhound buses and trains from Anaheim to Pittsburgh on minimal sleep. Dreams and fear.

Mike didn't remember Sid's agent's first name or his lawyer's name at all, and at this point, he was too afraid to ask. Once all of them were present, the lawyer laid out the plan to keep Mike and Marisol in Sid's custody. She couldn't pull punches; much of what she said went over Mike's head. But he did his best to pay attention and remember the questions he wanted to ask.  What was it with Sid and having intimidating people on his team?

It sounded very expensive. Mike has no idea how he will be able to pay Sidney back for all of this. It will take years. Papi always said to pay back what you owe. And Mike will owe Sid a lot to ensure he can stay with Marisol. If it were just him, Mike wouldn't be so worried. Sid is his biological father. That's what family does.

If they care, at least they are not like his aunt and her husband. Since waking up the day after Marisol had her panic attack and listening to Sid and Helena talking about therapists for them both in another room, Mike realized why his parents didn't speak to his aunt. It wasn't because his mother had 'run away' as his aunt's husband put it once.

It was because his aunt and her husband weren't really family; they didn't care. They wanted Mike for some reason, but they never wanted Marisol.

Sid cared. He didn't give Mike up; he didn't know he existed. Sid's made it clear to him that he would do anything to care for his kid. Sid cares and is a good person, so Mike would love to be a good person back to Sid.

Except… Mike brought Marisol with him. That was more than Sid could have reasonably expected to care for. A biological son, yes; a bio son and an unrelated toddler? That was more than anyone was expected to care about.

That was the whole reason Mike ran away, to use Sid for Marisol's protection. Without having Marisol to protect, Mike might never have cared who his father was. That first night at Sid's house, Mike chose to be selfish. Because it meant Marisol was safe. Sid is doing a lot for them, and Mike somehow must pay him back.

Maybe if he makes the NHL…. No. he should stick to his parents' plans. Hockey would be a great way to help pay for college. Mike will just have to get a good job, one that is paid well.

"…contacting California's Child Protective Services." Sid's lawyer said. Mike turned back into the conversation. He would worry about paying Sid back once everything was settled. "They were willing to send me the case file. They also sent me a missing person's case. For Mike. Not for Marisol."

"What?" Sid breathed, his eyebrows raised in surprise, "Did they not find one to send to you?"

His lawyer shook her head, "It seems there wasn't one filed."

"They never cared about her," Mike muttered, primarily to himself. Most of the adults heard it, though. "Rodger hated her."

"I can see that," the lawyer agreed, not doubting Mike for a moment. Mike really wished he remembered her name. "Your old caseworker didn't seem to have much paperwork on either of you; she barely could recall the situation."

Helena sighed. "Probably was very overloaded with cases. There are never enough of us."

"That should be enough for now," the lawyer said, briskly moving on rather than commenting on Helena's words. "We have the children's interviews, their photographic evidence, and that's what the courts will use to decide."

Helena nodded, handing over a copy of her report they were submitting the next day. "I was also able to get the medical reports."

Mike flinched and then started as he felt a hand on his shoulder. Sid wasn't looking at him; his attention was still on his lawyer, but his hand rubbed soothing circles. Mike leaned into the touch.

A few days before the meeting, Helena had gotten Mike's version of events, including a visit to a pediatrician with Marisol. Helena had some of her coworkers take his statement so the courts could protect them. Marisol had shared her account – not that it was much – first.

Mike hated explaining repeatedly what had happened to them, but hopefully, this was one of the last times.

Between the interview and the examination, Mike was glad he wouldn't have to talk about this for a while.

Mike was finding it hard to believe they had been in Pennsylvania bearly more than a month, but they had, and Helena had made it clear that they couldn't push off informing CACPS anymore. The season hadn't even started yet. Sid stayed with Mike and Marisol every step of the way.

"The judge will review this, and I don't anticipate any issues." Helena continued. "She just wanted their statements."

"How long will this take?" Mike asked, trying to not sound winey. He wasn't stupid; it was going to take a long time. However, he also didn't know how long that would be.

He hated the exchange of looks from the adults they thought was above his head. "That's a complicated question," Helena said, hesitating to give him an answer.

Mike bit back a 'No shit.' Out of everyone he had met since arriving in Pittsburgh, she treated him most like a child, which was getting annoying. She had never lied to him, but he wasn't a little kid like Marisol was. He wasn't so young that he needed to be babied. "To be honest, expect several months before we'll have any results from the investigation."

"Oh," Mike said, all his anger deflating. That was less he expected.

"But," she continued, "If the judge rules in favor of you and Sid, you get to stay with him."

The lawyer said, "Your aunt and uncle would have to fight to investigate and then for custody of you both separately."

"Oh," Mike repeated, but he felt better. Papi said things like that take months, and it wasn't fast like it was on TV. It could be years, even.

Sid, who had been handed a large stack of paperwork when he walked in and filled it out on and off while the lawyer was talking, said, "I would fight. For both of you."

Mike smiled at him; he would be selfish once more. He believed Sid. Unlike Helena, Sid didn't treat him like a child who did not understand what was happening.

On the other side of the room, Marisol slowly reads a book to Pat, Sid's agent. The simple book was in Spanish, and Pat didn't seem like he knew what she was saying but knew how to say 'Gracias' and 'Por favor,' which was good enough for Marisol. That's as much as she knew how to read anyway. She sometimes got animals right, but not many, and mainly in English.

"Are you done with that, Mr. Crosby?" the lawyer said, gesturing to the papers. Sid handed the documents over and watched the lawyer flip through the pages. It didn't take more than a few minutes before she nodded, apparently satisfied the work was done. "I will fill this with the investigation report tomorrow," she said. "Mr. Crosby, as always, you'll hear good or bad news from me."

"Thank you so much, Elizabeth." He said, standing to shake her hand.

Elizabeth looked the most amused since they had walked into the office. "You have the interesting cases, Mr. Crosby."

Mike wondered about that, but instead, he took Elizabeth's hand when she offered it to him and shook it. "Thank you." He said, meaning it.

The lawyer just smiled, a shark-toothed sharp look that would have scared Mike, but she had just laid out a comprehensive plan to ensure he and his sister were safe. "You're welcome."

[bubble-popping]

so that drunz au completely consumed my life since I read it so obviously I had to write more for it

tw for blood, sharp objects, murder, gore yk all the typical Drunz Things™

So, they'd been a little reckless. The favor of a God tended to do that to people. Punz was no different.

News of their merciless killing spree spread quicker than expected. The bounty on his head doubled practically overnight. But they weren't too worried. For half his life he'd lived on the run, evading the law and consequences as well as they could dodge arrows. A few extra hunters didn't bother them.

Not to mention they provided a steady stream of sacrifices for his God.

They got cocky. Played a little too fast and loose around sharp swords and crossbow shots. He used to pride himself on leaving every battlefield the same way they'd entered: completely unscathed. However, with the power of a God behind him, he simply didn't see the point in that effort anymore. Some cuts and scrapes were negligible. If anything, the little scars they became were evidence he'd survived each encounter.

In hindsight, it was only a matter of time before this mindset got them into big trouble. That trouble came in the form of a particularly skilled group of bounty hunters.

Punz hadn't noticed the one lurking in the tree branches, too occupied by the twin swordsmen gunning for his natural weak points and the potion-wielder turning the very ground he tread deadly. An arrow lodged into their shoulder from behind, causing them to stumble directly onto a freshly sharpened blade, clean through their stomach. The second soon followed, penetrating him in the side.

The swords remained long enough for Punz to cough up blood. When they finally retreated, he promptly collapsed to his knees, dropping their own weapon and clutching their abdomen. One of them roughly grabbed a fistful of sandy blond hair, forcing Punz to look up at them, and he seethed.

No one made them bow except their God.

They knew He'd share the same sentiment.

"For how high that bounty is, we really expected more of a fight, Punz." One of the twins smirked down at him, leaning casually against the other.

"Following that god has made ya soft," the one gripping his hair remarked.

He didn't dignify their jeering with a response, instead beginning to mutter the incantation his God taught them a few days into their arrangement. A glorified distress signal, complete with the piercing of his nails through their marked palm.

Just as the last words left his bloody lips, a hand wrapped around his throat and squeezed, cutting off their oxygen.

"None of that. Your god friend can't save you now."

"With one job, we'll eliminate our biggest rival and-" Before the twin could finish, several green threads sliced through every inch of his body. In seconds, he crumbled into a heap of a million little chunks. His brother screamed, and that too was interrupted by the same thing.

Punz had to stop himself from falling forward without the support. They strained to see what happened to the others, but the blood loss decided then to make them dizzy and blurry-eyed. That damn arrow was more than likely tipped with some poison that accelerated the process.

Still, even as his strength slowly gave out, he felt completely safe.

"Oh, fuck, that's so much blood," a pleasantly familiar voice whispered in utter horror. Then, Punz was being carefully positioned to a sit on His lap. He looked terrified. It didn't suit His pretty face. "Punz? Punz, can you hear me?"

"Where's your smile...?"

Their God blinked at them, bewildered. "Smile?? You're bleeding out, idiot! Where does it hurt?"

Punz grunted as he gestured shakily to the wounds, responding through clenched teeth, "They got me in two places, and the arrow-"

"Okay, okay, don't move too much. Save your strength. I've got you." Their God's hand slipped under their cloak to touch the worst of the cuts. They could feel the strings slithering into the wound and stitching up the injured organs. It felt very strange at first, then waves of warmth and pure bliss made all his tense muscles go slack.

They relaxed in His arms, leaning on His shoulder, a mere puddle of a human. Nothing bad could happen to them here, shielded from the world by large, scaly wings.

At this angle, he got the perfect view of his God. His bright green eyes, pupils thin-slitted and entirely absorbed in His work. The freckles that littered His skin, heaviest at His cheekbones and nose. His full lips with the tiniest peeks of fangs, now pulled into a taut line in concentration.

Despite His order, Punz reached up to cup His face and tried pushing up the side of His mouth. Their God startled, work momentarily pausing before quickly resuming as He fixed them with a stern expression.

"What did I say? And have you been staring this whole time?"

"How can I not? You're just so beautiful."

His God rolled His eyes, shaking His head, though not enough for Punz to let go. "You could at least pretend to be subtle."

"Why would I do that? I'd never hide my love for you."

"Devotion. Not love," He corrected.

Punz's brow furrowed. "What's the difference?"

"One of those is the appropriate feeling for a god from a mortal. The other just... isn't practical."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You... Humans have short lifespans. You should spend it loving someone that..."

"That, what?"

"That... that's also mortal. That can handle loving someone with such limited time."

Punz made a soft noise of understanding. He'd heard this sort of belief from Him before, ever since the first time he told his God he loved Him. They were determined to prove Him wrong. Now cupping His face with both hands, soft and tender, they poured all the sincerity they could into their voice, "I meant what I said. Truthfully, I haven't loved before, not like this, but I have heard of it. If what I feel for you isn't love, then I think I've found something totally new."

They positively beamed to see the faintest hint of a gilded blush on His cheeks.

He scoffed, swatting Punz's hands away and moving to suture the wound on his side. "You're delirious from blood loss. Please, hold still and be quiet."

Certainly, it got harder to keep his eyes open, but they both knew that's not why Punz said what he did. But Punz could wait. Even if it took the rest of their life, they'd make their God see just how loved He was.

***

Perfect. Absolutely perfect. Everything was in place. The bushes were pristinely trimmed. The miniature puppet sat pretty on the ornately sculpted wood altar. The bodies strategically placed, tied to stakes. The only task left to do was spill their blood. Fresh sacrifices for his God.

Several weeks have passed since that fateful night. Since Punz's life was turned completely upside down in the best ways.

They recalled those hours with such fondness. To change from years of rolling his eyes and scoffing at the mere mention of the divine to thinking about his God every second of every minute of every day. From killing to survive to killing to thrive. In the blink of an eye, all their beliefs had been demolished like a shoddy shack against a hurricane. Not only were Gods real, but they were truly as ethereal as they always heard. At least, his certainly was.

Dream embodied perfection in every sense of the word. (They still got giddy at the knowledge that their God had given them His true name. The ultimate symbol of trust and respect.) Beauty, grace, intellect, speed, strength, and so, so much more. It would take Punz the rest of his life to list them all and they'd already made the promise to devote that precious time to serving his God.

Even better, Dream understood them. Dream recognized his skillset and praised them for it. Dream gave them a cloak when the cruel world had stripped them nude. Dream provided him with the one thing he'd been missing since the day they were born: a purpose. No longer did they walk this earth simply chasing the next high-paying job, merely collecting the gold and jewels by that point in his career.

Murder was sewn into Punz's very DNA. Death was how he entered the world, crying unaware while his mother took her last breath. His father never recovered, blaming his only child for the fate of his beloved. At the ripe age of ten years old, they killed their old man in self-defense.

Frankly, Punz was surprised he made it that long.

Odd jobs were the beginning. Anything for enough money to buy his next meal. Mercenary work was the natural succession. They didn't make a lot of friends, much too busy just trying to make it to tomorrow.

So, to learn that all their efforts had attracted the attention of a God? Punz felt like the king of kings. Finally, finally, he got the recognition he deserved. He wouldn't dare squander it.

The muffled confusion of one of their victims interrupted their thoughts.

Ah, right. They were in the middle of something important. How forgetful of him.

He walked to the first, reciting the incantation they'd memorized by heart, and used the dagger Dream had so graciously gifted him to slit their throat. The grass was soft and moist under their feet from the storm yesterday, dew glistening on the rose bushes like diamonds. Petrichor and a faint floral fragrance hung in the air.

The one that'd awoken screamed around her cloth gag. He decided to save her for last. Dream mentioned something about souls tasting sweeter the more they suffered at some point.

Blood splattered on their face and cloak when he cut too deep on one of them. Thankfully, their concerns over dirtying the clothing were long quelled. Dream said He liked the look of blood sullying it.

Soon enough, Punz stood in front of her, the woman--who he recognized as the head priestess--now fully alert and absolutely terrified judging by the sheen in her big green eyes. Almost as green as Dream's. He wondered how Dream's eyes would look when He saw what Punz accomplished.

A few days ago, he'd discovered another group that claimed to worship the God of Chaos. More so-called followers. Punz instantly saw right through them. Their sacrifices were laughably mediocre. They offered animals. Dream loved animals! All their chants were wrong, the symbols they used were wrong, everything wrong!

Naturally, Punz could not let such an injustice continue. It was becoming disturbingly clear that no one knew how to properly worship their God. A pity, because he believed his God deserved all the followers in the world, but not if they were so incompetent.

They said their incantation louder than the last times, grabbing her by the hair and making a point to hold eye contact while his dagger plunged into her stomach. He dragged the knife up, slicing through muscles and organs, and smiled as her sobbing grew louder and her eyes squeezed shut. With a twist, they angled the blade to her left breast, hearing the grind of bone against the metal. They peeled back the skin, cut away the fibrous tissues, and slid their fingers under her lung to grasp her heart--a difficult task due to how slippery his hand was from all the blood. With a strong tug, he ripped the still beating organ from her chest. The last thing she saw before her head limply fell forward.

After that, Punz walked to the altar and crushed the heart between both hands over the puppet that sat on its smooth, lacquered surface. Red liquid drenched and stained the wooden doll, chunks of soft flesh landing in its false hair. A puddle quickly grew around it, Punz's way of returning the favor. The doll, designed in Dream's likeness, was a gift after that almost lethal encounter with those bounty hunters. It served as both an excellent cuddle buddy and a way for Dream to know what was going on at all times.

"You've gotten quite messy with your sacrifices, Punz."

They lit up like a kid on Christmas. Punz turned, a Cheshire grin on his face and blood still dripping from his fingers. "My Lord! I didn't expect you so soon!"

"I've come to know big sacrifices like this mean you want to show me something. What have you done this time?" Dream tilted His head, smirking playfully and crossing His arms. Once again, He blessed them with the privilege of seeing His gorgeous face. It was happening more and more, and Punz fantasized about what it could mean.

"Do you recognize any of these people, my Lord?" They asked, approaching slowly, watching for any signs that Dream didn't yet want him close. His body language was a lot easier to read without His typical cloak, now merely donning simple loose fabrics around his hips and shoulders.

His God scanned the bodies before shrugging. "Not particularly."

"I knew it! Nothing but liars and false prophets, the lot of them! Barely even martyrs, how pathetic. You wouldn't believe the things they did in your name, my Lord. They completely twisted what it means to worship you!"

Dream hummed. His lighthearted air dropped along with His smile. "Your ramblings are even more nonsensical than usual. How much sleep did you get last night?"

"Sleep?" Punz paused. "I could not sleep. There was too much to do. And, truthfully, I-I was so excited to finish all this for you and see your reaction. You told me you thought roses were the prettiest flower, right? So, I figured what better sacrificing spot than a rose garde-"

"Punz. Come here."

They didn't like that tone. Nonetheless, he got closer until he stood just a foot away. "Yes, my Lord?"

"I appreciate your efforts. The roses are lovely and the sacrifices are nice as always. However..." He brought His hands to cup either side of Punz's face and the human melted immediately. "Worshippers that ignore their own needs are entirely useless to me. So, as your God, I command you to..." Punz steeled himself, expecting the worst. A useless worshipper deserved nothing more than death in their opinion. They only prayed Dream would make it a quick one. "Please, take a nap."

Punz blinked at Him. "A... nap?"

"Yes, a nap."

"But, I'm not tired..."

"Then I will lay with you until you fall asleep."

"You'll lay with me?" He questioned, so full of unabashed hope.

"If that'll help-"

"Yes! Yes, that would be wonderful."

Together, they settled against a nearby tree, Dream's back to the trunk and Punz laying atop His plush thighs. Dream's skin felt so much warmer and softer than that of His puppets--though he cherished them just as much. Normal pillows would probably be ruined for them now.

"I'm sorry, my Lord. This must be such a waste of your precious energy..." Punz murmured in a remorseful tone, fighting the strong urge to play with Dream's long blond waves that cascaded from beneath His hood.

"Hush now. This isn't about me." Dream closed Punz's eyes with a drag of His fingers before combing through their hair. The human easily relaxed under His touch.

"You're too kind to me, my Lord..."

"You're not kind enough to yourself."

"My sincerest apologies. I've disappointed you... I will do better, I swear it on my soul..." Punz's sleepy mumbles continued, but Dream paid them no mind. He simply continued playing with his hair, admiring the subtle contours of his face and how the rays of sun highlighted the gentleness of each slope. He thought about Punz's refusal to wear anything except the cloak He gave them those many weeks ago, now dirty and bloodied and stinky, until Dream made him a full outfit. And He mulled over how careless Punz was with their health, even barring the bounty hunter incident.

Most of all, He worried that He wasn't able to fix any of it. His threads could slice through flesh like butter and stitch it back together as if nothing had happened, but His threads could not combat these natural processes. They were powerless against the basic needs for food, water, and rest. He could not cure Punz of being human, of being mortal.

At least, not on His own...

No, surely Punz wouldn't agree to that. This was temporary, a kind of honeymoon phase. He just rode the high of being favored by a God. Soon, they'd realize what a terrible burden it truly was, what a burden Dream was.

Dream had long resigned to this knowledge. It'd happened before. In the end, all mortals were the same, prioritizing themselves above everything else. (They had every right to, really, what with such fleeting lifespans.)

Yet... Here this human was, losing sleep and sanity solely to make a pretty spot for sacrifices to Him. Dream could feel it; the dangerous fondness growing in His body that only worsened with each new show of devotion. His last contract utterly crushed Him. It taught Him how to cry. He could only imagine what He'd learn if this went on...

