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#don’t you love it when that happens with one of your characters
grandline-fics · 2 days
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Terms of Endearment
DESCRIPTION:  You call them by a term of endearment without realising 
WARNINGS: just fluff, mentions of alcohol in Luffy's
CHARACTERS: Ace, Sabo, Luffy | Law, Kid, Shanks, Marco, Zoro
WORDS: 1,933
A/N: The next part in this in honour of reaching 500 followers. Hope you all enjoy
*REQUESTS ARE OPEN*
MASTERLIST | PROMPT LIST
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ACE
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You knew nothing would ever happen between you and the Division Commander. You knew he was just a likeable guy who was friendly and warm with everyone. Countless times you told yourself that he was just nice with everyone and yet still you couldn’t help but feel your heart beat just a little faster when he smiled at you and you couldn’t stop yourself from liking him a little more each time he spoke with you and spent time with you outside of chores and tasks being done onboard the ship. It didn’t matter though, even with the knowledge nothing romantic would happen you were happy to be considered a close friend of Ace’s.
One morning you were perched on the edge of the ship’s railing and keeping a critical eye on the thick wall of cloud draped over the entirety of the sky above the next island you were approaching. It made a stark difference to the clear blue you and the rest of the crew were currently under. You were no stranger to the absurdity of the ever changing weather and separate climates certain islands had but seeing what you were going to be greeted with was starting to sour your mood. It wasn’t as fun stopping at an island if there was a storm to endure.
“Glaring at the clouds won’t make them change you know.” You looked over your shoulder to see Ace hop up onto the railing and sit down beside you. Glancing out of the corner of your eye you were jealous of how relaxed he was and let out a long sigh as you returned your stare to the clouds you could now see were darker than you had originally thought. 
“Who knows, stranger things have happened on these seas.” You mused, scowling harder now that the idea was in your head. “Maybe I have the ability to control weather and neither of us knew it? Don’t know unless I try.”
From beside you Ace laughed, reclining back to support his body on his elbows and grinned up at you. 
“If that were possible, that’d be a pretty dumb gift. Glaring at clouds to make them obey you? You’d get a headache all day.” You rolled your eyes and laughed, getting more comfortable too, lying down and tucking your arms behind your head. 
“Look we can’t all be super amazing and control fire like some people, Ace.” You teased, a small yawn breaking from your lips as your eyes closed. You were still a ways away from the stormy island so you may as well make the most of the sunshine and warmth until then. “Some of us are just boring.”
“I definitely wouldn’t call you boring.” Ace told you. Safely in the knowledge that you couldn’t see him, he could observe you carefully with softened gaze. “You’re one of my favourite people to hang out with.” 
“Aw thank you love, you always know just what to say.” Your relaxed smile brightened considerably but you were too drowsy to open your eyes again to look at the man beside you. It was also why you hadn’t realised your slip of the tongue. Ace however tensed and sat up a little straighter from his once relaxed position. His eyes were widened and a soft pink was dusting his freckled skin. All this time he’d thought his feelings were one-sided and now he was hit with the reality that it might not be the case. Overcome with a burst of excitement and hope he quickly lay back down and used his hat to hide his giddy expression and began to think about how to subtly broach the subject when you were awake.
SABO
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“You’re not going to improve if you don’t keep your focus.” Hack lectured, swiftly knocking Sabo back with ease. Sabo managed to recover from the attack and retaliated with one of his own that was completely dodged to the point it made the attack look so pitiful. Hack paused in the sparring match to frown at the younger Revolutionary. “Seriously, what’s with you today? Do you need to take a break?” Quickly Sabo shook his head and forced himself to keep his attention on Hack but even then he couldn’t help but feel your presence silently calling to him. 
You were oblivious to the power you had over the Chief of Staff, even from the very first day you joined the Revolutionary Army you’d somehow managed to make Sabo immediately endeared to you. Given Sabo’s personality he was able to pass off his momentary slips and lack of concentration when you were around and for the most part others hadn’t made the connection. Most being the word. People like Hack, Koala, and Dragon however knew. Normally Hack wouldn’t mind and ignore it but this was the third time in the short amount of time of the sparring match that he’d seen Sabo zone out and look your way as you were speaking with Dragon about a recent mission you’d been on. Enough was enough. After knocking Sabo onto his back, Hack turned and called you over. You finished your conversation with Dragon and approached the sparring pair with a soft, expectant smile while Sabo got to his feet. “I want you to spar Sabo with me. Perhaps having two opponents will help sharpen his dulled senses.” 
You became concerned to hear Hack’s less than complimentary tone at the blond and you looked to Sabo with a light frown, scrutinising his features carefully. Could it be he was sick? Was something else be bothering him? It wasn't like the Chief of Staff to be so distracted especially when it came to his training. At the suggestion of you fighting along with Hack, Sabo’s expression became a mix of uncertainty and irritation. He didn’t want to spar against you but he couldn’t outright deny Hack requesting you join them given he had no real reason to oppose it. Sabo could only take a breath and adjust his stance while praying he didn’t make an embarrassment of himself.
At first having you as part of the fight helped Sabo when it came to focusing on the fight, by having two skilled fighters attacking he didn’t have the ability to pay attention to his personal feelings. However when he kept his sight on Hack as the priority he’d slipped up and forgotten you. You took the window of opportunity and ducked under Sabo’s arm, your face less than inch from his. Quickly you hooked her arm around his and tucked your foot around his ankle, twisting and knocking him to the ground. You kept a firm hold on Sabo’s wrist and pressed your knee into his back. “Give up sweetie?” you asked innocently, unable to see Sabo’s eyes widen. Before he could respond you were abruptly called for by another Revolutionary to go out on a mission. Pouting you released Sabo and left him and Hack. 
“Please tell me I didn’t imagine that…” Sabo uttered, almost begging Hack. He looked up to see the Fishman grin at him and help him to his feet. 
“No I heard it too. Funny thing is I don’t think they noticed they did it.” Sabo watched your retreating form and brightly smiled. 
“Interesting.”
LUFFY
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For the most part Luffy can be considered fairly clueless about a lot of things if they don’t involve his ambition to be King of the Pirates and obtaining the One Piece, doing whatever he wanted and eating all he wished. That included his own deeper feelings at times. However no matter how complex Luffy’s emotions were about certain things he found it easier to break them down into more simplistic views and gain a better understanding about them. He found he had to do that with you and the longer you were part of his crew the more he had to take an inward look at his feelings. So far he was able to discern that he liked you, he liked being around you and it was mutual because you’d been all too eager to join his crew. For the longest time it was simple as that. 
Things however became complicated one night after he and the rest of the crew helped free another town from a corrupt ruler. As always the celebration was a large affair with plenty of food, music and drink. While Luffy wasn’t a drinker and happily indulged in all the food he could get his hands on, you were pulled into a drinking contest with some of the locals along with Nami, Zoro, Franky, and Usopp. You’d managed to hold your own for a respectable amount but when you felt the world being to tilt and your mind grow hazy you knew you wouldn’t be able to handle anymore. 
Staggering from the table you somehow managed to wander to the only spot you knew you’d feel completely safe and content with. You didn’t know how you managed it, call it instinct or sheer will but you stopped beside your Captain and slid down to sit on the soft grass beside him, leaning against his back for support. Luffy looked over his shoulder to grin at you before continuing to eat. “You lost huh?” he laughed before taking a large bite of a meat skewer.
“It’s cheating when Zoro plays.” You grumbled, shifting to get more comfortable against your Captain. “He’s so smug too. Didn’t even wanna win anyway.” You fell into soft laughter with Luffy and then drifted into content silence. Subconsciously Luffy moved while he ate, seamlessly turning so you were leaning against his side and neither of you seemed to even notice the new position.
When morning came and you woke with a hangover and lack of memory you let out a worried groan, hoping that whatever you’d done wasn’t too embarrassing or at the very least you hoped that everyone else was also too drunk to remember too. Wincing you pushed yourself up to see that you were in your own bed. Hazily you tried to force your brain to work and managed to pull out the image of Luffy which made sense, he was your go-to for anything. Knowing he didn’t drink, you knew you could also rely on him for the truth on what you failed to remember. You found Luffy sitting on Sunny’s head just as you knew he’d be but you became worried to see him frowning, deep in thought. “Everything okay Luffy?” you asked, flinching when Luffy’s head swiftly snapped around to look at you intently. 
“No! You’re not allowed to call me that.” Immediately worry and guilt took hold. What had you done? Would he ever forgive you? Oh no, what if it was so bad he’d kick you off of the ship for good. 
“Wh-what do you mean?“ You asked panicked and feeling sick which was not from the hangover. “Whatever I’ve done I’m sorry but I don’t remember. Please tell me what I did wrong. I can fix it.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.” Luffy’s expression became confused. “I’ve just decided that you can’t call me Luffy anymore I like what you called me last night after I helped you to bed better.” 
“Oh…” you couldn’t tell what you were feeling in that moment exactly. Desperately you tried to think what you called him, silently thankful that whatever it was hadn’t offended him. “Well if you want me to call you that instead you have to remind me.”
“You called me dear.” Luffy grinned while your face reddened.
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May I ask why you dislike Malleus so much?
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[My TWST character tier list is here.]
[For context on why I dislike Malleus: here and here!]
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Many of the reasons previously cited above are still applicable presently (though some points may be outdated since those posts were written before book 7). In this post, I will mostly be focusing on why my thoughts on Malleus have not changed despite the new added content of book 7.
I ramble on for a bit, so I put my thoughts below the cut! Ah—but before you read, please be aware that these are my opinions and not meant to be disparaging to any Malleus likers out there.
Me disliking him should not take away any of your joy!! Go out there and love him for me ^^
A lot of the things happening in book 7 were a long time coming, so really I felt as though Malleus finally “losing it” was affirming of all the red flags from before. Since day 1, his loneliness, aloofness, and awkwardness around his peers were key traits of his. What book 7 does is it magnifies the darkest aspects of his character.
We’ve seen several examples when Malleus has fits of rage and his power flares out of control or he at least threatens it. In Glorious Masquerade, he becomes enraged at the realization that the invitation he received was a false one. In A Firelit Sky, he insinuates that he would be upset if people questioned his presence for the trip. He crushes Lilia’s phone in his own Dorm Uniform vignettes, destroying a friend’s belonging because he was upset about not being invited to an occasion. In book 7, we see a flashback of Malleus freezing the whole castle as a child because his grandmother, overtaken by her duties, could no longer dine with him as promised. Malleus’s temper has been a persistent issue since childhood.
We’ve also seen him act callously toward his classmates and misuse magic to force his will upon them. Remember him stopping time during Endless Halloween Night? How he wanted some ghosts to enjoy themselves instead of missing out on being with everyone for the holiday? Now he’s stopping time in book 7 and keeping everyone in their happy dreams forever. Remember how (in his Dorm Uniform vignettes) Malleus thought it would be easier to make the other dorm leaders come to him instead of him coming to them for their meeting? So then he disregards their autonomy and casts magic that’s normally cast on objects on living beings (something which the other dorm leaders take offense to, as it is dehumanizing). He fails to consider their perspective when he returns to Diasomnia (he basically goes, “well, I wouldn’t have been mad if they cast that spell on me!”). Malleus learns nothing from the experience despite Lilia trying to tell him over and over to be more considerate of others and how different they are from him. Now we have Malleus relating his peers to a virtual pet that he never ever wants to leave him.
Malleus can be stubborn and arrogant. He has a very single-minded way of thinking and often does not consider others’ feelings before he makes the decision for them. Malleus can be insecure. He doesn’t even fully realize he is lonely until Yuu suggests it in book 7, but he’s capable of acting on his bouts of intense emotion. He has always had these flaws, and now they are being brought out in full; we’re being forced to confront OB Malleus and all the complicated, twisting feelings of abandonment that come with him.
Let’s make one thing very clear: I don’t take issue with the overblot boys in general; they are meant to be morally grey characters that act in dubious ways. It would be insincere for me to claim “I dislike Malleus because he did bad things!” News flash, many TWST characters have done bad things or at least questionable things that would give you pause. What separates Malleus from the others and makes him egregious enough to earn significant ire from me is the particular actions he takes (which triggers a personal disdain of mine).
Malleus consistently exerts a scary amount of control over others. This is not a new idea; Riddle and Vil are also notorious for being oppressive or controlling, and I’ll be the first to admit that. (You’ll note that those two are low on my tier list too.) The thing is, Riddle and Vil were very overt and open about their demands for obedience. Malleus can be too, but it’s so insidious how he acts within the dreams. He ignores people’s autonomy, gaslights others, and, again, acts like he knows what’s best for them 💀 Other characters have done these things too, but never to the same scale or by exerting this much power. Malleus then resorts to violence when his lies don’t work, even though he’s fully aware of the power disparity between him and his peers. It feels particularly scummy to me because of how Malleus frames his selfish actions and feelings (his wish for Lilia to not leave) as selfless (for the benefit of his peers) and something everyone else would want in order to justify it to himself 💦 I know he is in (or bordering on) overblot so he wasn’t thinking rationally at that point, plus the fact that many examples I listed come from events or vignettes which may not be canon to the main story timeline. Still, there is a concerning pattern of behavior with Malleus misusing his powers or not being considerate of others and failing to grow from those mistakes. You can only go “oopsie” so many times before you harm someone by accident. I expect people to learn their lesson by then and adopt some proper restraint. He keeps claiming his intentions are good as if that’s supposed to dismiss any harm that results from his actions??? No, his actions still harmed people and he has to deal with the consequences of them, not have them hand-waved away or excused. The behavior I’m witnessing is reminiscent of like… having a toxic friend that is constantly told “hey, what you’re doing/saying makes me feel uncomfortable; do you think you could dial it back?” and the friend tells you they’ll try but then never actually changes their behavior or defends their behavior with “I didn’t mean to, so therefore I did not actually harm anyone”.
