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tanoraqui · 1 year

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I need to share the dream I had last night (this morning. w/e) before I forget all of it. It was one of those dreams where I alternated between literally being the protagonist and watching it play out as, this time, a literal movie, which @vesperaevis, @hedgiwithapen and maybe @isi7140 were insistently showing me?

General plot was: modern world, there's some sort of human agency that fights & subdues supernatural threats; I (random innocent) stumbled into a big boss fight and got possessed by a superpowerful ancient spirit of darkness, and ended up using my new powers, stubborn determination and faith in universal personhood to bully both sides into being friends.

Details I remember:

Idk if the supernatural was openly known if if there was a standard 'masquerade

I think I was at the boss battle because I was trying to talk to a boy I had a crush on? who was part of this anti-monster agency, but I didn't know that? Maybe there was a masquerade. He was some sort of legacy kid in the agency; maybe instead of an official thing it was one of those "this family has hunted monsters for centuries" set-ups.

They had a big compound and cool weapons, etc. but a sense that they used to be better funded & staffed

Mostly human but 3(?) cat people, like, D&D-style cat people. I distinctly remember a wide banner movie poster showing 3 cat people on each side, which was thematic ofc. All the cat people were elite fighters, especially at martial arts (ft claws).

The Bad Guys included 3 key players:

- 1 short, fast, kinda goblin-y in appearance? dark blue skin? (my visual memory is of the dream is bad.) very vicious, vengeful, was maybe enacting a plan to destroy the world in that initial boss fight. most dangerous enemy (except ancient darkness spirit possessing me)

- 1 tall, reptilian and/or snake-like in the way the cat people were cat-like, 2nd most dangerous enemy in terms of power but less motivated to do mass murder about it; I distinctly remember thinking he looked exactly like someone out of another piece of media but I have NO idea what. Flat head, vivid yellow snake eyes.

- "Chrommaster", no I do not know why he had a name like a supervillain, maybe literally was a human who took up fucked up magic somehow? dressed all in black & dark colors in some sort of bulky tac gear, with a dark cloak or cape, but his eyes were constantly shifting oil-slick bright colors on account of the Fucked Up Magic he wielded. Which idk if I ever saw or knew the details of in the dream, but I'm gonna say he did weird shit with reality that made people look like they're been color-saturated or desaturated, as a side effect of killing them? 3rd most dangerous antagonist.

(Yes my character design for the villains FUCKED in this dream)

so, I got tangentially caught up in a boss battle with...all of the above? 2/3 of the above? and the ancient spirit of darkness, which was maybe possessing someone else at first or maybe embodied on its own, but got injured enough that it needed to possess someone, and went for the random civilian. It's definitely sentient, but I'm not sure how intelligent it was?

I think at first the "heroes" didn't know I was possessed? Or just didn't know what to do about it? It wasn't obvious or active at first, maybe not even to me; the Darkness was laying low, either naturally because it was injured or deliberately trying to hide.

"the void" might be a more accurate monkier - it could, and with it I could, consume people in kinda slimy shadows which either transported them to the darkness realm (where they'd slowly dissolve) or just consumed/dissolved them right there, body and soul. Antithetical to matter & existence.

But it didn't actively want to kill anyone/destroy everything. It enjoyed it, but it was also happy to just hang out in my head I think? The Darkness wasn't really characterized

There was some sort of time limit wherein we could separate it from my soul but after (?? let's say 1 week) we'd become inexorably linked forever

Interactions & plot go here? I think my dream skimmed this part of the plot, as my waking mind always does in story-building

An obvious solution would be to kill me to re-release the Darkness so the Heroes(TM) could contain it somehow, as maybe they'd been trying to do in the boss battle

Or imprison me directly, forevermore

Or some sort of way to separate me from the Darkness, but probably with high risk of killing me in the process?

OR just let me keep hanging out with it forever bc it's a cool friend in my head who only periodically fills me with a desire to destroy all life and/or physical matter...

At least 1 fight with, idk, 1 of the main bad guys here, who wasn't in the earlier boss fight or who evaded capture in it? (Goblin-y Bad Guy did get captured I think). I display consume-people-with-void powers? Introduction to the concept of the special jail for supernatural entities?

(the above 1-4 bullet points are 99% awake!me right now extrapolating what would be narratively necessary)

1 of the cat-people with the Heroes, EITHER her whole family was killed by the Darkness and she refuses to accept any option that leaves it remotely intact (as others on this side start to shift to "maybe this girl can just keep the Darkness and it'll be okay?", OR her whole family was killed by the #1 Gobliny Bad Guy but she believes so firmly that the Darkness is Dangerous that she's willing to work with him anyway...

As the deadline for splitting me from the Darkness forever nears (at which point I'd be able to access more of its powers, or it would despite this frail mortal vessel, or something?), she goes to the Monster Jail and stages a mass breakout in order to recruit them to fight to contain/destroy the Darkness, ie, me

We (me + other people in the agency?) are too late to stop her. There's not much fighting bc I scare (most of) the major threats away by threatening to Envoid them, while desperately hiding the fact that I can't actually do that on command and also I don't want to, bc I don't want to kill anyone

I deliver to everyone else - human and human-aligned heroes(tm), supernatural murderers, supernatural non-murderhobos who have been locked up under false premises just bc they're scary and maybe slipped up and ate human brains 1 time, etc - a BOMBASS lecture that starts with something like, "How many of you have heard of a being called Lucifer Morningstar" and then I proceed to tell the story of the fall of Lucifer.

It's dramatic. It's compelling. I am working ALL my storytelling and middle school summer theater camp chops, and the audience is ENTHRALLED - or at least, buying the act that I'll feed them all to the Darkness if they don't pay attention. Which achieves the same thing!

(Because this is a dream, the large atrium of the jail in which this is taking place is visually reminiscent of a standard high school/rec center multi-purpose room)

(in one of the 'watching a movie with my friends' parts, they were talking about a uquiz or tumblr poll about the best dramatic line of the movie, and there was an implication that when I gave this speech, I was making NEW lines, like, rewriting a pre-established script like some sort of isekai protagonist? this element wasn't otherwise present in the dream, but I did feel smug to deliver my own original badass speech)

I conclude with clarifying that the entity possessing me/of which I am in possession is not Lucifer, but it could be, or might as well be? (I think the internal logic of the speech fell apart here, but to be fair, even in-dream I was mostly desperately playing for time and attention).

Then I invite everyone and anyone - spread word, tell friends and enemies - to come to the anti-supernatural agency compound to move in if they need a home/have a big potluck/peace treaty negotiation/idk exactly. The timing of this coincides, naturally, with the deadline for separating the Darkness from me, so if anyone's gonna attack, it'll be then, too.

Idk what the people running the agency thought of this. I did NOT consult them in advance.

The day of: first a couple minor supernatural people show up, the sort who just wanna live in peace, maybe were neutral parties already? Then other minor randos, some from jail, some bc word did spread. Idk why so many are willing to trust this offer - maybe something I did during the bulk of the plot which the dream skipped over? I think the humans have been pretty free with the "this person isn't human and should be locked up" over the years, but maybe there's better ones, idk. Most "monsters" don't support the ones who want to end the world/kill all humans/etc. There starts to be a crowd.

Snakey villain, #2 danger, shows up relatively early and reveals that mostly he just wants to be left in peace, and if he can have that WITHOUT killing all humans first, he's fine! Let's give this a shot, as overseen by the nice young woman melded with the void!

Chrommaster tries to break in I think? Idk if he's here to kill me or just to steal stuff or what

We def had some sort of sensors/perimeter alarms/idk looking out for the particularly Big Bads, so I greeted both of the above personally. There's an alert for the Goblin but it's a false alarm? But we're pretty sure - and as an outside view, I'm VERY sure - he will show up to try to kill me and take the Darkness for himself?

AND THEN

IN THE DREAM

IT SHIFTED BACK TO ME WATCHING WITH MY FRIENDS BUT WE WERE TALKING INSTEAD OF WATCHING VERY HARD, AND THEN I WOKE UP.

#dreams #my dreams #my fic #i guess??

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gossip-girl-of-middleearth · 3 years

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Speak my Language (Fellowship x Hurt! Reader)

Synopsis: After being ambushed by orcs, you are left alone at your isolated camp to bleed out. However, your loyal friend, a “tyger” from Far Harad, has other plans in mind—tracking down another camp nearby, comprised of nine warriors, in search of aid for you.

Pairings: a bit of Legolas x Reader. I’m a simp for him, okay?

Warnings: blood, mentions of an attack, hurt/comfort

The attack came too fast and too swiftly. Orcs weren’t supposed to reside in this area of the forest, or so you thought. It was almost as if something were driving them to your location, like dolphins chasing down fish to the shores of oceans.

Whatever may be the case, and whoever the fish in this scenario were, you were the one left severely injured.

It started with a flickering of your tyger’s ear. Comrade, as you named him, was an exotic breed of big cat, from the furthermost southern jungles of Far Harad, where the likes of oliphaunts also roamed.

You had met the large orange, striped cat on a mission to spring all kinds of animals free on the southern shores of Middle-earth. The Haradrim were responsible for this illegal smuggling trade, though you knew someone far larger was behind it.

A mystery was unfolding in Middle-earth before your eyes. Orcs in odd locations, secret illicit activities in dark harbours, and a growing disbalance in the ecosystem.

Setting the stampeding oliphaunts loose, the wooden crates on the foggy harbour soon burst into chaos. Men ran everywhere, both trying to save themselves and their jobs.

As ropes and hooks were cast into the grey flesh of the loudly trumpeting beasts, you snuck out. However, on your escape route, a rabid, hissing animal caught your attention.

You had never seen a cat like him before, and knew instantly he was out of sorts amongst the scenery of Middle-earth. What on earth would he need stripes to blend in with? You figured he was more used to tall savannahs, if anything.

Tentatively, and knowing all could go wrong for yourself, you unlatched the lock containing your soon-to-be friend.

He leapt out and crouched lowly before you, arching his back and sizing up your neck. His teeth were large and yellow at the gums, as he flashed them viciously.

However, making the first move, you slowly showed him your empty hands, and kneeled down. A slight change in his attitude was present, as his hisses ceased and his ears unpinned themselves.

And when a Haradrim man came at you, well, all that was left were ribbons of flesh and a new partner for you.

Ever your noble protector, Comrade lifted his head from your lap, where you were running your hands through his now twitching ears.

“What is it, boy?” you cooed, tracing the black stripes on his head.

A low growl had begun to form at the back of his throat, and you stilled your hand. Though a level of trust had been formed between you both throughout the three years you walked alongside him, he was still a wild animal at the end of the day.

You took into account the twitching of his tail, and your heart stopped. You always feared Comrade might one day turn around and attack you like he did to those Haradrim. Small housecats were bad enough with mood-swings as it was.

Eyeing up his large paws, where claws the size of small shanks appeared, you grew clammy. However, a distant snapping of a branch beyond the dark trees both settled and rose your nerves.

Glancing up from Comrade, you followed his keen line of sight past your little campfire. You stared for what felt like minutes, until another branch snapping sounded the alarms.

Comrade immediately lifted himself from your lap, and stood tall. The power in his sudden movement scared you, and you found yourself jolting to your own feet.

All you had on you was a small dagger, for you liked to think of yourself as a “wise pacifist”.

You drew it in front of yourself, and scared breaths racked your chest. Comrade was pacing the dirt in front of you, eyes forever trained on the forest, tail swishing.

And then, the attack came.

A slaughter occurred between the trees and before the fire, and though you managed to assist with many kills, Comrade in the end was the clear victor.

However, one tyger against ten orcs was not entirely fair.

In the aftermath, you found yourself with your back rested against a tree—your hand clutching a dagger in your abdomen.

Orcs bodies lay strewn around, some missing heads, others with their intestines spilled on the upturned dirt. Most, however, had their jugulars torn out.

Comrade had just put to rest his last orc, and turned his panting, blood-soaked snout back to you at the sound of a small whimper. The previously feral glint in his eyes subsided, as he observed your mewling state.

Your hand clutched the pommel of the dagger, as you struggled to not look at it—favouring to keep your eyes screwed shut instead, and your chin lifted high.

He immediately thudded one paw in front of the other, as he came to stand beside you. He sniffed the dagger, and made a small sound reminiscent of chuffing to your face. He nudged his nose with your cheek, willing you to look at him.

When you did, you found amber eyes, brimming with concern, looking back at you.

“I wasn’t fast enough,” you tried with a small smile, but mewled again through the pain of speaking.

He chuffed once more, and tried to inspect the dagger. You gently pushed his head away, knowing there wasn’t much he could do.

Understanding the severity of your state, he lifted his neck and stood tall. Flickering his ears in all directions, Comrade scoped out the forest. He could hear the sounds of night for many miles—owls hooting, mice rustling, squirrels climbing and…men chatting lowly around a crackling fire.

They did not sound like orcs, and turning his nose to the air above, Comrade knew instantly they were not. Instead, the scent of men and elves lingered in the breeze, and something new he hadn’t encountered before.

Without glancing back at you, he took off running through the woods.

Watching him leave in confusion, you knitted your brows. However, the throbbing split in your stomach soon burned away again, and you were left crying alone through bared teeth.

On the other side of the forest, just a few miles away, the Fellowship’s camp resided. The loss of Gandalf still rippled through the colleagues and friends like an unsettled lake, and not much was found beyond quiet chatter.

The topic, primarily, was of Lothlorien—the beautiful kingdom they had just reluctantly left.

Sat on a log, and grimacing as he ate rabbit meat off of a bone—quite different from the prepared salads with small chunks of chicken he had grown up with—Legolas watched the fire.

His fingers were sticky, and his nose was scrunched, as he attempted to eat said meat.

Next, Gimli’s chuckles filled the air.

The laughter silenced everyone, for it was the first time anyone had laughed since Moria.

Lifting his eyes, Legolas found Gimli laughing at him. “What is it?”

“A bit out of your comfort zone, aren’t we?” Gimli chuckled back, motioning to the prince’s fingers.

Legolas’ lips fell into a sarcastic frown. “That’s because I was actually raised with the idea of comfort to begin with.”

Gimli dismissively waved his hand. “All I’m hearing is pretty excuses.”

Legolas placed a sticky hand over his chest, and batted his lashes. “You think I’m pretty?”

A smirk grew on Gimli’s lips, as he pointed at the faint outline of grease on Legolas’ Lothlorien tunic.

Losing his own smirk, Legolas looked down at the clothing and sneered upon realizing his mistake.

Laughter rippled through the camp, and a few added on their own taunts in an effort to keep the happy atmosphere alive, even if at the prince’s expense.

However, Legolas had since tuned out. His head was over his shoulder, his pointed ears twitching, as he eyed off the forest behind. Distantly, snapping twigs and thudding paws could be heard.

“Don’t you think, Legolas?” Boromir laughed, slowly reeling the elf’s concerned attention back in to him. “Legolas? I said, don’t you—”

“Shh!” Legolas cut him off, whipping his head over his shoulder again.

Aragorn was the first to cease his relaxed nature, as he knew the cautious elf well-enough.

“Someone’s a bit of a soft—” Gimli had gone to say, before Legolas shushed him again.

Snapping his eyes to his friends, Legolas hastily whispered, “Do you not hear that?”

“We don’t have your—”

“Hush, let him speak,” Aragorn interjected, earning the obedience of the camp. “What is it, Legolas?”

“Something large and ambitious approaches from behind,” Legolas answered, scanning his eyes over his shoulder again.

Just as the elf did, the Fellowship dragged their sights along the trees. Slowly, following Legolas’ words and now actions, the entire camp rose to their feet and clutched their weapons.

The hobbits all nervously eyed one another, as the four stronger warriors stood in front. They each all watched the trees, and their hearts pounded faster, for they, too, could now hear what Legolas was explaining.

Loud thumps reached their ears, as did beastly panting. Legolas drew an arrow, and aimed it in preparation.

And then, Comrade burst into the camp.

The hobbits screamed in shock—in fact, both Gimli and Boromir shouted, too.

The tyger paced before them all, chuffing loudly in communication. Legolas, understanding all living things, heard the tyger speak.

Please! I need your help! My friend, she’s hurt—wounded by orcs!

Legolas lowered his arrow, much to the horror of the others.

“What are you doing?” Boromir screeched. “Shoot it down! It’s rabid! Look at the blood coating its mouth!”

“It is orc blood,” Legolas slowly drew out, knitting his brows in the direction of the tyger. “And he says he needs our help?”

Aragorn glanced at Legolas wide-eyed, and they shared a look—one dripping in superior knowledge.

Legolas made a show of disarming himself of his bow, and spoke back to the tyger in a way only elves could.

Take us to her.

The tyger turned around instantly, and began running into the woods. Aragorn and Legolas followed.

“Wait,” Pippin exclaimed in confusion, as everyone left him behind. “Has he always been able to speak with animals?! Did everyone else know this but me?!”

“Hurry up, Pippin!”

Comrade had left you twenty minutes ago, and you felt an uncontrollable shiver run through your body. It was a shiver that, despite being close to the fire, was continuous.

Your teeth chattered, and your stomach coiled at the blood soaking you. It was all over the front of your tunic, and continuing to spread. You hadn’t removed the dagger as of yet—too afraid of both the consequences and the pain simultaneously.

You felt both dizzy and tired, and only wanted a nap. Just as you were beginning to close your eyes, frantic thudding in the distance could be heard.

Weakly, you turned your eyes to the trees Comrade had left through, and waited for either your friend or more orcs to appear.

However, what you were not expecting, was a blonde elf to burst through the dark with your tyger.

The tall elf skidded to a stop a few yards before you, and gasped sharply. His widened eyes raked over your paling, clammy body in alarm.

“Oh my goodness!” he cussed, before throwing his eyes over his shoulder. “Aragorn! Come quickly!”

Next, a man burst into view. Behind him, another man, dwarf and four hobbits followed. Though, for all you knew, they were children.

White dots filled your vision, and you soon felt very delirious, as if in a dream.

The elf rushed forwards, and fell to his knees beside you. He brushed your hair out of your face to observe your half-lidded eyes, where he then spoke.

“Y/n? Y/n, are you all right? Your friend, Comrade, told me of you. Can you hear me?”

All you could make out of his face were two brilliantly blue eyes. A white, angelic light encompassed him otherwise, and the blonde hair certainly didn’t help.

You garnered a sort of dazed smile, as you scanned his blinding face. “You’re an angel, aren’t you? Sent from above? Oh thank goodness—I thought I was going to go alone.”

Listening to your soft voice, the brunette man with greasy hair dropped beside the elf.

“Her strength fails and her light fades,” Aragorn commented. He scanned his eyes over your wound. “I shall use athelas to treat the bleeding, but…this may be beyond us.”

Legolas looked at Aragorn in horror, before looking down at you again. Two deaths on his hands in such a short amount of time? The immortal elf couldn’t—wouldn’t—process it.

“We are not yet too far from Lothlorien,” Legolas pointed out, studying your tired face. “We can turn around and leave her in the hands of Galadriel and her kin. They will heal her.”

“We haven’t time to double-back and risk the orcs,” Boromir pointed out.

Next, Legolas gestured at all the strewn bodies of the camp. “It appears our fault she dies in the first place. She felt safe enough to camp in these woods, and rightfully so, but we brought the orcs with us. We must help her. She’s our duty now.”

“Legolas is right,” Aragorn agreed, crushing athelas in his hands with water from his pouch. “The orcs are only in these woods because they track us. Legolas, you are the fastest here and know these trees second-best to me. You will take her back to Lothlorien and then take the journey three times faster to catch up with us.”

Legolas nodded his head in understanding, and felt your hand. It was cold, shivering and sweaty. He swallowed his nerves.

“You might want to hold her further,” Aragorn quietly pointed out to Legolas, gesturing to your hand.

The elf noticed the prepared athelas paste, and the ranger’s hand hovering over the intruding dagger’s pommel. Next, Aragorn spoke to you.

“Y/n, my name is Aragorn. I am going to help heal you, and then Legolas here will rush you back to Lothlorien. I am going to remove the dagger to decrease further injury. It will hurt for a moment. Do you understand?”

“Legolas?” you repeated in confusion, looking up at the aforementioned prince. “Oh, yes—him. He’s an angel.”

Aragorn smiled briefly, especially at the creeping blush on his friend’s pointed ears, until you looked back at him and took into account his dirty presentation. “You, on the other hand, are not an angel.”

Comrade, having been pacing the dirt on your free side, came to lay beside you, recognising what was about to happen next.

Aragorn politely curled his lips at your delirious insult, and quickly tore the dagger from your abdomen.

As if supporting a woman through birth, Legolas’ mewls were louder than your own, for the hand of yours he held clenched tightly.

Aragorn got to work quickly, and began applying the athelas to your now bleeding wound. You cried softly, as you felt the pain both grow and lessen.

Finding comfort through your dizzy haze in the thumbpad stroking your knuckles, you squeezed the same hand again, and were pleasantly surprised to find it squeezing back.

Gimli, Boromir and the hobbits watched on—nervously observing both the tyger lying beside you, and your hurt form.

“Lothlorien is a night’s run behind us. She needs a different tunic to reduce the risk of infection,” said Aragorn, using a makeshift cloth to wipe the blood away from you.

Legolas pressed his lips into a thin line, and nodded. He briefly let go of your hand, much to your vocal discomfort, and grabbed the bottom hems of his tunic. He lifted the green material over his head, and was left with nothing but a long-sleeved, white undershirt.

As Aragorn wrapped your chest with what he could find on him that’d temporarily work as a bind, Legolas patiently waited.

After your wound was tended to, Aragorn leant over to speak with you. “Your wound is dressed, Y/n. Legolas will now take care of you until Lothlorien. You are in good, capable hands. I promise.”

You mustered the strength to nod back, despite white dots still filling your vision.

Aragorn clasped Legolas’ shoulder and nodded, to which he nodded back. Then, the ranger turned and told the rest of the Fellowship to head back to camp.

Having ensured everyone was out of sight, Legolas looked down at you again.

“May I please change your tunic? I will close my eyes, but it has to be done—the blood will lead to infection if not dealt with.”

However, you stilled gazed up at him with a silly smile. Considering all he wore was now white, you believed your suspicions of him being an angel correct.