Dream plucked the puppet from the altar with his threads. A mere wave of His hand flicked all the blood off. Then, He placed it in Punz's hands where they soon hugged it to their chest with the sweetest smile.

He was too selfish. To be loved felt too good. And to be loved how Punz loved Him... A better feeling simply didn't exist.

He'd indulge as long as He could. The inevitable hadn't yet come to fruition. Dream could cherish this, for now.

[madamegemknight]

I've finally watched the Muppets 2011 with my dad, and it was a blast!! I love its sense of humor (seriously, that Muppet man joke had me CACKLING), and it's so heart-warming in its simplicity and having a good time despite the trials the Muppets went through... I feel like I can't wipe this smile off my face (ehe)

Do you have any other Muppet or puppet media you'd recommend? I thought I'd ask you since you're the resident puppet expert, and I've been wanting to get into more puppet-related stuff :P

OH YAYYYY I’m so glad you liked it!!

And I do have other Muppet/puppet media I would recommend, thank you so much for asking (and gosh I am incredibly flattered you consider me the resident puppet expert). This is going to be LONG (sorry about that in advance), so under the cut it goes!

First off, I’d recommend the sequel to Muppets 2011, Muppets Most Wanted! It’s about the Muppets going on a world tour after getting back together in the previous movie, only for a criminal mastermind named Constantine (who looks exactly like Kermit) to hijack the tour, sending the real Kermit to prison and pretending to be Kermit so he can hide from the law and use the tour as a chance to steal the Crown Jewels. It’s a really great comedy heist that’s also an INCREDIBLE musical, and it has the same humor and sense of heart that Muppets 2011 has. I haven’t seen it in a while, but I have incredibly fond memories of watching it with my sibling when we were younger, and I think you would really enjoy it.

I would also recommend the original Muppet Show! I haven’t finished watching it yet (I’m on season 4 of 5 at the moment) but it’s a really fun show that serves as a love letter to old vaudeville theater and is just consistently entertaining. There’s no overarching plot and you can pretty much watch any episode in any order, though I would suggest that if you’re interested in checking it out, you watch the Harry Belafonte episode first - it’s regarded by a lot of fans (including me) as being the best episode of the series, and gives a very good idea of what the rest of the show is like.

(Also I HIGHLY recommend you watch the pitch reel for The Muppet Show, which you can find on YouTube here. It’s not essential viewing by any means, but it’s very funny and gives a bit of context for what the field of entertainment was like at the time the show was pitched)

The original trilogy of Muppet films are also absolutely stellar. The Muppet Movie is the story of how the Muppets got together, The Great Muppet Caper is essentially an AU where Fozzie and Kermit are brothers working for a newspaper and trying to prove Miss Piggy innocent of a jewel robbery, and Muppets Take Manhattan is essentially an AU where the Muppets were all friends in college and are trying to put on a show in New York. The original trilogy films are really fun in my opinion because they play fast and loose with what’s real and what’s fake; Kermit admits at the beginning of The Muppet Movie that it’s only an approximate retelling of how the Muppets actually got together, and the other two movies in the trilogy are telling completely separate stories than the main Muppet timeline, with The Great Muppet Caper even having an entire song devoted to telling the audience that it’s just a movie and that it isn’t actually canon. They all have INCREDIBLE soundtracks, too, the songs from these movies are some of my favorite Muppet songs ever.

Fraggle Rock isn’t really considered a piece of Muppet media anymore, since when Disney bought the rights to the Muppets they didn’t bother buying it as well, but it was originally a Muppet production and all of the stuff I watched as a kid referred to it as a Muppet production, so I’m counting it as a Muppet production still lol. Fraggle Rock is an absolutely amazing show on all levels; the puppetry is great, the songs are all stellar, the characters are so well-written, and despite being a show aimed at kids it never talks down to its audience, handling serious issues like death and prejudice with the respect they deserve. It’s probably best to go into Fraggle Rock as blind as possible (unlike The Muppet Show, there is an overarching story, though you don’t really find out that there is one until towards the end of Season 1) so all I’ll say is that it’s probably one of my favorite Muppet productions ever and that the finale, without exaggeration, made me cry for 30 minutes straight. There’s also a Fraggle Rock reboot called Fraggle Rock: Back to The Rock, and while I personally don’t think it’s as good as the original series, it’s still REALLY amazing and you can tell that the team working on it really cares about the og series. If you do end up watching Fraggle Rock, I’d recommend the reboot as well!

Getting into a bit more obscure territory here, but Tales From Muppetland: The Frog Prince is very near and dear to my heart. It’s a Muppet retelling of the Frog Prince fairytale, with the twist that the princess has been cursed by the same witch that the frog prince has been cursed by! The relationship between Prince Robin and Princess Melora is really cute, and it’s clear that the two of them really care for each other. I love the changes that it makes to the original fairytale, too; I mentioned the twist of Melora also being cursed, which gives her and Robin the chance to bond and leads to a very sweet song about finding someone who understands who you are and what you’ve gone through, but the story is also altered so that Robin explains why he needs Melora to kiss him instead of hiding the fact that he’s a prince from her - she doesn’t believe him, but I’m glad they made that change regardless. The witch is also a really fun villain! She’s reused from a previous Muppet production (Tales of The Tinkerdee) that was meant to be a pilot for a planned show but was never picked up, and I’m really glad she got a chance to shine in something that was actually officially released.

Sam and Friends is the first ever Muppet series, debuting in 1955, and while most of it is unfortunately lost media there are a couple episodes you can find online! I really like Sam and Friends (I have a book all about the making of the show), and I would recommend it both as a way to look at how far television puppetry has come and as just a genuinely very entertaining show in its own right - plus, the episodes are only 5 minutes long, so you can get through all the available episodes pretty quickly. My personal favorite episode is “Powder Burn,” a parody of the show Gunsmoke.

Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas is probably one of my favorite Christmas specials ever, despite me only watching it for the first time this past December. It’s a very earnest and emotional story about a family (Emmet Otter and his mother Alice Otter) living in poverty after the death of Emmet’s father. Both Emmet and Alice want to be able to give each other a good Christmas present, so they both enter the local talent contest on Christmas Eve in order to win the cash prize without telling each other. The soundtrack is done by the same man who did the soundtrack for The Muppet Movie (Paul Williams), and is just GORGEOUS - it manages to be silly and heartfelt at the same time, and does some really interesting stuff with the instrumentals, like having a kazoo solo during one of the more somber songs which somehow actually works! Like Fraggle Rock, it it isn’t afraid of tackling serious issues like death and poverty, and like Fraggle Rock, it made me bawl like a baby.

Finally, I would recommend both the documentary Of Muppets and Men and the Jim Henson Hour episode “Secrets of The Muppets” (I sadly haven’t watched enough of The Jim Henson Hour to give a proper recommendation, but from the little I’ve seen it’s very good). Both of these tackle the behind the scenes of working on the Muppets, with Of Muppets and Men being about the making of The Muppet Show specifically and “Secrets of The Muppets” being a general overview of the stuff the Muppets had done up to that point. I completely understand if you don’t want to see the behind the scenes workings of the Muppets (my mom doesn’t like seeing that kind of thing either and I get why), but if you do want to see it I can’t recommend these two enough. They do an excellent job at introducing and highlighting the skills of the troupe of Muppet performers, detailing specific tricks of puppeteering, and showing how everything comes together.

There’s definitely more Muppet media I want to recommend, but if I did so we’d be here FOREVER, and I still haven’t gotten to the puppet media recommendations! This list does serve as a pretty good starting point though - if you like Frog Prince and Jug-Band Christmas you’ll probably like the rest of the Tales From Muppetland specials, if you like one of the original trilogy of Muppet movies you’ll probably like the others in the trilogy, if you like Sam and Friends you’ll probably like the Muppets’ appearances on shows like the Ed Sullivan Show or the Jimmy Dean show that they made during that period, etc. Most of this stuff is on YouTube or the Internet Archive, but if you’re looking for something specific and can’t find it, let me know and I’ll do my best to locate it 👍

AND NOW AFTER 50 MILLION PARAGRAPHS WE ARE ON TO THE PUPPET MEDIA IN GENERAL RECOMMENDATIONS

I have to start this list off with my favorite movie of all time, The Dark Crystal. It’s a fantasy epic done entirely with puppets, and it is utterly gorgeous. All of the puppets are so detailed (I had the absolute blessing to see some of them when a local museum held a puppetry exhibit and the sheer amount of tiny details you can’t even SEE in the film are incredible), the world is so richly developed, the soundtrack is absolutely top-tier, and the amount of innovations in puppetry that this film causes are mind-blowing. There are traditional puppets, people in suits, radio-controlled puppets…the list goes on! I cannot recommend The Dark Crystal enough, it means so much to me and is probably the reason I’m so obsessed with puppets in the first place. It also has a prequel on Netflix called Age of Resistance - like the Fraggle Rock reboot, I don’t think it’s as good as the og, but it’s still absolutely stunning and the team working on it clearly cares about the world of the original film. Sadly, the prequel was cancelled after only one season :( I still recommend it if you like the film, but just go into it knowing that it’s gonna end on a cliffhanger.

The Little Shop of Horrors movie has an absolutely AMAZING puppet in the form of Audrey II, the film’s main antagonist. There are multiple Audrey II puppets, as the character grows throughout the entire film, and the biggest one required over 50 puppeteers to operate. There are no opticals or blue screens used for Audrey II (except for one scene at the very end of the film that they had to reshoot), and the effect is mind blowing. Little Shop is an absolutely incredible film overall, too, and thankfully doesn’t use Audrey II as a selling point or a gimmick - the puppet is incorporated very naturally into the film, and you appreciate the puppetry much more as a result.

I haven’t watched Labyrinth, but my sibling has and they really like it! From what I’ve seen of the puppetry, it’s really well done, and the movie seems very fun. Sorry I can’t give a better recommendation than that lol.

If we’re counting stop-motion animation as a form of puppetry (which I personally do considering the models are typically referred to as puppets), then I absolutely recommend checking out the work of LAIKA, which includes productions such as Coraline and Kubo and The Two Strings. I also highly recommend Wendell and Wild, made by former LAIKA supervising director Henry Selick, as well as Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. All of these films are stunning, and they absolutely deserve the hype that surrounds them.

This one is a bit more preschool-centric, but when I was very little I was OBSESSED with Johnny and The Sprites, and having watched a bit of it again recently, I feel it still holds up somewhat for older audiences. It’s a show about a musician named Johnny who moves to a house in the woods in order to focus on his music only to find that the house is next to Grotto’s Grove, where a species of fairy-like beings called the Sprites live. The series is focused on Johnny teaching the Sprites about human stuff and the Sprites teaching Johnny about Sprite stuff in turn. It’s a very cute and charming show :3

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum is Mystery Science Theater 3000, a show about a man trapped in space with 4 robot companions and forced to watch bad movies as part of an evil science experiment. It’s very goofy and very immature at times, and 99% of the time you need a guide to understand the stuff they reference, but it’s great regardless, and despite being very simple the puppets are really well-designed. Unfortunately, one of the characters is named after the ethnic slur used against Romani people in the show’s original run; it wasn’t done out of any intentional malice and the creators changed her name when the show was revived and viewers expressed their concern, but if that sours your opinion on watching the original show I completely understand.

Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared is a classic, and for good reason - both the original webseries and the tv show riff off of and play with the stereotypes of traditional children’s puppet shows, while still clearly respecting the art of puppetry and giving it their own unique spin. It’s definitely on the spookier/gorier side of things, so MASSIVE content warning if you want to check it out, but DHMIS is very good and I adore it.

And with that, this very very very VERY long list comes to an end. I definitely didn’t mention everything that I wanted to - there are some excellent pieces of puppet media, like Starkid’s Starship, that I just haven’t gotten around to watching and thus can’t properly recommend - but like with the Muppet section, I’d suggest using this as a starting point. There’s a TON of puppet media out there, and this is just scratching the surface!

I hope this list helps, and that you find something on here that you enjoy :D

[elvisabutler]

1k angst prompt “Did you really think it’d be that easy?” With your Elvis! Selkie au please

and never again i'll go sailing

fandom: elvis presley | elvis ( 2022 ) rating: t with brief implications of sex pairing: elvis presley x female reader word count: 4069 warnings: mentions of seal skin. me playing fast and loose with selkie myth. jerry is a werewolf. mention of gambling. mentions of the colonel. mentions of elvis's poor health. mentions of implied violence against other people. the reader briefly being concerned about violence against her. elvis's anger issues. fights in pools. author’s note: thank you for this anon! i apologize for how long you had to wait because i had a whole issue trying to write this. i do enjoy how it turned out and i hope if you're still reading this that you enjoy reading it! this was done for my 1k gala that's been closed since march, based on angst line “did you really think it’d be that easy?” this is based on/in the same universe as the selkie au i wrote. not required to read it but it makes things make a lot more sense. y'all know the drill, real elvis or austin elvis works fine for this despite the moodboard. also seriously anyone who likes this au earns my undying adoration. i truly never thought anyone would enjoy this let alone multiple people so it delights me to see it. i also thrive on comments as usual and welcome them into my askbox.

As it turns out detangling a man who signed away his life under what you feel were dubious circumstances at best was harder than it looked. It's a fact you shouldn't be surprised about, you figure, after all, since the very moment you laid eyes on Colonel Tom Parker across the table with your eyes peering at him over your cards. You knew he wasn't perhaps the most honest of men. You know that carny men were always slippery as snakes when it came to business. Once upon a time you had run into a lawyer who- while a piss poor poker player was actually quite competent at his job. Problem was that you never had quite clarified with him what branch of law he specialized in. His business card didn't even help on that front either. A voice inside the back of your head reminds you to point that out to the man. Partially out of the goodness of your heart but also in the interest of keeping the man practicing and under gainful employment, just so you could use of his services if need be beyond this particular day.

"His contract- it's- it's not ironclad, there's some wiggle room but it's a tricky one to get out of." You end up opening and closing your mouth several times before the lawyer- Aiden, you think his name is, takes pity on you. "You didn't think this was going to be easy did you?"

Your face hardens just slightly, a fact both Elvis and Aiden pick up on before Elvis lays a comforting hand on your shoulder and squeezes.

"Down, darlin'," he says before leaning closer so that only you can hear his next words, "down my yittle seal wife. Ain't gonna do us any good to have get angry and start barkin'. Leave that to me."

Your chest shrinks down from the puffed out position you were in as you side eye him, your words coming out a harsh whisper, "Hard to bark if you haven't been able to shift."

It's a cruel comment that you at least partially regret the moment it leaves your mouth. Elvis's face had fallen, hurt coloring his features before he plasters a smile on his face and looks over at Aiden. "Can ya help me though? Get me outta this mess- this lil trap he's got me in?"

Aiden looks between the pair of you and the papers in front of him and exhales. "I can but you have to give me a bit of time. Especially if you want it done right."

"I'm supposed to go on a tour in a month," Elvis frowns, "that too tight of a timeframe for you?"

"Depends, is your girlfriend going to be the one I'm having to tell that to or you?" He tries to quip but you aren't as good at gambling as you are without recognizing a person's tells. There is no way he can do this in a month but he isn't about to admit it to both of you.

You manage a hint of a smile before shaking your head. "Oh no, you'll be telling Elvis that all on your own. I won't have a thing to do with it."

Aiden looks at you suspiciously but manages to compose himself well enough to make it so Elvis doesn't notice- or doesn't care to pay attention. You figure he can sense that you know what he's saying is complete horseshit but for the sake of everyone involved it's best to just let it sit for now. It's best to let things sit and not press lest something blow up in everyone's faces.

The meeting goes for another ten minutes but it feels almost closer to an hour before you find yourself walking out with Elvis, his arm around your waist pulling you close enough that his nose buries itself in your hair as he murmurs to you. "Ya think he was lyin'? Think it's gonna be that easy for him to get it done that quick?"

"We'll see," you answer as you step into the car, not wanting to crush his hopes just this once, "we'll see."

In hindsight, not telling Elvis might have done more harm than good as you come to realize after the fourth argument in less than two weeks between him and the Colonel. You figure it's about the fact that he wants to be let go from the contract without paying an arm, a leg and Graceland to this man but tonight you realize the real reason. You realize that yes it's partially about that but it's also about you. It's about the skin.

"I told ya we've got it safe. She's keepin' it safe like she's supposed ta. Like ya were supposed ta, ya goddamn toad." Elvis's words are muffled through the door but you don't dare walk in to your shared room just yet. Perhaps it's because you want to spy a little or perhaps you're worried about his mood being taken out on you, not that he's necessarily given you the indication that he ever would do that. Normally he might somehow sense you're on the other side of the door but today he doesn't. It's silent for a moment except for Elvis's breathing and you almost make the move to enter before you hear another yell.

"Jus'- jus' lookin' out for me. That's fuckin' rich. Might've started out that way but keepin' the damn thing away from me damn near killed me. Ya would've fuckin' killed me if she hadn't-" There's a brief pause before he launches back into his tirade again. "No, I don't care that she lied 'bout it. Hell, she was gonna come clean. She- it ain't like 'Cilla, she's it. She's it and I wouldn't've known if she hadn't won it from ya. Jus'- Stop goddamn actin' like ya care. Stop actin' like my daddy."

The slam of the phone makes you jump on the other side of the door and finally has you turning the doorknob to get inside. Elvis is angry, it's clear as day from the tension in his shoulders, the way his chest- his glorious chest- heaves up and down with heavy breaths. It's clear as day and makes you feel surprisingly a little skittish as you walk up to him and place your hand on his shoulder.

"Calm do-" you start to say before stopping yourself, and making it so Elvis turns to face you, "breathe."

There's something fascinating in the way that Elvis relaxes at the request. You've known he doesn't take orders from anyone, truly and that if he doesn't want to do something and it doesn't involve his fans and performing? Oh, he won't do it. He is the quintessential ideal of you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. But this time, in this case he relaxes so quickly that you can't help but smile and move to give him a kiss in a show of thanks.

You open up your mouth to ask him what that was about before he cuts you off, seemingly reading your mind. "I knew he wasn't gonna wanna let me go. Knew he'd hate ya 'cuz even when- even 'fore I knew ya had my skin he wasn't a fan of ya. Made it worse when I took my skin back from ya," your eyes tighten and water at the memory as Elvis continues, "and he told me that it wouldn't be easy. Told me comin' back that bein' wit' ya'd be hard as anythin' 'cuz I wouldn't know if ya wanted me even if ya couldn't control me. Didn't have my leash. And he jus' won't let it go. Won't admit to himself that he ain't gonna have me footin' his gamblin' bill and lifestyle much longer. I- I'm real thankful for everythin' he did but-"

"You want to be free. You want to do what you want with your career." You finish off his thought for him and move to cup his cheek. "You know you're going to get that, right? You know I'm not going to let him drag you back here. We're gonna get you untangled and we'll make plans to go to let you tour and I'll come with you. You'll get to swim in the Northern European waters. Get to swim in the Mediterranean."

Elvis's jaw tightens as he grips your wrist. "Yeah. If I can 'member how t' shift. Mama'd be embarrassed to see me strugglin' this bad."

A laugh, a small little chuckle leaves your lips as you shake your head. "From what I've heard she'd probably be more mad at the Colonel for keeping you from your skin for so long to cause it. You- You're putting too much thought into it."

