#why not start with the fact you raised me in a fucking cult??? hm????? THAT was traumatizing. but shed NEVER get that bc shes messed up in
Text
.
#cw parent rant incoming#tell me why im having to out of the blue ease my mom's cis guilt over text rn#im. hoough. im tired.#shes apparently been worrying abt having ''messed you up from day one'' bc they assigned me the wrong gender at fuckin birth & now hearing#the words ''assigned [x] at birth'' makes her feel ''on edge and accused''..................#bc it ''puts a responsibility for trauma and unkindness on parents that simply isn't there''#how tf do i say ''yeah i mean you fucked me up real good but also thats not the reason why.'' tf#the reason im traumatized isnt bc im trans. its bc im trans and was raised in a transphobic society that didnt want me to be trans.#why not start with the fact you raised me in a fucking cult??? hm????? THAT was traumatizing. but shed NEVER get that bc shes messed up in#a ton of the same ways -- but bc shes still In It she cant fucking see it#if it were fucking easy to just *play* with gender outside of your agab then it wouldnt be fucking traumatizing to grow up trans!!#thered be nothing to feel guilty for!! if gender roles werent so deeply fucking entrenched in the church and the way i was raised then#it wouldnt have fucking HURT so much not to fit in them!!!! but i cant SAY that it hurt bc then she'd Feel Accused and Wounded and To Blame#FOR THE WRONG DAMN THING. FUCK.#im not accusing you for being a bad parent or some shit just by existing as a trans person?? take responsibility for the shit that YOU DID.#when you did NOTHING *before* i came out to make me feel like i could Exist As A Trans Person? or As A Person that didnt Meet Expectations?#THATS on you. the fact i didnt know For Certain if id be *okay* if i came out?? THATS ON YOU.#theres TONS of shit i can think of that are my parents fault and directly tied to how fucked up i am. BUT ALSO. *THOSE* are never going to#be the things they feel sorry for. bc they think they werent in the wrong. so theyll just feel 'on edge' & 'accused' bc theyre sO justified#hhhhHHH. FUCK.#just out of the fucking blue. immediately after asking what cake i wanted tmrw for my birthday. so. happy early birthday i fucken guess!!#i hate it here.#every time i start to get comfortable and feel lighter and freer to express myself again... theres always fucking something.#theres always fucking something and *IM* the sorry fuck who has to keep the damn peace and smooth everyone elses ruffled fucking feathers#i hate to complain bc i really was afraid itd be so much worse but. but also this still fucking sucks ass? ig i wasnt really expecting that#idk man. maybe its the fact ive been extra fucking dysphoric and been dealing with one helluva rsd spiral the last week or so but. FUCK me#lemme out lemme out lemme out#just have to get thru the end of august and then im. back in school again. not exactly looking forward to thAt part either but at least ill#be AWAY. and with my partner and with my friends and OUT of HERE.#bee speaks
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
London Will Burn - Chapter Twelve.
Look at me go! I updated on time for once, haha! Happy Friday, besties. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend <3
Previous chapters - One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven
Tag list - In the comments, please DM to be added/removed
Words - 4,180
Warnings - 18+ content throughout. Minors DNI.
“Sorry mate! Christ, the traffic was absolute murder! They’ve completely closed off the bloody main road outside my offices and... Oh, hot waiters. Hello!”
In times of tension, Rin knew she could always trust in her old friend Carly for a little light relief, literally veering off mid-sentence to appreciate the appearance of the wait staff there at San Carlo, where they were meeting for a long overdue catchup dinner.
With their beloved Rashida now living over in Chicago, it was just the two of them, their friendship fully re-bonded since Rin’s return from Africa. Not that geographical distance had diminished the love or closeness between the two lifelong friends whatsoever.
“Oh, don’t worry. It’s fucking mayhem out there! Come here, give me a smooch,” Rin assured her, kissing her cheek as they embraced. “I only got here on time because I was in Chelsea for a meeting this afternoon.” Carly took her seat, thanking Rin when she dutifully poured her a glass of wine. “Anyway, why are you eyeing up waiters? Not loved up with twat waffles, still?”
No, it was fair to say that Rin had never really liked Carly’s long-term boyfriend, Mathias. Not after their visit to Kenya, when he’s gotten absolutely smashed, resulting in him thinking he could square up to Sokoro, a decision that had landed him in a world of regret. Being dangled by his ankles over the top of the stairs within the lodge by the pissed off Kenyan until he’d apologised had sobered him up nicely, though.
“You will be pleased to hear that the man known only as twat waffles to you is no longer in my life. Yeeted him about four weeks ago. I’ll say it, you were right.”
Rin beamed. “I always am.” Well, not always. The events of the previous week were still burning in her gut, being shamed in the way she had been by Sean and his superior powers of deduction. “No but honestly, honey. I’m glad because you can do so much better than him!”
“In this instance, you are correct. I can and I will, with that waiter over there with the blonde hair if I have my way.” She paused, raising her glass in his direction. He was at the table in seconds.
“Good evening, ladies. Are we ready to order?”
Oh, he was so sweet, absolutely none the wiser to the fact there was a bona fide man eater about to chomp down upon him. “Not yet, love. I was just appreciating the fact that you happen to be the most gorgeous man within the restaurant, so cheers to you.”
He pinked at the cheeks, nodding while attempting to bite back his grin. “Well, when you need me, feel free to appreciate me again.”
Rin chuckled, shaking her head. “We'll take some focaccia and olives to nibble while we decide, please.”
He made a quick note on his iPad, smiling widely. “Certainly.” Scampering away, Rin fixed her friend with a look of pure mirth.
“You’re terrible, Muriel.”
Her assessment had Carly in hysterics, reciting their favourite line from the nineteen nineties cult classic film, Muriel’s wedding. They’d always said it to one another when there was mischief afoot. “I am, this much is true. So, how’s everything? How’s work, and my beautiful goddaughter?”
“Tiger is perfect, as usual. As for work... hm.”
Inclining her head, she took a sip of wine and thanking the waiter when he brought over the required pre-dinner nibbles. She winked again and of course, he blushed furiously. “Oh? I sense a story there. Does it have anything to do with her dad? How’s all of that going, by the way?” Of course, Carly had been made privy to it all. She’d known right from the start, after all.
She ground her teeth before forcing a somewhat terse smile to her face. “I gave him a black eye last week.”
Some things truly never changed, Carly making a motion with her hand that she should elaborate. “The tea requires spilling, Miss C.”
And so, Rin did. She spared certain details over her work (although of course, Carly well knew she was a hardened criminal, Rin never gave away enough that could implicate her at any point in the future, just in case) but managed to sum it all up in a way that gave the story without all of the nuanced ins and outs of it.
“Right, so he potentially saved you from making a big mistake with the Per...” she began, eyes scanning around before leaning in close to whisper, “the PM, shall we say, and you gave him hell for it?”
“He embarrassed me in front of my associates, and took great pleasure in doing so,” she spoke, picking up another small cube of focaccia and dunking it into the balsamic vinegar bowl. “I don’t take kindly to that.”
A taste of one’s own medicine was always the bitterest, Carly couldn’t help but note. “Yet you do exactly the same with him at any given opportunity.”
Rin frowned. “I’m sorry, who’s side are you on here, exactly?”
“Yours, always yours, love,” she was quick to interject, “but sweet, from what you’ve told me about him, if you bite at him, he’ll do exactly the same back. You two, you’re much too similar for your own good. Something I believe you once said about you both, didn’t you?”
The focaccia was chewed upon with mild fury. “He doesn’t deserve to ever have one over on me. Not after what he did. I want him to suffer. His punishment will be prolonged, mark my words.”
God, she was so hardheaded, especially when it came to Sean. Carly looked a little pensive, picking up her wine. “Do you want to know what I think about that? The complete, unfiltered truth?”
Her lips thinned, eventually nodding. “I suppose an outside perspective couldn’t hurt.”
“Okay.” She took a breath and another sip of Sauvignon Blanc for courage, placing her glass back down again softly.
“You’ve already punished him enough, Rin. You deprived him of a relationship with his daughter for six years, and you came back and took an empire he was planning to preside over out from under him, and then made him effectively run his own company for you, on your terms. Trust me, from what you’ve told me about Sean, you’ve hit him twice where it hurts with big strikes. Family and business are what means everything to him, and you hold all the power over both. Prolonging that, well, as far as I can see, mate, all that does is cause problems for you.”
“How?”
“Your business deals should be running smoothly, and if you continue to hold him in contempt, they simply won’t. Risky really, when taken into consideration just what you do. Then of course, for Tiger. In fact, mostly for Tiger. Trying to repeatedly cut her father down for a mistake he made seven years ago will only hurt you and her in the end. Has he ever offered you an apology for his actions?”
She lifted her chin, remembering it, when he told her of his lament. “He has. I have to give him that.”
Carly reached for her arm, squeezing softly. “Well, then. There you go. You have to stop figuratively yeeting him right in the gonads for it at point or another, or behaving like this is only lowering you to his level, or former level, I don’t know. I can’t speak for him, but I can speak for your character. You’re better than this.”
If anyone was going to give her the truth, it was Carly. It was a truth she did need to hear, too, before the battleground that was her relationship – or lack thereof – with the father of her child became even bloodier than it already was. “Why are you bloody laughing? I’m trying to talk seriously for once in my flippin’ life! You could at least appreciate my attempt to be sage!”
“I am,” Rin chuckled, covering her hand with hers where it still rested upon her arm. “It’s just you still can’t help but be funny through it. Yeeting him in the gonads, oh god.” She descended there, laughing richly, even wiping a few tears from her eyes, it had entertained her so much.
“And at the fucking risk of getting my head bitten off, well, maybe it’s because you still lust after what’s hanging directly above the gonads that you’re getting yourself so bent out of shape over him.”
Immediately, she sat a little more upright, her laughter stalled. “Order me the burrata salad to start and then the salmon penne. I’m going for a cigarette.”
“Avoidance tactics,” Carly chimed as Rin rose from her seat, discreetly offering her middle finger in salute.
“Bugger off.”
“Filthy habit,” she further teased, Rin mouthing that she was a knob, her clearly entertained friend giggling as she picked up her wine. “This could all be so much simpler for you if you weren’t so much like your dad.” she muttered, sipping the buttery smooth Sauvignon while looking down at the menu to make her choice.
They had a lovely night together, parting ways at just gone 10pm, Carly heading home and Rin calling a car to do the same. After stopping at a Tesco Express to purchase a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black, though, home was not where she ended up.
Sean was coming to the end of a five-mile treadmill run when the buzzer sounded through his penthouse, slowing the machine to walk before climbing off, his bare chest glistening with sweat.
“Yes?” he spoke into the intercom, seeing the woman upon the screen turn to reveal her face to the front entrance camera.
“Can we talk?”
She had a nerve, turning up out of the blue at 10:35pm. “That depends on whether I’m going to get lambasted all over again for trying to do the fucking right thing, Catherine.”
“You aren’t. Promise.” She knew she needed to give a little, Carly’s words hitting home with her a little. He buzzed her in, Rin moving to the lift, hitting the button for the penthouse. As it glided in ascent, she spoke sternly to herself, her internal monologue advising that she needed to keep calm and talk things through with him, apologise for her pride getting in the way the week before, that she was doing this for the greater good of business continuing to run smoothy, and for her daughter to have a father in her life. One who truly did want to be there.
All of her steely composure flew straight out the window when he opened the door to her, though, when her eyes nearly fell out of her head for seeing him there, shirtless and gleaming with sweat, his navy joggers so low slung she could almost see his...
“Well, don’t you look resplendent in Dolce and Gabbana,” he spoke, raising an eyebrow.
She cocked her head, swallowing hard. “How did you know this is D&G?”
He took a moment, his eyes roaming her slender curves. “I have an eye for quality.” The scent of her perfume wafted under his nose, spellbinding, those orchid notes reminding him how it felt to have his senses flooded by it, his eyes meeting hers.
Her body moved, yet her feet planted, her mouth agape as her chest and cheeks flushed, overcome by the sight of him like that, her throat drying. No. Not now. She willed her brain to take the reins away from the jockey that was her desire, steer her right, but she failed. It was too strong, charging away down a path she swore never to encroach upon again, moving in a second to press her mouth to his, his arms immediately locking around her as he kissed her back with all the heat of a thousand suns.
Now they were in trouble.
Flattened against the door, he pinned her there as they gave in to the torrent, his hands smoothing over her body, reaching to ruck her dress up around her waist, both panting furiously as their tongues rolled in an erotic dance, Sean grasping her thong and tearing it from her in one swift yank. It sent a flood to where she ached for him, her legs wrapping around him as he lifted her, pulling his joggers down just enough to free his cock and plunge it into her fully.
Lord, how she’d missed the feel of being split wide around him, kissing him in utter frenzy. It was mindless, feral sex, their need for one another rampant and unhinged, her body banging against the thick, black door as he fucked out every single wave of desire, longing and, if he was honest, utter contempt he held for her, his fingers dug in hard beneath her thighs.
It sizzled through her, each sparking pulse, tiny fireworks set to burn within her blood, crying out as he filled her again and again, his teeth at her neck scintillating, hanging onto him for dear life. It felt like he was attempting to fuck her right through the door, the pace barbaric, smouldering, everything she needed and had craved in the years they’d been parted.
It shimmered through them both, the crest of an almighty wave they rode until it crashed, washing over them entirely, Rin feeling completely mindless as she swam to the surface of her pleasure, desire glimmering down her spine. That was the moment her brain engaged, her breathless body pinned by his, their tightened muscles slackening as the divinity ebbed away.
Oh, god. Damn him. Damn him for being so fucking irresistible.
He was the first to speak, finally sobering from his orgasm enough to form words. “Please don’t tell me we’ve just possibly given Tiger a sibling.”
“We haven’t,” she panted, “IUD.”
“Oh, thank Christ.” He finally looked at her, withdrawing and placing her down, his mouth twitching a little. “So, you wanted to talk?”
“I did,” she confirmed, rearranging her dress, looking away. Easily, she could have throttled herself for her actions, hiding her face in her hands for a moment, dying a little. “For fucks sake! We’re such a mess.”
He raised an eyebrow, pulling his joggers and boxers back up again. “That we are, Catherine.” He paused, watching her run her hands over her hair, still looking desperately uncomfortable. “We could become less messy, though. Perhaps if we ceased the urge to needle at one another quite so much as we do.”
“Are you truly admitting to the fact that you do?” she asked, Sean feeling his blood flicker in annoyance.
“I am, yes. Because somebody who continues to fucking punish me for the mistakes of my past bloody deserves it. Know that for my part, it is only in retaliation,” he told her, walking over to his kitchen, Butch there in his bed, absolutely none the wiser to her arrival and subsequent pounding against the front door.
She pulled the bottle from her bag, nodding towards him. “It’s because you enjoy the fight, Sean. Don’t pretend that isn’t how it is.”
God. The Woman was insufferable. He turned to her, his nostrils flaring. “Stop it. If I can put my ego aside here and admit my transgressions, then so can you. You know full well you hold your power over me like a fucking sword of Damocles, in both business and with Tiger whenever the opportunity arises. Now, admit that, or get the fuck out. I’m going for a shower; I suggest you take the time I’m gone to consider that. Glasses are above the sink cupboard.”
She knew she had to, he was right, but god, it wasn’t easy. They were both just too similar, too – to use an analogy she herself had many times before – cut from the exact same cloth. Except this time, deep down Rin knew that Sean was right, and she loathed him for it all the more.
Life would be made exponentially easier for her if she simply ceased her desire to punish him, to realise that Carly was right. She had struck back against him more than evenly. The playing field was entirely equal once more.
Just last week she’d heard Ed Dumani offer peace towards Sean, and regardless of the fact he hadn’t been ready to accept, she knew that a clean slate was exactly what had to happen between her and the father of her child, so that ultimately that precious little girl didn’t suffer because of her parent’s rampant toxicity.
“I almost expected you to have done a runner.” His words pulled her from her thoughts, a freshly showered Sean entering the kitchen again, going to the cupboard himself to retrieve the glasses she’d been preoccupied from fetching. “I perhaps couldn’t blame you if you had.”
