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luveline · 10 months

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𝐚 𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐩𝐢𝐝 𝐡𝐨𝐩𝐞 | 𝐦𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐞𝐥 𝐨’𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚

miguel does everything he can to make you feel better after a civilian casualty steals your ‘sunshine’. —a fic featuring reluctantly adoring miguel and his sad spider-girl. pre across the spider-verse but contains spoilers. requested here. fem!reader, 4k

cw character death, violence, reactive depression

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

"Miguel," you say, your voice grained by the communicator in his ear, "this universe is almost the same as mine, right?"

Miguel stares down at a Doc Ock variant you're staking out, lying in wait for the anomalistic antagonist to make his first move. He's trying desperately to maintain his focus but you have a nice voice, and you ask him with a confidence that betrays your total faith in him. You haven't considered that he might not know.

Well, Miguel does know. He's not sure he should start this discussion and distract you, but he has trouble saying no to you in any capacity, so he does.

"I don't know every difference, but yeah, they're the same. Same geography, world leaders, roughly the same fast food chains." He bites his lip. He's at work, more than work —you're attempting to save an entire dimension, here— and he shouldn't feed the conversation anymore. But he knows you'll be interested in this. "Donuts aren't a thing, here."

"What?"

"They have donuts, but they aren't called donuts, and they're nowhere near as popular."

"This is a very strange way to flirt," Lyla says, her flickering hazed by a golden aura as she changes rapidly between laying on her front, legs kicking, and her back, as though she's in a therapist's daybed. She floats across his vision lazily.

"That's because I'm not," Miguel says.

"What?" you ask.

"Nothing. Talking to Lyla."

"How come Lyla doesn't talk to me?" you ask sweetly.

Miguel can see you in the distance, your simple black suit like an ink splodge against the blue grey glass of the skyscraper you're standing on. Anchored with a web and your body tensed, you're perfectly parallel to the ground below, as though you're standing on the windows.

"It's not that I don't want to," Lyla promises. "Miggy won't let me."

"That is not true."

Projections cover Miguel's vision, powered by his favourite lying intelligence. Movements are mapped in a bright marigold yellow, though the net turns red to signify potential danger, chance percentages bouncing up and down. Doc Ock raises an arm and it turns an eye-straining red. He sits down on a park bench and his body turns yellow again. It's a smart program, but it can't account for everything.

"Something isn't right."

You hum appreciatively. "It feels weird, how he's acting. Like he's two separate people."

Doc Ock glitches hard, the air around him fractured by colours in varying depths, like a tangible, physical screen tone. They've been coming faster. He doesn't have much time before he begins to tear apart, and that tearing will prompt panic. Panic will prompt anger.

"What should we do?" you ask.

Miguel doesn't know. He regrets asking you to come with him, not that you aren't capable. When you first joined the Spider Society you'd hadn't been Spider-Girl in your own universe for very long, and you weren't particularly proactive. You were kind-hearted but lackadaisical, and after worming your way into his life, a flower budding between concrete slabs it shouldn't have the power to crack, (he seriously doesn't know how it happened, only that you'd been bringing him things, carefully wrapped foods and trinkets you'd made, your bad conversation, and suddenly you were worrying about him and doting on him in the strange way that you do, suddenly, he was doing the same), you decided you wanted to help. You've trained hard on Spider-led courses at the Society, improving your overall fitness, your stamina, your technique, to become the fighter you are now. You can hold your own well.

Miguel knows what motivated you. You want to look after him. You'd all but admitted to it. And that's why Miguel wishes he asked someone else to come with him, because you'll put yourself in harm's way as he would for you, to protect.

"Why did you want to know if this universe was the same?" he asks, the nano of his suit morphing over his hands, claws growing long and minaciously sharp.

"Oh! Because, I used to have these favourite cookies called Butter Leaves, but they stopped making them in my dimension 'cos of the Whey disease. Even when it was better, loads of companies couldn't come back…"

You give him the entire history. He already knows it. He tries to listen to you with the attention you deserve anyway, only he's weighed the options, and taking down Doc Ock feels much more important than listening to your cravings.

"They were really thin and they had this sweet coating brushed over the top. You'd like them, I think." Miguel drops the last hundred feet to the ground, ignoring the jarring heat in his ankles at such a landing without having rolled into it. "If they were a little softer and had some sugar they'd taste just like polvorones, Miguel."

"You could say that about lots of things," Miguel argues, tone measured as not to alert bystanders nearby of his presence.

"This doesn't feel like a good idea," Lyla says. Standing now, alert.

Miguel toggles the communicator so you can't hear him.

He wonders if you'd even notice him speaking over the intensity of your excitement, "I know it's not professional but maybe we could go and look? After we beat the bad guy. They're more than worth it, I swear," you say hopefully.

"It's fine," he says to Lyla, throwing out a hand, shins braced and ready to burst into a tackle.

"It feels off, you both said it."

"It always feels off. He's in the wrong dimension, his presence caused a shift. The wrongness is unavoidable, like the body–"

"Rejecting an organ transplant," Lyla says. "I know. You say it constantly."

"If you know, why are you asking?" he asks, deadpan.

"Good to know your girlfriend can ask questions and I can't. You're a trailblazer for equality, O'Hara."

Not my girlfriend, he thinks, but he isn't sure how true that is. Miguel realigns his eyesight, the holographic netting that pinpoints anomalistic stress a menacing red where it maps Doc Ock's limbs. The colours are abrasive against the yellow-green leaves fluttering in the breeze to the grass below, trees like arms stretched toward one another standing behind the simple brown bench where Doc Ock murmurs drunken-sounding ravings.

Miguel's fangs slice through gum and lock into place. He tries not to salivate. The paralysing agent produced gives him a numb tongue.

Miguel attempts to work quickly. Approach the target. Lock the target in. Incapacitate. He rears back and takes a deep breath.

"Wait! Behind! Behind you, Miguel, there's something behind you!"

He twists backward without hesitation and swings his arm around a cold neck. He squeezes hard, hears a metallic crunch similar to a mortar and pestle, but the person in his chokehold isn't a person, it's a robot.

"Octobots!" Lyla shouts.

"HELPFUL!" Miguel shouts back, grunting as a robotic arm curves around his back, and then a second, a third.

The hills of his muscles strain against white-lacquered steel, a sweat breaking at the back of his neck as he groans, desperate to stop the octobot from crushing his arms to a powder. He can practically hear the creaking of his humerus.

Around him, civilians scatter, screaming for their lives as a small horde of octobots descends on the park. Doc Ock doesn't react to the chaos. He sits there muttering to himself as people run past him and his octobots play cat and mouse. Miguel finally snaps the arms off the robot holding him with a pissed grunt, punching the carcass of machinery away from him while you tuck and roll from a dive to the ground. In an impressive show of your improvement and coordination, you throw out a web as you roll and hit Doc Ock square in the face, a second binding his chest to the bench. You spring to your feet, shooting at bots one after another. You must take down six by the time he's gathered his bearings.

"On your left," Lyla says. Miguel smashes a bot at the apex of its white body and she laughs. "Nice. Behind."

Miguel falls into the fight as though it's a well-practised dance. With the stress maps locked on, quick-thinking, and Lyla's pointed direction, Miguel can decapitate or incapacitate each bot swiftly as long as they don't get a hold on him like the first one managed.

You're like Lyla in that a good skirmish seems to set you off —you're giggling, cheering, enjoying yourself much more than you should be. "This is just like that video game," you say, leaping onto a moving octobot and shooting webbing at the joints, gumming them up until they can't move. "With the girl and her super powered puppy, you know that one?"

"Of course I don't know that one." Miguel brings his claws down into the aluminium shell of an octobot as it swipes your legs from under you and tears it in two. It cracks like a halved apple, the gore of its inside sparking and smoking as it hits the ground in tandem with you. Your head whacks hard into the concrete pathing beneath. He doesn't have time to help you.

The arm of a bot races forward like a stinger. This one must be the head of the hive, the Queen bee so to speak, far more complicated than the others in the plating of her ivory bodice and chain-mail like shielding on her arms.

Miguel swears under his breath and vaults at it.

He pulls your droid feed up in his display, watches you writhe from one side and the other as your pained moans play in his ear. You clamber onto wobbly footing as Miguel descends, the screeching cry of metal while it's shorn apart beneath his hands not half as loud as your useless gasping —you're winded, likely concussed.

"Civilian entering range," Lyla says.

"What? Where?"

Lyla has your drone's camera spin on the spot to show Miguel the civilian stupid enough to enter an active fight zone. They aren't stupid at all, it figures, but unaware. A man in activewear jogs the beaten path with headphones in, eyes to the ground. He stops for a moment to look at his sports watch, and like the octobot can tell, it shakes Miguel like a bothersome flea and surges for him.

You're closest.

"Y/N!" Miguel shouts, knowing it's too late before he so much as closes his mouth. You turn, your head braced in your hand, breathing hard with pain. Miguel would take it back if he could.

You can't save the civilian, but you can watch him die.

—

People look at him like he's a ghost, sometimes. Wide-eyed, horrified, they move aside in the halls. They treat him how he feels on his worst days, like someone who should've died a long time ago. Today, things are different.

No less than three Peter Parker' have stopped to stare at him unabashedly. Nearly all make the same jokes, Late for a date?

He'd honestly prefer feeling like a ghost. He can't deal with their derision and he doesn't want to, ignoring their looks and their judgement as he treks to the elevator that's gonna drop him outside of the medbay. The only person he wouldn't mind poking fun at him is you.

You aren't in the mood.

Miguel doesn't acknowledge your prone form at first. He walks to your bedside table to deposit the bouquet he'd chosen, peonies for good health and strength, swapping old for new, changing the water in your small shared sink. He may orchestrate the Spider Society, but Miguel's special privileges can't reduce the extreme turnover rate of the medbay. You have curtains to partition the room for privacy, and you got the bed by the window, and that's as much as he could get you. You deserve better.

Miguel opens the window to drown out the smell of antiseptic. He stands in front of it, his shadow stretching over your twisted hip. You're not sleeping, you're resting. Doctor's orders.

Miguel wishes you'd deign to rest in your own bed, or his, but you're a little too catatonic for a safe discharge either way.

He sighs quietly. You likely hear it with your enhanced senses and still you remain an impassive lump under your blue hospital blanket.

"Good morning," he says, instead of the thousand other things he wants to say, that he's too much of a coward to ask. "Let's get up."

He doesn't give you any choice about it. Starting slow, Miguel rounds the bed to meet your eyes through your sluggish blinking. Perhaps you'd been more asleep than he thought.

Gentle, Miguel peels down your blankets enough to push his hands under your armpits. He pulls you up into a sitting position, and it —it breaks his heart. He's a monolith, he's hurting, he has years and years of loss and grief behind him and it doesn't matter, it finds him again. His heart breaks at your limblessness and your willingness to be positioned like a paper doll.

Miguel arranges the sad pillow behind you and puts the remote for the adjustable bed frame in your hand. The last time you'd been here in the medbay after a training exercise fractured your ulna, you'd spent pretty much the entire time messing around with your bed, even as they crafted your cast. It made for messy work. Miguel must've told you to quit it fifty times.

Your fingers curl around the remote.

Miguel perches on the mattress on one knee to fix the protective style your hair is in. Nothing serious, just smoothing the tiniest of stray hairs and making sure it's still comfortable. He strokes your temple absentmindedly, checking you over one feature at a time. Tired eyes, nose tip looking parched, your lips chapped. Frowning, he sits properly, and he pulls your big hospital bag from the bedside table, his hand falling to your wrist to say, Hey, I'm here, and I'm not going far.

He finds your smaller bag of toiletries and necessities and unzips it. He tries not to think about the last time he had to take care of someone like this as he cleans your face with a wet wipe, two fingers wrapped in the wipe and petting at your skin carefully. He notices the life returning to you inchingly, his touch a tether you're pulling on, so he prolongs his actions. He smooths moisturiser over your face extra slowly. If you asked why, he could say it's cold, but you don't ask.

Your face shiny in the sunshine filtering in through the wide windows, you almost look like yourself again.

"Are you hungry?"

You shake your head. An almost imperceptible gesture.

"This is why you don't feel well," he says. "You're not eating enough."

"That's not why," you say.

He aches to hear your voice. I know, he thinks, but doesn't say.

"Eat something," he says.

You shake your head again. He managed to bring you back and squash you back down in less than a minute. He really doesn't like himself, at that moment. Often, but especially now. He's failing you. He failed you with the octobots and he's failing you now.

Miguel refuses to fail someone he cares about again.

He takes the remote for your bed and lifts the top section so you can sit back comfortably. He shakes the blankets out over you, and he puts away your things. Hopeful, Miguel places new pyjamas and underwear with your shower caddy at the end of the bed and pulls a strict pose, hands crossed over his chest.

"I need to go. Shower, eat breakfast when it comes. Please."

You give him a look that might mean Yes but probably doesn't mean anything, laying down as much as the bed allows and turning your face from him toward the flowers. Miguel leaves, stopping a ways away to look back, and watches through the gap of your curtains as you reach out to touch the flowers he'd brought. Your pinky finger is less than an inch from the petals when your movement stutters, your hand falling back to your chest with a soft thud. You close your eyes.

When Miguel returns, he's thankful to find you've done as he told you. Showered, changed, a discarded breakfast tray at your feet. You've attempted the oatmeal and left the toast to go cold, congealed butter white against golden yellow.

Miguel swaps the tray for his bags. He's hoping you might be tempted to look while he's gone. He knows before you would've known the entire contents of the open bag by the time he'd left the room, but he returns having taken your tray to the rack and is sorely disappointed.