Elvis hums before moving away from you. "Ya- Baby, Darlin', ya don't get it. Ya my yittle seal wife and ya got a goddamn seal who can't show off. Wanna let ya have me swim beside ya, wanna have ya watch me swim circles 'round ya. Without that- I ain't a very good selkie am I?"

You want to tell him that's not why you're with him. That the skin doesn't mean anything to you. You want Elvis no matter what he is or how his body betrays him. You want him mind, body and soul because he's already captured yours wholeheartedly. It's hard to explain that though, hard to explain that even if he wasn't a seal you'd still have fallen for him. You're so lost in your own thoughts swirling around your head that you miss some of his words and only catch the tail end of his last words.

"Can't have ya leavin' me for someone else."

Your heart threatens to break in two at the implication, at the mere idea of leaving him for someone else. It's never been about the skin even if it might have pushed you two together in ways you're both so very unsure of. It's been about him wiggling his way into your heart through talking and kissing and coming back after he was given back his skin. It doesn't take you a minute before you're practically forcing your way into his arms, your arms wrapping around his torso and pulling him in tight. He needs to feel how your heart beats for him and how you may have never figured you'd fall for him of all the people but God, you have fallen so irrevocably in love with him that there's no turning back. He doesn't speak and doesn't move for a long while before you feel him nuzzling at your hair and hear the inhale of his breath as he murmurs a few words.

"Promise me you won't take home away."

Promise you won't take you away is what he means you think and you can't help but nuzzle into his chest, his chest hair tickling your nose just a little as you whisper back. "They'd have to drag me away."

"I can't do it like this. Ya know how many people are goddamn watchin' from their rooms?" Elvis manages to keep his voice down to not attract more attention but all it does it aggravate you more.

"Do you have a better idea that works? You told me you don't think the bath works and it's not like we can just go off to Lake Mead. There's a finite amount of options, Elvis." You mutter, running your hand across your face. "You want to practice trying to shift and tomorrow's shows are canceled. It's the perfect time to do it."

Elvis hates how nervous he sounds when he speaks again. He's a man who doesn't get embarrassed, who's been in the spotlight for damn near two decades- there's no reason for him to be so shy about this but it's different. Shifting isn't supposed to be done where other people can see it unless he trusts them. Only Jerry and you and maybe some of the Mafia are supposed to see. Family is supposed to see, not fans who want to catch a glimpse of Elvis Presley. "They're gonna see and it's gonna be-"

"It's gonna be what? Elvis, it is 11PM, I don't know who you think is being nosy and looking outside their window but it's just me here. It's just your goddamn seal wife trying to help you shift." Your anger and frustration are starting to get the better of you and you can feel your body heating up the angrier you get. "Just relax, Elvis."

In a flash Elvis is in front of you, his wet hair sticking to the sides of his face and the top of his head. Another time and you'd think this was the most attractive you've seen him for a while but right now all it does is frustrate you. "Can't relax with ya tryin' to yell at me. It's- goddammit, Y/N, ya don't- it's supposed to be easy. Like breathin' for me. And here I am struggling to even get one part of my body to turn the way it should."

Your first instinct is to push back at him, to remind him that you're not trying to yell at him but he's pushing every single one of your buttons and the two of you are far too alike when it comes to that. But you hear the frustration in his voice and the hurt that his body won't cooperate. He's been able to halt the damage caused by not having the skin for so long but he can't seem to reverse this damage. His body is still betraying him even after he gave it the one thing it was missing. Your chest twists a little at the realization as you watch Elvis tread the water with you in the pool. Looking at his face you're reminded of the little boy he must have once been learning how to shift from his mama and in that moment you swear you feel a cold breeze wash over you that has you shivering loud enough for Elvis to pull you close to him.

"Ya alright?" He asks, but there's this pleading edge to it, a desire for you to answer yes even if you're not.

"Just a little wind, E," you answer simply before moving to cup his face. "Did you really think it was going to be that easy to relearn how?"

His face is bashful when he answers and if you weren't still at least a bit frustrated with him you'd have laughed at how it turns him into what feels like a sixteen year old boy in trouble with his mama. "I did. I learned it once from mama. Should be able to 'member how."

A hum leaves your lips as you shake your head. "You also didn't shift for over a decade. You forget things, bury them down when they aren't useful to you any more. Just- breathe, Elvis. Relax and take a deep breath and try again. Picture you and I in Hawai‘i when this is all over. You swimming around me, nuzzling at me. Showing everyone I'm yours."

The pair of you shut your eyes together, just swimming next to one another, treading the water and breathing until you hear a splash that has your eyes shooting open. The pool is darker than you'd like but you had been able to see Elvis up until now. Your breath quickens as you quietly call out his name. You can't see him and there was that splash and the panic threatens to wrap around you before you feel a nudge against your leg. You feel a large nudge that's only able to be done by something not human against your leg and you look down to see what looks like a seal in the water. The only response that comes to mind is a squeal as you see him, delight overwhelming you before Elvis manages to peek his head above the water. The bark he makes at you sounds so much like his laughter that you can't help but laugh and pull him into a hug, ignoring just how slippery he is.

He shifts back quicker than you think he'd like but it's progress. It's a step in the right direction.

You were right about Aiden not being able to make it so Elvis didn't have to go on the tour and Elvis's reaction isn't pretty to say the least. He keeps himself in check purely because you're there reminding him that Aiden is trying and it's just one more tour. It's just one more grueling tour before he can take easier ones. Before he can take his time spending days at a time in cities if he wants. The reminder helps but once you're back to the hotel and the Colonel is knocking on the door you know what you're destined to deal with is Elvis's anger and depression over the matter. You have pressing issues you have to attend to and it's the only reason you don't stay up there during the meeting and why Elvis doesn't press.

Two hours later and you enter a dark room with Elvis reading something in the low light of a lamp by the bed. Any other time and you'd slink out of your clothes and climb in next to him but you choose to remain in your clothes and sit on the edge of the bed. "That bad?"

"That bad," he answers simply, turning a page with pursed lips. "Ain't gonna get a wink of sleep. Added one more date to make up for my foolishness and- I jus' wish ya were comin'. Know ya can't 'cuz there ain't a damn thing in our life that can be easy but- ya'd have made it better. Made it easier to handle. Ya gotta make him work harder, darlin'. Can't do another season like this. I gotta get outta here."

The aggravation and hurt seep into your voice despite your best efforts. You've known Elvis expects a lot from the people he cares about but you've been trying harder than anyone else to make sure he can run free. To make sure he can swim whenever and wherever he wants. You're the one in charge of his skin, you're his seal wife and he's damn near treating you like an actual one. "E, you don't think that's what I've been trying' to do? That's all I want for you. I don't want you tied down like you have been. I don't think you have many years left in you if you are. You need to be able to get out of this city permanently. Sure, you can come back if you want but not- you need to not be tied down and be forced to come back year after year. You deserve freedom."

Freedom to do whatever even if it means running off from you and finding someone who doesn't know about him being a seal. Who he can count on being in love with him without a skin binding them together. You don't necessarily want to be his legal wife but getting called his yittle seal wife hurts sometimes. As if all you're there for it to be another bodyguard for Elvis Presley. "I'm trying."

Elvis looks up from his book and notes the hurt on your face before setting it down on the nightstand and opening up his arms as a hint for you to cuddle up to him. When you do he presses a kiss to your temple. "'m just angry, darlin'. Keep havin' things get in our way and I- I felt like this with 'Cilla. Felt so in love and I don't feel like losin' that again. Wanna make a life wit' ya. Travel the world. Have ya meet my lil pup." His words trail off as he moves his hand down to your torso, not saying another word for a moment. "Wanna build a life that we can both enjoy, ya know? Don't wanna push ya away. Don't wanna- I jus' want things to be a lil easier for us. Ain't we been through enough already? Jus' need a break from God. Been askin' him for one."

You're not nearly as religious as Elvis but you've been praying for God to do it too. He deserves it and you like to think you do too. It's a simple request that just hasn't been fulfilled yet. You bite your lip before you speak. "Maybe it's coming soon. It's like your shifting, Elvis. Just give it time."

"Darlin', like ya said, I ain't sure I got a lot of that left."

It's funny how something about that night changes things. He goes on tour and gives brilliant performances and you hear about the articles and the reporters talking about how he's more invigorating than he has been in years and it fills you with warmth. He's showing off the man you fell for. The man who has all the energy in the world for his fans on the stage and off it. He's a man with a new outlook on life and it does something to you. It reminds you that all this is going to be for naught if he has to come back her to wilt. Aiden is more a little terrified of you after the second time you come by in less than a week, demanding an update better than he's working on it.

A judge has to get involved and you have to get Elvis's permission to use funds to keep things hush hush and out of the papers. This is a private matter for now, it doesn't need to be plastered everywhere, tarnishing his reputation and tarnishing the goodwill he's receiving. The judge as it turns out takes one look at the contract and the circumstances surrounding it and throws it out. Doesn't make the Colonel pay anything back and lets him keep small residuals of Elvis's income- a fact you're not a fan of but will concede to just as much as Elvis does. But they free him.

Elvis has to get a new manager and asks Jerry to step in at least for a little bit, just to smooth over a transition unless he wants to balance him and the Beach Boys. Jerry does and it's- it works better than you think it will as you watch the two men work together with an ease you almost envy. A world tour is planned faster than you think was possible until Jerry tells you everyone's had it in their back pocket without Elvis knowing. They only realized it might become a reality when they saw how you and him interacted. They saw a hope that they thought was gone for good.

The first night at Graceland is calmer than you think it would be and you find yourself against Elvis's chest, playing with his chest hair as you both bask in an afterglow that rivals the best of shows or the best of poker hands. Elvis voice rumbles in his chest as he speaks. "Finally get to do what I want when I want. Think it's gonna get easier now?"

"Maybe," you murmur, kissing his chest. "But, there's a quote, I think, that goes something like nothing worthwhile in life is easy. And I like to think all of this qualifies. Figure you and I do too." You pause. "I wouldn't complain if it did get easier though. It's been an exhausting time."

"Mhmm," Elvis hums, "think we oughta take a vacation after the new tour. One where I don't work. Hawai‘i and the two of us with Cilla and Lisa sounds-"

You cut him off with a kiss. "Sounds like perfection and like the easiest thing in life for us to do. Four months traveling the globe and stopping there for another month."

The smile that crosses his face is brighter than any sun and you can't help but smile back. "That- That's why you're the perfect seal wife for me. Goddamn brilliant woman."

"Goddamn charming seal." You quip back before he lets out an mock offended gasp and rolls on top of you as you both laugh until you're breathless.

It might not have been easy but it's worth it.

[tortoisesshells]

For the Uncommon questions for OCs: 12, 35, 43, and B (if you’re willing)

12. How do they deal with an itch found in a place they can’t quite reach?

Fantasize about bitching about it, and then ignore it until something distracts her long enough to forget about it.

35. How do they treat the things their friends come to them excited about? Are they supportive?

I don't think Nellie Treat is really most people's first port of call when something cool or exciting happens, but she tries to love what the people around her love, even when she doesn't get it.

In the case of not getting it, she'll at least try to figure it out for herself, on her own time and terms, which I do think can read as coolness or disinterest to people who don't know her well (and even to those who do know her well, at times!) - she's concerned with not appearing foolish or uneducated or like she's making demands of people, asking them to explain themselves.

43. If someone asked them to explain their sexuality, how would they do so?

Serviceable. Vaguely puzzling by comparison to her observations of other people's varied sexual orientations, but not ultimately getting too much in the way of things.

B) What inspired you to create them?

There's a post that occasionally makes the rounds along the lines of Jimothy "is an Austen hero in a theme park ride movie" and I had notes about it - for me, the appeal of the character is that he does do quite a lot wrong, moral compass is pretty well shaky, but sure, I can work with (quoting P&P) him having been "given good principles*, but left to follow them in pride and conceit." as one particular manifestation of his larger character flaws.

In that vein, Elinor Coggeshall Treat came out of a vaguely Austen-heroine-shaped space in the narrative. Nellie owes no small amount of her original DNA to Elinor Dashwood (responsible older sibling to a younger sister, Mary/Marianne, emotionally locked-down, relentlessly practical, I even stole borrowed the name!), and especially in the first part of Customs, there's a lot of parlor drama (probably too much, for 1730s Boston, but ludicrous AU of a Disney Theme Park Ride Movie, I'm allowed to play a little fast and loose at times) & it's Nellie's ability to navigate it that counts towards her narrative survival. Still, she's not really that much of an Austen heroine - she's older, more established & isn't looking to (re)marry unless personally inclined to do so; she's also running a smuggling operation for reasons which include "greater profits" "it (the Molasses Act) isn't even good law" and "fuck this guy". Obviously the latter reason she comes to have some. uh. conflicted feelings about.

*: I don't actually think his principles are that good, but for the sake of argument, here: a person who has the ability to be good and even shows glimmers of it at times, but has so thoroughly twisted up (I would say entwined but people will throw things at me) his sense of self in his office that he will almost always default to what he believes he ought to do as the King's man, or what he is outright ordered to do even if he appears to personally disagree with it.

Uncommon Questions for OCs

[miscelunaaa]

shell-ter | knj

pairing: hermit crab!namjoon x marine biologist!reader (who is also soft-bodied because reasons)

genre: crack, humor, smut, strangers to lovers, hybrid au, really just unabashed nonsense

summary: While walking on the beach and avoiding your responsibilities, you stumble upon a line of hermit crabs waiting to exchange shells. It should be an exciting moment for you, but instead there’s this random naked guy yelling at you to leave his friends alone. Why can’t a stroll on the beach ever just be a stroll on the beach?

rating: 18+ for maximum crabby goodness

word count: 6.9k

warnings: Scientific inaccuracies around the nature of crabs, hermit crabs, and other adjacent decapod crustaceans (I tried my best, I promise). Implied early pandemic setting. Writer plays fast and loose with hybrid tropes. Swearing. Crabby Namjoon lmfao. Meet ugly. Awkward public nudity, which is also very likely illegal wherever this is set. Joon’s crab friends leave him to die. Probably inaccurate descriptions of hermit crab mating conventions. Namjoon being casually naked the entire fucking time. Instinctually protective Namjoon. Lots of hybrid nonsense. Bittersweet ending?? Kind of??? Look, Namjoon plays by nature’s laws, y’all. This is perhaps the least feelingsy thing I have ever written. sexual content in the form of: Breeding kink. Oral, female receiving. Face sitting. Body worship??? Size kink. Big Dick!Namjoon. Dirty talk. Strength kink. Unprotected sex with other birth control in place. Rough-ish sex. Squirting. Possessive Namjoon. Hybrid nonsense. 

notes: this is all @thatlongspringnight’s fault, so everyone pls be sure to thank Julie. I ironically and unironically love hybrid fics, and this series is going to be my homage to the more ironic side. There will be more chaos!! I’ve got ideas for each member, some more than one! Please note that this is a significantly delayed crosspost from my AO3 pseud. I’m still trying to decide how to approach this space in a lot of ways and posting this is partially me feeling out how I personally feel about getting work out in this space anymore. 

Please also note!! I am no longer doing any tag lists. If you want updates for as soon as I post a fic, please subscribe to me on AO3. Updates go straight to your inbox and AO3 is way more stable than this fucking dinosaur of a platform. And this is to say nothing about it actually giving a shit about writers. 

my masterlist | my disclaimers | read on ao3

The sun has only been above the horizon for a short while and already it feels like the sand’s been baking underneath its gaze for hours. The tiny grains each feel like hot coals as they wend their way between your toes. You scowl and try to step more carefully. Seokjin’s already fucked up the shower drain once or twice after neglecting to shake the sand off his body; you’d hate to be the next call to your cranky landlord.

It’s not a glamorous life, being a marine biologist, but someone has to do it. Or at least, that’s what you and Seokjin keep telling yourselves every time the university threatens to cut your funding and bring both of you back home. Someone has to study the beach flora and fauna, right?

Right?

“But why crabs?” you mutter to yourself. “Why the fuck did I pick crabs …”

Hermit crabs aren’t even real crabs, you muse to yourself as you step lightly over the early morning beach. They’re still crustaceans, just not “true” crabs like their sisters in the infraorder. Every time the university threatens to cut funding, you have to explain it to some bureaucrat who doesn’t think it’s important to know the difference. To the average person and their piss-poor science literacy, taxonomy seems like a lie anyway.

All things become crabs in the end. You’re more than ready to carcinize and join your tiny decapod brethren. Seems easier than waking up at the asscrack of dawn just to put on pants and a bra and see if you can catch them moving shells all at once. At least the crabs are nicer than anyone in the finance department so … take me now, crab daddy or whatever.

Today doesn’t seem promising. You’ve been trying to observe a vacancy chain for a week, with no luck. It’s not even for your thesis; you’re just fucking bored. Like fine yeah whatever you could be working on your thesis right now but why do that when you can avoid it and watch hermit crabs line up and wait patiently for shell to free up? They even naturally orient themselves!! They line up by size! That’s way more fascinating and way less depressing than talking about brachyura behaviors in wild environments versus commercial ones.

Maybe you should have picked the fake crabs instead. Maybe your advisor would let you change your thesis … for the third time …

Better not. It’s just easier to procrastinate the inevitable at this time.

Hours pass, and nothing’s happening on the beach. You’ve walked it up and down, you’ve reapplied sunscreen, you’ve finished both water bottles, and you’ve seen nothing, not even a lone crab sighing. You go home for lunch with a sigh, taking care to knock the sand out of your sandals before going into the dinky apartment. And then you repeat it all again, leaving this time with a sun hat and stronger sunscreen for the intense afternoon light.

You’d think by this time that the sound of the waves beating the shore would drive you nuts and remind you of your failures, but no. It’s the only thing soothing your annoyance at the lack of hermit crabs and your lack of will to work on your thesis.

Every once in a while, as the sun makes its way across the cloudless sky, you sit for a moment in the hot sand, dropping your notebook to the side. During these moments, you allow yourself to stare out into the sea and let the quiet flow through you. It’s nice, really. No one’s been coming to the beach because of the pandemic, so it’s personal nature hours just for you, the lone soul brave enough to venture out.

It’s during one of these moments, late in the day, the sun just beginning to touch the horizon after a long day of making things unbearably hot, that you see it. Or, rather, you see them.

Hermit crabs, perhaps a half dozen or so, beginning to queue up in the sand. It’s adorable, really; they’ve arranged themselves biggest to smallest, and they’re holding onto each other with their claws to make sure the order is maintained. At the end of the line lays a shell, just a bit too big for the biggest crab to move into.

The wonders of nature never cease to amaze you.

You watch from a few feet away, trying not to make any sudden movements, as a few more crabs join the line and the rest shuffle to make sure they’re in the right order. You turn to reach for your notebook.

As you’re flipping through to the first available page, you hear a little pop.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

The angry voice makes you jump, your notes and pen flying somewhere as your hat falls off and you scramble to look dignified instead of very obsessed with crustaceans.

“N-NOTHING?? I-I waS—”

“Doesn’t look like nothing to me.” The voice is angry, accusatory. Your head spins around to find its source before you’ve even located your pen and you’re too startled to care about the undignified shriek you emit when your eyes find it. Or, actually—if you had to make an assumption—him.

A man, tall and lanky and naked as hell, is staring down at you. His hands are on his hips, his skin burnished gold in the mid-afternoon sunlight. Good lord, he’s so fucking naked! And angry!! But mOSTLY NAKED???

Why is an angry naked man yelling at you on the beach?

Why is it also kind of turning you on???

(Maybe Seokjin was right, maybe you do need to get laid.)

