sweeter dreams (in your arms)

Pairing: Vashwood Rating: T Words: 6,823 Tags: Nightmares, Angst & Hurt/Comfort, Nicholas D. Wolfwood is Bad at Feelings (and Needs a Hug)

Summary: The nightmares and recollections of a past that never feels distant enough don’t plague him every night. It’s like a game of roulette at times. Never a specific pattern or telling when luck will run out. There’s those swaths of luck where Wolfwood can go days or weeks at a time without any sleep disturbances, but lately he’s had a consistently unlucky draw. He doesn’t bother pondering how or why. He simply endures until they stop.

He wonders how many times Vash overheard it, though. The gasping fits as he would wake up in a cold sweat on the verge of screaming.

Wolfwood is haunted by the cold terror of his past. Lucky for him, Vash is good at grounding him in the much warmer present.

--

The fire of the campsite is, thankfully, warm enough to stave off the cold of the desert tonight. Wolfwood sits in front of it atop one of the spare blankets, soaking in said warmth as he watches the steady dance of the campfire. He stretches one leg out, bending the other at the knee to serve as an armrest while he absently taps at the butt of a lit cigarette. 

For as much as Nicholas can complain about the heat of No Man’s Land, he hates the cold even more. 

He hates shrinking and shivering underneath blankets, and hugging himself in an effort to maintain some of his own body heat. He hates having to stop his own teeth from chattering or when the hair on his neck and arms stands up. Something about these acts always make him feel vulnerable or small, or send his mind back to the times he felt vulnerable and small amidst the cold.

There were more than a few nights where he felt that way at the orphanage despite being looked after and cared for. He can recall far too many nights, when in the clutches of the Eye of Michael, where he felt this way. Whether he lay in a pitiful, broken slump in the corner of a dark cell or confined to the cold hard table of a lab, trembling in dread of how the next experiment might break and morph his body.

The quick flashes of those memories send a chill through him now; A harmless child one moment, bundling up in his blanket as snug as possible while curiously staring up at the stars through the window above his bed. A makeshift adult frozen in his own agony the next moment, hooked up to who knows what through tubes and wires, trapped in a pool of his own blood, eyes wide in shock and barely registering the ceiling above him.

Wolfwood takes a big drag of his cigarette to combat those flashes, inhaling deeply to ensure he can feel the scratchy burn from his throat to his lungs. He lets the smoke sit there for a few beats, the steady dance of the campfire reflecting over the lenses of his glasses. His exhale comes out slowly, the resentment of those colder memories puffing out with the smoke, wafting off to dissipate into the smoke of the fire. 

Wolfwood sighs and taps the butt of his cigarette again, shaking off the extra ash.

(Read the rest on ao3) (Reblogs would be really, really appreciated <3)

🇸🇪 Carola - Fångad av en stormvind

h e lp did they shrink yujiro again?????

Pokeddexy 2024 | Day 4: Electric (Oricorio - Pom Pom style)

A cheerleader for Melemele Island's surfing team! Her cheerleading attire could also be used for swimsuit! Since they perform by the ocean all the time, getting hit with waves is... more or less the norm for them by now.

...

...I... uhh... Struggled with curly hair, and I got kinda lazy with the bg so :/

-> Day 1 | -> Day 3 | -> Day 5

2023 go bye bye

i need to inflict this upon yall. kol has challenge paths where you can be the classes from sol and just. ???? what did they do to them???

noël's missing her ponytails

terrence doesnt have his glasses

and bruise is just kinda. here? he looks fine other than the like. kinda short arm that comes w kol's artstyle

j6

anime would be also awesome at making changes that aren't a complete diversion of the characters. like they could make dracula explicitly bite jonathan instead of implicitly, give him the ability to summon the dead as ghouls to hinder the heroes in his escape, they could give mina more than the psychic ability after her baptism, make renfield and john have a closer bond, make van helsing have backstory with dracula… but still keep the majority especially parts that get cut off, like the marriage, berserker, jonathan's corruption arc, all the character quirks like john's phonograph love and uncoolness around ladies…

EXACTLY! Keep the core parts of the book, and add stuff to round them! A lot of these sound really awesome, specifically giving Van Helsing a good backstory after the little bits that we read in the book in the format of flashbacks, and making Mina's transformation more ominous through her appearance. The scene sequences that could capture the dread and the terror of many moments in the book like Lucy's last entry, Mina's reunion with Jonathan, Mina and Jonathan working on the investigation, or Van Helsing's first appearance, so many moments that need the drama that animation could give.