After a moment, his words finally drifted through your mind, like a lone leaf on a lazy river, and you nodded.

Legolas raised a hand to the hem of your tunic, and hooked his fingers underneath, but was halted by the sudden growling and standing of Comrade.

You dare touch her in such a state? I sought you out for help!

I am an elven prince, mellon. Trust me when I say; it is not even remotely possible in my genetic nature to do such a thing.

Well, trust me when I say; it is most definitely in my genetic nature to go for the jugular—always.

Understood, but you must let me help her. Have we not done so already? Let me complete assisting her, and then you shall follow me to Lothlorien.

The snarling lips of the tyger curled for a minute, as he stared across at the determined elf over your body—face to face.

Slowly, his growls died.

Fine. Just know, however, I am watching you every step of the way.

Well, that makes one of us.

As he promised, Legolas closed his eyes. He carefully, but swiftly lifted your blood-soaked tunic and tossed it aside.

Fumbling for a few minutes, as he did so blind, Legolas dressed you in his own green tunic. It was large on you, more like a short dress, but did the job of concealing your wounded form.

At some point, you had nearly drifted off to sleep, but a gentle cooing of Legolas brought you back.

“Hey, you must stay awake for now, all right? I am going to carry you to a lovely kingdom, and you will be taken care of. All I ask in return is that you keep me company with conversation the whole way. Can you please do that for me?”

Exhaling past your nose through your fatigue, you fluttered your hazy eyes open again.

Searching Legolas’ own, you nodded.

“Okay,” you promised.

“Good girl,” Legolas replied. He then gently scooped you into his arms like a bride, and checked in with Comrade.

Are you a fast runner?

Is that even a question?

To further his point, Comrade sprinted off into the trees, leaving Legolas jogging behind him. And, just as you promised, you spoke softly to him the whole way—mostly of his “angelic eyes”—and he delivered on his promise, of quite literally delivering you to Lothlórien.

Surprising Legolas most, however, was the new promise you made after healing by the aid of Galadriel’s hand, just a few days after your arrival.

Upon learning of what exactly was disturbing your ecosystem in Middle-earth, you told Legolas he would not be making the journey back to his friends alone, for he had gained two new ones.

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killmebythebeach · 3 years

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A bunch of head cannons (Maybe too much). Also in talking about the characters.

I think Dream is that one design where his skin is just the static tv screen. He just constantly emits that fuzzy noise, Sam crafted him the smile mask that he can see through so he doesn't scare people.

George is just kind of the server itself. He's the same species as Hannah, but a mushroom and more powerful. If he stays awake too long, the server just kind of freezes. This is also a reason XD keeps him sleeping, it's his way of talking to George and he thinks the server is like his soap opera of mortals.

Callahan is sort of like the person who makes sure George doesn't get killed or dies while asleep, making sure he's surrounded by mushrooms and such. Deer hybrid <3

Alyssa joined the server because she knew all her friends were idiots and didn't want them to die immediately. But once the elections rolled around, she felt the pressure of choosing sides and ran away to the desert, only keeping contact with Ponk. She actually lives just a couple miles from Foolish's summer home. Her communicator actually died after a couple months and she had no way of charging it, so she lost contact with everyone.

Sapnap is a magma cube hybrid and can jump higher than most, his natural temperature runs hotter, and is fire proof. Bad found him in the nether when he was maybe 10-15 years old.

Sam was actually a normal creeper, but gained player like sentience from being struck by lightning. Instead of becoming charged, he gained intelligence and met the others on the server. Callahan taught him some Redstone, but from there he figured out a lot on his own. He's also a creeper centaur.

Ponk is actually a descendant of a fairy, a lemon tree. Their mask was also a gift from Sam because after the second or third time their tree was burnt, their immune system was weakened a considerable amount. Alyssa also wore her mask for them.

Bad is a size shifting demon from the nether, more specifically soul sand desert. He uses soul fire to gain strength, so because the egg died when near it, he was just a little weaker than normal. Because he's a demon he needs a tie to the overworld to stay there, he tied his soul and lives to Skeppy.

Tommy was grown in a lab to be a hero, project: THESEUS. The lab gave him small enhancements, like slightly stronger and just a bit more resilient, to make the Above Average Boy (TM). He then ran away to meet Wilbur. When Dream asked Wilbur if he wanted to come to the server, he asked if Tommy could go first to see what it was like. He also actually really likes gardening and making up funny songs to Wilbur playing guitar. He also made funny lyrics for his discs, but he's still a bit scared to take them out of his ender chest. Other than bringing attachment, Dream also exiled Tommy to see what his lab enhancements could do.

Tubbo is an adaptive hybrid! His hair was blond, shifting to brown when Wilbur found him, getting blue eyes from Tommy, growing small horns under Schlatt, parts of his skin being static when Dream was "helping" him with his presidency, and parts of his scars tinging black and green from Ranboo and Micheal. Tubbo also helped Wilbur write part of the anthem. He likes living in the snow because the Manberg flag had magma blocks on it, casting a heatwave over the country, and after L'Manburg blew up it got really hot from the exposed stone in direct sun.

Fundy can actually hold his breath for a very long time and swim very well because of Sally teaching him and his salmon genes. The yellow things on his hat are actually shells, and the stripes on his jacket are trans colors. Also with his dreams, he saw Eret was going to betray them but didn't think it was real, or didn't want to. He also saw Wilbur blow up L'Manburg but chose not to believe it, thinking his father could still be saved. He actually saw pretty much everything, but didn't quite understand what they were until after doomsday.

The necklace Punz wears is one of those picture lockets, but he lost the picture and can't remember what it was. The first time Dream paid him was when Dream asked for help and Punz made an off hand joke about getting money, and then Dream thought he was being serious. Him, Dream, and Sapnap were like brothers, and Punz got sadder every time he saw Dream pushing people away and diving deeper into darkness.

Purpled is an aliensent to see if the planet was colonizable, but then crashed and was stranded, all his communications down and his ship barely able to hover fifty feet off the ground. When Quackity blew it up, he essentially got rid of his chance of ever going home. Purpled's species can shapeshift, so he turned himself into the first person he saw, Punz. Eventually before trying to communicate with the native life forms, he edited his form a little so they weren't identical, keeping purple eyes and antennae, changing the colors slightly, and changing the voice up. When he moves away from the main SMP, Ponk makes sure to check up on him and that he has a way to check his communicator.

Wilbur came a month after sending Tommy. His father being a patron of life and his mother the goddess of death, he met in the middle being born as a human. The only reason Ghostbur was as active and present as he was was because he was so connected to both life and death. Since his corpse was decaying for as long as it was, Wilbur is now super weak, his flesh is thin and his eyes are rotted and gone. Much like Ghostbur, Wilbur in limbo saw what people said about him, and Ghostbur could hear that from the back of his head. Now Wilbur can hear what people say about Ghostbur and he hates it, not wanting to be connected to what he thinks like a shell of himself.

Schlatt is a ram (duh) and actually does the fainting goat thing. So when he died of a heart attack, no one knew at first if he was actually dead or not. His alcoholism stems from the revive book, as the possibility of tampering with death made him existential and scared, so to cope he drank. There are also a ton of other stuff other than revival in the book, but it's in galactic.

Skeppy was just a normal human, but after making the pact with Bad, Bad put a spell on him. Parts of him turned into diamond, protecting both his and Bad's lives. He however, is unaware of this. With the egg, he would just sit on it, the diamonds chipping away to make room for the vines.

Eret was cursed by the Wither Cult, giving them white eyes and a slowly deteriorating memory. Not sure what to do, Foolish dropped them off at the SMP. Sometimes they would dream about old memories from before the curse, but it was just glimpses so he could never tell what they meant. Once they were king, they made the Herobrine shrine subconsciously, not really sure what it was after. They also had a strange affinity of beacons and resurrection, some of their memories resurfacing when they tried to help Phil and Ghostbur revive Wilbur after doomsday. The reason people are more scared of their eyes than any other wierd eyes was because he generally looks like a normal human, but the wither along with their Herobrine origins creates an uncanny valley that people are shocked by.

Jack had red and blue irises before crawling out of hell, but after coming back the whites of his eyes also turned red and blue. He always wears 3d glasses so no one noticed, but he just thought no one cared enough to mention it. He also has a bunch of scars and burn marks that no one but him can see, therefore no one asks about them or thinks something is wrong, cementing the idea that no one cares about him.

Niki is a blaze hybrid (stole this from @/420technoblazeit) whose fire hair color changes based on strong emotion, something she bond with Tubbo for as a fellow shifter. A soft yellow in L'Manburg, brighter orange in Manburg, hot pink on Doomsday, a soul fire blue with the syndicate (which Techno hates), and a dead grey when she found out Wilbur was alive. She was also old child hood friends with Ranboo and Eret, leaving Ranboo for the SMP. Ranboo, unfortunatly, doesn't remember much more than her name. She also knows galactic from Ranboo, so she talks about her troubles to Shy the Enderman. She doesn't really know how to talk to Puffy anymore after Doomsday or finding out how she wants to protect Tommy.

Quackity can perfectly replicate someone's voice and, with a lot of effort, can completely change his form to another player. He also has very small yellow wings, too small to fly, so he almost always hides them. He used to constantly change his voice for jokes with Karl, Sapnap, and George, but he doesn't like doing it now in Las Nevadas, as he sees it as unprofessional. However, sometimes he uses when he visits Dream, changing his voice to people like George and Sapnap to make torture more effective.

In the In Between and Other Side, Karl actually looks like his old skin, or his natural state (the big purple one that inspired his sweater). But most of the time in the normal world, he looks human. With effort he can bring out the interdemential being thing, something only Quackity and Sapnap know about. The more he time travels, the easier it becomes to change, and he's even started defaulting to the other form.

HBomb is actually just a normal news reporter, sent to interview and record what's going on in the server, his first big story being the election. Upon Doomsday, the stress of seeing everyone alone, fighting, and disconnected, he ran away from the world, essentially becoming a cat lady. His undercover reporter persona is actually the cat maid. He eventually came back to the server to see how he could help after Doomsday, befriending Niki again and living with her in the underground city.

Techno is a piglin, so he's scared of soul fire. He forgot to tell Phil before he decorated the syndicate room, so he just suffers in silence. He also does better when around a lot of gold, like in the nether, and he feels drained and slightly weaker without it. Instead of just putting gold around the area (it would ruin his property value), he just hibernates. He has an emerald earing, like all of the syndicate, but his is a locket that unfolds into pictures of the syndicate.

Ant always wears a red hoodie, now ruined by the egg, that used to be Red's. On Red's death anniversary, him, Bad, Skeppy, and Sam would make cake and put flowers on his grave. He missed the last one because it was during the egg, but for a brief moment after Puffy killed him he saw Red. Red then promptly and bluntly told him to stop being a pussy (haha, cat) and that he shouldn't do all this just to get him back, one of Ant's motivators to make amends with the people he hurt while with the egg. Ant is also a shapeshifter, but can only turn into a cat.

Phil actually used to work under Foolish as a patron of life but then he had a son with the goddess of death, so his title was removed so he could be with her and he became an Angel of Death. Kristin noticed how sad he was after being released, so she gifted him wings. They were however, destroyed on November 16th. His chat also serves as messenger pigeons, which were used to send letters to Wilbur.

Connor is actually just a hedgehog who somehow befriended Schlatt. Even before the haunted mansion, Karl vented to him about his time travel troubles, not knowing he was a sentient player. As a hedgehog, no one really cares where he goes, so he goes outside the server limits to meet his friends from the haunted mansion.

Puffy is a distant relative of Schlatt, but instead of politics she went into piracy. With her mom, she went travelling the seas. One say, a storm came and wiped out her ship, her crew, her mom, everything but her. The reason she survived was because Foolish saw her and saved her. Unfortunately, Puffy hit hee head in the crash and doesn't remember anything.

Vikkstar is the equivalent of a big time celebrity, so of course his endorsement of POG2020 was a big deal.

Lazarbeam is literally just a ginger bread cookie.

Ranboo has actually met a lot of the smp before actually joining. He's met Niki, Fundy, Eret, Punz, and Dream at least. He also sees the inverted colors Enderman see. His suit was actually a gift from Eret before they forgot how to tailor. He got the crown from Techno after joining the syndicate, claiming he didn't want any syndicate members to look like trash.

Foolish came to the server most recently to check up on Eret, but he couldn't bring himself to leave again. When Puffy adopts him, he can't say no because he remembers saving her. His initial goal was to kill an ender dragon to claim the XD title and become a full god like DreamXD, but after realising someone already killed it he went into his totem if death phase. Upon meeting Eret, he got over it and they went on some silly adventures, Foolish now taking a more peaceful route.

Hannah is essentially a weaker George, as her power is tied to the plants themselves and not the entire server. She however has a lot more physical power because rose dryads like to fight because they have thorns. Since roses can be taken out a lot easier, she is essentially a glass canon. Also when around any plant, she can make it grow faster than normal.

Any guest on the server? Corpse, Pokimane, Lil Nas? They were all Slimecicle. That's how he knows where everyone is from, even outside of Las Nevadas. No one else knows this. He's also ancient, if he met Phil they would probably recognise eachother. There was an actual Charlie Slimecicle who was not a slime, but after being launched into orbit this Slimecicle decided to impersonate him.

Michael Mcchill is a sort of bounty hunter. He came to the server after hearing of all the crime, assuming there'd be a lot of bounties to collect. However, he soon learned that no one really cares if you commit a crime. He then took to reading news articles made by HBomb to see if there were any past open bounties. But after reading for a while about the server's wronguns, mostly Dream, he began to sympathise with them. And he's also a speedrunner, so maybe he could help with some bounties across other servers!

This was a very long post and i apologize, but it was so fun to finally write all these thoughts down! I hope you liked them! I can't even fit all the tags I want.

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mimzy-writing-online · 3 years

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Hello. I had a question regarding your post about blind characters. I have a character in my WIP that must cover their eyes.. but it’s blind. He may need to tell people he is blind to explain why he covers his eyes though. I was wondering how I might write this character without offending. Thank you :)

I think I want to start by explaining the “covering blind eyes” trope and why it has become a harmful trope. I think understanding why it’s hurtful helps everyone learn how to handle it better.

I would guess that the “blind people wear sunglasses” trope comes from Hollywood for the specific reason of 1. wanting to signal to the audience that the character is obviously blind and 2. avoid breaking the suspension of disbelief by preventing the audience from catching the sighted actor look at visual stimuli (because disabled characters are almost always played by able actors).

But this changed the way the public expects to experience blindness. If watching a sighted actor wear sunglasses and say he’s blind is all the exposure to the blind community a person has had, that’s the only model of blindness they’ll recognize. If they meet a blind person in real life who doesn’t wear sunglasses, it’s going to break this built perception and cause an uncomfortable cognitive dissonance.

And then there is the common “cloudy-white blank gaze” that pops up in media. It stems from the fact that cataracts is the most common cause of blindness and the appearance of severe cataracts is a cloudy film in the eyes obscuring the iris and pupil. It can also alter what color a person’s eyes appears to be, making them appear paler and grey in the beginning and then as the cataract advances it becomes more yellow/brown and alters a person’s vision to appear more yellow tinted.

There are lots of other eye conditions that makes the eyes look visibly different. Albinism for instance affects the color and structure of the iris. Eyes might be congenitally misshapen. The muscles might be weak or not work and one or both eyes point significantly outward. Someone who was born blind and experienced no visual stimuli might also have weak muscles around their eyes because they never had a reason to focus their eyes on anything.

And unfortunately humans have the habit of feeling uncomfortable when they meet someone who looks very obviously different from the norm, whether that’s a personal style choice (hair color and style, tattoos, clothing choices) or something they can’t help (a visible disability, skin color, scars).

To the paragraph above, @gothhabiba replied with: “it's very weird & ahistorical to claim that racism or ableism are some kind of natural "human" trait.. like frankly it's apologia”

You’re right, I wasn’t thinking beyond that generalization or assumption.

Perhaps a better way to put it is: I was raised in a society where I was taught from childhood to think that there was only one kind of human being to be. White, cis, straight, abled, conservative. That’s a very western thing and that’s a thing I’m going to constantly be unlearning.

Racism and ableism and homophobia aren’t innate, that’s a western thing that was forced onto the rest of the world by colonialism. And because western media created this idea that the world is white, abled, cis, straight, and Christian-value leaning, it taught people to think that was the norm so that seeing someone different from that archetype would cause a cognitive dissonance, which causes discomfort.

And instead of working past that cognitive dissonance to learn more and realize there’s so much more to life than media taught you, society encourages you to ignore that cognitive dissonance by sticking your head in the sand-- or TV screen.

So combine these two tropes or common beliefs together and you get something a little dangerous: the idea that blind people cover their eyes because they look obviously different and they’re ashamed (or should be ashamed) of that.

And if you’re someone who’s just gone blind or who was born blind and you have little to no contact with the blind community, then this societal belief that you should be ashamed of how your eyes look becomes detrimental to your self-esteem and further builds internalized ableism.

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve read or watched a blind character cover their eyes with sunglasses because they were ashamed of how their eyes looked. And I distinctly remember a few times where a sighted friend of the character was trying to convince them to stop wearing sunglasses because there’s nothing wrong with looking different--which is true, but it plays into this fantasy of being the perfect abled ally who saves the blind character from being miserable.

In an ideal world, the character has no reason to believe looking different is a bad thing or diminishes their worth or makes people dislike them. And if they develop this belief, it’s more likely that someone more involved in the disabled community, most likely someone disabled themselves, will set them straight. Or that the character will learn to accept themselves on their own, looks included.

But there are some perfectly valid reasons for any blind person to wear sunglasses. They might have an interest in fashion and sunglasses complete the look they’re going for. They could want to protect their eyes from UV rays while they’re outside. They may experience light sensitivity and sunglasses reduces any discomfort or pain. Those are incredibly common reasons to wear sunglasses whether you’re sighted or blind.

But there are some more complicated situations.

In your words, your character must cover his eyes. You never specified why, so my primary guess is that he has some kind of power that is unpleasant or has devastating affects and the only way to prevent it is to keep his eyes covered. My primary guess stems from this post where an anon and I discussed a retelling of Medusa, a hypothetical blinding of oneself to avoid ever killing anyone ever again, and what I think I would do if I was in that scenario.

So how do you write a blind character who must cover their eyes and avoid some of the complications?

1. Your character must always have the ability to say “fuck off, it’s my business, I don’t have to tell you why I’m blind or why I cover my eyes.”

Most blind people really, really don’t want to get into the nitty-gritty of why they’re blind and how they feel about it and what it’s like being blind with a stranger they’ll never see again or a new acquaintance they don’t know well yet. You have exceptions to that rule where sure, educating the public about blindness is a thing you want to do and you’re committed to helping your community, but I still have days where I don’t want to talk about being blind or disclose my medical crap.

And if someone doesn’t respect their right to their privacy or pushes too much, the blind character is allowed to be angry, is allowed to tell them off and complain without anyone else in the situation vilifying them or saying they’re “overreacting” and “should have just disclosed private information because big deal or whatever.” If they are angry, that’s their right, and it’s not unreasonable, it doesn’t make them a bad person.

2. Your character should not be ashamed of being blind or of covering their eyes. It is a part of their life, they’re used to it by now, even if they weren’t in the beginning.

The shame and internalized ableism is something that should be written about, but that’s for an own-voices story with a blind author. I don’t think an abled person will ever be able to understand how much society expects you to hate yourself and your disability because “being disabled is a tragic thing that ruins your life” and how that does affect your mental health, self esteem, your relationships with others, your medical care, and what kind of accommodations you can get.

3. It wouldn’t hurt to have a few sarcastic lines in response to uncomfortable conversations.

Stranger: so what’s with the...

Blind Character: what’s with what?

S: the... you know

BC: you’re gonna have to be a bit more specific

S: Your eyes?

BC: They’re... eyes

S: but you’re...

BC: Blind?

S: uh...

BC: yeah, I’m blind. *walks away*

Or this conversation:

S: *to some other character* so why are his eyes covered?

(author’s note: which, honestly, that’s fucking rude. At least have the guts to ask me yourself)

BC: If I look anyone in the eye they instantly perish.

*awkward silence*

BC: instantly.

Friend: It’s truly tragic

BC: *melancholic* that’s how I lost my sister. *chokes up* She was so young

Or this conversation:

S: Why are you wearing that?

BC: It’s called fashion Karen!

Or this conversation:

S: are you like... blind?

BC: yes?? why wouldn’t I be?? Wait, are you sighted? Are you one of those sighted people? You poor thing! What caused you to gain your sight? Do you have a car? A bike? Were you born sighted? What’s it like to see color? Do you miss not having to see

God, I want a chance to try that last one. I haven’t interacted with a stranger in almost a year. One day...

4. Honestly, it’d also be cool if someone’s reaction to your character covering their eyes was like, “cool sunglasses,” or “cool *insert random character, even one you made up* cosplay,” (which is ten times funnier if this character is a notable figure in modern society like an actor who people might cosplay).

5. You know, if he’s covering his eyes with some kind of blindfold, he should totally have custom blindfolds for his moods. Like, I have a mask that says “suck it up buttercup” and another that says “not today” because sometimes that’s the mood. And sometimes the mood is one of my floral masks, and sometimes the mood is my cat mask.

So, just some thoughts. I hope that helps.

Edit: a commenter said: “op, unless i'm mistaken this kind of reads like anon meant the character ISN'T blind but lies about being blind to explain covering their eyes? it seems like they made a typo on the word "isn't"”

So my original response to the question was based on the assumption that the character is blind. However,

If the character is not blind, then do not under any circumstances have them lie and say they’re blind to escape a mild inconvenience.

It’s better to have the character actually explain the situation or straight up leave the conversation or invent a more ridiculous lie than to perpetuate the very real stereotype and misconception that there are people who fake being blind and therefore it’s okay to discriminate or harass them if you even suspect they’re faking.

Do not under any circumstances perpetuate that stereotype. Do not harass someone because you don’t think they’re blind enough.