“Do you fucking mind?” He’s tall too, glowering down at you with handsomely hooded eyes, his full lips set into a hard line that makes no sense with how soft they look.

This is not the time to be thinking about this man’s mouth!! What are you doing? Has the sun addled you? Say something!

“D-do I mind? Mind what?”

“Do. You. Fucking. Mind?” the man spits at you. His eyebrows furrow.

Don’t look down. Fuck. Do not look down.

“Do I mind?” Something in your brain finally fires correctly. “Do you mind?? Naked asshole yelling at me?”

“This is my natural state and this is my turf—”

You scramble up to stand, almost falling over because your head swims from doing it too quickly.

“Your turf? This is a public beach, dickwad.”

Dick. Don’t look down don’t look—

Fuck. You looked down. Ohhhhhh boy did you look down. Oh wow. That’s a peen. That’s a big ole peen out in the sunlight in public on this here public beach. Holy shit. He’s gifted and he’s naked and he’s on the beach yelling at you and fuck why is this making you so horny???

“Lady, I don’t know who the fuck you are but you’re on my turf, you’re scaring my friends, and you need to fucking leave so we can do our business and get back to doing what we do.” The man’s chest is rising and falling rapidly as his jaw ticks with frustration. He’s got really nice pecs and his n—NO. FOCUS.

“I’m sorry, what friends? It’s just you and me here on the beach.” Thank god. This would be hard to explain to the local cops.

He steps to the side and points at the ground, to the little hermit crabs in their line. “My friends??? The crabs that you’re disturbing, including myself???”

The incredulity in his voice makes it click for you.

“Oh. Oh my god, are you a crab hybrid?”

He puts his face in his hands and shouts through his palms: “YES.”

“I … okay, are you all hybrids? I’m so sorry, I didn’t know, I—”

“Save it, I don’t care. Could you just leave us alone now? You’re scaring the littler ones and we all just want new shells.”

You bend over to pick up your notebook. “I’m a scientist, I promise I wasn’t trying to scare you and your friends.”

“Fine, whatever, just leave us alone please? You’ve been walking up and down this beach for days and you’re disturbing the peace.”

You’re suddenly very aware of the sand stuck between your sandals and the soles of your feet. Your heart sinks. “Ah, yeah. I can … do that. I guess.”

It’s better this way, probably. You need to start working on your thesis anyway. Your notebook feels heavy in your hand as you secure your hat back on your head.

“Great,” the man says. His shoulders relax as he sighs. “Great. Thanks for understanding. I have to get back to it but if I see you around again, I’m coming for you. Got it?”

Did he have to say “come for you” while ass-fucking-naked on the beach and looking like a hunky dreamboat??? You feel something in the pit of your stomach pulse with need.

“Yeah,” you say as you abruptly turn away. Is the sun hotter now or is it just you? “I got it. Bye then, I guess.” God, this is just fucking weird. Hybrid crabs in the wild and they’re kind of hot too. Ugh. Seokjin’s going to laugh his ass off.

“Bye.”

You only make it a few steps away before a loud, frantic “FUCK” makes you whip back around.

The man is on his hands and knees, still very naked and human shaped, scrutinizing something in the sand.

“Um, is everything alright?” You keep your voice low and soft in hopes that your question won’t aggravate him further.

He sits back on his heels, throwing his head back with a groan. His throat bobs, and you try not to think about what biting at his resplendent skin might be like.

“No. No it’s not. I lost my fucking shell because these assholes—” he gestures wildly at nothing in particular “—finished the shell queue without me. The only one that’s left is way too small.”

And now the handsome naked man is pouting. He’s a hermit crab hybrid without a shell and pouting and distraught and now even more naked in a way. Good lord, is this a test? Is there a dude with a camera hiding somewhere recording all of this for reality TV?

“I’m sorry.” What else can you say?

“This is what I get for helping these ungrateful fuckers. This fucking sucks.”

If he doesn’t have a shell, does that mean he’s homeless?

“How long do you think it’ll be until the next vacancy chain forms?”

“The what? The shell switch?” He looks up at you. You’re still standing a little ways away, but the anguish is clear on his face. “I don’t know, it could be days it could be …”

Weeks.

Shit. You can’t just leave him out here like this.

Without thinking, you walk over to him and squat down to look at him at his level. “I’ve got a roommate, he’s a scientist too. I’m sure if we explain what’s going on, he’d be okay with you crashing with us for a bit. If you want, that is. I just … I feel bad. You lost your shell because you were yelling at me.”

The man bites his lip as his eyes trail away, lost in thought. And then, after a moment, he nods his head.

“Okay. It’s the least you can do, I guess.”

He’s hot. He’s kind of rude, but at least he’s hot, you think.

“Great,” you reply, hiding your slight irritation. You shrug off your sun protective button-up and hand it to him. “Tie this around your front to cover up. It’s just a five minute walk from here. I’m Y/N, by the way.”

He looks at the shirt and takes it reluctantly.

“I’m Namjoon.”

The first thing you learn about your new hybrid acquaintance is that he has little regard for personal boundaries. The moment he steps into your apartment, he refuses to leave your side. You’d expected him to be skittish, maybe, but not clingy like this. You’d had to keep him out of your bedroom as you changed out of your beach clothes, and you’d actually locked the door to the bathroom for once because it took too much convincing to let him know that you weren’t going to suddenly disappear on him, leaving him alone in a strange place. You weren’t unconvinced that he wasn’t going to to break the door down. You could hear him pacing on the other side as you tried to pee in peace with mixed success.

If you hadn’t been convinced of his hybrid status before, watching him sniff at the air and scrutinize everything in your little apartment would have been enough to change your mind. And then there’s his proclivity for nudity, which just further proves his nature. His behavior is just that removed from what you’re used to from normative humans.

You’d also expected more questions from him, if you were being honest. Then again, just because Namjoon had been encountered in a wild environment didn’t mean he’d been born out there. He’d not been perturbed by the microwave or the stove or even the hot water kettle you’d started as soon as you got out to the kitchen. But fuck, he was weirdly clingy.

You frown as you wait for the water to boil. You don’t know much about hybrids, but if you had to guess, his clingy behavior likely has something to do with you being an available female and it being the mating season. August is primetime for horny hermit crabs; maybe his instincts are drawing him to you in some way because of it. If you’re being honest, you don’t completely hate it, though it feels a bit cringe to admit that to yourself. Even so, you try to shake the shame. So what if you enjoy the fact that he may or may not at this point in time consider you desirable in some way? Who doesn’t want to feel desired every once in a while?

As you reach up to open a cabinet above the counter and grab a box of tea, you hear something rustle behind you. Namjoon probably, still looking around while hovering.

“Namjoon, do you want some—”

Your voice catches in your throat as you feel a warm body press to your back. Large hands appear on either side of you, grasping the counter. You feel warm breath on your neck.

“—tea?”

A nose nuzzles into your skin, lips exhale a shaky breath.

“You smell really good, baby,” Namjoon says. “Smell good enough to eat, to …”

T-to what? You feel like you’re about to implode. To whAT??

“To what?”

Ugh, you sound pitiful with your voice all airy like that. You’re lucky anything managed to come out at all.

His hands don’t move to touch you, but his chest is scorching against your back. He’s close enough that you hear him swallow as his lips brush just barely against the shell of your ear.

“To breed.”

Namjoon’s voice is so low it brings goosebumps to your skin. A tremble passes through you, and you’re certain he can feel you shiver between his form and the counter.

“That exciting for you?” he asks. “The idea of getting your cunt fucked by a hybrid cock?”

“Yes,” you breathe.

His hands finally move, his weight settling against your back as he begins touching you, brushing his fingertips against your forearms and over your hips.

“Do you want me to mate with you, baby?”

“Yes.” God yes.

The scramble for your bedroom is a blur. All the way there, your hands are trailing over his skin while his are pushing your clothes up and off. You can feel how hard he’s gotten against you, but before you can get your hands on his erection, he’s falling back against your bed and pulling you on top of him.

Maybe you should be worried about how quickly things escalated. And maybe your conscience should shut the fuck up and let you be vaguely irresponsible with your feelings and body for the first time in months.

Namjoon groans as you straddle him, letting your hot flesh drag against his. His fingers sink into the softness of your thighs.

He murmurs a protest against your kisses. “Not yet, I want to—”

You realize he’s pulling you up his torso before can think to stop him. With stunning ease—damn that hybrid strength—he carefully positions your center over his face.

“This. I want this. I want your scent. I want you.” He looks up at you from between your thighs with those intense, dark eyes of his. Fuck. Fuck you want to die. This is fucking obscene. This is fucking—

The first suck against your folds makes your body pulse, and every movement after that brings you higher and higher into a stratosphere you didn’t even know existed. Namjoon is extremely skilled with his human mouth. It feels like you’re being devoured. It feels fucking amazing.

“Taste so ripe for me, baby. Breeding you’s going to be so easy,” he says against you. The vibration of his low, husky voice reverberates up your spine. Goosebumps spring up from your bare skin. Did your nipples just pucker?

Maybe you’ll leave out the fact that you’ve got an IUD. Maybe you’ll just let him have his fantasy about you. You’d hate to break his little paguroidean heart.

Namjoon licks wide stripes through your folds, each stroke culminating in a suck at your clit before he starts the motion anew. He groans into your flesh as if it’s the finest thing he’s ever consumed, as if he can’t help how this makes him feel. Each stroke, each tug, each movement and sound he makes pushes you closer to an edge you didn’t realize was there.

Your hands find their way to his scalp. You run your fingers through the dense hair as you breathlessly moan praises to him. It’s all you can do not to grind down onto his face; you’d hate to feel like you’re suffocating him. When his teeth graze your clit, however, you find yourself gripping his hair close to his scalp and grinding down anyway.

“Fuck, I’m so close, I’m gonna come,” you keen, your hips dragging along his lips.

“Come on my face, baby. Give it all to me,” Namjoon growls. His grip on you tightens and he starts helping you hump his face.

Suddenly, the wave hits you. It carries you past the edge and out into a realm of pleasure you haven’t felt in ages. You cry out, your body tensing as your cunt pulses with release. High as you feel, the emptiness makes it feel incomplete.

It’s like Namjoon senses this, because abruptly, he’s flipping you down onto your back. He towers above you as you whimper and reach for him.

“Please, I need your cock,” you say, fighting tears as your orgasm’s flood recedes.

“I’m going to fuck my spawn into you over and over, baby,” he purrs, his eyes trailing up and down your quivering body. “Gonna fill your soft, pretty body up with my seed. You’re not going to be able to walk for days when I’m done with you.”

You watch as his hand drifts down his torso to tug at his massive length. Will it even fit? You’re not sure. And will he actually wreck you the point of rendering you immobile? Who fucking cares?? You’re willing to see him try. For science. Yeah, for science or something.

You reach for him again, hands open and needy as you help him pump his length a few times before he finally lifts his eyes back to you. He looks hungry, perhaps as even as needy as you feel.

Namjoon finally leans over you, and you feel the tip of his cock start pressing into your cunt. You suck in a breath as slowly, so slowly, he pushes further inside. His size almost hurts; it toes the delicious line between pain and pleasure, and you can’t be bothered to differentiate between the two. Not now, not in this moment.

He groans once he’s finally fully sheathed within you, and the sound of his pleasure makes you clench. The squeeze makes his body tense.

“Cunt’s so tight, so fucking right around me.”

If you weren’t so breathless from being filled, you’d cry out praise in return. You don’t get the chance to catch your breath. Namjoon starts thrusting slowly, and the drag of his skin against your core makes you grip the sheets and press your hips into his.

For a moment, you wonder if this is it. This is hybrid sex. It’s normal sex but just a little bit better in all the right ways. Your hormones sigh in content, but your scientist brain is a little disappointed that it’s not something more.

After a few moments, during which you finally seemed to adjust to his girth, he stops and hooks your legs around his elbows. The stretch of your muscles is unexpected and before he starts to thrust again, you panic.

“Namjoon, I don’t think I can bend like tha—”

“Yes you can. I’ve got you,” he murmurs, his face dropping to kiss your knee as you adjust. He’s got your legs bent up at an intense angle, making his thrusts even deeper. Because of his strength, he’s able to help support your weight on his arms and thighs so that you don’t have to support it yourself. You’re completely at his mercy now, and fuck if it’s not the hottest thing that’s ever happened to you.

He picks up his pace as you relax into the position. Every thrust has his hips slapping against yours, the wet sound of his cock fucking your cunt echoing into your tiny bedroom. You realize through the haze that your bed is creaking and hitting the wall behind it as he fucks you hard and deep. You can’t be bothered to care if your neighbors will hear. They can probably hear you moaning and crying in his arms too. The hybrid above you seems to think the same thing.

“That’s right, baby, let them hear you. Let them hear me breed this wet fucking hole. Let them hear me fill you with my spawn.” Namjoon’s breaths are beginning to grow raged. When he’s not grunting obscene, filthy things at you, he’s biting his lip. Sweat’s dripping down his temples and neck and beading at his chest. “You’re mine. This is my cunt, no one else can fill you like this, can they?”

“No one can. I’m yours,” you whimper as your hands trail up to grip his arms. “Only yours.” What the hell has gotten into you? Pre-thesis trip you could never.

His thrusts grow rougher still and you realize that the string within you has wound itself tightly again. Fuck, it’s never snuck up on you like this. Namjoon’s cock is dragging against every sensitive spot it can and at such a quick pace that suddenly, just as soon as you noticed it, the string is snapping.

You scream. You’ve never screamed during sex before. This orgasm’s even stronger than the last; your ears ring, your heart pounds, your cunt tries to squeeze around his length so tightly that he almost can’t move. And you’re wet, so so suddenly wet. There’s a trickle down your ass and into the sheets and you realize that this fucking hybrid’s still fucking you through it as if it’s nothing.

He doesn’t make it much longer after you. As soon as your orgasm begins to ebb, his hips begin to stutter, hard and fast.

Namjoon swears one last time and with a last snap of his hips, he comes, emptying himself within you.

Your ears continue to ring with the sudden silence. The sound of heavy breathing is the only thing reminding you that right, yes, you’re still alive, this isn’t a weirdly real wet dream at all. This actually happened.

You wait for Namjoon to pull out, only to realize that he’s looking down at where you’re still joined. His brow is furrowed, even and his chest rises and falls with recovering breaths.

Finally, you break the silence.

“Everything okay, Namjoon?”

“Yeah, just ... I didn’t realize you could gush like that.” His fingers brush along the stretch marks at your inner thighs as he looks down at the sticky scene.

“Yeah, it’s a bit messy, I’m sorry. It means you did a good job though.”

Namjoon grabs a pillow and places it under your hips before carefully pulling out. You whimper at the sudden loss of his cock.

“Don’t apologize, I just—”

Is he ... is he pouting right now??

He sits back on his heels and surveys your wrecked, tired body, the pout still playing his lips.

“I just wish you could have done that on my face. It smells so good.”

Your feel your face heat instantly. Not even his obscene dirty talk had you feeling this embarrassed. Does he even know what he’s saying right now?? You’re so stunned you can’t even speak.

Namjoon shrugs to himself before finally settling next to you in the bed and pulling you towards him with care.

“It’s fine,” he says into your neck. “The night is still young, it just means I’ll have to try harder when we go again in an hour.”

Your stomach lurches at the thought. You’re not sure if it’s horror or anticipation. “Again? In an hour?”

Morning comes sooner than either you or Namjoon expect, and with it, your roommate, also arriving sooner than you expect.

He makes himself known in his customary way, which doesn’t have the customary result he expects. Barging into your room, already recounting the wonders he saw out at the reef, goes over poorly when you’ve got a hybrid still sleeping in your bed, clinging to you under the thin sheet covering your naked bodies.

Seokjin yelps. You scream. These are normal and expected reactions.

But poor Namjoon … he does neither of those things.

“I’ve never seen a grown man skitter.”

“Well, you scared him. I think he’s got a right to be spooked.”

You and Seokjin are standing outside of your bedroom door while Namjoon hides under your bed, refusing to come out until he thinks it’s safe. Your roommate’s not wrong; the man had absolutely skittered into his new hiding place. He’d actually tried to drag you with him, but you’d resisted long enough to shout at Seokjin to leave before you tore him a new asscrack.

“His dick is … well, it’s huge.”

“Nice subject change there, you jerk.”

“What? You expect me to see an endowment like that and not say something? How did you even fit it inside you?”

“Please don’t say the word endowment. We’re stressed enough about funding without you comparing his dick to the massive amount of money we’re missing out on.”

“Fine. Unlike the rich white assholes back home though, he seems … nice? I guess? The whole hiding under the bed thing notwithstanding. Did he at least know how to use that enormous—”

You hold up a hand. “Just stop. The sex was great. Amazing even. But um, the hiding thing—”

“You’re about to tell me something weird aren’t you. Hon, you’ve got to stop bringing home your weird hippie types, like, you can’t just bring hot homeless dudes home. Living in a van is not the same as having a house! I hope you used a condom.”

“Jin. Ugh. God, that was one fucking time. He’s not unhoused and even if he were, what business is that of ours?”

Suddenly a voice comes from inside your bedroom. It’s muffled, and perhaps a little salty in tone, but it’s now close enough to make you think that maybe Namjoon’s gone from hiding under the bed to hiding under the blankets. “Well, technically I am homeless and it’s all your fault!”

Seokjin raises an eyebrow and levels a hard stare at you. “Talk.”

Namjoon doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to get back to the beach after being coaxed out from your bedroom. In fact, he’s not in much of a hurry to do anything besides follow you around the little apartment, wrapping his arms around your waist whenever he’s got the chance. He’s also not in much of a hurry to put on any of the clothes that Seokjin picked out for him.

Namjoon just looks at the garments and instead walks over to you and pulls your body into his chest. His body is warm against your back. The gesture seems sweet, but it’s beginning to get annoying. Seokjin looks the two of you up and down, your stiff form enveloped by Namjoon’s lanky, muscular one.

He shrugs. “If I had thighs like that I’d eschew pants too, I guess.”

You purse your lips as you watch Jin leave the room, leaving you with the very naked and needy Namjoon.

“Hey, so um,” you start, your fingers finding his arms to loosen his hold on you. “You’re really cool, but I’m not much of a … cuddler? Like casual cuddling is cool but this is a bit much.”

Instead of letting you shake him off, the hybrid’s hold around you tightens.

“I’m not cuddling,” he scoffs. “I don’t cuddle. This is protection. I’m making sure you stay safe until you can release your eggs in the ocean.”

It’s very hard not to roll your eyes and scoff back. This is an instinctual behavior for a lot of brachyura species, and apparently it’s something he’s displaying too.

You pat his arm, perhaps with a little bit of condescension. “Yeah, but I don’t have any natural predators, big guy.”

“True. But you’re still all soft.” His hand trails up from your waist to fondle one of your breasts. Your breath hitches while he continues to speak. “You still need protection.”

“Namjoon, I’m not going to suddenly sprout an exoskeleton.”

“Don’t care. Still gonna do my job as your mate, at least until you can get back to the ocean.”

“Buddy, we had mammalian sex!”

As much as you protest, it’s no use. At any given moment as the day moves on, Namjoon’s got his naked body entwined with yours, to protect you from predators like email pings from your computer and Seokjin (but only when he suddenly stands up or steps too close to you). It’s all you can do to get him to release you from the confines of his embrace so that you can use the bathroom. For his part, Namjoon seems to be content to spoon you on the couch as you mindlessly sort through thesis research.

It could be worse, you guess. You’re getting your touch fix for the next few months of thesis hell.