You can give me a backstory, but a backstory only goes so far as explaining why he is the way he is; it does not excuse him at all. You can say “He’s a fairy! He’s sheltered!” until the cows come home, but when he relies on magic to quickly fix the problems he caused instead of stopping to genuinely reflect on why people are mad at him, it’s hard for me to sympathize. Because of his immense power and status, the only person that can reasonably hold Malleus accountable is himself, and he has not demonstrated to me that he can do that.
Book 7 is essentially the payoff for allllll the tropes and traits I never liked to begin with coming into fruition. That’s why Malleus has stayed where he is in my TWST character ranking. I did not expect the writing, no matter how good or tear-jerking, to change that. Until Malleus shows that he’s fully apologetic, recognizes the error of his ways, and consciously tries to connect with others and understand their perspectives, he’s staying squarely where he is.
Am I saying a character with flaws is a bad thing? No, absolutely not! Flaws are what make a character interesting, I’m not faulting Malleus or any other characters for having them. Am I saying that he is poorly written? No, I think Malleus is actually quite a complex character and he’s been really fascinating to follow. I love the emotional complexity of book 7–and it was so clever how the devs related his virtual pet to wishing for happily ever afters for people in his real life. This magnitude of danger is also just about what I expect of book 7 and the themes of togetherness that TWST was angling for from the start. But the fact remains unchanged that I perceive his attitude as irritating at best and reprehensible at worst.
My distaste for Malleus is based entirely on my own views and life experiences. The specific flaws Malleus has and how he acts because of them don’t sit well with me and the kinds of things I enjoy in fiction. It’s not anything deeper than that!
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callmebrycelee · 1 day
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Can we just talk about how some of y’all were okay with Josh just being the sassy gay bestie until Tommy came along. Then all of a sudden, I start seeing posts about Gee, wouldn’t Josh be perfect for Tommy? So, all of a sudden Josh has romantic potential the moment a new gay man arrives on the scene. A lot of you only began to see this potential the moment Tommy aka Mr. Steal-Your-Buck became a threat to a certain ship. The moment that chin was lifted, you saw your ship flash before your very eyes. The fact that Tommy Kinard did in 4 minutes and 23 seconds what could never be done in 6 seasons, was downright terrifying for some of you. And the twist of the knife came when a lot of us viewers started to see the potential in Tommy and Buck.
Now all of a sudden you want to play matchmaker????!!!
And that’s what so frustrating about all of this. You don’t care about Josh or his romantic prospects and you most certainly do not care about Tommy. In fact, a lot of you are so hellbent on Buddie (notice I did not say Eddie and Buck) being endgame that you’re willing to screw over the other characters to make it happen. Like y’all seriously believe that Buck is going to cheat with Eddie at his sister’s wedding???!! Like how does that make sense for either character? Come on! Maddie and Chimney and Hen and Bobby and Athena … hell even Christopher at this point, they’re all pieces on a chessboard to move around until you get what you want.
Now I’m not a TV writer so I’ll leave the storytelling up to Tim Minear and the other 9-1-1 writers. Whatever ending we get to this show, however far in the future we get it, I hope it’s one that serves ALL the characters a lot of us have grown to love over the last seven years and not just a specific ship.
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kdinjenzen · 1 day
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🔥 Your favorite video game (or one of them if you have multiple)
Pokémon lost a lot of personality in the characters, designs, and details when it shifted to 3D models over pixel art.
GameFreak has suffered because of this change because the 3D stuff was never really in their development pipeline and expecting this company who often developed for mobile games or made smaller experiences to be able to pick up and run with a new 3D development pipeline was and still is a ridiculous concept.
The vast amount of people in the credits for the Pokémon games don’t work at GameFreak and are actually hired out as contract through other studios (Like Bandai Namco) through Nintendo to actually assist and work more directly on those 3D pipelines.
That said the 3D games are great and most people who trash on them as being “GOD AWFUL GARBAGE” have no idea how hard game dev is and have no concept of the industry struggles.
“Gotta Catch Em All” was easy for Gen 1 and 2, but once 3 and onward happened most folks didn’t give two fucks about catching them all and just focused on their favorites. So the hateful explosion of “FUCK THE DEVS FOR REMOVING POKÉMON” is bullshit and most folks likely never complete a Pokédex anyway even with the smaller dexes.
Everyone who said “Palworld is Pokémon But Better” is an asshole and either doesn’t care or ignores the fact that designs were stolen and the company loves generative Ai.
GameFreak needs to be able to make a game every 3 years instead of every single year/year and a half.
Nintendo should be supporting GameFreak with more side games to support a release schedule for the series instead of pushing for mainline games.
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neoflect · 2 days
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sharing some of my disorganized jojo musical thoughts now that ive had a week to sit on it and ive rewatched it several times over. i intended to wait to publish something like this until a subtitled version was available, but im not seeing any indication that thats happening any time soon so for now youll have to deal with my loose interpretations from my extremely rudimentary and rusty japanese… so take what i have to say about the finer points of characterization with a grain of salt. gratuitous spoilers below obviously, both for the original source material and the changes made in the stage production
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my feelings are OVERWHELMINGLY positive. of course there are things i can criticize or that i would have personally done differently but oh man… i have literally not thought about anything besides this fucking show for a week. im 100% confident in saying this is a better adaptation of the source material than the tv anime. sorry to the davidpro staff, i respect their hard work and their love for jojo and their dedication to what is by any metric a pretty difficult property to adapt off of the page, but i dont know if i can ever forgive them for leaving half of the first episode’s storyboard on the cutting room floor in order to fit a standard half-hour tv slot, especially considering that what they cut is some of the really crucial character-building stuff. happily those scenes are not only reproduced in the stage version, some of them are expanded upon!
with the quick disclaimer that i’ve only managed to get my hands on the final 4/14 performance with shotaro arisawa and yoshihisa higashiyama, from what i’ve seen the casting is perfect. i’m sure there’s a rip of the 4/13 performance somewhere (i’ve seen clips) but i haven’t been able to find one… every single performer knocks it out of the fucking park, the cast chemistry is incredible and even the minor characters are loaded with charisma. and mamoru miyano… my god… mamoru miyano i owe you an apology. i was not familiar with your game. of course hes been killing it for decades at this point but i had soured on him a little bit recently because i felt like he was overcast in everything and i just didnt connect with his dnt reinhard at all, so when the casting was initially announced back in august i was underwhelmed, and of course my standards for the dio role in particular were astronomically high… i’ll go more into detail later in the post because i have so so many things to say about dio’s characterization here but mamoru miyano’s performance is like, life-changing. i had impossible expectations and he exceeded them.
sorry if im gushing. i am a hater by nature. its unusual for me to be so thoroughly pleased with something. im not even a musical theater guy. these are strange new feelings for me.
just to balance things out i’ll talk about a couple of the things that didn’t really work for me: first of all, the music is just ok. my initial draft of this post called the music “bad” but three additional viewings later i have warmed up to some of the songs. i don’t know if this is a shortcoming by dove attia as the composer or if it’s just me, as i said i’m not a musical guy and a lot of the genre conventions of musical theatre are not really the things i look for in music that i enjoy, but like… even at their worst they are serviceable. nothing here is sonically unpleasant to me. high points are “resolve of the ripple” (zeppeli’s hamon training song, a jazzy swing number - it’s simply catchy and fun to listen to) and the closer “phantom blood” (a sweeping ballad that reprises the earlier “light and darkness”/”golden spirit” leitmotifs into an epic duet between jonathan and dio as they join hands and walk off into the darkness together… made me cry! i wont lie! on every single one of my numerous viewings this one got me misty eyed!)
wait i forgot this is supposed to be the part where i’m being critical. ok my most loathed song in the musical is “dio’s world”. sorry dio nation. it doesn’t really work for me. i think this might be a case of my standards/expectations being too impossibly high because it’s not even really the worst song in the whole thing. and of course miyano eats it up so it’s not really his fault. i just find it kind of underwhelming… i find the melody a little grating, it’s kind of just a generic rock number, it’s just missing a particular je ne sais quoi…. the essence of dio isn’t there… lyrically though i am obsessed with the premise of dio recruiting his minions by selling himself as a kind of social revolutionary who is upending and inverting the brutal hierarchy of post-industrial victorian society with zombie blood magic. you win some you lose some.
the second sticking point for me is the costumes. they’re perfectly serviceable… adequate… but i mean when it comes to jojo “serviceable” and “adequate” costume design obviously falls well below what’s expected, right? a lot of the outfits have kind of a boxy, almost flat-looking kind of unflattering fit on the actors, which if i wanted to be generous i could attribute to the challenge of bridging the gap between these frail slender musical theater twinks and the two-meter-tall 250lb roided-out beefcakes theyre meant to be embodying. (bearing this discrepancy in mind a lot of the insane martial arts stuff in the second act doesn’t really land with the oomph that it should, but i also understand logistically why this kind of casting is not practical, and all things considered i think shotaro arisawa does a really incredible job of embodying jonathan joestar even though he kind of looks like i could snap him in half over my knee like a twig. he’s very cute. so i’m not mad about it.) of course, again, logistically, i understand that in a stage musical production, where actors only have minutes to complete costume changes, some sacrifices have to be made to the creative vision in the name of practicality. nevertheless this is jojos bizarre adventure!! i want to see some fucking baubles!!!!!!
which is all to say that… after carefully considering it for some weeks… i still have extremely mixed feelings about dio’s grink ass feather bathrobe look. it’s not that i dont think its something he could wear (the concept of dio lounging around in his gothic vampire palace doing re-animator style body horror experiments on the local wildlife in this “officer i have no idea what happened to my husband”-ass nightgown is nothing short of hysterical to me) but then he wears it into combat and i felt a little disappointed… it has the same unflattering fit issue as the other outfits in the show, and it is just such an un-araki-like design… where are the gaudy color combinations? the bizarre geometric patterns? the tease of an exposed boob/thigh/midriff? erina gets a stage-original dress design that i have fewer issues with because the excessive pleats and ruffles have more of an araki-esque sensibility, but every time i look at dio’s robe it feels like there’s something missing.  i’m going to choose to be nice about it because it’s not at all a deal breaker and, again, mamoru miyano devours the look. it’s fine. it’s always fun to have a new dio outfit. if anything, the fact that the blu-rays are being marketed as “2024 cast version” gives me hope for the possibility of a future production with a new vision for the costume design. (although the fact that this was such a difficult production - with stunts and pyrotechnics and moving setpieces - that its entire first week was cancelled indicates to me that the prospects for a future production from a different company are impossibly slim. i guess there’s always hope?)
in terms of the writing and the changes that were made from the original narrative, honestly i don’t really have an issue with anything that was cut. sorry if there are any diehard stans of Poco’s Unnamed Sister out there who are steamed that their favorite minor late phantom blood character got the axe, i kind of understand how you feel because i’ve been malding over david pro cutting the Danny Lore for eleven years, but i think it was the right choice and the story flows so much better. the real juicy meat at the core of phantom blood as a narrative and the thing that brings it head and shoulders above so much of the rest of jjba is the character-driven drama - that deliciously pulpy victorian gothic family tragedy - and the relationship between jonathan and dio. the musical beefs up the character drama and slims down the action-driven second half by trimming out the extraneous battles. the only real downside i see to this is that the absence of tompetty and his prophecy makes zeppeli’s arc and death feel INSANELY abrupt, but tbf that’s not a deal breaker for me. sorry zeppeli. you were born to die.
okay. okay. i think 1500 words into the post is enough fucking around so let’s talk about the real reason why you and i both know we’re here
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musical dio is SO fucking sad. he’s positively wretched, you guys. he was born in a wet cardboard box all alone and forced to eat cement when he was six. he cries even more than he does in the source material and even when he’s not crying he frequently delivers his lines as though he is moments away from bursting into tears. back when the musical first opened i was snooping on the reactions on jpn twitter and one commenter said they could see miyano’s tears and snot from the nosebleeds even without opera glasses, a remark i initially assumed was hyperbole but that i now think probably was not. araki’s dio is certainly tortured and a deeply pathetic crybaby beneath all the cruelty and posturing, but changes in the musical and miyano’s embodiment of the character bring this pathos to the fore. he is literally haunted: dario’s ghost lingers, a manifestation of all of dio’s traumas and insecurities that emerges from the recesses of his memory to taunt him with the reminder that he will always be his father’s son, all the way up until the very minute that jonathan breaks down the door to his vampire lair. i am OBSESSED with this - not only for the obvious reason that i delight in dio’s suffering personally but also because kong kuwata is a delight and he fucking kills it every time. also lends itself to a category 10 leitmotif moment at the top of the second act when dio emerges from the charred ruins of the joestar estate singing dario’s theme and calling out to jonathan - if i had to pinpoint this is probably the moment when this musical stuck for me as the Real Deal. they Get It.
the first solo number in the show is dio’s disney princess I Want song (amazingly, simply titled “dio”) where he weeps for his late mother and his wretched lot in life, and then - in a creative decision that made me clap my hands and hoot and holler at my screen in real life - there is a reprise of this number (delivered, naturally, through tears) when dio is almost arrested for murder and decides to become a vampire instead. so there’s this amazing hopeful uplifting inspirational orchestral music accompanying the onstage action of dio ruthlessly slaying jonathan’s dad and then getting pumped full of lead by a bunch of cops. it is brilliant. 10/10 no notes. it’s moments like this that i think really sell the “softening” of dio in the stage version for me, even though i am historically Not A Fan of fanworks that take a similar angle - like, yes, he is sad, but specifically he is narcissistically obsessed with the spectacle of his own suffering, he is boiling over with bitterness and rage for everyone around him who (by his own estimation) could never hope to have suffered as much as he has. this sensitivity and self-pity he wallows in are not expressions of a guilty conscience or a desire to change - they’re entirely the opposite - every cruel and monstrous deed dio commits is always justified to himself because he is simply the saddest little boy who has ever existed. he has been done wrong by the world and so there is no limit to the depravity he may reasonably respond with. i’ve seen several commenters describe this as a drastically different interpretation of the character from araki’s dio (and someone told me on twitter that mamoru miyano himself has also said this, but i cba to go digging for an actual source so take it with a grain of salt?), but i… dont think thats the case! dio’s obsession with his own weakness and his self-perception as the eternal underdog (as compared to jonathan) are certainly more exaggerated in miyano’s performance, but i don’t think this is an angle to the character that’s been manufactured out of whole cloth. the genre conventions of the stage musical force the melodrama up to eleven and dio’s incredibly repressed angst is the most rich vein to mine for that. hair-trigger sadist dio is still here, it’s the same guy, he’s still killing people mercilessly, you’re just getting to see him sing a big ballad about his feelings instead of confining those to an internal monologue.