That's fine, he decides. You don't have to look. He doesn't mind laying things out for you.

First port of call: extra pillows. He pulls the plastic wrapped 'hotel pillows' up onto your sheet and tears the plastic. They pop out. He didn't think for pillow cases, so he slides them behind your hospital pillow and pushes you down by the shoulders, not cruel but not particularly gentle —you actually laugh at his handling. He bites back a smile.

"What, you got me presents?" you ask as he dumps a blanket onto your lap. It's one of those soft, shiny fleece ones patterned with those characters you love so much, the girl and her super powered puppy.

You rub your hands over it appreciatively and spread it out over your legs. "What's that mean?" he asks, pointing at the Chinese characters, '超級汪汪!'.

"Chāojí wāngwāng!" you cheer, an impression missing the majority of your usual pep. "Super woof. It's his level five power up. He yaps and Joyce gets her HP back."

Miguel pretends to know, like he'd forgotten, and you're reminding him. "Ah."

You're watching now, interested. He puts his back between you and the bag and you whine weakly, "Miguel."

"What? You think these are for you?"

"Please, I want to see."

He gives in like a cheap tent, passing you a packet of pearly beads for your bracelet making, skeins of variegated thread that change colours, a packet of pencils with frogs on the lids, a plushie. You don't know how to react and Miguel doesn't know what to say. He honestly doesn't want to say anything, vulnerability stopped being his thing a while ago, but he clears his throat. "Do you know what I look like in the middle of Miniso? Picture it."

Miniso being a Chinese home goods store lined floor to ceiling with plushies.

You laugh weirdly. Miguel knows it's guilt holding you back.

"One last thing." He sits down on the bed next to you, hands big enough to cover the box in its entirety. "You were wrong, by the way. Extremely wrong, these don't taste a thing like polvorones."

He passes you the box. You take it into steady hands, smiling widely, your thumb brushing up against the black cursive font. A box of butter leaves from one of your sister dimensions.

"I don't know if they'll taste like they did. Are they the same ones?"

You nod, loosing a breath between parted lips. "Same ones."

"If you don't eat them all, I won't get them for you again."

"That's so mean," you murmur. Miguel would apologise if he thought you meant it.

"That's how it is. Eat your cookies. I'll come back later to make sure you actually ate dinner."

He stands. You immediately grab him, cookies dropped in favour of braceleting his wrist in your warm fingers.

You look up at him through your lashes, a frown dampening your pretty features. At least, in his eyes.

"Please don't go," you say. Your eyebrows pinch together. It's even more heartbreaking than your catatonia, this pleading loneliness, like you think he won't stay.

"You have to talk to me," Miguel says. He softens at your chastised wince, sitting back down again. "Did you want a hug?" he asks.

It's an apology to offer it, though he should've asked you this morning, or yesterday, even the day before. You'd been inconsolable when it happened. Miguel's never seen you that way. Your sunshine shattered, your shoulders shaking under his hands as he led you away from the scene, he didn't hug you like he wanted to. It wouldn't have made a difference at the time. You couldn't speak. You could barely walk.

Seeing something like that happen leaves a mark, even if you've seen it before.

You sweep aside your gifts and twist your legs to climb onto your knees. Miguel hadn't realised how much you wanted to be close to him until you're bordering his lap, your arms sliding over his shoulders, your pyjamas soft and smelling of antiseptic under his nose. A switch flicks at your nearness. He pulls you into his lap and sandwiches you there, chest to chest, thankful for his stature because it means he can encapsulate you effortlessly. He can hide you from the world for a short while.

You choke him half to death.

"It's okay," he says, your back curved into the length of his forearm, leaning forward so you can take the weight off. "You're okay."

"I don't– it's not me. I'm not worried about me."

"It's over," he says. "What's done is done." Which isn't to say it isn't tragic, or that it didn't leave a permanent mark on the world. But you're punishing yourself for a crime you didn't commit.

"It's all my fault," you whisper, your cheek pressing to his shoulder, face hidden in the juncture of his neck.

He tilts his head toward you. "It's my fault. I jumped in. I wanted it to be quick."

"I let him…"

"You had a grade ii concussion, you didn't let anyone do anything. I'm lucky you didn't pass out right there. I'm lucky you had the ability to defend yourself, because I left you defenceless."

"No, you didn't, it–" You rub your cheek against his shoulder. "It happened really fast, you were making sure that bot didn't get me because I was stupid enough to leave myself open–"

"Stop it."

It's harsh enough to stop you in your tracks. Miguel sighs hard, hair blowing away from his face.

He lays down backward, skewiff on your bed, and pulls you with him in a secure but gentle hold. You make a quiet 'oof' as you go down. Apologetic yet again, Miguel rubs a line up and down your back, fingertips between your shoulders, palm flattening as he reaches the small of your back, your shirt inching up. He's sure you look foolish to anyone watching, but for once, he's past embarrassment.

"I don't want to hear you blaming yourself. It's not your fault."

You've twisted on your side on the mattress rather than crush his pelvis, though your chest remains pressed to his. You twist a strand of his dark hair around your finger. "Why did you bring me all this stuff?" you ask softly.

"To make you feel better."

"But why… do you… want that? Why does it matter that much, that you'd waste time going to get me things?"

"Why do you think?" he asks.

Your lips ghost the column of his throat. "Mm… 'cos you're nicer than you let on."

"Wrong."

You laugh again. He's more grateful than he'd ever say aloud.

"Because you care about me too much."

Too much is right. He feels like he's at the stern of the universe's most important ship. The universes, plural. That ship is heading square for an iceberg, for the precipice of a gargantuan whirlpool, and there's nothing Miguel can do but hand out buckets and veer sharply to the left, hoping it will be enough, knowing deep down that it won't be if something doesn't give soon. And he's lived a life, two lives, before he even met you. He's tired. He doesn't want to lose anyone else, and he hoped he could do that by never caring again.

What a stupid hope.

"I just want you to feel like yourself again," he admits.

"I really wanted to save him."

"You can't save everyone."

He knows better than most.

"I know," you say, no tears left to cry, voice impossibly small.

Miguel wraps his arms around you and doesn't let go for a long, long time.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

thank you so much for reading, I really really hope you enjoyed! please think about reblogging if you liked it, I appreciate it <3

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sleepingdeath-light · 2 months

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having a gomez and morticia-esque dynamic with his fem overlord s/o hcs ; alastor

requested by ; anonymous (15/02/24)

fandom(s) ; hazbin hotel

fandom masterlist(s) ; here

character(s) ; alastor

outline ; “So good to have you back!

Can I request Alastair with an fem Overlord! Reader? Like they have a relationship similar to Morticia and Gomez Addams, especially when Mortica says “Don’t torture yourself Gomez, that’s my job.” Reader is just elegant and classy in a sense with her man 👀”

note ; there are some potentially (very mildly) ooc bits here and there for the sake of filling the prompt, but otherwise this is exactly what the outline requested as best as i could write it lol ^^

warning(s) ; references to canon-typical levels of violence, but mostly fluff!

the two of you are, to put it bluntly, a match made in hell — which is rather fitting as your first meeting occurred in hell itself shortly after alastor’s reign of terror as ‘the radio demon’ had first began

very few people are aware that the two of you are in a relationship, or that you know each other at all, and that’s simply because neither of you see the point in broadcasting your attachments and personal lives to the entirety of hell — your husband may be an egotistical radio broadcaster with a kill count that most sinners can only dream of achieving, but he preferred to keep his private life private and your marriage was just one of those things

(of course rosie is keenly aware of the two of you and teases alastor relentlessly, and lovingly, for how utterly in love with you he is — but he lets it slide because he knows she means well and wouldn’t dream of causing you harm)

but when you’re together it’s plainly obvious, even to those who don’t know you well at all, that the two of you are deeply obsessed with each other — that’s mainly down to your unusual, and yet somehow not at all surprising for the two of you, displays of affection which most would find deeply off putting

of course your alastor is a gentleman and can appreciate the more traditional romantic displays — he never fails to greet you with a kiss on the back of your hand and a bouquet of the finest flora hell has to offer, and he’s always ready to offer you his jacket if you complain about the weather — but it doesn’t just stop at those more ‘normal’ acts (something that you come to be more and more grateful for as your relationship progresses from courting to dating to something resembling marriage without all of the formal paperwork)

there are displays of affection that are more reliant on his more cannibalistic side, for one: diligently licking any and all of your wounds clean whilst earnestly complimenting the rich flavour of your blood (after dealing with whichever poor soul decided to go after you in the first place), talking cheerily about all of the ways he’d prepare your flesh if ever you let him (and listening with rapt attention as you discussed your own plans for any errant limbs or slabs of flesh that he may lose in battle), making sure to get to rosie’s cafè as early as possible to ensure that you only get the best of your favourite baked treats, and staring hungrily down at you as you gingerly wipe the blood from his lips and cheeks with your fingers and lick them clean in a way that most anyone else would find disturbing

there are shows of love that lean more into your mutual sadistic tendencies: kissing sweetly whilst the blood of your victims is still fresh on your skin and clothes, slow dancing to whatever song he’s broadcasting from his radio on top of the corpses of your slain targets, wistfully admiring each other as you rage and show your full demonic forms to anyone who dared to cross you (a precursor for plenty of compliments and private affection later on, i’m sure), and you stepping forward and coaxing him out of a violent episode by insisting that he should torture you instead with that sweet tone of voice that you know he can’t say ‘no’ to

there are acts that are a mixture of the three — such as you calling each other the sweetest pet names in a mixture of your spoken languages (‘love’, ‘cher’, ‘dearest’, etc.) before going on to say something truly monstrous that would have everyone else in earshot staring with a mixture of horror and disgust, or him taking you out to get your tailored clothes repaired since he so loves taking care of you after a spat with another (now likely very dead) overlord left your clothes torn in places and stained with all sorts of viscera

and, of course, amongst all of that you can guarantee that alastor is being nothing short of encouraging, adoring, and protective over you (read: quick to threaten anyone who intends to cause you harm into silence and slaughtering anyone who refuses to comply with that warning) and your honour as you go about your life as an overlord alongside him — he knows you’re more than capable of taking care of yourself, but he was raised to be a gentleman and he’s certainly not going to stop being one just because he happened to go to hell

truly, it’s like the two of you were made for each other

#sleepingdeath #female reader #fluff #fluff hcs #hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel fluff #alastor x reader #alastor hazbin hotel fluff #hazbin hotel alastor x reader

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geraldmariaivo · 4 months

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back on my halfa!Damian bullshit.

today’s 2am thought: what if Damian unknowingly ecto-marks people and places he considers “his”?

like if a ghost ran into Bruce, they’d know that he already has a ghost kid because a child ghost has left their ectoplasmic signature on him that more or less says “this is MY parent.”

Which in ghost culture isn’t necessarily a sign of someone being off-limits because of how lax they are with family structures, and might actually make him more attractive to ghosts and heavily liminal people who want a partner. Mostly because it’s like Bruce walking around with a neon sign saying “I’M GOOD WITH KIDS!” even if we know this man has the emotional communication and processing skill of a slab of basalt when it comes to personal relationships.

Tangent about Damian potentially unintentionally plastering a “date me” sign on his dad aside, the idea of ghosts coming to Gotham and being confused about how this one child ghost has little spots of “this is mine” ecto really scattered around, and all over this one rich family, a few other humans, and several animals for some reason, is funny to me.

#DPxDC #halfa!damian #damian wayne

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theloneotaku158 · 17 days

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As of Batman: The Brave and the Bold #12, local precious-gremlin-who-I-would-die-for, Maps Mizoguchi, is now officially(?) the sixth Robin. Or at the very least, she's now "in" on The Secret™.

If this isn’t a set up for her taking up the Robin mantle officially then I genuinely don’t know what is.

As one of the twelve Gotham Academy enjoyers in existence, I am having the extremely normal reaction of "FUCKING FINALLY! LET'S FUCKING GOOOOO--!"

In all honesty, I'd be lying if I said I hadn't seen this coming from miles away. Like, Maps has appeared in a number of seemingly random cameo roles recently, including Batgirls (2021), and even technically as Robin in the backup issues of Batman (2016) #119-121, and in a short story in Batman Black & White. And most of those got collected in a standalone titled "Maps of Mystery", which specifically gathered all her appearances as Robin (and the Gotham Academy Belle Reve story).

And then, of course, her recent time-travelling Future-Trunks-esque appearance in Birds of Prey (2023), as the tech-based Meridian, from a potential future timeline where she apparently makes it as a superhero using gadgets she apparently designed, proving that she's hero material.

That's not something you do for a character for no reason. That's the sort of thing you do when you want to keep a character in the conscience of your readers for whatever reason, because you have bigger plans for them.

Also interesting to consider that, in the "Mother's Day" story where this took place, Alfred is standing right there and not lying down six feet under wood, dirt and a stone slab, and that Bruce is in the old Batcave under the manor so he still has Money™. So we must assume this was some nebulous time in the past (after GA: Second Semester(?), but before City of Bane)... which I won't bother to analyse the exact timeframe of because DC doesn't care about the post-Flashpoint / New 52 / Rebirth / Prime Earth / idfk / Dawn of DC timeline, so neither should I.

But I think it's really funny that this presumably means Maps has known The Secret™ for a long time relative to present-day comics, but always acted like she didn't.

But if all her appearances are in chronological order, that means Bruce is only the fourth Bat whose identity she discovered.

Like, she discovered Cass' identity almost by accident on a trip to the zoo, Damian showed off his grapple gun and gave her an actual Batarang during the three hours he was enrolled in the school (as if she wouldn't immediately put two-and-two together even back then), and she even found out Terry fucking McGuinness would become Batman in a future via a time-travelling grandfather clock.