Imagine poor Lucy alone in her room terrified and agitated, the wind at full force entering through her broken window giving her room a dark blue hue, her mother laying dead on her bed with a single hand outside of the sheet. Lucy locked the door yet something keeps knocking, and she keeps thinking she doesn't know what to do until her eyes catch her diary on the floor. One thought simply repeats in her mind... "Write", she throws herself to grab the diary, and her pencil while the knocking on the door gets more aggressive by the second. Lucy then hides behind her bed, and immediately starts to write her last letter to the world. She starts writing, writing, and writing while her hand trembles, we see Lucy struggle and cross out words yet even if her face is wet with tears her determination is unbreakable. There is no knocking anymore, but now someone is trying to force the door open, and Lucy just keeps writing. I imagine at the end of her letter when she writes her name she does the most dramatic hand action to write and sign her full name one last time, in bold jet black. Then the door finally clicks open... Lucy quickly rips the page off and hides it, she grabs her mother's hand and stars to pray and cry silently, and the angle of the scene goes slowly from her to the now open door to reveal a completely dark background save for two blood red eyes that look directly into the "camera".

It would be so good.

On the other hand... let's say that I'm not too fond on the idea that Renfield and Jack need a "closer bond" because I think that Jack was one of the core factors that pushed Renfield to wrongly give his service to Dracula. My humble opinion is that the best thing that Seward could have done for Renfield before his death was to finally let him go. Just let him leave the asylum since it was clear that Renfield got tired of suffering under Seward's "care".

Said treatment made Renfield seek another person who could give him a semblance of power over something, over anything really, and Dracula was right there to manipulate him and use him. Seward got so deep in his own ableist perspective of Renfield that he didn't notice all the signals around him. Renfield was so traumatized thanks to his time in the asylum that while he was in his death bed he begged Seward to take away the restraining jacket, not knowing that Dracula paralyzed him. The way Jack pushed Renfield to a breaking point again and again was horrible.

I think what a good adaptation would do is give Renfield a happy ending where he keeps on living, away from the asylum and Seward, with a new page to start his life again. If they want to portray his death to be accurate to the book, at least give Renfield a more humane and dignified death than leaving him alone to slowly die in pain.

... wow, que setimientos tan fuertes, mira esos párrafos.

It's 1:33 AM btw.

hey cos!! what are your favorite rune factory games in order :0!! im super curious!! have a nice day!!!

helloooo!!! <3 oou thank you so much for the question.. <333

of the ones i’ve completed in full — 4 is my favorite, followed by 3, and then 5! <3

including the ones i’ve just played enough to have an opinion — it’d be 4, 3, oceans, 2, 5 :> <3

LOVE not being able to do my hobby because I spent all day/week/month on doing compulsions. It's THE BEST. MY FAVROITE THING

AVES @ TWITCH CON DAY 1 ‼️

ft. velvet and ant, niki, sam, eret, austin (!?) and myself before falling to despair from. not seeing the banter boys

*

🇮🇱 Ilanit - Ey Sham

“Ooooh, Dr. Joy, you’re in trou-ble!” Dr. Libitina sneered, leaning back against her own desk as Grian stormed past her.

“Hm? What—” Scar looked up in time for Grian to glare down at him. “Oh! Good morning Dr. Dreamslayer, do you know why the alarm is going off?”

“Scar,” he hissed, clenching his fists at his sides, “Can you tell me why my specimen of SCP-6722 is all over the greenhouse floor?”

Scar hummed, lacing his hands together in his lap. “Well, no, I’m afraid I can’t. Is that what the alarm’s for?”

The biology department, AKA where the facility's most annoying not-couple ruin everyone's vibes with their not-problems.

so excited for dracula daily !!!

Tiny excerpt from a new oneshot headed your way soon; I’m salty I always get ideas before I have to go to work