if anything, the exaggeration of dio’s pathetic/cowardly/crybaby traits combined with his megalomaniacal aspirations and bottomless well of cruelty is just right. it’s perfect. fucking around, finding out, and then trying to weasel his way out of the consequences with crocodile tears just so you don’t see him drawing his knife to cut you clean open… yeah. thats the stuff. thats my one true blorbo. sad to say i will love him for ten thousand years.
i think that might be all i have to say… or at least all i feel like saying here… most likely ill come back and edit this post later. i certainly have some additional thoughts and some more esoteric/controversial takes but they’re not suited for a public blog. real ones will understand. im keeping my eyes peeled for somebody to translate this thing but to be frank i am kind of enjoying this little corner of fandom as it is right now: just the asians and the true hardcore phantom blood phreaks. i have not had this much fun in jojo fandom in almost a fucking decade. as soon as somebody publishes an english version my timelines going to get flooded with all the most deeply annoying “kono dio da” “speedwagon waifu” reddit guys and 15 year olds and my suffering will proceed. unfortunately this is my lot in life and i am doomed to be here forever because dio put a worm in my brain
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icyg4l · 1 day
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PAC: How to Heal Your Broken Heart
Hello beautiful people! If you are currently going through a romantic break-up, I send my love to you. 🫶 But here, I will give advice on how you can deal with your grief. I am not a therapist so if you feel like you need to contact one, I would highly encourage that you do that. If you resonate with this reading and would like a more personalized reading, please read my guidelines and message me privately so you can receive one. Without further ado, please select your pile!
Top Left-to-Bottom Right: (1-4)
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Pile One: You need to acknowledge that this was meant for you to happen! There is nothing wrong with being single, lovely. Sometimes things just don’t work out and that’s okay. Right now, it’s time for you to focus on bigger and better things without someone by your side. You could have been with your partner for years and one day things just ended. It happens. But the best for you to do right now is to get your hair and nails done. Get to know yourself as a person, not as a partner. You have so much personality, Pile One. You need to take up more space on your own. You don’t need someone to conquer the world with you. I feel like you honestly just have to get used to being by yourself so find literally anything to do by yourself. Read, go for a walk, buy yourself flowers, take yourself on dates. Spend more time making yourself the main character instead of finding ways to antagonize your ex.
Cards Used: Ace of Cups (RX), Four of Wands, Judgment, 7 of Discs, 9 of Swords, 9 of Cups.
extras: fancy dates. peach smoothie. alice in wonderland. benedict cumberbatch. “lumberyard.”
Pile Two: You got a lot of cards, which means that you need to listen up. Pile Two, when was the last time you’ve been outside with your friends? You may have spent a lot of time in isolation in your previous relationship. You don’t have to do that anymore. Your girls are waiting on you. It is best that you go to as many parties that you can find to avoid going back because you don’t need to be with a manipulative liar anymore. I would also suggest that you go to a jewelry store and go spoil yourself. The codependency in your last relationship was abnormal and it’s time that you realize it. I feel like this person took the light away from you and you’re slowly but surely gaining your power back. Your energy is similar to Pile One but I feel like the focus for you is to empower yourself. Adopt the mindset that things will work out for you. Assuming the worst possible outcome is going to work for you. You have to let yourself shine because no one is dimming your light anymore. Surround yourself with positivity and please please please make sure you’re around people that make you feel comfortable and like yourself. Right now is a crucial time for you. Treat it as such.
Cards Used: 6 of Discs, 9 of Discs, King of Discs, Princess of Wands, 8 of Wands, 4 of Cups, The Magician (RX), The Hanged Man, The World, The Emperor, Ace of Wands, 3 of Cups.
extras: “party hard.” tiger print. mr rogers. sofia the first. birthday pin. red dot.
Pile Three: I feel like this pile has to get their body in check. Have you been having physical health problems as of lately? I feel like you need to see a doctor. I am getting the image of someone with a fever getting their temperature checked. It’s almost summertime, this shouldn’t be happening! So first things first, take your Vitamin C. Once you take care of your physical health, you should affirm that everything will be okay. Expose yourself to new places, people and things. Take a getaway trip for the weekend, maybe longer. I think you should also write affirmations on post-its and put them up around your house. I feel like this pile went through a mutual break up but it still hurts. This will sound weird but you’ve been through worse so this shouldn’t break you, lol. I think that’s your spirit guides way of saying to stay optimistic about your situation. There’s an advantage in your situation. You will find more things to laugh about when it comes to your situation. Another thing that I suggest that you do is remove your ex’s energy; their clothes, pictures of them, any and everything. Get it out!
Cards Used: 4 of Discs, Temperance, Queen of Cups, Princess of Swords, 2 of Swords, 5 of Swords (RX), The Sun, 6 of Discs, The Star, Ten of Cups, Queen of Discs
extras: cameras flashing. candied yams. apples and oranges. dominoes pizza. hot flashes. quince.
Pile Four: I’m not going to lie, it may be time for you to consider taking the extra step to getting your mental health in check. If you have been feeling like ending it all, then please talk to a psychiatrist. They may prescribe you with medication. I feel like you need that extra boost. Shit feels stagnant with this group. It’s all about personal accountability with you guys. Yes, it sucks to have your heart broken but how will you fix it? How will you recover? I think you should get in touch with your family. It’s been a minute since you talked to them, hasn’t it? You might feel like they will mock you for going through it or say “I told you so” but they won’t. They’ll be angry about the fact that you were cheated on & manipulated. You were too good and too pretty for your ex, Pile Four. Any plans that you had with them are gone and it’s time to accept that. You may have a hard time moving on but it’s best that you are supported by those who have your best interest at heart. You absolutely can do it. Turn your pain into art. Make music, write poetry, draw something. Do anything to keep your energy moving and flowing. You should also get physical. I channeled Dua Lipa’s song for you as well. So get in the gym & build your physique, begin a cardio routine, just do it!!!
Cards Used: 6 of Cups, Ten of Discs, King of Wands (RX), The Empress, The Star, Death, 9 of Discs (RX), Ten of Swords, The Chariot (RX).
extras: agent of chaos. black ops. nike. “that’s not my forte.” acting. self-righteous. fake smile. eye bend.
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Hi, I have a request: Could you do Angel Dust x Human Reader in platonic way? Where Reader have magic skills and, for a mistake of a spell, fall in hell and meet Angel Dust.
(I don’t see much fan fiction where Hazbin Hotel characters interact with human reader and I hope this can be possible)
Thank you
omg yes!!! i loved this idea so so much! thank you for your patience as i did this request and i hope you enjoy it!
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down the rabbit hole
rated: G
the spell was supposed to be simple. a simple spell that was to protect your home and transport any negativity away from your home. but after you chanted the last spell for it, you heard rumbling that grew louder. your dog, luna, whined as she darted closer to you and the rumbling increased.
“shit. how are we getting an earthquake?” you ask yourself out loud, not thinking anything of the shaking yet. that is until the ground started to fall away from your feet. your eyes widen as you see a maroon ground and desolate surroundings. your feet glued to where you were as you tried to run and pull luna with you, but to no avail. your scream echoed as you and luna fell through the portal and landed on the ground. your breath knocked from your lungs as luna landed on top of you. you look at her and the around you, seeing a city, but more conveniently a large building that showed it was the “hazbin hotel”. you blinked and murmured to luna to keep close by as she whined and followed you.
shakily making it up to the door, you hesitated for a moment, anxiety clutching in your chest as you froze. a soft lick on your hand pulling you out of your paralysis as you look at luna and sigh.
“okay, girl. i just have to knock right?” you ask, posing your hand to do so, when the door suddenly opens.
“well, hello there-“ the voice is cut off as you scream, startled and step back. luna takes this as whoever was there as a threat and lunges. your mind catches up to your body as you scream at her to heel. not before a very high pitched scream comes from whoever opened the door and they fall back. you, holding luna, look at the… man? deer? person. he was on the ground and his arms in front of his face, subtly shaking.
“i am so sorry. that was my fault. you startled me and she thought i was in danger.” you explain as you tell luna to sit and stay, and you walk over to help the red deer man up. he glares up at you, looking like he was going to have some snarky comment, when his eyes widen.
“where are you from?” he asks, getting up himself and brushing off his coat like nothing happened. you blink for a moment, and straighten up.
“i’m from california?” you answer, framing it more like a question. his glare is unamused as he stands up straight.
“no, where are you from, what ring? you don’t look hell born.” he says, his eyes narrowing in distrust.
“i-um-i don’t know how to answer that. i’m from earth. i guess? i’m a witch, and i did a spell and i think it went wrong. where am i, actually?” you ask.
“oh yer in hell toots.” a voice comes down the stairs. “charlie we got a new one!” the white spider yells up the stairs, still consumed on their phone. you blink.
“is everyone animals down here?” you ask, but before you can get an answer, a woman with blonde hair bounds down excitedly.
“oh another guest! are you ready to be-“ her eyes widen looking at you. “redeemed?” she trails off, her face scrunching in confusion.
“are you an angel?” another woman, who is next to the blonde asks. you blink owlishly at them.
“i mean, i’ve had compliments before, but if i look that much like an angel, thank you?” you say and the woman shakes her head.
“no, you’re an angel.” her face distorting into anger as she pulls out a spear. “why are you here?” she yells as you back up. luna jumping in front of you and growling. everyone takes a step back at that.
“oh my fuck. is that a dog?” the white spider demon asks, and walking up to luna. luna’s growls deepen and you tell her to heel again.
“be nice.” you mutter to her as she whines and sniffs the spider demons outstretched hand. deeming him a worthy friend, goes over and sits in front of them for pets. “you can pet her. she’s fine.” you say, looking at the spider demon and smiling.
“i haven’t pet a dog in almost 80 years…” he trailed off.
“that’s a dog? from earth?” the blonde squeals and goes over, mimicking the way the spider demon introduced himself and then petting luna too.
“so, let me get this straight… i’m in hell?” you ask. the red deer nods, standing far away from luna.
“yes. you are in hell. but why don’t you look like demon spawn is beyond me.” he provides.
“probably because i didn’t die.” you conclude. “im assuming you all were born here or died and ended up here, right.” there were murmurs of agreement.
“except vaggie,” the blonde points to the spear wielding girl, “she’s a fallen angel.” you nod.
“heaven that bad?” you ask.
“you have no idea.” she deadpans.
“so, i apologize if this is rude, but who are you all?” you ask.
“oh my goodness! i don’t introduce myself!” the blonde exclaims getting up and rushing over to you. “i’m charlie! charlie morningstar. and this is the hazbin hotel. a place where sinners can be rehabilitated and go to heaven.” your eye brows raise at that.
“morningstar, as in lucifer morningstar?” you ask, a bit shocked.
“that’s the very one!” she exclaims.
“how is he? he’s felt a bit off recently, and hasn’t liked the offerings i’ve put out.” you ask as charlie looks at you confused.
“you know my dad?” her head tilted in confusion.
“well, not really. i work with him, in my practice. i’m a witch.” you explain.
“oh, like alastor!” charlie says, making a connection. you look over to where she pointed at the red deer demon, alastor you assumed.
“i don’t think she deals in my magic, charlie.” alastor explains.
“what is your magic?” you ask, curious.
“partially voodoo.” he looks at you and smiles.
“oh, goodness no. my family doesn’t practice voodoo, and that is a closed practice i respect. but more power to ya man!” you say, nodding at him. he tilts his head at you curiously and you look over at luna now on her back and the spider demon rubbing her stomach.
“if you rub her chest to her stomach in one fell swoop, she’ll be your best friend.” you laugh as the spider demon looks at you, does that and watches as luna’s tail wags quicker. he laughs and does it again.
“oh my god, i’m in love.” he says, petting her ears.
“that’s angel.” charlie explains. you smile and nod, until a new person descends the stairs and calls out for charlie.
“charlie, sweetie!” the voice says, getting louder coming down the stairs. “you don’t happen to know where my hat is, do you?” you look curiously at the man, who is barely taller than you, his eyes fixed on his jacket not looking up.
“ummm… no, dad. also. i want you to meet…” charlie looks at you. “i never asked your name.”
“oh! it’s y/n. it’s a pleasure to actually meet you in the flesh lord lucifer.” you say, bowing your head slightly. he stops and looks at you, looking taken aback.
“you didn’t die y/n, why are you down here?” he says coming over to you and grasping your arms.
“i was doing that protection spell for the house and i think i fucked it up.” you say, a bit downtrodden.
“don’t be so hard on yourself, sweetie. we all make mistakes and luckily i can get you back up to earth.” he says, smiling at you.
“thank you. it’s a wonder to actually meet you. i was worried, you hadn’t liked many of my offerings.” you said and he looked bashful.
“how do you guys know each other?” charlie asks.
“well, i work with lucifer in my practice, like i said before.” you say.