He poured two large measures, Rin thanking him as he slid hers across the black marble worktop, knocking it back in one. He followed suit. “Come on, it’s fucking cold in here and the lounge is warm.” They walked back out again, Butch still sleeping on with a series of deep snores, taking a seat upon the long, L shaped grey sofa, Sean refilling their glasses. “So, what did you come here with the intention of saying?”
Taking a breath, she closed her eyes for a second, seeing Tiger there in her mind’s eye. It forced her to take a lasso to her pride and give it several tethering yanks. “I want to apologise for my part in us continuing to have friction. It isn’t conducive to us healthily co-parenting Tiger, no matter how much I dislike you at times. I need to be better for my daughter.”
He snorted softly, sipping his drink. “At times? Catherine, you despise me near enough constantly.”
“Do you truly blame me for that?”
“Yes, I fucking do when you’ve had seven bloody years to get over it!” he spoke tersely. “I apologised to you, and it was sincere. I regret what I did to you, every fucking day I regret it, but god above, woman! You have to take your fucking boot off my bloody neck at some point.” She looked accepting of his words, albeit that acceptance bitter, Sean continuing in her silence. “I lost everything, went through hell after my father died, attempted to claw it back only to have you take it all again and only give it on your terms. Terms I have complied with.”
“But Sean...”
“No, for fucks sake, there isn’t a fucking but here! Stop fucking punishing me. If you want me to cease resenting you, then you have to stop making me sorry for something I already regret! I am doing everything in my power to prove worthiness, to prove most importantly that I can and will be a fit father for Tiger, but as soon as you perceive me to have any kind of upper hand, you fucking use her against me, like you did with the Persians!”
Her ire ramped in an instant. “You fucking enjoyed that, making me look small!”
“I didn’t want Bahram Forouhandeh to fucking kill you! I was looking out for you, you ignorant, insufferable woman!” His eyes were wide, exasperated as he scoffed, sinking his whiskey. “And yes, maybe I did derive a little joy from cutting you down, but bloody hell, Rin! Like you don’t do exactly the same to me at every fucking opportunity!”
“I just apologised, and you’re throwing it at me all over again!”
“Because you need to have it thrown at you all over a-bloody-gain to recognise what you’re doing to me!” He took a moment, his heart jackrabbiting in his chest, trying to calm down from the anger that had all too sharply risen. “Your father was exactly the same. On his terms or not at all. You? You’re better than that, and I am one of the very few people in your life who not only sees that, but isn’t too afraid of you to tell you either.”
Neither was Carly, and it wasn’t lost on her, how his statements more or less matched those of her oldest friend. She’d always taken pride in the fact people likened her to her father, but truly never dawned in her until right then that perhaps it wasn’t always a complimentary likeness.
Bolting back her drink, she took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Sean.” They were words that did not come easily, feeling bitter, like ashes in her mouth.
Standing, he picked up the bottle, moving to seat himself at her side, topping up her empty glass. “Finally. Now I only have to await a little sincerity in your actions going forward, and maybe my fucking blood pressure might lower a tad.”
Lifting the glass to her lips, she took a sip, nodding. “What would like first, then, for me to show this sincerity?”
“A blowjob wouldn’t go amiss.” He expected the light slap he received to the chest. “Well, you did ask.”
“And you just shagged the shit out of me against the front door not ten minutes ago!”
He smirked, his eyebrows twitching. “I never claimed not to he insatiable.”
Rolling her eyes, she rested her head back against the comfy sofa, biting her lip. He certainly never had, as a mere few minutes against the door had reminded her, should she have forgotten. “No, you definitely didn’t. I’m still not putting your cock in my mouth, though.”
“Spoil sport.” The conversation moved away from their dalliance into the verboten, talking instead about of work and life, and then of Tiger when they were over half a bottle into the whiskey.
“I know I say how perfect she is, the bias of being her mum, and she’s always so well-mannered when we meet up with you,” Rin began, her words peppered by giggles.
“Apart from when we took her on the Harry Potter tour and she had a meltdown mid-way round,” he interrupted with, remembering the squealing well.
“Yes, apart from that.” She paused again, looking pained. “You fucking have a habit of doing this to me, interrupting and making me forget what I was about to say!”
He snickered, flicking the side of her glass. “No, darling. That’s called alcohol.”
“Anyway, as I was saying…”
“As you were saying.”
God, how he knew how to wind her up, even when he was being playful rather than deliberately devious. “Be quiet, or I’ll black your other eye.”
“You bloody won’t,” he warned, “look at it, still purple.” It was, too, just a smidgen marking the skin violet around the socket.
“As I was saying, she isn’t the perfect, Tiger. She’s going through a phase of saying things she definitely shouldn’t at the moment. She called the window cleaner a dickhead the other day because he appeared suddenly and startled her.”
Predictably, Sean cracked up hard. “The profanity apple has not fallen far from the tree, I see.”
She laughed, cringing a little. “No, it certainly hasn’t. That child had bionic hearing, and stealth mode. I never know when she’s going to sneak up on me and overhear my vulgar mouth. Bastard shoes was another recent one, when she couldn’t get her little Timberland boots on because she hadn’t loosened the laces. Sokoro nearly pissed himself laughing at her.”
“When do you plan on telling her who I am?” he then asked, Rin feeling a little pit inside for the question, no matter how gently delivered.
“Soon, I think. Before our next meeting. She needs to know.”
He smiled. “Good plan.”
What was also a good plan to them that night was working their way through the rest of the Johnnie Walker, Rin feeling the effects strongly, not having much memory of the night. Upon waking the following morning, she certainly had no remembrance over how she’d ended up in Sean’s bed, her sober, slightly hungover self feeling a little flicker of panic.
They hadn’t... nope. Her underwear was still on, she felt after checking, her shuffling around stirring the body at her side.
“Morning,” he yawned, propping himself up. “I hope you don’t mind, but if you’d slept on the sofa you’d have only awoken to Butch trying to sit on your head, so I brought you in here.”
“You have more than one bedroom though, no?”
He might have been half asleep, but he heard the tease in her tones clearly. “I do, but the beds aren’t made up and I was too pissed to wrestle with a fucking duvet cover, so yes. Here you are.”
The warmth of him, the bright of his blue eyes, the scent of his skin. No. Not again.
“Here I am.” She looked down for a second, feeling a hand reach beneath her chin, Sean shifting closer, his heart quickening as she looked up from beneath her long, full eyelashes at him.
That time, he was the instigator of the kiss they fell into, his body moving to cover hers.
Now they were in trouble.
#sean wallace fanfiction#gangs of london fanfiction#sean wallace smut#sean wallace fanfic#sean wallace fic#sean wallace x ofc#gangs of london#gangs of london fanfic#gangs of london fic#joe cole#london will burn#sean and rin
22 notes
·
View notes
Photo
Some of my doodles for Session Six of our Call of Cthulhu game!! We finally got back up with that potion-maker from Last Loop and tried to explain EVERYTHING to her, since she’s the one who seemed the most ready to believe us last time (Also, we saw her voluntarily possessed by a spirit at one point, so it seemed like it would be a good starting point to explain some of our problems).
This went.... chaotically, as there are 0 tells for who’s talking and everyone was very insistent on contributing to the conversation. The alive versions of Sammy and Joey mostly stayed out of this mess.
ALSO!! WE’VE PICKED UP SOME NEW INSANITIES! Henry has a mania that compels him to draw/document everything he learns (in case we lose memories or loop again), Sammy still has the mask thing, Joey’s picked up an obsession with symmetry after witnessing his body horrifically transformed by a corruption across half of it, and Sammy, after seeing the Star Pool lurker’s indescribably horrible non-ink-demon form, is filled with a terrified respect for it and has become strangely deferential. I DID NOT EXPECT SAMMY’S SANITY DROPS TO LINE UP SO PERFECTLY FOR CANON PROBLEMS,
Anyway, have some more out-of-context quotes!! Some of these are just conversation because imagining people trying to hold a conversation with three different voices coming out of “Henry” is my favourite thing now.
[Sammy is played by me, Joey is played by Boo (inkyvendingmachine), Henry is played by Maf (inkcryptid), and Thren (haunted-hijinxer) is our GM!]
[Sammy] *summarising* (So we're gonna run by Josephine and see if she has anything that maybe we should know, uh, based on our current predicament, which has gotten even more complicated than the previous time we talked to her, which hasn't happened yet!)
[Alive!Sammy] Is something wrong?
[Henry] No! No, everything's fine. Let's go.
[Alive!Joey] ...I don't think anything's been RIGHT for a while...
[Sammy] (Are we, as a, uh, unit -- do we have the mask on?)
[Ghost!Joey] There's... three of us in here?
[Ghost!Sammy] Sure, that's a normal thing to say!
[GM] Josephine looks like she is trying to figure out what to say, but she is having... trouble.
[Ghost!Joey] Have you ever had someone... hang out with you... during the festival? Like, kind of, possession?
[GM] She raises an eyebrow, but nods, and says "Yes, that's part of my duty, as a leader of this religion."
[Ghost!Sammy] Fantastic. That seems to be happening to us.
[Ghost!Joey] We're not, exactly sure how we managed to get... in the past again... but we're -- *points with Henry's non-sketching hand over at the live ones*
[Joey] Live!Joey just confusedly shrugs and sips his coffee.
[GM] "...Uh, go back a minute."
[GM] "And you don't know how this happened?"
[ghost!Joey] Not exactly? I --
[Henry] Sammy fell into a Star Pool, and Joey got killed, or, was a host for the cultists.
[ghost!Joey] I don't know if I got killed, but,
[Henry] Well, you looked goopy.
[ghost!Sammy] I don't know what was going on with me, either; I still seemed to be running around.
[Henry] Also very goopy.
[ghost!Joey] So, that's a confusing answer! Um. Let's pretend *points at alive!Joey* that he didn't listen to you, and he went up to the Star Pools anyway, without the potion, and then something happened up there that resulted in whatever is happening to us now, which included us losing our memories and waking up later as the same... entity, but we didn't know for a while, and.... uh... it looks like the last time we saw our bodies that weren't alive and human still, they looked... corrupted by the Star Pools.
[ghost!Joey] Do you know what might've happened to cause all that?
[GM] "...I think there's a lot to unpack there," she says.
[GM] And, indeed, one of them has turned up a pair of gloves! It's somewhat worn, but they don't have holes or anything. Though they might not match your ensemble.
[Joey] As long as they match each other, that's fine!
[GM] They do that.
[Sammy] (I mean, Henry has-- not to rag on Henry's fashion sense, as a man who's worn nothing but the same shirt and suspenders for twenty years, but Henry doesn't have much of an ensemble going on, really.)
[chatting while Joey's player steps away for a moment]
[Sammy] Sorry for making you guys deal with Alive!Sammy; Ghost!Sammy genuinely doesn't know how to argue for this.
[Sammy] It's like, yeah I dunno! Sounds like a raw deal!
[Henry] Henry also doesn't know how to argue for this, it's like, Hey! Do you want a whole bunch of awful, horrible, terrible memories? ....No? Oh.
[Sammy] CANT IMAGINE WHY!!
[Sammy] Like, please? I'd like my body back? ...it's your body, we'd be sharing it-- but not like this situation, uh,
[Henry] Just please, take... I have... take Sammy back.
[Sammy] Could you take this off of my hands, I'm really tired of dealing with it,
[Henry] I love 'im. But I need a break. Please come take your lost.... self.
[GM] Your wayward self.
[Henry] Who's this sassy lost child.
[Joey] *re-entering chat* Ah, we're talking about Sammy.
[Sammy] OH MY GOSH.
[Henry] I ROLLED A ONE HUNDRED!
[Sammy] Henry is VERY tired and distracted.
[GM] Henry's sketching again. He was left unattended for a bit and he's sketching again.
[Henry] Yup,
[Sammy] *sputters* HE CAN'T BE LEFT UNATTENDED, WE'RE BOTH HERE
[Joey] HE LITERALLY CAN'T!!
[Sammy] THAT'S THE WHOLE PROBLEM!! SAMMY WOULD LOVE TO LEAVE HENRY UNATTENDED!!!
[Sammy] Is the voice familiar?
[Joey] Is it the Lurker's?
[GM] A bit...?
[Henry] A bit familiar or a bit like the Lurker's?
[GM] ...Yes.
[ghost!Sammy] Joey, what do you think it was?
[ghost!Joey] I think it has something to do with our situation, and perhaps the fact that--
[ghost!Sammy] "OUR SITUATION" doesn't really clear anything up, that could be a LOT of things right now!
[Sammy] Sammy doesn't want to be back in the actual time we belong in! He's dead in that one!
[Sammy] I guess it's also Alive!Sammy's turn. I don't, uh,
[Sammy] ...there's too many Sammys,
[Joey] (Alive!Sammy just goes WHAT THE FUCK)
[Sammy] Yeah, I don't think he's prepared, when he turns the corner, to find cultists with swords, and Henry immediately drawing a gun and screaming at them; I don't think he's prepared for any of this, or has a game plan for what to do in case this happens, other than just, yelling, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”
[GM] at Henry, or the cultists?
[Sammy] ....BOTH????
[Joey] Does Joey know of any way to interrupt magic?
[GM] Injuring someone is a good, classic way to do that.
[GM] So, you can do an attack, whether it's with the gun or with your fists!
[Sammy] *flipping through character sheet* I mean, I feel like I'm probably not just shooting him, I-- wHEN DID YOU ADD "DUSTPAN" TO MY WEAPONS???
[Sammy] The idea of Joey just continuously accidentally killing people is REALLY funny to me.
[Sammy] This is going MUCH better than the last time that we fought anybody!
[Joey] Apparently Joey just needs to be really angry, and then my dice are like, “yeah, you can kill people.”
[GM] *flipping through the rules* Here we go, "Disrupted spellcasting, for example, if they are shot!" Well, okay then--
[GM] ......ohhh.
[Sammy] Uh,
[Henry] "Oh?"
[GM] HM! ........ let me get a d8.
[Henry] Concern...????
[Sammy] It's probably fine. It's... it's probably fine.
[GM] ........
[GM] Uh..... huh. Well. That's an 8.
[Sammy] On the d8.
[GM] Yyyeah,..... you disrupted his, casting,,, it's not a serious spell so most of this stuff is not extreme, but I rolled an 8, and that says,
[GM] "A mythos monster is accidentally summoned."
[Sammy] WHAT??
[Henry] WHAT???
[Sammy] WHAT????
[Joey] *dying of laughter in the background*
[Sammy] I DIDN'T KNOW THAT WAS AN OPTION??? OKAY!!!
[GM] I didn't think it was, at this level of spell!!
[Sammy] Remember when I said that this was going well? I NEED TO STOP SAYING THINGS.
[Joey] How is Sammy putting on the mask?
[Sammy] With his.... hands...?
[Joey] No, like, how is it laying on his head,
[Sammy] OH.
[Joey] Ghost!Joey would like to turn it so it's like, in the middle of his head. But like, on forehead, so that they can still see.
[Henry] (A fancy visor!)
[Sammy] (...you can still see if it’s on the side...)
[Joey] (Joey would really like it if we, put it in the middle.)
[Sammy] (...I FORGOT YOU HAVE A SYMMETRY THING)
[GM] You felt, when Sammy and the cult leader were both giving the Lurker commands, that there was a kind of tug-of-war going on there, and it seems like the cult leader won that round.
[Henry] Wait, we can give the Lurker commands?
[Joey] We're allies.
[Sammy] Yeah, we're the host.
[Henry] Oh, um,
[Sammy] Sammy asked it for help! It didn't, uh... this is how things always go for Sammy, so, I feel like this is correct.
[Sammy] (...Henry pulls out a gun, someone tries to grab him and he just bashes that person over the head, Joey tries to help by shooting this cult leader to stop him from casting a spell, and this horrible weird bendy monster is unleashed, Henry IMMEDIATELY kneels to this creature, and it starts listening to him, and he grabs the amulet and starts directing it to murder people after pulling the mask down over his face, so, yeah!! I can see that being pRETTY UNSETTLING actually!!)
[Joey] And I've already accidentally summoned a demon, somehow!