No I did not make that last part up. Read Gotham Academy istg.

Did Cass know that Maps had been acting as a Robin when she met her, both at the zoo in Batgirls and her future version in Birds of Prey?

Does Damian know the one (1) friend(?) he made in Gotham Academy is potentially in the running for his job?

Is Bruce himself aware that she knows as much about their identities as she currently does?

How is DC going to retcon this so it all makes sense in the barely-functioning canon of the modern DC universe?

I'm digressing. Where was I going with this?

Point is, she's destined to become a Robin, and I'm glad DC finally pulled their fingers out their asses and capitalised on that destiny.

Let's just hope it doesn't take another year for them to follow up on this plotline again.

Bonus: Jason Todd, after learning of Bruce taking yet another happy kid under his wing as yet another Robin, giving her some advice:

#dc #batman #maps mizoguchi #mia mizoguchi #bruce wayne #cassandra cain #batgirl #batfam #damian wayne #robin #jason todd #red hood #gotham academy #dc istg dont drop the ball on this i will NEVER forgive you #and PLEASE do not traumatise this robin #Bruce promised he wouldn't let anything happen to her #he better keep that damn promise #otherwise I will personally Blue Skidoo into the comic itself and kick both Bruce and the traumatiser in the groin

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blueiskewl · 26 days

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Three Roman Graves Uncovered in Portugal

Three burials dating to the 5th or 6th century AD have been unearthed in the ancient Roman city of Ossónoba in Faro, southern Portugal.

The Ossónoba’s first archaeological evidence dates back to the 4th century B.C., when the Phoenicians settled in the Western Mediterranean. The city was then called Ossónoba From the 2nd century B.C. until the 8th A.D. the city was under Roman and Visigoth dominance being afterwards conquered by the Muslims in 713.

A team of archaeologists from ERA Arqueologia discovered ancient Roman structures and the remains of a man, woman, and child while conducting excavations over a 5,000 square meter area that will eventually house a real estate development.

The excavations, which took place before a construction project, revealed the grave of a man whose skeleton was complete and who would have been between 39 and 45 years old, as well as a young woman under the age of 25, and a baby who would have been no more than six months old, according to archaeologist Francisco Correa.

Francisco Correia, the project’s head archaeologist, said in a statement that the discoveries were made in an old truck repair workshop and are believed to date from the 5th or 6th century.

The tombs appear to have been looted in the past to steal “small bracelets, necklaces, and rings,” according to anthropologist Cláudia Maio. The tombs indicate that the people may have had “some economic status” as they were not simply placed in open graves but instead buried in carefully built graves.

The proximity of the three people’s graves seems to indicate that they were family members, though the team cannot be certain of that. “But we cannot say anything for sure,” the anthropologist said.

To learn more, the researchers hope to be able to provide more precise answers through DNA tests and isotopic analysis techniques used to determine population movements and dietary habits from chemical traces in ancient human remains.

This latest archaeological discovery did not come as a surprise to archaeologists, who had already led similar works which resulted in the discovery of a Roman game artifact believed to date back to the first century AD in 2020.

“We know that we are in an area with archaeological potential where there is a 17th-century convent (of Santo António dos Capuchos) to the west, and to the east lies the area where the mosaic of the Ocean God (Deus Oceano), now a national treasure, was found,” he said.

What did come as a surprise to archaeologists was the location of the tombs.

“Based on previous studies, this would have been an area that was possibly residential or more linked to industrial activities. There are many traces of salterns. Largo da Madalena would have been the entrance to the urban area of the city of Ossónoba. The identified graves are in the Figuras area, near Teatro Lethes, close to the Ermida de São Sebastião and the Pavilion of Escola D. Afonso III. This area is almost within the urban fabric,” the archaeologist explained, adding that this illustrates both the “growth and decline of Ossónoba.”

The graves of the man and the woman “were sealed with limestone slabs,” believed to be reused parts from “some of the most emblematic buildings that would have been here in the area,” he believes.

According to the project manager of ERA Arqueologia, who was co-responsible for the work, in addition to the graves, hundreds of small pieces were also discovered which suggest that there may also have been a mosaic there.

The researchers also recovered Roman artifacts in the area, including ceramics, bone dice, nails, pins, a spoon, possible evidence of a dye factory, and coins minted during the reign of Constantine the Great, between A.D. 306 and 337.

Cover Photo: Roman mosaic of the god Oceanus, part of the ancient city of Ossónoba, the modern town of Faro, in Portugal.

By Leman Altuntaş.

#Three Roman Graves Uncovered in Portugal #Roman city of Ossónoba in Faro #ancient grave #ancient tomb #ancient artifacts #archeology #archeolgst #history #history news #ancient history #ancient culture #ancient civilizations #roman history #roman empire #roman art

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stsgooo · 3 months

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Love, Hate, Love.

✩࿐ summary: shoko reminisces.

warning(s): death, description of gore, angst, hurt no comfort, depression, bit of a character study(?), sad yuri. wc; 3.2k

pairing(s): ieiri shoko/fem!gojo!reader.

a/n: this is kinda messy, but i love shoko and wanted to write something for her so :3 excuse anything that just

SHOKO STARED DOWN AT THE BODY OF ITADORI YUJI AND SHE FELT AN ARRAY OF EMOTIONS.

Disdain. Anger. Frustration. Confusion. Exhaustion. Slight, slight sadness. Emptiness.

She didn’t know Itadori Yuji well. She had only met him for a few minutes when he was passed out and thrown onto one of the many medical bay beds by Gojo. Had patched up the rather small cuts and bruises, listened as the tall teacher described the King of Curses. Then sent him on his way.

Shoko hadn’t seen Itadori again until he was a corpse on her table.

It wasn’t that Shoko was sadden by this strange boy’s loss. Not entirely. She had no attachments or thoughts on the boy. Even when he had gotten everyone talking.

No, it was more about what Itadori Yuji represented in that moment.

Death was a common thing to happen within their world. Every day it was something new. Whether it be non-sorcerer, sorcerer, or a random animal, there was death to be following. Random at most, but there were few instances where it was intentional. Where the grapevine of gossip lead to something catastrophic. That it lead to the death of a young sorcerer with great potential.

Itadori hadn’t been the first to die. And he certainly wasn’t the last.

No. No, Shoko could recall her first vividly.

First, it had been Yomada Han in their first year. A third year that had been the last of his class. He’d run into a trouble, died messily. It’d been the first time she dissected a body. The first time she threw up over it too. It’d been the first time she had a cigarette too.

He’d been sent off to slaughter because of his hand in some clan mess. They thought it was justification enough for his murder death.

Dissecting and seeing death got a little easier from then. Shoko didn’t throw up anymore. She didn’t get angry or question why someone was on her slab. It was just what happened. She came to accept it.

The second had been… well, Gojo Y/N.

Shoko was still unclear on what exactly happened that day. She can just recall the dread and sickness that flushed over her when she saw her sprawled out on the cot. The way Gojo’s voice shook and pleaded with her— desperately trying to appease to Shoko’s good side as if she hadn’t wanted to save her. As if that’s the only thing Shoko wanted to do.

She’d seen a lot by then. Geto’s chest wide open, the insides of various students and curses, bloody limbs. But she had never seen something quite like that.

It was so surreal to have been speaking to someone a day before, smiling and laughing, sharing touches and secrets. Then have half of their brains scattered on your table the next.

Still and silent. The entire time she had been still and silent.

It was all so sickening.

Shoko hadn’t even been able to take a step towards her before she was throwing up the food she’d consumed in the last 24 hours. Tears flushing down her cheeks and bile rising in her throat. Brains trailed into the room and blood dripped from the end of the table onto the ground like a leaky faucet.

She was sick. She was sick. Shoko couldn’t stop being sick.

Then, she hadn’t been sure what to do as the white haired boy pleaded and cried. As his twin remained limp in his hold. Shoko had just watched with trembling lips, shaking hands pressed against her mouth.

She was dead before she was even found.

Shoko had concluded such during the autopsy. As she pushed tears away behind her protective goggles, cutting into her… her….(what? Her friend? Her friend.) As she cut into her friend’s bones and body. Gojo Y/N had been dead the moment the curse made contact and dealt the blow. The moment her skull cracked open and her brain turned to mush, she was gone.

At least, that’s what she reassured Gojo and Geto (and herself) with.

"They said it was a Grade Two," Gojo had said in a whisper, slumped in his seat, eyes uncharacteristically vacant as he stared at the ground. A hollowness that embraced them all was evident and clear. "They sent her with Nanami and Haibara because it was a Grade Two. So why are they both dead? Why is my sister dead? Why was it a fucking Local Deity? It was a Special Grade!"

Gojo had broken down then. A mess of rage full tears as he uttered on about how it was a mistake. One that costed his other half, since birth, to die. It was surreal to see the Strongest reduced to this. A bumbling mess. While he tried to piece together the puzzle of death. As he questioned the justification behind his sister’s death.

Shoko had wished she was afforded the same.

"Satoru," Geto had whispered, oddly blank and hollow himself. As he always had been back then. For a year he’d been a husk of who he once was. Body always tense, always frail and alert. Tired and withering. "You know how she is… was. She would’ve tried saving Haibara no matter the grade."

Haibara had been the third.

He held out longer than her. Given that she’d jumped in front of the curse to save him. Still, he’d been split in half. Nanami only retrieving his upper half with a pale face and hollow eyes. Still, he died.

What was the point of her dying if the one she saved died too?

Shoko wasn’t sure

And neither was Gojo.

"Yeah, and now there two dead sorcerers!" Gojo had shot from his chair. Fast enough that it bounced off the wall and made a horrible sound throughout the empty hallway. Shoko could recall the way she flinched back the moment she felt Gojo's technique fire up. A barrier between him and the people he cared about. An unrelenting and unchecked power that kept his rage contained. "W-Who even cares about Haibara—?"

"Satoru." Geto's tone had darkened considerably. His face shadowed under the flickering fluorescent lights. Any other time Shoko would've ran away. She would've made some comment about them being annoying trash, then stalk off with her in her shadow.

Not now. Not ever again.

Gojo's face crumbled, he grew desperate at Geto's call, "I... Why does it have to be her?" His eyes split to Shoko, narrowed and angry. "I thought you could do something."

Shoko, taken aback, had tensed. "Half of her brain—"

"You love her, right?" Gojo had continued, ruthlessly, "Right?"

A nod.

"Then you should've saved her!"

"Satoru!" Geto's hand wrapped around Gojo's arm, pulling him away. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"I'm wrong?"

"Yes!"

"What the fuck do you know, Suguru?"

"What do I know? I know that you're..."

Their voices had faded away as Shoko stared endlessly at Gojo's previous spot. A well of tears collecting in her eyes as her hands buried deep within her pockets, clenched and shaking. Her technique was great, it was amazing. She'd done a lot even before she was 18.

So why couldn't she save her?

It stuck around with her for a long time. Well after Gojo had stomped off with tears flowing down his face. Well after Geto had conjured up the last bits of his fake kindness and apologized, tried to comfort Shoko. Well after she was alone in her dorm, holding onto the pieces of her that were suddenly all Shoko had left.

Death was sudden. It was the last curtain call. In their line of work, there was usually no time for goodbyes or last words. Much like this situation. It was inevitable and everyone would meet their making sooner or later— it was only a matter of when. It was better to accept you wouldn't get nice little bows in at the end of your life instead of constantly thinking about it.

Still, Shoko had wondered if there was a possibility she could've saved her. Wondered what she would've said in her last moments if she had the chance to say goodbye.

It was a bad downward spiral to commit herself to. Especially when she was alone in the dark, laying in her bed, staring endlessly at the ceiling above.

It was flat-out dangerous to wonder when she was wrist deep in her chest cavity.

Shoko was best for it. Allegedly. She was the best bet to tell them all exactly what happened to her technique and body as she died.

Originally, Shoko had been tempted to just write that Gojo Y/N lost her brain. What else was there to report? What else could her family possibly want to know?

But then bitter curiosity got the best of her. She needed to know everything. She didn't even care about what the Gojo's wanted to know. Shoko herself had to know if her soul— if the technique just... vanished.

She wasn't really sure what she expected when she stood over her in the morgue. How she would possibly cut her open and scoop out her organs as if she hadn't been speaking to her two days ago. Had been engaged in conversations. Blushing when their hands brushed against one another. As if she hadn't—

"Shoko, what do you want while we're gone?" She had stopped by before they were to be sent off, lightly sprinkled white H/C hair. Expression light, but serious, as it usually was. "Treats, shirt, another body for you to pick around in? Ew, by the way."

Usually, a girl wouldn't think anything of it. But Shoko, elbow deep within a curse, blushed like she was an elementary girl. "Sorry"

She leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, smile small yet tender, "So? What does sweet, sweet Shoko-chan want as a souvenir?"

Shoko always had a hard time believing Y/N was a Gojo. Especially the same product line of Gojo Satoru, who was just... the opposite of her. This girl was intelligent and kind, beautiful and timid. Self-aware, selfless, and She wasn't anything like the boy she shared the womb with, or birthday, or name. A twin. Same blood, same name, everything them. But so distinctly different.

"I'm not really interested in anything." Shoko had replied with a tilt of her lips and a shrug of her shoulders, pulling away from the curse corpse to face her fully.

Y/N's eyebrows raised, "Really? You're not interested in a single thing?"

"Not really," She walked closer, "What did the others get?"

"Oh, uh, I'm not entirely sure—"

"Gojo-senpai!" Haibara had barreled around the corner, loud and grinning, his hair flopping as he bounced around. "Geto-senpai would like something sweet for himself and your brother!"