“she’s a witch charlie. there are many different types of witches, but there are some who have the gifts to communicate with beings outside of earth, or choose to honor certain beings through what earth calls offerings. they can be food, trinkets, etc.” lucifer continued to explain.
“they’re a form of devotion. and there are many different types of relationships you can have. i work with your dad for help with my spell work, i’ve been working with him for almost 10 years now. not so long to him, but a long time to me.” you finish.
“i had no idea…” charlie explained.
“that’s why i said about the offerings and your dad not liking them. i can normally get a vibe.” you laugh. “maybe i need to put more apples?” you ask, chuckling. lucifer chuckling with you.
“nah, just put a damn rubbah duck.” angel says, still petting luna. “he loves ‘em!” you look to lucifer and he shrugs.
“i do like ducks.” he bows his head, bashfully.
“noted.” you say as you walk over to angel and luna, sitting with them. you smile at angel and pet luna’s head and sigh.
“so, how do i get outta here?” you ask, looking at lucifer.
“how about ya nevah leave and luna stays here. she’d love fat nuggets!” angel exclaims.
“fat nuggets?” you ask.
“my pet pig. sweetest little doll eva.” angel says, leaning to you like he was telling you a secret. you smile and coo at that.
“i’m going to need to get an asmodeon crystal from lust and then i will be back. stay here until i get back all right?” lucifer said, materializing a portal and getting ready to step through it. you salute him in understanding and he disappears.
“that means we’ve got more time to talk and i’ve got more time to let this dog!” angel exclaims, laying down next to luna who was fast asleep now. you laugh and look around.
“it seems i do.”
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thelarriefics · 1 day
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SPRING FIC REC: Below you will find fics that take place in spring, have a springy feel, etc. 
📖 always you (i should have known) by @28goldens (60k)
“Oi, now we’re talking. Came running to ol’ Tomlinson for help, gotta say Harold,” He crossed his arms over his chest, and Harry watched as his eyes looked him over. “It's very out of character for you.”
“Yeah, well, don’t feel too special, you're my last choice,” Harry subconsciously crossed his arms as well, giving Louis his own look over.
“Oh, that's a lot of power, I’m your last resort!” He wagged his finger at him, letting out a cackle. “Alright, hit me with it.”
Harry’s lips pursed as he slowly started to regret the words about to spill out of his mouth, “I want you to pretend to be my boyfriend.”
or the one where harry and louis cant stand each other and fake date to make someone jealous.
📖 (I'm Dreaming of a) One Night Inn by @lululawrence (54k)
When everything Louis had planned for his life falls through, and on his birthday no less, he's left with no other option but to regroup and start over again. The road of life isn't always straight and it certainly isn't always easy, but sometimes it's those twists and turns that find you your closest friends and—if you're really lucky—the love of your life.
Louis just happens to be very lucky.
A Holiday Inn AU.
📖 Blush by @dip-lou-in-honey (33k)
Harry is a young omega, presented at his first Royal ball, when he first meets Louis, the King. They're immediately infatuated with each other, but in the ancient hallways of the castle, whispers travel far and wide, and what they want is not what they're allowed to have.
📖 Tip Toe Through The Tulips by @peachbootylouis (27k)
Ever since moving to Manchester, it had just been Louis and his dog Clifford against the world though it had never felt like enough. It’s not until Clifford quite literally sniffs Harry out while on a walk that Louis realizes he’d been looking for someone like this flower child all along. A fluffy one shot filled with fur and flowers.
📖 To Begin Again by @chloehl10 (23k)
Harry’s ready to spend a fun Easter morning with his two children at the park, but it’s thrown into chaos when an over-excited dog and his owner come barrelling into their lives...
📖 Sakura Sunset by @mizzhydes (16k)
Harry and Louis have a tradition. Every spring they stand below hundreds of dazzling cherry blossom trees in Kew Garden, and year after year they come back to walk amongst the trees and experience that love over again.
This year everything changes. Louis is offered a once in a lifetime opportunity in Silicon Valley, California.
Only after Louis has left does Harry realise he made the biggest mistake of his life breaking up with Louis, and he has to live with the consequences of his actions.
Four years later, Harry discovers that Louis has returned to London, and in an effort to find the closure he desperately needs, he must tell Louis the truth behind their break up so he can move on with his life.
📖 The Prince and The YouTuber by @haztobegood (12k)
The Annual Rosendal Spring Gala hosted by the Royal Family is the most prestigious fundraiser in the country. When a problem with the honorary foundation arises, Crown Prince Louis Tomlinson must pick a new worthy foundation on short notice. He discovers the perfect replacement in an unlikely place, while watching his favorite YouTuber, Harrysparkles.
📖 Love You To Want Me by @rainbowsandlovehl (11k)
Niall coerces Louis into doing 'spring cleaning', which is basically cleaning their flat which leads to Louis finding the pair of braces he used to wear back in early Uni days. Harry, Niall's bandmate has a strange but visible reactions to the braces.
📖 Chubby Bunny by @littleroverlouis (2k)
Harry spends his Easter Sunday basking in the spring breeze while playing games with the smallest Tomlinsons, and a package of marshmallow Peeps.
Louis is stuck in a sweltering bunny costume for the enjoyment of all around him.
Harry offers him a chance to peel himself out of the costume and indulge in some of the fun.
📖 my lap is the best place for you to be by @bottomhaztoplou (1k)
Omegas, especially pregnant omegas, are expected to ride in their marriage partner's lap, usually on their knot, during carriage rides so as to minimise any jostling that may harm the pup.
Heavily pregnant in mid-April, Harry lifts his skirts and sinks down onto his waiting alpha, his body easily taking Louis inside himself.
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chaifootsteps · 2 days
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God I’m so fucking tired of Vivziepop. I’m sorry, I love some of her stuff, and I’ve learned to do more dynamic poses with her art, but I can’t watch anything made by her anymore. She’s too much. Too many rumors(that may or may not be true), has too many characters that look white, too many curse words, inappropriate usage of voodoo and rape, and making a character that is a literal cannibal and serial killer be sympathetic. I get it, it’s hell, and no one’s innocent(EXECPT FOR THE FUCKING ANTI-CHRIST APPARENTLY???), but I’ve been too many people make Alastor have mommy issues and people in the comments with be like “NOT MY POOKIE ALASTOR!!”
BITCH HE WOULD OWN YOUR SOUL AND TORTURE YOU SHUT UP!!!!
Also the fucking problem with backbone of wires Vox, “my fashion is stuck in 2012” Velvet, and that dickshitter Val. I’m perfectly fine with conventionally attractive people being horrendous people, it happens a lot, but they also downplay (sometimes) what the other Vees do and make Val seem like the worst. Vel sells a date rape drug, and Vox literally makes stalking easer and enables Val. THEY BOTH DO!!
And dear FUCKING LORD STOP SIMPING OVER ALASTOR. sure I get simping over a character that has a good character design, but he would push you aside without another thought. He. Does. Not. Care. ALSO IVE SEEN TOO MANY “JUST THE TIP ALASTOR!” FUCK THE SHIT OFFFF!!!!! STOP IT YOU HORNY MOTHERFUCKERSZZ!!!
And also adams entire character. I genuinely hate him. I don’t care for him. He was done so dirty and no I will not say that his character is good. I get it, yes a lot in the Bible about Adam is very misogynistic(for fucks sake in the Jewish Bible he got upset at Lilith because Lilith wanted to have sex equally(side by side sex)), but he’s. Fucking. Adam. THE FIRST MAN!!! Would he not be monitored by the seraphim or god himself??? He’s very important!! And when he fought Charlie, I was disappointed. “The entire human race came from these balls!!!” FUCK OFF!!! Would the first man, whom was made in gods image, curse like a sailor and call his second in command “danger tits???”
Rosie I like. No complains, just the voice is a bit much.
Angel and Husk. “Oh we’re doing slow burn!!” BITCH WHERE. HUH??? MASQUERADE IS LITERALLY THEM JUST FALLING IN LOVE GET OFF MY DICK
Also it’s so fucking vile that she named Vaggie Vagina. What the shit. Huh??? “Oh it’s mysogonistic Adam! It makes sense!” Yeah and going with that logic the fuck is lute short for?? Yeah, it’s a joke about female genitalia and it makes me sick,, I don’t even like saying her name.
Also fucking Pentious and Cherri. Get the FUCKKKK OFFFF. I just can’t stand them. Ugh. I don’t like it. I really don’t. It’s bad
Nifty. No.
Sorry, this was a rant. I’m so sorry
Sometimes you just need to rant, and I don't blame you one bit.
it's so, so fucking much, all the time.
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Hey Love your stuff! The Vs being protective of Retro, preventing them remembering anything bad or near murder that they do, is actually cute considering what Retro's dark side.
So here is a thought I had after reading Valentino covering up his near murder that Retro saw. What if Retro, most likely in the tower as i can't picture them ever doing this in public, was to try and flirt with Vox and Val?
I don't expect anything more than Retro maybe trying on a risky outfit, maybe getting nervous, and getting caught of course.
I just wonder how they would react as Retro making that kinda move seems outta character for your wonderfully created Hidden Serious killer 'house wife' Sea Bunny.
Sorry if my suggestion made you uncomfortable feel free to ignore it.
Anon, you are amazing. Don’t worry about it at all! I actually have a really adorable idea because of this, and I hope you like it! (Slight spice warning? I guess. It’s just a picture of the outfit in question, nothing really happens)
Something New!
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“Vel, babe,” I said, with a nervous smile. “I have a teensy tiny favor to ask of you.”
“Oh?” Velvette asked, over the phone. She motioned for her models to shut up. “And what would that be?”
“Just- please come to my room when you can,” I said quietly. I was already blushing, and I hadn’t even told her what this was about.
“Of course! I’ll be over before you know it,” she said with a grin. I never asked for favors, much less from her. She knew that whatever this was, it would be good. “Love ya sweetheart, see you soon!”
“Love you too,” I said, a small smile on my face.
She hung up and dropped everything. “Everyone! Leave! Now!” She said, pointing towards the door. “I’ve got an emergency to cover.” She made another call on her phone. “Yeah, hey, Vox? Shut off the cameras.”
“What- why?” He asked, sounding suspicious. He was watching me fidget nervously in my bedroom- he was in his office, watching from the cameras- as I awaited Velvettes arrival. “Is something wrong?”
“No, not at all! If my hunch is correct, this could be great,” Velvette said, sounding excited. “I just need you to turn off your stalker cameras for a bit- at least the ones near and around Retro. If you’re watching, they might bail.”
“Bail on what?” Vox asked, sitting up straighter. “Vel, what are you talking about?”
“Nothing,” she said in a sing song voice, already headed to my room. “Nothing you need to worry about, at least. This will be fun, trust me.”
“Fine.”
“Yes!”
“But you only get two hours,” Vox said sternly. “Then the cameras are on and I get an explanation, understand?”
“You got it, babes,” Velvette said with a grin. She hung up and knocked on my door. “Retro? I’m here, love. May I come in?”
“Hm?” I looked at the door, surprised. She’d gotten here quick. I opened the door and stepped aside, letting her in my room. “Uh, yeah, definitely.” I closed the door behind her. “Uh. Don’t you- I thought you had work?”
“Hm? Oh yes, it was a slow day,” she said, waving a dismissive hand. “Don’t worry about it. Now, what was that favor you needed?”
“Oh! Right,” I said, my face heating up already. I looked away and sat on my bed, fidgeting again. “I, uh… I was wondering….”
“You were wondering,” Velvette repeated, sitting down besides me. My reaction was practically confirmation of her guess, but she wanted to hear it from me. “What is it, love? You know I can’t help unless you tell me.”
“Can you- could you help me find a good outfit to wear?” I blurted. God, I was so tense and nervous. It was silly, really. This wouldn’t be my first time wearing something risky, but I was still anxious about it. I loved them, and I was afraid I’d screw it up. I was having second thoughts already. “Something for Vox and Valentino. Something they’d like.”
“Oh!” Velvette said. She put a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide with surprise. She thought it was something of this nature, but to have me actually say it? Me admitting it? Damn. The way I was acting made it adorable to her. “You want something… suggestive? Or just showy?”
“W-what?” I asked, looking at her. Now I was confused. “Wait, there’s a difference? What?”
“Oh sweetheart,” she said, taking my hand in hers. “I have so much to teach you.”
For what seemed like forever, Velvette showed me an outfit and I said no. She was showing me lingerie, bondage gear, and the like. She quickly realized I was not used to this sort of thing (and I didn’t want to do anything, I just wanted to tease the boys), and toned it down. Eventually, we settled on a top and some normal pants.
Tumblr media Tumblr media
(Left if you don’t have tits, right if you do. Or you could wear something else, I don’t care. I just don’t know how to describe this lol)
So, I got changed and hesitantly walked out from behind my dressing screen to show Velvette the outfit.
“So, uh… what do you think?” I asked, doing a little twirl for her. “Do you think they’ll like it?”
“Oh. My. God.” She gasped and walked over, admiring how I looked, and her handiwork. “Babes, you have got to do this more often! You look stunning. Here, let me get a picture.”
“No! No,” I said immediately pulling away. I was blushing furiously. “Please don’t. Oh my god, I should’ve known this was a bad idea. God, I feel so stupid…”
Velvette frowned, looking disappointed. She felt a pang of guilt. She hadn’t meant to make me feel that way, she just wanted something to remember the occasion. She reached out to explain, but before she could, the door opened. Vox and Valentino walked in, looking serious.
“Alright, times up,” Vox said sternly. “I turned off the cameras, now I expect an-” he cut himself off when he saw me.
“Oh,” Valentino said with a grin. “This. I like this.”
“Fuck! Fuck, no, shit- you aren’t supposed to- oh my god,” I panicked, ducking behind my dressing screen. My face was as red as a tomato. I was so embarrassed. “Please leave!”