[GM] This is just how Joey rolls, he just aCCIDENTALLY SUMMONS DEMONS, apparently! Even when OTHER PEOPLE are casting spells, Joey finds a way to accidentally summon a demon!
[Sammy] We do need those; those ARE our bodies running away,
[Lurker, when asked if he can shapeshift] It depends on the host! I didn't do this. It's pretty awesome, though! I feel like this is actually something that was designed to be this way, for the first time I can remember! Deliberate, you know what I mean?
[Henry] “Yeah!” Henry says, not knowing what he means.
[Sammy] We're very focused on getting out of here.
[Henry] We're channeling Wally Franks!
[Sammy] NO! Don't channel Wally Franks! He didn't get outta there he just YELLED ABOUT IT, which is what WE'RE DOING RIGHT NOW!! LET'S ACTUALLY GET OUTTA HERE!
[GM] You guys go around a corner that at least obscures you from immediate sight, though it's good the Lurker is as, uh......
[GM] ........
[GM] ........
[GM] ...uh, for lack of a better word, bendy as he is,
[players explode with laughter]
[GM] I TRIED, I couldn't think of anything else!
[Sammy] NO I SAW THE GEARS TURNING IN YOUR HEAD
[GM] You have a small Bendy.
[GM] He's blinking.
[Henry] Henry is.... is having, a moment,
[Sammy] We're honoured you're joining us, but we really should get moving?
[Henry] Just let him ride on his shoulders like a kid, that'd be adorable!
[Henry] Henry's having SO many emotions right now. He wants to be respectful, but also, oh my god, that's so cute?? and also my OC???? Oh my god??????
[GM] I don't think the Lurker is familiar with the concept of piggyback rides. I mean if he's asked I'm sure he's down for whatever, but,
[Henry] Henry's gonna ask the Lurker if he wants to climb on his shoulders and ride.
[GM] The Lurker thinks this is a FANTASTIC idea, because nobody has ever carried the Lurker around before!
[Alive!Sammy] Sammy's very pale.
[Alive!Joey] You have a... Bendy now, Henry...?
[Henry] Uh, kinda! This is the Lurker.
[Alive!Joey] “The Lurker”?
[Henry] The giant monster? He's... small now, so he's not a giant monster.
[Alive!Sammy] Henry WHAT is going on? Or, whoever you are right now,
[Henry] It is me; look, I've been letting the others talk because I have no idea what's going on. I don't know... I just want to get everyone out of here alive.
[GM] (What a Henry thing to say)
[Alive!Sammy] *snarking* Well, we're alive SO far! Maybe don't run at people with swords, in the future? Might help with that.
[Henry] That was Sammy. That wasn't me.
[Joey] (*laughing* "By the way, that thing you were lecturing me about? That wasn't me, THAT WAS YOU!")
[GM] The Lurker settles down when it is clear that the hug is not a threat.
[Henry] (I AM LOSING IT! I hope you know what you've done to me!)
[GM] (I was not expecting this either but here we are!!)
[Henry] (Maybe it was my idea. I can't believe I've done this.)
[Joey] Alive!Joey at some point shows Bendy how to hold the pencil.
[GM] He says "Oh, hey, neat!" and has an easier time.
[Henry] Oh my god, cute?
[Sammy] (*losing it in the background*)
[Joey] I was just thinking that if he's sitting next to Henry, and he watches the Lurker fumble with the pencil enough, he's going to just, reach up and--
[Sammy] (I LOST NINE SANITY TO THIS ASSHOLE!!!)
[Henry] (But he's so cute!)
[Joey] (Well now he's cute, maybe you get some sanity back!)
[Henry] (Like petting a cat! You get sanity back from petting the Bendy.)
[Sammy] (Yes, he is adorable, I will serve him faithfully.)
[GM] Make a navigate check.
[Joey] *rolls terribly* Joey doesn't know where the fuck we're going.
[Henry] I missed the navigate check too.
[Sammy] Ohhhh boy, we better not get lost...
[Joey] Sammy, do you remember where we're going?
[Sammy] Oh, don't ask Sammy. Don't ask either Sammy.
[Sammy] Alive!Sammy will eventually ask "You DO know where we're going, right?"
[GM] You guys..... uh, get lost! Well, let me check one thing.
[GM] *rolls*
[GM] ... THE LURKER, APPARENTLY, CAN GET YOU BACK TO WHERE HE APPEARED,
[GM] What a useful pocket demon.
[Henry] I love our pocket demon.
[Joey] I love our son...
[Sammy] Joey,
[Joey] Firstborn...
[Henry] Adopted from a cult!
[Joey] We went to Haiti and adopted a son.
[Sammy] Sammy's role as third wheel here is getting weirder and weirder.
[Sammy] I can't believe Binoculars is a Bendy fan.
[Joey] (Meanwhile, Ghost!Joey remembers something? There is an inscription on the floor between the laundry room, and Josephine's room, that does not allow the passage of evil spirits. I... don't think the Lurker is going to make it past that.)
[Henry] (Ohhhhhhhhh)
[Sammy] (Hmm. Also... BRINGING THE LURKER in to see Josephine feels, hostile???)
[Henry] (OH... I didn't think about that; he's just my kid now!)
[Joey] (I have literally no idea for Joey.)
[Sammy] (Gosh, what a thing to ask... I just have to appreciate, what a thing to ask a Type Three -- "Okay, what's YOU?")
[Joey] (Joey looks down at the mask, feeling all of his inner masks,,,)
[Sammy] ("I'M COMPOSED OF THINGS THAT MAKE OTHER PEOPLE THINK IM SUCCESSFUL,,,")
[Ghost!Sammy] After you.
[Ghost!Joey] Actually, I would feel more comfortable if you went first,
[Ghost!Sammy] ...Fine. Fantastic.
[Joey] (This is-- I don't know if Sammy can feel it, but this is definitely out of, still thinking about the slight guilt that ran through him when Sammy was blaming EVERYTHING on him, and telling him to keep them out of this,)
[Sammy] (I mean, Sammy just thinks this is risky and wanted Joey to be the guinea pig, so, that's nice that you were thinking of him!)
[Sammy] A quick kiss won't be enough time for Sammy to like, stop bluescreening in time to react to this? So, um, uh, he- he just, uh, needs, uh, a- a minute, but he, will be, blushing furiously. I think that's the only reaction!
[Joey] Perfect~
[GM] The spirit lady probably flashes him a thumbs up.
[Joey] *laughing* Sammy DIES. We did all of this to get him alive again, and he just DIES.
[Sammy] SLAIN INSTANTLY.
#call of cthulu: haunted hijinx#when in doubt just keep drawing#sammy lawrence#joey drew#Henry Stein#I get way too much of a kick out of non-henry Henrys#i wanna draw so many of these convos but like ITS ALL JUST ONE GUY#TALKING TO HIMSELF
149 notes
·
View notes
Text
Mandalorian chapter 16 spoilers
Coupla thoughts ab Mandalorian chapter 16:
Lemme start by saying I loved it. It was heartbreaking, I broke down sobbing and had to pause the episode for an hour bc the ending was hitting way too close and personal for me but it was beautifully (and accurately) written and I loved it.
-Unpopular (?) opinion but I'm a bit irritated with how they did Luke. Like I love Mark and I'm happy he gets to play his character but they hire younger actors to play younger characters all the time and Sebastian Stan was RIGHT there fjfufjsj also the CGI just looked so bad but whatever im being a baby. Anyways soon as I saw the X-Wing I knew it was Luke and I was so fucking excited
-IS BO-KATAN OKAY??. TF??? SHE GOT SHOT AND SHE GOT UP BUT SHE GRUNTED AND WAS CLEARLY HURT??? WTF IS SHE OKAY
-Bo-Katan making a team of literally the most powerful ones in the group has the same energy as the popular kid team captain in dodgeball hfjfjd
-Bo-Katan just berated Din not 5 episodes prior for blindly following tradition of a cult he was raised in and yet she's all superstitious about the dark saber??? Ma'am I love you but your hypocrisy is showing😬
-I'm STILL crying over Luke taking Grogu away. Still. Din's taking off the helmet w no hesitation just so his kid could finally see his face, closing his eyes when Grogu grabbed his face I'm literally in tears again fuck. DIN'S SMILE I'M WEAK.
-I CANNOT BELIEVE THEY'RE GONNA MAKE US WAIT FOR A WHOLE OTHER SEASON TO SEE IF THEY REUNITE I'M SO UPSET LIke how long would it take?? Would Luke have Grogu for just like a summer or would it be
YEARS???
-I think s3 is gonna show us Din helping Bo-Katan take back Mandalore as a distraction and Luke training Grogu. Or maybe someone else trains the kid cause idk how Luke is gonna fit into this show tbh but whatever
-Koska and Bo-Katan absolutely DRAGGING BOBA HAD ME CRYING THEY DIDN'T LET HIM *BREATHE* DJFJFHHSD like I love him but tbh he deserved that a little bit
-"You mean your donor?" I'M FUCKGGIJFHSD
-also him calling them "little one" and "princess" why are Mandalorians like this lmao
-"If we had shown half that spine to the Empire we would've never lost our planet" damn Bo-Katan with that duchess attitude we love
-Din JUST got his kid back and now he's gone again. I'm literally in so much pain over this.
-when Din cried we all cried. I know for a fact as soon as that elevator door closed he lost it.
-also the elevator, idk if that was on purpose but it seemed like a nice nod to ROTJ.
-BOBA IS GETTING HIS OWN SHOW WE WERE WAITING FOR THAT INFORMATION
-When he sat on the throne my neanderthal brain went hm his lap looks like a nice seat fhfhshd why am I like this
Anyways I loved this episode even though it ripped my heart out and made me sob for 3 hours haha
#The mandalorian#the mandalorian season 2#mandalorian season 2#mandalorian season 2 finale#the mandalorian chapter 16#mandalorian chapter 16#din djarin#the child#baby yoda#grogu#Pedro Pascal#cara dune#fennec shand#boba fett#Bo-Katan Kryze#Koska reeves#moff Gideon#cara x fennec#Dincobb#Luke Skywalker#jedi#the darksaber#Mandalore#mandalorians
84 notes
·
View notes
Text
❥ ♡
The Baptist ✰
-·=»‡«=·- 𝘾𝙝𝙖𝙥𝙩𝙚𝙧 7 -·=»‡«=·-
Warnings/ Blood, Violence, strong language, substance abuse, choking, needles, insinuated sexual references, and potential smut. Viewer discretion advised.
A/N - Heyy!! I’m back with chapter seven! Just want to give a, heavy content warning, I know they’re listed above but this chapter includes choking and even smut...yes, I finally wrote some smut for this story, ha! I’d also like to say that I’m sorry that it’s taken me so long to get this chapter posted but I’m glad to be back. I’ve officially graduated high school (since may-june, I was homeschooled) so now I have lots and lots of free time so expect more chapters soon! One more thing, I posted a masterlist which can be found in my bio and I also have it pinned to my profile. Okay, I hope you enjoy this lengthy chapter! <<33
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
★·.·´¯`·.·★ 𝓈𝓊𝓂𝓂𝒶𝓇𝓎 ★·.·´¯`·.·★
Delaney finally found out that while she was in John’s bunker, Nick’s wife Kim gave birth to their daughter, Carmina. Delaney decided that before things go any further with Sharky, she has to decide where things are going with John. Before she goes back to the bunker, she makes a pit stop to see someone special.
─── · 。ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
𝙳𝚎𝚕𝚊𝚗𝚎𝚢'𝚜 𝙿𝙾𝚅
“Hey, we can take my jeep. Once you drop me off at the bunker, you can just drive it back to my house unless John decides to send in the cavalry.” I said throwing Nick the keys and shaking my head. “It’s so fucking annoying when he does that, the bliss bullets make me feel so shitty.” I sat in the passenger seat and struggled to buckle myself because I was shaking so bad. “Hey, are you okay? Be honest.” Nick grabbed my arm and stopped me. “No...not really. I just - when I went to go arrest Joseph, I didn’t know this is how the county would turn out.” I put my head in my hands. I wasn’t crying, I was just disappointed. “Look, none of this is your fault. Nobody knew this is how it would’ve turned out. Don’t blame yourself.” Nick said as he rubbed my back. He took his hand off and started the engine. “Look on the brightside, we’re going to see Carmina right now. Don’t worry about anything peggie related until it’s time, D.” Talking stuff over with Nick, cleared my mind. We pulled up to Nick and Kim’s house, standing on the porch was Kim holding Carmina. “Oh my god! Congratulations guys. Kim, she’s gorgeous. How’re you feeling?” I said as I was rubbing Carmina’s head. “I’m doing alright! My feet hurt so bad though. Other than that, I’m so relieved she’s here.” Kim handed Carmina to Nick and pulled me in for a long hug. “Look, I know things are tough right now but I want you to know that Nick and I are always here for you. What’s going on right now isn’t your fault, remember that.” She rubbed my back. Tears rolling down my face, Kim pulled away. “Nick, why don’t you give Delaney her goddaughter, I’m sure she’s dying to hold her.” Kim said smiling sweetly at me. “Oh, she’s so small. She’s going to grow up to be an amazingly strong woman just like her mother.” I said as I was rocking Carmina back and forth. “And just like her godmother too.” Kim said smiling at me.
𝚃𝚒𝚖𝚎 𝚂𝚔𝚒𝚙
As the sun sets, I realize that I still need to head back to the bunker. “I’m going to have to hand beautiful Carmina back to you, Kim. I have to head back to John’s bunker. I’m honestly surprised he hasn’t sent in the-” As Kim grabs Carmina, I feel a bliss arrow shoot straight into my thigh. Suddenly, everything around me fades to black.
𝚃𝚒𝚖𝚎 𝚂𝚔𝚒𝚙
𝙳𝚎𝚕𝚊𝚗𝚎𝚢'𝚜 𝙿𝙾𝚅
As I start to wake from unconsciousness, I hear faint grunting in the background. I don’t know where I am but the last thing I remember is being with Nick and Kim meeting their daughter. She was so petite and wholesome. I’m heartbroken to know that she has to be raised in the current state of Montana. This isn’t how I wanted things to turn out. Innocent families ripped from their homes, citizens being held under their will to be converted to the cult, innocent people dying, I had no idea this would happen. My eyes are blurry but I’m now able to see where the grunting is coming from. Deputy Hudson is sitting right in front of me. Black mascara has covered her cheeks and she has duct tape over her mouth. I try yelling to her but it’s no use seeing as I have tape on my mouth as well. I start to look around and begin to realize that I’m in John’s bunker. I hear the door latch open and hear John whistling, We’ll Meet Again by Vera Lynn. He slams down a toolbox and opens it up. He removes the one storage compartment and stops. He turns around and begins to tell me a story;
“My parents were the first ones to teach me about the Power of Yes.” John turns around to the toolbox sitting behind him. He pulls out, what looks to be skin, and staples it to the wood of the table. “One night, they took me into the kitchen, and they threw me on the ground, and I experienced pain after pain after pain after pain-” He slammed down the staple gun he was holding. I winced because I had never had him act this way around me. John was usually loving and made me feel safe. He had his moments, yes, but he was never violent. At least towards me. “And when I didn’t think I could take anymore, I did.” Once again, John turns around. This time, he goes into the storage compartment he removed from the toolbox. He grabs a tattoo gun and begins to walk towards me. Hudson, behind him, starts screaming but her screams are muffled due to the tape covering her mouth. John adjusts the lamp that’s next to me and continues, “Something broke free inside. I wasn’t scared, I was-” John flicks the lamp on. “clear.” He plugs a wire into the tattoo gun. “I looked up at them and I started to laugh. All I could say was...yes.” John clicks on the tattoo gun for just moment and then immediately turns it off. “I spent my entire life looking for more things to say ‘yes’ to.” He places the tattoo gun down and popped open my shirt to reveal my chest. For a moment, he just stares...then, he continues. “I opened up every hole in my body and when those were filled, I created more.” John is now making eye contact with me. A single tear comes out of my right eye as I’ve never seen John like this before. I try talking to him but this damn duct tape is my goddamn way. He pulls away and still continues on with his lengthy story. “But it was Joseph who showed me just how selfish I was being.” Hudson is still in the background trying to shout at John. He grabs a bowl off of the table next to him and pulls out a sponge. He begins cleaning off my chest. “Always receiving. Always taking. The best gift isn’t the one you get, it’s the one you give and giving takes courage.” He finishes cleaning off my chest and places the bowl down. He begins to walk back towards the table which has the toolbox on it. “The courage to own your sin. To etch it on to your flesh and carry its burden and when you have endured -- when you have truly begin to atone -- to cut it out like a cancer and display it for all to see. Ha...my god that’s courage.” He stops and grabs a screwdriver. “I’m going to teach you courage. Teach you how to say, ‘yes’ so you can confront your weakness.” John begins pacing and speaking with more volume, clearly full of passion. “Confront your sin. You will swim across an ocean of pain and emerge...free.” He quiets down and begins to walk towards me again, this time, pointing the screwdriver at me. “For only then can you truly begin to atone.” When he reaches me, he places the cold metal of the screwdriver onto my chest. He then, swiftly takes it off and walks back to the table. “So who wants to go first? Hm? Which one? Hmm? This is lesson number one. Someone’s got to choose.” Feeling the pressure and knowing if I don’t nod my head in agreement, John will just get angrier. I don’t want anything else happening to Hudson because who knows what she’s already been through. I nod my head and wave my bound hand at him. “Yes. YES!” I can hear Hudson screaming in disagreement as John begins to walk closer to me yet again. “You’re not going to regret this. I promise.” He points the screwdriver at me again. “Now, before we begin,” John begins to walk to Hudson and throws the screwdriver to the side. “I think it’s only proper that Deputy Hudson goes back to her room. Confessions are meant to be private, after all.” He reaches the back of Hudson’s chair and begins to roll her towards me. Screaming, Hudson makes eye contact me. We hold it for a moment and I begin to tear up. Hudson is now crying even more than she was before. “Shhh. Shhh...I am not here to take your life. I’m here to give it to you.” John straightens up and pushes the lamp out of the way that had shined on me prior. He places his hands around my neck and begins to choke me. “I’m going to open you and pour your worst fears inside and as you choke, your sins will reveal themselves.” Hudson, next to us begins shouting at John in hopes he’d let go of me. “Only then, will you truly understand the Power of Yes.” He removes his hands from my throat and continues back over to Hudson. “I’ll be right back.” John says as he wheels Hudson out of the room.