#blind character #writeblr #writing community #disabled character #writing tropes #trope talk #blindness tropes #Anonymous

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that-was-anticlimactic · 3 years

Text

reki with tourette’s headcanons

[ID: it’s reki from sk8 the infinity wearing a yellow sweatshirt with his hands on his hips. he’s wearing a red bracelet on his right wrist and he’s smiling. behind him is a touette’s syndrome awareness flag. end ID.]

so. @zukkaclawthorne got me hooked on reki with ts and now imma post headcanons i wrote oops

okay so first—that little skateboard he plays with??? stim toy, actually.

he likes the sound the wheels make—that whirrrrrr sound. it makes his arms flappy :)

he also finds the rolling motion soothing and relaxing and it always calms him down—it takes his mind to a happy place

he rocks back and forth and shakes his legs a lot. that also contributed to why he was terrible at skateboarding the first few times he tried—because his body would be like “time to rock back and forth!” and it would mess him up

neck twitches for days :)

no but for real—neck twitching is one of his worst tics because sometimes—if he’s in a bad mood or if he’s sad or anxious—it gets harsh and violent and really strains his neck.

so, langa gives him neck / upper back neck massages to help with the pain

he went through this phase for a couple of months where whenever his neck would twitch, he would snap his fingers two times.

he has a lot of hand tics which can be stressful when he makes skateboards because sometimes he’ll be in the groove and then suddenly he’ll mess something up

speaking of messing things up, he has a tendency to dig the bottom of his palm into his forehead whenever he feels like he does something stupid—he doesn’t even realize it until someone points it out.

he feels like even more of a failure of a skater because of his tics because they can hold him back and make the course more dangerous.

if his blinking tic resurfaces, sometimes the blinking gets so intense that he literally cannot see for anywhere between five seconds and a minute depending on how bad it is. that is how he got some of his worst scars.

or sometimes he’ll make a really aggressive hand motion and it throws him off balance on the skateboard due to the intensity

anyways back to hand tics: he points a lot and does symbols like the “rock on” sign or certain numbers (for some reason, the most common number for reki to throw up is four—though sometimes he throws up whatever number he hears) he also grunts a lot as a tic so he sounds angry even when he is’t.

sometimes, his hand tics really hurt and his hands become shaky and his fingers start to feel the way his heart feels when he’s anxious. langa helps in different ways—he holds reki’s hand, he gives him something to fidget with to try to distract him (sometimes it’s his own fingers—he’ll just set them in reki’s palm and be like “let me carry some of the pain”—no, reki didn’t totally cry when he said that what)

sometimes, reki sticks pencils in his ears. his teachers have been trying to stop it since he was young, but he always did it anyways—he couldn’t help it.

his hair is also long enough for him to chew on. yes, he chews on the tips of his hair because i say so. sometimes, to stop him from doing that (and from swallowing his own hair), langa will try to make him laugh so it falls out of his mouth and then he’ll scoot close and tuck the hair behind reki’s ears… once they start dating, he kisses him too. but also that’s one reason why he wears the headband—to try to keep his hair out of his face so he doesn’t chew on it.

reki’s favorite form of stimming (other than his skateboard toy, that is) is stress balls. he’s got a couple of stress balls in his room or backpack—even one with string attached so he can carry it around his wrist. he just really likes the texture of them.

after his second race against adam, cherry and joe were so proud of him and also impressed and worried dads that they bought reki a big stress ball, like, the size of a stuffed animal. it was a blue cat. he uses it all the time.

speaking of fricking adam, we all know he would so use reki’s tics against him during a race. like, when he grabbed his wrist and “danced” with him, he would mock reki’s tics or say creepy things about how his verbal tics are music and his motor tics are him dancing along and it makes him so uncomfortable and like even more shaken

oh and adam purposely does things to trigger his tics, like when i mentioned that number tic??? yeah, adam will purposefully say numbers to make reki do the hand gestures

one time, reki wanted to tell langa that he loved him but got nervous so he signed it in sign language instead. but, since reki’s tics are occasionally hand gestures, langa thought that it was just a tic and mentally was like “i wish that was for me…” and reki is like “i wish he knew it was real…” and joe, cherry, shadow, and miya are all facepalming and groaning at their obliviousness

reki prefers taking hand written notes to electronic notes because he draws / doodles to stim and he can’t really doodle well on a laptop. so, he’ll doodle in class all of the time

sometimes, his pictures / notes turn out pretty bad / illegible depending on how bad his tics are, but that doesn’t phase reki. it used to when he was younger, but it doesn’t bother him at all anymore. in fact, he thinks it adds personality

during class, he’ll draw pictures for langa and slid them on his desk. they’re usually really random things like the teacher or the back of someone’s head or squiggly lines or whatever he sees outside. more often than not, it’s abstract art. langa loves these drawings and he keeps them all on his desk in his room.

reki also started drawing pictures for the rest of the sk8 crew and gives it to them during races. when he gave everyone their first doodle, he was like “i’m not the best artist ever and sometimes my tics mess up the doodle, but i thought of you while i drew it so i want you to have it”

(shadow didn’t shed a couple of unwilling dad tears when he got home that night what)

anyways, they all keep them. every single one. miya puts them in their school binder so they don’t feel as alone / isolated at school.

although shadow and miya give reki a lot of crap / teasing about not being as good as everyone else, the second they hear anyone comment about “the weird red head that makes noises” and comments on his ts in a negative way, oh, they will stop you.

sometimes, reki whispers words he hears under his breath as a tic (echolalia, baby~) and when he overhears people saying stuff about “that redhead that always follows snow around” or about him not being good enough or how he’s an idiot to face adam, he ends up muttering that too. and it’s not a one and done kind of thing—like. he does it for days. it makes him so upset (and i already hc him, with depression so it just makes it worse)

having tics while having injuries is not a good combination—especially if it’s with a broken arm. the crew made sure to keep an eye of reki’s comfort / pain level after adam broke his arm and literally tried to kill him in their final race. joe let reki squeeze his hand whenever he felt the urge to tic and cherry would ask him how much pain he was in after he ticced and depending on how bad it would be, would make joe or shadow fetch a heating pad or an icepack for reki.

joe also taught reki about the magical thing called physical therapy tape and helped him put it on his shoulders, neck, and back one time. it was his idea to use the tape on reki’s fingers when he was injured to make him feel better (because it literally makes my fingers feel better)

also langa kisses each of reki’s fingers and knuckles, slowly and tenderly, soft so he doesn’t hurt him or trigger a tic. a way of showing that he loves him not despite his tics, but even with his tics and that he loves him and his tics.

cherry isn’t always the best at showing he cares, so he’ll wear a ts ribbon sometimes in a way to show support (and it makes reki beam)

shadow once gave reki a flower shaped stress ball because there were “extra at work” (not true—he went looking for one)

miya didn’t really know much about ts at first and asked why reki made those noises and made weird movements all the time and langa explained so then that night when miya got home, they did research on ts so they could understand it better. later, they told reki that whenever they called him a slime, they meant it purely about skateboarding and it had nothing to do with his tics—even that his tics didn’t make him less of a skater

all his life, reki had been the different one: the one no one wanted on the team because sometimes his tics messed him up, the one who was asked to leave classes during tests because his tics were too distracting and made him take the test in the hall, when sometimes he’d get too overwhelmed by how close people were in the halls or at races and would have panic attacks, how he rocked in his chair and adjusted his position seventeen times an hour and sat on his feet while the other kids didn’t, how he shook his legs more aggressively than others, how he couldn’t skate as well as everyone else because of his tics and because he wasn’t good enough

which is probably part of the depression that weighs on his shoulders

the first time reki had a panic attack during a race due to closeness and overstimulating noises (and this is the first one after the sk8 crew happened) langa was racing and wasn’t there to help, so shadow kind of panicked and like picked him up under the armpits and carried him away from the crowd since reki could barely process anything other than panic and the sound and feeling of static and they sat in shadow’s car for the rest of the race and once he felt better, he gave shadow a huge hug and shadow returned it.

one time it happened and cherry was nearby and he saw the signs before it got bad (remembered from the previous time / his own experiences) and helped talk reki down before it got bad (he has a soothing voice)

usually, though, when / if it happens (because reki usually feels safe there), langa is the one who helps

but it got so much worse after skating against adam the first time because he no longer felt safe and suddenly everyone cheering adam’s name even after witnessing what he did to reki was too much but langa was racing adam so langa wasn’t there and this time it was joe who kneeled in front of him and started talking just loud enough for reki to hear and he was like “you’re safe—we won’t let anyone hurt you. we won’t let him hurt langa. you’re safe. i’m here and so is cherry and shadow and miya and langa will be waiting for you at the end of the race…”

it happens again at the next race he goes to—and this time it’s miya who notices and they tug on langa’s sleeve and is like “i think you need to take reki somewhere else” and langa does :)

okay i’ll end on a positive ts note or two—langa asks reki to add the ts ribbon to the design on his skateboard

shadow finds chewelry at the store one day when he’s shopping and buys it for reki (and gets a matching one for langa!)

once reki came back after his mental health break, the first thing joe said to him was, and this is nonnegotiable “reki! i missed you and your tics!”

miya once overheard reki muttering to himself about his annoying tics were, so they intervened and was like “your tics aren’t annoying. they’re you and anyone who think s they’re annoying is an idiot”

and for the first time in his life, reki doesn’t feel alone and isolated and so different from everyone (at least, he’s working on that last one) and he’s finally found a group of people who want him on their team and a boyfriend who always supports him and makes him feel less isolated, tics and all <3

i uhh I have a lot of feelings,,,

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pillage-and-lute · 3 years

Note

If you're still taking request - your arranged marriage Au made me think of Jaskier as maybe someone cursed and in a tower, maybe everyone thinks the prince in a tower is guarded by a terrible dragon but the prince IS the dragon, and Geralt investigates?

Cute idea, elementalsight!

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“Rescuing a fair maiden, really?” Geralt said.

“The notice had he/him pronouns, so probably not exactly,” Yennefer said, looking at her nails. “And you need the money. Do you want the contract or not?”

Geralt picked it up from the table and smoothed the parchement.

“There’s really very little information here, they say he’s guarded by a dragon?”

“Mmmhmm,” Yennefer said, brushing at a chip in her nail polish that was probably imaginary.

“There’s no dragons out here, the terrains wrong, we’d know anyway.”

“Mmh, intriguing, right? Bet you wanna take that contract now.” Yen hadn’t looked up from her nails.

“Yen, what do you know?” He lashes cast odd shadows across her face in the torchlight.

“Nothing I’m telling you,” she said. Then she summoned a portal and disappeared with a swish of skirts.

Damn. He really was out of money though.

The tower wasn’t imposing or ominous. It wasn’t made of black stone or crooked, no random lightning storms or smoke, it wasn’t even that tall.

“Go away,” the voice came from a throat like a blast furnace and Geralt was staring into the slitted eyes of a mid sized (still big enough to eat him, just in more than one bite) dragon.

“Hello,” he said. “What’s a sky dragon doing in a place like this.” It was his special ‘talking to horses or big animals’ voice.

“Not a sky dragon,” the sky dragon grumbled.

“Yes you are, and what’s weird is that you should be up on some chilly cliff, not in a forest.”

“I’m a dragon, not any special kind. The eat you all up and burn your armor kind.” There was a pout in the voice now.

Geralt scratched one of the snout scales.

“Sure,” he said. The dragon huffed, blue-silver smoke rings curling from the nostrils. No eating occurred.

“I imagine I’m not very good eating,” Geralt said. Most witchers would probably at least give a dragon indigestion. “I also imagine you know something very important about the prince in the tower.”

The dragon, despite having eyes the size of soup bowls, did not meet Geralt’s gaze.

“He’s not even a very important prince, I don’t know why you’re interested.”

“I’d quite like to know why he’s imprisoned in a tower,” Geralt said, although a mental picture was forming. “And why I have a contract to kill both him and the dragon guarding it.”

The dragon pulled back sharply and hissed. A blade thin line of fire, blue and so hot it nearly seared off an eyebrow, missed Geralt by inches.

“Monster hunter,” the dragon said, shifting up on it’s haunches like it was getting ready to pounce. It wasn’t. He could see it in the muscles, they weren’t bunched right. The dragon didn’t want to hurt him, and the eyes just looked sad and kind of resigned.

“Yes,” Geralt admitted, holding up his hands, both currently sword free. “But I don’t want to kill him...or you. Monster hunter, not prince hunter.”

“Dragons are monsters,” the dragon said.

“Only to stupid people,” Geralt replied. “And sheep,” he added as an afterthought. “I want to meet this prince of yours.”

“NONE MAY ENTER,” the dragon said. “NOW LEAVE BEFORE I BURST YOUR EARDRUMS WITH A ROAR”

“You can’t, that’s only earth dragons, they’re all curled up under a mountain somewhere, and they’re certainly never blue.”

“The dragon looked nonplussed. “I’LL SPIT ACID IN YOUR FACE.”

“Swamp dragons,” Geralt said. “Green or yellow and a little smaller.”

“I’LL...”

“You were raised by humans,” Geralt interuppted.

“No?”

“Yes you were, otherwise you’d know more. Did the prince raise you? I won’t harm him you know, I only wan’t to talk.”

“NONE MAY ENTER.”

“Yes, you’ve said, but I won’t take him away. I just want to know why people want him dead.” Here Geralt looked the dragon right in the blue eyes, close enough to se the silver flecks in the iris. “Maybe I can help him, help you both.”

The dragon looked away. “Come back at sunset.”

Geralt did.

He yelled out for the dragon but it wansn’t there.

“I’m climbing the tower,” he called out. “Don’t flame me, you invited me.” And he clambered up the tower. Coming back down he’d be thankful for the rope he’d brought, because the stones were slick and smooth. He sat on the small windowsill and swung his legs into a room.

It wasn’t a very nice room. It was definitely a prison. small bed, one candle, uneven table and wobbly stool. A young man was sitting on the floor, cradling a lute.

“Are you the prince?” Geralt asked. He hadn’t seen a picture and although he felt silly making sure, he’d feel sillier if he got it wrong.

“Yes, are you the dragon slayer?”

“Witcher,” Geralt said. “And I did’t slay your dragon.”

“He’s not my dragon, he’s my fearsome jailer, keeping me inside this tower.”

“No,” Geralt said. “I doubt it. Show me your eyes.”

“No,” said the prince, not looking up.

“I’ll bet they’re a very pretty shade of blue,” Geralt said. “With silver.”

Blue and silver eyes met gold.

“You knew,” said the prince, swiping dirty, brown hair from his brow.

“You act odd, for a dragon, prince...” he sought the memory. “Julian.”

“Friends call me Jaskier,” said Jaskier. “Although I don’t have many. Just a little bit of dragon blood in the line, barely more than a drop, really, but I just so happen to get all of it. Anyway, I thought all dragons could look human.”

“They can,” Geralt said. “But they’re raised by other dragons, so they don’t act the same. Why are you inprisoned? And why was I sent to kill you.”

Jaskier sighed. “It’s not good, is it, to have a dragon for a son, even if he is your third son and won’t inherit. Father locked me up and had a mage cast a spell. As a dragon I can roam a little, but I can’t climb down the tower as a human, and I’m only human at night, some mishap with the runes as I understand. True love’s kiss breaks the mage’s spell.”

Geralt scoffed. “That pansy stuff never works.”

“It’s just what I was told,” said the prince, shrugging. “Somehow my father got the idea that true loves kiss will also make me no longer a dragon.”

“Not how that works,” Geralt said.

“No,” Jaskier agreed. “But he keeps sending heroes after me hoping they’ll kiss me.”

“The contract said I was to kill both of you.”

“Yes, well, that would also take care of the problem, wouldn’t it?”

“The problem being you?” Geralt said.

“The problem, generally speaking, being me.”

“We’ll break the spell,” Geralt said, although it wouldn’t be that easy.

“And then what? I can’t fight, I’ve no useful skills and nowhere to go. According to you I don’t even make a very good dragon.”

The young man slumped down. “But I’ve been so lonely,” he said. “You know I’ve been here five years? Just me and my lute, I think I’m going mad. You could even be a figment of my imagination.”

“Right,” Geralt said. “Getting you out first, dealing with other problems later.”

“Where am I going to find true love’s kiss?” asked Jaskier. “Do I kiss you?”

“You could try?” Geralt said. He really wouldn’t mind. The prince was whiny and a little dirty but very good looking. “But I was thinking more like, finding the runes and wiping them out.”

“You can just do that?” Jaskier leap to his feet. “They’re right up there,” he pointed among the cieling beams. “I can’t reach them on my own but the two of us...”

Geralt was already lifting the princling onto his shoulders. He didn’t weigh a lot.

“Just a little forward,” Jaskier said, accidentally kneeing Geralt in the chin.

“Hmmm,” he said, to avoid cursing, and shifted forward.

“Thery’re coming off! The runes are wiping away!”

He was loud but Geralt couldn’t blame him, five years was a long time. Although not compared to a dragon’s lifespan.

“They’re gone, I’m free!”

Geralt let the boy down from his shoulders and got a surprisingly tight hug and a very pleasant, extremely enthusiastic kiss.

“Just...you know, covering all my bases,” said the blushing prince. He really was cute.

Geralt carried him down the tower. Delighted, Jaskier turned into a dragon, then back to a human, then a smaller dragon, house cat sized, and perched on Geralt’s shoulder.

“Where are we going now? And what’s your name? Will I meet other witchers? Don’t forget to bring my lute?”

It would probably get old very quickly, Geralt thought. But the company was kind of nice, if a little scaly.

#geraskier #dragon jaskier #creature jaskier #true love's kiss is for sissys #the witcher #askbox answers

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writings-of-a-hufflepuff · 3 years

Text

My Liability, My Deadweight

Fandom: The Chronicles of Riddick

Collection/Series: My Liability, My Deadweight

Pairing: Richard B Riddick x Female Fat + Glasses Wearing Reader

Writer: @writings-of-a-hufflepuff aka @hufflepuffing-all-day-long

Rating: T (Swearing, Riddick is Riddick, violence)

Warnings: Swearing, violence towards deadly alien creatures, violence from deadly alien creatures towards the reader

Summary: None of this was supposed to happen. You were supposed to be on a holiday resort planet, relaxing by glistening waters and forgetting your troubles. Not traipsing through a deadly jungle on an uncharted planet with a just as deadly companion who seems torn between helping you and hating you.

Notes: So I guess this is going to be similar to Western AU Din in that i’ll probably write some stuff in the same sort of world/vein as this. I’m just interested in the idea of Riddick with a reader who is the opposite of a survivalist, who isn’t fit or strong, who is scared. The idea of Furyans having mates or soulmates that they don’t really get to choose and the idea of Riddick having to come to terms with the idea that the person he wants to protect so bad needs his protection more than most is interesting to me.

This is probably such a niche thing to write, not only because the fandom is tiny, but also because people tend to write Riddick fanfic where the reader or OC is extremely capable, but I wanted to write it. So self-indulgent fic coming up.

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Kratos is a horror show of a planet. It’s the sort of planet you’d never thought you’d end up on, the sort of planet that you saw on horror vids and read about in the tales of survivors of tragedy. You weren’t supposed to be on it. You were just on a short trip, just supposed to go to a stupid holiday planet, at the insistence of your boss that you needed a break from your desk, that you worked too hard. You were a city slicker, an urban citizen, not an outdoorsman or an adventurer, certainly not the sort of person who’d come to a planet like this. But, your pilot had needed to make a stop, said there was a problem with the fuel cells that he needed to check out. So you’d made a pit stop on a barely charted planet. Nothing good ever happens on a barely charted planet.

Covered in dense, muggy jungle, the planet would have been beautiful had it not been trying to kill you and your, for want of a better word, companion at every turn. It was covered in vibrant green forest, tropical plants, exotic and brightly coloured flowers (many of which, it turns out, were deadly themselves). There were brightly coloured bird-like creatures and primitive mammals that scurried through the trees and across the ground. It would have been beautiful, except for the limp in your walk from the burning claw marks deep in your thick thigh, except for the blood that followed in your wake, the dead bodies of the crew you’d left behind, and the yellow eyes that seemed to follow the two of you under the dark canopy.

After a stupid decision by your group to go out into the jungle to try and find a settlement of some sort, just because it had seemed like (as if there was any real reason to leave), you’d been picked off one by one. You could only describe the beasts as fucked up panthers. Two tails with stingers at the end, sharp spindly spines along their backs, an elongated neck, venomous fangs and sharp teeth and claws. They were hard to spot, silent in the underbrush and decidedly and most definitely deadly. The only reason you were still even alive was because of Riddick, because for some unknown reason the man, the murderer, had decided to stick close to you, like glue. You weren’t complaining.

At the time of boarding the ship for your trip it had seemed horrifying, to know that you were travelling on the same transport as Richard B. Riddick, escaped convict, known murder, predator. He was the sort of man your parents whispered about, the sort of man that you never wanted to meet. He was someone from your worst nightmare. Now he is your saving grace and surprisingly not what you had expected of a notorious big bad. While he meets many of your expectations, crude at times, harsh, and physically intimidating, he defies them too. He is at times oddly gentle with you and, the mere fact he cares about someone’s survival other than his own, is in itself a surprise. A fortunate one for you.

“Are we nearly back to the ship?” You ask because your leg is killing you, because you so desperately just want to get off this planet even if it means being stuck in a confined space with a convicted murderer. You hate this planet, you hate the constant feeling of fear and of uselessness. You hate the truth of it all, that you are weak, vulnerable, prey not the predator. It has you realising your many weaknesses, many vulnerabilities, many failings.

“Shhh…” Riddick raises his hand out in front of you, a universal sign to stop, while the other comes to his lips in a shushing motion. If he were a dog, his ears might very well have pricked up at the slightest sound.

To you nothing seemed out of the ordinary. There were no unusual sounds or movement in the brush. You couldn’t see anything out of place. Just as you begin to notice the silence, the lack of sound, that is the moment everything goes terribly wrong.

“Riddic-” You were cut off by your own scream.