“Wait, what?” Vox asked, looking to Velvette. He was confused by my reaction. Was he not supposed to see me like this? Hadn’t I just spent the past two hours preparing for this? Why was I reacting this way? He wondered if he did something wrong. “Did I…?”
“No, it’s not you,” Velvette said quickly. She stood and walked over to the two, looking guilty. “They’re just… a bit shy. They aren’t used to this, you know? I kind of startled them, by accident, just before you came in.”
“Oh,” Vox said. He was still processing. And overheating slightly.
“Honey bunny,” Val said softly, approaching the dressing screen slowly. “It’s okay. We didn’t- we don’t-” he sighed. He had no idea what to say. “Sweetheart..”
“It was a silly idea,” I said quietly, on the other side of the screen. I was sitting on the floor, my knees tucked to my chest. “Sorry.”
“No, no, don’t be sorry,” he said. “May I…? Please?”
I didn’t respond but I didn’t stop him, either. I was conflicted. I wanted them to see, I was just afraid. I was afraid of a negative reaction. “I… I guess.”
He pushed the dressing screen aside and folded it up, then sat down next to me. “Come here, mi amor, it’s okay,” he said gently. He reached out to touch me, but didn’t, awaiting my permission. He was being so considerate, it was unlike him. I leaned towards him, allowing him to touch me, but I didn’t meet his gaze. “You look beautiful,” he said, wrapping his arm around my waist. He pulled me up against him.
“Thank you,” I said, with a small smile.
I looked over at Vox, who seemed on the verge of a system crash. His screen was flickering and he was clearly overheating just at the sight of me. Velvette was trying to help. She was not very successful. I laughed a little to myself and smiled wider- more genuine.
“He likes it too, you know,” Val said, nudging me playfully.
“I can tell,” I said, my expression softening. I was less tense now, more relaxed. “I’m glad.”
“So… will you be doing this again?” He asked with a grin.
“We’ll see,” I said with a small laugh. “I’m not sure Vox could handle it.”
“He’ll just have to get used to it! I won’t let him stop me from seeing you all dolled up and gorgeous like this,” Valentino said with a playful huff. He gently ran his fingers along my bare skin. “You look wonderful, mi cariño.”
“I agree!” Vox said, apparently having snapped out of his little spiral. His screen had a pink tinge to it- I imagined that was his way of blushing- but he had a smile on his face. He walked over and sat with us, Velvette following close behind. “I’d love to see you like this more, if you’re comfortable with it. You look stunning, either way, my dear.”
“Thank you,” I said, blushing again. He chuckled and pulled me into his lap, wrapping his arms around me.
“Not a problem, darling,” he said softly. He gave me a kiss on the top of my head and smiled wider. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“And I love them more than you!” Velvette declared.
“Hey!”
“I love them most!”
“HEY!”
48 notes · View notes
theastrical · 3 days
Text
you’re the only one who understands
what is it like to say goodbye to your partner without saying goodbye?
kaeya x reader
implied major character death, sudden death, teenage angst
notes: please listen to keshi-understand while reading this!! I promise you won’t regret it <3
it was around 7pm. sitting in front of your laptop, your eyes already red, probably from the exhaustion at your university….or maybe, the expectation to greet kaeya at this certain time, while you both have been in this long distance relationship for a while.
you texted him, expecting him to immediately reply, knowing that would happened, it’s currently evening in his area and he’s a night-owl at that, evening is his awakening if you might titled him.
“wanna facetime?”, you send him the text. you were already smiling by that time, just seeing his profile picture or his chat, makes your day…a much better hell.
i expected it, he’s online now…hmm and he’s typing! i wonder if he put my contacts exclusively outside his do not disturb notifications…well, we can wonder?
kaeya called…i guess he immediately knows it’s time, huh?
“hey..”, his voice raspy; sweet i thought. Though it’s weird that he’s tired, it’s still 9pm in his timezone.
“Why so tired”, a gap of silence, maybe he fell asleep?…or maybe his eyes are already sticky enough that it could easily closed down. “…hmm, a bit.”
“you sound raspy, ironic, you’ve always been the one to remind me to drink my water.”
“hey, even that reminder can be exhausted”. He sighs, you can imagine that he’s doing the facetime exactly in his bed, while all of his caffeine products are everywhere around the floor. Kaeya is nowhere near the word clean. He chuckles slightly, continuing his words with question. “Hey, when will you comeback?”
“i don’t know, summer break maybe?”, unsure, worried, and excited. Three emotions in combine, maybe he misses you?
“chonky misses you…and...that applies to me as well.” dang i miss chonky, his cat, his big chonky cat that always purr whenever a stranger pet him. He has no survival skill for sure.
“what? Why? you’ve always texted and facetime me as well..chonky should’ve been the only one to miss me, not you, silly.”
“i need somebody to talk to..”
“you can always text me.”
“no, like real person. Like you and me.”
“you make it complicated kae.”
“fine”, he sighs. You replied, trying your best to assure him despite how much of a bitch that sounds before. “sorry, i know you must’ve been lonely. Diluc says you’ve been bed rotting all day long.”
“Dang, he must’ve worked for you.”, he finally chuckles.
yet he continued his questions, he always been one to prey over small details.
“say, what if i’m going to another place tomorrow? Will you…just say, visit me before i leave..?”
“why not?”, he heard that word and chuckles. “Just say yes or no, please?”, with your ego out of this world, you mumble a quiet…”sigh…yes, i will..”
“then if i go tomorrow? Will you visit me?”
“where?”
“hmmm wanna make a guess?”
“Univ?”
“better”
“New job across the town?”
“even better”
“Fuck i don’t know kae..just tell me already.”
“It’s a secret, just come back already…i miss you so much.”, he chuckles while opening his camera. You can see how he smirks like a childish moron. “If you come back home, i promise i’ll let you see chonky with his tie again.”
“that’s a hard thing to resist urgh!!! Fine i’ll come back tomorrow, i think my siblings won’t mind my existence till next week. I’m free after all..” , you tell him while opening your camera as well and give him the picture of you just moving around the bedroom, you’re currently tidying up your place while in the call. “promise me you will okay? I have a surprise, you’ll love it”, he gives you the small sighting of a…present. A red box. “It’s for your late birthday, sorry i’m not much of a good boyfriend it seems”, he say that before closing down his camera and giggles like a maniac.
“you don’t have to act romantic in order to love me you know, let me thank you properly with a templated paragraph hahaha.”
“idiot.”, he replied shortly, you know he’s happy and that makes you all smiley. Your cheeks are red, yet he doesn’t seem to care for it…cause if he cares, then you would hide it from him. “I’ll end it now okay? I wanna sleep..chonky is being a rascal for making me run to catch him.” , you laugh, you know he’s tired so you just made a muffled “hmm”, before he says,
“i’ll see you tomorrow, goodnight..” he gives off a smooch and end it. You send an emoji to his chat instead. A white love emoji.
[name] 10.12pm : bye kaeya, love you.
he read it.
kaeya 10.18pm : 🤍
ring…ring…ring…
Kaeya? I’m here. Sorry i’m late…
ring…ring….
ring…ring….
kaeya?
your phone is ringing kaeya. Pick it up. I’m here, please call me back.
ring…ring…
20 miss calls from [name] 🤍
kaeya?
why are you so quiet?
It’s not like we’re distant.
i might forget to drink my water now.
I’ll miss you.
And i wish to understand you better,
before you eventually say goodnight to me.
you’ll always stay 21 forever now kae, but i’ll keep celebrating your birthday, even if nobody remembers you anymore.
notification: Today is kaeya’s 30th birthday, do you want to celebrate it? 🎉🎁
taglist: @esthelily @indarius @n0tamused @sangoqueenkoko @voidlesslove @lyralibra @eroxotckv @rikasurl @dailypenpen @daydreaming-paradies
to be included in the taglist, send me ur @ via askbox.
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tsams-confessions · 3 days
Note
I don’t have any particular opinion on the whole ‘infantizing lunar’ thing, but I sure as hell have a reason on why it’s happening in the first place:
So as we all know, we have basically seen lunar’s entire life. His highs, his lows, his extremely low lows. basically everything.
so I think that we’ve all kinda unconsciously thought of him as our child in a weird kinda way.
We’ve all seen the memes about him being the b e a n, and I think that’s the fandom’s way of saying: “he’s the child” or more accurately: “he’s our child”.
And even now when he’s matured a little bit, we (like many parents) can’t help but still see him as our goofy ah little baby.
I mean think about it, how many times when your age is mentioned, your parents say something along the lines of: “you’ll always be my baby” or: “I still see you as my little baby, even after all these years”?
And his design isn’t really helping since he’s extremely short (like a child). and despite him saying that he doesn’t want to be treated like a kid, even after all this time, we can’t help but still see him as our happy little beanbag loving boy despite all the character development he’s gone through.
So basically this entire thing (in my opinion) is basically lunar’s thousands of online parents still seeing him as their little boy, and occasionally one of his friends and/or one of his other parents, trying to get his parents to see that he’s growing up.
.
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lovedianagrey · 24 hours
Note
hello!!do you have skk fic recs?
Introduction
Yes, I do. I’m sorry it took so long to give you a reply, but I wanted to give you a comprehensive list and was busy preparing for my last day in high school, and then I got a job 12 hours later, and then I traveled to New York for a couple Broadway workshops. But now that today’s been dealt with, I have my wonderful notes.
So here’s the gist of it. I have three focused reviews on some of my favorite Soukoku fanfics ever, but I felt like copy pasting it would kill you a little, so I’m going to use a simplified format that echoes what I once did for two other ships years ago.
Canon Space
Here I compiled four fanfics that take place in main canon spaces (so not BEAST). While I encourage you to read, I also ask you to make sure to check the tags of the actual work for any possible triggers. Furthermore, the styles these characters are written in, and the way they are portrayed, vary from writer to writer. Some are more “canon” based than others, but they all carry the essence of this ship. And if they don’t in your eyes, then you’re just reading a great novel with Japanese names. 
i'll bleed out for you by StarshipDancer
Synopsis: After getting impaled together, basically dying in each others arms in a joint mission with the Port Mafia and the ADA, and getting brought back by Yosano, this shattered Soukoku is asked to go into hiding. In this time, things seem to start healing. But the impending call asking them to return to their positions in their groups haunts them, and when it arrives, things fall apart all over again.  
Tags: Caretaking, PTSD, A Singularly Important Rat Is Present, Canon-Divergence, Post-Port Mafia Days, Love Confession, Pet Co-Parenting, Angst
Word Count: 71,848
Notes: Rattata is the best character. You cannot negate AbsoluteNegation’s incredible skill. I remember reading this fanfic between the airport and my flight, and when chapter four ended, I had to board the plane, with my shaking hands and quiet sniffles. Please read this one.
If you kiss me (I might let it happen) by encsiimomo
Synopsis: Chuuya’s done watching this. Dazai’s literally dating a new girl every week. He dates based on who asks him first that Monday, he breaks up with them that Sunday, and it goes on again. And again. And again. It’s driving him insane. So he does the only thing he can think of to earn himself a break – He asks to date him for that week’s cycle. Dazai’s surprised. Chuuya’s exhausted. But once the sparks fly, they’re unable to be put out. 
Tags: Canon Divergent & Kind of Canon Compliant, Dark Era, Smut, Mutual Pining, Light Angst, Silly
Word Count: 52,127
Notes: I loved this fic because it encapsulates a pretty carefree tone that isn’t associated with Dark Era. It’s pretty smutty, but it’s really lovely to read them. It’s not a reflection of what these characters canonically represent. And while it definitely stays as a loose interpretation of these characters, it keeps the essence that makes this ship so sharp and wonderful. I loved Oda’s appearances too, they made me laugh.
A Doll's House by Abyss_In_WonderLand_likes_sexy_cannibals
Summary: After coming to contact with an ability-powered artifact, Dazai and Chuuya are forced to work together to overcome the ability’s trials, and face the bubbling sentiments they keep trying so hard to ignore. 
Tags: Teamwork, Ability Loss, Poisoning, Denial of Feelings, Confessions, Light Angst
Word Count: 45,288
Notes: While definitely not a character study, this fic goes and shows how wonderfully warm a Double Black fanfic can be. You’ll giggle in some moments, be entranced in others, and it’s just fun. This is for those that aren’t scouring for the angst. This was the first fic that sunk me into a skk fanfiction hunt all throughout the winter holidays.
On Deathless Feet by AbsoluteNegation
Synopsis: Chuuya always knows the monster can get out of control, but it doesn’t get any less surprising when Arahabaki powers through him. For a while though, it’d been comforting to know Dazai could always reign it in, make it go quiet. Because he did when they recently met, when they rose through the ranks, and at the brink of their end. But after years of disconnection, and the consistent waves of betrayal, is Chuuya capable of trusting him? And is Dazai capable of letting him?
Tags: Caretaking, Controlling Arahabaki, Port Mafia, Post-Port Mafia, Mistrust, Non-Linear Storytelling
Word Count: 71,848
Notes: This story is just breathtaking. The writing style is incredibly vast and detailed, which may seem scary when described, but it flows so easily when you read it. The story takes place in an event where Chuuya loses control of Arahabaki in a  Post-Port Mafia Soukoku time. But because of its non-linear style, one gets to understand their past experiences with each other in a manner that contextualizes and weighs in the events of their reunion. 
Fanon Spaces
Before I begin, I’d like to note that there are so many AUs in this fandom, that I had to really search for the canon ones in my list. So understand that if you want more of these, I DEFINITELY have more of these. Also, again, while I encourage you to read, I also ask you to make sure to check the tags of the actual work for any possible triggers. 
I’ll crown your inner child with laurel by acuteguwu
Synopsis: Chuuya has worked in a Michelin Star restaurant. So he really has no place in losing this cooking competition. But a sudden newcomer, who seemingly has no previous experience in the field, seems to want to tell him his bechamel sauce isn’t ready. And really, who does he think he is?