I begin sobbing. I know John was probably doing all of this because Hudson was in the room but I’ve never felt like this before. I knew I should’ve gotten back to the bunker earlier. He probably hated the fact that I was having a good time out of the bunker, thinking I’d get too used to it and want to go out more often. Well, who wouldn’t get used to being outside after being locked in all day?
𝙹𝚘𝚑𝚗'𝚜 𝙿𝙾𝚅
I roll Deputy Hudson down the hallway of the bunker. I feel bad for treating Delaney the way I did back there but, that’s what happens when you don’t come back to the bunker after many hours of being out. If anything, she should be lucky I didn’t do anything worse to her. I just...I know that, after that interaction, she might not feel the same way about...us anymore. I reach miss Deputy Hudson’s room and I unlatched her door. I bring her inside and shut the door so when I remove her restraints, she doesn’t try anything...funny. I go down to her feet and begin to cut off the rope. Next, I come up to her wrists and finally get the duct tape off of her mouth. “What the fuck is your deal? What are you going to do to Delaney? Don’t you hurt her anymore then that petty fucking choking you did.” She gets in my face. I slap her and push her down onto her bed. “You don’t tell me how to punish my people. What goes on in confessional, is going to be none of your business. You’ll get your fill of confession soon, don’t you worry. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to get to.” I remove my hand from her face and head over to the door. I unlatch it and start back down the hallway to Delaney. I open up the door and see Delaney still in the spot that I left her. I place my hand on her shoulder and walk around to face her. I pull up a stool that’s near her and sit down. Reaching up to her face, I remove the duct tape slowly so I don’t hurt her as much. “So, I’d just like to apologize for acting different towards you. I was angry about your tardiness. I felt as though you abandoned me and I didn’t like it. I’d also like to apologize for choking you.” John said stroking my cheek and removing my wrist restraints. “Oh yeah? Well, you should’ve fucking said that instead of choking me and scrubbing me down with a sponge. I’d also like to mention, it didn’t make me feel any better knowing that Hudson was here. Has she been in the fucking bunker the whole time?!” Delaney yelled. “I don’t want to lie to you so yes, she’s been here the whole time. I’ve kept her in the lower rooms as to keep you from be able to hear her. I didn’t want to put you through that or risk other things so I didn’t tell you.” I told her as I started to cut through the rope around her ankles.
*steamy scene approaching, btw, not just making out ;)*
𝙳𝚎𝚕𝚊𝚗𝚎𝚢'𝚜 𝙿𝙾𝚅
“Yeah, other things meaning, saving Hudson and leaving the bunker. Look, I love you, John, but choking me and having her bound in front of me, wasn’t the most amazing thing either.” I said flustered as I started pacing back and forth. “Wait...wait. Did you just- did you just say that you loved me?” John grabbed my wrist and I froze. Oh shit...I fucking did. “Yes...yes I did. What are you going to do about it?” I said yanking my arm back and crossing my arms now. John shoved me against the table that had the toolbox on it. He sat me on top and started making out with me. John began unbuttoning my shirt. “You know, you could just rip it off. It would be a lot faster.” I said in-between kisses. “No I can’t, this shirt was expensive.” John pulled away so he could accurately continue unbuttoning the shirt I was wearing. I started laughing as he continued. He then began to unbutton his shirt so I starting unbuckling his belt. I took off my unbuttoned shirt and threw it to the floor. John did the same, as well as pulling his pants down. I undid my belt and threw my pants to the ground. John came back over to me and continued to kiss me passionately. He made his way to my neck and began sucking which left hickies. “Well, if no one knew we were together, they would now.” I said through heavy breathes. “Fuck it. Who cares right?” John said while making his way to nibble on my ear. “Um...maybe Jacob or y’know, Joseph. I’m pretty sure they’d care.” I said rubbing my hand up and down John’s chest as he continued biting my ear. “Okay so, do you want me to stop? Do you want this is to be over?” John said biting my bottom lip. “No...I’m just- making a point.” I replied as I hopped off the table. I grabbed John’s hand and led him over to the chair that I was bound to prior. I shoved him down and he fell onto the seat. I wheeled the chair over to the wall that way it won’t move as much once I sit in his lap. Before I sit down on his lap, I removed my underwear and unfasten my bra. I walked over to John and started to pull down his underwear. I climbed on top of him and he placed both of his hands on my hips to help stabilize me considering we were about to have sex on a chair with wheels. John slowly began to slide his penis inside of me. I arched my back a little and gasped at how it felt going in. I let out a small moan and beginning moving my hips back and forth, slowly. John threw his head back and let out a moan of his own. I placed a hand on his throat and I ran my fingers through his hair with the other. I started picking up speed. With the hand I placed on his throat, I now grabbed his face and roughly started making out with him. John slid his tongue into my mouth and I did the same with mine. He quickly took his tongue out and threw his head back once again, this time letting out an even louder moan. I started riding him even faster and due to how passionate it was, I let out a moan, however, I moaned his name. “John...” I could feel him finish inside me, however I wasn’t done. I got off of him and laid on the floor. In this moment, I didn’t care that I was laying on freezing, dirty, concrete...I was in love. John got the idea and got down on the floor but instead of laying next me, he got on top of me. He started making out with me then slowly worked his way down to my breasts and began running his tongue along my nipples. Taking one into his mouth, he began sucking. As he did so, he slid his hand down to my vagina and began to slide two fingers in. John, however, was a smart man and knew that’s not only what I wanted so he stopped sucking on my nipples and made his way down to meet his fingers. He placed his tongue on my clit and started working. He went as fast as he could, my back arching so far off the ground. I let out plenty of loud moans, even some with his name in there. Then, I felt myself release. But, like I said, John is a smart man...he kept going. Soon enough, I had finished a second time and lastly, a third. He took his fingers out and I was lying there, unable to move a single muscle. Once I had been able to breathe, I told John, “That...was absolutely amazing.” I stretched and stood up. Barely able to walk, I sat on the swivel chair. “John, baby, can you hand me my clothes please..I’m unable to walk.” John turned to me and laughed. He walked over to wear my bra, underwear, pants, and shirt were and handed them to me. He leaned down and kissed me warmly and began dressing himself. Once he was fully clothed, he came over to me and help me out. Buckled my bra for me, buttoned up my shirt, slid on my underwear and next my pants. Then he grabbed my socks and shoes and put those on for me as well. “I love you too, Delaney. I realized just now that I didn’t say anything.” John said, leaning his hands on the chair’s armrests. “You didn’t need to say anything, I knew.” I got close to his face and left him small pecks on his lips. “Would I be able to see Hudson?” I asked John with sad eyes. John let out a sigh.
𝚃𝚘 𝚋𝚎 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚞𝚎𝚍… †
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUrUN5CqcB87hkBtuYKM6Vs_RMpcDuwaT
#john seed#john seed x deputy#fanfiction#fandom#Far Cry 5#fangirl#falls end#deputy hudson#far cry 5 hurk#nick rye#animals of hope county#delaney calloway#Far Cry Arcade#far cry 5 lockscreens#faith seed#joseph seed#jacob seed#my screenshots#sharky boshaw#sheriff whitehorse#Hope County#cougars#MY OCs#original#original character#pastor jerome#jess black#project at eden's gate
14 notes
·
View notes
Text
Soulmates Aren’t Real - Soulmate!AU
Summary: Seven years ago, a “study” found that people who get incredibly close to death, meet their soulmate in their minds. People described them as an angel in the darkness, a light at the end of the tunnel. The idea alone made Tony want to hurl. It’s stupid. Bullshit. Soulmates aren't real.
Sure, Tony zapped himself every now and then. Occupational hazard. But as of yet, he hasn’t come close enough to death to object the study with facts. And though he is a curious man by nature, he’s not that curious. His "soulmate" will show up on their own time. And if they don’t? They don’t. Whatever. Tony can tinker all he likes. He’s content in his lab. Even if it’s a little quiet sometimes...
-
Or: Every time Tony nearly dies in the MCU canon, he sees and talks with Peter (who ages appropriately - aka during Iron Man 1, Peter is 6 years old, etc etc etc). It’s a little Cinderella like, if you ask me, aha!
-
Author’s note: Hi everyone! This started as a small idea that I just wanted to get out of my brain. Took me two Saturdays to write and it's barely edited, aha. I hope you enjoy it, though! <3
-Lien
Words: 3589
Warnings/tags: Fluff, Angst, Soulmate!AU, Mentions of death (a lot), Mentions of attempted near-suicide, read this however you like, I wrote this as Irondad.
Read Soulmates Aren’t Real on AO3!
Occasionally, Tony wonders how much he resembles Sherlock Holmes. He drinks a lot more than what’s probably healthy and he thinks faster than other people around him. Though, he is of the opinion that everyone deserves a chance, not all deserve kindness. He likes being alone, tinkering, and losing track of the days. He actually enjoys fucking up his sleeping patterns, since it means he’s being productive. He’s in a flow. He’s busy.
Right now, he’s absolutely certain he’s Sherlock Holmes. The only reason being this one single thought that keeps bouncing through his head every time he scoffs and rereads the article in front of him. People are idiots. Tony would love to have a Watson by his side, but unfortunately for him, his soulmate has yet to show their face. Speaking of soulmates, the article is about just that.
Seven years ago, a “study” found that people who get incredibly close to death, meet their soulmate in their minds. People described them as an angel in the darkness, a light at the end of the tunnel. The idea alone made Tony want to hurl. It’s stupid. Bullshit. Soulmates aren't real. Those people who cheated death claim that some rando they meet is the one they saw when they nearly died. That they belong together. People cheated over this, saying that the person they saw when they died looked nothing like their current partner, or maybe like another friend. The study ripped apart tons of marriages and while that’s partially why Tony thinks people are idiots, there is another reason. The reason that is in the article he’s reading.
Death therapy. Jesus Christ, who even came up with that shit? More and more people want to know who their soulmate is. If who they are with now is the right person. If they will ever meet them. If they already lost them. And so, they try to almost die. Drug abuse, waterboarding, even playing with electrical equipment and guns. Idiots. People are idiots. And this whole article is about some kind of soulmate cult where groups of twenty all try to get as close to death as they can just so they can get a glimpse of what their soulmate looks like. Stupid. Stupid. STUPID.
The people who organize those things are predators, aiming to get as much money out of people as they possibly can. Let them sign wavers that if they do die, which happens ninety percent of the time, the cult can’t be held accountable. Death rates have risen significantly since the study came out and it’s insane. Soulmates don’t exist and nearly dying for the sake of having a looksie at the true love of your life is psychotic. A money-grab, to scam people who are extremely gullible. And oh, boy, are there many gullible people on this hell of an earth. If only they knew all this crap was fake. So many innocent lives would be spared.
Sure, Tony zapped himself every now and then. Occupational hazard. But as of yet, he hasn’t come close enough to death to object the study with facts. And though he is a curious man by nature, he’s not that curious. His Watson will show up on their own time. And if they don’t? They don’t. Whatever. Tony can tinker all he likes. He’s content in his lab. Even if it’s a little quiet sometimes...
...
Afghanistan. The deal was supposed to be the greatest Tony had ever shook hands on. And then everything went to shit. The missile. The explosion. Darkness. And then a fuck ton of pain, clawing at his chest. He could hear someone screaming but he wasn’t sure who. Was it… Was he screaming? God, it hurt. Ached. Burned. Scratched. He was gasping for air and he wasn’t sure if his body could hold out any longer- if he could hold out any longer.
“Hello, there? Sir?” A small voice asks. Tony gasps and writhes, turning on his stomach before crawling up to be met with a boy. Pale skin, brown hair and brown eyes. Cute. “Are you okay? Mister?” Tony brings his hand to his chest in an attempt to feel where the horrific pain is- was? It’s gone. He’s fine. When did that happen? Is he… Is he dying? Or is he already dead?
“Hey, there, kid,” he sighs, somehow grateful that the hell he was in has passed. He doesn’t exactly want the child to be part of his panic, so he takes a glance at his seemingly infinite surroundings and casually asks his question. “Where are your parents?” The boy looks around, pursing his lips and raising his eyebrows. He then turns to stare at Tony with his big eyes.
“I dunno.” Tony moves so that he’s at eye level with the boy and studies him.
It’s only then that it dawns on him that… Oh, God. Nope. No, this isn’t real. It’s stupid and fake and there’s no way this little kid could be his soulmate. It’s just his dying brain, giving him something to work with before he vanishes into nothingness. Normally, he wouldn’t get anywhere near children. They were quite the liability and honestly the epitome of contrast to his bombostuous life. His biggest fear has always been one of his bed partners showing up on his doorstep, carrying a baby. His baby. He has no time for that. Or well, had. Since it’s his last moments alive, he might as well indulge the imaginary kid.
“How old are you?” The boy thinks for a second and then looks at his hands. He raises one, fingers stretched out, and then the other; just a thumbs up.
“Six!”
“Six?” Tony smiles. “That’s a big number.”
“Mhm!” The boy nods aggressively. “Need two hands now.” He waves his little fist around and grins. He then looks down at his hands and looks back up. “How many hands do you need?”
“A couple more than you do, kid,” Tony scoffs.
“So, you’re like, really old?” Ugh. Kids.
“Old enough to be your dad.”
“You’re not, though!”
“Thank God, no.”
Tony sits down on his butt and pats the floor next to him.
“Mind doing me a favor, kid?” The boy sits down next to him and pulls in his legs, resting his head on top of them.
“Depends, Mister. I’m not actually allowed to talk to strangers.” He thinks for a second and then continues. “And you’re about as strange as it gets.”
“Is that a compliment?” Tony chuckles.
“Depends on who you ask.” The reply has Tony scoff a laugh, louder, and he throws his head back This kid…
“Cheeky little thing, aren’t you?” The boy doesn’t reply. Instead, he hides his face to laugh himself. “So, the favor...” Tony starts, trying to get back the boy’s attention.