Things happen so fast that you don’t really have time to process them. One minute you are standing behind Riddick attempting to get his attention, the next a dark shape crashes into you and you’re on the jungle floor a heavy weight pressing on your chest and stopping your breathing. Your hands reach up instinctively, pushing against the creature in an effort to keep sharp gnashing teeth from your face, but you’re not strong and you’re not a fighter and you can feel your arms beginning to collapse already. Can hear yourself screaming for Riddick even as part of you thinks he’ll leave you there, abandon you to be eaten alive. There is a deep fear that this is it, this is the end. That it shall be painful, terrifying, lonely, and unfamiliar.

Claws scratch at your arms, blood runs over your skin in rivulets as you scrabble in the dirt. Then as suddenly as the weight came it was gone, hefted off of you with an angry roar and the sound of a knife hitting flesh over and over again. You don’t look, can’t bring yourself to look, just lie there and breathe, in and out. You don’t want to see him do what he’s good at, don’t want to see alien blood, a dying creature, the parts of him that are less than gentle. So you stare up at the canopy and catch your breath, feeling the blood flow down your arms, the bruises that ache over your stomach, hips and legs. Feel the relief flow through you, combat the shock, as you realise you are not dead, you are alive, and he did not leave you to die.

You’re rather numb in truth until you hear him muttering above you, “goddamn liability, deadweight…”, it shouldn’t upset you because it’s true. But it does, it upsets and angers you because you didn’t want to be here, you didn’t want any of this and you didn’t ask him to hang around, didn’t ask him to help you. You had no say in this. This was not your idea of a holiday, your idea of fun, or your fault.

It forces you to your feet, forces you, despite the blood dripping from your wounds, to stand and face him, despite the bruises, despite the pain, despite the fear. You find yourself planting your feet even as you sway unsteadily, standing with hands on your wide hips and a scowl aimed at a man that could kill you easily. For the first time you’re too angry to overthink your actions towards the man. For a moment you stop thinking and start acting.

“If i’m such a goddamn liability, then just leave me here! I didn’t ask for you to stay, Riddick! I didn’t ask for your help! If it’s such a fucking chore to have me along, if i’m really dead weight then leave me! Go!” You didn’t normally scream at anyone, it wasn’t your personality type. You were quiet, shy, retiring. A wallflower. You didn’t scream. You didn’t start fights. You didn’t do any of that. Anger wasn’t your natural response to anything. Fear was. But after being hunted down, time and time again by giant alien cats with venomous fangs and an uncanny ability to hide on a jungle planet, all while being called a liability, a dead weight by the one person you had to rely on, well, you were finally at your wits end. You were in pain, you were upset, frustrated and ready to just go home.

You didn’t understand it. Why Riddick even bothered with you, practically a stranger. You knew you were a liability, that’s why it hurt so much when he said it. You were soft, emotionally and physically. You were a slow runner, a poor fighter, had terrible eyesight that required glasses, you weren’t light on your feet or graceful and you certainly didn’t know much about survival. You were overweight, unfit and unsure on your feet. You were prone to panic and tears, you were easily emotionally and physically unbalanced. Until this trip from hell you’d been content in the inner rim, working a normal job, a safe life. Your day to day had been comfortable, safe. Easy. You weren’t cut out for this, for danger and potential death and had Riddick, this known criminal, one of the most sought after murderers in the verse, not decided to stick by your side you’d have died at least ten times already. It didn’t make any sense and your frustration at yourself, the situation and at him had tears pooling in your eyes. You didn’t ask for any of this.

“I can’t.” He’s so impassive, so calm, that it pisses you off more. It pisses you off how hard it is to read him, how he hides his eyes behind black goggles that stop you understanding him. How he hides all emotion from you so easily. How is he okay with this? How is he so calm when everything around the two of you wants to kill you, when he could have left this goddamn planet already if you weren’t slowing him down at every turn? How could he stand there above the body of some hell spawn creature and just stare at you like that, like everything was just fine, just normal? Like he wasn’t covered in it’s blood. Like you weren’t dripping in your own. Like you hadn’t almost died. Again.

“I..I don’t get it…? What do you mean you can’t? You could walk the fuck away right now. I can’t stop you! No one else is here to stop you! If you want to leave, leave! No one’s holding you back, Riddick! No one is going to stop you! I can’t bloody well can’t! Look at me!” You sound hysterical even to your own ears but you can’t help it. You are so scared, so confused, so frustrated, so panicked by all that’s happened, all that could happen. You gesture down to yourself, to the bloody coating you, the way you protectively hold yourself off of your hurt leg, the sheer stature different between the two of you. All the things that make it very abundantly clear that if he chose to simply walk away you couldn’t stop him.

“Listen, princess, it’s not that fucking simple!” The snap is almost relieving, that he’s not as cold, not as impassive as you thought. That he could break too. That he could be angry, that he could be upset, that this wasn’t just normal. Even as his steps closer cause your back to hunch, cause you to second guess your antagonist behaviour.

“I don’t understand!”

With a growl he’s crowding you against a tree, thick arms caging you in. He’s imposing, large, a head taller than you and the action has him taking over every one of your senses. He never touches you in anger and while the display is intimidating, it oddly enough doesn’t scare you. It almost feels secure. Perhaps because not once has he done anything to suggest to you that he would hurt you, every move he’s made has been to keep you safe. Every time he’s touched you has been to pull you from danger or bring you back to your feet. Despite his harsh appearance, his foul language and the deadliness that he displays at every turn, he has never once given you cause to fear him. To fear how he would treat you.

“You’re my mate, got it?! I don’t get to choose, I don’t get a choice! I can’t leave you! I just fucking can’t, so you’re a fucking liability and dead weight, but you’re my dead weight, got it? I ain’t fucking leaving you, we either both get off this motherfucking planet or we both get eaten by these fucks, princess. There’s no inbetween, understand?” Silver eyes flash at you as he tears the goggles from his eyes, his brow furrows and the muscles in his thick neck and broad shoulders bunch and move with every piece of tension that bursts through him. You are distinctly and sharply reminded that Riddick is a predator in every sense of the word, while you are prey. You are on two separate ends of the spectrum.

“Mate…?” Your eyes flit across the landscape behind his head, trying to process all those words and all their meanings. You don’t understand, you don’t understand any of it. But, those words soothe you in a way you can’t explain. He isn’t going to leave you. For whatever reason, for whatever this is, whatever he means, he isn’t going to leave you. You let out a breath you didn’t even realise you’d been holding. He’s not leaving, even if you’re a liability, a deadweight. Even when things get bad, he’s not leaving. He is, at this point, your only chance at getting home, getting away from him, of surviving. The panic in you begins to soothe, calm and settle.

“We don’t have time for this.” You’re startled by the sudden display of affection as the man cups the back of your neck and presses his forehead into your own, “Just trust me.”

“I do, Riddick, I trust you” It’s hard to explain, the trust you feel for him, the safety as you let him lead you once more through the jungle. You are bleeding, in pain and still ever so aware of the dangers around you, but you have an implicit belief that with Riddick you are as safe as you can be. That if there was ever a person to carry you through this it would be him.

You might still be confused, might not understand what he means by you being his mate or by his obligation towards you, but you know that he isn't leaving you for dead and that is enough right now. That is more than enough.

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

All Works Taglist

@charradelange @belfry-bat @gabile18 @beccaboo929 @trasheater

#riddick x reader #richard b riddick x reader #chronicles of riddick #richard b riddick #plus size reader #my liability my deadweight #fat reader #readerinsert #reader insert

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tilltheendwilliwrite · 3 years

Text

Cat Got Your Tongue

Chapter One

Master List / Series Master List

A/N: This series is set in the same world as Bare In The Woods (a one-shot were-bear Henry Cavill story). This series will be cross posted between Tumblr and AO3. As Tumblr has no way of preventing minors from reading the smutty bits (and there will be smutty bits) those chapters will only be available on AO3.

My archive work is available to Register Users Only. This means Yes, You Must Have An Account with Archive to read my work. If you'd like more information on how to acquire your Free archive account, please see this post. All you need is an email address to sign up. That's it. Just do it people.

Read on AO3 here!

Summary: The community of Salvation holds many secrets, not the least of which is the diversity of were-folk who call it home. Ember Porosha is one resident for who Salvation isn't just the town's name but her saving grace. After outrunning her past, she's resigned herself to playing surrogate to everyone else's children and never having her own. A mate was not in her future, and she was learning to live with that. Until he walked through the door of The Last Book and Brew.

Thomas Loki Hiddleston wasn't going to be in town long. Here for the naming of Henry and his wife's baby girl and presentation to the weres of Salvation, he planned only to stay a few days. A small town like this could never offer him the outlet he needed for his cat's dark desires, nor could he hide what he was for long. His nature would eventually need an outlet and Salvation held nothing for him. Or so he thought. One wiff of Ember's unique scent and he knew he'd found a long thought lost to him future.

But when she doesn't fall at his feet, and proves more stubborn than a mule, can he resit taking her in hand long enough to win her heart? Or will the bond between true mates not be enough to tame this wild hellcat.

Series warnings: Were-Creatures, Cats, Bears, Smut, Shameless Smut, Explicit Sexual Content, Explicit Language, Dom/sub, Blood, Blood Kink, this one could (will) get kinky

***

When the sleek black car drove through town, Ember gave it only a passing glance. It was odd, sure, but anyone who drove a Jag was so far out of her league they were playing on a different ball diamond altogether. The car screamed money, something she cared little about.

Sure she needed it, everyone did, but Ember was content with what she had, and in this sleepy town cradled lovingly between the mountains, she didn't need much. She had her sweet yellow cottage, her bookstore, and a community of friends when she desired company. And now, with the snow falling thick on the ground, she would have another singular pleasure.

Ember's little snow leopard heart leapt at the thought of running through the high passes and sliding down the long slopes, her wide paws keeping her above the snowpack instead of sinking in while her thick coat kept out the cold. It had been too long since she'd last played in her were form, and was looking forward to going out to the ranger station in a few days to visit with Henry, his wife, and their little cub.

The sweet baby girl already had Henry wrapped firmly around her finger, and Ember couldn't help but laugh at the goofy smile that perpetually graced his face when he looked at his family.

If a pang of jealousy jabbed her heart, Ember didn't let it show. She'd resigned herself to a lonely life a long time ago.

The bell over the door of her little shop gave a merry jingle, and she placed the last of the new James Patterson novels on the shelf before dusting off her hands and stepping out from behind the bookshelves to smile at Lorraine, the town's most gossipy raven.

If she was fluttering into The Last Book and Brew, then Ember was about to hear an earful.

***

Tom swept into the charming inn and forced himself to smile at the woman behind the desk. He'd spent a miserable six hours on the road, driven through a blizzard, and killed his cellphone when he'd dropped it in an icy puddle two hours prior as he'd filled the car with petrol. But there was no alternate way to get to Salvation, buried deep in the mountains, except to drive.

And Salvation was where he needed to be.

His old friend, Henry, was celebrating the birth of his first cub, and Tom dropped everything to come and see the little darling Henry was blessed with. And to meet the woman who'd tamed the giant bear after all this time. Sadly, he'd been unable to attend their wedding, but he refused to miss the welcoming of a new were into the community, whether he belonged to the Salvation clan or not.

That didn't mean he wouldn't give Hen the gears for choosing to live in some backwater nowhere even if it was beautiful here.

Still, Tom preferred the city for its indulgences and entertainments. No, he couldn't fall on all fours and run through the concrete jungle he called home, but he'd long come to terms with his destiny. It wasn't as if there was a panther out there waiting to run under the moonlight with him.

He was going to be a lone cat, a bachelor. He'd resigned himself to it, for no matter what anyone said, no one - were or human - had ever submitted wholly to his dark desires and chosen to stay in his possession afterward. They were all far too soft for his liking, ending in no more than a one-and-done.

At least, he could stalk the clubs and play with those unaware of his darkest needs and wants in the city. Tom was not a Dom to be denied, and those who gave in to the allure of his pretty face soon learned all about the devil underneath his Gucci suit.

"Hello, darling," he purred to the desk clerk. "Thomas Loki Hiddleston, checking in. I believe I have a reservation."

She blushed to the roots of her hair, sputtered, and nodded. "Of-of course, sir. If-if you'll sign a few things and put your card on file, I can get you situated on your back- In your room!" she corrected, staring at her hands.

Tom couldn't hide his smile, but he swallowed his laughter. It was always the same. The sweet little birds flocked to him, but they had no idea a predator was stalking them.

He went through the incidentals, signed her documents, collected his key and listened intently when she told him about the room, breakfast, the restaurant, spa, and pool. His ears perked up at the last. He did enjoy a refreshing swim.

"And if you fancy something other than regular coffee or black tea, there is The Last Book and Brew just down the street. Ember makes the best scones and tea."

"Does she now?" he murmured, eyeing Irene - her name on a little plaque pinned to her chest - as she handed him back his credit card. "Perhaps I'll check in on it. A cuppa does sound delightful." The drive had been long, and tea might be just the pick-up he needed before calling round to Henry's.

He nodded to Irene and headed for the stairs instead of the elevator. Three floors were nothing for his long legs, the exertion minimal, as he hiked to the third floor and down to the end where he fit the old-fashioned key into the antique lock and pushed open the door.

Tom was pleasantly surprised to find a mixture of well-kept antiques and modern furnishings decorating the space. While the bed and mattress were new and covered with clean, white duvet and sheets, the dresser - upon which sat a television - was a heavy mahogany buffet with curved Queen Anne legs. The bathroom was a revolution of modern plumbing though a cast iron tub stood on clawed feet beside a glass shower big enough for two. Gilt framed mirrors hung above dual vanities into which water poured from brushed gold fixtures.

It was all very romantic with its old-world charm though the inn was showing its age. Wallpaper lifted at the edges, millwork was chipped and rubbed in places, and a few of the lovely old tiles on the floor in the bathroom were cracked. But with the likely age of the building, it wasn't so surprising. If the gorgeous stone building weren't at minimum a century, he would eat his scarf.

She could be an absolute beauty with effort and enough money. Yes, he would be comfortable here for a time. The Salvation Inn would suit him.

Tom made his way to the windows that looked out on Salvation's main street. The road was a mess of dirty snow, sanded and salted for ease of travel, but the thick white flakes floating down turned the quaint replica gas street lights into white-topped monuments of winter. Storefronts glowed with welcoming light, still running their Autumn displays, creeping toward American Thanksgiving. The commercialization of Christmas had yet to appear, giving everything a cheerful, colourful cast he found pleasing to his senses.

Cars moved without hurry, mimicking the people coming and going about their business. Everyone was bundled up, but no one seemed to mind the cold and the snow. To be expected, he supposed. They lived in the mountains where snow fell early and lasted late.

As his gaze traversed the lane, his attention landed on The Last Book and Brew and caused him to tilt his head, intrigued. Unlike the other traditional storefronts with their brick faces and colourful awnings, gold filigree writing on wooden signs, the little bookstore had a distinctly different feel to it.

The door, window frames, and brickwork that accented the front of the building were painted a shiny, deep black. There was no awning but three stunning lanterns hung above the windows on wrought iron arms, beautifully curved like the elegant lines of a woman's body. A sign in the same black iron hung perpendicular to the door. Shaped like a shield or some family crest, the words The Last Book and Brew glowed crimson outlined in gold, while a raven of the same black iron sat guard, casting judgement on all who entered. Red velvet mounded in the windows, lovingly cradling the displayed books like sacrificial offerings.

Someone knew what they were doing, for that was the sexiest storefront Tom had ever seen.

Utterly enchanted and desperate to see if the interior matched the exterior, he left his leather valise unpacked on the bed, pocketed his key, and headed for the door.

Irene looked up as he passed her, but Tom paid the clerk little mind. He was on a mission, a hunt now, needing to discover the answer to the mystery of just who this Ember of Last Book and Brew was that she could create with such aplomb a store so alluring.

There was no wind when he trotted down the inn's exterior stairs and out into the snowfall. Traffic was light, so he crossed mid-street, avoiding puddles and snowbanks in an attempt to keep the Italian leather of his shoes dry while large flakes of falling snow collected in his dark ginger locks. He reached the door and admired the ornate handle before opening the door into another world.

Tom stepped inside and stared in amazement. He'd never thought a bookstore could be moody, but this one certainly was. The floors were highly polished ebony wood that led into dark railings which spiralled past the sunken first-floor cafe up a short flight of stairs toward the bookstore beyond.

He admired the cobblestone floor in the cafe, again shiny with polish, sealed he suspected to make cleanup easier. Upon them sat a virtual Mad Hatter's Tea Party of chairs, all shapes and sizes separated by wrought iron tables topped with glass. And though the chairs were unique in shape, they matched for colour, upholstered as they were in the blood-red and black brocade that turned them into a sexy indulgence he prayed were as comfortable as they looked.

And hung above it all, like a lady's magnificent fascinator, was a chandelier worthy of the name. Clearly electric, it appeared to drip ropes of black jewels and crystals as long as his palm, lit by three dozen candles that flickered with faux flames. It was spectacular.

Beyond, the cafe counter, like a walnut dream, appeared to be a repurposed and rehabbed saloon bar where elegant scrollwork on a pristine chalkboard announced the daily specials. He could see the cakes and pastries in their glass case, and while his stomach rumbled to remind him of the last meal he'd eaten, Tom was too enthralled with the decadence of the store to allow himself to be led by his nose when a small sign at the foot of the stairs requested no food past that point.

Another small sign asked him to wipe his feet, which he did without thought, before heading up the short but wide curved stairwell to the second floor into the fantasy world of someone's most magnificent mind.

He felt guided by the hand of a fae as he wound his way through ebony bookcases over hardwood floors, beneath more hanging lanterns and delicate chandeliers. The soft white of all the lights allowed him to read titles and leaf through pages without feeling as if the overhead lights would eventually dry out his eyes or buzz their annoyance through his brain. Every so often, he came upon stands of lightly scented candles, or soaps, or lotions made with all-natural products and tingling with the lightest touch of were-magic, causing Tom to look at the store with deeper senses.

The corners and cardinal points of the space had crystal wards, he realized, and the soft pulse of benevolent magic left him at ease. Whoever this Ember was, she bid all who came to her sanctuary welcome.

Even more intrigued than before, Tom found his way toward the counter where voices spoke in hushed tones, intent on finding the owner and congratulating her on the sensual, slightly erotic nature of her store. It left him breathless in a way that was hard for him to come by, and yet even as it pulled at his dark, seductive nature, he knew a family could come into such a place and find it magical, like falling into the rabbit hole of a dark Alice fantasy.

"That's nice, Lorraine, but I don't think Henry would approve of you gossiping about his friend."

Tom stopped in his tracks. Warm brandy and velvet bled over his senses, stroking straight through him to the soul of his cat. The panther purred and preened, wanting the owner of that voice to pet him and whisper words of seduction in his ear.

"Poppycock! Some big-city fella isn't going to care if we mountain folk talk about him."

Ugh, raven. He'd know that grating tone anywhere.

"Besides, he's some fancy lawyer or something," the raven, Lorraine, continued. "I'm sure he's used to people talking about him."

"It is still impolite."

Tom shivered, eyes half-lidding. He had to roll his head, stretching his neck to keep from sprouting fur. What he wouldn't give for one night with the owner of that voice.

Never one to hide in the face of scrutiny, Tom glided out from behind the bookshelf and smiled at the two women. "Actually, I run hotels."

The raven eeped and jumped, spinning to face him. She was older than he'd suspected, her dark hair thoroughly saturated with grey though her eyes remained clear brown orbs. The other, oh, the other, he could not help but stare.

Her face was the kind that would make angels weep with sharp, classic features, high cheekbones and a pointed chin like a sweet little fox. Her big eyes widened in surprise, showing off the shocking green, so pale and light they were almost neon when the light caught them. The heavy fall of thick curls that slipped from her shoulder left his mouth dry with the desire to sink his fingers into the mass that started black at the root and faded into tones of silver and dark grey, hinting at patterns like small rosettes.

A sleek, lithe body lovingly caressed by a sweater of raspberry wool and leggings of black knit glided out from behind the cash desk, her steps silent in small silver ballet flats. "Mr. Hiddleston?"

"Indeed," he purred, accepting her hand when she offered it. He captured it between both of his rather than shaking it as presented and held it lightly. "Thomas Loki Hiddleston, at your service, love. My friends call me Tom."

"Ember Porosha. Welcome to Salvation and The Last Book and Brew." She tilted her head, causing all that lovely hair to slide to the opposite shoulder. "Henry speaks highly of you."

"Mm," he chuckled, adjusting his grip to lightly press his thumb into the palm of her hand as he brought her knuckles to his lips. "Brags, does he?"

"Terribly," she agreed with a smile.

Tom smirked and pressed his lips to her skin. He inhaled and went rigid. That scent, the sweet smell of pine and snow somehow laced with the delicate notes of summer dreams, drowned him, flooding his lungs until he was sure he would never be able to breathe again without breathing in Ember's delectable fragrance.

She tried to retrieve her hand. Tom growled, low and deep, more a purr than a reprimand, and opened eyes he knew would glow green with his cat.

"Well, hello, pet," he smiled. "It seems I was wrong." He wasn't destined to be alone after all.

Sharp claws latched into his hands. "I've no desire to start anything with you, true mate or not."

He dropped her hands and brought his to his mouth to catch the blood seeping from the minor wounds. "We will see about that."

She hissed at him.

Tom threw his head back and laughed before gliding into her personal space and threading his fingers into her hair. "Spit all you like, little kitten. I always get what I want."

"I think it's time you left, Mr. Hiddleston," Ember growled, her hand on his chest to keep him at bay.

"Tea first," he smirked. "I'm gagging for a cuppa. Haven't had a decent one all day!" He stroked the silvery strands before letting them fall through his fingers. "Is your coat just as soft, Kitten?"

She glared daggers at him. "Leave."

He chuckled but stepped back, practically able to see her tail flick in anger. "Until later then, Ember."

***

He turned on his heels and sauntered away, leaving her seething behind him. How dare he. How dare he! How dare he assume such liberties when they'd only just met. When it was clear he was only passing through and would leave nothing but devastation in his wake.

"How dare he!" she hissed and stormed toward the back of the store to her office to calm down, forgetting Lorraine was still there.

Ember didn't slam the door, knowing he was still in the store, and she'd be damned before she gave him that much power over her. She would not be brought to heel like some… some… Kitten!

She growled a low sound and clenched her fists, determined to get control of herself and that snow leopard rolling like a damn hussy inside her.