Seokjin tolerates the interloper as well as can be expected, but softens when he sees the delighted look on Namjoon’s face as he has instant ramen for the first time. It’s a humble dinner, but it does the job. After that, Namjoon seems to soften on Jin too, and finally, you can move around the apartment without requiring Namjoon’s protection.

The next day, the hybrid seems more restless. He’s not ready to go back to the beach, but if you had to guess, he’s close. Now that he’s no longer preoccupied with your safety, he starts inspecting things in the apartment with care. He opens cabinets and sticks half his big body in them, probably just to see how it feels. He smells and sniffs things like spices and soap. He touches the carpet and the couch and the different utensils sitting in the kitchen’s tool crock. Nothing is not worth his inspection, it seems.

At one point, you walk into the living room to see him standing in the box that Seokjin’s extra computer monitor shipped in. He stands in it as if it’s exactly what he’s supposed to be doing at the moment, while still naked as ever, his hands at his sides with his back straight. His full lips are pursed into a thoughtful pout as he stares off into space.

“Everything okay, Namjoon?” you ask gently, hoping you don’t startle him.

He blinks and turns to look at you.

“Yeah. Uh …” He pauses, and looks down at his feet in the box, and then back to you. “Does this box make my butt look big?”

It’s now your turn to blink and not speak for a moment.

This must be an instinct thing too. And it’s one you’re frankly unequipped to handle. How do you tell a hermit crab hybrid that he doesn’t currently need a shell, not in this form at least?

“Um, no, it doesn’t,” you say carefully but casually. “Looks great.”

Namjoon tries to hold your gaze but you glance away and try to make yourself look less perturbed by pulling out your phone and pretending to check the time. When you look back at him, his pout is even more pronounced.

“I don’t believe you,” he grumbles.

The rest of the day passes much like this, with Namjoon trying to see how it feels to cram his big body in various spaces. At one point, you find him sitting in your empty suitcase. At another Seokjin enters the bathroom and comes out screaming moments later; Namjoon had laid down in the bathtub and decided not to make his presence known until Jin had already lowered his fly to pee.

Your favorite might be the hybrid’s discovery of the colander in the kitchen. After inspecting it closely, he sets it atop his head. He thinks for a moment, rolling his shoulders and shifting his weight between his feet, as if to feel out how the colander might protect him from danger. Whatever protection it offers must be enough because after a moment, he nods, and carries on doing whatever it is a hermit crab hybrid does after finding suitable protection. In this case, it’s sitting at the kitchen table, eating peanut butter straight out of the jar with his bare fingers while you and Seokjin chip away at your research.

Later that evening, after you’d all eaten dinner and had gone to bed, Namjoon wakes you up and says, “I think it’s time for you to go release your eggs into the ocean.”

And who are you to argue with his instincts as a hybrid?

As luck would have it, the beach is vacant still, and the weather is having one of its rare mild days. There are no errant visitors escaping their homes for some sun. There are no beach patrols or lifeguards, no kids playing hooky. It’s just you and Seokjin and the increasingly agitated crustacean hybrid who just wants to make sure you deposit your eggs in the ocean like a good girl.

No matter how many times you tell him you’ve got an IUD and a mammalian reproductive system, he still thinks that he needs to see you leave his spawn out in the sea. He’d tried to pull you out of bed to do it last night, but you’d pinched his nipple to get him off you and made him compromise: if he put a pair of Seokjin’s shorts on and left the colander at home to come with you, he could escort you to the ocean to “deposit your eggs.”

So now it’s mid morning. You’re about to wade out into the ocean to please Namjoon’s instincts.

Seokjin had shaken his head and said, “The things we do for science” when you’d woken him. He’s not wrong, you sigh to yourself as you kick off your sandals and shrug off your bag. You set them in the sand next to Seokjin and approach the water lapping the shore. You turn, and see that Namjoon’s close behind you, but instead of looking out at the ocean, he’s looking at the sand underfoot, his brow furrowed.

“Everything okay, Namjoon?”

“Yeah, go release your eggs, baby.”

You hate that his casual language still makes you preen, days after he’d fucked you. It’s even more infuriating that he can make something like releasing imaginary spawn out into the ocean sound remotely sexy. And yet … the things we do for science … and for the people we’d probably come to love if circumstances were different.

The water is warm and comfortable as you wade out into the shallows. It soaks through the running shorts you’d worn and wicks up your shirt as you move deeper, so that eventually it’s up to your waist. You turn and look at the beach, Seokjin standing where the sand is still dry, Namjoon closer, the waves brushing over his toes.

You squat a little, trying to make your imaginary spawning look convincing. After a few moments, you stand and start wading back. As you emerge from the ocean, Namjoon smiles. Ah, he has dimples, how had you never noticed?

Seokjin trots forward and tosses you a towel as you walk further ashore. You wrap it around your middle as Namjoon moves to wrap his arms around you.

“Thanks for having my spawn,” he murmurs, his voice sweet and heady as he kisses your forehead and holds you for a moment. Your eyes meet Seokjin’s over his shoulder, and the man looks like he’s about to burst out laughing. He keeps his cool and swallows it down as Namjoon releases you and clears his throat.

“So uh, just a second, I think—” The hybrid squints and looks out across the sand. “—Yeah, one moment.”

He runs off in the direction he squinted, and suddenly stops and squats down. You and Seokjin watch as he picks something up and looks at it closely. And then he puts it down and picks something else up. The objects are too small for you to see clearly.

“Is he … is that …” Seokjin trails off and starts walking toward him, and you follow.

“It’s another vacancy chain,” you say as the two of you draw closer to the hybrid, just enough to see the gathering at his feet. You watch Namjoon’s eyes trail up and down the line of hermit crabs, who’ve already ordered themselves by size. “Maybe one of them is about to give up a shell that’s the right size?”

Your roommate throws you a glance. “That’s the hope, right?”

You nod. Is he expecting this to bother you in some way? For a moment, you zone out, wondering what you’re supposed to feel about all this. But it’s only for a moment, because suddenly your attention’s being stolen away.

“You fuckers, I’ll fucking fight you!” Namjoon suddenly shouts.

With a little pop, he disappears. In his place is a little hermit crab without a shell, its little spiral abdomen, soft and vulnerable, curled up to the side. Seokjin’s shorts flutter to the ground a second later, now empty. You and Seokjin watch as this little crab, presumably Namjoon, scuttles up to another crab similar in size, and starts to hit it with his pinchers. All hell breaks loose in the vacancy chain, and you loose track of Namjoon as the hermit crabs all swarm and start … fighting, you guess? It’s weird and kind of hard to look at, but you also can’t get yourself to look away.

After a few moments, a lone crab wearing a shell emerges from the scuffle and creeps toward you and Seokjin.

“Is that … Namjoon? Is he looking at you?” Seokjin groans. “This is fucking weird.”

You squat down to look at the little crab. It, or maybe he, waves a claw at you, almost as if saluting, and then walks off quickly. You let your eyes follow him down the beach as he moves away from the fray. When you turn to look back at the vacancy chain scuffle, you see that it’s broken up. The crabs are dispersing and going off to do whatever it is that they do during these late summer days.

Namjoon’s gone. And you can’t help but smile to yourself and wonder what the fuck just happened.

“Is that it?” Jin’s beside himself with laughter. “He’s just fucking leaving? No dinners or dates, just a fuck and run after you’ve fulfilled your purpose? Is there no romance left in the world??”

You stand and dust off your knees, watching your fellow scientist send the hermit crabs scurrying away as he walks up and reaches for his discarded shorts.

You sigh wistfully. “With the way the guy ate me out, I was dinner.”

“That’s gross. That’s fucking disgusting. I don’t need to know that shit.”

“Look I’ve seen things now, don’t knock hybrid dick till you try it.”

“Quit bragging, it’s unbecoming.”

“Fine. Just know that jealousy is unbecoming as well.”

As you walk back down the beach to collect your things, Seokjin squints out to the horizon. He takes a deep breath and sighs. “Well it’s good he was a paguroidea and not brachyura I guess, right? You didn’t like compromise your data or anything?”

“Oh god no,” you shake your head. “I will do a lot of things for science, but that’s not one of them.”

“Then, uh, what was all this then with Namjoon? An experiment of sorts?” He’s got a smile on his face, and a light, teasing tone. He’s trying to make sure you’re okay, it seems, trying to gauge whether or not you caught feelings.

“No, not an experiment,” you say, letting yourself grow quiet with thought.

“Then what would you call it? Like are you okay?”

“I’m fine!” You really are, you mean it when you say it. “This was fun, I think. Just some fun and helping someone who needed it.”

“So is that code for schedule you a vacation for the next mating season around here or—”

Seokjin’s sentence is cut off by you throwing a sandal at him.

“You jerk! I can’t believe you’re supposed to be the uncle to my spawn and you’re treating me this way!”

Your roommate’s laughter peals through the air. “You’ll regret that when you need help coming up with names for your several hundred children.”

“Ugh, thank god for larval stages and precocious young.”

“They grow up so fast. Want noodles when we get home?”

“Please. Let’s head back.”

Thank you for reading! Drop me an ask and tell me what you think. Find me in various places at my carrd :)

©miscelunaaa 2022. My work is only found on this blog and under my ao3 pseud. Do not, under any circumstances, copy or repost my work. Thank you.

posted: originally to ao3 9.10.2022, to tumblr on 10.26.2022

[kunoichi-ume]

SWTOR AU Challenge

Again I was tagged by both @keldae​ and @cinlat​ so here is my second AU. I noticted both AUs I chose to share are the ones that give my two main girls a lovely childhood with their families. I’m sure there is a deeper meaning to that but it’s early.

The Rules:

The rules on this one are simple (for SWTOR players), go into the character creator and make an AU version of one of your characters. You can change literally anything about them. Class, allegiance, species, gender, ect.

Meet Jurisa Markon, usually known as Jurr Jiin

In a world where Jurr was never injured she never forgot her name, so Jurisa is what she goes by. She’s the daughter of Crysta Markon and Vorten Fett, grew up in the Mandalorian culture but joined her sister Thera in starting a “shipping” company that sometimes plays loose and fast with the law. Ironically she has a very good memory and rarely forgets things. She still has a bit of a temper and enough confidence to bullshit her way through most situations - just in this au she is doing it because she wants to get away with things, not to hide that she is hopelessly lost. Sweets are still the way to her heart and she always has some kind of candy hidden in the pouch on her belt. Some people need coffee to function, she needs her sugar. I think this version of Jurr would still be an artist, she just started painting armor with her dad instead of as therapy in the hopspital.

[dannyphantom-rewrite]

Timekeeper's assistants AU

Alright y'all! This is gonna be my info dump post for the Timekeepers assistant Au- buckle up cause it's gonna be a long one!

Inspired by @queendibz post here

The entire purpose of the assistant squad is to keep all the time lines running smoothly- this can range from stopping a world ending event to making sure things misplaced by natural ghost portals get put back into the right time and place.

So First up on the crew list,

Dan:

-Dan definitely isn't a homicidal maniac anymore but he's not 100 percent "redeemed" either.

-I mean he's probably still a bit of sadist but he tries not to be?

-The best description I can give is that he's in recovery, basically.

-So, Clockwork knew that Dan would eventually bust out of the thermos just because it wasn't built to hold a ghost of his power level for a prolonged period of time. But beyond that?? He has no idea about anything in regards to Dan. Since Dan's creation was averted, his timeline doesn't exist anymore. He's a paradox that exists outside of time, and unfortunately, that means he's the one entity in the multiverse that exists in Clockwork's blindspot. There's no way for him to know what Dan's going to do next.

-Anyway, Dan eventually breaks out of the thermos fully intending to Fuck Shit Up, And Clockwork makes a point of informing him that if he leaves the clock tower he will cease to exist. (Like Dan, the tower exists outside of time, so he's safe there.)

-Dan is the first member of the assistant squad. Granted, it took a while for him to come around to the idea of helping Clockwork but he got there eventually.

-Dan is an entity that was born out of the rage and grief of two very broken people and he has so much shit he's working through as a result

-One of the first things he had to do was recognize and accept that he's an entity that's completely separate from Vlad and Danny. He might have all their memories and the weight of their mistakes on his shoulders, and on top of that, the atrocities he himself committed because of them. The first step is realizing that he doesn't have to be defined by the people that made him.

-It's a really fucking difficult thing to do tho and he's got a lot of weird emotions in regards to Vlad, Danny and the Fentons as a result. A near constant identity crisis, self loathing, daddy issues, something that could arguably be called an Oedipus complex, (FUCKING THANKS, VLAD)

-Cannot stand the smell of fast food, it makes him nauseous and the sight of Nasty Burger sauce alone is enough to make him vomit Ectoplasm.

-He's just a hot mess all around y'all

-He tries to keep his interactions with the Danny's as minimal as possible at first bc of this. The first time he meets them in person he shape shifts into Danny like he did in TUE and just pretends to be one of them. Some of them have had interactions with their respective Dan's already and would be super wary of him and probably pretty freaked out otherwise.

-Dan is eventually allowed to leave the clocktower for supervised "Field missions" with the aid of a time medallion to keep him from poofing out of existence, but it takes a while for clockwork to build up that level of trust.

-Dan's shapeshifting ability Actually comes into play a bit on a lot of those missions, since he can Mimic Danny it also makes sense that he'd be able to impersonate Vlad in the same way. Granted he's not incredibly comfortable taking on either of their appearances but it does help him hone his shapeshifting ability to the point where he's able to pick and choose features from both Vlad and Danny and sorta make his own human disguise.

-Most of the time he acts as the eye in the sky from the tower, monitoring for timeline anomalies and then notifying the appropriate member of the assistant squad.

-He has a room under the clock tower that he operates from. I kinda like the idea of there being like, catacombs down there? Anyway he's got all kinds of monitors and view screens and he very rarely leaves. It also doubles as his "living space." He doesn't need to sleep but he's got a big mess of a pillow fort that he crashes in regardless bc sometimes you just NEED to be unconscious for a while. The catacombs are also absolutely full of those little blob ghosts that wander around the zone bc They're attracted to the ecto energy the tower gives off. He's really annoyed by them at first but they grow on him after a while and now he just dotes on them.

-There's a specific throw pillow sized one that likes to hang out in Dan's room a lot and he ended up getting a little over attached to the stupid thing. His name is Dorian. Bc he's a gift.

-SIR THATS MY EMOTIONAL SUPPORT BLOB

-Dan's appearance has changed slightly. He wears his hair loose now and it's kinda just this big fiery mane when it's not contained. His cape is more of a cloak now, it has a hood and he wears it sorta pinned together at the shoulder so the DP logo is covered.

-Dan's relationship with the rest of the Danny's is kinda weird, and a little strained. He has a hard time being around them for very long because, well, he used to sort of be them? Except not really? He does care about them tho, and the last thing he'd want is for one of them to end up like him.

-His relationship with clockwork definitely starts out pretty familial, after he becomes his assistant, anyway. There's room for that to develop into meddling minutes but I'm not entirely sure if I'm gonna go that route yet.

-The Danny's only ever hear his voice for a while before he finally let's them meet him for real, so they end up calling him Charlie for a while as a joke. Cause Ya know. Charlie's angels. Even after Charlie still ends up being his designated name on missions.

Mer! Danny:

-Was recruited bc a lot of the shit that gets sucked through natural portals ends up in a body of water somewhere and when that happens he's on call to retrieve it.

-Is Actually not at all ghostly! Mer Danny's situation is basically the plot of H2O (just add water), or if you haven't seen that, Aquamarine. And by that I mean he's only a merfolk in water.

-He's an electric eel

-His Jack and Maddie are marine biologists, with a particular interest in marine cryptids

-We're taking sea monsters baby!!!

-Not entirely sure how this Danny ended up half mer yet but I'll figure it out, lmao.

-14 years old

-His nickname/ designation is "Moray"

Crown Prince! Danny:

-Nickname/designation is Prince / Princey

-16 years old

-Not allowed to go anywhere in the zone without the Fright knight bc of some ancient ghost law bullshit, so he has a constant babysitter.

-He's next in line bc he sealed away Pariah, but can't take the throne until he is both, A) at least 18 years and B) Completely deceased

-Vlad is his Regent bc he did have a part in the whole sealing the previous king thing, but he's also not completely dead so his power is super limited there.

-As Prince Danny has the crown of fire in his ghost form, although now the name is kinda ironic seeing as it's completely frozen over. It's blue now and it smokes like dry ice.

-As Regent, Vlad has the ring of rage for "safe keeping"

-Vlad and Danny are pretty much constantly at each other's throats, fright knights probably had to shut down more than a few of Vlad's attempts to usurp the crown from Danny through combat.

-Princey deals with the timeline issues that involve the ghost zones' internal / political affairs, and he's gotten very well versed with dealing with the Observants.

Winged! Danny :

-15 years old

-Mallard duck wings

-His Vlad is a swan

-Comes from a family of waterfowl, Jack is a goose, and Maddie is a white swan. Both he and jazz are ducks bc of their grandparents.

-As Fenton his wings are white, like jazz, and as phantom they turn black with a green iridescent sheen.

-He's trans

-Nickname/ designation is inviso Bill. Bc ducks have bills haha get it-

-Ghostly wail?? Nah son he's gotta killer QUACK

-Absolute besties with Mer!Danny/ Moray, sometimes they go swimming together after a mission.

Clone! Danny:

-Physically he's a 12-year-old, but he's only been alive for a few months.

-Alt universe where Vlad manages to stabilize the perfect clone with his own DNA.

-Dani still exists, and the original danny from his time line also rescued the other problematic clones.

-Doesnt like the fact that he's a clone, and very much wants them all DEAD. Bc them running around is a reminder that he's not the real danny.

-Human half looks the same aside from the widows peak and the mallen streak. His ghost half takes after plasmius. Blue skin, and the Hazmat kept it's original white colors.

-Probably has fangs and a forked tounge.

-Not so much a member of the squad as he is someone that they need to be keeping an eye on.

-Does NOT get along with them.

-Dan enjoys making him uncomfortable.

-Designation is Masters / the brat (not to his face tho)

Family Breakfast AU! Danny:

-A BABY

-The boy is a fucking overpowered todler okay. He's an 8 year old.

-The biological son of his Vlad, was born a Halfa. Jack, Vlad and Maddie got their shit together and are in a healthy poly relationship.

-Got separated from Vlad one time in the zone and inadvertently adopted by the assistant squad and clockwork.

-His Vlad is aware of the squad and just. Dad's the crap out of the Danny's as a result. It makes for some..... interesting interactions.

-I can't think of a nickname so I'm just gonna be lazy and say he gets to be the one Tru Danny bc cute little kind privileges lmao.

Full ghost! Danny:

-15 years old, will always look 14.

-Nickname/designation is Toast

-Died in the portal accident and got fucking FRIED.

-He always smells like somethings burning.

-He's really bright and sorta sparks a bit, you can see his bones glowing through the hazmat.

-He still leave the zone to protect his version of amity, but lives with clockwork full time.

Canon Danny (NOT PHANTOM PLANET COMPLIANT) :

-Basically show Danny, except phantom planet never happened fuck you

-Joined the crew after the events of de stabilized

-Also he's trans fuck butch

-Franken! Danny

-Yall remember that Headless Danny Au? This is my take.

-Is Actually 20 years old, but physically stuck at age 14. Bc he's a walking corpse :)

-Came from a timeline that was directly parallel to Full ghost! Danny. He dies in the portal accident, but jack and Maddie are in the lab when it happens and manage to sort of bring him back using a combination of science and freaky ghost junk.