“Hm?”
“Just… Be kind, okay? If you really are out there… Life’s too short to-”
Tony opens his eyes, confused. He takes a second to assess his location. He’s lying on something hard and uncomfortable and there’s this dull, continuous ache in his chest. He groans when he realizes… Guess I’m not dying anytime soon.
...
He was terrifically wrong about that. The organization that put him and Yinsen in that cave were absolute monsters. Tony knew better than to struggle a dozen men with big guns unarmed, but when they brought him to the trough with water, he fought nonetheless. His head was pushed in. His body convulsed and though his brain was telling him to stay calm and simply hold his breath, he kept fighting the aggression from his captors. It wasn’t long before he saw flashes again. Of the same boy.
“Mister?” The voice was muffled through the water in Tony’s ears. He wanted to yell at the boy, to look away from the trauma and ensure his safety, but whenever the kid became clear enough in his mind’s eye, he was pulled from the water for air, and then pushed back in, to start the process all over again…
Nobody was to know. He wasn’t going to tell anyone about this… Unnamed boy in his lucid dream. Nothing happened. He didn’t even say what his captors did to him, though with the arc reactor now glowing in his chest, people assumed the worst. If they asked him whether or not he saw someone, his answer was always the same.
“No.”
Tony regretted not asking the kid for his name, but then, everything would’ve become too personal anyways. And soulmates aren't real. Even though Tony had seen the boy on multiple occasions at this point. He should just stop almost dying, to be honest. Though, with his new job as Iron Man, he wasn’t sure if he could hold off on that. He ignored the boy’s worried touch on his thigh when he was paralyzed after his ex-business partner/mentor ripped out his new heart. He tried to tune out the encouraging words as he crawled down to his lab to push the old one back in. The boy was only a figment of his imagination. He couldn’t be real. He. Isn’t. Real.
...
Palladium poisoning. Great stuff. You know what’s even greater? Being haunted by the ghost of an eleven-year-old. Tony never got close enough to death to even be able to say hi to the kid and he wasn’t sure if he was grateful or disappointed. The boy was still smaller than average. Clumsy, even. His glasses were cute, though. Red and gold. Iron Man themed. Adorable. He squeezed his eyes, trying to look through them. Maybe they were the wrong prescription?
The first time Tony saw him was when he was in the bathroom. In true horror-style fashion, the nerdy boy appeared in the mirror. When Tony yelped and turned, the kid was gone. He then appeared for a brief moment on the side of the road when Tony was racing the Formula One. The billionaire nearly crashed his car when he did his double take. From then on, everywhere Tony went, the oblivious boy would be by his side. Not being dead enough to talk to the kid, also meant he wasn’t dead enough for the kid to see him. It was torturous to see the boy play and learn and grow without being able to be a part of it. Funnily enough, Tony still didn’t like children. He just… He liked the boy. And no, it wasn’t because the kid was his soulmate. Soulmates aren't real.
...
Tony was certain flying the nuke into the wormhole would be a one way trip. He’d see the boy one last time, maybe even be able to say goodbye and satiate his need to know the boy’s name, before he’d kick the bucket. At least he’d die peacefully, knowing he stopped an alien war on earth and therefore protected the boy. Twelve. He should be twelve now. Why Tony even bothered to remember the kid’s age, he didn’t know.
“Mr. Stark?” Tony’s vision blurs, the alien spaceship fading to black as his muscles lose tension and his suit gives up on him. He falls. But he doesn’t.
“Yeah, kid, I’m here. For the last time.” Tony frowns as he pulls in his legs, seated on the floor. He sniffs once and looks up to see the boy sitting across from him. “Hopefully.”
“Wait, you want to die?” The question was awfully direct, which makes Tony scoff.
“I’ve seen you so often now…” The barely dead billionaire glances to the side. “That can’t be healthy.” He purses his lips. “Also, the healing process of coming back from the dead is a pain in my butt. Pardon my French.”
“I like seeing you.” The boy fiddles with his fingers and looks down shyly.
“Do you really see me? Like, for real real?”
“I’m dreaming. It feels real, but I don’t talk about it with anyone.” The boy cocks his head and raises his shoulders casually. “I think we both think we’re each other’s imagination.”
“Well, we are, aren’t we?”
“Definitely.” The kid nods aggressively. He crosses his legs and looks at Tony through his long lashes. “Nobody believed me when I said I think you’re my soulmate because I dream about you. Then again, nobody nearly dies as often as you do.” They both chuckle, but the sound quickly fades. “They just think I idolize you a little too much.” The boy frowns and then straightens his back. “I mean, I do idolize you, I- I think you’re a genius! Your papers on Artificial Intelligence are groundbreaking-”
“Kid- you’re twelve, you shouldn’t even be able to read those.”
“I…” The boy presses his lips on top of each other. “The books I have to read at school are boring.” He almost seems guilty about saying it.
“Those papers are filled with big words, though. You understand all of it?” Tony stares at the boy in awe.
“I Google things I don’t know, but context usually explains a lot.”
A short, stunned silence settles between the two of them. Tony can barely believe how smart this boy is. He calls Tony a genius, yet he is a genius himself. People who graduated university, specialized in Artificial Intelligence, ask Tony to clarify his papers. So either the boy is messing with him, trying to seem big, or he’s actually incredibly bright. The thought alone makes Tony reminisce about the first time he met the boy, when he still had to use two hands to show Tony how old he was. That was six years ago. Six. He’s fairly certain the boy is a terrible liar, though. And he’s not lying now.
Tony’s eyes open wide, every muscle in his body clenches at the sound of the Hulk’s roar right next to him. There was so much he still wanted to ask the boy. At least he was still alive. Maybe he’ll find him and if not, Tony hopes he’ll near-die again soon.
...
He didn’t expect his own Malibu house crashing down on him and forcing him into the sea to drown being the way he’d go. He’d never been in a worse situation than this. There was no one there to save him. He’d die, never having met his soulmate. Who knows, maybe they’ll meet again in the afterlife, one day. Tony closes his eyes and lets the quiet wash over him as his suit shuts down.
The silence is broken by a quiet sob. The sound brings Tony back to the half-afterlife present and he opens his eyes. The boy is sitting right in front of him again, crying visibly and audibly.
“Hey, hey-” Tony moves forward to place a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t want you to die, Mister Stark.”
“What makes you think it’s for real this time?”
“You just said it yourself,” he sobs. “There’s no one to save you now.”
“You heard that?” The boy nods, face twisted.
“Well, since I’m still here, I’m not gone yet,” Tony tries with a smile. The boy looks up, tears streaming down his face and shoulders slightly shaking. His red cheeks puff and he sniffs.
“We haven’t even met-” The boy squeezes his eyes shut and pushes in, hugging Tony’s chest tightly. The man raises his arms in surprise, but hearing the kid sob, breaks his heart in ways he never thought possible. He embraces the boy and rests his head on top of his. “I can’t lose you too.”
“Too?” Tony’s voice cracks and he clears his throat, trying to remain composed.
“M-my parents-” Oh, no. Tony immediately pushes the boy away from his chest and ducks his head, forcing the boy to look in his eyes.
“Kid, I’m not going anywhere. I’m right here. I’m going to meet you, ‘kay? Give me your name and I’ll find you.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.” The boy takes a second to collect himself and Tony wipes his tears with the sleeve of his shirt.
“My name’s P-”
The second it dawned on Tony that he was still alive, but without the knowledge of the boy’s name, he wanted to cry. And so he did. He was in snowy Tennessee. Many, many miles from home. Who knows, maybe P is somewhere around here? This couldn’t be a coincidence anymore. The boy has to be real. And Tony left him alone. Truly and utterly alone. Just as he is right now. He sobbed quietly as Jarvis shut down. It wasn’t long before he stood up, hugging himself, making the resolute decision that wherever he was, whatever was going to happen, he was going to live. For P.
...
Harley filled up the hole P had left for the short while they spent together. Tony learned to care for him, but it wasn’t the same. All he could think about was the other brown-haired boy in the back of his mind. His soulmate. His P. After the whole Mandarin situation was dealt with, there was no way he could go looking for the now thirteen-year-old without seeming like a creep. P. That was all he knew about him. His name started with a P. First name? Last name? Nothing narrowed it down. He had to let it rest. He simply had to. But he couldn’t. For the first time in his life he felt like the people he once called idiots. But he couldn’t afford to die. Not with the boy out there waiting for him. And so, he shut the tab on his tablet, linked to the Death Therapy site. Maybe he wasn’t Sherlock Holmes after all. If only he could find his Watson.
...
Sokovia was hell. He got so close to seeing his boy again. So close. But not close enough. He tried to reach for P, but their encounter was cut short.
“Mr. Stark! Mr-” P yelled. “I’m P-! Don’t go, please! Please! My name-”
“Kid!”
“P-t-” It was torturous. Tony wished he could go back to when he didn’t care. When he didn’t think the boy was actually real. But he couldn’t. P is out there. Somewhere. And by God, Tony would find him. Whatever it takes.
...
Spider-boy. Whoever it was, the web-slinger caught Tony’s attention. A young hero, wanting to help out the little guy. He was young, though. And so, Tony felt the need to be a mentor. To guide the young man into becoming the hero everyone would root for. That and whatever the boy was wearing was absolutely unsafe for the job. Tony wanted to give the kid something he could work with to make it all safer for everyone. Plus, he needs someone Steve would go easy on, should Berlin go South. Pepper did most of the research and the phone call went by quickly. Tony didn’t really feel like talking anyways.
“Alright, so he lives on 15th street. I’ve texted you the building and the address.”
“Thanks, Pep.” Little did she know Tony was already at the front door.
“Oh, and his name is-”
“Bye, Pep.” He hung up and knocked.
The door was opened by a lovely woman in her late forties. Of course, she immediately recognized him and let him in, offering him a seat on the couch.
“My nephew is probably your biggest fan,” she yelps, clapping her hands with excitement. “You are here for him right? He applied to your scholarship a couple weeks ago.”
“Yes!” Tony clears his throat. “That’s exactly what I’m here for.” He raises his eyebrows and continues his lie. “He got the scholarship, so I wanted to let him know personally. As I… eh, I do with all other people who got it.” Not every hero shares their identity with the ones they’re close with. It’d be better for Spider-guy if Tony played it safe.
...
Not much later, the door opened again. Tony looked up with a smile, knowing it’d be the friendly neighborhood hero he was going to recruit. His expression faltered when he saw the boy’s face. His boy’s face. P. That’s P.
“Ah, perfect timing!” May exclaims cheerfully. “Look who’s here to see you!” Tony blinks and clutches his chest. He’s having a heart attack, isn’t he? He’s dying. This isn’t real. This isn’t happening.
Peter seems just as taken aback, seeing the billionaire of his dreams - quite literally - on the couch with his aunt. After a short while of amazed silence, May breaks it.
“What’s up with you two all of a sudden? It looks like you’ve seen a ghost!” They can’t help ignoring her. Tony slowly stands up and shuffles closer to the boy who drops his backpack to the floor.
“Mr-”
“Say your name-” Tony whispers, inching closer and closer until he invades Peter’s personal space. “Please, tell me your name.” Peter looks up at him, wide-eyed, flustered. His lips part, but he swallows before he speaks.
“Peter. My name is Peter Parker.” P. Peter. Parker. Peter Parker. Holy- It fits. Everything fits. Sherlock has found his Watson. Everything feels so insanely right in this moment.
Tony slowly raises one hand, placing it on Peter’s fast beating heart. Peter curls both hands around Tony’s and opens their palms, sandwiching Tony’s hand between his.
“Need three hands,” Peter mutters. “Four soon.” He moves his hands to Tony’s chest, feeling the scar of where his arc reactor used to be push through the fabric of his dress shirt. “You’re not dying again, are you?” Peter asks quietly, almost scared.
“No, kid,” Tony sighs. Content. Finally. “I think this is real.”
110 notes
·
View notes
Note
These are... a lot I’m so sorry I just have a lot of feelings
-I think Zexion and Xemnas acting like siblings is absolutely hilarious. Xem is serious superior man until the rest of the org leaves and then he tries to gently bludgeon Zex because the bastard threw a book at his head earlier
-Zexion was the only one not afraid of Larxene who had her grudging respect-He can shoot a gun. He was raised by Braig.
-He can use a sword. He was raised by Dilan.-Ever since he was little, he was fascinated by weird creatures and would bring them home. Even drew the line at the giant snake (he hated the spiders equally though). He still does this at 20-something only now the warriors of light are in on it and they’ll occasionally bring him even weirder things
-no he doesn’t experiment on them he just thinks they’re Neat
-Zexion occasionally comes out in Ienzo’s personality, usually when he’s mad at one of the apprentices. He’s very petty.
-Even as Ienzo, he can be really unsettling sometimes. He can just kinda... snap to being happy and pleasant at a moments notice and his smile never wavers... he moves like a predator even if he does his best to mask it. And yet he’s still really easy to let your guard down around
-he was raised in an emotionless cult and it shows. He’s just... off. And absolutely despises showing ANY weakness (I mean, he was the smallest, physically weakest, youngest member in the org practically his whole life). He will walk on a broken leg without giving anything away and it’s driving the apprentices insane
-He is the apprentice’s secretary at this point. Everyone always go to him when they need something because the others are... themselves
-he doesn’t put up with any of the apprentices bs. If one of them is being rude, he will absolutely grab them by the ear and drag them off, size difference be damned
And finally, consider: Ienzo accidentally adopting a bunch of gremlins (Vanitas, Repliku & 3ku). By that I mean they follow him around everywhere and hiss at people and Ienzo’s just like “yeah they’re not socialized yet but I’m working on it :)” and 3ku bites his arm
DO NOT APOLOGIZE THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I ASKED FOR :D 💙
-i never considered the idea that they'd act like siblings; i personally always thought ienzo (or ig zexion, at the time) would have.... secretly harbored a grudge, now that i think about it. he remained as close as possible to xemnas, both because he wanted to keep an eye on his actions, but perhaps also because a part of him truly believed in what xemnas was doing, reaching for. after all, he was the only one freaked out when the org13 members started killing each other - it must have been jarring because at that point, that was the closest thing he had to a family. he wasn't close to everyone, and certainly not as a nobody- but he WAS manipulated by xemnas, and i feel like once things started going bad, the rose-colored glasses came off, so to speak, and he probably realized just how badly he'd been deceived. of course, that was only the beginning, too ;_;)
-yeah, there's no way he was afraid of larxene. annoyed by her attitude and upset with her eventual betrayal/plan to overthrow the organization, but never scared of her. in fact, i'd argue ienzo wasn't scared of anybody in the organization until vexen was assassinated.
-either he CAN use normal weapons like guns and swords and just chose to use a fucking book instead, OR he can't use any traditional weapons and got a book as consolation. i can't tell what's funnier honestly
- WEIRD 👏 KID 👏 IENZO 👏 yessss. i love the idea that he'd sneak off for however long and by the time anyone noticed he'd gone missing they'd find him on his way back with some sort of fucking creature. and now that i think about it, that would explain why he didn't seem to be afraid of the heartless at all in BBS- at that point he'd likely not seen one yet, and must simply have thought it was another fun creature to put in a box and watch SHSJHAHAJS
-hm, i personally think it's less like zexion "comes out" in his personality, and more that they're the same person, and that any habits he formed as zexion were/are hard to shake. if you play/watch in japanese, you see he's actually rather polite, even as a nobody; and is VERY good at hiding snark behind faux politeness.
-HDMSNMSFNNSNDG "sorry even i'd love to help you, unfortunately i'm in a call with sora right now because SOMEBODY WOULDN'T ANSWER HIS PHONE"
-i personally see it less as him being unsettling, and more like it's just very blatant that he spent his entire adolescence being gaslit to believing he couldn't feel anything and is now learning how to deal with emotions for...... the first time in his life, cuz he wasn't exactly expressive as a kid, either. his emotions, when he's able to stop dissociating for 5 seconds, are probably all over the place. i agree with you tho that he can put up a mask like it's nothing- but others would probably find that more concerning than scary.