She'd smelt him the moment he'd stepped beyond the books—dark spice and leather, mandarin and rosewood, with notes of cinnamon and vanilla. Ember's mouth watered with the desire to taste his skin and see if he tasted as good as he smelled.

"No," she said firmly. Her cat scoffed. "He won't stay here. He's a big city panther, and we will never go back." She was determined to live alone, be alone because she was safer that way.

Salvation was, well, their salvation. When she was most desperate for a new start and a place to hide from her past, Salvation was there with open arms, and an established were community.

Her cat settled down with the reminder and left her alone to pick up the phone.

Ember dialed the number by heart and waited for them to answer. "Hey, Henry, it's Ember. About tonight. Something has come up… I'm… not going to make it."

Next Chapter

#cat got your tongue #hiddleston au #Thomas Loki Hiddleston #were creatures

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weirdthinkingdragon · 3 years

Text

Welcome To The Family (1/???)

Yandere EraserMic household x reader

Finally decided to start writing it! I’ve never babysat in my life, so if this is incredibly wrong I’m sorry. No warnings for now. No idea how many chapters this is going to be right now, but for sure at least 3-5.

I’m on my way to babysit two new children. Well, a child and later in the day a teenager when they get back from school. It’s beyond astonishing somehow being the one selected to babysit two children of heroes. They’re adopted, but that makes it all the more strange. I can’t complain much though. They’re paying a rather large amount and asked me to keep quiet about it. I have to go there early in the morning and be there most of the day. They also warned me some days I may have to babysit them longer than others. They did also warn me a few of their students may come by to hang out with Eri for a bit.

My fist knocks on the door four times. Yamada- hopefully, I remembered who is who correctly- opens it. He lets me in with a giant and welcoming smile on his face. In the living room were the other three. Eri, and the other which must be Shinsou, look at me cautiously. Eri hides a bit behind the black-haired adult while Shinsou seems rather watchful and wary of me. I crouch down to her level but stay a bit away to introduce myself. “You must be Eri. I’ve heard a lot about you. My name’s Y/N. I hope to get along with you.” This is true, I’ve been informed by the two about what she has been through.

The black-haired man confirms with a small nod down to her as she looks up at him. Whatever that was supposed to be about, it helped make her take a step away from him and look at me more.

Aizawa- hopefully, I’m still correct- looks at the clock. “We need to go now.” the blond nods and leaves for their rather expensive-looking black car. Aizawa leaves as well. Shinsou glares at me one last time before he starts to head towards the door as well. “Don’t do anything you will regret.” He threatens and leaves too.

Eri sits on the couch still timidly staring at me. To say it felt awkward between us is an understatement. “So, Eri, would you like to show me your favorite toys? Or maybe there’s a show you really like we could watch for a while?” Like a lightswitch, her eyes light up like she was just told she could have all the candy in the world. She then takes off up the stairs for presumably her bedroom. I wait in the living room for her return. I take a moment to examine the living room better. There are hardly any pictures on the walls. There’s only one with the four of them and a bunch of teens. Must be his class. They look like a chaotic and lively bunch. The light gray couch is in the middle of the living room with a large flat screen T.V. in front of it. To the left of the couch and a little behind is a matching gray loveseat with a giant cat tree between it and the wall. Huh, so they have a cat or possibly two. Surprised they’re not in the living room. The black stand under the T.V. matches the coffee table in front of it. There’s a door straight from the main entrance I entered from. My guess is either a bathroom or the kitchen. Next to it is a flight of stairs that Eri went up. That must lead to the bedrooms. There’s another door next to the stairs. A closet maybe? Or maybe another bedroom.

Eri comes down a few minutes later with five stuffed animals in her arms. A green rabbit with matching green eyes, a brown teddy bear with beady eyes, a blue galaxy patterned fox with turquoise eyes, a yellow dog with blue eyes, and a cute tiny light gray unicorn with glittery pink eyes. It looks like her and seems like her favorite with how it seems a little worn. They’re all so adorable that I think my heart might have melted.

“Aw, what are their names?” She proudly holds them up and says their names. The one that got me was “Deku”. Doesn’t that mean useless? How would a child know that term? More importantly, how are the adults allowing her to name it that?

“Deku? Why is it named that?”

“He saved me. I wanted a stuffed animal like him!” She cheerfully says. I’m not going to question why they chose that name.

“They sound like amazing people! I can’t wait to meet them someday!” She smiles at me. It quickly becomes sad instead. “But I won’t be going to the school with them anymore…”

I try to think of how to make her feel better. Those two must be the ones her fathers warned me will come over at some point. “Well, maybe I could ask your parents if they can come over someday after school.” She enthusiastically nods.

It grows quiet between us again as she holds her stuffed animals.

I look back at the cat tree. “I see you have a cat tree. Do you know where the cat is?”

“We have three!” she cheerfully informs.

“Three? Wow! I bet they keep you safe, huh?” I question. She shrugs. “Mochi is too big to even jump on the bed.”

“Mochi? Cute name!”

“Mrow” came a sudden voice from the cat tree. There’s a box part on the floor I somehow missed earlier. A rather fat cat saunters out of it. “Mochi!” Eri cheerfully yells and goes over to it. It’s an orange tabby. She tries to pick him up and miraculously succeeds. It’s so comical I can’t help but laugh. A child carrying a cat that’s almost as big as her. She waddles over with it and places them on the couch between us. They just yawn, stretch, and lie down right where they were plopped. They roll over to show their belly. I rub the belly of it. How could I not? Once again, it doesn’t seem to care in the slightest.

“What are the names of the other two?” I ask.

“Sundae and Oreo! They’re brothers!”

“Are they as big as Mochi?” She shakes her head. “No. My dads went to buy things that feed the cats when we are not home.”

“That’s good! Maybe later we could try finding the other two and have a tea party or something.” She looked like she was nearly screaming in excitement at the news. “Only one of my dads likes to do tea parties with me.”

I smile. “Well, now you have two that do!”

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Many hours later, she decided she wanted to do the tea party. We were able to find the other two cats which were sleeping on her dads’ bed. Eri told me they were in there since I didn’t go in there out of respect. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring a dress or suit to change into for her. I’ll have to remember that for next week so I can do it when not babysitting.

Oreo and Sundae were rather difficult to settle down into chairs around the table. They’re tuxedos and an easy way to tell which is who is apparently the white eyebrows on Oreo that makes him look always angry. We just gave up when they decided to sit on the table instead of the chairs.

The tea set is a pastel green with interesting shiny gold lines decorating it. It’s a great contrast to the small dark red table it’s on in her room. She has tons of drawings with her, Shinsou, and the two adults covering her walls. There’s also a few with a green-haired and blond with her. There is nothing in the teacups as she passes one to me. “Why, thank you, Eri!” She smiles and nods. That smile needs to be protected.

It’s hard to think someone could do something so evil to such an innocent bean. I’m beyond glad she’s in a much better home now. I’ve only known her for like half a day, but if something were to happen to her, I’d kill everyone around me and then myself. She looks behind me and lights up more. “Toshi!”

I turn around to see Shinsou leaning in the doorway with his arms crossed and a glare aimed at me. How long has he been there? Man, he’s incredibly quiet. I understand why he doesn’t trust me yet. I’m still a stranger after all. It would be more concerning if he did trust me immediately. I give him an inviting smile. “Welcome, Shinsou! Why don’t you come to our tea party instead of standing there? I’m sure Eri would be more than happy to have her brother join!”

“Yes! C’mon Toshi, please?” She begs. He shakes his head. “You two go ahead. I’d rather watch for now.” He says, hardening his glare at me. Eri doesn’t seem to notice his glare and goes back to her chair. How cute though, a protective brother! She deserves nothing less.

After that, she wanted to show me her favorite show. Shinsou sits rather close to her between us. Seems a bit excessive, but whatever makes him comfortable I guess. Checking the clock above the T.V., it was almost time for me to go.

Shinsou goes to the bathroom, but something tells me he’s testing me. I mean, I didn't do anything before he came home, and wouldn’t Eri have already run to him if I did do something? Well, with the villains around you can’t be so sure.

Eri swings her feet while sitting farther up on the couch. “Are you going to come back tomorrow?”

“Of course! We still have so many things we have to do together!” I reach over and go to rub her head. She flinches so I take my hand away and think for a moment. How can I get her to trust me without any problems occurring? “Hey, Eri?” She looks at me again with trust, yet a hint of unease still in her eyes. Please don’t tell me I just royally screwed up. “How about this. I do to myself what I’m going to do to you, and you can allow it or not. Like this.” I say, and gently rub the top of my head. I bring my hand halfway to her and wait for her reply.

It takes a moment, but she gives me a small nod. I rub her head, making her give a big smile to me.

At that moment, the door opened to reveal the two men. They were tense as we locked eyes, but that went away when they noticed Eri was smiling at me.

“Welcome back you guys! Eri and I had so much fun today. She even brought me to her tea party! Your cats gave us quite a bit of trouble to involve them though.” I inform as Eri goes to hug Yamada and then Aizawa right after.

Shinsou comes into the room as well. Like a silent conversation, he gives a curt nod to Aizawa, which he returns.

Yamada smirks at me. “But what’s important is… Did ya succeed?”

I shrug. “Kind of. We got them to stay on the table instead of the chair.” He snickers. “That’s those devious two!” He looks down at Eri. “Ya must have had a lotta fun, huh? Sad to miss the party!”

I decide to leave so they get more time as a family before they have to go to bed. I don’t need to interfere with that. I wave to her as I go to the door and put on my shoes. “See you tomorrow, Eri!” She waves back, shocking the two adults. Wonder why they’re shocked about that. Maybe she doesn’t usually trust new people as fast? Well, I’ve always been pretty good with children.

I wave at the three men as well and leave excited for what tomorrow might bring.

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

I have rather big plans for this story. Hopefully I keep up with it, and I promise it will get better later on.

#EraserMic household #yandere present mic #yandere eraserhead #yandere shouta aizawa #yandere hizashi yamada #yandere shinso hitoshi #yandere x reader #yandere mha x reader #welcome to the family

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subterfugespecialist · 3 years

Text

Led to You

As a child, everyone finds their "soulmate guide," an animal meant to lead your soulmate to you. And one morning, Janus and Remus wake up to see a stranger's guide in their homes.

Written for Day 3 of @dukeceitweek : snakes/bugs

AO3 link

Pairings: Dukeceit, Familial Creativitwins, Platonic Loceit, Moceit, and Dukexiety

Warnings: Some Remus-typical violent thoughts, scorpions/tarantulas/snakes

Word count: 4228

Janus woke up to something brushing against his hand. He groaned and batted Dusa away while muttering "Five more minutes"

But when it brushed against his hand again, he noticed it was definitely not the headbutt from a snake. His eyes snapped open and he glanced down to see a fucking scorpion on his bed holy shit-

If his roommate asked if that was him that made the high pitched squeal that morning, no it wasn't.

He scrambled out of bed to look around for something to try and trap the scorpion under, but he didn't want to get near it what the fuck-

Janus paused. The scorpion was staring at him. At least, it looked like the scorpion was staring at him. It at least didn't look like it was trying to attack him.

Did... did it wave?

Now that Janus had calmed down, he noticed the scorpion was a deep, emerald green. Janus didn't know much about bugs, never had a reason to, but he never heard of a green scorpion before.

Could it be...?

"Hey, Logan?"

Footsteps came from the kitchen down the hallway.

"I was wondering when you were going to call me in," Logan said as he opened the door, his deep blue raven perched on top of his head, "What happened?"

"Can scorpions be green?"

"Why would I know that, Janus?"

"Because you know everything."

"Why are you asking?"

Janus pointed to his bed, and when Logan looked down he jumped back with a startled shout, disturbing the raven on his head.

The scorpion turned towards Logan and, yeah, the scorpion definitely waved.

After calming himself (and his bird), Logan slowly approached Janus' bed.

"...While I have heard of scorpions glowing green under ultraviolet light-"

"Oh, so you did know, you asshole-"

"I haven't seen a scorpion that looks like this, no," Logan said, crouching down next to the bed, "Is Dusa here? She was not under her heat lamp."

"Dusa? Come here, darling."

Dusa didn't crawl out of hiding, and Janus' room and the living room under her heat lamp were the only places she liked to be first thing in the morning.

"I guess she isn't."

Logan's raven, Minerva, hopped off his head onto the bed to examine the scorpion. She leaned down and the scorpion gently bumped heads. Minerva let out a happy chirp.

"My soulmate guide is a scorpion."

"Fascinating," Logan muttered as the scorpion and Minerva playfully chased each other around the bed, "I haven't heard of a bug guide before."

Janus glanced at the clock and put his hand down on the bed. The scorpion immediately ran onto his palm.

"I have class in an hour," he said as he cupped his hands and lifted the scorpion, "So how do you feel about business, corporate, and commercial law?"

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Remus woke up to Roman screaming. After a moment of debating whether to go back to sleep or not, he decided that, yeah, he probably should go check on the well being of his brother. Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Remus trudged towards the living room to see a snake curled up on the couch, with Roman's robin perched on its head.

"Peter, please come here!" Roman pleaded. But the little bird seemed perfectly content on top of the snake. The snake started to slither off the couch, making roman shout again. The robin flew onto Roman's hand and he relaxed a bit as he held the bird to his chest.

Roman took his gaze off his brother back to the snake and- oh look at that it. It was headed towards him.

"Remus stop standing there what is wrong with you-"

The snake was around four feet long with yellow-and-black stripes. Quite gorgeous, really.

Remus decided he wanted to pick it up.

He knelt down and outstretched his arm (as Roman continued to shout at him), letting the snake crawl up and around his shoulders. The snake nuzzled its head against Remus' cheek.

Roman stared at him, eyes wide and mouth opened.

"What?"

"You're insane."

"And you're a chickenshit. You've lived with a scorpion as a roommate your whole life and you're gonna freak out over a snake guide?"

"How was I supposed to know it was a guide!?"

Remus stepped over and placed a hand on Roman's shoulder. "...You're a moron."

Roman shoved him.

"Peter was fine. And we should be expecting to find strange animals in our apartment at this age."

"Oh, piss off to find your soulmate and stop bothering me for a while."

"Gladly."

Remus turned to go back to his bedroom.

"...I'm really happy for you, you know."

Remus stopped and groaned. "Roman, no sentimental bullshit before nine."

"But I mean it. You deserve this."

"...Thanks, you idiotic bastard."

Roman gave him a gentle smile as Peter hopped onto Remus' head and nestled into his wild mess of bedhead.

"Also you screamed like a little girl."

"Fuck off-"

Remus cackled as Roman shoved him again. Peter gave Remus a petulant little peck on the top of his head.

Peter flew back over to Roman while Remus held out his arms go guide the snake in front of his face.

"Are you gonna lead me to my soulmate?" Remus asked with a large grin, which only grew wider when the snake nodded.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Janus was very much enjoying having a scorpion on his shoulder. People instinctively stepped away from him, even more so than with Dusa, meaning he didn't have to fight his way through the crowded sidewalks.

The scorpion had been upset that Janus didn't follow its directions. It scuttled frantically from one shoulder to the other. It calmed only when Janus explained he had to go to class, but would follow its directions immediately after.

Janus was stopped in his tracks, though, by a corgi running up to him and jumping on his knees.

"Hi, Peachy," Janus said as he scratched behind her ears. The scorpion crawled down his arm in curiosity.

if someone's guide was a common house pet like a dog or cat, they were issued a special white collar to show they were a soulmate guide to be allowed in public places along with service animals.

But this dog didn't have such a collar. She was just a dog.

"Hey, Janus!" someone called out. Janus looked up to see Patton jogging down the sidewalk, his guide right beside him.

"Hello, Patton. Hello, Cookie," Janus said to his friend and the capybara standing next to him.

Patton had been Logan's friend first, and Janus hadn't been too keen on his... optimistic personality at first. But dammit, the guy's too sweet.

"Miss Peachy! What have I told you about running off?" Patton said with a light scowl as he reattached her leash. But of course, unlike a guide, she couldn't actually understand. She jumped off Janus' legs to go lick the capybara's face.

Janus didn't understand the appeal of keeping animals that weren't your guide, but to each their own, he supposed.

Patton's eyes fell to Janus' shoulder, and after the instinctive fear vanished a large smile took over his face.

"Oh! You've got your soulmate guide!!"

"Yep," Janus said as he resumed walking down the sidewalk. Patton followed.

"Ohmygosh, this is so exciting!" Patton exclaimed, practically bouncing as he walked, "How long have you been out trying to find them? Do you think you're close?"

"I'm going to class, actually."

"Really? Gosh, you've got more self control than me," Patton laughed, "I don't think I'd be able to wait."

"I've got exams soon, Patton. I can't risk missing anything."

"Oh, I'm not trying to change your mind! You do what you think is best. But aren't you excited?"

Janus was convinced Patton was smiling so hard his face was going to get stuck like that. But when Janus didn't answer immediately, his frown dampened.

"Hey, are you okay, Jan?"

"Of course I am. Why wouldn't I be?"

"Oh, honey. You're nervous, aren't you?" Patton asked as his smile turned empathetic, which Janus thought was almost worse than excited.

The scorpion nuzzled against his neck, which was an odd sensation for sure, but Janus appreciated the sentiment.

"Of course I'm not nervous. I have no reason to be."

Patton tilted his head down slightly and gave him that look. The soft-smile dad-friend look that meant you were about to be comforted, whether you like it or not. Janus sighed.

"Okay, fine. A little," he conceded. He probably should be worried about how close that scorpion and its stinger was against his neck as it cuddled closer. But he'd never heard of a soulmate guide killing anyone, so he chose not to.

"Oh, sweetie," Patton said in that annoyingly soft tone. He wrapped an arm around Janus' and led him over to a bench. Peachy promptly hopped up to sit on Patton's lap while Cookie plopped against Patton's legs, giving Janus a soft nudge with her nose.

"It's not a big deal," Janus huffed, "I just think its reasonable to be nervous about meeting some stranger I am now expected to spend my life with."

"You have every right to feel what you're feeling. Such a big life change can be scary. But I'm certain your soulmate will understand your reservations and will go at any pace you're comfortable with."

While yes, the idea of a soulmate was a pleasant one, it was also a bit... concerning, to say the least. Janus was quite happy with where he was in life, and he wasn't too keen on the idea of something changing it all completely.

He was a bit surprised Logan wasn't his soulmate. He was the perfect roommate: neat, consistent, punctual. And Janus felt enough fondness for Logan that he was sort of expecting to wake up one day and have their guides just push them into each others' arms.

Alas, apparently not.

Janus bit his lip, debating. It would be good to talk about his worries. And as much as Janus pretended, he was actually quite fond of Patton.

"Patton, what if we don't work?"

"What do you mean, hon?"

"This person is supposedly meant to complete me. To make me better. But I'm perfectly fine the way I am now. I don't feel like I'm missing anything. What if I meet them and they just want to... to fix me? Because I'm expected to change for them?"

"Janus, your soulmate is meant to compliment you. Not complete you. You aren't missing any parts of yourself, because you're already your own complete person. And you certainly don't need to be 'fixed.'"

The scorpion crawled down to Janus' hands, and Janus ran his thumb over its back to pet it.

"But what if... what if we meet and nothing happens? Everyone always talks about their 'immediate romantic connections' but I don't buy it. What if we're doomed to always be strangers? After all, I'm not particularly good with people, Pat. What did I call you when we first met? A-"

"An annoying, self-righteous, dependent puppy with no boundaries?"

Janus winced. "Yeah. That."

A gentle smile grew on Patton's face as he held his arms out for a hug. Janus hesitated for only a moment before accepting.

"You don't need to worry about anything. Soulmates don't always mean romantic. Even if you don't feel romance at first, even if you never do, you two are going to share a tight bond and a special relationship different from anyone else you know. Nothing gets to take that from you."

"...Thank you, Patton. For taking the time to talk to me."

"Of course! What are friends for?"

Patton gave him a soft smile, and Janus gave him a rare, genuine one in return.

"Oh! I hope I didn't make you late for class!"

Janus looked at his watch. "I'll be fine if I hurry. Thank you. Again. Goodbye, Cookie. Bye, Peachy."

Peachy didn't react. Cookie gave him one last gentle nudge.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

The snake in Remus' arms couldn't guide in front of him like Roman's bird would or any sort of animal with wings or legs. While he could let it slither on the ground, it would be dangerous with how busy the sidewalk was. And Remus really didn't need to return the snake to his soulmate all squished.

So it was wrapped around his shoulders, reaching down his arms, and rested in his hands, guiding him down the street like a compass.

The snake turned back to look at Remus.

"What is it? What's wrong?" he asked as he kept walking, the snake shaking its head urgently. Only for someone to grab the back of his jacket and yank him back, pulling him off the street and narrowly missing oncoming traffic.

"Watch where you're going, asshole," the person muttered. Remus turned, ready to start shit, but instead broke into a goofy grin when he saw Virgil.

"Hey, emo!"

Besides Roman, Virgil was Remus' only friend. Most people were too put off by Remus', well, everything.

And Virgil had been too, at first. But the two bonded over their soulmate's guides being creatures most of the public feared and the stigma that came with that. And now he was used to Remus' bullshit.

"And hey, Helena," he said to the tarantula sitting on Virgil's shoulder.

"So. You found your soulmate guide," Virgil said. The snake reached over to inspect Virgil and he scratched under its chin, the snake then nuzzling against Virgil's cheek.

"On your way to find your soulmate?" he asked as the snake and tarantula started inspecting each other.

"Yep!"

"Are you nervous?"

"Nope!"

Virgil squinted at him, searching for any sign of dishonesty, but all he saw was the normal, excitable Remus.

"Shit, you're lucky, man. I've been psyching myself out over meeting mine."

"But aren't they, like, made for you?"

"Supposedly. But you know me. I can't stop thinking about all the bad things. Like what if they don't like me?"

"Well, that would be a them problem."

Virgil let out an amused huff. "Really? You wouldn't be bothered?"

"Well, yeah," Remus said as he watched the snake and Helena play peekaboo behind Virgil's neck. "But like, it's not like I'm not used to people not liking me. And if I don't know this person, what would I lose, really? So actually, this can only go up for me."