Tags: Chef Competition AU, Character Study, Slow Burn, Chuuya Is A Blunt Perfectionist, Dazai Is A Culinary Genius
Words: 197,090
Notes: I read this in two days, and I finished by waking up at four in the morning to finish up before going to a drag queen brunch. So really, my experience was incredible. You get to really know these characters, who are very themselves, and it’s lovely. Please read, it’s so worth it.
music for our funeral by itotypes
Synopsis: Dazai has always been lost on what exactly he wants to be. Chuuya knows exactly what he wants. Working with such incredible differences proves to be a difficult challenge, ending in at least a little bit of violence multiple times, but they make it work. Because their music sounds beautiful. Because they’re better geniuses beside the other. And maybe because once it started, they can’t seem to process this journey can ever end.
Tags: No Smut, Angst, 70s, Musicians!AU, Drug Abuse, References to Child Neglect, Lowkey Pretty Violent, Emotional Cheating (w/ Main Ship)
Word Count: 67,723
Notes: Look, there’s a whole genre of Soukoku music AUs. And I could tell you to read the famous “still, still, still” by icedlightroast, or the even more famous “I Was Screaming Your Name Through The Radio” by ElectricSplatter. Which really, they’re both INCREDIBLE fics that I think you should read (IWSYNTTR literally inspired me to try and write music, which led me to do an album for a school project, so I’m not kidding when I say they’re life changing), but I also know that these are famous fanfics that you can find in almost any big skk reader thread. So disregarding the following recommendation, I try to give you fanfics I found through a long scrolling process. 
Everything or Nothing by Wellthathappened (Cataclysmic_Calamity)
Synopsis: Chuuya has never been able to experience much. So when he meets Dazai on the night of orientation, he lets himself explore. And as lips sink into his, and he lets himself be free, Dazai lets him know how unimportant he is by walking away when kids walk in on them. Cut to a month later, they’re paired as roommates, Chuuya’s gotten what Dazai insists is a douchey boyfriend, and Dazai Osamu has to recognize it wasn’t true. It wasn’t a night’s fluke. He really, definitely isn’t straight.
Tags: College AU, Pinning, Chronic Illness, Creation & References Of Illegal Panini Rings,  Confessions, Miscommunication, Past Sexual Abuse, Bad Parenting, Cute Dates, Dazai’s Really Rich
Word Count: 264,937
Notes: I recognize I just put in my notes that there’s no major point in recommending these big fanfics, but I just read this because the person that introduced me into the fandom in the first place really loves this one. And it’s incredible. Worth every moment. I laughed a lot, and cried a lot. It’s those pieces of work that resound with you that keep you engaged. This one builds off of that.
Inseparable by milwritescausewhynot
Synopsis: Dazai and Chuuya have been joined to the hip since day one. But they’re not best friends. Or enemies. Or, worst of all, lovers. They are, however, great at pranking each other. Until one goes close to dangerous, and things begin getting complicated afterwards. 
Tags: High School AU, Pranks, Light Angst, Denial, Pining, Confessions, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Crazy Kouyou, Childhood Friends, No Smut
Word Count: 107,804
Notes: I hadn’t saved this one in my compilation, but I couldn’t not find it. This fic is so charming, and I most enjoy how the characters move through the story. Definitely recommend.
In Conclusion
Again, I’m sorry for such a late response. I’m literally falling asleep right now but I felt too guilty leaving this for tomorrow morning. If you have any questions, notes, or looking for something specific for your reading, we cna talk about it. 
Anyways, thanks for asking! Hope you love them, and sorry for any mistakes
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katerina-marie · 2 days
Text
Bathtub Confession (Eres Tú)
Sukuna x Reader
Part 3 to this
The one where you learn that certain confessions don't always have to be romantic, but others certainly do.
Word Count: 5.7k
Notes: Part 3 of my Sukuna x Reader celebrity!au. Takes place directly after part two. Song of inspiration: Eres Tú by Carla Morrison
Content: bandmember Sukuna x actor female Reader (referred to as such, but left descriptively vague), no y/n, manager Nanami, bodyguard Toji, actor Gojo, found family vibes, some angst, fluff, crack, humor, out of character Sukuna (he's so fluffy), suggestive, maybe lightly explicit, tho no sex actually occurs just yet (sorry), so please avoid accordingly.
-------------------------------------------------------------
“Should I change my name?”
A beat of silence. A drop of water.
“No.”
“Should I get a wig?”
Another beat of silence. A clink of glass on tile.
“No.” 
“Should I flee the country?”
A minuscule half second of silence.
“Not if you’re going to quit paying me,” Toji grumbled. 
His response made the frown on your face dip down further on your lips, and you rolled your head against the back of your porcelain tub to stare at the ceiling.
“Is that all you see me as?” you whined, “A paycheck?”
“You want me to lie?” 
“That’s it, I’m going to drown myself.” 
That gets a long, heavy sigh from your bodyguard and you can hear him readjust himself on the chaise lounge seated in the middle of your expansive bathroom before he carries on.
“First off,” he grunts, “no you’re not. That would require me to pull your sad self naked from the tub, and we both know we don’t want that. Second…you know you’re not just a paycheck.” Toji goes quiet for a moment. “I’d like to think that we’ve become a sort of family over the last couple years, you, me, and Nanami. Shoot, even Megs too when he’s around.” 
His soft confession brings a smile to your face, and you turn your head to the right to look in his direction from behind a large mahogany privacy screen. It stands tall, wrapping just barely around the ends of your tub where your feet and head lay, keeping you securely tucked away from any prying eyes. It found its way there long ago, because this wasn’t the first time that Toji had played therapist from his dedicated chaise while you lounged in a hot bath and the two of you shared a bottle of wine. 
“Thank you,” you whispered to him, “I’m grateful you’re my friend…and my family.” 
“Don’t worry about it, I know you are. But don’t go on getting too upset or sentimental just because you’ve had a rough day. Things haven’t been that bad,” Toji said, and you groaned at the reminder.
After finally arriving home safely—no thanks to you—Toji immediately went into damage control mode and spent the afternoon fielding phone calls and text messages, though nothing too serious had been blown your way yet. 
You had received a none-too-pleased email from the producer of the movie you and Satoru were co-starring in, accusing you of sabotaging the release by not waiting to reveal your relationship with Sukuna until after the movie premiered in a few short months (as if he couldn’t tell that what happened today wasn’t by choice). Luckily, Satoru swooped in with his sweet-talking words and buttered the producer right back into promising extra money for a job well done. Though Satoru’s idea of fixing things was convincing the producer that the only premise that sold better than a classic love story was the angst of a good ol’ fashioned love triangle, and he was more than happy to play the jilted lover dead set on winning you back. You wondered what it must be like to live in such delusions. 
What really put the cherry on top of a bad day was the text you received from Sukuna shortly after arriving home. It wasn’t anything particularly worrisome, a straight to the point, “I’ll call you this evening, busy smoothing a couple things out, x,” but it had you in a fit nonetheless. After sending a quick affirmation back, you threw your phone across the couch in your living room and flung yourself onto the nearest surface to bemoan your miserable existence. Toji was not amused when that nearest surface happened to be his chest, and he only offered you five minutes of soaking his shirt with snot and tears before he drug you upstairs to your bedroom, turned on the hot water to your tub, and shoved you into the bathroom with a promise to return with wine if you quieted down for just a second. 
So here you were, an hour later, soaking under a mountain of peppermint scented bubbles while you toed at the hot water handle at the end of the tub. 
“You think if I begged hard enough Nanami would let me come stay with him for the rest of his vacation? I’m afraid I’m in need of a tropical escape,” you told Toji, already calculating in your head how quickly you could pack your bags and be on the next plane to Malaysia. 
Toji chuckled, “No, I don’t think he would, considering he refused to tell us anything more about his trip other than what country he’d be in and when he’d be back. You showing up would take seven years off his life. Add three more if he opens up the door to you sobbing like you’ve been all day. Besides, running away to another country just because you’re afraid to talk to your boyfriend is a cowardly move.” 
You ‘tsked’ at him for calling you out on poor behavior and slouched further down into the hot water in shame-filled defeat. Instead of wallowing in it further though, you popped your ankles up on the rim of the tub, tossed your arms back to hang behind your head, and clapped twice to get Toji’s attention.
“Another glass of wine, please,” you mocked in as snobby an accent as you could manage.
“What do you take me as? I’m not your damn butler,” he complained, but you could hear the quick successive cracking of his back as he stood up from the chaise and stretched. 
“Just one more and that’ll be it, I promise.” You considered what else could entice him into doing your bidding. “I’ll let you be done for the evening and take the day off tomorrow if you also bring me a plate of cheese and crackers, please.” 
Toji was silent before letting out a begrudging “fine” and shuffling out the door without another complaint. 
You marveled in the silence, nothing but the occasional lap of water as you adjusted yourself in the tub to break it. After a few minutes, however, you realized the absence of conversation was the perfect environment for your thoughts to run unhindered, and that was not something you cared to partake in at the given time. Trying to concentrate on anything else though was futile, and perhaps trying to wade through your own head for a few minutes would leave you feeling better when you chose to pointedly ignore it once your butler…ahem, Toji, returned with your snacks.
Besides falling on national television—and underneath Gojo Satoru nonetheless—you had a particularly difficult time deducing from yourself what exactly about the accidental revelation of your relationship with Sukuna caused you so much embarrassment. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to be associated with him or that you always intended for the relationship to remain secret until it had reached its course; your desire was quite the opposite, actually. It was a feeling best left to baser animals and bedroom activities, but the idea of staking a claim, proving that he belonged to you in a way, was not unappealing and not something you could talk your way out of thinking, especially with the world the two of you lived in. 
If you got down to it, the real problem lay in your unfortunate habit of caring what people thought. You didn’t want Sukuna to see you as childlike, only a few years younger than him in age but miles behind in maturity. You didn’t want him to view today’s incident as a misfortunate foreshadow into the “what if’s” of your relationship. Neither did you want the world looking at the two of you and questioning how exactly something like it came to be. Where Sukuna was all sharp angles and dark colors, suave nonchalance and carrying a presence that demanded to be seen, you felt painfully opposite. You wouldn’t self-deprecate and believe that you were unworthy of standing beside him, but just cognizant of how different you felt. More like something that could be just as appreciated, but more likely to be overlooked and favored over something brighter. A “mismatched pair” is what they would call you, something that struck you so vividly that the pressure in your chest increased ten-fold. You knew he would hear it, see it, be made aware of it, and while he may not agree right away, you wondered how long it would take for the sphere of influence to get to him too. The anticipatory grief (as your actual therapist called it, usually followed by anxiety) of waiting for someone you valued so much to realize that he had better options was enough to make you consider running away from the whole thing entirely. 
And that’s how you came back to scheming your departure from the country. If you hurried, you could probably towel off, pack a bag, and slip out the back before Toji realized (you wondered if the big oaf had decided to take a nap instead of bringing you snacks for how long it’d been since you last heard him). Surely Nanami wouldn’t abandon you in your time of need if you were wailing at him over the phone in the airport of a foreign country. 
But alas, you heard your bathroom door open, effectively cutting off any means of escape.
“It’s about time, Toji. What took you so long?” He neither spoke, nor took another step. “Eh, no matter. Bring me my snacks, please.” 
Footsteps continued again and before you could chastise Toji further, a voice spoke up from right behind your privacy screen. 
“Should I be concerned with the normalcy of your bodyguard attending to you while you’re naked in the bath?” 
The shock of hearing Sukuna’s voice caused you to jolt, sending your legs into the water with an unmistakable splash and leaving you to scurry back into a sitting position from where you had slipped dangerously close to submerging your whole head underwater. The indecency of it all would kill you if this conversation that was about to happen didn’t.
“I assure you,” you started, hoping you didn’t sound as wrecked as you felt, “it is not nearly as salacious as you made it out to be.” 
Sukuna hummed. “Really? Because it sounded as if you were expecting him, and when I ran into him downstairs he told me to tell you that he would be back up to deliver wine and cheese shortly. Sounds like a romantic evening to me if I’ve ever heard one.”
You were relieved to hear a hint of amusement in your boyfriend’s voice, but horrified at what he was saying. 
“Please stop implying things that’ll make me gag.” 
Sukuna chuckled, but was quiet for a minute until, “You have five seconds to tell me to stop before I move this privacy screen so we can talk face to face.” 
You shot upwards, looking around hurriedly as you tried to scrape the remaining bubbles in the tub to strategic places in order to maintain your dignity, though you realized a moment later that it was probably unnecessary. With a second left, you brushed tendrils of your hair away from your face and wiped your thumb across the top of your lip to remove any remnants of a wine stain from your skin. In the next, Sukuna was pushing aside the privacy screen and looking down at you with a blank—but not unkind—expression. You eyed him warily as he walked up to the edge of the tub and dropped a cushion from the chaise Toji was sitting on earlier to the floor. He settled himself down onto it and then placed his elbow on the edge of the tub so he could lean in close to you. 
“Hello,” you whispered to him, settling both your arms down next to his and then resting your head against them. A small smile crossed his face.
“Hello to you too.” 
You were surprised at the lack of tension in his face, no clenched jaw or heavy brow to be seen, and as you trailed your eyes further down his torso you noticed its absence there too. His shoulders were relaxed, and his chin was cupped in the hand propped up on the tub so he could gaze at you with those unnervingly observant eyes of his. You wished he’d been wearing a t-shirt instead of the thin navy turtleneck he currently had on so you could focus your stare on the black tattoos decorating his body. Aside from being intricate, and distracting, they always gave you something to look at when meeting his eyes felt like too much. 