She had released a bitter sound, fond and amused, but bitter all the same, "Of course he'd be thinking about Satoru." She turned back to Shoko with a small tilt of her lips. "You sure you don't want anything, Shoko?"

Shoko wondered if things would be different if she said anything else than what she had. If she asked for some ridiculous sweet or a stupid shirt, would things have ended differently? If she kept her around for a little longer, would someone realize the misclassification of the curse? Could Shoko have done something?

Who knows. All she said was, "Just come back. That's enough for me."

Her face had scrunched up, a light laugh leaving her as she turned, waving a hand, "Just for you, Shoko! See you around."

It wasn't anything special. Her goodbye had been a teasing promise. A nonchalant wave. Nothing special. Another day. It wasn't anything special.

So why did it have to be the last?

The autopsy ended abruptly. As Shoko held onto a trash bin, sobbing and throwing up the little food she had in the past two days, Yaga put it in the hands of someone much older. Much more detatched.

Gojo Y/N had died almost instantly. Before she could even activate her technique.

That sparked up a chatter at her funeral.

If the affair wasn't sickening and horribly in the first place, the conversation that took place most certainly was.

The people that attended outside of Shoko and Geto where just some old clan members either from the "Big Three" or some lowly ones. They all kind of just loitered around as they ate food and conversated. Nothing exciting, nothing entirely too telling of their grief either.

She couldn't ever recall Gojo or Y/N talking much about the other clans. If only to drag them through the mud, express their great distaste, or general displeasure. Shoko just knew that an occasion like this, filled with old people and terribly traditional things, was something that the girl nor her brother wanted. She knew that they all like the Gojo's about as much as the Gojo's liked them. Which was not very much.

It was only as Shoko was using the bathroom that she overheard what they truly thought.

"I heard that she didn't even have the time to activate her technique before it killed her."

"It's not like her technique would've done much against a Special Grade anyway. The Six Eyes got all the potential. If anything, that boy that got killed alongside her had more skill."

"I thought she had some type of power?"

"That's just a lie the family put out to calm their egos. They gave birth to the Six Eyes while giving birth to a useless girl right after."

"Poor thing."

"I wouldn't worry. The girl was a bit airheaded, she probably didn't even know she was boring."

It took everything in Shoko not to snap. To not ruin their gossip with her petulant cries of anger. It was just wrong. What they thought of her. There's never been something so wrong.

Y/n was different and amazing, magnificent and interesting. She was strong in ways that Gojo wasn't. She could hold her own. She was intelligent on things outside of jujutsu just as much as she was in things regarding jujutsu. Shoko wasn't sure where they got their information but it was wrong. It'd always been wrong.

Seven days later, Geto killed an entire village.

Thought about her and Haibara the whole time. The mountain of bodies that came with being a sorcerer. Killed 112 people just because he was angry and sad. At least, that's what Geto had said to her.

Shoko wished she could've destroy a whole village in her grief.

Those are all the things Shoko thought as she slips on her gloves, glancing back at where Gojo and Ijichi were standing in the corner.

"Hey, you guys, I'm gonna get started," Shoko says flatly, with her usual detachment. It'd been years since she felt uncomfortable or disgusted with this job. Just a normal routine now. "You gonna just sit there and watch?"

She snaps her glove into place at the same time Ijichi's face visibly pales and his jaw drops, Gojo's own face screwing up into something akin to shock. She was about to ask what was wrong, but—

"Whoa! Full frontal!"

Shoko whirls around to look at Itadori Yuji who looks, shockingly, fine.

Well, Shoko's never had someone come back to life in her morgue before. (No matter how much she's begged.)

She tugs down her mask, staring at the boy with disappointment, "Well, this is too bad."

Itadori blinks, a faint blush on his cheeks, "Um... who are you?"

"Yuji!" Gojo stands, a beaming grin on his lips as he walks forward, hand extended. "Welcome back!"

The teen lets out a loud laugh, clapping his hand against his teacher's for a loud slap that almost makes Shoko wince.

"I'm back!" Itadori cheers, smiling back.

"You sure are!" Gojo then tucks his hands into his jacket, turning around to face Shoko and Ijichi. "Hey, can I speak to you outside for a minute? Ijichi, get Yuji something to change into."

"O-Of course, Gojo-san!"

Shoko doesn't even dignify Gojo a response, lazily making her way out of the room with bored eyes. There went an afternoon of digging through Sukuna's vessel's organs and finding out what made him so different from the others. What allowed him to inhabit the King of Curses while so many others had died trying. It would make for perfect research. Fun and interesting.

But the kid just had to wake up. From death.

(She tired to ignore how many times she'd imagined her waking up on her table too.)

"Ugh, now I have to go back and change the report." Shoko utters bitterly once the two adults are outside.

"No, leave it as is." Shoko snaps her eyes to Gojo, who keeps his carefree smile on his face. "Before he's targeted again, I'd like to at least give Yuji some basic training. Please leave him listed as deceased in the report."

Shoko frowns, tucking her hands into her pockets, "Then Yuji will have to go into hiding for good."

"Nah, I'll have him ready in time for the Goodwill Event."

The Goodwill Event. Now, that was something she wasn't entirely concerned with. Something she didn't think Gojo was either.

"Why?" Shoko utters.

"Easy. I refuse to keep that kid from losing the best years of his life. Not just him, but everyone."

The way he says it is tender and true. Said with his heart and his soul. Despite how childish Gojo has always been, he's been terribly aware of when kids should be kids. Something he'd been keenly aware of when he was a kid himself.

Gojo suddenly tilts his head, smile distant and incredibly sad, "Not to mention... he kind of reminds me of Y/N, y'know?"

Shoko's steps falter. They've never really engaged in a conversation about her before. Never really a chance or reason to. Shoko figured they always had their own thoughts and opinions about what happened. Their own grief pushed down to be ignored. Never addressed.

But he—

"Bit of an airhead, but he means well. Smart when it calls for it. Wants to do the right thing no matter if it's his life on the line." Gojo stops a few feet ahead of Shoko, back stiff and, unfortunately, unreadable to her. "I wonder what she'd think of all this."

Shoko draws in a breath, inching closer to lean on the railing overlooking the courtyard. "She'd be disgusted to learn you're a teacher."

"Disgusted?" Gojo repeats with a pout. Shoko just knows that his eyes are narrowed behind his blindfold. "And she wouldn't judge you for cheating your way through med school?"

"She would, but I wouldn't care." Shoko rolls her eyes.

Gojo presses his lips together, leaning on the railing next to her, "I don't think I would either... as long as she was here."

Shoko tenses and her eyes grow distant as she watches leaves twirl and fall in the distance. Her ears begin to ring and she thinks, for one single moment, that Gojo is right. If she just had her right next to her. Breathing, talking— living. Then Shoko might be one of the happiest people alive. She wouldn't care about any of this. She wouldn't worry about anyone leaving or dying. She would just—

What was the point of think about something not possible?

11 years. They needed to let go already.

"I'll make sure Itadori is, in all the official ways, dead." Shoko pushes away from the railing and begins to make her way back to her office (ignoring the soft snort Gojo gave). "Make sure he doesn't die again before you can train him."

"I'll do my absolute best."

11 years. What's a few more minutes with her memory.

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rel124c41 · 3 months

Text

CHILDREN OF THE O.D.D. alastor

In his seven years of absence, Alastor calls on you and collects you.

tags: radio, literary references, developing relationship, temporary amnesia, mental torture, alastor love you but can’t resist causing a little emotional damage, wendigo, dark magic, hurt/comfort

word count: 10,716

It was not your intention to make any sort of detour after work. Always the string of home pulled you back in like a faithful dog returning to the outstretched hand. You trudge, like a ghost shackled by unfinished business, to the space underneath your shower head. To watch ebony red and wood brown slip into the drain; the filth of blood under fingernails and the sleeves of dirt upon your arms ebbing away.

This detour is unexpected and odd. Breaking a cycle that you had never strayed from, it is undernerving to you. Still –You put your fingers over your lips and frown. You are looking for something; that is as much as you are able to deduct.

The homemade yard-sale sign is crumbled and ruined. A slab of cardboard folding in on itself because of the rain from yesterday. In streaks, the markers bleed like branching veins across the surface. You actually took a wrong turn because one of the arrows was so wet that you could not decipher if you were meant to walk right or forward. The skies still remain a blanket of nebulous gray and black, thick with potential rain.

Really, you should head home and ignore this detour, you judge just as you step into the backyard sale. Logic tries as it might, you are grappled by this ardor. Entering the mouth, you realize you are here, looking for something. Something that has leashed you subconsciously.

Yard-sales hold a wild assortment of things: dusty books, a splintering wooden bow with arrows included, outgrown clothes, etcetera. An evil secret here or there? You chuckle at the ridiculous thought.

Rummaging around in dirt was your past-time, rummaging around in strangers’ belongings felt unusual. Mindful of your unclean hands, you simply float around the tables and piles of things. When someone lingers behind you, you move quickly because you are browsing while others are hunting. Truly, you do not yet know what you are planning to sink your teeth into. Your little routine continues, floating around and bouncing out of the way when it looks like someone is interested in the pile you stand in front of. Deeper and deeper, you wander into the labyrinth of unwanted things.

Perhaps you could pick up something for Alastor. That harrowing need to find something was starting to dim inside you.

Just as you start browsing for him, that feeling returns tenfold. The peach pit of your stomach feels like a mixture of drain cleaner and bleach. It burns you. Whatever that something is, it is upset to be ignored and hooks itself into your abdomen pulling.

“Turn left then straight.”

You jump at the sudden voice. And a shudder runs down your spine because they were close enough that their breath tickled your neck. In the labyrinth’s heart, you glance around for the individual that was talking to you. Hm? No one is looking at you. Everyone is nose down in their own business, browsing tables.

Tentatively, you rest an ice cold hand on the spot where you definitely felt someone’s breath. Odd. You take a step to the right.

“Left then straight.” You stumble in your walk as if you were a newborn in heels.

What? You shake your ankle as you restabilize yourself. It felt as if someone had snatched onto your ankle when you moved. Another shudder joins your first. This time you decide to heed that voice. If your subconscious pulled you into the yard-sale, it can definitely direct you. Different from your previous lazy tumble, you move with purpose to that ‘left then straight’ direction.

But as you take that left turn, you feel an uneasy cocoon itself over your previous headstrong annoyance. You slow your pace. Those previous sensations had been very odd. Someone’s breath on your neck. Someone’s hands around your ankle. You shudder one last time and move straight, searching.

A slumbering nest of snakes starts to squirm in your stomach. The real snake though – the ouroboros ring on your ring finger – is scorching instead of slittering. Like red hot iron to a horse flank. Knowing it is impossible to take it off, you rub cold fingers over it. Worrying hands joined at your chest, you look left and right for the item that has ensnared you. Long ago, the ouroboros ring had ensnared you in the same way, pulling and tugging at your intestines and bones like a magnet grabbing at its opposite pole. Remembering that, you grow even more uneasy.

What are you looking for?

You realize it as soon as your eyes fall on it.

The spiritual itch is finally scratched. The last piece is thumbed into the puzzle. The starved man has finally been given food. Before your mind catches up, you have already reached the plastic folding table and are touching your something. Heat from the ouroboros ring ebbs softly.

The woodwork is beautiful like a stained catholic mural. The single diamond eye of brown bakelite and wood blinks at you, surprised to be touched. Gilded brass is tickled by your experimenting hands as you turn its knobs. Wires spread over the speakers like a spider-made ribcage start to beat flustered at your presence. When you run your fingers over the ridges and arches, it leans into your touch. Though it is an entirely inanimate piece, it has so much character. An authentic radio, probably dated 1910 or 1920s. Worrying a bit about its fragility, you do not dare to pick it up no matter how it pleads and flirts with you to do just that. It is certainly a bewitching beauty. So, this is your something; this is what you were looking for.

But – a delicate frown moves your lips. You have no use for a radio like this in your home. Heavens know you have enough radios at home. Can this really be what your heart wants? When you move your hands off the woodwork, it feels as if your ring grows a circle of spikes that sink into your skin and collide at your fingerbone. You yelp and quickly put your hands back on the yard-sale item. Your heart does want this … apparently …

“Okay,” you whisper as if that will appease your heart, your subconscious, and your ring – all three holy spirits of your body. “Okay.” Gingerly, you lift up the hulking mass and start back towards the entrance. Well, Alastor can simply deal with another radio. And you are slightly elevated to bring it back home. Elevated enough that when you reach home –

You kick off your shoes by the entrance and sing out, “Alastor, I’m home.”

Radio cradled to your chest, you listen intentionally to the suspicious silence. You wonder how he will greet you this time. Sometimes, there are bumps of furniture or he simply slips in front of you. You can never truly predict Alastor’s moods. He is something volatile; he can either be as sweet as a dream or dangerous as a nightmare. For a few moments, you wait for the other shoe to drop. And when he arrives in your sight, you wear your best smile to greet him.

“Hi honey,” you say and kneel down. You balance the heavy radio on one of your knees. Reaching out one dirty hand, your faithful cat Alastor nuzzles into the skin, ignoring the dirt and blood. You scratch behind his ears as his purring starts up.

You named him after King Alastor from the game Painkiller: Battle out of Hell. When he was just a kitten, you wrestled with two names Alastor or Asura from another video game. Why did the name of a final boss win over a hero’s name? You had no idea but your heart guided your decision and four years later, it fits your mischievous bengal cat perfectly.

“I know, I know,” you medicate when he starts meowing for food. “I’m twenty minutes late coming home and that means two hours to you. But look Alastor! Another radio! This one is too heavy for you to knock down so it’s perfect.” Your enthusiasm is met by louder caterwauling.