Virgil cast him a sad smile. Remus hated it.

"It'll be good for you," Virgil said as the two crossed the street. "You are a strange fucking creature, but you're a good dude. Mostly. Partially? Mostly."

"It'll be good for you, too, then. Cause you're better than me."

Virgil nudged him with his shoulder.

"Ultimately, I know it will be. My brain just hates me."

"You and me both, emo."

The snake curled back against Remus after booping Helena and resumed its role as soulmate compass.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Remus ended up on his old school campus.

Ew.

He had dropped out, and he had hoped he would never have to step foot back here again. Oh, well, C'est la vie, or whatever the fuck.

Though you needed to swipe a student ID to unlock the doors, Remus knew if he yanked hard enough the doors would give. He had managed to make it through a whole semester without his ID after he lost it.

A grimace grew on Remus' face as he walked back into the Taylor Building for the first time in over a year. It was named after his least favorite professor, and he had a lot of bad memories in this building.

Time to find his soulmate and get the fuck out.

He was just about to head upstairs when someone shouted at him.

"Excuse me! Only students and faculty are allowed in this building."

Yeah, Remus supposed he didn't look like the typical law majors that took up a majority of the classes here. Not with his spiked leather jacket and ripped jeans. He turned to see who had yelled at him.

And speak of the devil.

"Hey, you're Taylor!"

The man straightened his shoulders.

"Yes, I am. Were you a student of mine?"

"Yeah! I hated your fuckin' guts."

The man looked like he had been slapped before a sneering look of recognition appeared on his face.

"Remus Kingsley."

"Aw, I'm flattered you remember me. Especially since I dropped out. You encouraged me to, remember? Right after you called me a, what was it, 'moronic good-for-nothing- imbecile that would never amount to anything?'"

"You need to leave immediately."

Taylor had reached out to grab Remus but he bolted up the stairs, making sure he had a tight grip on the snake.

He wasn't about to give up on his soulmate that easy.

As they ran down the upstairs hallway, Taylor continued to shout at him. But Remus wasn't worried. He was clearly much faster.

He turned to see the disheveled man chasing behind him and laughed. This was kinda fun!

Then he had to turn around and run face first into the chest of a campus officer.

Well, bitchtits.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Janus' class was nothing out of the ordinary, except that his surrounding classmates had inched as far away from this as they could, and Janus was enjoying the extra space.

The scorpion had been still on his shoulder for the most part, settling in where Janus' neck and shoulder met. But now it stood, rushing down Janus' arm to the desk and running around in circles.

"What is it?" he whispered.

Right after he asked that, shouting was heard down the hallway. The professor and students all turned their heads in time to see someone running past the door, laughing, with Professor Taylor chasing after them.

"...Okay, then," The professor said, "Now back to your review material."

Janus hardly listened as the professor spoke. He was more focused on the scorpion that kept switching between running in circles and scuttling onto Janus' hand.

When the professor dismissed the class, Janus hung back. He preferred to let the crowd of students leave before him instead of trying to fight his way through.

By the time he walked into the hallway, it was mostly empty. Janus was holding the scorpion in the palm of his hands and it jumped to get his attention. It gestured with its body to go down the hallway.

"Alright, let's go."

The scorpion led him down a couple of hallways, and Janus heard shouting and the sound of running footsteps against the tile.

A man ran around the corner, his neon green combat boots skidding on the floor as he tried to stop. He had a mustache above a wild grin, with a streak of white through his hair.

He also had Dusa wrapped around his neck.

Janus stared. The man stopped in front of him.

"Fluffy!" he said to the scorpion in Janus' hands, who was alternating between running in circles again and hopping in excitement.

He looked up at Janus with a manic grin. "Hey! I'm Remus. I'd love to stop and chat but I'm afraid I've found myself wrapped up with something."

Two campus officers rounded the corner.

What the fuck.

Janus took the scorpion - Fluffy - in one hand and held it against his chest, grabbing Remus' wrist with the other and bolting.

Remus let out a delighted laugh as he let Janus pull him down the hallway and down a set of stairs.

Jesus, what did Janus get himself into?

He was heading towards one of the student parking lots, cutting through the Union. There would be lots of students and he hoped they could get lost in the crowd. But with two idiots running across the yard with a snake and a scorpion, people were parting a path for them. Which made them more obvious but at least let them through.

When Janus looked behind him, he couldn't see the officers, but he didn't want to risk it. It wasn't exactly hard to identify them: one with a large scar on the left side of his face and the other, with, well, a lot of fucking identifiable traits.

Logan would probably get mad at him for this, but Janus was sure he would be forgiven that same day if he made Logan thumbprint cookies. So Janus let go of Remus' hand to dig in his pocket, finding the spare key to Logan's car he gave Janus only for emergencies. Janus would consider this an emergency. Logan probably would not.

Janus unlocked the car and Remus got in without question. Remus hardly stopped laughing.

Great. So his soulmate was a maniac.

Janus pulled out of the parking lot and onto the street, gunning it out of there as Remus shouted in excitement.

"Fuck, yeah, dude!" he yelled. His seat-belt was not on, by the way.

"What the hell did you do?"

"Trespass, technically. But it would've been fine if that bitchass Taylor hadn't come along. And then I maybe assaulted an officer, but could it really be assault if I just whacked him when he tried to grab me? Anyways I already have three offenses - I guess four now - and I didn't want to go to jail or anything so I started running-"

"God, I'm going to miss my next class," Janus groaned, "What if they try to find me tomorrow?"

"How's your track record?"

"It's clean. Unlike someone, I don't get caught."

"Psh, then you're probably fine. you're a white law student."

Janus took a deep breath as he tried to collect his thoughts. What was even happening right now?

"...Okay, I may have fucked this up," Remus started, and he at least had the decency to sound sheepish, "I didn't mean to drag you into this mess, even though I was purposefully... searching... for you... Shit, I didn't even think about that. I don't think a lot, actually. I mean, I wasn't even paying attention on the way to find you. I almost got hit by a car. Could you imagine, Fluffy leading you to me only to find your soulmate and guide squashed by a car and our blood and guts everywhere-"

"Remus."

"Sorry, sorry," he groaned as his hands went to grab his hair, "I was really excited to meet you, and even when being chased by police my dumb brain only wanted to focus on finding you because I don't have many friends cause most people get weirded out since I can't control my thoughts or my mouth so, like, all the weird shit that pops int my brain just comes right out and I was really looking forward to meeting someone who wouldn't leave-"

"Remus, it's okay," Janus interrupted, "Deep breaths, okay?"

Remus took a couple deep breaths.

Then Janus let out a short laugh. He felt bad for laughing, but he couldn't help it.

"...What?"

"I'm sorry. I'm not laughing at you. The situation just caught up to me: You're my soulmate, we just ran from the police, and we just took my friend's car and wow. Can't say this is how I expected this to go."

Remus grimaced. "Sorry."

"No, actually. This is better than the sappy shit I was thinking about."

Remus perked up a bit. "Yeah?"

"Is it always like this with you? Am I sentenced to spend my life digging you out of trouble, now?"

"Yeah, probably."

Janus laughed again as he pulled into the parking lot of a shopping center. He had no clear idea where he was going, and at least this place had plenty of people and plenty of parking. When he stopped, the scorpion hopped off his shoulder and scuttled to Remus.

"Hey, Fluffy," he said with a smile as he put the scorpion in his lap.

"Hey, actually, let's talk about that," Janus said, "You named your scorpion Fluffy?"

"Yeah. I named him that to trick people. Scared the shit out of my mom when he first showed up. 'Hey, meet Fluffy,' then I pull a scorpion out from behind my back. It never gets old."

Janus couldn't stop smiling, and he was sure his face was disgustingly close to Patton's in terms of fondness, but he couldn't do anything to help that.

"I'm Janus. The lovely lady on your shoulders is Dusa."

"Janus. That's a badass name," Remus said as he scritched Dusa under her chin.

"Thank you for your help today, Dusa," Janus said with a grin as she slithered back over to wrap around Janus, "And you, too, Fluffy."

"Fuck yeah. Thanks guys. Shit, Dusa was awesome. I'm pretty sure that while I was running, she flicked her tail to open a door and it hit one of the officers in the face."

Janus glanced down at her. "You are an enabler."

She stuck her tongue out.

"Well, since we're already here, would you like to go on a date or something? It seems like you have stories to tell," Janus said as he gestured to the mall in front of them.

"Yeah," Remus said with a fond grin, "Are you hungry? I'm starving. Wanna go to the food court. On me. We'll have to be careful, though. I'm pretty sure I'm banned from this mall."

Janus stared at him before bursting out laughing again. This was his life now, and how exciting that thought was.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'd love to."

Thanks for reading! Requests are open in my inbox. Hope you enjoyed <3

#sanders sides #dukeceit week #janus sanders #remus sanders #dukeceit #logan sanders #roman sanders #patton sanders #virgil sanders #platonic loceit #creativitwins #platonic moceit #platonic dukexiety #janus fic #remus fic #dukeceit fic

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aiweirdness · 4 years

Text

How to begin a novel

Last year for National Novel Writing Month I trained a neural net called torch-rnn on 10,096 unique ways to begin a novel. It came up with some intriguing possibilities, my personal favorite being “I am forced to write to my neighbors about the beast.” But many of its sentences used made-up words, or had such weird grammar that they were difficult to read, or meandered too erratically. (“The first day of the world was born in the year 1985, in an old side of the world, and the air of the old sky of lemon and waves and berries.”) The neural net was struggling to write more than a few words at a time.

This year, I decided to revisit this dataset with a larger, more-powerful neural net called GPT-2. Unlike most of the neural nets that came earlier, GPT-2 can write entire essays with readable sentences that stay mostly on topic (even if it has a tendency to lose its train of thought or get very weird). I trained the largest size that was easily fine-tunable via GPT-2-simple, the 355M size of GPT-2. Would a more-powerful neural net produce better first lines?

One of the parameters I can tweak when I’m getting a trained neural net to generate text is temperature - this controls whether the neural net chooses the most likely next bit of text as it writes, or whether it’s permitted to use its less-likely predictions. At a default of 0.7, a relatively conservative temperature, the neural net’s first lines not only make grammatical sense, but they even have the rhythm of a novel’s first line. This is DRAMATICALLY better than torch-rnn did.

I am, or was.

At the mid-day meal the sun began to set and the quiet dragged on.

There was once a man who lived for a very long time; perhaps three thousand years, or perhaps a thousand million years, maybe a trillion or so, depending on how the scientists look at it.

He had the heart of a lion, and the fangs of a man-eater.

"I am Eilie, and I am here to kill the world."

The old woman was sitting on a rock near the sea, smoking a pipe.

I have just been informed, that the debate over the question 'is it right or wrong to have immortal souls' has been finally brought to a conclusion.

When I was a boy, I was fond of the story of the pirate god.

He had a strange name, and he was a very big boy indeed.

The purple-haired woman came to the clearing in the plain, and without looking up from her book, said, "It's too late to be thinking about baby names."

The village of Pembrokeshire, in the county of Mersey, lies on a wide, happy plain, which, in a few years, was to become known as the "Land of the Endless Mountains."

I don’t think the neural net plagiarized any of these? They are so good that I’m suspicious. But others of the neural net’s lines are even weirder, yet in an effective way that opens with an intriguing premise.

The moon had gone out.

I was playing with my dog, Mark the brown Labrador, and I had forgotten that I was also playing with a dead man.

The black stone was aching from the rain.

The short, dirty, and dirty-looking ship that weighed three tons and was three feet in diameter landed on a desolate and green plain.

How many times have I had the misfortune to die?

The first black dog in the park had been captured alive.

Behold the Sky Rabbits!

In the belly of the great beast that was the bovine Aurore there lived, upon the right hand of the throne, the Empress Penelope; and she had, as it were, a heart of gold.

The moon stood on its own two feet.

The reeking maw of the blood-drunk ship, the enemy's flagship, was silent and empty.

The first day I met my future self, I was aboard the old dirigible that lay in wait for me on the far side of the moon.

The child of two cats, and a tiger, a clown, a horse, a bird, a ship, and a dragon, stood on either side of the threshold of the Gatehouse, watching the throng of travelers who came in from all around the world, before he had any idea what was going on.

I think it’s probably doing this accidentally, stringing likely words and phrases together without understanding what any of them really mean. It’s not that it’s good at science fiction or magical realism; it’s that it’s trying and failing to predict what would have fit in with the usual human-written stuff. Some of the neural net’s first lines really betray its lack of the understanding of the laws of physics. It really likes to describe the weather, but it doesn’t really understand how weather works. Or other things, really.

The moon was low in the sky, as though it had been shipped in from the farthest reaches of the solar system.

The first star I saw was a blue one, which became a scarlet one, and then a gold one, and green, and finally a yellow one, which for some years afterwards seemed to be an ebony one, or even a bubbling mass.

The sun rose slowly, like a mighty black cat, and then sank into a state of deep sleep.

The sea of stars was filled with the serenity of a million little birds.

The great blue field was all white, swept away by the blue-gold breeze that blew from the south.

The sky was cold and dark, and the cold wind, if it had not been for the clouds, would have lashed the children to the roof of the house.

The morning sun was shining brightly, but the sky was grey and the clouds aching.

The night that he finally made up his mind to kill the dog, the man was walking home from the store with his wife and child in the back seat.

Arthur the lion had been pretty much extinct for some time, until the time when he was petted by Abernathy the old woman, and her son, Mr. Popp.

One of the disadvantages of having a neural net that can string together a grammatical sentence is that its sentences now can begin to be terrible in a more-human sense, rather than merely incomprehensible. It ventures into the realm of the awful simile, or the mindnumbingly repetitive, and it makes a decent stab at the 19th century style of bombastic wordiness. I selected the examples above for uncomprehending brilliance but the utter tediousness below is more the norm.

The whites of my eyes shimmered, as if my mind were dancing.

I once went to a party where the dress code was as strict as a chicken coop with no leggings and no boots.

A black cloud drifted by, a mottled mass of hydrogen, a black cloud of hydrogen, with the definite characteristic of being black.

I say I am at sea, because I am standing upon the ocean, and look out across the barren, vast throng of the sea.

It is, of course, a trifling matter in the ordinary course of things, if a certain writer were to write a novel, which is a book of stories, which is a book of characters, wherein every detail of the story is stated, together with a brief description of the theme which it concerns.

There was a boy with blue eyes, with sandy hair and blue eyes that looked at all times like he had been pushed through a million compartments.

The Sun, with its rolling shaft of bright light, the brilliant blue of the distant golden sun, and the red glow of its waning corona, was shining.

The man who was not Jack the Ripper had been promoted four times in the last two years.

Felix the Paw was sitting at the table of his favorite restaurant, the "Bordeaux" in the town of Bordeaux, when his father, Cincinnata, came in to say good-by to the restaurant.

It, sir, gives me the greatest pleasure to hear that the Court be not too long in passing away: but that I may have leisure to prepare a new work for the publication of my friend and colleague, the renowned Epistemology, which is now finished; and in which I shall endeavour to show, that this very point is of the highest importance in the subject of the philosophy which I am about to treat of.

It was a rainy, drizzling day in the summer of 1869 and the people of New York, who had become accustomed to the warm, kissable air of the city, were having another bad one.

Repetitiveness is also common, especially at this conservative temperature setting. Once the neural net gets itself into a repetitive state, it doesn’t seem to rescue itself - it’s a problem that people have noticed in several versions of this algorithm. (It doesn’t help that I forgot to scrub the “title” that someone submitted to the dataset that consists of the word “sand” repeated 2,000 times)

The sky was blue and the stars were blue and the sun was blue and the water was blue and the clouds were blue and the blue sky was like a piece of glass.

At the end of the world, where the tides burst upon the drowned, there exists a land of dragons, of dragons, which is the land of the dragons.

It's the end of the world, it's the end of the world, it's the end of the world, it's the end of the world, it's the end of the world, you're dead.

There was once a land of sand, and sand, sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand

Increasing the temperature of the sampling would help the repetitiveness problem, in theory, letting the neural net venture into more interesting territory. But at a temperature of 1.0 the text tends to venture out of everyday surrealism and into wordy yet distractible incomprehensibility.

The praying mules on the top of the hills sounded the final klaxon, lifting their spiked front hoofs as they crept the last few feet of desert landscape past the crest of the enormous swathe of prehistoric sand.

In the glen of the Loch is a ladder that winds way up through a passage to a ledge with soft, moss-laden environmental standards.

Someone whipped a dead squash gibbet across the room, like some formidable war lord unleashing a heavy hunk of silver at home.

One blue eyed child stood up and cried out: "Douay, saurines, my Uncle – Fanny Pemble the loader!"

Jud - an elderly despot, or queen in emopheles, was sitting across the table from the king, looking very thoughtfully into the perplexions of the proceedings.

Oh, you're a coward little fool, as if you couldn't bear to leer at a Prunker or white-clad bodyguard quickly emerging from a shady, storm-damaged area of the city.

Hanging presently in his little bell-bottomed chamber on the landing-house, early in the morning, the iron traveler sat on a broad-blonde sandbricksannel blanket outside the gate of a vast and ancient island.

Long, glowing tongues trailed from your mouth as you listened to what was being said across this kingdom of ours, but growing a little more somber since the week that caused us to proclaim general war.

The night I first met Winnie the Pooh, I had sat in the Tasting-House and heard the Chef unpack the last of the poison upon his quiet dinnertable.

There is, of course, no perfect setting at which the neural net churns out sensible yet non-repetitive first lines. There are just varying shades of general awfulness, interspersed with accidental brilliance.

No matter how much you’re struggling with your novel, at least you can take comfort in the fact that AI is struggling even more.

I generated all the neural net sentences above using a generic “It” as the prompt that the neural net had to build on (it would usually go on to generate another 20-30 sentences at a time). But although the sentences are independent in my training data, GPT-2 is used to large blocks of text that go together. The result is if I prompt it instead with, say, a line from Harry Potter fanfic, the neural net will tend to stick with that vein for a while. I've included a few examples as bonus content for subscribers.

Update: I now have a few thousand unfiltered examples of neural net-generated first lines at the GitHub repository where I have the original crowdsourced dataset. Themes include: Harry Potter, Victorian, My Little Pony, and Ancient Gods.

My book on AI is out, and, you can now get it any of these several ways! Amazon - Barnes & Noble - Indiebound - Tattered Cover - Powell’s

#neural networks #you look like a thing #nanowrimo #gpt-2 #writing #first lines #gpt-2-355m

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narrators-journal · 3 years

Text

Months of tolerance

So, I was looking back at my ranpoe valentines story and I got an idea. Why not write a little collection? A little trio or so of Valentines-themed sort of ship stories?

And so, I wrote a second one for Shin-soukoku! Though, please be forgiving, I’m not a super big fan of Atsushi, so I don’t have a lot of ideas and experience on how he works and behaves, so I kinda took inspiration from the rp me and my friend did for BSD and their sort of rendition of Atsushi mixed with canon.

Atsushi had never really experienced Valentines day or White day, so when Dazai offered to take him out on one of his days off and introduce him to the basics of the event he accepted it. He was quick to find it to be a bit depressing. “Dazai, I don't think I have any real...reason to be here," The tiger sighed, putting down one of the little Valentines bears he'd been looking at in the shop and looking over at the bandage-clad brunette that was to be his mentor in the ADA. The rail of a man just pouted at him, "Nonsense, Atsushi! You're learning about romance," he assured, giving the white-haired man a sweet smile, which made Atsushi grimace, "Yeah, but this holiday is obviously for couples, and I don't have any romantic partner of any sort," He pointed out, a stone of loneliness settling in the bottom of his stomach as he spoke, but his mentor simply snorted as if that point was moot. "Sushi, you don't need a romantic partner to celebrate Valentines day, you can just as easily get gifts for friends. After all, I don't have a partner but I'm gonna get a gift for someone." He assured, and while the tiger was still a bit unsure, he just nodded.