The tenderness of Sukuna’s knuckles meeting your temple forced you to look back up at him, only to see that he was following the path his fingers were making over your skin. They grazed over your cheekbone, feathered down the bridge of your nose, and then were skimming over your mouth, his thumb catching ever so lightly on your bottom lip. His hand didn’t linger there, and it was quick to skate over your jaw before his thumb landed under your ear and the rest of his fingers tangled in your hair while his palm cupped your neck. With a slide of his other hand up your arm and down your back to press between your shoulder blades, Sukuna brought you close enough to him that he was able to reach the rest of the way over the tub and kiss you. His lips remained pressed against yours for a second or two before he broke away, hesitated, and then leaned in to do it once more, twice, and a third time. 
You were the one that put space between the two of you, sitting back in the water and drawing your knees to your chest. You desperately needed to inhale without smelling the crispness of his aftershave or the spiced warmth of his cologne, both of which were guilty of making your head spin. 
“You’re not mad at me?” you asked, breaking the silence before he had a chance to, before you lost your nerve. You watched as his head tilted slightly to one side, his expression a touch befuddled, but full of disbelief. 
“Why would I be mad at you?” He questioned slowly, moving himself to his knees on the cushion so he could go back to resting his arms on the tub. 
“I don’t see why you wouldn’t be,” you told him, your voice a bit sharp. “I inadvertently told anyone with access to the internet that we were dating, without even talking to you about it, and then proceeded to flee the scene like a coward instead of getting back out there to present myself as confident enough to own up to my mistakes. Not to mention the fall with Satoru right before. It’s embarrassing. The whole thing made us—me—look like a giant mess!” 
Your voice cracked on the last word, and you bit down on the inside of your cheek until you tasted iron. Sukuna looked pained, and he reached a hand out to play with your fingers as they sat at the top of your knees. 
“You’re not a mess,” he said, rubbing his thumb in small circles over the middle knuckle of one of your fingers, “and I’m not embarrassed either. I never intended to keep us a secret, and I’m not trying to implicate you when I say this, but I don’t think I ever implied doing so that evening.” 
“Well, yeah,” you huffed, the twinkle in his ochre-brown eyes and the mischievous grin on his face as he hinted to the night the two of you cemented your relationship into the category of “official” making your face get warm, “we didn’t do a whole lot of talking after that point.” 
You tried to jerk your hands out from under his to cover up your cheeks, but Sukuna was unrelenting in his hold, and you gave up before continuing on, “I know you never implied that you wanted to keep our relationship hidden, but that’s been the theme of whatever we’ve had going on these last ten months. We were sneaking around from the very beginning, we lied about it to Yuji and Choso, and then let’s not forget about the whole incident of being caught by Satoru,” you pointed out to him, feeling the slightest bit smug when he looked chagrined. 
“I apologized for that,” he reminded you, his voice tone faintly defensive. You squeezed his hand in comfort. 
“You did, and I’m not upset about it.” 
You took a deep breath and cast your eyes everywhere except Sukuna, taking in the details of your bathroom as you tried to muster the courage to share your insecurities with him. He never let his attention on you deviate, and between that and the heat of the water you had been in for almost two hours, you were beginning to feel lightheaded, and everything finally came rushing out of your mouth.
“I feel like we’re mismatched! It feels like everytime someone looks at us, they’re going to wonder why, like we don’t fit well together. And I’m not saying I believe that, or that you would believe that, and I know this whole thing sounds ridiculous because it is ridiculous, but it’s hard to get outside of my own head about this when I already love you so mu—,” 
The startled look on Sukuna’s face is what clued you in to the fact you had said something you had not intended to. You snapped your mouth shut with an audible click of your teeth and used your feet to push away from him and to the otherside of the tub, wrenching your hands out of his grasp. 
If someone asked why you never liked to talk about your feelings, this was why. Why the words that came out were never as eloquent—or as sane—as the thoughts in your head was something you’d pay so much money to figure out. And Kento was about to have no choice in letting you hide out with him for the rest of his vacation because you were no longer asking, and if he was interested in keeping his job he would do so without complaint. Even so, you considered that forcibly releasing Kento from the grip of a career that was so wrought with overtime would be another mercy for the overworked sal—,
“You know what I think,” Sukuna murmured, bringing you out of your own head to focus with rapt attention on the blissfully contented expression he wore. His fingers curled around the tops of your arms as he reached out to slide you back to his side of the tub, and when you were close enough again, he pushed his nose into the plushness of your cheek to nuzzle there affectionately. You were transfixed by a small tan freckle on the edge of his eyebrow that you somehow hadn’t noticed before.
“I think this whole time you’ve been so focused on pleasing everyone around you—which isn’t necessarily unadmirable, I promise—and treading with extreme care to take into consideration my feelings about our relationship that you haven’t noticed what’s been going on…or I haven’t been doing a very satisfactory job of making it apparent.” 
He said the last part more under his breath, but didn’t give you a chance to interject with an objection before he carried on, making intently sure your eyes were on his. “From the very beginning, even when all I had of you were fleeting touches and secret meetings in questionable places, I was always bound to fall in love with you.” 
You didn’t know what to say, what to think, and trying to wrap your head around the fact that what you considered to be one of the worst days of your life was ending with unintentional confessions of love in your bathtub wasn’t helping. So you did what you could and traced a finger down one of the tattoos under his eyes, hoping he would keep talking.
“We aren’t a mismatched pair,” he insisted, his eyelids fluttering slightly at your gentle touch, “I think we compliment each other quite well, so please, don’t try to hide or run away.” He fixed you with a pointed look that told you Toji had warned him of your current status as a flight risk, and you ducked your head slightly and in a way that you hope conveyed repentance.  
“Because you must know, I will always be chasing after you.”
You wasted no time in hurrying to crush your lips against his and throw your arms around his neck, because what else was there to do when words couldn’t suffice, other than to surrender to the melding of bodies? 
Sukuna reciprocated in fervor, breaking apart from you only to stand up from his place on his knees, and reached down to cup his hands under your bottom, lifting you out of the tub and securing your thighs around his hips while his mouth found yours again.
He seemed to care not that you were dripping water on the floor and soaking the front of his clothes from where you were pressed tightly against him. He stumbled back a couple steps until the back of his knees made contact with the chaise, and the two of you fell back onto it. Sukuna adjusted you to straddle his lap, his hands clasping at your hips while your hands scrambled down his back to pull up his shirt. You ground your pelvis down against him as he dropped his head to mouth at your neck, and the rough groan that elicited from his throat had you deciding that your bed was too far away to justify taking time to separate, and that the convenience of the chaise was worth going to the trouble of having to buy Toji a new one. You had no more than let the thought flutter through your head when an obnoxiously loud knock resounded through the bathroom. 
“You two haven’t drowned yet, have you?” 
Speak of the devil and he shall appear. 
Sukuna ripped his lips away from where he was sucking a mark into the space where your shoulder blended into your neck, and met your gaze with one that dared you to intervene. 
“Don’t even think about it,” he growled, using the grip he still had on your waist to hold you in place while he rolled his hips up into yours, and you prayed that the moan you let out wasn’t as loud as it sounded. Even if it was, you hoped Toji would get the hint and make himself scarce.
“Look, I get it,” your bodyguard remarked, sounding both amused and vaguely uncomfortable, “but it’s kinda, maybe important.” 
With both the mood dashed and your anxiety spiked again, you patted Sukuna on the shoulder in a bid to get him to let you slide off his lap. He rolled his eyes, exasperation—and lustful desperation—painted clearly on his face, but he helped you down without giving you any grief and grabbed a black fluffy robe from where it was draped over your privacy screen. He held it out so you could thread your arms through it, and then he proceeded to tie the belt securely around your waist. 
“Come in, Toji,” you called, moving to sit on the chaise while Sukuna came to stand at your back.
Your bodyguard waited a moment before opening the door, peeking his head around first and then sauntering in with his normal arrogance to lean against your bathroom counter just a couple feet in front of you.
“Glad to see that nobody’s drowned. There’s only one of you I’d be willing to do mouth-to-mouth on,” Toji joked, clearly proud of what he had come up with. You felt Sukuna’s hands come to rest on the tops of your shoulders, his fingertips digging into the muscles lightly. They relaxed when you bought one of your hands up to twine your fingers with his. 
“So, to what do we owe the interruption?” you asked. The amusement on Toji’s face vanished, and in its place came weariness. 
“I just got off the phone with Nanami, and—,” 
“You called him?!” You yelped, springing up from your seat, “I begged you not to!”
“Whoa, Whoa,” Toji cautioned, raising his hands up in a surrender, “easy with the accusations. He called me. He knew.” And before you could open your mouth to ask how, Toji’s expression darkened and his eyes flicked up over you to glare at Sukuna. “Uraume called him.” 
You whirled around to look at Sukuna, who—thankfully—seemed just as surprised by the news as you did. 
“I didn’t ask them to do that,” he assured you, then turned to Toji, “did Nanami say what they wanted?” 
“Just to talk about the whole situation, more or less. Nanami said they only talked for about ten minutes, but they’re planning to discuss things more when he comes back in five or six days.” Your bodyguard sighed and crossed his legs as he leaned back further against your counter. “He was nearly ready to hop on the first plane home, but I managed to convince him to finish his vacation. Told him it’d damn near break your heart if he came back early.” 
You plopped back down on the chaise, bone tired and completely ready for this whole day to be over. 
“Thank you, Toji. I’m sorry for jumping down your throat like that.” 
“Don’t sweat it, Princess,” he said, pulling a vaguely familiar set of keys out from his pocket and pushing himself off the counter to walk towards the door. “You two going to be okay if I head out? I have some errands to run and then I’ll probably crash at Megumi’s tonight instead of the staff quarters.” 
You nodded at him, sending him off with a wave before shifting to look back at Sukuna. 
“Stay with me?” you pleaded. He answered with a kiss to your hair, and then offered his arm so you could stand from the chaise. He followed after you into your bedroom, and the faint flutter of clothing made you glance back over your shoulder. Your heart began to race at the sight of his bare chest, tattoos displayed in full glory. You must have made some kind of noise because he looked up at you from where he was draping his shirt over the back of a lounging chair in the corner of your room.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said sheepishly, “my clothes are wet.” 
You shook your head, tugging your bottom lip between your teeth as you watched the muscles in his back flex as he bent down to push his jeans to the floor, leaving him in simple grey underwear. There must have been something written all over your face as he began to walk towards you, for he was reaching out to pull you into him as soon as he got close enough.
“I’m tired, Sukuna,” you warned as he pressed your cheek to his chest, though you wondered if you could muster up the energy to continue where the two of you had left off in the bathroom. Surely he would make it worth your while. 
“I know,” he told you, voice light and good-natured, and he tightened his arms around you briefly before stepping back and nodding in the direction of your bed, “why don’t you go get comfortable. Toji left your snacks on your dresser. Want to finish them off before bed?” 
With a grateful nod, you turned to leap onto your bed, sitting down in the middle and wiggling with excitement as Sukuna came to join you. He sat the tray of food and wine in between the two of you and crossed his legs underneath himself before picking up a piece of cheese and offering it to you. You smiled in thanks and began to nibble on it while he surveyed his options. 
“Mhm,” you started, an errant thought popping into your head, “I’m assuming since Uraume knows that Yuji and Choso know now as well?” Sukuna raised his head slowly from where he had been studying the various snacks, and the hint of guilt on his face wasn’t confidence inspiring. 
“They do,” he drew out, observing you carefully, “they were both watching the interview with me.” 
You groaned as white-hot embarrassment flooded your body, and you fell back against your pillows, grabbing one to shove over your face to muffle the bitter laughter you couldn’t control. “What do they think?” 
“It’s nothing you should be worrying about,” Sukuna said, suddenly sitting by your head and lifting the pillow off your face to set it above your head, “you know they adore you. Choso was his normal, level-headed self. He’s happy for us. Yuji was just as ecstatic once he got his laughter under control, if a bit disappointed that we hadn’t told him.” Your boyfriend paused, his face darkening suddenly, and you watched with interest as a muscle feathered in his jaw. 
“What?” you asked, pushing yourself back into a sitting position and poking him in the arm to urge him to explain. He shook his head, clearly annoyed.
“You know what that little shit said immediately after? He thought that you and Gojo had been secretly dating and were waiting till after your movie was over to say anything.” 
Obnoxious laughter erupted from you, and you hurried to slap your hands over your mouth to try to conceal it as Sukuna’s face fell. 
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” you rasped out in between giggles, unable to stop it as you watched Sukuna sit back against your pillows with a huff and a crossing of his arms. 
“The little idiot is just dense. And delusional. Anyone could see that you and the q-tip don’t have any real chemistry.” He sounded an awful lot like he was trying to convince himself of the truthfulness of his own statement. You wondered, affectionately, at which brother was a touch deluded. You were a fine actor, thank you very much. And you were about to open your mouth and say so when something ‘plinked’ off the window next to your bed. 
Strange. Your bedroom was on the second floor. 
Sukuna jerked his head up, all traces of humor forgotten, and the two of you listened for the noise again. 
Plink. 
“What the hell,” he muttered, pushing off the bed so he could go inspect the noise, “stay right there.” 
You appreciated the concern in his voice as he began to lift the window pane open, and he had just begun to stick his head out to look around when something small smacked him right between the eyes, sending him butt-first to the floor. 
“Sukuna!” you gasped, rushing over to kneel by his side and lift his hand from where he had it pressed to his forehead. You didn’t get a chance to fawn over him any further before he was up on his feet and striding to your bedroom door. 
“Be right back,” he growled, throwing the door open and cursing all the way down the stairs. 
You heard something land next to you on the floor, utterly perplexed when it turned out to be a rock from your flower beds. You got up and tiptoed over to the window, just barely lifting your head over the pane as to avoid becoming another victim of a flying projectile, then shot to your feet when you caught sight of a familiar white-haired costar outside beneath your window.