Wilting at Alastor’s lackluster reaction, you gently set the radio on the long dining room table. It was lined with six chairs that no one besides yourself used. On the wooden surface is a Christmas rug-runner and stacks upon stacks of mail asking you to open a new credit card. A few unwashed plates stand in a stack of six, grease of meals shining luminous off them. May’s sun pours in to brighten all of the radios that you have collected on your table.

Your new radio nestles itself snuggly into your little home. Though you were not able to bargain the price you exactly wanted, you were glad to have it at all. The condition is remarkable for something coming from a yard-sale. Annoyed at your admiration, your bengal cat lays himself over your socks and bites your toes.

“Alastor,” you scold, scooping up your noisy cat. “Be nice to your parents. Where are your manners?”

With a boop on the nose and a kiss on the cheek, you bring Alastor into the kitchen so you can serve him Purina kitten chow and ruffle his fur when he nuzzles into you. Then you will wash away all your filth and sleep.

It has been seven days since you bought the radio.

For something you were so enraptured over, you had no urge to try working with it. The owner remarked that it only works for AM radio broadcasting. After a century, those channels never changed and were opertable during power outages. Their frequency could be picked up anytime, connecting themselves to the skin of your radio like a lovely little kiss. Since no natural disasters were happening, the most entertainment you could get from AM radio was the morning’s traffic. Enthusiasm washed out of you after a week of showers, you found yourself kicking yourself for giving in so easily to temptation.

“And my more-having would be as a sauce to make me hunger more,” you mutter Macbeth as you lace up your boots.

Today, your boss has scheduled you and your groundskeeping company to plant a dozen trees outside of a mail office. You enjoyed the small business as a landscaper; being the leader of a whole team had some perks too.

Louisiana was always pleasantly warm. Never did you have to gripe over blizzards causing traffic nor bringing an extra coat to weather the weather. Most days you manage to just walk to and from the sight your boss assigned. Life was good and life was simple.

You finished with the final knot on your Timberlands. Hesitantly, you cast a look towards your new radio, standing out among the rest because of its antiquity. Hearing a bit of the weather might be the perfect test to see if the radio worked, if all vacuum tubes and components were clean. Stomping through the kitchen into the adjacent dining room, you quickly turn the gilded knob and wait.

A mimicking hiss of a vexed Alastor and a sizzle of eggs poured into a pan is the first sound your new radio blesses you with. Resolutely, you flicker with the knob. The sound of a million pieces of hail falling on your roof. The singing of a mixed bowl of frequencies. The caterwauling of – oh! You finally found a coherent station.

“With highs reaching ninety, we can expect a beautiful Thursday ahead of us. Now, we do have some cumulonimbus clouds making their way down from the north-east. That thunderstorm from Mississippi should be reaching us in –” Satisfied, you click off the radio and head out the door.

“NO! NOOO!” When you are pulled up by the waist, you only scream louder. “NOOOOO!” You scream like a deer with its leg snapped and broken in the jaws of a bear trap, desperate and tormented.

“(Name)! (Name), stop this! (Name), calm down,” your mother pleads.

The woman who baked you under her pie crust skin for nine months is devastated to see you so upset. Her own flesh and blood, curled tightly in her arms, wailing like a hunted deer. You cry loudly as if you have broken a bone or been stabbed. “I know, baby. I know,” she tries to console and move your crying face into her neck. A piercing yell in her ear causes her to wilt and shudder.

“(Name) please.” Your mother has already passed the point of angrily yelling back at you. The crescent shape of her acrylic nails still present on your tiny wrist. Given up that fight, she tries desperately to figure out why you refuse to leave the pawn shop.

Gore cakes your tiny, wailing face. A scream so loud had one of the vessels in your vocal folds erupting open; a vocal cord hemorrhage which will cost your mother a month of bills for vocal therapy for her four year old child. Red oil glides out and down to vinyl floors. Around the mouthful of blood, you still scream no no no as your mother tries to walk you out.

There are no words to explain what you are experiencing. Even if you were not so young, you doubt that you could relate to anyone what you felt. As the distance between you and entrance grew smaller, a stabbing pain in your gut emerged. A simple tummy-ache. Then it grew. Tummy-ache evolving into a fever; fever blossoming into a stab wound; stab wound maturing into a pain that felt like some invisible hands were trying to tear your soul from your body. When you toed your foot on the entrance, everything exploded in one culmination of white pain and you lost yourself to the possession of something otherworldly.

Defiant, your limbs move in a hurricaning, thrashing windmill. You squirm like a fly blindly trying to escape out a window as bang bangs of a person’s shoe follow its erratic track. A strong kick into your mother’s pancreas has her stumbling. Relenting, she drops your mercurial body.

Your mother falls to her own knees with you. She considers telephoning your father, telephoning her own parents, telephoning a medical professional. Anyone who can come and save her: a scared, new mother who has never seen her child act out this.

Hundreds of eyes are staring at the volatile display. Guests who want to enter and buyers who want to leave, all stare at her hunched form as you caterwaul. “I don’t know what’s wrong. I just don’t know what’s wrong,” your mother mutters helplessly. By now she is starting to suspect that you might be seriously injured in a place she cannot see. Something beyond the blood in your mouth. “God please.”

Finally, someone heavensent steps off the background and taps your mother on the shoulder. Her desperation causes her to turn at a neck-breaking speed.

She never remembers the face or gender of this person when recalling the story. She recalls only a shudder of terror. Spindly and crawling terror, pianoing itself in a rapid flight up her body like a bumblebee. A symphony of fear, she recalls. Gently, the person takes one of the hands she had put around you protectively. In it, a ring is dropped.

An ouroboros ring – the image of a snake eating its own tail.

Fumbling with disbelief, your mother glances around to see that the person is gone. She sets her sight back on you, worried you might have disappeared along with the person. There you are – all forty inches of you, shivering, water and blood falling down your face in rivulets. She glances helplessly at the ring and then –

When she drops it into your hand, the pain goes away. Yet, stricken by such an endeavor, your eyes roll back in your head. Past the billowing tears and red veins, up and up. Like a puppet cut from strings, you promptly pass out. Squeezed tightly in a rigor mortis grip, the ouroboros ring stays with you. And when you feel that thousand feet plummet into oblivion course through you, your body in the waking world springs up, face stained with warm tears.

That memory again.

How many times have you dreamed about it?

How many more times will it be in your dreams?

Chilled fingers run across your damp face, drying it. The head of the iron snake kisses a stroke from eyelid to eyelid. You suppose the ring will always remain with you, in dreams and in reality. Tired eyes glance at your bedside alarm clock: 1:11. Trust your intuition and listen to your heart. You climb out of bed, mindful of Alastor even with limited vision.

Often, your body moves disconnected from the kingdom of your mind. Without even being aware of it, you will pull yourself back from danger (a falling tool at the job site, a misplaced nail, etcetera) and chalk it up as extreme good luck. Leaving words unsaid, you laugh at all the random occasions of self-saving, pointing your thanks towards God.

You are not slow though. After a while, anyone would start to suspect it. You know it is something else other than luck. Something that has shadowed you since birth.

Pulled towards it like a magnet, you sit on the dining table chair. Everything in your house is shrouded in nebulous dark. Silver light shines down from the moon, past a window’s filter, onto the radio. An evangelical interruption? Like slippery fish-oil, silver glides over the rich brown of a ribcage and heart and skin. The scene looks disrupted like fragments of reflection in a dirty mirror. Sleeping moonlight brushes over your fingers, nuzzling into your ring.

Timidly, you extend a hand and flick on the dial. A short buzzing hum greets you. “Hello?” You turn the knob some more, searching. Your face is still damp from previous tears. “Hello?” And though there should be more than a dozen A.M. frequencies that your radio can tune into, all that you hear is everlasting static.

None of your strawberries tasted like fruit this morning. Where they should be rich with juice flowing in your mouth when you bite, they are dry. It is the entire quart of strawberries that you bought had been replaced with foam copies, a facsimile of themselves.

Everything that has been feeling imitation of itself. Yesterday, you swore there was someone standing behind you while digging a tunnel for a septic tank and distribution box. Yet at each wild turn, no figure was hovering off you. This morning, you woke up dreaming that dream again. You carefully spit your strawberry into a napkin. Ugh, what was happening to you?

When you discard them into the trash-can, Alastor stirs and gives you a look before returning to his food. You nudge him with your foot and move across the kitchen. Leaning down into the fridge, you search for the carton of milk. In the recess of your mind, you halfheartedly listen to your radio.

Your new family member plays something vintage this morning. You had no idea A.M. frequencies did old radio series like this anymore – you had only heard about The War of the Worlds radio drama due to a parody and its natural popularity. In today’s modern age, you thought podcasts were the only echo of radio dramas, a cheap imitation. You luckily caught this radio drama at the very beginning, perhaps only two or three minutes in.

The radio drama was about a husband and wife. Aboard With the Lockharts was the name. The wife, Kathleen Lockhart, had finally persuaded her husband that they would take a cruise to Europe, after some womanly envy, and her husband conceded to come. It is the end of the first episode:

“There we are, dear.”

“You’re the nicest husband a woman ever managed!”

“Well, I-uh I guess every husband would be nice if he had a wife like you. Now, let me study that circular a bit and see what we’re going to get. And, uh, turn on the radio, dear.” A flow of music follows.

The cheapest you can get a gallon of milk in New Orleans is at Aldi’s for only three dollars. You had heard almond-milk was statistically better for your health. As a groundskeeper, you knew maintaining that was entirely important for your job but double the price for a quart rather than a gallon. Well, you knew your –

“Tour Europe with us! Seven glorious countries! Why, you have just started to go aboard with the Lockharts … We thank you for tuning in listeners. The day is May 10th, 1931. The weather forecaster is sunny with –”

As Alastor stops hissing, angered at how rapidly you run from kitchen to dining room, you hold the knob in your hand tense. Challenging, the eyeball of your radio stares back at you. 1931? 1931, ha. You sigh at your panic. It was probably prerecorded. Even if the day and month were the same, there is no reason to get so out of sorts. Ugh, what was happening to you?

As you towel off yourself, the radio program you had turned on plays. You were so ashamed that you had gotten worked up over nothing. After listening to a few more radio dramas, it turned out that they were cut and played from previous tapes. Of course the dates and times would remain.

Though why when you used your car, (Name), did you not find that station? Did any other A.M. frequencies play returns of old 1920s and 1930s radio drama, hm? Not a single one.

You scrub your towel harder into skin, ignoring yourself. There was no intelligent reason to be worked up over a station that played love stories. Love was the least malice part of life after all. Not that you would ever know, you mourned. You got ghosted more than you would like to admit.

The program on the radio almost seems to mock you:

“Because I love you myself I suppose.”

“You do, Jeanie?” The woman murmurs a yes. “How long has this been going on?”

“Ever since I helped you with that tire.”

“You know maybe that was why I was kind of relieved when Roberta told me we were all washed up.”

“Frank!”

“It’s true. I’ve been kind of dreading marching down that aisle with Roberta for some time now. You know, someone else seemed to fit better into that picture.”

“Who?”

“A hitchhiking blonde I picked up once. She was bound for New York. Funny if she ended up in London on our honeyman.”

“Oh Frank.”

“Oh (Name) darling.”

The towel falls to the ground, heavy with the weight of water it has absorbed off your skin. Nude, you stand with a breath locked and keyed away in your lung. Alastor sleeps soundly on your comforter, ignorant to your distress. You push a hand to your chest, steel band cold on your skin. Yes. It is beating as fast as a hummingbird’s wings.

“Go to bed, (Name),” you instruct yourself.

When all the lights in your house are flicked off, you make sure to put the radio into the kitchen. Your bedroom is right adjacent to the dining room. At least with some distance between you and it, without true separation, you might get some sleep.

You stare at your ring as you pet up and down Alastor’s spine. Some distance but never fully separated.

You rush into your home as if someone is chasing you, snapping and swiping at your ankles. “Shit, double shit,” you curse, throwing your closed umbrella down to the ground. Loudly, the door is banged shut to the point where the tiny window on it rattles. Water has soaked you down to the bone marrow.

“Fucking shit,” you gripe as you take off boots filled with miniature ponds. If only the rain was not coupled with sparks of lightning, you would have been able to use your umbrella.

Ugh, what a goddamn mess. You strip off the soaked bomber jacket. That depth of rain was so bad for the fabric. Defeated, you hang the Clavin Klein jacket on the nearby hook and go to venture deeper into your home when you pause.

You had forgotten you left the radio on your kitchen table. The presence of it startles for a quick moment. Surely, the need to strip off the wet clothes you are in wins over. Truthfully, besides a few odd glitches of words, it has been harmless. Falling back into your typical dismissal cope, you move to go into the dining room.

The power in your house goes out.

“Double fucking shit.”

A power outage would have been a minor inconvenience if you were not blind. The entirety of your house is cloaked in a nebulous black, not even a flicker of the microwave clock. You pause in your footfall, still as a tree. Hands clenched by your side, you rationalize it all. Lightning must have caused a fallen wire. One of your hand pats around to find a wall. Get to your hung jacket then you can use your phone to navigate in a much clearer fashion.

You just hoped Alastor would not be causing a fit in the deep sea darkness. “Alastor, honey?” Thankfully, your hand falls on the circular kitchen table. “Alastor?” Slowly, you round the table and start to finger the walls. Just ten or so steps forward and you will be standing right by the entrance.

Though, Alastor being this quiet was unnerving. You move towards the door – Huh?