-idrk what you mean by "moves like a predator"- he's analytical for sure, and hyper-aware of his surroundings most times, and that may be unsettling for other at times. deep down the other apprentices + ansem know it's a trauma response, and probably blame themselves for it. especially now that he knows that literally ALL of the people closest to him lied, tricked him and used him, for basically his entire life..... trusting, being comfortable, is hard for him. but he tries his best, and deptite his inherent pettiness, almost disallowes himself to be upset by it or hold it against them. he struggles a lot with guilt and he knows the rest of them do, too. he doesn't understand that it's okay to be in pain, and feels just as responsible as he feels they were- so it provably feels, to him, that if he were to deny them forgiveness or even allow himself doubt, then he'd be a hypocrite for wanting that same forgiveness. i can personally see lea making some sort of fuss about the way ienzo was treated as a kid and ienzo to actually be the one to tell him to shut it. but..... more on that later ¬w¬
-it took me a moment to remember who tf 3ku is and jfc there as so many rikus so fucking many. so many. but also he'd be an awful babysitter and they'd all love him for it GNDMDNF
#long post#THANK U FOR ALL THE THOUGHTS..... much to think about#ienzo#zexion#kingdom hearts#answered#asks#sheep speak#also sorry if it seems like im disagreeing w u a lot!! everyone has their own hc's and it's valid i just also have thought about him So Much#and my thoughts. they need to go SOMEWHERE
19 notes
·
View notes
Text
No I Cannot Get a Break(Part2)
(The first part’s over here)
“Athena? Have you seen Apollo?”
The grey-eyed goddess raised an eyebrow.
“Wasn’t he with you?”
“Yes, but that was an hour ago.” Calliope frowned. “Hermes ran off to look for him but he hasn’t come back yet-”
Just then, two immortals came running out of the trees; it was the two gods that the muse was looking for. She immediately rushed towards them and inquired as to what had happened; Athena was about to do the same when her father’s voice thundered across the garden.
“AH-” “What’s this??” On his hand, he held out a fruit made out of pure gold. It had stuck him right on the face while he was chatting with his siblings, just like the messenger before him.
“Father.” Apollo suddenly spoke up and stared; one of his eyes twitching. “Father please, for the love of Troy, throw that into Tartarus!”
Before Zeus could respond, the apple was already gone; snatched out of his hands by the god of love. His wings instantly threw him up into air as he curiously stared at the fruit of gold.
“Pft, what’s wrong sunshine? Why so stressed?” Eros grinned mockingly at the sun deity. “Tis’ just a yellow apple with a few words craved onto it.” He cleared his throat in preparation to read the inscription. “To the fairest goddess of them all!”
Athena could’ve sworn Apollo’s fingers were twitching like he wanted to break Eros’ neck. Calliope and Hermes seemed to be holding him back; trying to calm him down. She gazed back at her father, who was just a tiny bit drunk, and he looked both confused and slightly concerned. This surprising turn of events had gotten a lot of the other immortals’ attention; even Artemis had took notice and quickly sped towards her twin.
Meanwhile Eros had flown over to his mother and exclaimed, “Well, well, well… I guess we all know who this trophy belongs to then now, don’t we?”
Aphrodite smiled, flattered by her son’s compliment. Just before she was handed the prize, however, a spear came hurling out of nowhere; piercing the fruit and pinning it against one of the trees.
“Wait.” Athena’s voice was commanding; briefly glancing back at her distraught younger brother. “This all feels a little off. Where did that apple even come from?”
Eros rolled his eyes. “Don’t know; don’t care Misses killjoy.” He flew over to retrieve the fruit; tossing the spear aside.
“I can assure you that I sense nothing of the like, no malicious auras or weird obscure magic, at least, not on the apple itself. If anything, this is probably just some secret admirer trying to praise their idol.” He smiled, but it was the kind of smile that proves he had a suspicion that wasn’t the case at all. “Besides, why do you care? Don’t tell me that this trophy was meant for you instead?”
“What-” “No!” The goddess seemed appalled that he would even consider that to be a possibility.
Then there was a loud sigh. It was from Hera.
“If that truly is why the apple exists,” She said. “Then for all you know it might’ve been intended for me instead. It landed very close to me after all; specifically onto my husband’s face. Maybe they just had bad aim?” It was hard to tell whether or not she was joking (‘She’s most likely joking’ Athena thought), but even Poseidon muttered against his breath that she did have a point.
Aphrodite just smiled. “Then why don’t we let the king of the gods decide?” She nodded at her son, who gave the fruit back to the lightning-bearer. “Tell us my lord, who do you think deserves to be awarded with the title of the fairest goddess of them all?”
Zeus blinked. “I…” “You want me to choose between you, Athena and Hera? With all of my possible biases I think I would be the least fitting judge for that matter.” He was still uneasy about his eldest son’s reaction; even quickly glancing back to make sure he wasn’t having a panic attack amidst all of this.
‘If only he hadn’t blocked my voice from his head.’ He thought. ‘Then I would know what’s bothering him so much.’
On the other hand, now that he was holding it again, Eros seemed to be right. It looked and felt like a normal and harmless shiny apple; a very pretty one at that.
“Let a mortal who is not part of any of your cults decide, and swear not to endanger their life over some trivial matter such as this.”
Aphrodite peered off the edge; her gaze landing on a young prince of Troy. “I think I already know who.”
Eros took the golden apple and flew down onto the earth. She motioned to the two goddesses to follow as well before morphing into a dove; flying just behind her son.
---------------------------------
Paris stared at the three deities standing before him. At this rate, it looked like he was too shocked to be able to choose anyone at all. Athena internally sighed, wondering how she got herself involved into this mess.
“Okay well, how about this.” Aphrodite pondered for a moment. “If you choose me, I’ll give you the most beautiful mortal princess the world has ever laid their eyes on.”
Eros gave his mom a look, but she whispered to assure him that she was in fact not finding a way to get rid of Psyche.
Athena raised an eyebrow. “Well, that’s just cheating-”
“Zeus never said anything against bribery~”
“In that case,” Hera said. “Choose me and you’ll get to rule the whole of Asia Minor.”
The war goddess thought that was an extremely irresponsible opportunity to give to someone as young as Paris, but then again maybe that was the point. She suddenly felt a little bad for the young prince.
“If you choose me, I can give you unlimited wisdom and glory in war.”
She could’ve sworn she heard Aphrodite curse. However, defying most of their expectations, Paris uttered the words, “I choose Aphrodite” and awarded the golden apple to the goddess of love.
‘Oh. Well, I tried to give him the least risky option.’
When she got back to the main event, it was almost like nothing had ever happened. Despite the incident that had killed the mood a few minutes ago, the party seemed to be back in full swing. She noticed one key difference though. Athena walked over to some of the muses; giving Clio a gentle tap on the shoulder.
“Where’s Phoebus?"
---------------------------------
Apparently Apollo disappeared when they weren’t looking, so Hermes, Artemis and Dionysus had gone off to go look for him in the depths of the garden.
“I tried to approach him, but he wouldn’t even look at me.” Zeus sighed. “And I am still not able to hear his thoughts.”
“Don’t worry, if I see him I’ll try to talk to him.”
“…please do.”
---------------------------------
There were already three gods searching for him among the trees, so she figured she might as well try looking inside the palace itself. Besides, if he really wanted to be left alone, he might’ve tried hiding somewhere else, far from where Hermes last found him. Plus, she had a few spots in mind that she could try checking out.
The silence was eerie, but also oddly comforting. There was nothing but the soft hollow thumps of her steps as she walked through the empty halls. As luck would have it, it didn’t take long for her to finally spot the god sitting on the railing of a certain balcony, the one that even their father himself often stood on.
The blonde was tense, but when he turned around and saw Athena, he started to relax.
“What’s wrong?”
“Your steps scared kind of scared me. I thought I was having another vision for a second there… I mean, you are the real Athena right?” He laughed, but his breath was more than a little shaky.
“Of course I am the real Pallas Athena. Who else would I be?”
She allowed a full minute to pass by to let him fully process her statement to be true before moving to stand right next to him.
“What’re you doing here?” Apollo asked.
“I wanted a break from the party.”
“Oh, that makes sense.” He paused. “You sure it’s not because you’re salty about the golden apple?”
Athena scoffed. “Don’t even think about trying to tease me. Why on earth would I care that much about some accursed fruit?”
“Aw, don't worry Athe. If I were him, I would've definitely chosen your deal instead."
"Well, of course, no surprise there. You choose what you don’t have after all."
“Wha-” “I was trying to cheer you up and this is what you do to me?!"
"So, you admit that what I just said is true?"
He had his hand over his chest as if he were offended; that forced smile on his face feeling just a little bit more genuine, until it slowly dropped entirely.
“Paris fucked up, Athena. Paris really fucked up.” He sighs. “Do you still remember their oaths?”
“Helen’s suitors?” She thought for a moment. “Apollo, I doubt Paris would still want to keep her after seeing the army that comes after-”
“But he will.” His voice suddenly hardened. “And he’ll keep her for over 10 fucking years and will become the torch that burns his city down to a crisp.”
Her tone softened. “How much did you see?”
“I don’t know, but I do know that Thetis is about to give birth to one of the greatest warriors in recorded history and-” “and-” He suddenly stopped, stuttering.
Athena placed a steady hand on his shoulder, as if he might fall.
Apollo’s grip on the railing tightened. “I-” “I don’t want to lose another one, Athena. Not now, it’s too fucking soon I literally just watched Asclepius-” The tears started trailing down his cheeks until they dissipated into thin air as a whiff of steam. “I just want a fucking break!”
There was a long pause before he continued.
“Why do I care so much?”
“I’d be more concerned if you didn’t. After all, I’m barely any better.”
------------------
“Athena?”
“Yes Phoebus?”
“What do you think dad’s going to do about this?”
“…I don’t know.”
------------------
“Apollo?”
“Hm?”
“Do you hate him?”
“…sometimes I wish I did”
“…”
“I-” “I’m sorry-”
“No, don’t be. I occasionally wished I did too, but it’ll never be that simple, no? Who would even replace him?”
“You?”
Athena laughed. “Weren’t you the one always asking to be his heir?”
“I was a very stupid toddler back then, hell, probably still am now. I mean, don’t tell me you actually trust me to run this thing?”
“True. I don’t blame you for not believing in yourself. Honestly, I don’t either.”
“I-” “Wow, you couldn’t have at least sugar-coated it a little?”
------------------
“Hey Pal, maybe we could share the throne?”
Athena immediately made a face of disgust. “But then if we kept our titles as King and Queen, someone might assume we married each other.”
“Wow!” Apollo tried his best not to laugh. “I mean, I don’t want to marry you either but still, you make it look like being with me is a bad thing!”
------------------
“I-” “I don’t want to get rid of him Apollo...”
“…I know.”
------------------
For a few minutes, all they did was stare and enjoy the view; looking down at the earth like they owned everything that the light could touch. Then with a flick of her hand the goddess summoned her spear and slung her shield over her back.
“Apollo, get your bow.”
“Wait-” “What? Why?” It took a few moments for him to realize what she was suggesting. "Athe, no matter how much I try, you know I’ll never stand a chance against you in close combat-"
“I did say get your bow, not your sword, didn’t I? I mean, you’re welcome to try if you want.” Her eyes were taunting him. “Father invited almost every single deity to Thetis and Peleus' wedding in Olympus. Excluding the mortals, the rest of Greece should be fairly empty right now."
"...I guess a duel does sound fun.”
"It certainly does. Besides, you really look like you could use one right now."
"Did-” “Did you just insult me by calling me out of shape or am I just over thinking this and you're genuinely trying to cheer me up?"
"Maybe both."
“…Fine. Only a few conditions: no one uses the aegis or the masterbolt, and that you better be a hundred percent sure father isn’t watching us right now.”
“Of course, wouldn’t want to embarrass you in front of him now, would we? I’m not that mean.”
After a few moments of consideration, Apollo summoned his signature bow and wore his golden quiver. Taking one last glance behind them to assure themselves that they were, in fact, alone; they went over the railing. It was faint and easy to miss, but when Athena saw the eager and determined look on his face, she couldn’t help but smile.
‘Now there's the arrogant bastard that I know.’
"Mt. Othrys?" She asked.
"Sure, the closer the more convenient.” He grinned. “Mt. Othrys it is.”
And so, they jumped off, straight into the abandoned ruins of a golden age long forgotten; landing in the middle of all of those towering columns and mighty slabs of black, the remains of their father’s decade long war.
#Apollo#Athena#golden apple#greek gods#greek mythology#MyWritingShit#If no one writes Apollo and Athena interactions#then I will
20 notes
·
View notes
Text
The Past Informs the Future - a Good Omens fanfic
in which anathema has something to tell crowley, but she feels it’s very important to figure out why he hated the 14th century, first
mild angst with ample fluff
anathema and crowley are best friends forever i will fight you over this.
--
“What happened during the 14th century?” Crowley, who is lounging upside-down over the couch, joint smoking lazily between his fingers, blinks once or twice. Anathema puts her head to the side. “You always talk about hating it, but you never say why.”
“It was terrible,” he answers automatically. “You don’t want to know.”
“You discorporated, right?” She knows that much, had gleaned the information from cast-away remarks here and there throughout the years. “Three times?”
“Yeah.” He rolls over, languid, and looks levelly at her. “Book-girl, believe me, you don’t want to know.”
“What if I do?” she challenges. “I asked, didn’t I?” He is glaring, but she meets him eye-to-eye, and rests her chin on her hand. “Why would I ask if I didn’t want to know?”
“Why do you want to know?”
That question slows her roll for a second: why does she want to know? Certainly, she considers Crowley her friend, but he is an interesting character with his foibles and his inconsistencies and his iron-clad but completely incomprehensible values. He has his secrets, thousands of them, and she is more than happy to let him keep most of them. But something about the 14th century pulls at her, and she wants to know. Needs to know, because the future is looming, and it’s the only thing about Crowley that gives her pause when trying to incorporate him into it.
It’s become more pressing recently, too, she thinks. She has a good idea why. She is changing, and he is a demon, and she needs to know.
“Because you’re my friend and it bothers you,” she says finally, mostly honestly. “You talk about how awful it was, like you want us to ask, and then when someone does you balk at it and change the subject. Does Aziraphale know?”
“You - yes, he knows.” He looks puzzled. “Book-girl, I’m being very serious. It’s … weirdly kind of you to want to know I suppose, but you do not want to know.”
“Crowley.” She leans back into the chair, and draws her knees up to her chest. “I have something I have to tell you. I want to tell you, anyway. But I need to know … you have to tell me why you hate the 14th century.”
That gets his attention. Slowly, graceful, snake-like, he slides off of the couch, dumps the joint into the ash tray, and stalks across the living room toward her. He is examining her, like a doctor sizing up a patient, or like a snake sizing up a mouse; she can’t quite decide. “You alright, Book-girl?”
“I will be.” Her belly is roiling, and suddenly, pinned under those snake eyes, she regrets this. She still wants it, but she also wants to avoid it. She could avoid it, really, but then she wouldn’t be able to … She let that train of thought trundle off, and jumped onto the next one. “You don’t have to tell me specifics. I just need to know why. Basically. Beyond the discorporations.”
She never saw him sober up, but there isn’t a hint of anything but diamond-sharp clarity in him now. “Not enough for you? Looking for some juicy gossip?”
“For what?” She snorts. “My advice column? A blog? No. I just … Just tell me why you hated it so much.”
“It was hell.”
She rolls her eyes. “Well yeah, obviously, if you hate it that much -”
“No, literal Hell. With a capital ‘H’.” He swallows. “S’where I go when I discorporate.”
“Right.”
He stares at her for a minute, when it becomes clear that that answer had not satisfied her. His jaw works for a minute. And then, quietly, he says, “I have only ever told Aziraphale about this.”
“I promise it doesn’t leave this room. I will tell you why, but you have to tell me, you have to be honest, Crowley. Please.”
He sighs, and puts his head in his hands, suddenly cross-legged on the carpet in front of her seat. “You know what they do, when you discorporate too many times in a certain time frame? They punish you.”
She nods. She had rather thought it would be something like that. “I see.”