“Satoru!” You screeched, dumbfounded by his mere presence and the way he waved up at you, completely unbothered, “How in the world did you get through the gate?!”
“Hey! There you are!” He called, with a lazy grin on his face, “that’s not really important right now.” 
“I would disagree!” You yelled back down to him, making a mental note to have Toji go over all the security points around your property after his day off. “What are you doing here?” 
Satoru laughed sarcastically before the smile on his face suddenly disappeared, and he propped his hands up on his hips. “Where is my car?” 
No. Way. 
“You’ve got to be kidding me, Satoru.” 
“Nope! Give me back my car. It’s one of a kind!” 
You groaned, reaching up to massage the burgeoning headache you could feel at your temples. “Are you sure it’s not out there in the driveway? Toji left just a bit ago, so you shouldn’t be boxed in or—,” you cut off when the memory of your bodyguard twirling an unfamiliar set of his keys around his finger as he left your bathroom flashed across your memory.
Oh god, that absolute bastard. 
Satoru must have caught the horrified look on your face, as well as how you suddenly stopped talking after mentioning Toji because his face blanched even paler than usual, and his voice was two octaves higher in distress when he hollered back up at you.
“Does that criminal have my car?!” 
You deserved a vacation at this point. 
“I’ll call him in the morning, Satoru, I promise. And I’ll make sure he washes it for you or whatever you want, just come back tomorrow.” You hoped placating him with the prospect of torturing Toji would convince him to leave, but no, he still stood rooted to his spot down below. 
“As fun as that sounds,” he mocked back up at you, “I can’t.” 
“What do you mean you can’t?”
He looked a bit like a toddler caught with his hand somewhere it shouldn’t be. “Suguru dropped me off and then left in a hurry. He said he had something to do.” 
You couldn’t believe that the universe thought that pairing those two together in any capacity was worth the absolute chaos they unleashed on the poor, unsuspecting population. 
The slamming of your front door caught your attention, and you figured your boyfriend was about to make himself known.
“Look,” you sighed, backing away from the window slightly, “you can borrow one of my cars and swap it tomorrow when Toji brings yours.” You ignored Satoru’s protests and started to close the window. “Just apologize to Sukuna for hitting him between the eyes with a rock and he’ll open the garage for you.”
You caught the confusion on Satoru’s face, and just barely heard his panicked remark as you shut the window.
“Oh, fu—.”
-------------------------------------------------------------
Whew, that one took it out of me, not gonna lie. Angst and I are not friends.
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flubnuggetpurple · 2 days
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Dove Cameron’s Alchemical album is so fucking bat coded I feel like a conspiracy theorist.
(This went off the rails at one point, so WARNING: vague mentions of sexual assault and being drugged without consent)
First song: Lethal Woman.
Cass, all over, right? The bridge is “she walks like a saint, floats like an angel, sharp like a knife under the table”
c o m e o n
Second song: Still.
“Man on the screen, they only see whatever you want them to see” and “Supernova self-erasing, hourglass is always draining”
Could be either Tim or Bruce, but I lean toward Tim because of “how dare you, dare me to love you, if you jump I will too” because whenever Tim decides he loves someone, he’s the ride or die, ends of the earth type, even if they don’t even know who he is. A) how and why he became Robin in the first place, B) The Cloning Thing, C) an argument could be made for the Captain Boomerang thing (but now that I think of it, I think I’m mostly basing this off fanon oh well ontotgenextone).
Song Three: Breakfast.
I will admit out the gate that this one’s a reach, so I’m just going to leave Selina here.
Song Four: Sand.
For this I’m thinking Tim or Jason, for different reasons.
For Tim;
“I saw the end when we began, you couldn’t love the way I can, I tried to bargain with the stars, for more than half your heart but you have more pieces of me than the dessert has sand, and I have less pieces of you than I could hold in my hand” and “our love’s misaligned, ‘cause you’re on my mind every night, I stretch out the time, and now I know why.”
I’m just making it obvious I read the Red Robin run, aren’t I?
For Jason:
“What's worse, being wanted but not loved, or loved but not wanted? What's worse, hearing what you wanna hear, or hearing what's honest?” And “What hurts, is the one thing that you wanna do, is the one thing that you shouldn’t do”
Pre-death Jason, but like, right after the Garzonas thing.
Song five: White Glove.
Okay hear me out.
This is part one of the Dick Grayson saga; the persona he shows to the public. This is Richie Wayne. This is every honeypot mission he went on too young, every woman he’s had to seduce for information (it’s one hundred percent happened before don’t fight me) every source of sexual trauma (that one I’m ninety percent sure is canon) that keeps him up at night.
And this guy’s been a vigilante for over twenty years, he can absolutely recognize drugs by sight, smell, and how they feel when he’s too late to notice something slipped in his drink. He’s felt nearly every strain of fear toxin and every one of Ivy’s pollens. If anyone knows their drugs it’s pretty boy Richie Wayne and Robin.
Song six: God’s Game
This one I’m definitely taking some lines out of context, but for Jason, “Just a boy with a man's face, playin' God's game” is when he’s taking over Crime Alley, pit-mad and trigger happy. “I prepare with so much care, I was runnin', it was stunnin', I am desperate from delusions, not much of a solution, never knowin' what the truth is, oh, God” is when hid plans start to fall apart, when Bruce slits his throat with a batarang, when eventually the pit-madness eventually starts to wear off and he realizes what all he did to Tim, who was a child at the time, not to mention Robin.
He nearly became what the Joker was to him to the next Robin, and I feel like at some point that would occur to him.
Song seven: Boyfriend.
(…Admittedly, I don’t think this one has any grounding in canon and if it does, feel free to educate me.)
So, obviously I could mention Kate Kane at this point, but I know basically nothing about her, so instead I’m going to talk about Steph.
So Steph has definitely had some shitty experiences with guys, right? Like, her dad to begin with, but also the guy who got her pregnant (at like fourteen? Maybe I’m just sheltered, but I don’t think anything about that relationship was heathy—again, I haven’t read many of the comics, so correct me if I’m wrong), then Tim, which, I love him as a character, but didn’t he date her in the mask for like, months, and I have some vague recollections of some dickish things he said (i know i know i need to read more comics)—whatever. Men are shitty.
I have a scene in my head. Like, Steph’s in college, at a bar with friends or something, maybe it’s an under cover op, idk, and there’s this girl she’s been lowkey watching all night. She doesn’t quite know why, but she just keeps catching her eye, and okay, it’s not like she’s never questioned her sexuality, she knows Cass. There have been Extensive conversations with Babs on the subject.
Anyway, so at some point, there’s obviously some sort of argument between the girl and the guy she came with and the girl’s crying, and Steph just Can’t Handle That.
She goes up to her, comforts her, makes a new friend, listens to the whole story.
And at some point, she has the thought.
“I could be a better boyfriend than him.”
She doesn’t necessarily do anything about it that night, but now that she’s had the thought, it won’t leave her alone.
Yeah. So. Maybe I’ll write that story later.
Song eight (last song): FRAGILE THINGS.
Dick Grayson part two; So your mentor (dad) just died, leaving you an angry murder child, another one hanging on by a thread after losing eighty percent of his support system, a grieving butler (grandfather), and a mantle the size of the Most Dangerous City in America. Any direction you move is going to hurt someone, and one kid is more likely to snap and murder people than the other, and hey, if you have to be Batman anyway, might as well let your brilliant kid brother be Nightwing, right? Except, whoops, you forgot to mention that last part and now Timmy thinks you just replaced him without telling him and fuck you knew you were forgetting something and now there’s a goddamned imposter Bruce and—
“Love is like a house of fragile things, where hearts can be broken as easy as antiques, and now there’s glass all shattered at my feet, what we built together, you left in smithereens.”
Anyway. This got kind of incoherent (or maybe it was from the start?)
I accidentally added a poll at the bottom and can’t figure out how to remove it, so.
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saras-almanac · 2 days
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BuckTommyWeekend Day 2: A figure from their past
BuckTommyWeekend Day 2: A figure from their past
Title:  What we have
Fandom:  911 (ABC)
Pairing:  Buck/Tommy
Summary:  Buck had complicated feelings after they run into Abby. Luckily, Tommy is there to comfort him. For the prompt: A figure from their past for @bucktommyweek
Notes: I have a lot of thoughts about Abby and her relationship with Buck (plus just thoughts on her character in general). And this is a part of something much longer I’d written but it was just bits and pieces—the meeting, the aftermath, Tommy talking with Athena or Maddie, this scene—just too much going on and too much to write in a day when my brain was still coming up with the actual idea for this. So this is what I’ve got.  
Tommy hadn’t thought much of this meeting Abby at the time. Apparently she was in town for some meeting or other for one of her stepdaughters and him and Evan had happened to run into her as they were leaving the restaurant they had brunch at.
Evan had gotten a bit quiet but smiled and politely introduced him as “This is Tommy,” before Abby started telling him about her life. It was about three minutes of a quick catch up before Evan and him continued on their way out and honestly, Tommy hadn’t thought it was strange.
But now It’s been over a week since he’d last seen Evan and he was trying not to worry or get caught up in his own head about what this all might mean. He was off today, so maybe Tommy could convince him to meet up for lunch or at least just talk later today.
Thankfully the doorbell rang at that moment, pulling Tommy out of his potential spiral.
He opened the door and there stood Evan, holding two coffees and a bag of food.
“I brought coffee and burritos,” Evan said.
Tommy ushered him in and followed him to the kitchen. “It’s been a minute. But I’m happy to see you.”
“Me too.” Evan set everything on the counter, dropping his duffel on the floor, and then turned to him, basically wrapping himself around Tommy.
“Is everything all right?”” Tommy asked.
“Yes,” Evan said. “I mean, it’s getting there?”
“Would you want to tell me about what you’re thinking about?” Tommy asked, pulling away and gently pushing Evan toward the stool by his counter. “While you eat a little something.”
Evan sat down but made no move toward his food. He sighed. “I told you about Abby. My ex. The one we ran into a couple weeks ago.”
Tommy nodded. “Yeah. I mean, a little.”
“Right, well seeing her sort of threw me off—Not because I’m dating you or freaking out about my bisexuality and stuff,” Evan rushed to reassure him. “It just… I guess it just brought a lot of old feelings, things that trigged some old insecurities. And I wasn’t expecting it. I mean, it’s been years and looking back, it’s not even like we were really together together so I don’t know really what happened.”
“Feelings can be surprising,” Tommy said. “They come back around in the strangest ways sometimes.”
“Yeah,” Evan said. “But I don’t even think about her anymore. I don’t. I’m not like in love with her or want her back or anything--I swear.”
“I didn’t think you did, but thank you for the reassurance,” Tommy said. “Seeing people who used to play a big part in our lives brings up a lot of emotions. And that’s okay.”  
“That’s what Dr. Copeland said too,” Evan said shaking his head. “I called her because it just triggered a lot of feelings, feelings of insecurity that I thought I’d dealt with. But when you come face-to-face with your biggest failure those feelings can come back.”
“You and Abby not working out is not a failure,” Tommy said.
“I know that. Now,” Evan said. “But it’s what happened when I saw her again. It was my first relationship where I did everything right. I followed everyone’s advice, everyone’s ideas, followed Abby’s lead. I did everything I was supposed to. And she left anyway. Which, I don’t have to tell you made me panic and worry about you, about us.”
“Well, I’d argue that we haven’t’ done anything right in the way that other people would have it or do it,” Tommy said, nudging Evan with his shoulder. “But I also can’t’ say that we’ve done nothing right because a look where we are, what we have.”
“That’s what I realized,” Evan admitted. “At least part of it.”
“What’s the other part?” Tommy asked.
“So it’s like this,” Evan said, amping up and already starting to gesture with his hands. “I think I thought so highly of Abby for so long, right? She was this woman who was mature and knew what she wanted and had a whole life and still wanted me; it’s like she made me better or at least want to be a better man. And after she left, I was terrified that she’d taken that part of me with her, the mature Buck, the guy who was dependable and worthy.”
Tommy clenched his jaw because he hated hearing Evan talk about himself in terms of worthiness or usefulness. Granted, it was a bit of the pot calling the kettle black, but Tommy usually operated under a “do as I say, not as I do” policy.
“And seeing her again, seeing her with you just put so much into perspective for me,” Evan said. “I always thought of her as my first real relationship, but seeing her next to you, knowing what we have, how you treat me, it finally dawned on me that we didn’t have a relationship. Or we did, but like not the one I wanted, the one I thought we had.”
Tommy gently moved the coffees out of the way. “And what was that?”
“I thought we had this amazing relationship where we could be ourselves, someone I could share myself with and someone who wanted that too,” Evan said. “But I think I was just a physical presence for her during a hard time in her life. Someone who was there, who helped shoulder some of the weight, and then someone she just left behind because I didn’t matter to her. Not like I wanted to.”
Evan sighed. “And then I just saw her standing next to you and couldn’t help but think about all the things you know about me, the things you like about me, and I realized that she never really knew me at all.”
“It doesn’t sound like she did,” Tommy said gently, carefully. “Because if she had, I doubt she’d have been able to leave.”
“See and that,” Evan said, reaching over to grab Tommy’s hand. “You’d never do that to me. To anyone really. You’d never just take off, knowing you were done with me, without telling me. Yeah, it would crush me to lose you, but you’d still at least tell me. You wouldn’t leave me hanging on, waiting for any words of our future when you had no plans to come back.”
Evan squeezed his hand between both of his. “I just, I love you so much and I feel so lucky to have you in my life that sometimes I panic that I’m not quite good enough for you. And I want to be.”
Tommy reached out, cradling Evan’s cheek in his hand. “You are good enough. You’re more than good enough for me.”
“Even when I’m having a crisis and stupidly keep myself from you for 12 days?” Evan asked.
“Even then,” Tommy assured him, pressing a quick kiss to his forehead.
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