The table rattles unsteady as you are pushed into it. “Ugh, what the –.” The breath is punched out. The scream that comes out of you is inhuman and animalistic, full of fear. Groaning muscles wilt as you are thrown into one of your kitchen chairs, seated forcefully.

You barely recover your mind, barely recover yourself to worry about your safety, when something chills you to the bone.

Up, the scream of an injured cat pierces the formless black innards of this haunted house. It almost sounds fake like a horror movie sound recording. Then the clattering rain of a handful of objects hitting the ground pierces your ears next. Those coupling sounds … the horrible thought that someone has thrown Alastor into something. The horrid, bone-chilling thought that someone is hurting him.

“Alastor!” You jump off the chair, guided by instinct. Swiftly, you are back down in the chair. “Alastor!”

A mimicking hiss of a vexed Alastor stabs the air … except it is not your cat. You know because it sounds like the sizzle of eggs in a pan too. Your bottom lip trembles wildly. Luminous white from a flash of lightning splats onto the kitchen then shrinks away in seconds. You refuse to look at it though. Calm down. AM frequency works during power outages, this radio is unlike your others, you rationalize, but you never turned the knob for it to reach any sort of frequency.

“...Alastor,” you try again, voice trembling. Oh you stupid cat, just come when called. You sit mournful and yearning that Alastor will come to prove he is safe at the very least.

Not stuck with silence for long, the radio sings out. The words and instruments broken up by flaking static like kintsugi pottery, a second melody backdropping the noise: Hey, hobo man; hey, Dapper Dan; you've both got your style but brother – then an anguished scream breaks the voice of Donald Craig and the musical number. You shrink into the chair, face aghast and jaw slack. No. No. NO!

You stay silent the entire broadcast, horrified.

A woman’s voice: “– he gives me the glad news that I have a growth in the back of my eye and he wants to cut it out. Only it’s too close to the brain, and he says if it isn’t cut out, this growth might cut off my sight, and leave me up on the high wiRE –”

A plea: “GOD HELP ME! HELP ME! HELP ME! GOOOOD!”

The wail of a pipe organ piano follows this demonic symphony. Rustic and deep, it billows out. Echoes of the sound flicker and decay across your walls; the reverbs are rich and dark like shadows; the start of Bach’s Toccata.

A man’s voice: “lying on the floor, two feet away, with a broken neck. With a broken neck, and his left hand – Well, he put the golden ring on his little finger of his left hand – the way his arms were spread out –”

The chugging grind of a car that would not start – stubborn coughs and wheezes – assaults your ears. You cradle your head tighter, praying that hardwood will morph into quicksand.

A cry: “MERCY PLEASE! MERCY! AAAAA!”

Three separate voices overlapping all at once: “Help me! Help me! We belong dead!” — “Oh well, I am just not appreciated around here. Dirt under the feet. That’s all I am.” — “Please, kill me! KillmeKillmeKillme! I just want to die! I can’t — anymore —“ Then the shriek of a deer who has its foot caught in a bear trap. It is your voice as a child, crying out. A masculine voice in a fatherly rhetoric shouts over your infant wails, “You should have never been born, Alastor!” Then, as if lightning had torn down the broadcasting tower, all the cacophony on the radio fell silent, lingering on that horrible name.

The Earth holds its breath in anticipatory silence.

A merry tone starts up – the melody of a saxophone, clarinet, and trumpet all hugging into one another. It moves amatory in humid air. Jazz. Your favorite genre despite the fact you were born in the year 1998. Swing and blue notes fill your heart like honey on the tongue, familiar and comforting. From the warmth of continuing jazz, a woman’s voice pops out like a flower bud emerging on a spring morning.

“666 A.M.” No that is wrong – the station was 833.3 A.M. (how do you know that?) “-- the Voice of the South; radiophone broadcasting station of the New Ear, New Oreleans, Louisiana, announcing the one who needs no introduction, our one and our only Alastor Melsar.”

Somewhere far away, deep below, a hostaged crowd rises, pulled by the hooks in their napes to start a thundering, happy applause. Someone’s lips are even voodoo-ed to move into an adoring wolf whistle.

“Hello, hello, is this thing on?”

Your stomach falls to your feet like a rock dropped from a bridge. It explodes, breaking every ice-layered bone in your body. Jazz withers away but the familiarity stays. Because you know that voice, intimately beyond what New Orleans knew about it beyond the ribcage of a radio. You had been ribcage to ribcage, heart to heart with that odious man before. Only you had forgotten. Until now.

You remove your hands from your ears, listening in rapture.

“Now, I know the broadcast you want to hear comes from Center Theater studio, but today we are coming at you straight from Hell’s very own Pride Ring. But I will bring back our favorite broadcast, for my dear listener. (Name). My love, this one's for you.”

i. Papa nou ki nan syèl la, [Our heavenly Father,]

Alastor hates his father.

This is as established as the hues of flora or as the physics of energy. It is a sentence that will never change under any variables or phenomena. If emotions could become fact, this is one instant of such a time. It is a sentence that you sympathize with as you hated your father too. Oddly enough, you two meet on Father’s Day. Both of you illegally drunk in the height of prohibition, escaping to an abandoned bayou. A shared sentiment connecting your wayward souls: there was no better day of the year to get wasted besides Father’s Day.

“Oedipus was such an unlucky bastard.”

“How so?”

“He gets to kill his father and doesn’t even know it. The man who left him stranded on a hill to be eaten by wolves. And how does Oedipus repay this? His revenge is killing him in a duel like he is another thug, a nameless person.” You gulp down a sizable sip of your bathroom-made gin. “Just no satisfaction in it.”

“Yes, but wouldn’t you suppose it’s better than not getting to commit patricide? Poor Hamlet. His father harks him about vengeance. And he cannot even get that annoying parasite off his shoulder as Claudius had already killed the King.” Alastor takes a much more measured sip from his whiskey.

“A dead father is better than a ghost father … I suppose.”

You give a mischievous smile to the stranger sitting with you. He is quite handsome, bronze brown skin flawless without a drop of sweat. If this were any other day, you would try flirting a bit but today is June sixteen so …

“How’d you kill yours?”

“A shotgun. Then I cut him up and ate him.”

“Serve him to your mother?”

“Oh, I would never taint her darling palette with such horrid meat.”

You start laughing as the stranger asks you the same question, you in jest and him in sincerity, “How’d you kill yours?”

Smiling, you reveal, “I drowned him in this very bayou.”

“This very one?”

“This very one.”

The stranger smiles at that. His smiles are nice. Wide winks of yellowing teeth that seem to engulf his entire face. There is something charming about smiles that show all your vulnerable enamels.

“I suppose that we drink from the same bottle.”

“We do … I suppose,” he copies your earlier pattern of speech.

You smile back as you two clink your glasses together. It sucks that after today you two will never see each other again. You have never felt so kindred to another person. New Orleans is so vast. Both a blessing and a curse, certain that your paths will only cross this once.

ii. Nou mande pou yo toujou respekte non ou. [We ask that they always respect your name.]

Names are so significant. It is the equivalent of slicing off a cut of your soul and sharing it. It is the word used to beckon one in a call. And, reconnecting, Alastor and you give your names to each other easily, smitten in a butcher shop.

iii. Vin tabli gouvènman ou, [Come and establish your government,]

The company Alastor kept was odd. Men who wore sunglasses at night and women who laughed like rusty doors. Human beings that seemed more like monsters with human skin pulled over them like an ill-fitting nightgown. Demons and witches, a cruel part of you speculated.

You had underestimated the vileness of them. They were beyond witches and demons.

You cannot even settle into the place you are sitting. Instead, you collapse into it like a body thrown off a ledge. Vocal cords pinch and tighten under your skin. Awful wheezes plume out of your throat. Amidst this destructive hyperventilation, tears pour down the curvature of your face in steady beads. Your trembling hands gather them up as you curl into the brick wall outside of The Dog House. Ugh, what is happening to you?

The door to the jazz club’s back-alley opens tentatively as you wallow. It is only a sliver of space, not even enough to poke a head through much less an arm or leg. From the slit eye of a shy door, your boyfriend says, “Should I come back at a later time?”

The care of his question only makes you sob harder. Respecting previously set boundaries, the timid door does not fling open and Alastor does not move an inch to step outside – though, the doorknob does wilt and ache under the mounting strength of his grip. He relaxes when the sound of your voice (strained and trembling but no less beautiful) asks, “Do you think I’m silly?”

“Why, dear, you are the unfunniest person I have ever been acquainted with,” Alastor smiles. “Unhumorous and beautiful, like always.” A hazel eye peaks out through the space. It is a talent how much emotion he can translate into each facet of his body. A simple upward crinkle of his eyes, a tiny gleam, and you know his aim is to make you laugh.

Instead, you are compelled with the urge to smack him on the shoulder.

Taking that angered energy, you grip the bottom half of the door (you still stay seated on infectious, wet pavement). As you push it open, Alastor slinks out into the back-alley. One hand, one foot, a shoulder and chest, until he finally joins you. He sits shoulder to shoulder with you in your hiding spot behind The Dog House.

“Now, can I ask what made you so out of sorts, dear?”

“You would find it silly. This is all so silly.” You harshly scrub your tearful face, wishing it would restore itself to the dry skin you were accustomed to. “I’m sorry.”

“Now, (Name), we just established that you are unfunny.” With him so close, you do whack him. Nursing his shoulder with a laugh, Alastor continues, “So whatever needs to come off your chest, be out with it. Climb off it.” He looks upon you patiently.

“Mimzy.” His face makes no change in expression, imploring you to continue. “And Harlord. And Lawrence and Evelyn. Oh, Alastor, all of your friends are just so cruel.” Shameful of your confession, you hide back into your knees. The geyser of tears that you had capped with your thumb is starting to billow and leak. “I just cannot see how someone like you can keep such horrid company.”

It was almost like someone had prematurely told them every single insecurity you had.

The left side of your abdomen still aches from where Mimzy took her nails and dug into you. Lawrence had hooked a finger under your necklace and pulled a bright, suicidal mark on your nape. After repeated use, those insectual insults crawled under your skin, a horde of ticks. Weak defense laughs eventually stopped coming from you altogether when you realized this was not a hazing mechanism. Hate bled from every millisecond of their actions – such a quick switch, all because Alastor left to use the washroom.

“Oh, dear, what happened?” Alastor wraps an arm around your shoulder, pulling you in close.

“I don’t know. Perhaps, I did something to offend them. What they said was so true, so spot on. They just –”

“No, you’re perfect. Hey. Look at me. You are perfect.”

“Alastor, maybe, I don’t belong here. I just cannot fit in with them and I–”

“Dear,” here he takes both your hands and squeezes them tight. “I have felt that sentiment of yours my entire life. I have been so ostracized for so long before I met you. Never knowing someone who could relate to what I have been subjected to. If they cannot see how perfect you are, then that is sincerely their loss.”

“But Alastor, they’re your friends. I want them to like me!”

“Dear, we need no one but each other.”

iv. pou yo fè volonte ou sou latè, tankou yo fè li nan syèl la. [to do your will on earth, as it is done in heaven.]

Your nighttime routine is a bit strange. To be truthful, your entire life was wandering a little bit out of the quotidian fences on the roaring 20s.

The most startling difference was your romantic courting compared to the entire United States. You and Alastor had lived together before marriage. His house was empty – mother and father dead – and you wanted out of that odious prison called home.

Yet, by now, the two of you had established a nighttime routine like one which a married couple would have.

Before Alastor stepped into the shower, you checked the expanse and plain of his skin for any ticks that might have made their home there. After, you brewed Alastor coffee instead of tea as a nighttime drink as the shower ran. Then, you freshened yourself and Alastor penned down his next broadcast before you two joined in the dining room, stomach already full of dinner.

He takes the photograph of Papa Gede out of his study after locking away his papers. On the dining table, his golden eyes cut through you. You always felt nude under that gaze. Parallel to what a dog must experience before being hit. Gazes locked, you hear the repetitive motions of Alastor as he collects all he needs for the ritual.

Papa Gede’s, the corpse of the first man who ever died, painted form stares at you. Alastor was very keen on this man who represented the powers of fertility and death. A psychopomp believed to wait at crossroads to take souls into the afterlife. You had no idea what Alastor spoke in Creole to him when you two did this before bed. All you knew is those gleaming, almost alive eyes unnerved you to the point where you wanted to turn tail and flee, doe-like.

“Dearest.”

You shudder, disrupted like a still lake attacked by a falling rock, and finally tear your eyes away. The comfort of his arm across your back is warm. You lean into him as he quotes Hamlet to you, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

“Sorry.” You place a kiss on his cheek. “Sorry. I know, I overthink too much.”

This is the part you hate the most.

“I quite adore your mind.”

“Thank you, Al.”

He kisses you on the lips. “No, thank you.” And before you can comprehend, like a child getting his tooth pulled on two instead of the promised count of three, Alastor has already run the blade over your palm.

Alastor goes back in for a deeper kiss as you wince and wilt. Pressing himself hard against you as an outlet to your pain. And then, after a good enough amount of your blood has fallen into the vial, Alastor, in his native tongue, starts to pray that when Papa Gede sees you at the crossroads, he will send you back into the living world.

v. Pen nou bezwen an, ban nou li jòdi a. [The bread we need, give us today.]

The geography of hearts are all the same.

When Alastor brings home a dead deer, you can tell what his gullitoning Shibazi cleaver is striking down on. Yet — when it all cleaned up — fur and hooves off the table. You can almost pretend you have any species on the table.

As mammals, we all have four chambered hearts.