“The first time wasn’t anything - fill out form BD663 in triplicate, here’s your new body, don’t do it again. The second time in a century they make you wait, maybe ah ... “ He makes a vague sort of motion with a hand. “Maybe a light flaying. You know. ‘Be more careful next time’.” He swallows. “Didn’t think I was going to get to come back up here, after the third time.”
She folds her hands. “But you did.”
“Oh, yeah.” He sounds a little strangled. “For a price. By then they started to think I wasn’t doing my job right, although I was, at least at the time. So for a while they had me down in … it doesn’t matter, you really don’t need to know, but then some cult up top wanted to summon up a demon with a real wallop. And I was available.” He sighs. “Better the Serpent of Eden than a Duke of Hell - wasn’t like they really needed me down there for anything anyway, and humans are always impressed by the whole original sin thing.”
“Mhm.” She thinks about reaching out to him, but this is important, and she doesn’t want to stop him. She wrings her hands together instead.
“You know the worst part?” He looks up to her, wide-eyed and unabashedly remorseful. “I didn’t care, was the worst thing. Because I was back up here, I wasn’t in Hell, and if they wanted to bind me to do … dark bidding or whatever the fuck it was, that was better. So I did it.” He holds up a hand, fingers splayed. “Five years. Five years in servitude to some stupid cult in back-country Italy. It wasn’t hard work, mostly meant looking scary and killing someone occasionally.” He closes his eyes, pressed the heel of his hand against the bridge of his nose. “Then they wanted me to kill a kid.” She inhales sharply, and he snorts. “S’what I said.
“And, you know, five years isn’t that long, not for me. Is for humans, though. And they’d slipped on keeping some of the bindings together. I probably could have slithered out of there a year or two earlier, but it would’ve been work. Wasn’t fun as it was.” Sharply, he hauls the right side of his t-shirt up, and points to a broad web of scars slashed across his hip and ribs. “Got that for my trouble. But I did not kill that kid.” He doesn’t look at her when he says, “Was about the only one there I didn’t.”
She releases the breath she’d been holding, and leans forward. “Crowley -”
“You wanted to know,” he snaps then, and she sits up. “So let me finish. Because after I got out of there, who do I run into but Aziraphale, and after the run I’d had it was a good thing he was the angel I met up with because any other one would’ve … Anyway, doesn’t bear thinking about.” He smiles, a little bitterly and a little fondly. It looks strained. “He helped me burn all the books on summoning we could find. Scoured all over Europe. I’m sure we missed a few, but no one’s dared try anything serious since then.” He forces a little laugh. “And it was the last time I discorporated, you can bet on that.”
Anathema nods, and then pauses. “But … there are summoning books still. I’ve seen them.”
“Nothing that can bind you,” he says quickly. “Summoning is one thing, binding is another. If you see anything that mentions binding, I’d be obliged if you got rid of it.” He sighs. “Nah, summoning is different. Last time I got summoned I ended up helping three college students in Massachusetts with a group presentation. And they didn’t even put me on the Powerpoint.”
Anathema takes a moment to wonder how that would have gone over. ‘Presentation thanks go also to the Demon Crowley, who was surprisingly helpful for an infernal being of temptation and sin.’ Probably, she thinks, not well.
“Anyway,” he says, with a sort of gruff finality, “that’s your answer. Now why the fuck did you need to know so bad?” He’s half-glaring at her, and she can’t tell if he’s angry or relieved. She wonders how many other humans he’s told about this, decides the answer is very likely a definite ‘0’, and she shrugs.
“I’m pregnant.”
“What?” He stammers for a little while, eyes flicking from her face to her belly and back-and-forth. “How is that relevant?”
“Well.” She sits back, and laces her fingers together, resting them on her crossed knee. She looks to the ceiling for a minute, thoughtful, and tries to think of a way to explain this that doesn’t make her sound absolutely unhinged. “Crowley, we’re friends, right?”
“I should hope so.” He sneers. “Hate to think you just twisted the worst 100 years of my life out of me if -”
She waves a hand. “It was rhetorical, but fact established. So that being the case I … well, I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s going to happen after I have a kid. About who I wanted to have around.”
“Oh.” He looks away. “Makes … Right. I get it. Don’t exactly have the greatest record with babies.”
“Mm, not recently, but I’m considering that extenuating circumstances. Plus,” she adds, “according to Aziraphale, you were a really good nanny when you weren’t trying to get the kid to be evil.”
“Does he know about this?”
“Not yet. I figured you could tell him. But he’s mentioned it in passing.” She takes a breath. “Anyway, I know that you don’t hurt kids. I know that. But, I dunno, when I found out about … all this … I wanted to make sure it wasn’t because something happened and it made you that way.” Her mouth twists. “It’s weird, as soon as I found out I started thinking about things I never thought about before. Wondering about stuff, planning for things, that kind of stuff. I still don’t want the book,” she adds, because she sees the way he’s looking at her, and she knows what he’s thinking. “But … Yeah. I had to make sure.”
“Hm.” He watches her for a long, long moment, and then nods. “So what’s this mean, now?”
“You wanna be its uncle?” She raises a finger. “You have to promise not to try to make it evil.”
“No problem.” He looks thoughtful. “I think godfathers is more typical -”
“No, that’s outdated and kind of cliche, at this point.” She waves a hand. “Besides, my brother lives in San Diego, and Newt doesn’t have siblings, so the poor kid’s gonna need some aunts and uncles anyway.”
“Fair.”
She softens, and leans forward. “Crowley, I’m sorry to push, but I had to … I just really needed to know that there wasn’t anything, you know -”
“Extra evil?” He sighs. “I get it. There was, but not in a way that’s going to happen again, alright?”
“Very much so.”
He leans forward and pokes her in the stomach. “Who else knows?”
“Newt.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Hm. Way to make a demon feel special. Argh,” he says then, because she has taken advantage of her proximity to grab him and hug him. “You’re only getting away with this because you’re with child,” he grumbles, and she gives him an extra squeeze. And then suddenly, he is trying to pull away, wide-eyed and panicky. “Wait, how pregnant. When’d you find out?”
“About seven, eight weeks. I took a test about a week ago.” He sags with relief, and she laughs. “Why? What was that about?”
“You didn’t see any broad-shouldered feathery assholes with purple eyes then?” She shakes her head. “No one said, ‘be not afraid?’”
“No,” she laughs, “but it might have helped when I took the first test. Not that I wasn’t sort of trying - we weren’t trying, that is - but when you see the two little lines, you know, it’s kind of … startling. Sobering. All of it.”
“So no Gabriel.”
“Ah.” She chuckles. “Yeah, no Archangels. Just a little stick with some lines on it.”
“Oh. Good.” Miraculously, he suddenly is holding a bottle of wine. The joint is still in the ash tray, no longer smouldering, and she makes a little noise of protest. He waves a hand and it vanishes into the ether or, probably more accurately, into an ash tray in a cottage in the South Downs. “Secondhand smoke,” he says, by way of explanation, uncorking the bottle and taking a mouthful.
“How considerate.”
He grunts, and holds up the bottle. “Not at all. Demon, remember? This is a Caymus cabernet, very delicious, and you can’t have a single drop. You are very jealous.”
“Oh, extremely. Very evil of you.” She budges over, obligingly, and he sprawls into the space on the two-seater next to her. “Want to watch a movie?” She waggles the remote. “I rented The Tide of Blood.”
“Is that anything like Blood Tide?”
“I dunno. Never saw it.”
He takes another swig of wine, and raises an eyebrow. “It’s awful. I’ll get a copy some time.”
“Deal.” She gestures to the TV. “This one’s about a prehistoric sea monster that stalks and eats promiscuous teenagers.”
“Classic. I’m in.” He settles back, and her too. The first teen - a football-playing bully - has been eaten before either of them says anything. “Uncle, hm?”
By this time, she is slouched against his shoulder, the better to reach the shared bowl of pretzels that somehow appeared ten minutes ago. She hadn’t asked. “I figured. Unless you want something different.” She doesn’t look at him as she elaborates, “I mean, chronologically, I could certainly justify grandpa -”
“Oy.” The pretzels are snatched away, just momentarily, although he is laughing. “You have your own parents, use them for that.”
“Right. So uncle.”
“If that’s the alternative, I’ll take it,” he grumbles, and she finds herself with a bowl of pretzels in her hands. “Grandpa, Book-girl, honestly.“ The wine bottle glugs as he takes another drink, and Anathema crunches another handful of pretzels. On screen, another teen fruitlessly tries to fend off the monster with a kayak paddle. “You’re lucky I like you.”
“Hm. Yeah. Yeah, I think I must be.”
#good omens#good omens fanfic#good omens fanfiction#crowley#anathema device#i wish i didn't enjoy fanfiction so much
32 notes
·
View notes
Text
Intimacy
Archive Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18672919/chapters/47304547
Chapter 12/13 of Proximity (The Collision of Lonely Men)
Word Count: 6171
Summary: Spring break brings an opportunity to get out of town, leading Simon and Baz to new and unsure parts of their relationship.
~~~~~~~~~~
It’s cloudy today, just like every other day this week.
Like the week before.
And the week before that.
Except today, unlike all the overcast days that came before us, we’re at least going somewhere. Getting away from the stacked towers and mixture of old and new of Watford Academy, and going up North--up to Baz’s family’s country house that apparently sits a short walk from a small town.
Some picturesque type of place, with all the charm of a cheesy little rom-com.
A place where nobody really knows us, beyond maybe seeing Baz when he was younger. A place where, if we hold hands and snog in public, it won’t have any significant bearing onto our daily lives.
A place, in short, where I can be out.
Because it’s never us, when it comes to this. It hasn’t been about us being out--it’s about me. In all my confusing self-sabotage, I’ve been chewing and chewing on the fact that this frustration over us has just been me all along. I’m the villain trying to hold us back here, and I really quite hate that there’s nothing to blame besides myself.
I’m the beast to conquer. It’s even worse that I rarely hold onto even a tiny thought, yet I’m clinging to this one.
It’s scary. It’s new. It’s scary because it’s new, and it’s newly scary. And at least, at least I’ve got Baz here with me, because he’s not scared. Not anymore.
He’s to the point of this stone-cold, face-forward fearlessness that he walked right out of our flat with his shirt half undone, sauntering up to his car as I’m leaning against it. I’m wearing his Ray Bands (he says I look cooler in him than he does, but I think he’s lying), feeling the Volvo hum against my backside as I wait and watch him step out of the building.
He looks fantastic as always, which feels strikingly unfair to the gloom that’s been hanging over us. I feel washed in it, dressing in greys and beiges while he struts out in a the poshest possible shirt--soft violet with maroon and deep green floral detailing stitched in. He lets it hang open over his chest, tucked nicely into his black jeans.
“Bold move,” I hum gently, watching him toss one last bag into the boot. “Didn’t think you’d go to unbutton it ‘til we got out of town.”
He smirks a bit, giving the top a good nudge as it slams back shut. “Yes, well. Saw myself in the mirror and I couldn’t quite resist.”
For a split second, I’m sure he’s considering stepping over and kissing me, but his face drops a bit before going around and getting into the driver’s seat. I follow suit, hesitating as I relax into the leather before reaching over and lacing our hands together while chewing on a bit of my bottom lip. His head turns, taking full notice of my apprehension, then snaps back wordlessly as he moves to shift gears.
It isn’t long before the area grows to be unrecognizable. Blurs of passing countryside peaks and the rolling of hills, disappearing into vague greens and twinges of yellow. It’s gorgeous, and a bit of a hike.
Baz doesn’t make much of a fuss when I put on my headphones, knowing full well I’d warned him about my car sickness before hand. He just pouts a bit, but takes my hand and lets me zone out until it’s over (which takes a full Killers album and half an Offspring album).
Once we start passing through, he nudges me gently, letting me snap back into reality to watch us slowly make our way through town.
It’s pretty. Floral, at this time of the year. Not incredibly lively, but not dead, nonetheless. A few shops--the usual types of spots throughout. Pubs, a tailor, coffee shop, a few spots to eat, etc.
All charmingly safe.
All charmingly secure--all somewhere I can do what I feel impulsively--without the barrier of peers to stop my mind from doing it.
I lean across at a stop, kissing his cheek softly and feeling his smile tug before flying back and settling back into my seat.
“What was that for?”
I shrug, staring out my side window dazily. It feels like a rush--a chemical burst in my head. I wonder if this is what happiness is supposed to feel like. “Felt like it.”
I catch him smiling secretively all the way to the house.
Which, to my surprise, isn’t really the “Little cottage” he made it out to be. Rather, it’s a quite sizable estate that probably costs more than I’ll ever make before I’m fifty.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Baz,” I start, watching him turn the ignition off and unbuckle. “How fucking loaded is your family?”
His smile drops, lips twitched a tad as he yanks the keys out. “A bit too much,” he says, stepping out and turning to grab out stuff as I sit stunned, staring up at the building while he unpacks and starts inside.
I join closely behind him as he’s turning the front key through the locks, pushing the door (that’s bound to be hand carved, by the looks of it) open and letting the scent of the old building hit us as we step further in.
Someone must’ve come through and cleaned recently. It’s absolutely spotless, and smelling of an odd mix of what I can only describe as Pine Sol and just the plain waft of ancient wood and stone.
“Room’s upstairs.” Baz pushes past me, carrying three of our bags up at once as he starts to climb the seemingly twisting and turning set of wooden stairs that sits beside the set of kitchen doors. I sort of bound up after him, curiously peeking into the suite.
It’s ridiculously grand. Like some fucking five star place you stay at because you’re dating some posh arsehole.
Except, it isn’t some five star place, it’s one of his family’s fucking houses.
“Shit, Baz,” I breathe, leaning against the doorframe. “Do you take all the boys you shack up with here? Romance the shit out of them before the cult rituals begin? When do I lose my bloody mind?”
He rolls his eyes, settling down our bags and checking himself in the mirror (never the surprise). “You’re the first, believe it or not,” he says, shockingly soft, which nearly makes me drop my phone.
At first, it doesn’t entirely process. It isn’t much of a joke--he isn’t laughing, and neither am I, but it doesn’t feel like it should be real. Because he has a lifetime of being the hottest fucking bloke in the room, and yet he expects me to believe that I’m the first bastard he’s actually brought around.
“You’re kidding, right?”
He turns, raising a brow. “When do I joke about this sort of stuff, Snow?” he asks, brushing past me and turning back towards the stairs.
I stay in the room, making my way to sit on the bed as I listen carefully to him unloading the car, locking it, and heading inside.
I can’t really believe it. He can keep saying it, over and over again, but it feels fake.
Nearly four months in, and it feels fake.
Not the romance, and not us, but the fact that he likes me. That this isn’t some elaborate move to get the upper hand, and I’ll end up looking like an idiot on purpose.
And it must show--at least. The fact that I’m thinking like this must show, as Baz stops in the doorway to frown at me.
“What?”
I blink, eyes feeling cloudy as I try to shake it off.
This is real. This is real. “Hm? What? Nothing.”
“You were spacing. You only space when you’re overthinking.”
“That’s not true.”
He raises his brow and makes my skin flush. “You rarely ever think to begin with, Snow. The rare occasion that you do, you try to make up for all the lost thoughts and pile them on at once.”
I exhale, feeling the bed dip beside me as he sits. His hand wraps around mine, making my throat feel even tighter. Fucking hell, he doesn’t make it easy. “I’m--” I stop myself. I can’t say it.
I look at him, and it all runs to the back of my head.
There’s so much I want to say. So much that should be said, should be shared, and none of it seems to be coming out right, so I sigh. And shrug. And look away, because I’m really shit at this whole thing.
I’m trying. I really am. I want to try hard for him, but it’s hard.
But instead, I opt for leaning against him as his head falls onto mine, leaving us in a strangled silence.
“Why do you like me so much?” It comes out almost broken, trying to push its way back into my mouth as the words leave my lips.
He’s silent for a minute, letting me stay resting onto him until he does speak. “What’s making you all--”
“I just don’t know why you like me,” I start, sitting up. “I mean, unless I’m just the first one to last this long.”
“Are you implying I can’t hold a relationship?”