-So he's basically possessing/ stuck inside of his own dead body. Which, is thankfully not rotting or going into rigor mortis bc Ectoplasm is rather similar to formaldehyde, but he's not the most durable thing and bits and pieces fall off from time to time.

-Like his head. For example.

-He's pretty desensitized to it at this point and if he loses a leg after a ghost fight he doesn't see anything wrong with sitting down on the curb of a main street to stich it back on. His being dead isn't exactly a secret.

-Don't ever ask him to "give you a hand" bc he can and will not hesitate to pop one off and Chuck it at you.

-Said hand and any other body part will continue to function just fine even if it isn't attached to anything, btw.

-Nickname/ designation is Adam. Bc. Ya know. that's the name Frankenstein's monster gave itself.

Post Phantom Planet! Danny:

-A very jaded 22 year old who is driven only by spite and enough caffeine to kill a horse

-Very, very tired of the hero thing.

-Being a global celebrity isn't all it's cracked up to be.

-Decided to follow Vlads lead and fuck off to space for a while. Partially to get away from everyone and also partially bc he kinda feels responsible for the fact that the only other person like him and probably floating DEAD in the void somewhere? And yeah Vlad fucked up all on his own but what if he'd tried harder to get through to him things could have been different-

-Joins the crew after a natural portal opens up in space and decides to help out and use clockworks resources to try and track down his Vlad.

-Nickname/ Designation is Polaris, aka the north star.

[lovelylogans]

puppy love

roger: do you want another cup of marriage? anita: excuse me? roger: tea? another cup of tea? anita: you said marriage. roger: uh, marriage? anita: yes, that’s what you said. i—i mean, you meant to say tea... but it—it came out marriage. roger: oh, i’m sorry. uh—do you want another cup of... tea?

—101 dalmatians

warnings: misbehaving dog, misunderstanding that might cause secondhand embarrassment, please let me know if i’ve missed any!

pairing: virgil/logan, offscreen patton/janus

word count: 2,732

notes: this is for day four of @analogicalweek! the prompt of the day is “alternate universe” and i have decided to write a "i think my dog likes your dog” au, based off the introduction of anita and roger in 101 dalmatians! please enjoy!

⁂

Logan would have named his dog Tesla if the name had not already become popular due to the brand and if he did not have a deep-seated dislike of Elon Musk, but as it has, and as he does, his dog’s name is Nikola instead. He had finally given in and adopted her after his brother, Patton, had been wheedling him to adopt or foster one of the animals for years from the shelter he serves as veterinarian.

Nikola is a very intelligent dog. In the two-and-a-half years he has had her since she was a puppy, he has taught her a variety of tricks—the usual things, like sit, shake, stay, but also more unusual tricks like fetching him water bottles or tissues or any number of things that she knows the name of and is within her reach. She is a mix of two intelligent breeds—rottweiler and German shepherd—and as such learning and practicing tricks helps keep her from being bored. 

She has a surplus of enrichment toys. She never rips up shoes or furniture. She keeps an obedient trot at his side on hikes and runs ahead if he tells her to. She waits after he throws something for her to fetch until he says to run, and she has learned to sit before they cross the street. She is a very well-trained dog. 

Which is why it is so surprising when, as soon as he crouches to unleash her at the dog park they go to on Sundays, weather permitting, she snatches his baseball cap meant to keep the spring sun out of his eyes, and goes running off as if he has told her to fetch a tennis ball.

“Nikola!” He calls, out of being startled more than anything, before he starts to jog after her.

Nikola runs, just a black-and-brown streak of fur with the navy blue of his cap clamped between her teeth, and Logan is really quite fortunate that he spends most Saturdays, weather permitting, hiking, and weekday mornings on jogs besides. This habit has kept him in shape, however, it has also contributed to keeping Nikola in shape, and as such she is a very fast and athletic dog. He wonders briefly if he’ll catch her before he makes too much a fool of himself.

But just as suddenly as she’d started running, she stops at one of the benches installed around the dog park, dropping his cap on the bench and then immediately moving to the dog sitting beside her owner, Nikola wagging her tail and panting and looking quite pleased with herself, with eyes only for the other dog. The other dog, all black excepting the white splotch on her chest, looks at Nikola curiously, but does not crouch in a playful posture or otherwise react.

“Nikola, really,” he scolds, picking up his cap and jamming it back on his head. Then he looks to the man sitting on the bench with the dog that Nikola now seems enamored with, intent on apologizing for disturbing him or his dog, but his mouth goes dry almost immediately.

The man with the dog sitting calmly at his side is very handsome. 

He’s brown-skinned and black-haired—he’s Latino, Logan thinks—and in the middle of reading a book. Logan isn’t sure what book, based on the way his hands are placed, his long, elegant fingers covering the title. He’s also listening to music, as evidenced by the white wireless earbuds placed in his ears.

It’s likely that Nikola’s tomfoolery hasn’t disturbed him at all. The man only gives Logan a look—his eyes, which are a stunning shade of brown so dark they’re practically black—and returns his attention to his novel.

Logan clears his throat awkwardly, jams his cap back on his head, and turns to Nikola, who is still trotting around them, seeming very pleased with herself, wagging her tail, looking every inch a pompous showdog.

Sometime in the middle of watching Nikola, the exceptionally handsome man has closed his book and stood up, and Logan tries his best not to pay him any mind as he walks away.

“Helena, come,” he says, with a deep, lovely voice that hits Logan somewhere in the sternum. He has an accent—Spanish, maybe? Portuguese? Logan isn’t very familiar with romantic languages outside of English, other than the Latin he took throughout high school and college. Nikola is still looking very excited, but the black dog—Helena—stands and follows after the man.

“Nikola, really,” he repeats weakly, and crouches before her, gathering her leash in hand and preparing to let her loose so they can, perhaps, play a game of fetch, or something that does not involve Logan running after her like a madman.

But of course not. Whatever mood Nikola’s in persists, as she suddenly pulls forward, forcing Logan to get up off the ground lest he be dragged in her wake, and he really does not want to be dragged along the ground at the dog park, so he does, scrambling after her and trying to regain his balance.

He doesn’t notice she’s looping her leash around the man’s knees until it’s too late.

Which brings him to notice that she is also backtracking to loop around his knees.

He cannot help but notice when Nikola pulls tight and it brings Logan and the man colliding forcefully, chest-to-chest.

“Oh!” The man grunts. His chest is warm and broad. Logan would quite like to curl up under a nearby rock and never come out and also, if Nikola understood human terms, she would be so grounded. As it is he is absolutely revoking treats for her behavior today, even if the man is now putting a hand on Logan’s shoulder and it radiates warmth through his shirt.

“I beg your pardon,” Logan splutters, “I’m so sorry, please excuse me, I’ve no idea what’s gotten into her—”

At the same time, the man is saying “What the hell, oh my God, what—” and trying to push them apart, Logan stumbling with it.

Which makes the man stumble, which makes Logan stumble a little more, and very suddenly, they’re overbalancing, and Logan lands on top of him, the man wheezing as his back meets the ground, surely knocking the wind out of him. Even with that, he puts a hand at Logan’s waist to keep him from falling off of him into the dirt.

“I’m so sorry,” Logan gasps, and looks over—Nikola and Helena are side by side, Helena still haughty, Nikola still seeming very self-congratulatory.

“Nikola, bad girl,” he scolds. She doesn’t even have the decency to look chastened. “I swear she’s never like this, I really am so sorry—”

Logan manages to loosen the leash from around their knees and rolls off the man, apologizing all the while.

The man manages to sit up, eyes wide, and promptly Helena comes trotting over to him, leaning heavily into his side. 

“Uh, that’s,” the man coughs, “that’s okay. It—it wasn’t your fault. Um.”

He threads his fingers throughout Helena’s long fur, and Logan whistles sharply. Nikola at least has the good sense to return to his side.

“I am very sorry,” he repeats and stands, offering a hand to the man. The man hesitates before he releases Helena and takes it, allowing Logan to pull him to his feet.

Logan picks up the book—oh, he’s handsome and he has good taste, too, he’s reading On Beauty by Zaydie Smith, of course he had to go and look like an absolute buffoon in front of him—and holding it out for him.

The man takes his book back, eyes wide, before he looks to the dogs.

And then, of all the things to do, he starts to laugh.

Logan looks, too, and he feels his face crack into a grin.

Nikola is wagging her tail eagerly, staring at Helena, and Helena, at last, seems to look back at her. Her tail, almost grudgingly, starts to wag, too.

“I think your dog has a crush on my dog,” the man says, amused.

“I can’t deny that observation,” Logan admits. Sure, Nikola will play with other dogs, but she’s never been so sweet to another dog before. Even if he is irritated with her for running off, he can’t quite hold onto his sense of annoyance as Nikola makes doe-eyes at Helena.

“Like a regular Romeo,” the man says, then makes a face. “No, scratch that. Um—”

“She’d be a Juliet, regardless,” Logan interrupts.

He relaxes his shoulders. “Good. Romeo’s overused.”

He catches Logan’s confused eye, and explains, “My brother’s name is Roman. He crushes on people a lot. It was an easy joke growing up.”

“Ah,” Logan says, waits a beat, before he says, “It’s odd I know your dog’s name and your brother’s name before I know yours?”

“I have another brother named Remus,” he offers. “And, now that you know my family tree except me, I’m Virgil.”

“Well, I have a brother named Patton, and a brother-in-law named Janus,” Logan says. “I’m Logan.”

Virgil’s brow crinkles up. “Not Janus Ophidian?”

“The same,” Logan says.

“Small world,” Virgil says thoughtfully. “He’s a pain in my ass.”

He immediately blushes, as if he did not mean to say that, but Logan laughs before he can stop himself. Virgil blushes deeper.

“Uh, sorry,” Virgil says. “Sorry, he’s your—”

“No, you’re quite right,” Logan says affably. “He is a pain in the ass, he’d be proud to hear you say it. How do you know him?”

“Coworkers, of a sort,” Virgil says.

“So you’re a lawyer?” Logan says curiously.

“No,” Virgil says. “He’s in immigration law, right?”

“Correct.”

“I’m a translator,” Virgil says. “They hire me on retainer, sometimes, for clients who speak Spanish or Portuguese and not as much English. Or Catalan, or Aromanian, or Asturian, but those are way less common.”

“Interesting,” Logan says. “You’re a polyglot?”

“Six languages fluently, and three enough to make conversation,” Virgil says, then, “Aw, look at that.”

Nikola is nosing at Helena, and, after waiting a moment, Helena noses her back, their muzzles pressing together in a facsimile of a kiss.

“Well,” Logan says, unsure of what to really say to that, because it really is quite adorable. Then, “I suppose they’d like to spend time together. Would you like to sit back down on the bench to talk?”

Virgil smiles at him, more a quirk of his mouth than anything, and Logan’s heart flutters in his chest.

Please be single, please be single, he prays to no one in particular as they sit down together.

“So, what do you do for a living?” Virgil asks, ensuring that he has marked the page (his bookmark advertises for a small, local independent bookshop) and closing it, setting it aside.

“Oh,” Logan says, then, because his actual job title is quite long and unwieldy, he says, “I’m an astrochemist.”

“An astrochemist,” Virgil repeats, sounding intrigued. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that. What do you do all day?”

Logan brightens. “Well,” he begins, and off he goes.

He knows he can be something of a rambler, especially when it comes to topics he’s passionate about, and especially when it comes to astrochemistry, a combination of his two most favorite scientific disciplines of study. It only takes someone five minutes of listening to him ramble to discover he’s passionate about his work and the discoveries they make.

But he can’t help it. It’s the best thing in the universe, what he gets to do—use radio telescopes to detect the electromagnetic radiation that’s given off by objects in space, establishing what substances are in space and in what quantities, which can potentially come to tell the story of how the universe was made. 

He gestures frequently with his hands, his voice rising in volume as he talks about the significance of his work, the knowledge he’s helped discover, the theories they have. He sweeps a wide, expansive gesture to the sky, and points in the approximate direction of the various planets and stars of study. All the while, Helena and Nikola move to chase each other in circles, and all the while, Virgil alternates between watching the dogs with a soft look, and then looking back to Logan with genuine interest shining in his eyes, along with something Logan can’t quite name—well, he did just meet this man, he supposes that isn’t unreasonable.

Whatever the look is, though, it increases the excitement of lecturing about something he loves to someone who wants to learn, something in his stomach fluttering, his heart beating loud in his ears.

He’s about to start explaining the use use theoretical models as well as computer visualizations to help them explain their observations in terms of known physical and chemical principles, and how it helps them study the origins of extraterrestrial bodies and the chemical processes that have shaped their present forms when he stops, abruptly aware of how long he has been talking.

“Goodness,” Logan says, suddenly shy, pushing his glasses up his nose. “I’m so sorry, I’ve just talked away a good portion of your afternoon. Um. That’s the—that’s the sum of what I do on a daily basis. Which is what you asked.”

Virgil has that same quirk to his mouth as before, and that look in his eyes that had made Logan so eager in the first place.

“I don’t mind,” he says, and scratches at the back of his neck. “Um, I don’t drink coffee, ‘cause I have anxiety—Helena’s my emotional support dog, actually—”

Her stillness and calmness at the start of the whole debacle makes sense, then.

“—but, um. There’s a café nearby with outdoor seating, would you wanna maybe go... get a cup of marriage?”

Logan blinks at him, mouth agape.

“Excuse me?” He manages to squeak out.

Virgil blinks right back.

“Tea?” He clarifies, as if he was unsure if Logan heard him over the sound of other dogs and humans in the park. Goodness, there’s other dogs and people in the park, when did that happen? When did it get so crowded? “Would you want to maybe go get a cup of tea?”

“You,” Logan says, certain that his face is flaming red. “You said marriage.”

Virgil blushes then. He opens and closes his mouth a couple times, and at last he says, “Marriage?”

“Yes,” Logan says. “You—you said marriage. I mean, you meant to say tea, but it—it came out marriage.”

Virgil’s brow furrows. He thinks for a few moments. Then it seems to click, and he buries his face into his hands.

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” Virgil groans. “It was nice to meet you and you’re very attractive and also you were so excited about your work so I have started liking you in a friendly way but also in a I’d like to date you way but I just proposed marriage barely an hour after we met, so I’m going to go fling myself into the creek so I never have to see you again, I can’t believe I said that.”

Helena has untangled herself from Nikola and is currently butting up against Virgil’s shins, seemingly in an attempt to get him to calm down.

“No! No,” Logan says hastily. “No. Oh, please don’t do that, um. Tea sounds great. Tea sounds lovely. I also think you’re very attractive and like you in both a friendly and romantic sense!”

Virgil peeks out from between his fingers. “Really?”

“Really,” Logan promises. “In fact, would you like to go get a cup of tea with me? Right now? As a date?”

Virgil grins at him weakly. “I guess a date sounds more reasonable than marriage right off the bat, doesn’t it?”

Logan smiles back at him, as encouragingly as he can. “It does. I’d like to go on a date with you.”

Virgil’s grin strengthens. “Great! Okay. Okay. Um—follow me, then?”

They both pause to leash their dogs, sharing a bashful smile with each other, and Logan follows Virgil and Helena to the gate of the dog park.

Nikola’s strange sense of mischief has worn off; she’s trotting obediently at his side again. To think, he’d thought Nikola had just caused all this trouble for nothing, and now he’s going on a date with a handsome, intelligent man. 

He sneaks her a treat as they exit the park, on the way to the café just down the street.

⁂

logan’s dog, nikola virgil’s dog, helena

[blueeyedgeorgie]

MCYT ROYAL AU (1)

Pronouns: She/Her

Word Count: 2.7k+

____________

"I'm not too sure about this." He crossed his arms as he spoke, it was a chilly night. Usually he was kept warm by his cloak, but tonight wouldn't be a smart time to wear it.

The night was silent besides the sound of their boots hitting the ground. As the two men walked side by side, nothing disturbed them as they quietly spoke to one another. "You need to take a load off friend, you've worked hard. One night of fun won't ruin your name."

"What name do I have, Nick? Nothing. I just believe it's a risky move to enter a place where most want me dead," A green-eyed man spoke. He prayed to himself silently, hoping no one would recognize his face. It was rare for him to remove his cloak, let alone his mask. He felt nude without them.

"Well, I've heard quite the few call you cloak, I prefer smiley mask," a hint of humor could be heard in Sap Nap's voice as they walked. The joke was quickly put to rest with the taller man jabbing him in the side. "Alright, alright... I'm trying to get some to call you mask. It's the best we could come up with at the moment."

"It stills sounds terrible."

"Then why don't you come up with a better name?" A moment of silence passed between the men as they thought in silence. "What about speed? After all, you're quite fast when you escape us."

"You might as well just stick with mask at this point, friend." The dirty blonde let out a huff of breath created from a bit of frustration. He had been escaping and breaking cruel laws for years now, yet no one had given him a name yet. He couldn't even come up with a name to use.

"Don't let your spirits down. Tonight is going to be filled with joy, laughter, dancing, and drinks. Focus on that, you can plot your fugitive name another day." Sap Nap had picked up his pace, the king's castle was now in sight. "You are quite the lonesome man, maybe if you play your cards right you'll find someone to love while you're at it."

"No one loves a criminal, Nick."

Staring at herself, Y/n couldn't help but smile. Her gown was beautiful and tailored just right. It was a pastel shade of blue, the sleeves made of lace with her skirts made of silk. Her corset was tight enough to show her figure but loose enough for her to breathe and enjoy a bit of dancing. Her hair was pinned up with a stunning jewel pendant sitting on the right of her head.

In only a few minutes, she'd meet her fiance. For weeks she had been waiting for this very moment. Letter after letter, she had gotten a chance to speak to her future lover, but for the first time, she'd get to see him in person.

Y/n was a bit nervous about the thought of engagement when the news was first sprung on her. But after hearing from her partner, she was quite interested in meeting her future husband. Her father had listened to her wishes, making sure her future husband was close in age with a good heart. The lucky part of this marriage was that it could bring peace between two kingdoms and help each town flourish.

"Your highness. It's time."

Her smile brightened as Y/n turned, facing a good friend of hers, Lord Soot. "You know you don't need to call me that, Wilbur."

"It just feels right, just for tonight. This is going to be an important night for you after all." The tall man held a wide grin on his face.

"I can't believe this is it. My future is so close."

"You're quite right. You and Prince George will work well together, I can tell. I'm happy for you, Y/n." Moments like these were always nice, Wilbur had been friends with the princess for what felt like forever. Considering he was one of the king's best vassals, he was allowed and trusted to be close to his daughter. Their friendship was similar to how siblings would act, making silly inside jokes and teasing while also being protective and kind.

"You really think so? What if he turns out to be cruel and his kindness is all just a ruse?" The h/c girl had begun to pick at her hands as she spoke, she always did this when she doubted herself or felt anxious.

"Impossible, you can tell that man has a good heart. Just by the way he stands, you could tell he wouldn't hurt a fly unless he needed to." Taking a few steps forward, he pulled out a golden pocket watch, flicking it open, "By the looks of it, I have two minutes to get you downstairs before your father sends Technoblade up."

"Then we should hurry down. We wouldn't want to upset either of them tonight."

"I completely agree with you on that, your highness." After getting her grand entrance to come to a close, Lord Soot had accompanied Y/n to the front of the ballroom. Her father had sat on his throne, a few quite important people huddled near him. Y/n's eyes glazed over the small crowd, where was he?

"Don't be nervous. He's excited to meet you." Wilbur muttered quietly, loud enough only for Y/n to hear over the music playing.