Silver light from an oil lamp folds itself over Alastor and where the silver is not, shadows snuggle into Alastor. He is an autopsy photo, too gruesome yet necessary to examine. From his hands, the slick pulse of meat being cut talks to him. Unforgiving, his hands move like headstrong lightning, slicing and dicing.

He opens the whole heart like a scroll or a book.

You had been apprehensive about consuming deer hearts. The heart was the zenith of evangelical symbolism in literature. Were you or Alastor worthy to consume such a part of the body? It was if you were dissecting an angel and feasting on their piety.

The geography of hearts are all the same.

As mammals we all have four chambered hearts.

He opens the whole human heart like a scroll or a book.

vi. Padonnen tou sa nou fè ki mal, [Forgive all that we have done wrong,]

Alastor was not an active participant in his own religion. When he did, it was often out of your sight and always out of the public’s eyes. He kept religious scriptures and paintings locked in a safe then additionally locked in a study room. A scandal such as performing in the Haitian religion would pinch out the fire that was rising up his radio broadcasting fame like a hot-air balloon.

Today, you are positively giddy and positively ready to puke when Alastor invites you to join him to celebrate St. John’s Eve. A holiday in June he rarely went to.

Ditching your shared car, Alastor makes you walk hand in hand with him to the celebration after pink twilight skies drift into charcoal black hues. You have no idea how he can navigate so clearly in such darkness. Trusting him, you follow over moss and soil. Both of your white attire was probably stained from the journey. None of that mattered. You could not stop yourself from smiling.

The night is wondrous. You will never understand such a beautiful celebration could be so abhorred. Reaching impressive heights, the humongous bonfire casts warm hues of amber over the white attire of all who attain. Your body spins and leaps with positive energy – everyone is so friendly – no one wears glasses at night and they all laugh like humans, humans! You and Alastor dance, painted in the bonfire’s warmth and laughing in addition to all the other people. At one point in the night, Alastor says to you, “They say bathing in the gorge is supposed to preserve the health of your body and the good condition of your skin. Not that you need anything to add to your beauty. However, I would be grateful if you —”

“Yes! Yes, I’ll join you.” You have been that way all night, eager and absent of your usual anxiety. You strive to enjoy this – enjoy the world he lives in spiritually due to the stinging rejection of his friends. Something to keep you two close and tethered together.

He takes your hand and brings you waist deep in the water. All the while, you cling to him, arms around his neck, smiling and kissing his cheek repeatedly. He preens under the attention.

“So, is it like a baptism of sorts?”

“I’ll dip you under the water briefly, yes.”

“Ok,” you are still giggling, not even having a sip of anything. “Ok. Can I go first?”

Adoring Alastor brings his hands up to the sides of your face, running his thumb over your cheek. What a shame that you will not be smiling so wide soon. The flame of you has to be extinguished same as the roaring bonfire on the shore. He pecks you on the lips. “If you want to go first, I have no gripe over that, dear.”

Don’t worry, Alastor thinks as he dips you down into the murky, nebulous water, he will relight you.

You hold your breath as you go under. The water chills the back of your ears, sliding itself through your hair, then covers over your eyes. Alastor’s hands rest in a triangle of your upper back, steadying you so you do not fall back. One involuntary shiver moves you then you fall still. You take your breath and cup it in your chest like a pearl.

Weightlessness is a rare sensation. There is something tranquil about being enshrouded in water and able to feel like you are slipping away somewhere. Like the ribbon pulling on your heart at all times has eased and unraveled itself so instead of a bundle it has become a slippery eel.

You are so grateful that Alastor is sharing this with you. You felt bad for not making a connection with his friends. You hoped nothing ever breaks your connection with Alastor.

After half a minute or so, you lean a bit up to signal to Alastor that you want up. Oddly, there is no pressure on your back from Alastor pushing you up. You lean yourself up a bit more, then with the speed of a cobra striking, a pressure pushes you down. Fingers on your throat. The pearl in your chest slips out. With a muted, submerged shout, you push your hands up hoping to break the water surface, feel dry air. Nothing, all your panicked hands slide through is water.

AlastorAlastorAlastor – the pearl grows spikes like a urchin and pierces you, a debilitating pain in the chest as water floods through. You hack up what you swallow and yet swallow some more. Previous cold water feels as intensely hot as the bonfire you were dancing in front of before.

Everything is dark.

Everything is burning.

Everything – you gasp as Alastor pulls you out. You cough like you are trying to expel a hairball or demon out of you. Your body shakes and pounds with each forceful push. And in the midst of that, Alastor holds you by your waist and worrying over you, your hands around his neck, you start to sob.

“A-Ah, Alastor.” Your smile is gone.

vii. menm jan nou padonnen moun ki fè nou mal. [as we forgive those who hurt us.]

“Promise me you will not leave me.”

“I promise.”

“No, be serious.”

“I am being serious, haha. I promise. Hey. Hey? … Hey, I promise to never leave you, Alastor Melsar. No need for tears, love.”

viii. Pa kite nou nan pozisyon pou nou tonbe nan tantasyon, [Do not leave us in a position to fall into temptation]

Injuring Alastor is no easy task. He takes impeccable care to never be on the receiving end of any harm, but this amorous injury is different.

In the back of a drunk mind, Alastor senses the trail of warm blood running down his lats to his spine. Three evanescent droplets riding down and down. Sweat is outshone by the iron beads. He focuses his mind gently on where you scratched him, the injury it caused, and the blood curling around the brown curvature of his abdomen muscles. How he wishes you two drew each other’s blood more beyond this and rituals to Papa Gede — at a later time, he will ask you if you want to engage in anything more with blood.

“Oh fuck, Alastor. Oh fuck!”

Yes, at a later time would be more appropriate. He cannot properly engage in conversation which he is grunting so heavily.

Gently, Alastor rubs a thumb into your skin, studying the harsh bone of your pelvis. You tremble when his palm goes down and pushes up your left leg. Knobby knee touching your breast, you shriek at how more palpable you are to his efforts.

Alastor does not particularly like sex. He shared no interest in it like his acquaintances and rather seemed repulsed by it. He performed and acted on this sweaty stage because it made you happy. Yet, now that you have drawn his blood —

The speed at which his head pounds into your spongy inside gradually starts to pick up. You two are clashing your hips into one another like vengeful knights crossing claymores. Instead of the racket of piercing metal sparks, the noise of wet skin slapping and patting against one another billows up and up in volume. He fucks you hard, an executioner stealing the last drops of your life away.

“De-Dearest,” he pants, hoping to grab your attention.

All you do is dig your nails into his shoulder blade deeper, anchoring yourself feebly to a ship caught up in a storm. Alastor has never been so rough before. His force punches the words out of you, mouth hanging open in involuntary cries.

He pushes your knee down harsher into the globe of your breast. Your nails dig in deeper. Cut more skin, please, Alastor wants to beg but his own voice is withering from him now too.

“Fu-Fuck! Fuck!” You shred another part of his skin like a cat slicing up curtains into decorative ribbons. He feels it. The waterline of blood bubbling before it spills over like tears of a face.

“Oh Hell, (Name),” Alastor moans.

He often had problems coming to his release. Now, he worries that he will come before you are satisfied. Your previous cut has trailed down, colliding at the spot where the two of you are joined together. His worries are meaningless. At the sound of his voice, trembling and wanton, the violin strings of your consciousness are slit down the middle. Mind plucked out of your body, you cannot control your voice and groan a loud “Mmmmmpfh!” as you throw your head back and orgasm.

Your warmth squeezes around him and he loses that hold on your leg. Collapsing down, he moans and keeps thrusting in. Greedily, you roll your hips up. Slick, wet suctioning noises lose their space between one another fast like counting lightning that is rapidly approaching.

Into raw bloody flesh, your nails burrow. Alastor comes with a grunt of your name.

ix. men, delivre nou anba Satan. [but deliver us from Satan.]

It is an inconvenience of an illness that has befell the Meslar house. Really, you should be resting your body and he should be resting his voice. You stumble in your chores, body humming with a furnace warmth that rivals New Orleans summer heat. Alastor stumbles in his broadcasting, throat expelling out body-jerking coughs like plumes of brimstone smoke. He jokes that it would be more fortunate if you two swapped illness before curling into himself, hacking. You nod your agreement before curling into yourself, brain sitting in your head like a popsicle on a summer’s sidewalk.

Eventually, you two have to concede that you cannot keep on like this. Your shared stubbornness to push through a lingering illness will do you no good. Alastor calls out of work, you dismiss yourself from your household duties. Finally, you two rest.

Alastor loves having windows open. He pulls the woven horsehair screens away from their pins. Let spiders and flies enter your humble abode, meet their two caring hosts. Refreshing air snakes a tranquil pattern through the kitchen and dining room. Sunlight warms wood of a dining table and back of chairs. In the forty second breaks Alastor gets before his throat punches him, he nestles close to an open window and breathes in rich Earth.

You are resting in the open living room, passed out on the uncomfortable sofa. He had taken care to wait on you as you had taken care to read Hemingway aloud for him. Yet, soon syllables started to slur into a rainbow of ums, mhms, mmms, until you fell into a cavernous sleep.

Content, Alastor drinks his coffee (absent of the sedative, amobarbital, and the awful taste of tea) and gazes out on nature. Drugging you is not so gentlemanly of him. However, who can truly blame him, watching his beloved drag themselves to get the one last load of laundry folded or scrub a stove that would be fine with a day of neglect.

“Such a stubborn donkey, that one,” Alastor chuckles, taking a gracious sip.

His sleeves are rolled up and cool air breezes over the mark drawn on his inner forearm. Cornmeal and wood ash grounded up into a pallid gray. The symbol sticks to his skin fairly well. The symbol is an open diamond with a long line running through it, elbow crevice to wrist, with a tapered end like that of a ½ beat note. The voodoo symbol of good health. You have one drawn on your comatose arm too, sleeves rolled up.

He did not see the need to call upon Damballah for healing properties. A simple incantation and a longer than natural sleep should get you back to your natural self. Alastor always promised himself that he would care for you. He would keep you away from dangers always, even a mischievous viral infection swimming in your body.

Maybe he should tell you, maybe open up just a bit about his –

No. He had labored a fine scheme to make you afraid of what his religion and his friends had to offer and that fear would be a coin to cash in later. If everything else around you was horrific, he would be a certain tunnel to run towards – leap into his open arms so he may protect you from Death, the Devil, and beyond.

All you need, all you would see, all of it: him, him, him.

x. Paske, se pou ou tout otorite, tout pouvwa ak tout louwanj, depi tout tan ak pou tout tan. [For to you be all authority, all prayer, and all praise, forever and ever]

“Honey, I just don’t think he is right for you.”

“That Al, he is a bit eccentric. A little birdie tells me that Edward thinks you’re butter upon bacon! And Ed’s quite cute!”

“Is there a leak in your attic, (Name)? Alastor, really?”

He’s absolutely perfect for you. His eccentricities had bewitched you. And if there was a leak in your attic, you hoped it showered over you forever. In your rose-tinted eyes, no one could hold a candle to your Alastor. He was it for you, until death and perhaps even beyond. You know this to be a universal truth – if emotions could become fact, this is one instant of such a time – especially true as he proposes to you.

“Yes, of – of course, I will,” you tumble over your words. A showman until the end, the long, heartfelt speech that Alastor had voiced in that honey intonation had you quite speechless. He knew exactly where to praise and where to kill your insecurities. “O-of course.”

He has to pinch the center of your hand, thumb on bone and index on palm, so he can slide the ring on your shaking hand. You truly are a mess in his presence, so in love.

It takes a few moments to find your voice. Alastor kisses you in front of the crowded restaurant, people clapping. You two sit back, still having untouched desert waiting for you. As the waiter shakes the hand of the most famous radioman in New Orleans, you sit wide-eyed, glancing between tiramisu and champagne, waiting to fall out of this daydream.

“An ouroboros,” you murmur after the waiter leaves. Giddy smile on his face, Alastor raises an eyebrow at you. “It is an ouroboros.”

“Yes, I figured a literary master like you would love the symbolism. Does it please you? I was apprehensive of choosing something that did not have a diamond.”

“The self-eating snake.” Smitten, you rotate around your left hand to greet all the angles of the creature with enraptured eyes. “The eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth. Transmigration of souls.”

“The eternal cycle of our love.”

You flush and smile. “You’re being too charming tonight, Alastor.”

xi. Amèn. [Amen]

“Alastor,” you whisper into the dark after he finishes saying your wedding vows. The name is much heavier on your tongue. It no longer belongs solely to your sweet bengal cat. The name you sing out to grab a cat’s attention or scold him for swatting something off the counter – “Alastor.” – the name is now shared with your dead husband.

Bone-deep shivers run through you. Dead husband. Your dead husband who is broadcasting out to you, voice rich and recognizable. The most chesired prayer you had ever heard in your past life, bleeding off into radio-waves. “Alastor.”

“Yes, dearest?” His intonation holds the patience of an enraptured man. He is smitten and at the ready to lend you his ear in a much more tangible Van Gogh way than in the literary sense. “Would you care to share your vows too? I always did love hearing French-creole roll off your fumbling tongue.”

“No, I –”

You feel dreadfully faint. All of it rushing back to you; it is a miracle that you have not faint or turned into a vegetable. You stare at the brown husk of a radio where you should be looking at the brown skin of your late husband’s face. A miracle is too angelic. A curse. This is a curse.

Something boils unpleasantly in your gut. This house. It was Alastor’s. Even after being born in a different square of New Orleans, you found your way back to the house.

Found your way to the ring. Found your way back to the radio.

“Why?” It is the only word that you can manage to form.

“Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality”

“Death is a supple suitor, that wins at last.”

“Love is anterior to life, posterior to death”

“Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes.”