After that, he just went back to milling around up and down the aisle as he poked at the little toys, knick knacks, or sweets scattered about until Dazai clapped his hands together in an idea, "Atsushi! I have an idea for what you can do on Valentines day!" he chirped, bouncing on his feet in some childish, giddy high, "Why not get a gift for Ryuunosuke!" The tiger blinked and scowled at the idea, "Why the hell would I do that? I don't have any sort of feelings for him," he about spat, almost feeling his lip curl in a snarl at the mere mention of the wheezing, gothic, Dazai fanboy. However, the brunette simply rolled his eyes at his venom, "There is a very common phrase, 'kill your enemies with kindness', you ever hear it?" before the weretiger could answer, he continued, "Akutagawa doesn't like you. At all. Hates your guts. But! If you get him a gift, maybe be as friendly as you can be, you can get him to warm up to you!" the weretiger's scowl only deepened, which made his mentor huff and drop the excited, bubbly tone, "If you get him to like you, you won't have to spend quite as much on shirts every week." Atsushi ended up buying a cheap little gift for the goth. However, that now left him with a question. How was he to get the cheap plush cat to Akutagawa? He'd been pondering the question all through out the three days that led up to Valentines day, going back and forth on whether or not he should even bother with Dazai's stupid idea. Is it really worth risking getting stabbed again? Just to give this cheap little thing to a bastard like Akutagawa? He thought bitterly, though his cheeks burned a slight pink while he glared down at the floppy little beanie baby cat that was sprawled out on his meager little coffee table, staring up at the tiger with glassy amber eyes while he sat on his couch the evening before Valentines day. I'd sooner drink my own piss then give Akutagawa a Valentines gift. He told himself firmly, getting up from his couch and plucking the toy from the cheap table to get rid of it. To do this, he threw it out of his livingroom window into the darkness of the cold night and listened to it land in the dumpster across the street with a soft thud thanks to how hard he'd thrown it. And, with that, he shut his window with a decisive 'humph' and went to bed. Dazai was a smart man, but Atsushi was not going to have conflicting and confusing feelings plague him just to placate a violent asshole with a hateboner for him. An hour later, the tiger went out to the dumpster he'd heard the cat slam against and dug the poor thing out to be washed. Not that the weretiger had changed his mind or anything, he'd just spent money on the derpy little toy, he didn't want to waste it. Or, so he told himself. So, he instead returned it to his bedside table after washing it a few times, trying to see if he could somehow rub the new crack out of his amber eye while doing his best to get the dumpster stench out of its fur. If he really was going to 'kill Akutagawa with kindness' like Dazai said, the least he could do was make sure the gift didn't reek of three day old take out and dog vomit. When the next day came, he took the toy to work, then walked home with it draped over his arm after a day of dealing with petty couple squabbles that had turned nasty, or helping Ranpo to and from the smattering of robberies he'd been requested on. Y'know, this just proves why I should've kept this thing in the garbage, he fumed to himself, staring at the sidewalk ahead of him so he didn't see even more lovey-dovey couples for the day, If I gave this to Akutagawa somehow, all that would happen is I'd be a statistic. Nothing more. He hates me too much, it'd probably off- Atsushi's ill-tempered thoughts were cut short when he ran into someone else on the sidewalk, sending them both sprawling to the pavement. "O-oh my god! I'm so sorry, are you hurt miss?!" The weretiger squeaked, hopping up to his feet at record speeds to offer a hand to the pretty lady in white. She had long black hair, and a familiar style of dress on, but it was her light, steel-colored eyes that finally got her face to click in the frazzled tiger's irrational mind. "Oh!...Gin, right?" he asked as she took his hand and let him help her up while she nodded, "Sorry, I didn't mean to run you over," she said, her voice as quiet as the first time he'd met her with Katai and Kunikida, but her words shot a nebulous sort of anxiety into his veins, "Oh, no no no, it was my fault, I wasn't looking where I-I was going," he stammered, trying desperately to comfort her as he reached to dust her off, but then changed his mind half way, doing that would be super weird, so he instead tried to think up another way to make up for running into her. He felt awful for knocking her over, but had no clue what to do, so he just ended up putting a hand over his anxious heart and staying quiet. Gin, meanwhile, had spotted the saggy stuffed toy on the sidewalk, "Um, is that yours?" She asked, picking it up and dusting the little thing off gently, snapping Atsushi out of his thoughts, "What? Oh! Yeah, that's...actually, I bought it for...Akutagawa." he admitted, not knowing what else to say to explain why he had a stuffed cat. Gin blinked at him, raising an eyebrow, "No offense, but why did you buy my brother a toy? Is it for Valentines day?" Atsushi gaped for a moment, for some reason his brain struggling to give even the simplest answer for a moment, "I...D-Dazai suggested getting him a gift..." he muttered, his cheeks beginning to heat up as he spoke, which Gin seemed to notice, but she said nothing, "Well, how about I deliver it to him? He likes cats, I'm sure he'd enjoy this one," she offered sweetly instead, and for a moment Atsushi could only stare at her while his cheeks undoubtedly glowed a healthy pink until he cleared his throat, get yourself together Atsushi! This is a fine way to get the damned gift to Akutagawa, then Dazai can get off your ass, he told himself, pushing down the weird flustered feeling in his chest, "Um, t-that would be helpful," She nodded, smiling a bit at the toy cat. With that, she wished him well as the sky darkened from the yellow-purple gradient of Atsushi's eyes, to a dark, star-speckled blue, leaving the tiger to walk home and contemplate his day. For the next few days, the weretiger was on edge, just waiting for the wheezing goth to pop out from behind every corner ready to stab him. However, it never happened. Atsushi was expecting it, always at the ready to defend himself, but for the entire month he didn't even see his nemesis on jobs, let alone when he was walking home or too work. So, he began to relax. Maybe he really did enjoy the stuffed toy, he thought a month or so later on his walk home from the ADA. The thought brought an odd warm feeling to his chest, but he was swift to stomp the detested feeling back down into that part of himself he refused to acknowledge. He could accept his tiger, but he was not ready to face anything like that emotion. Then, something slammed into the side of his head. In an instant, Atsushi was knocked onto the sidewalk with his world swimming for a moment or two. In those moments, he laid there in a daze, forced to wait for his senses to return and the throbbing ache in his skull to die before he could finally stumble to his feet. When the pain stopped and he could bare to stand once again, the white-haired man looked around for what might've hit him in the head, but the only thing he found was a can of soda. A soda that, upon closer inspection, he found to be one of his favorites, which was weird enough, since usually his favorite soft drink doesn't fly at people's heads, but, no one was currently around to explain why an unopened, very dented can of his preferred soda was rolling around at his feet after knocking him on his ass like it had. He'd tried to look around, taking advantage of his improved night vision to try and spot anyone trying to hide from the blame for throwing it at him, but the street was currently sparse in other people in the area. However, after a moment of thinking, and examining the near-bursting can, it slowly dawned on the tiger who might've thrown it. Then, the date set in, bringing a stronger wave of hot embarrassment to his cheeks. "Um?? T-thanks I guess?" he called out into the swiftly growing darkness, and then swiftly continued home, before the hiding goth caught sight of the way his cheeks tinged a small shade of pink or decided to come out to maul him for acknowledging him.

#Shin soukoku #bsd #Bungo stray dogs #Atsushi Nakajima #Akutagawa Ryunosuke #scenario #fluff #valentines day

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robininthelabyrinth · 4 years

Text

sequel to A Sick Thought (aka the Mo Xuanyu & Wei Wuxi-cat fic)

“Did I do something to make Hanguang-jun not like me?” Mo Xuanyu asked.

Jiang Cheng wasn’t expecting the question, so he reacted as usual – incredulous glare with a side order of ‘who are you to dare talk to me directly?!’ – which to nobody’s surprise was massive overkill for a shrinking violet like Mo Xuanyu, who quailed at once.

“I’m sure he likes you fine,” Jiang Cheng said hastily, trying to make up for it. He hadn’t had much practice at trying to be not scary in years. “What makes you say that?”

He wasn’t really good at making conversation, either, but he was the only one here right now. They’d all been taking shifts to support Mo Xuanyu with spiritual energy per the doctor’s recommendation for treating the mercury poison that was still affecting his mind, and Jiang Cheng usually volunteered to take the late night-early morning shift because Lans simply weren’t properly functional at those hours until their official wake-up time hit.

Also, it was the one time he could generally guarantee Wei Wuxian would be either busy or napping and he wouldn’t have to deal with – any of that.

He knew he’d eventually have to deal with Wei Wuxian, but…not yet.

Right now, he turned to look at Mo Xuanyu, who was lying very still, covered in acupuncture needles to the point that he resembled a pincushion; he had very large eyes that suggested trembling even when he wasn’t, and that irked Jiang Cheng, somehow, when he’d already made an effort not to be scary.

“He doesn’t seem happy when I’m around,” Mo Xuanyu explained.

“That’s not about you,” Jiang Cheng said gruffly. “Hanguang-jun just doesn’t like anyone. You wouldn’t believe it based on his righteous reputation, but he can be a real ass to people.”

Jiang Cheng supposed that the ice-block must like someone, given how often jokes were made about him looking as though his wife had died, but he’d never seen it in person. When they were young, Lan Wangji had already been stern and cold, with occasional bouts of being snappish – especially towards Wei Wuxian. There’d been a few months during the Sunshot Campaign when he’d been a little softer, during the time they were looking for Wei Wuxian together, but he’d gone straight back to asshole right after, sticking his nose into everyone’s business and harassing Wei Wuxian for his demonic cultivation. And once Wei Wuxian had died, he’d gone into seclusion for years on end, only to come back as his current glacial self –

“No, that’s mostly just to you, I think,” Mo Xuanyu said. “He’s very polite to all the juniors, everyone in the Lan sect…even Jin Ling.”

Jiang Cheng really hated that his first thought was at least I’m unique because being the only man Hanguang-jun is consistently rude to was a stupid prize to be happy to win and he knew it. He didn’t even like Hanguang-jun enough to care what the man thought!

“But I really do think it’s something about me in particular. Recently I’ve noticed that he seems to scowl when I’m around –”

“There’s a time when he’s not scowling?”

“…I mean, actually scowl, as opposed to being expressionless?”

Jiang Cheng tilted his head to the side, reviewing instances in which he’d observed the two of them, then nodded. “That might be the case, actually.”

Mo Xuanyu sighed, sounding almost relieved by the confirmation. “I don’t know why! I didn’t think I behaved all that badly when we first met, and I never met him at Koi Tower before –”

Jiang Cheng didn’t like to think of Mo Xuanyu and Koi Tower.

He’d only ever seen Mo Xuanyu distantly, a wallflower even when decked out in Lanling gold, and Jiang Cheng hadn’t been in Lanling for very many visits during the short time Mo Xuanyu had been there – a few years, maybe, half a decade at most, and most of that time Jiang Cheng had been focused on his sect or his nephew to the exclusion of everything else.

Still, his first up-close view had been truly disturbing.

All the more so because Jin Ling clearly hadn’t realize that it was so disturbing, because Jin Ling – his Jin Ling – thought it was somehow normal for what had once been a perfectly ordinary, if shy, man to suddenly become a lunatic, raving with fits and terrified of everyone dressed in yellow…

(He’d have to have words with Jin Guangyao about it, whenever he found the time. Had they done something wrong in raising Jin Ling? And who was it that had so tormented Mo Xuanyu while he was there? Surely Jin Guangyao would know something…)

It was all extremely uncomfortable, and doubly complicated by the fact that Jiang Cheng himself had been driven to the edge of a nervous breakdown when he heard Wei Wuxian’s voice again after all these years. He’d dreamed of his shixiong coming back, back the way he used to be before the war had ruined everything; he’d had nightmares of him coming back, too – not again I don’t want to have to kill him again please no – but somehow the idea that he’d come back as a cat had just been…too much.

They said only the worst sort of people reincarnated as animals.

Later, of course, he learned about the body sacrificing array (he’d nearly been sick at the thought of Wei Wuxian’s familiar gaze looking out at him from Mo Xuanyu’s big trembling eyes, the actual man’s soul gone who-knows-where), and the fact that someone had taught that and only that to Mo Xuanyu, intending on squeezing him dry and then discarding him to use the shell…

It was sickening.

He should have paid more attention.

“- and anyway I can’t figure out what it might be.”

“Well, think over what the instances that you saw him scowling were, and figure out what there was in common,” Jiang Cheng said. Circulating spiritual energy into another person was tiring, but not necessarily mentally stimulating – it wouldn’t be too much to devote some time into the puzzle of the mysteriously scowling Hanguang-jun. “Were you at a particular location?”

“No. Once I was at the dining hall, once walking through the field, a few times in here…”

“Were you doing anything in specific?”

“I don’t think so? I don’t really – do anything.”

That was certainly true. Maybe they should be encouraging Mo Xuanyu to pick up a hobby.

Jiang Cheng thought about it a bit more. “Would you say Hanguang-jun scowls at me?” he asked.

Mo Xuanyu was caught by surprise and failed to hide his smile – it was a surprisingly cute smile, broader and more full-fledged that Jiang Cheng would have expected from such a shy person. It transformed his whole face: his eyes crinkling at the sides, his cheeks dimpling, his nose scrunching up.

Really, surprisingly cute.

Was that what Mo Xuanyu would have been like, if it wasn’t for the poison and the abuse?

“Yes, Sandu Shengshou,” Mo Xuanyu said, his eyes twinkling a little in his amusement. “Hanguang-jun always scowls at you.”

Jiang Cheng felt a stupid little spike of pleasure, which, damnit, he does not care. Stupid prizes were not worth winning – he just had to keep reminding himself of that.

“Well, that’s something, then,” he said, deciding not to think about it. Much like he was not thinking about Wei Wuxian: very purposefully. “That means it’s not you he doesn’t like, because then he’d scowl every time, instead of just sometimes. Is there anyone with you during those times?”

Mo Xuanyu pursed his lips when he thought. “I don’t think so?” he said doubtfully. “It’s usually just me and Wei Wuxian…it couldn’t possibly be Wei Wuxian, though. They like each other.”

“You think so?” Jiang Cheng asked, surprised. “Why?”

“Well, I mean, they’re always together, aren’t they? Unless Wei Wuxian’s with me, Hanguang-jun is always keeping him company – in the library pavilion, in the dining hall, in the cold spring…”

Jiang Cheng was starting to get flashbacks to his teenage days. “Surely you mean that Wei Wuxian is the one keeping Hanguang-jun company?” he said, because that sounded much more likely. “Or, well, pestering him?”

Mo Xuanyu shook his head. “Hanguang-jun brought him a little bit of meat from the town outside,” he said. “He must have gone there especially to get it, since there’s no meat in the dining hall here. And he even let him have a jar of some wine.”

That – did not sound right. Whether from the perspective of what Jiang Cheng knew about Lan Wangji, or about Lan sect rules, or even, well, general guidelines for what was appropriate to feed to a cat.

“You’re sure?”

“Mm. Here, come to the window, I’ll show you.”

Somehow Jiang Cheng found himself on the bed next to Mo Xuanyu, shuffling around carefully so that he could look out the window without being too obvious about it.

Just across the way, Lan Wangji was standing guard at one of the central areas of the Cloud Recesses – judging the time, he would have just finished up the last leg of his patrols, having presumably utilized his considerable willpower to stay awake until this hour. As they watched, a faint wind picked up, ruffling Lan Wangji’s hair and causing the ends of his forehead ribbon to gently flutter.

The picture would have been one of the classic cultivator, lonely but righteous, standing sentinel on behalf of others, except for the fact that Wei Wuxian was crouched right behind him, red ribbon and black tail and all, trying his level best to leap up high enough to catch the ribbon.

Jiang Cheng briefly closed his eyes. “That idiot.”

Mo Xuanyu elbowed him lightly. “Open your eyes, you’ll miss it!”

Jiang Cheng felt absurdly proud over the fact that Mo Xuanyu had apparently gotten over his fright well enough to do as much as that, and opened his eyes.

His eyebrows went up as he watched Lan Wangji – still stone-faced as always, but (and it was perhaps a trick of the light) a little softer than usual – lean down to rub behind Wei Wuxian’s ears, and to pull out a bit of dried fish from his sleeve where he’d clearly been keeping a stash.

He even crouched down to better speak to him, taking in account that Wei Wuxian was, while moderately porcine for a cat, now much smaller than him.

There was a great deal of staring happening.

It took nearly the length of two incense sticks for Jiang Cheng to actually process what he was seeing.

“Hanguang-jun likes…cats?”

“No,” Mo Xuanyu said, his lips twitching. “He likes Wei Wuxian. Isn’t it obvious?”

It was, in fact, a little obvious.

“When you say like –”

Mo Xuanyu reached out his own paw and patted Jiang Cheng’s arm in sympathy. “Trust one cutsleeve to know another,” he said, and then he left his hand on Jiang Cheng’s arm.

“But when did they even start?” Jiang Cheng asked, honestly bemused. “They were always at each other’s throats before! And – and he’s a cat now. Don’t tell me that Hanguang-jun has some sort of – some strange – I’ve heard things about catboys –”

Mo Xuanyu burst out into giggles. “Where did you hear about that?”

“An old acquaintance with bad taste and a penchant for sharing it,” Jiang Cheng said, since obviously Mo Xuanyu wouldn’t know who Nie Huaisang was. “It’s not that, though, is it? They must have – before.”

That would explain Lan Wangji’s decade-long mourning for a dead wife, he supposed. Also his seemingly inexplicable resentment of both the Jin sect and Jiang Cheng personally.

“I think so.”

Jiang Cheng was going to murder Wei Wuxian for not telling him that he’d apparently run off to have a whirlwind romance with Lan Wangji during the time he’d been the Yiling Patriarch – that was the only time when it was possible, since Jiang Cheng had been there all the other times, and he was pretty sure they didn’t get together before that.

If only because Wei Wuxian wouldn’t have been able to resist boasting about it.

In fact, it was a little strange that he hadn’t done so now, cat or no cat – it wasn’t as if everyone didn’t know he was planning to cultivate towards a human form as quickly as possible, so why wouldn’t he –

A horrible thought crossed Jiang Cheng’s mind. “Does Wei Wuxian know? Does he – does he like him back?”

Mo Xuanyu pursed his lips. “You know, I’m not sure?”

“I thought you said cutsleeves could tell.”

“Well, the whole cat thing has been throwing me off a bit.”

Jiang Cheng covered his eyes with a hand. “I don’t think I can deal with this. The cat thing was bad enough…at least it explains your issue.”

Mo Xuanyu, who’d finally removed his hand, blinked. “What?”

“Wei Wuxian is a perpetual headache that exists for the sole purpose of tormenting me,” Jiang Cheng explained because really it was the only logical conclusion at this point. He wished that he loved the man (cat) a little bit less; it would make every bit of it much less agonizingly personal. “But apparently Hanguang-jun like that sort of thing, so whenever Wei Wuxian is spending time with you...”

“…you think he’s been drinking vinegar? About me? Hanguang-jun?”

“Why not? You’re open about the fact that you cut your sleeve, Wei Wuxian is already protective of you, and it’s not as if you’re not cute – it make sense that he’d be worried, especially if he’s been pining all these years.”

Mo Xuanyu had turned pink. “Cute,” he said dazedly, reaching up and pressing his hands to his cheeks as if that would help cool them down. “Uh –”

“Don’t do that,” Jiang Cheng said irritably, reaching up and catching his hands. “You’re covered in needles that you really shouldn’t be moving around – here, lie back down already.”

Mo Xuanyu obediently shuffled back into place, and Jiang Cheng returned to his previous place as well.

“I’ll need to talk to Wei Wuxian about it,” he said mournfully. Even after everything that had happened between them, it was his duty as Wei Wuxian’s only living relative to make sure the idiot wasn’t getting involved in something he shouldn’t. “I don’t want to talk to Wei Wuxian. He doesn’t even like me anymore.”

That was the problem, too.

“Uh, Sandu Shengshou –”

“Just call me Jiang Cheng. Everyone else does.” He was pretty sure he hadn’t even heard his courtesy name without a heavy dose of sarcasm or cringe-inducing toadying at any point in the last five years, and his title was far too formal if the goal was to be less intimidating. “What, do you have an idea on how to make it easier?”

“It’s just a thought.”

It couldn’t be worse than any of Jiang Cheng’s. “I’m listening. What is it?”

“Have you considered…catnip?”

#mdzs #jiang cheng #mo xuanyu #wangxian #lan wangji #wei wuxian #my fic #my fics #jiang cheng is the king of mixed signals and obliviousness #having no idea if someone is trying to flirt with you is the number 1 trait of yunmeng #a sick thought #wei wuxicat

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tallstars-rewrite · 3 years

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Chapter 32

chapter list / previous / next

A bright ginger tom padded confidently along the narrow fence, taking in the scents of the morning. Dawn was cloudy and gray, but there were small streaks of yellow and orange poking through the gloomy cover. It wouldn’t take long for them to dissipate and give way to scorching clear skies. Jake normally wouldn’t bother being awake so early, as his housefolk wouldn’t be up to feed him until well after sunrise, but this morning felt different.

Jake had looped the neighborhood twice already looking for...something. He didn’t know what, but he figured he would know when he found it. So far everything was quiet. But he knew when his gut told him that it was a day for going out, he should listen. It had always been right so far--well, ok, it was right at least half the time, but that was a good enough ratio for Jake to take seriously. So, he kept his ears and nose open and searched for anything and everything slightly out of the ordinary.

A pretty gray molly bounded up onto the fence when he walked by her yard.

“Good morning Quince,” Jake greeted her.

She purred and rubbed her cheek against his. “You're up early,” she purred in a honey sweet voice. “Are you going to watch the sunrise with me after all?”

“Sorry, I was just going to walk by the woods today.”

She rolled her eyes “There’s nothing interesting in the woods! What do you want to go there for?”

“There’s plenty interesting in the woods! Don’t you remember that story I told you before?”

“Oh yes, yes, the monster cats. You’re still going on about that?”

“They’re not monster cats Quince! They’re called warriors.” Jake said indignantly. “Well don’t let Nutmeg hear you talking about it again, you know how worked up she gets about it.”

Jake knew his friends didn’t care as much for his stories of the wild cats that prowled in the woods and beyond. And they didn’t believe him about the one he’d met once either. Sometimes even he wondered if he was just manufacturing the memory of that cat. It felt like it had been an eternity since he lived on the farm at the edge of the moorland; the world around him sprawling in every direction, massive and wondrous if his legs had only been long enough to run it. It certainly felt a bit like a dream when he described it, especially to cats who had always lived in a smaller world where you couldn’t see very far without a house or tree in the way.

Not that Jake didn’t like living with Cris and Dusty, he loved them both dearly. His housefolk had always been in his life, though he never really understood what made him suddenly want to take all of their things and leave the farmhouse behind. Jake was happy to go with him, but he couldn’t help wishing he’d had just a little bit longer at the barn near the moors. But as his mother always said, life for a cat simply goes on. Everything changes eventually. His paws would be swept in a new direction, with him simply carried along and adapting with it. Family goes separate ways, one day you only know a few fields and a shed, the next you’re whisked to somewhere completely strange, and so it went. It was bewildering, but also exciting in a way.

Jake had lived in his new home here for moons He’d explored every nearby inch, including the farther town, and got lost only a few times. It was nice, but it had started to grow a tad...monotonous. And, sure enough, there came an itch in his paws and a tug in his gut that insisted...maybe it’s time to get swept along again. He was restless with the waiting, so he made a point of following the impulse every time. Usually it led him places he wasn’t supposed to be, angering housefolk and strays as he went, but...maybe this time was different.

Jake’s friends didn’t really understand his fancies, but he still tried to goad them into joining him anyway.

“There are lots of birds in the woods this time of day, Quince,” Jake pressed. “You like watching birds don’t you?”

“I like watching birds from my garden, where it’s safe,” she replied, pointedly.

He had promised not to try exploring the woods because it made Quince and Nutmeg uneasy, but it was the only place he hadn’t checked yet. Quince continued giving him a hard look.

“I’m not going in or anything!” Jake insisted.

She narrowed her clear blue eyes a bit, clearly having doubts about that.

As they walked, eventually they heard a rustling below. Someone hissed up at them. Jake and Quince looked down to see a disheveled looking tortoiseshell who walked with a bit of a limp.

“Good morning Nutmeg!” Quince chirped. “You’re not hurting your leg more are you?”