"What gave it away?"

"you're picking at your hands once again, Y/n."

"My daughter! Finally, it's time!" Standing from his seat, he had thrown his hands into the air. "I'd like you to meet, Prince George." He pointed to his left, with a man stepping aside Y/n's eyes landed on him.

It was him, George. Her future husband. He was quite handsome as he smiled kindly at her. Already she could tell, she was going to have a happy ending. When she was a child, she always feared her father would give her away to a monster of a man who'd use her as an item instead of a   person.  But when she spoke to George, she knew her father had found her someone who'd love her like a person.

"My lady." Those were the first words he spoke as he approached his fiance, "I have waited for this moment since I first heard of our engagement. It's amazing to finally meet you."

"As to you, my prince," Y/n bit her lip, trying to keep herself from grinning like a fool.

"Your highness, I must thank you once again for throwing this ball to give me the chance to meet your daughter. She can easily be mistaken for an angel." George had turned towards the intimidating man sitting on top of a throne made of gold.

"Take care of her, or many consequences will come your way, Prince."

"You have my word that I'll keep her safe, King Schlatt." With a short bow, George had turned back to his future partner, "My lady, would you like to have our first dance?"

"Please."

While the music played, Sap Nap couldn't help but sway his hips as he sauntered through the hall. Next to him, his friend merely walked, not a  touch of rhythm in his step. He couldn't focus on the music, he felt out of place. It was normal for him to sneak from place to place without being noticed, but this had just felt wrong.

His eyes had landed on a few people he recognized, people who wanted him dead. He had spotted the vassal Technoblade quite a few times in the corner of the hall, standing by King Schlatt every now and then. He seemed too busy focusing on someone else to notice him.

Tonight was his first night back in this kingdom since months has passed. The last time he was here, he had escaped with a stolen sword and a nasty cut on his shoulder. There wasn't any sign of him coming back soon, but after receiving a letter from his friend asking for his presence, he couldn't say no.

"You really need to wipe that frown off your face, friend. You're at a party, enjoy yourself."

"It's hard to do, Sap."

"Then take a drink or two."

"I..." He passed his stroll. The fugitive's eyes had landed on one thing that did interest him, a beautiful girl in a blue gown. She was smiling as she stepped off the dance floor. "Who is that?"

Sap Nap took a moment to look for whoever had caught his friend's eyes. It took a few seconds before he realized who it was. "Oh, that's the Princess, her name's Y/n."

"Y/n..."

'It makes sense she's royalty, just look at her. She's beautiful. But why haven't I noticed her before?' The tall blonde thought to himself as he watched her walk through the ballroom. She was as graceful as she was beautiful.

"I'm going to speak to her."

"I..." Sap Nap paused, rethinking his answer, "You should, you two will get along quite well. Just be careful not to pull attention to yourself."

Moving towards the princess, the blonde muttered only a few words to the knight, "My middle name is careful."

"Wait, is it?"

"Princess."

Turning on her heels, Y/n had come face to face with someone new. A man towered over her, with almond hair and beautiful green eyes. She had never seen him before, yet she felt like she could trust him with everything. Something was so intriguing about this stranger that had only muttered a word to her.

"Sir."

"I couldn't help but notice you from across the room, may I have this one dance?"  He bowed briefly, putting his hand out towards her. For a moment she stared, hesitant. Would she betray her future husband with just one dance with a stranger? ...No This couldn't be considered cheating, it was just a friendly dance.

Gently, she placed her hand in his calloused one. A smile appeared on his face as he carefully lead her to the dance floor. "You may have to excuse me if I step on one of your slippers, I was never trained to dance when I was younger." A sense of humor could be heard in his voice.

"I'll simply return the favor if you do," she smirked, placing a hand on his shoulder and he put a hand on her waist.

"Ouch." He shot a smirk right back at her.

"I can't believe it... he's actually doing it," Sap Nap muttered to himself as he watched his friend. His eyes glanced over to the King and his Vassals, they seemed to be busy in a conversation. How had this turned out so well?

The knight watched his fugitive friend, it made sense he was a good dancer. He had always been good on his feet. Sap was a bit curious about what his friend had been saying to the princess. Whatever he said was quite charming to the princess, she kept laughing and replying to him. Both held smiles on their faces as they danced together.

Song after song, they kept dancing. All Sap did was watch, looking out for any sign of someone catching onto his friend. The knight was happy for his friend, he looked like he was finally enjoying himself. As time passed, Sap Nap seemed to lose interest in his friend's activities. He was a wanted man, if he could run from a crime he could run out of the ball if he needed to. He had now turned his attention to the food set out in the corner of the room. Turkey, potatoes, bread. It all looked delicious.

Prince George was busy as well, speaking to the king about plans for their future. He only had a few dances with his fiance before needing to excuse himself, he felt a bit bad for leaving her alone. But he needed to get a few things sorted out for his stay. He couldn't stop reminding himself that she was probably alone, looking for him. She had been so happy to meet him.

But that was the thing: She had found company from a man who never spoke his name. But as they spoke and dance, she found herself laughing at his lame jokes, opening up to him about her life, and even blushing at his compliments. This moment seemed too perfect.

The green-eyed man knew he had to keep an eye out, and it was a good thing he did. He had noticed Lord Techno had disappeared from his spot by the king. It had only taken a moment for him to spot the pink-haired man stalking through, his eyes set on him. He was trying to get close. This wasn't his first time outsmarting his enemies.

The green man only smiled to Y/n, beginning to lead her across the dance floor. It seemed to be a perfect moment for the music to have such a dramatic change in how it was played. Spinning, gliding, he did everything to distract Y/n as he tried to move them to the opposite side of the dancefloor.  Every time Technoblade had gotten close, the pair moved to the opposite side of the dancefloor.

'As nice as it to have a moment with her, when will this song end?' the green-eyed man thought to himself as he spun Y/n carefully for what felt like the 100th time. Technoblade was across the ballroom. It seemed to be perfect as the song has ended, seconds after the green-eyed man had thought to himself.

"This has been a lovely time, Princess. But I now to leave you be." He had pulled them to the side, giving a short bow with a mischievous smile plastered on his face.

"Will I see you again?"

"I..." His eyes had caught onto Techno how was halfway over to them, "I'm sure you'll spot me around."

"Good to hear," she cracked a smile at him, watching as he began to step away. Y/n hadn't noticed the way his eyes were glued behind her as he disappeared into the crowd, she could only focus on how it felt to have his eyes on her. His pretty green eyes.

"Princess Y/n."

Turning on her heels, she looked to find Technoblade towering over her.  "Hello, Techno."

"Your father is demanding your return to him." He mumbled, barely loud enough for Y/n to hear.

"Alright, thank you, Techno." Y/n and Techno had a strange relationship. While they didn't agree on certain terms, they were still great friends. They had known each other for almost as long as Wilbur knew Y/n. Technoblade always had a soft spot for her, it seemed he was her one weakness, yet he'd never admit it. Techno was always so harsh towards many, but with Y/n... she was different. He would always protect her.

As Y/n passed him, Technoblade's eyes glazed through the ballroom. Where had he gone? He had noticed a man dancing with Y/n, he had seemed so familiar, yet Techno had never seen his face before. He needed to see why this man was so important.

The green-eyed man could tell Techno was looking for him. He kept moving on his feet, trying to get as far as possible from the vassal. It seemed like he'd be fine, it was impossible for Technoblade to realize who he really was. As soon as the vassal had turned to make his way back to King Schlatt, the green-eyed man could feel himself slow his pace. He turned his attention away from the pink-haired man, looking to see in the corner of the hall two young boys. One was brunette, the other was blonde. They had broken into a fit of laughter, holding onto one another to steady themselves.  The green-eyed man couldn't help but smile to himself, they reminded him of his childhood best friend, it had been years since he had seen him.

Stopping his train of thought, the green-eyed man paused. He had bumped into someone. "So sorry," His eyes widened. It couldn't be... it wouldn't be a smart idea to stay here, he needed to step away before he was recognized. Leaning his head down, he ducked away into the nearest crowd. It was George, it had to be him.

"I..." George caught his breath, freezing in place. He had to be hallucinating. It was impossible that was him, Clay was dead.

[winterscaptain]

fathers.

Aaron Hotchner x Fem!Reader a joyful future fic

a/n: it turns out the words really do fly out of you when you write in comic sans. who knew? anyways, here’s a little sunday morning angst for you. starts sweet, ends sweet. takes place au!may 2016.

words: 1.8k warnings: discussion of abuse and alcoholism (nothing too graphic)

summary: “‘why do men like me want sons?’ he wondered. ‘it must be because they hope in their poor beaten souls that these new men, who are their blood, will do the things they were not strong enough nor wise enough nor brave enough to do. it is rather like another chance at life; like a new bag of coins at a table of luck after your fortune is gone.’” – john steinbeck

masterlist | a joyful future masterlist | ajf faq | requests closed!

Aaron walks in from a very long day at the office to find you and Sean crashed out on the couch. Isaac’s asleep, too, sprawled out on his back in his Pack ‘n Play. He can hear Jack shuffling around in his room, probably on the tablet or working on homework. 

Sean has the remote loosely gripped in his hand, hanging off the edge of the couch. His head is in your lap, one of your hands in his hair, and your body curled around his shoulders. You look more like a pair of siblings or long-lost childhood friends than anyone Aaron’s ever seen - certainly more so than he would in the same situation. 

He almost envies the familiarity you and Sean have between you. Your friendship is easy and automatic - always has been.

How can two people, seemingly so similar, feel so starkly different about him? 

Aaron’s not quite sure how long he’s been standing there watching as you two sleep like a pair of house cats. Eventually, you stir with a furrowed brow, squinting into the late afternoon sunshine. 

When you find Aaron’s eyes, you smile widely and wink at him. After some delicate maneuvering in which you replace your thighs with a couch cushion and your arm with a throw blanket, you’re free of Sean’s weight and you can finally tuck into your husband. 

He kisses your head and wraps his arms around you. “How was your day?” 

“Good.” You burrow further into his chest. “Sean and I talked.” 

Aaron dips his head. “Oh?” 

“Mhmm.” You pat his chest twice and kiss his cheek. “Later.” 

+++

“Sean talked to me about your dad today.” 

Aaron freezes where he sits at the edge of the bed. You don’t mean to ambush him, but there’d never be a good time, so out with it was your best option. 

He shudders as if a chill ran through him, but the room was warm and free of drafts. Sean warned you that this might be the reaction. Even then, he only told you about his experience with the patriarch of the Hotchner household. When you’d asked about Aaron, he only paled and shook his head. 

“Ask him about it, but I won’t… I can’t do that to him,” he’d said. 

So you have. And now you wait. 

Aaron’s voice is a croak when he speaks. “What -” He clears his throat. “What did he say?”

You turn toward him, tucking your legs close to you and pulling the duvet up. “He told me a little about what it was like for him growing up.” 

“Just him?”

“Just him. He wouldn’t say anything about your relationship with your father, nor about your childhood. I didn’t push.”

You pause for a moment. He’s still frozen, but his breath picks up. Not for the first time, you notice the silver lines - scars - across his back. 

Long-healed and decades-old. 

“I realized in that moment that it’s one of the few things I don’t know about you. I knew, even when I first met you, never to ask and you never told. You’ve alluded to things over the years on cases, and I’ve seen the unique kind of loathing you have for unsubs who hurt their children.” Your voice is low, Isaac sleeping in his crib beside the bed, almost old enough to sleep in the nursery.

You hear Aaron’s breath catch and you lean forward, putting your hand beside his hip so he knows you’re there. 

“I’ve known not to ask for so long that I never did.”

A huff leaves him. “You’re not going to like it.” 

“I don’t expect to,” you reply simply. 

Aaron’s hand wanders back to find your own and he grasps your fingers like a lifeline. Eventually, he turns, sitting in the middle of the bed like a child, his legs crisscrossed with his feet nearly underneath him. 

He stares at the bedspread as he tells you about his father. A charming, handsome lawyer with a wicked vodka habit. That particular wicked habit fed into his other one - a liberal use of his belt as a tool of discipline. 

Aaron tells you about the day he was old enough to step between his parents, to take whatever his father had to throw - sometimes literally - on behalf of his mother. Evelyn did her best, kept the house together and her boys as safe as she could. It didn’t always work. 

She’d thought, Aaron shared with you, that a second child would soothe whatever hurt tortured her husband.

Aaron never resented her. Especially after starting his work as a lawyer and later as an agent, he understands how difficult - really, impossible - it is to leave those situations when you have children.  

As his parents struggled to conceive, his father grew worse. By the time Evelyn had Sean, Aaron was thankfully old enough to wrangle his father into a cold shower and into bed most nights before he could get violent. He was thirteen. 

“It was almost a relief - it was a relief - when his body finally failed him. I was barely in college when he died, and I graduated early. Sean was still little, so I don’t know what he remembers.” 

Aaron sits for a moment, thinking. “If I could hazard a guess, I’d say it was the shouting.” He shakes his head. “We were always shouting.”   

You’re both in tears now, but your crying is silent and his tears hardly disrupt his breath. 

“Almost everyone at his funeral was someone he worked with. They, of course, loved him. His functional alcoholism served to make him affable enough to make and keep friends at the law firm. They had no idea what happened after he came home.” 

 He takes another breath. “I did my best to protect Sean after our father died, to keep him safe. I know he resented me for it - might still resent me for it - but he’s alive. And so is my mom.” 

You can’t imagine what Evelyn’s been through, the peace she’s probably had in the decades she’s spent widowed. How the Hotchner line managed to survive - managed to become as kind and genuine and loving as they are - is close to a miracle. 

You tell him as much. 

He raises his eyebrows and shakes his head, looking very much like the lost boy who took on too much, too fast, too early. “I don’t know how.” 

“Because,’ you say, leaning forward and crawling into his lap and wrapping around him like a koala. “You are a better man, Aaron. You won.” 

His breath is unsteady as he clasps his arms around you, his hands locked around his opposite forearms. 

“You’re a great brother, a fantastic husband, an exceptional father.” You lean back so you can frame his face in your hands. “You wanna know something?”

He just stares at you. 

“I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve heard you raise your voice at a member of our team or your family.” Your thumbs brush over his cheekbones as his eyes flutter shut. “You are a strong and gentle leader who relies on integrity rather than force to win respect.” 

You kiss his cheek and hook your chin over his shoulder, holding him as close as you can. “We’re never afraid of you. Your sons can’t wait for you to come home. They’re thrilled when they hear your keys in the door.” 

He sniffles. “I’m afraid...”

Leaning back again, you grip his jaw with a kind of gentle ferocity, forcing his gaze. “Aaron. Look me in the eye and tell me what your sons could do to push you to beat them, to physically discipline them. What would they have to do?” 

He meets your eyes, shifty and shadowed like a wild animal, and stares at you without speaking. After a moment, the wildness fades and his lower lip wobbles as he exhales. 

That’s enough of an answer for you. 

“Can’t find anything, can you?” 

Aaron shakes his head. He’s barely audible. 

“No.” 

“No,” you echo, your voice gentle and soft. Bringing his head back to your shoulder, you hold onto him, running your hands over his shoulders to soothe some of his shaking. 

Isaac snuffles and stirs, drawing your attention. Aaron looks up too, his eyes searching for his son. 

“Lemme get him,” he says. You untangle yourself and shuffle to the edge of the bed, looking over the edge of the crib. Knowing Isaac, he probably just wants snuggles. He’s the snuggliest baby you’ve ever known. 

His father’s son, certainly. 

Aaron rounds the crib and leans down, bringing Isaac to his chest. “Hey, little man. You alright?”

Isaac makes a little creaky baby noise and grabs Aaron’s shirt in a death grip. 

There are still tears streaked down Aaron’s cheeks and his breath is still a little unsteady, but he’s relaxed as he gently rocks Isaac around the room, shifting his weight from side to side. In his father's arms, Isaac falls right to sleep.

+++

Aaron’s night is fitful, but after you curl up at his side he manages to close his eyes and rest. 

You’re up before him in the morning - a rarity - finding Isaac awake and holding onto his own feet in the crib, staring up at the ceiling. 

My boy. Always happy to entertain himself. 

You pick him up and carry him out of the room, closing the door softly behind you. At this point, you’ve perfected the one-armed carry thanks to Aaron, and it usually comes in handy. 

Jack and Sean are already awake, making cereal so quietly the bowls probably deserve their own top-secret clearance. 

“Good morning, boys,” you say with a smile. 

“Morning, Mom,” they drone, in tandem, before dissolving into a fit of giggles. 

With a laugh, you find your own bowl and Sean pours your cereal just the way you like it while you pull a bottle for Isaac. 

The four of you eat breakfast in relative peace. It’s nice to have Sean here with you for more than one reason, but for now, it’s because he’s holding Isaac’s bottle so you can eat with one hand. One hand, you've learned, is decidedly better than no hands at all.

Aaron rolls into the kitchen about ten minutes after you, looking rumpled and squinty in the morning sun. 

“Coffee’s on, honey.” 

He mumbles his thanks and you share a smile with Sean.

“He’s predictable,” you explain in a half-whisper. 

Sean nods, playing at something pensive. “And old.”  

“Heard that.”

You and Sean share a look and a smile. You look over your shoulder. "Heard what?"

+++

tagging: @arganfics @quillvine @stxrryspencer @agenthotchner @wandaswitxh @hurricanejjareau @ughitsbaby @rousethemouse @criminalsmarts @shrimpyblog @genevievedarcygranger @ssaic-jareau @writefasttalkevenfaster @hotchsflower @hotchslatte @risenfox @mrs-dr-reid @captain-christopher-pike @dwellingsofrosie @pan-pride-12 @sunshine-em @jdougl-love @sageellsworth05 @dreila03 @forgottenword @aaronhotchnerr @ssa-morgan @buckybau @tegggeeee @abschaffer2 @ssacandice-ray @ellyhotchner @lotties-journey-abroad @mrs-joel-pimentel-23-25 @laneygthememequeen @violentvulgarvolatile @mooneylupinblack @ssareidbby @violet-amxthyst @zizzlekwum @lcvischmitt @qvid-pro-qvo @mandylove1000 @simsiddy @jeor @synonymforlame @roses-and-grasses @bwbatta @capricorngf @missdowntonabbey @averyhotchner @cevanswhre @joanofarkansass @infinity1321 @popped-weasels @evee87 @nuvoleincielo @ssahotchnerr @this-broken-band-girl @winqhster @reidtomestyles @hotch-meeeeeuppppp @the-falling-in-the-danger @nattylite49 @crazyshannonigans @softbibxtch @iconicc @mangoberry43 @andreasworlsboring101 @kerrswriting @mac99martin @itsalwaysb33nyou @ceceguajardo-blog @baumarvel @kerrswriting @messyhairday-me

[carpehistoryandthepens]

Legacy (what is a legacy?) Part 14

It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see I wrote some notes at the beginning of a song someone will sing for me

Hamilton, the world was wide enough. LMM.

one, two, three, four, Five, six seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen

Summary: Mike is 13. Born May 2009. Sid didn’t know he had a son. All Mike had was hope and a prayer for his and his half-sister’s safety.

(Sid is a dad of a teen he didn’t know about AU) Sidgeno.

Warnings: (for the total story) post-child abuse (all off-screen but it affects things and is spoken about often), learning how to parent, panic attacks, anxiety, based on last season, OCs?, realization about sexuality. Post breakups. Desperate lack of in-depth research for CPS in both PA/CA, melodrama?, kidfic, angst, slowburn, playing fast and loose with the law for drama/storytelling purposes.