“A wounded deer leaps the highest.”

You two cannot keep quoting Emily Dickinson at each other. Burying your head in your hands, you sigh deeply with the strife and age of an entire already lived life. You miss the flash of lightning that illuminates your kitchen, the shadow of a wendigo stamped on the floor where the kitchen table’s circular imprint should be.

As the light leaps back out the window and you raise your head, Alastor hums at you lovingly. “Now dear, you know I hate to see you so despondent. It breaks my heart … well it would if I still had a beating one.”

Laughter follows and you startle in your chair. It sounds so intimately real that you almost thought the crowd of a comedy show was dropped and placed in your kitchen. Your shield falls as the noises wither away.

“Why now?”

“Dear, this interrogation is so harsh. I thought you would be overjoyed to be reunited. You said yourself that you never wanted to live without me. Aren’t you even going to say it?”

“Alastor. I love you.” Those words come as easy as the last puzzle piece. “Why now,” you press stubbornly.

The dark space around the radio almost echoes with the deep sigh Alastor gives you. There is the sound of some tinkering, a few knocks of wood and clanks of metal. “Why now, dear?” The noises grow in volume and rich jubilation breathes itself through Alastor’s voice. “Why now indeed! Well, dear, I have just happened to secure your place in Hell! Right alongside me! Please, please, hold the applause.”

There is no applause besides the one he is controlling and manipulating to move to his whims.

Why would he think that was pleasing news? Vexed, you straighten up your posture and go to ask, “Alastor, why —“ and then your words get caught in a spiderweb. “Alastor!”

Uncaring of your blindness from the power outage, you jump up and rush towards your bedroom, in search of Alastor.

You make it about halfway into the dining room when the bengal cat is suddenly deposited in your arms. Alastor is shaking up a storm. Protectively, you wrap your arms around him, wary of whatever nebulous thing held him in their clutches. Your empty glare falls off your face as you are suddenly roller-coastered back into the kitchen.

“That was quite rude of you.”

“You’ve been quite rude this entire month.”

“Well, I simply cannot pop out of nowhere. I do still have my affliction for showmanship. Something that was a trait loved by my dear spouse.”

“Showmanship, he says,” you grumble, petting Alastor gently. His tremors are still so extreme. “Ouroboros. Transmigration of a soul.”

“Well if I tether you to me, there is this little political game called Extermination that would have been a threat to you. If you were to die of natural causes, you would have gone to Heaven. Keeping you human was the best choice until I came to collect you.”

“You’re collecting me to bring me to Hell?”

“Quite correct. Yes, I am.”

“And if I don’t want to be collected?”

“HAHAHA, and do you not want that? Truly?”

“No … if anything … I’m more pissed you didn’t arrive sooner.”

A flash throws itself into the open space of a kitchen. This time you are able to see it. Up the wall, between the space where you keep an ancient television set and the place on the wall where a rotary phone rests is a shadow. Ignoring its definition, the shadow is built from no imposing object or body sitting in your kitchen. Instead of a physical presence, the stamp of long antlers and a sharp angular body are its own body. Gone as soon as the lightning flash flees.

You miss it barely but you saw the shadow of a hand reaching out to you. The something you had been searching for, finally here to call and collect you. Come home, dear, it calls out in gravel static. And you answer.

#alastor x reader #hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel alastor #hazbin alastor

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hanlimz · 2 months

Text

[midnight thoughts: jungwon + bad habits]

pairing: yang jungwon x gn!reader (reader is jake's sibling) genre/warnings: angsty fluff (happy ending) / mentions of alcohol, vomit, some blood / idk it could potentially be a bit suggestive but i don't rly think so? wc: ~2.1k a/n: LOL cass write abt someone other than won challenge pt.2: FAILED!!!! / whtv! this had been in my drafts n then i reworked the idea into that jay drabble i posted but i still rly wanted to write abt motorcycle jungwon so here you go.. (it turns rly soft at the end bc i am incapable of writing hurt without comfort LMAOOO)

as you climb out your window to perch atop your shingled roof, a wave of cold surges up your spine, taking care to freeze each and every vertebrae on its way. your breath billows before you, the white cloud contrasting the pitch black of night. from this vantage point, you can watch all the bodies as they move in tandem, warm from the alcohol and the dancing. it's mesmerizing, the rhythmic swaying lulls you into a state of peace, a state of tranquility. paying no mind to the booming party music or the numbness blooming at the tips of your fingers, you let your eyelids flutter closed. comforted by the nothingness, you take in the scent of wet earth mingling with the air freshener you have in your room as it permeates the air. with chilled bones and a clear mind, you remain a passerby, a shadow, a ghost.

that is, until an unceremonious rumbling breeches the music blasting from your brother's speakers. the people below begin to whoop and cheer as the manmade thunder grows quiet; your brother shouts a greeting, and you're all too familiar with the person who manages to turn heads merely upon arrival. a rush of nerves tingles through your body, and you run over a checklist. heeseung, jay, and sunghoon are all presently dancing, sunoo is watching over the kitchen, and riki has been relegated to the dj booth for the night. with all other options exhausted, you know it has to be him.

craning your neck, you catch a glimpse of his crimson steed. it glints, almost menacingly, in the light of the moon. the chrome accents are like liquid silver as he dismounts and casts a myriad of shadows over his bike. jake claps him on the shoulder as he removes his matching helmet. his hair falls out—deliciously messy, perfectly tousled; it's a waterfall of silky, black strands that somehow look windblown and gelled back simultaneously. save for everyone that has continued to dance, girls and guys alike are crowding around the boy and his bike.

a cursory smile is offered to all of the faces in the crowd, but it becomes real as he turns to look at your brother. friends since they met through soccer practice years ago, friends despite their differing social circles, friends through the thick of it all. they push through the throng of classmates, acquaintances, and strangers—closer to the house, closer to you.

before they disappear beneath the awning, jake pulls him into a hug, and you can see him dig his fingers into the boy's leather jacket. "it's good to see you, man," jake says, just loud enough for you to make out. "drinks are in the kitchen with sun, i'm sure he'll be surprised to see you make an appearance."

and, just like that, the party resumes. you watch as the horde of people assembled around the motorcycle gradually disperses, and they begin to partner up again. despite not offering any physical warmth, a fire builds inside of you; small embers of memory are ignited by the nervousness that rips at your stomach. reliving each one is painful—the images that flash behind your eyes are hot, burning themselves into your mind once more. you guess that there are mere seconds left until he comes to see you, and you are proven correct when a measured knock sounds against your door. it confirms any suspicions and lays any doubt you might've had to rest.

you know all too well who this is.

the slab of wood creaks open, groaning as if aged by the cold. gazing back at him, you notice how young he looks when bathed in the warm, yellow light emanating from your desk lamp. he seems to glow, crowned with a halo of innocence, overflowing with something you can't place. this angelic countenance distracts you from the red solo cup sitting in grasp, distracts you from the fact that he is inching forward, distracts you from the movement of his lips. and, after a few moments, he is settling next to you and fidgeting in an attempt to get used to the frigid air. suddenly, you are stripped of your alien status because he is looking at you, seeing you—just as he always does.

ghosts notice ghosts, you think, daring to steal a glance in his direction. he catches you, ensnaring you with those deep, brown eyes, but he doesn't say a word. it isn't like him, really. he's an obligatory people person, a fan favorite, a crowd worker; he can have you doubled over with laughter one minute and crying the next. this irregularity is not lost on you as he continues to stare. you can almost feel the words waltzing on the tip of his tongue, and it kills you—the waiting game. it's one you always manage to lose.

"thought we agreed to take a break from each other ..." you hum, breaking the silence and turning your head away. "hm, jungwon?"

he mirrors you, and takes a sip from the cup. his impenetrable pokerface doesn't give you any hints as to what he's drinking. peeking over, you watch as jungwon answers with a nod and a sharp clench of his jaw.

"so, why are you here?" you ask, scoffing and shooting him a forceful glare. "why are you here, sitting with me in weather you hate, not saying a word? what—do you care about me, suddenly? about us?"

he prickles at this particularly harsh jab, rushing to defend himself, "i told you, [y/n]—"

"oh, yeah—you told me, jungwon. you told me about sunghoon, about how protective he is of his sister, about how he broke siwoo's nose after he found out about their relationship. you told me that you didn't want jake to get in our way, that you didn't want things to get ugly if jake didn't like us together," your tone is venomous enough to kill as you berate him. "then, after i called you on your bullshit, you told me that it was for my own good. you didn't want me to get hurt, didn't want me to walk away broken ... you talk such a big game with your motorcycle and your leather jackets, but really, jungwon? all you told me is that you're a coward."

the aftershocks of your explosion are still rocking through jungwon as he tries to process all of your words. absorbing your poison, guilt and realization wash over him; he is a coward. and, a fool for letting you slip through his fingers. his mouth gapes as he searches desperately for the right thing to say. jungwon flounders, and you take perverse delight in his struggle. all of the weight that had been crushing you is now his to bear; it feels good, but only for a minute or two. then, this parasitic love you harbor for him squeezes at your heart. the silence starts to suffocate you, balls of cotton begin to fill your throat, and the cold air is making your lungs burn. you turn to see him already looking at you, and the apology you were about to let free dies away.

his eyes are wild, frenzied almost. not in a way that frightens you, but in one that saddens you. jungwon is frantically hunting for a way to make you see how sorry he is, for a way to make you stay. he reaches out to you but flinches away on his accord, unsure of what your reaction might be. taking a deep breath, all he says is: "you're right."

as the admission of guilt hangs in the air, it is almost underwhelming. you sigh, preparing to push up from your seat and head back inside, but jungwon stops you. he grips your wrist before he is able to stop himself this time and wills you to sit once more. his hands are as warm as you remember, calloused and rough and surprisingly gentle.

"you're right, [y/n]. i'm a coward, and i don't deserve a second chance—i didn't even deserve the first one you gave me. but, god—you have to believe me when i say that i care. i care about you, about us. my stupid, fucking thoughts got in the way, and i was scared," jungwon explains, blinking rapidly to keep his tears at bay. "i used jake to hide from you, to hide from how much i loved you. from how much i've always loved you."

jungwon begins to shake—from the desperation or the cold, you're not sure. but, as the conversation dips into a natural lull, you usher him past the threshold of the window pane and shut it behind the two of you. a quietude settles between your bodies, a static that coaxes you closer while simultaneously pushing you apart. gently, you slip the tingling tips of your fingers beneath the leather of his jacket; it is replaced with a fluffy blanket before he can blink, and he relishes in the silken sensation blooming in his chest. enveloped by this newfound warmth, you ask him the same question from before: "why?"

he answers immediately, ignoring the searing pain as his blood begins to flow again, "because, i'm not good, [y/n]. i'm not good ... and, you're perfect. i'm afraid—if we go any further, i'll turn you into someone else. i'll ruin you."

you exhale sharply out of your nose, "selfish."

yang jungwon is stunned to silence; the remnants of vitriol seep like a toxic sludge into the cracks forming in his heart—a heart that he claimed to never have, a heart that you managed to steal for yourself. selfish. you called him selfish. jungwon wanted to protect you from the person you might become after being with him; he wanted to keep you away from the sight of bloodied knuckles and the putrid scent of vomit and alcohol. "i'm ..." jungwon starts, incredulity ringing clear in his voice, "selfish?"

"beyond belief," you sniff.

"wh—how?!"

"how? jungwon—who are you to decide what's good for me? who are you to tell me that i'm good ... that i'm perfect? what do you know about me that i don't?" inhaling deeply, you inch forward; jungwon unceremoniously plops down onto the pillowy cloud of your bed, and you follow suit. in this light, the halo makes a reappearance, and you swear the entire galaxy twinkles in his wide, blown out eyes. resting mere millimeters away, you whisper, "who are you to try and make me believe we aren't meant to be?"

his facade is crumbling bit by bit; walls upon walls of cold concrete are reduced to dust in the wake of your storm. falling back into the soft down of your comforter, jungwon flings an arm over his eyes. stupid, foolish—distracted by the possibility of losing you, he managed to make one of the biggest mistakes of his life. "i'm sorry," jungwon admits once more. "i was selfish. you deserve better."

"sure, i guess. if you think so ..." you begin, interlacing your fingers with his and taking away his hiding place, "but, i want you."

jungwon feels fragile in your hands. the look in his eyes is tentative, almost as though if he were to move, you would fade into a fine dust. in this moment, he is vulnerable—a turtle without its shell, a knight without his armor. there is a certain frantic hesitance you can feel as his heart beats against yours; the rise and fall of his chest is not so steady, and the rhythm is not so sure. having already done so once, jungwon doesn't want to lose you again.

you sigh, and jungwon takes in the sweet aroma of starlight mints and lemonade. "stop thinking so hard, won," you murmur. "i want you. i deserve you. i love you."

"you do?" he asks, uncertain.

"i do," you answer, resolute. "can i show you?"

when he nods, the butterflies flitting in your stomach begin to settle because this is jungwon. pressing into him, the rich taste of butterscotch and tang of beer blooms on your tongue; the sensation of your lips slotting against his is only rivaled by the victorious completion of a huge puzzle. perfect in every way—pieces fall into place, and everything just fits. jungwon is familiar, a home that has returned to you. you make jungwon know your love. so, you kiss his forehead, and you kiss his nose, and you kiss his lips.

i want you. i deserve you. i love you.

#enhypen fluff #enha fluff #jungwon fluff #enhypen reactions #; — cass writes: jungwon #enhypen #enha imagines #enhypen imagines #enhypen headcanons #enha headcanons #enha reactions #jungwon headcanons #jungwon imagines #jungwon x reader

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