“No, mom I’m not doing any jumping,” Nutmeg rolled her eyes. She carefully clambered up onto a stool, and then a table, to poke her head over the fence.

“You look more ruffled than usual. Anything different go by?” Jake asked.

Nutmeg broke her leg some time ago tumbling off a roof. She’d gotten frightened by a large bird when she was trying to peek into a new neighbor's garden, but the accident hadn’t stopped her from keeping up her favorite hobby: spying on all of their neighbors. Keeping a defensive lookout, she called it. Or perhaps just being very very nosy.

“Listen, I squeezed through the fence into Tyr’s yard earlier,” Nutmeg said in a hushed urgent voice, “and there’s this dangerous cat walking around!”

“Is this like the dangerous cat that actually turned out to be a little lost terrier?” Jake asked.

“Shut up Jake, that was one time!” Nutmeg hissed. “And yes, I’m sure, Tyr saw it too! It was a big lanky freak all covered in blood. It had probably just killed, and I bet it would do it again! It tried to attack both of us, but we managed to get away. Tyr just left me to scramble down the ladder like the coward he is, and I almost bent my other hind leg in the process.”

“So you have been hurting your leg more,” Quince tutted. “You're never going to get rid of that limp at this rate.”

“Are you even listening? That dangerous cat is still out there! You should both go back to your gardens and get inside.”

Jake couldn’t hide the spark of excitement. This was certainly different.

Nutmeg glared at him with flattened ears. “I know that look Jake, and don’t you dare even think about it. You can’t go messing with dangerous strays! Last time you did that you almost lost an ear to a mangy old brute.”

“We came to an understanding eventually,” Jake said simply. “I just surprised him is all.”

“Well this isn’t just any stray! This cat wasn’t normal, it was long and gangly and bony, and its claws were huge. A mistake of nature if ever I saw one! So whatever you're thinking, you’d better not.”

Jake blinked at her innocently. “I wasn’t thinking about anything.”

“He was just thinking of strolling by the woods.” Quince chirped.

“Tattle-tail,” he grumbled.

“No!” Nutmeg yowled, digging her claws into the fence in exasperation. “It was right by the woods where we saw it! Just go later! Or better, not at all! Do you have fluff in your brain?”

“It would be a better idea to go home, I think,” Quince said nervously. “I certainly don’t want to meet any aggressive strays.”

Jake sighed. “Alright, alright. Since everyone’s so worked up about it.”

“Thank you.” Nutmeg huffed, “Now get out of my garden, you're going to attract attention.”

Jake waved goodbye to both his friends as Quince quickly made her way back to her own house. He padded onward down the fence. His home was nearby, since he’d already made a full loop of the neighborhood. Truthfully, he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to keep his promise about going inside. What kind of cat could Nutmeg have been talking about? She had a tendency to exaggerate, but she did seem very worked up. He could go to Tyr and ask him, but Tyr was...well, Jake didn’t want to call him “stuck up” because that would be rude, but he was sometimes... difficult to talk to. And more prone to exaggerating than even Nutmeg. Whatever this mystery was, he’d have to find clues himself.

Jake always believed his paws would take him where he needed to be even if the path there was bumpy, and that destiny was something that had funny and unexpected ways of finding you. Maybe it was an overly colorful way to look at life or even a little naive, he knew that, but Jake figured he would rather be a little naive then miserable and bored. And as he approached his garden, he became all the more certain his gut was right about today after all.

A sharp scent hit the roof of his mouth and he opened his jaws to get a better taste. Was that...blood on the grass? Jake couldn’t help his curiosity. How could he possibly not follow it? So follow it he did, and to his surprise, the trail led him right into his own yard. Cris would still be asleep. Housefolk hated when Jake woke them up, but he would do it if he had to, in case there really was some sort of danger.

His other housemate, Dusty, had broken off a small bottom chunk of the wooden fence trying to dig his way out (and maybe Jake had encouraged it a bit), and it looked like someone else had squeezed their way through the hole. Slipping through after it, Jake could scarcely believe his eyes.

There was a long, stretched out form sprawled out awkwardly in the freshly cut grass. Skinny, bloody, and scratched up badly. There was dark wet spots on the ground where it smelled like they'd been sick. It was certainly a cat by the looks of it, though for sure an odd looking one. They were rather big, with an impossibly long tail and the biggest ears Jake had ever seen.

A series of memories came flooding to the surface of his mind. The sprawling moors, the scraggly border of the woods, a bewildered black and white face blinking down at him with eyes the most beautiful shade of orange and copper Jake had ever seen, like a brilliant setting sun. Memories from a different world that almost felt like dreams these days.

Jake sniffed the limp form. He was definitely passed out cold. It couldn’t really be him could it? It was too perfect a coincidence. It was absurd! And yet...Tallpaw was there. Of course, it all made sense now, that “lanky freak” couldn’t possibly be any cat else.

And he was an absolute mess.

“By all the stars!” Jake breathed “What happened to you?”

***

Nutmeg was the last to pull herself up onto Jake’s windowsill.

“Be careful not to put weight on your leg,” Quince warned. Nutmeg huffed in annoyance for the mollys fussing.

“Be quick! You won’t believe it,” Jake chirped. He could hardly keep the excitement out of his voice.

“I hope it’s good, because you’re right, so far I don’t believe it.” Tyr scoffed. Jake hadn’t actually invited him, but the pampered old tom had just invited himself as usual, and Jake was too nice to tell him to go away. The windowsill barely fit all four cats. Jake ignored Tyr’s comment and peered in, eyes bright with excitement.

“I’m telling you, it’s the same cat I talked about that I met when I was younger, I’d know those ears anywhere!”

Nutmeg narrowed her eyes. “And he’s in your house now because…?”

“Well, yesterday he passed out outside and I got Cris’s attention because I knew he would help any hurt cat, and then he took him away and brought him back, and now he’s in this room!”

“I cannot believe your housefolk just brought a strange stray into your house! Neither of you know if he’s dangerous. Jake, your housefolk’s head is as full of fluff as yours is,” Nutmeg exclaimed.

Jake turned up his nose. “He cares about everyone, I like that about him! Now wait here, I heard mumbling earlier, so I bet my friend is awake.”

Nutmeg’s short mottled fur stood on end “Wait, don’t go into that room! What are you thinking?”

“Everything’s perfectly under control, Nutmeg,” Jake assured her as he squeezed through the narrow gap in the open window. This window luckily never closed all the way and it was easy to shove a paw under and get open. Jake leaped down into the room and padded over to the carrier. It was covered in a shabby towel.

Poking his head underneath the cloth, he said as gently as he could “Hey, how are ya feeling? Any better?”

A garbled growl was his response. Well he was sort of awake at least. The carrier suddenly shook violently. Alright, he was definitely awake. Jake scooted back as a long, clumsy white forepaw shot out between the bars and swiped blindly at the air. When the paw got tired and drooped onto the floor, Jake patted it gently with his own paw, and promptly dodged another swipe in response.

He looked back at his bristling friends on the windowsill. “See, perfectly under control. He’ll feel better when he’s not stuck in that box. Hey Nutmeg, what was the trick you figured out about opening these carriers again?”

“I’m not telling you!” Nutmeg's growl was very high pitched. “You can’t let that thing out Jake, you don’t have any idea what you’re doing!”

“Maybe it would be best to be careful, Jake.” Quince agreed.

“Oh nevermind, I remember now.” Jake pawed at the silver lock. It had to slide in some direction...He batted at it, and the cat inside growled in alarm. “Don’t be afraid! I just have to paw at this until it moves.”

At last it slid, now if he could just get a claw around the door….

It turned out he didn’t have to, as a blur of black and white barreled into the door and it flung open, forcing Jake to spring back. A bristling ball of fur and bandages rocketed across the room until it tumbled into a pile of spare towels tossed on the floor. Cris was never very good at cleaning the house. He heard his friends on the window cry out in alarm, and Jake instinctively jumped back up on the tall windowsill, needing a bit of help from Quince to haul himself all the way up.

“There, everything’s fine,” Jake gasped. “Just want to give him a moment to calm down, being trapped in those little boxes is the worst.”

“That’s...really a genuine real life wild cat then?” Even Nutmeg sounded a bit amazed.

“Yep! He’s from the huge field I told you about, he’s the fastest cat who ever lived.”

“You don’t know that,” Tyr sniffed. He hated any cat that was more impressive than himself, with his “purebred bloodline” whatever that meant.

“I do so know it,” Jake argued, “They’re all really big, and they have a whole society with no housefolk to take food from. And we were friends, and he helped me get home when I was lost once!”

An angry pair of blazing orange eyes glared at them, hissing as he tried to stand up, but wobbling badly on his feet and falling over soon after. The vet’s medicine had obviously not worn off as Tallpaw stumbled around the room. Jake heard Quince giggle.

“He’s really as noble as you described,” she purred.

“Be nice!” Jake said. “We all saw how bad Nutmeg was when she came back from the vet after her leg got hurt. They make your head all funny.”

Down below, Tallpaw had gotten frightened by a mirror, tried to claw it, hurt his paw and scampered awkwardly away. “Who’s there?” he slurred. “I’m not afraid of you. I’m not afraid of anyone.” He smacked a stray piece of trash on the floor, but the noise it made when it clattered into the wall clearly startled him. He arched his back and snarled.

“He’s snarling at a piece of plastic.” Nutmeg said.

“He’s just confused, I’m sure I can calm him down.” Jake mewed.

Suddenly, Tallpaw whipped around at the sound of their voices and launched himself at them, attempting to leap up onto a shelf near the window. Nutmeg cried out in alarm. Tallpaw’s aim was unsurprisingly poor as he missed the high shelf and tumbled back to the ground. At last he lay still on the carpet, panting.

“W-well he is...something, isn’t he?” Quince stuttered.

Jake winced. “I’ll er...I’ll go see how he’s doing.”

“Wait, that is that same cat from yesterday, I know it!” Nutmeg called, claws digging anxiously into the old wood. “Jake, he’s dangerous and clearly insane, you can’t just walk up to strays like that!”.

“Well, I’m gonna,” Jake said over his shoulder. “I told you, I know him! His name is Tallpaw.”

“I thought its name was Tal.” Tyr muttered.

Tallpaw was breathing heavily on his side, clearly having exhausted himself from his drunken run around the room. Jake padded up and tentatively touched him on the side. Tallpaw’s head shot up, lurching back to his paws again and barring his teeth, but his gaze was blurry and unfocused. “Don’t sneak up’n me, intruder!” he slurred.

“Oh you're not on about that again, are you?” Jake laughed. “Come on Tallpaw, don’t you remember me? It’s me! It's Jake!”

“W-wh....Jake?” Tallpaw blinked at him blearily, as if he was trying to focus. He swayed back and forth on his paws like a tree in the wind.

“Yes, Jake. You're in my house.” Jake mewed slowly.

Tallpaw looked around again, his eyes focused on the three kittypets muttering to each other outside the window. “They’re laughing at me,” he growled. “I’m getting outside.”

Before Jake could stop him, Tallpaw crouched and leapt straight at the window. Tyr yowled in fear and promptly fell off his perch. Of course, Tallpaw smacked hard into the glass and fell back down again with a loud thump that shook the windowpane, but obviously didn’t budge it. Nutmeg and Quince were bristling in surprise, but Quince was clearly trying very hard to suppress a giggle.

Nutmeg was less amused. “What is wrong with that cat?” she hissed.

“It’s ok! It’s ok, no one is laughing at you!” Jake said quickly.

Tallpaw covered his eyes and groaned.

Jake pressed his nose against his head. “It’s all ok, maybe just stay on the ground ‘til you're feeling a little less dizzy, yeah?”

Tallpaw’s sunset colored eyes widened again as he looked up. “Jake?” he wheezed, as if he’d only just seen him.

“That’s it!” Jake purred. The wild cat remembered after all.

“But...but you got eaten by a monster. Where am I?”

Jake cocked his head in confusion. “Huh? I didn’t get eaten by anything, I just moved away.”

“You’re not real. I’m dead, this is just part of the punishment...” Tallpaw moaned and flopped back down, burying his face in his paws.

Jake licked his head. “I’ll give you a moment to rest until your head clears.”

“It’s so bright and loud,” Tallpaw mumbled. “I know buddy, here this will help.” Jake tugged the towel off the carrier and went to awkwardly drape it over the shaking WindClan cat. “There, if you can’t see it, it can’t hurt you.”

Tallpaw only groaned again, but eventually grew quiet and still. Jake looked sheepishly up at his friends while they stared in complete bafflement at the bundle beneath a towel.

Well alright, so this wasn’t the best of introductions.

Eventually the others were shooed away, but they were obviously very hesitant. Jake couldn’t help being a bit frustrated. Sure there had been one or two times….or maybe several times where he assured his friends that he knew what he was doing, only to come home with new angry bite wounds from adventures gone awry, but couldn’t they give him the benefit of the doubt?

The house cat sat contentedly next to the wild cat trapped in his house, who was still halfway hidden under a towel and making the occasional whimpering sound. Jake blinked fondly at him and sharpened his claws on the carpet to contain a burst of restless bubbling excitement. He had a feeling the next change in his life was about to start.

chapter list / previous / next

#FRU32 #chapter 32 #a sudden POV switch 32 chapters in? its more likely than you think #this was one of my favorite chapters to write lmao

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partialresonance · 3 years

Note

Hi! You asked for Geraskier prompts. What about some fluff? Jaskier heard that Witchers can’t blush so he tries to make Geralt blush by complementing him ?

Yay, thank you for the prompt!! This was so much fun to write. :D

CW: mild innuendo, reference to beheading?? Otherwise it’s pretty tame. ~1.6k of fluff coming right up!

Jaskier is eighteen, and Geralt is quite the most interesting man he’s ever met.

Of course, he’s handsome too, which doesn’t hurt. But for the moment Jaskier is mostly concerned with the fact that he’s a witcher. Jaskier has heard countless rumors and tales about witchers but he never imagined he would have the chance to actually meet one. He can’t pass up the chance to confirm the truth of what he’s heard, straight from the source.

“Geralt, is it true that witchers can see through walls?”

Even though Jaskier has to jog to keep up with Roach and is only treated to a view of the man’s broad backside, he can hear the eye-roll in Geralt’s dry response:

“No.”

“Well that’s a shame. I imagine brothels would be quite interesting places if you could.” Jaskier’s lute bangs against the back of his thighs, and he hoists the strap higher on his shoulder. “Speaking of which, is it true that witchers have—ah, how to put this delicately—inhuman stamina?”

“I can outrun you.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Geralt shrugs, and Jaskier puts his hands on his hips, his mouth twitching into a pout.

“You’re no fun at all, Witcher.”

What he won’t ask is if it’s true that witchers don’t have feelings. Jaskier had banished the idea as rubbish from the first, when he’d gone up to Geralt in that tavern in Posada and found him brooding. One cannot brood without feeling.

“Is it true that witchers can smell fear?”

At that, there is a telling pause.

“Yes.”

“Huh. That’s interesting. Can’t imagine how that’s useful though. I’ve always found it quite easy to tell when someone’s afraid, they go all bug-eyed and their hands start to shake and they stutter a lot.”

“You’d be surprised.” Roach flicks her tail, narrowly missing Jaskier’s face. He dodges to the side, stumbling a bit on the dirt path. “Some people are good at hiding it.”

Jaskier shrugs, uninterested.

“Hmm, what else. What else,” he taps his chin, trying to dredge up the other rumors he’s heard.

“If you can’t think of anything else we could walk in silence,” Geralt says hopefully. Jaskier laughs, shaking his head. The very idea.

“Oh! I’ve got one.” He picks up his pace, jogging forward until he’s far enough ahead of Roach that he can turn and walk backwards, keeping ahead long enough to see Geralt’s expression. “Is it true that witchers can’t blush?”

“Where did you hear that one?” Geralt looks unimpressed. He flicks the reins and Roach springs into a trot; Jaskier has to leap to the side to avoid the devilish mare. Thankfully Geralt doesn’t seem intent on leaving him behind; after a few paces Roach slows to a walk again, though Jaskier is huffing by the time he finally catches up.

“Oh, you know,” Jaskier wheezes, clutching a stitch in his side. He waves a hand vaguely. “Around.”

He’d heard it in reference to the only place on a witcher’s body blood could rush to, but, well. Geralt doesn’t need to know that.

“Yes. It’s true.”

“Is it really?” Jaskier squints up at Geralt. He wishes he was a witcher who could sniff out lies. “You know it’s illegal to lie to a bard, don’t you?”

Geralt doesn’t answer, and now that Jaskier has run out of questions his mind seizes on a new game.

Make Geralt blush.

“Hey, Geralt!” Jaskier swings his lute around and plucks a few notes. “You ever heard the one about the fishmonger’s daughter?” And without further ado, he launches into the most downright filthy version he knows. It’s barely even innuendo, containing outright descriptions of exactly what the fishmonger’s daughter likes to do with her catch, even including a few dramatic moans and sighs on Jaskier’s part because he is nothing if not an excellent performer. He keeps a close eye on Geralt’s expression, but to his dismay all he sees is the gradual tightening of his jaw and flattening of his eyebrows. By the end of the song he looks downright murderous.

“I’m guessing you didn’t like that one. Heh.” Jaskier plucks a discordant note, underlining his failure to please the witcher with his song, as well as rouse even the faintest of pink tones to his pale skin. “Well, not everyone has a sense of humor. That’s alright.”

Damn it. What could he do to make a witcher blush?

After another mile or so Jaskier is forced to admit that the sex angle simply doesn’t affect the witcher. He’d tried everything--describing some of his own conquests, real and imagined, and he’d even faked a limp and sighed wistfully about his night with the innkeeper’s son! None of it has any effect on the man. And, with a cruel spike of embarrassment that brings heat to his own cheeks, Jaskier abruptly realizes it’s because the century-old witcher likely has seen and done things he can scarce imagine.

It’s all old hat to him, then.

“Have it your way then, you big old brute.” Jaskier consoles himself by playing his favorite songs at the loudest possible volume, his voice echoing off the canyons. He thinks Geralt has mostly tuned him out, until abruptly he wheels Roach around and makes a sharp gesture at Jaskier. His yellow cat-eyes scan the surrounding hills.

“Shut up, bard.”

Jaskier scoffs, and strums a few loud chords.

“Well you could at least ask nicely if you’re--”

An arrow stabs into the ground, an inch from Jaskier’s foot. Jaskier jumps into the air with a yelp.

Bandits seem to pour down from the hills, and Geralt and Roach charge in to deal with them. Jaskier, weaponless and frightened, darts off of the path in the opposite direction, down a small gully to hide behind a bush.

Well, he hasn’t lived this long by sticking around for the danger! Someone has to live to tell the tale, after all.

It’s over faster than Jaskier would have imagined. He catches glimpses of Geralt moving smoothly through the fight, a whirlwind of steel and white hair. The big witcher actually looks graceful, spinning on one heel and swinging his arm in a broad arc to lop off the last bandit’s head. Jaskier swallows, feeling odd and sort of warm all over.

When he’s certain the bandits are dead he doesn’t hesitate to scramble up the hill to where Geralt is standing amidst the carnage, sheathing his sword.

“Do people do that a lot?” Jaskier tells himself his voice isn’t that shaky as he brushes off the knees of his trousers and hoists his lute onto his back. “Just attack you out of nowhere?”

“Hmm.” Geralt stands from where he’d been crouched over one of the corpses. He slips their purse into Roach’s saddlebags, then mounts her in a smooth motion.

Jaskier wrinkles his nose at the corpse. He doesn’t usually see death up close like this--his experience is more of the ‘passing by the suspicious lump in the alleyway without looking too closely’ variety. He’s frightened, but with Geralt at his side starts to feel a little bit brave. The bandit certainly isn’t scary like this, with his stupid head lying across the path. He sticks his tongue out at the corpse and then jogs after Geralt and Roach.

“Well, they should know better, shouldn’t they? I don’t think you even broke a sweat.”

“Hmm.”

“No, I mean it. That was genuinely impressive.”

“Shut up, bard, or you’ll draw more of them.” Geralt turns his head away, but not before Jaskier catches something interesting in his expression. He jogs forward, until he’s striding beside Roach and level with Geralt’s knee. If he looks out of the corner of his eye he can just barely make out Geralt’s face. A sly smile curls his lips.

“Do people ever compliment you? Or are they too busy shitting themselves because you’re a big, scary witcher?”

Geralt stares straight ahead.

“That’s a shame, really. Compliments do wonders for the self-esteem. I can’t go long without one before I simply wither away like an autumn leaf. And there’s so much to compliment you on.”

“Fuck off.”

“Geralt, I’m being serious.” Alright, so maybe he was also teasing a bit, but Jaskier’s voice took on a strident, genuine note as he turned his head to gaze up at the witcher. “What you did back there might seem like nothing to you, but I was terrified. If they wanted to kill me they could have done so easily, except you were there so now they’re all lying in pieces while we make our merry way on. Take that, bandit, you don’t need your legs!” Jaskier laughs and makes a slicing motion as if severing an imaginary bandit’s torso from his lower appendages.

“It’s nice, not to have to be afraid of whatever random asshole comes my way. I think I’ll stick with you after all. It doesn’t hurt that you’re easy on the eyes as well.” Jaskier winks. Geralt keeps darting his eyes between Jaskier and the path ahead. He looks distinctly uncomfortable, but Jaskier doesn’t think it’s in a bad way at all. “Big witcher man with your nice hair and all that muscle beneath your armor. You looked like you were dancing, you know.”

“Jaskier…” It’s a low growl, a warning, and it sends a shiver straight down Jaskier’s spine. He bites his lower lip to keep from smiling too broadly, and that’s when he sees it:

The distinct, pale pink undertone blooming to life beneath Geralt’s glowing (beautiful) yellow eyes.

Oh. Jaskier is in trouble.

He clears his throat, taking a few steps to the side and letting Roach get a little bit ahead of him. He strums his lute, a spring in his step as he follows his witcher, imagining feeling the heat of Geralt’s blush beneath his fingertips.

#geraskier #geralt x jaskier #geralt of rivia #jaskier #dandelion #the witcher #fluff #fanfiction #geraskier prompts #my writing

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