-

Sid's house was quiet when Nikita and Papa came back from school. It was missing the happy noise of Marisol and Mike talking and playing. When Papa picked him up, he said that Mike and Marisol had a tough day and might not want to be bothered.

Nikita frowned when told that; he hoped Mike would help him with his math again. This was harder than his last school. Nikita really liked it when he came home from school to them. He hoped that they would continue to hang out after school even after he and Papa moved back into their home. They could hang out, do homework, or maybe play with the mini sticks!

But Papa was clear before they left the car; now was time to be quiet. Mike and Marisol had a bad day.

Nikita liked Sid's house a lot, almost more than his Papa's house. He did miss the basketball court from his Papa's house, though. But Sid's garage was a good place for a football net. Since his Mama returned to Miami, he got his own room with a nice view.

He was a little upset at the constant moving around, though. Mama and Papa had promised him that if he chose a school, he would stay in one place except for vacations, and he only got a few weeks in his room before they had to move again.

It wasn't fair that the house broke. Nikita wanted to stay in one room for a while.

Mike and Marisol were nowhere to be seen when he and Papa entered the house. Sid was at their side in an instant, greeting them in Russian.

One of the other reasons Nikita liked Sid's house is that Sid spoke Russian. So, if Nikita forgot a word or didn't know it in either English or Russian, he could just switch, and Sid could follow – just like his parents! It was nice.

Sid's hair was a mess, and it looked like he had been running his hands through it. Nikita thought it looked fluffy. There was a slump to his shoulders that Niktia usually only saw on his Papa's teammates after long roadies.

Papa paused at the door and glanced around, "Mike and Marisol…?"

"Are in their room," Sid said in Russian. "Marisol needed to be in a bed."

Nikita looked up at his Papa, "Can I go play with them?"

Both adults exchanged a look over Nikita's head. Just because he didn't know what the look meant didn't mean he didn't see it.

"I think you can, buddy," Sid said slowly. "But you have to be quiet."

"And you have to ask," his Papa said, emphasizing the word ask and holding Nikita's gaze until Nikita nodded solemnly, "If they say no or are sleeping, you have to come back, ok?"

Nikita nodded again. "I promise." He said before dashing off, and he would. He would ask! But Mike and Marisol had never said no to him before, and they weren't like the kids from the school; they were nice. He grabbed his iPad from his school bag. There were a few games on there that didn't require sound. Nikita played them while he and his parents were at restaurants.

As he left, his Papa asked Sid, "How was the talk?" Nikita didn't hear Sid's answer, only the low tone of his voice.

Mike and Marisol were in a room across from his. Sid and his Papa's rooms were further into the house. Nikita knocked on the door. Mike opened it up, warily looking around and then seeing Nikita.

"Wanna play?" Nikita asked dutifully in English. Mike didn't speak any Russian, just Spanish. His Papa would be proud. His Mama might say something about proper English; if he had to learn the language, he should speak it right.

Mike scrunched his face unhappily, and Nikita's hopes dropped a little. Maybe he would say no. But Mike glanced back into the room and then back out. "Marisol is still sleeping. We can't wake her up."

Behind him, Nikita saw that Marisol was tucked into Mike's bed. Her bed was on the other side of the room, but Nikita knew they only tended to use one bed often; they both had nightmares they didn't like to discuss.  

"Napping?" Nikita asked before remembering to whisper. "I can be quiet!" He said, hushed.

Mike gave him a slight quirk of a grin before ushering him into the bedroom.

They settled down to play an English game on Nikita's iPad, which helped him learn the rules of the language. It was on mute.

"You're really good at this," Mike said after Nikita rapidly beat several levels before losing while at a spelling game while trying to spell 'believed.' Too many 'e's in the word.

"Thank you!" Nikita beamed. Nikita handed the iPad to Mike so he could play a few levels. He was really good at sharing things; his Mama always said so when they were in Miami with friends.

He should make lots of friends at school. Just because he hadn't yet didn't mean he wouldn't! He liked a few of his classmates. It was just hard to talk to them. It was different from talking to Mike or Marisol. One boy was bigger than the rest of them, and he was in charge. Nikita didn't like that boy, and that boy didn't like Nikita.

Mike and Marisol were easy to talk to, even when Marisol was being fussy or acting like a baby or when Mike couldn't talk at all. It was like they were his actual brother and sister! Something he always wanted – but was never able to get. His parents were always firm that they were not planning another sibling.

Mike played for a few rounds before losing at a level, trying to figure out the endings of words. After that, he handed the iPad back to Nikita. After going back and forth for a while, getting to a higher level than Nikita had ever gotten on his own or with his parent's help, Nikita set the iPad aside. "Can we play mini sticks?" he asked.

He missed having his own playroom. Both of his homes, his Papa's Pittsburgh house and his momma's Miami condo, had rooms just for his toys. (The Russian apartments didn't have a separate room, but Nikita never minded.) Sid didn't have that in his home. Instead, they could play with mini sticks in his room, or their room, or…

But Mike shook his head negatively, "No, Nikita. I don't want to."

"Ok," Nikita frowned; who didn't want to play mini sticks? But he accepted Mike's answer because that's what being a brother means, right? Mike had chosen to play on the iPad with Nikita despite being tired; he might not be ready to play something so rowdy.

Nikita wanted to be Mike and Marisol's brother. That way, his family and theirs can stay together. He doesn't understand much but knows his parents aren't getting back together, so his family is smaller than it was. He misses his mom – she left a few days ago to work back in Miami – but it was better with Mike and Marisol there.

"How about we work on your homework?" Mike asked, "You have more math today, right?"

Nikita nodded slowly. "Yeah." The math was hard and wasn't much fun. But his Papa was firm that math was necessary, even for professional athletes. The school used a website for homework, and Nikita logged in to the program online from the tablet. He opened the assignment, and very quietly, he and Mike worked through the numbers.

There were some kids in his class, classmates of sorts who were good at math, and they were mean to Nikita for not being as good as them.

Nikita was so much better than them in English, as they had only moved from Moscow a few years ago, but Nikita never brought it up.

He hopes they will be on a different football team. He knows they won't be on the same hockey team – he's better than most of them at hockey, even if he likes soccer better.

As they got close to the end of the assignment, Mike started to look really sleepy.

"Nap time?" Nikita asked. Most of his classmates weren't taking many naps anymore, but when his Papa, Sidney, and most of the men he knew took them regularly, Nikita didn't see it as childish as they did. He knew a Hockey player's secret: Naps.

Mike nodded. If they all ended up in Mike's bed and crashed out, Nikita was told that nap piles happened while on roadies.

[leqclerc]

care to spare more on the twilight meets sebchal idea? i‘m buzzing with excitement right now. the more i think about it the more comparisons i see 🥺

Oh man, I don't even know. I just occasionally get hit with like... nostalgia for the aesthetics and the music, y'know? Plus, I've been casually re-watching the movies every few nights so yeah I guess it's been rattling around my head, lol. But it's not like I have a solid plan or plot for a fic or anything. I mean I kind of did a while back but it's a more loose interpretation that doesn't faithfully follow the plot and isn't set in high school in America, lmao. Maybe at some point I'll go back to my WIPs and try to bang out a scene or two from that AU. It is NaNo after all...

The problem is, like...I genuinely can't decide which of them would be the vampire in this scenario? I could see it working both ways. I mean Charles is extraordinarily handsome, has (by own admission) "yellow eyes", drives a Ferrari, speaks several languages, plays the piano, is rich, impossibly fast and strong, etc. Reading the book and seeing how Bella describes Edward you're like "well lol he's not real people like that don't exist." And then you look at Charles and you realise SMeyer was ahead of her time and she knew he'd be torturing all of us on the regular sjdjef

But at the same time, Seb has the life experience and knowledge of someone who's lived, well, a really long existence. I can see him struggling to accept what he is/his nature (especially if he was, like, a medical emergency "change" or something and couldn't really make an informed choice because someone made it for him) given what we know of him and his outlook on life in general. I'm pretty sure there's an interview somewhere where he gets asked if he'd choose to be immortal or something and he says no because living life and making mistakes and learning from them and changing and shaping your life is what makes it worth living for him. So I think if he'd been changed (even closer to/at 30 and not very young like most of the Cullens) he'd have some angst about it and maybe a "rebellious phase" (think RB era) in his first few years as a newborn before maturing and kind of...trying to give his new existence some sort of meaning beyond just feeding. Imo he'd adopt a Carlisle-like approach and use the infinite time at his disposal to learn, gain knowledge, experience, better himself, meet other vampires, travel, help humans/the community, etc. I think he'd also be one of the first to convert to vampiric vegetarianism. You could even keep the mind reading aspect and have only Charles be immune to Seb's gift. Or he could be a "giftless" vampire.

So yeah given what we know of Seb I can't see him romanticizing immortality, let alone vampirism, and being all eager to be bitten and changed the way Bella was. If he were the human in this scenario and he fell for Charles I think he'd choose to stay human and just... have a long, happy life with Charles and his farm and his chickens and his whatever else, and then let nature take its course. Charles would angst about not having enough time with Seb (kinda canon) but would also try to understand his point of view and respect his wishes, even if it tore him up to eventually have to lose him.

Side note: in the context of Ferrari it cracks me up that the Big Bad ancient vampires that are responsible for maintaining law and order in the vampire world are based out of Italy, lmfao. Could also be the FIA and how they oversee everything. Michael Masi as Aro, anyone? ajsdjfed

[the-fiction-witch]

Mariée Au Mal

REAL LIFE X DEVIL / WITCHES COUPLE: TBS X READER RATING: FLIRTY

I walked the stone streets hearing my boots against the stone. Hearing the movement of my dress almost touching the stone. I felt the chill of the wind around me. The darkness crept across the village as the sun set beyond the hill. Every step I took I could hear and see, children being ushered inside, doors being bolted, windows being shut and locked. The whispers of the name they had given me. 'mariée au mal' I knew what it meant. I knew their assumptions about me. I tried not to think of it.

I looked at my shadow walking down the path with the light from the sunset, I looked to my left to a shop the blind already down, but a few shutters where someone peaked out, those instantly dropped as I looked and the door bolted I saw my reflection my long purple dress, black petticoats, black corset, my black hooded cloak, my tall riding boots, my twisted y/h/c hair and blood red lips. I continued on my way moving my wicker basket up my arm a little more, checking on the lavender and honey I had gathered across the forest this afternoon. I walked quickly trying not to draw attention to myself before reaching the graveyard and the little river that ran beside it, perched on the graveyard gate sat a raven it cawed at me so I smiled and offered my hand letting it perch on my ring as I walked over the little stone bridge over the river pushing open the little gate to my house. The twisted metal whining as I did I walked the sweet path through my garden until I arrived at my little thatched cottage with leaded glass windows and the conversatory. I smiled and headed inside my little house though the glass conservatory door putting my basket down emptying out my herbs and honey into my apothecary as the raven flew off into the house and perched on the sofa on his usual pillow

"Hello my little princess" he smirked 

"Will you just. One damn minute" I told him

"What? What have I done?" He whines getting up and coming over fixing his clothes a little but I did my best not to look at him 

"I'm working" I said 

"Umm working? I think your just being mean to me" he smirked into my ear untying my cloak and pulling it off me "come in you can work anytime, I don't get to visit to much anymore, not half as often as I'd like my sweet little princess" he cooed cuddling me from behind "and I have missed you, so badly" he smirked almost growing in my ear as he pushed himself against my dress

"Thomas. Five minutes alright, you've been gone six months five more minutes isn't going to kill you" I laughed 

"It might"

"Nothing kills you"

"Why? Are you trying to get rid of me?" 

"No."

"Good." He says kissing my shoulder "I'm sorry I was gone so long."

"Umm" I said ignoring him

"Aww? Is that why your so grumpy with me?" He laughs before turning me around to face him as he stood in my conservatory his golden hair reflecting the sunsets light, his red textured button down shirt undone half way down his chest, his tight black almost leather pants against him, black braces or suspenders on his shoulders to keep them up even if I don't think he needed them, stubble gracing his chin and the corners of his upper lip but nowhere near as bad as I had seen before when he's been away for longer his hands around me softly his foot between my own "I told you it was work, you know I wouldn't leave my little princess unless I had to" he cooes caressing my cheek "it's a busy job you know, I keep telling you I'll... Take you with me if you want?"

"No thank you" I said turning back to my work "I wish you wouldn't wait there"

"Where? On the gate?"

"Umm. Why not in the garden?"

"You might not see me, besides I like them knowing I'm here"

"You might I don't. It makes them nervous and when people get nervous they get scared and when people get scared they do stupid things." I explained

"Well... Maybe they need a little fear in them"

"I don't want to be feared, Thomas..."

"Don't you?" He laughs sitting in my work bench so I had no choice but to see him "you get off on it"

"What?"

"Oh come on" he laughs "riding boots with the six inch heels? The long purple dress? The black corset? Blood red lipstick? Long black hooded cloak? And you're telling me you don't want to be feared? You love it"

"It's fun sometimes" I admit

"I know it is princess, maybe you and me should go walking in the town sometime really frighten them" he smirked 

"No Thomas. We're in enough trouble as it is" I told him 

"mariée au mal" he smirked to himself 

"Shut up" I sighed 

"It's a good name for you"

"I said shut up Thomas"

"Bride of evil"

"Married to evil"

"Depends on your translation." He shrugs 

"Why did I marry you?" I asked leaning on my desk to slightly glare at him 

"I don't know, you asked me remember" he smirked, kissing my cheek and jumping off the desk going into the cottage "you coming to bed? Or do I have to drag my pretty bride down to hell with me to fuck her?" He smirked,

I smiled as I laid in my bed listening to the wind in the tree's, the sounds of animals in the woods, the babble of the river under the bridge, the quiet of this peaceful little town. I could hear Thomas Gently breathing, his arm around my waist spooning me as he often did wanting to keep me safe in his arms so if I even moved much less left his arms he would know and it would wake him. I couldn't help my mind flooding with the memories of the first night I ever spend on his arms.

I was young, but old enough to know better. I would go and play by the tall willow tree in the forest. I would go and spend hours and hours reading books and gathering flowers. Often times I would speak to the tree and many times it would speak back to me. I had always been a woman on the darker side of the world. I liked the grim and the spooky, I had a fondness for the darkness and what often times lurked within it. I had always been wary of straying too far, never leaving a door open, never offering things without consistency, never going too far if you won't commit to it. Rules I followed like laws, until one night. It was a blood moon, it hung over the willow and that night I decided I wanted to see just how far I could go.

I made an altar at the willows roots, with candles, herbs, a salt circle, flowers, and tools. I called out things but nothing answered. Each time I called out going deeper and deeper until someone answered me. 

"Hello, aren't you beautiful" he smirked as he saw me "not often I get such a beautiful woman calling out to me" 

"I uhh i-" stuttered in shock 

"Shh, it's alright. I guess you don't get answers very often. No need to worry, sweet girl. I won't hurt you" 

"I seek what is to be" I said

"Do you?" He smirked "clever girl as well as beautiful. Are you sure that's what you want?" He asks 

"Yes"

"Then a smart girl like you understands the price it takes" 

I nodded and took the cage from my basket of the small bird I had found he laughed at me 

"You have been misinformed" he says taking the cage and letting the bird loose 

"Then what is the price?"

"The price is different for everyone."

"Then for me?"

"For you?" He smirked "I can give you what you seek. But for you beautiful lady, the price is simple. Your utter love and devotion, swear your life and love for me, be mine and you shall have all that you seek" 

"How do I do this?"

"... Be with me. And swear your devotion to me" he smirked taking my hands 

"Yes master" I nodded

"Whoa... Just Thomas little princess, I'm not your master, and I won't be. You'll be my bride, still happy?" He asked and I nodded "good. Now... We're all done with the formalities, shall we? my pretty little princess? My sweet little wifey?" 

I nodded and he smirked looking at me, licking his tongue slightly across his bottom lip. He moved forward holding my Waist before leaning in and kissing me softly, he was warm, and soft, he tasted and smelt like ash, mahogany, petricorn and mint. He was gentle with me as he kissed me his thumb stroking my waist as we kissed in the moonlight, surrounded by the tree and it's leaves, the gentle breeze as the kisses got faster, deeper until he pushed me to gently laying me down on the grass in the circle of salt with him laid over me…

I woke up peacefully to the sweet symphony of bird song in the tree's. The gentle breeze whistling through the branches and leaves. The hushed sounds of the world before people rise. I was warm between the layers of my dress, one protecting me from the ground the other protecting my body, his arm around my waist his head nuzzled in my shoulder and arm fast asleep barely making a sound but his breaths. I looked seeing his sweet mop of hair nuzzled so close to me, looking up seeing the sunlight cascading through the tree as it rose, the sunlight peeking in through the leaves and branches. 

"Uumm good morning" he yawns 

"Hi" I blushed 

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing"

"No, come on tell me"

"So… that's that"

"Aww what? Was I disappointing little princess?" He whines 

"No, no. It's just that's it you know"

"Well, We’re married now”

“What?”

“We’re married. And mated.”

“So… I’m a real witch now” “You were a real witch before. But Now my bride”

“So? What are we going to uhh… going to do?”

“Well, I have to get to work soon. I’ll be down there for a couple of days but I’ll come back and snuggle up with my little wifey, I might not be home some nights. But it’s work. I'll always come back to my little princess, Like any husband and wife when a husband works away” He explained “So? Shall we head home?” 

I stood in my conservatory, the sunlight flickering through the glass, Through the leaves of the forest, the stems and petals of the flowers that grew in here or in the garden, The flicker of rain bows where light flickered through the glass or though sculpted bottles of potions and viles, as well as though light catchers. 

“Hey” Thomas smiled Leaning on my door to stare at me

“What?” I laughed 

“Nothing, I just like looking at you” He shrugs

“Go Look at your pit of sluts” 

“It’s not a pit. It’s a…. Box” 

“Go look at that then”

“Why would I go look at them? When I have my wife?”

“Go hang out with one of your other wives then” 

“What over wives?” he laughs 

“I can’t be the only witch who summoned you and… let you, you know” 

“Of course not. You’re my only wife princess.” He says 

“What about all those other-”

“Shhh, You’re my only wife princess, and if I get summoned by any other little witches in the forest I send the demons. I only come when my wife summons me” He smirked giving my cheek a kiss cuddling me tightly and stroking my stomach “Besides. I’m going to be staying from now on, as much as I can now you have the baby coming” He cooed, kissing my neck and down my shoulder as he stroked my stomach “My beautiful princess, My Beautiful bride. I get to spend all day with you now, My pretty wifey and our baby” 

“Sure thomas” I laughed “Maybe soon I’ll get to go down there?”

“You will, when the baby is born. My sweet little princess,” He cooed kissing my cheek 

[ka-2-yacraft]

Hello! Ive stumbled upon your D&D AU Idea and i do have to ask: Hows the group doing in allginment-ish wise? Im assuming they arent full evil, but theres no way they are fully good either - Scar certainly scams everyone he can and is probably banned from shops and whatnot (Also, do you have a list with all the characters and their classes/races?) all the love to you!

It’s definitely a range. Honestly I don’t think about alignments too much. I have some notes like lawful good Wels, chaotic good Grian, and true neutral Beef (which have a fun connection you’ll find out later). I don’t have any of them as baseline evil, and even Evil X will probably turn debatable after he joins the group. I play pretty fast and loose with it. Other than the earlier three, I haven’t really thought about it. 

For the characters, I’ll be sure to compile a list later on.