“I…” Fuck. This wasn’t meant to be a fight. “Fuck--no. Shit. I’d just meant--I mean… I don’t know what you see in me to take me along and show me your life and--”
“Because I like you.” His hand stays tightly around mine, voice sounding borderline stern. “I like you, Simon. I see a future with you. You might drive me up the bloody wall on occasion, but I think you’re someone I want around me for as long as you’ll keep me.”
His words fill my mouth but don’t let me swallow down--like a mouthful of dry spices. It’s there--it’s part of a meal, part of my life, but I can’t seem to let it into my body. It’s rejecting--I can’t take it like this. I can’t take it without something to swallow it down with.
I turn to him, searching his face for whatever can help it stick--help it stay with me. Settle in just right, and all I can seem to find is his lips, open in what seems like concern, but become my target.
I launch myself in, hands settling onto his face and tugging his jaw closer as I kiss and kiss and kiss until I feel him settle, kissing me back and letting it stick. Letting me sweetly pry his lips open and slip my tongue into his mouth, feeling the tremble in his movements as he takes my sides and tugs me closer.
His words are something I find myself being cautiously unsure of, but his movements? His body? The way he responds with such delicate affection and careful appreciation? That I’m sure of.
When I can feel him moving under my hands--feel his body fall back onto the bed with a solid nudge, letting me throw myself onto his lap and stuff my hands under his shirt as he moans into my mouth, urging me onwards...
That’s what feels solid--tangible.
Actions are definite, while words can’t help but feel like tricks.
I’ve been told before that I was loved, and when I was ready for more, it hit us that we didn’t know what we were saying to one another.
That wasn’t love. It wasn’t even lust.
It wasn’t what I’ve got pressed to me now. It wasn’t a grown man being vulnerable. It wasn’t telling each other we’re scared or we’re not ready.
It wasn’t like how it is now; now it’s kissing him everywhere. Tugging at the smooth fabric of his shirt, telling him you want him, telling him you need him. Telling him he’s everything you’ve ever needed and more, because he’s what’s tangible here. He’s what I can feel, what I can hold.
He isn’t words, but actions.
He’s grabbing me, he’s tugging at my shirt, watching me hold myself above him as he works at my buttons and making my head spin out of control before I have to stop him, breath not coming out right anymore.
I feel his hand slide, cup my jaw as I gasp.
“What’s the matter?” he whispers, letting me relax. I can’t look at him straight on--everything’s spinning, especially his face. It looks concerned though. He feels concerned.
“It’s not--I’m--” my chest flutters, eyes falling back shut. “It’s so much. Everything.”
“We can stop,” he says quickly, but I shake my head, cutting him short.
I take a shaky inhale, then a shaky exhale. With another breath, he slowly moves to finish unbuttoning my shirt, pushing the sides open and letting me breathe properly for a minute.
It all settles back into place.
It all feels real, and then all at once, I’m in the moment.
Like the world was fizzling, then I was popped back into reality.
The room’s awfully light, and he’s got a terribly confused look on his face, but I just lean down and kiss him clear, letting him slide my sleeves off and toss the shirt aside. I go to finally take off his, but he stops me with a snug push of his face into the small crook of my neck. I exhale with him, sinking down against him and quickly checking my watch.
“It’s quarter after three,” I whisper, kissing his hair as his lips meet my neck and mouth starts to worry at some skin that he’s probably set on marking.
“Mhmm,” he hums, unaffected. I grin.
“What time was our dinner reservation?” I murmur, stroking his hair back. A few strands slip through my fingers while others fall away as his head tilts.
He pauses to think. “Six thirty, if I’m not mistaken.” He looks me up briefly. “Why? Got some better plans?”
I hum at his building smirk, swiping my thumb over the crease in his cheek. “Maybe. But I think we can be done and out by six, if we’re fast.”
He chuckles, head falling back into my neck. “What sort of plan do you have, then?”
My breath hitches, mind supplying one answer, and one answer only. “You,” I breathe out, tugging him closer.
He blinks, and I feel him go stiff. We shift a bit, settling onto the bed as he turns us over and holds himself on top of me. “What do you mean me?” he asks, and for once, it doesn’t feel like some teasing game. Like he’s actually asking me--like he doesn’t know.
Or maybe he does, and he’s just scared.
Because I’m sure as shit a bit scared to say it, too.
“I mean that I want you, Baz,” I whisper, smoothing a hand over his hair. There’s no real ceremonious way to say this without using a term that I think we’d both gag at (“Making love.” Sounds like something a gran might say). “I want you to, you know…”
His brows raise, lips starting a smile as his jaw hangs a bit open. “Are you… do you want to…”
I feel myself smile along, cheeks flushing as I groan. “Yes, Baz. That’s what I’m saying.”
“And you want me to…”
“What? Do you not like it that way?” Suddenly, it’s turned from cheeky to just embarrassing, and I want to hide away under all these pillows.
He’s quick to stop me, though, running a soothing hand over my side as I stare at him, watching him smile. “No--nono, don’t. I’m happy topping, if you want me to. I just… it’s a bit of a surprise, that’s all.”
“What? Why?”
He bites his lip, holding back what’s probably a laugh (at me, nonetheless). “Dunno. Thought me wearing florals was sort of a dead giveaway that I like it in the arse.”
Jesus, I must be beet red now. “I can top, if you want me to!” I blurt out, watching him break into a giggle. “I just--I thought--isn’t this part of the experience?”
He tries to calm himself, still holding up above me as I nervously watch him go off and giggle like a schoolboy.
“What?” I demand.
He shakes his head. “Do you think that you have to take up the rear to really be queer? Is that it?” he chuckles.
“I…” Not that it was particularly my first thought, but I’d figured this whole time that he’d want me to sort of prove it, somehow. He’d never say it, clearly, because he’s too proud to admit this short of shit, but I’d figured he’d be happier know that I’m really this much into him.
“Because you don’t,” he adds, settling down. “You don’t if you don’t want to, Simon.”
“But I do,” I say quickly, hooking around his belt loops for the added effect as I arch my hips. All in all, I do want it. I want him to hold me closer than he ever has before--I want him to make it clear that this is real. “I… I actually do, though. At least once.”
His brows raise, smirk falling back onto his face before he steals a quick, gentle kiss from my lips. “As long as it’s what you want, I’m happy with it,” he murmurs, pecking my cheek before starting to work back at my jaw, moving back down my neck and onto my clavicle.
I melt against him, fingers sliding back into his hair as my head rolls back. “I am,” I whisper, breathing out a short huff. “I’m ready--I want this.”
His lips spread into a smile onto my skin, making me shiver. “Tell me what you want.”
My hips shift and lift, letting his hands nimbly pull at my belt and trousers, managing to get them mostly off before I kick them away from my ankles. “I want you to take those magnificent fingers of yours,” I start, breath hitching mid sentence as his hand slips into my pants. “A-and--shit--I want them in me.”
He chuckles, and I feel something heavy curl in my stomach like a steel ball. Fucking hell. “Did your research?”
I blush, hard. “I… yeah. Yes. A quick google search… maybe a few videos…”
His head lifts, and he’s grinning like a loon. So much so that I give his hair a good tug and shove his face back into my gut.
“Fuck you,” I mumble, nose scrunching as I squeeze my eyes tight. “Wanted to get this right--wanted to get us right.”
“Well, did you research prepping, then?” he mumbles into my skin, and I figure I should loosen my grip on him.
His head stays, lips plastering open mouthed kisses onto the slight curve of side and the gentle slope of my stomach. It’s soft. Far softer than it was when I was fresh in uni. Far too soft for my liking, some days. Feels a bit like I’m slipping further and further from the person I was. Makes me feel foreign.
The way Baz kisses it, though, doesn’t make me feel detached at all. It makes me feel closer to my body than I ever was before.
My breath comes out in a slow, small groan, feeling his teeth skid around my waistband. “I-I did,” I manage.
He peers up. “Did you…?”
I nod. “Figured we might this weekend, so I’ve been watching what I eat and I… well… earlier today I... and…”
He grins even wider, watching me try helplessly ramble about my ways of making sure my arse is well prepped to handle some, ahem, handling. It feels all very mood-killing, rather than building friction, but he’s got that creeping smirk of his, so I know he’s at least enjoying it (to a certain extent).
“What?” I ask, pouting a bit. This is far too much of him teasing, and less of us actually shagging.
He shrugs, pursing his lips before patting my hip. “Flip over, love.”
I blink, then knit my brows together as I slowly turn, pulling off my pants in the process.
Granted, he knows far more about this than I do, so it would be best for me to trust him. Except, I’m not exactly sure where this is going.
I think I’m ready for anything, though. Emotionally, and physically.
Although, the “anything” crossing my mind at the moment wasn’t his tongue, licking a stripe down half my back.
I gasp, involuntarily going rigid as I take hold of the sheets and bury my face into the pillow in front of me. It’s some posh goosefeather one, with a decorative sleeve that’s probably hand stitched and shit, I’m probably going to wreck his family’s outrageously expensive bedding.
Which probably shouldn’t turn me on more, but it does.
It so fucking does.
Baz takes his time, nipping at my exposed bum as I shuffle, pushing a shoulder hard into the bed as the other arm reaches back and grips onto his hair. He hums, sending tingles down my spine as his hands take hold and spread me apart.
His tongue trails down, swiping delicately around the tight ring of muscles once, then twice, probing at me carefully before I feel the pressure of his tongue release. All I hear for a second is my muffled panting, then the tingling shock of his breath blowing against the newly wet and exposed spot makes me shutter and whine in a voice I’ve never heard myself use. “Oh!”
He dives back in nearly immediately, my hand clutching a good fistful of his hair as his tongue works careful circles. Slowly, his tongue presses into me.
I gasp, face sinking deeper into the pillows as my back arches, hips pressing back while he licks in with his tongue moving in lavishly slow cycles.
I huff, another involuntary whimper escaping my throat as I grind my hips back, nudging his head forward and feeling his hum run up through my spine. I shiver, then push, trying to ride the flickering of his tongue as I keen, huffing indignantly. “Fuck, Baz,” I grunt, “harder.”
He pulls off after a moment, sounding breathy as he nips at the sensitive spot near my side, leaving me to whine haplessly below him.
“What is it?” He murmurs, kissing up spots along my back. “Need something?”
I squeeze my eyes shut, balling my fists around the bed sheets as I unceremoniously wiggle my hips. I hear him chuckle at me, so I end him a quick glare. “Can you just get in me, already?” I snip.
He smirks a bit, and I can tell he just absolutely adores the power. Wanker.
I practically snarl, flipping over and pulling him down on top of me. He laughs, though, trying to push off.
“Hold on,” he chuckles, “give me a bloody minute. I--Simon--” he stops, moving to pry me off his neck as he continues to laugh. “I need to get us a condom. Hold on.”
I let him go, with a bit of protesting, and watch him sit up and walk over.
“Did you bring condoms?” I breathe, forgoing any of the awkward bubbling from earlier. It’s a bit hot now, thinking he was ready for this, too.
He pauses, then nods, cracking open the box he’s got and ripping one of a strip before grabbing the tube of lube from his bag. “I like to come prepared regardless,” he says, pushing the flap back over it (as if someone will see).
I raise my brows, and hoping I come off as more smug and cocky than needy. “Or hoping that you’d get lucky?”
He raises a brow, smiling a bit before leaning down and catching my mouth with his. I push myself up, steadying on my elbows as we snog for a good minute.
Eventually, he peels away, sitting aside and moving to undress.
I pull myself up fully, leaning back against the headboard and watching him strip. “How should we do this?”
He throws me a glance over his shoulder. “How do you want to?” he asks, wiggling off his trousers and pants before folding them and setting them aside (he’s fucking ridiculous).
I shrug, watching over his back. “What would be easiest?”
He turns around, sitting with our knees knocking as he thinks. “You want to ride me and see where that takes us?”
I shrug again, then nod, pushing away the hair plastered to my forehead. “Sounds good,” I breathe, exhaling slowly, then smiling. “Fuck.”
He quirks his brow, and I reach out, smoothing a thumb over his cheek.
“No, it’s just… it’s new. It’s good, but new.”
He relaxes, eyes closing. “Good.”
I chuckle and push myself across our laps, planting my lips onto his as pulling him close.
His chest knocks into mine, our legs slotting up awkwardly as we shift, my thigh rubbing up his cock as he lets out a low, rumbling groan. I rub it again, feeling him rock a bit into it before nudging me back and laying me flat as he pulls off, fumbling with the lube.
I shift, hips lifting as my legs spread and heart races at the sight of his lubed fingers. Fuck.
“Are you ready for me too…?”
I nod, shifting myself again before surging up and pulling him down against me. He nearly knocks over, steading himself while I clumsily pull him in and properly snog him. It’s not the most romantic, but it sure feels right. Awfully right. Undeniably, absolutely right.
Nothing feels more right than to have him kiss me, especially as his fingertips press around, middle finger slipping into me with ease. I groan, tugging him in closer.
I let his tongue poke and prod into my mouth, eliciting helpless groans as my face goes beet red. One hand slips back into his hair while the other snakes down his chest, taking a moment to stroke down his cock and feel him whine into me with each coaxing move.
He works his way through three fingers before pulling them out one by one, my hips rolling with each movement.
I groan, panting as he pulls away and lets us roll and reposition. It feels a bit odd, at first, as I hover above on all fours and watch him roll on the condom and pile on plenty of lube, but then we settle with my hips above his, arse grinding against his cock, and it all falls back into place. His hands travel then sit on my sides, thumbs stroking circles onto my skin as I suck in a breath, raising my brows at him. “It doesn’t really hurt, right?”
He breathes out a laugh, head falling back. “Are you really asking this now?” he manages.
I nod, blushing as I move to tease on top of him, guiding the head of his cock around the crown of my arse. “Maybe.”
I watch his eyes fall shut, hands tightening around my sides as I suck in a breath.
“Not terribly so, no. You’ll be sore after.”
I nod, chewing on my bottom lip. Right. Not a terrible cost for the action, I suppose. “Alright,” I mutter, settling my free hand onto his. I feel it slide, then link our fingers together. “Are you ready?”
He nods back as my eyes fixate on his chest, watching it move up and down before I slowly start sinking down, shutting my eyes along with it.
“Fuck,” I hiss, low and deep, as I sink deeper onto him. My knees wobble a bit, and all that’s running through my head is that he’s right--it doesn’t hurt that much.
Instead, it just feels like pressure, at first. A new tightness. A heat in my core as I settle my palms onto his chest and sink myself deeper onto his cock, carefully start to rocking myself up. I feel myself involuntarily gasping out into the air, searching to find his hands.
He rubs up my side, then down, grasping my hip as our fingers squeeze together.
I shift, starting to rock myself up and down.
“D-do you want me to--” I cut him off, nodding immediately and feeling his hips start to grind upwards, making me gasp and whine in a shaky, slow grumble.
I groan, lifting our hands off my skin and holding them both tightly while experimentally pushing harder, feeling my head spin and vision fizzle with it. “Fuck--fuck!”
His hips shift, then thrust up, sending me spiraling as I rock down to meet them.
I give him a few bounces, then grind back down, feeling his fingers squeeze mine tighter before one lets go, moving to my cock and closing around it. He gives me a quick questionable eyebrow raise, and I just nod, huffing out a vague “Please” before he starts stroking.
At first, I think I can take the stimulation, but the sight of him watching me sends me spiraling faster than I thought possible. And it’s all too much--too overwhelmingly there, pushing me off the deep end in seconds before I even know what to do besides ride it out, whimpering helplessly while spilling onto his chest.
He pulls me off, letting me sit against his hips as it comes back down.
Only issue left is his cock, flushed hard and throbbing against me.
I don’t even let him try to tell me not to, reaching back and stroking him carefully as I lean down and kiss everywhere--kiss his neck, his cheeks, his lips, his forehead, his eyelids. Kiss the slope of his jaw, the dip of his cheeks. Kiss the notch of his adam’s apple, and the turn of his clavicle.
I shower him in kisses, stroking him fast and hard until I feel him come, spilling out onto my hand and back (and probably onto these overly expensive sheets) as I grin, panting along with him and only having two words left for the both of us.
“Holy shit.”
He tips his head up to me, a broad smile spread across his face as he relaxes, rubbing my back. I sink into the touch, face pressing into his neck as I exhale. Shit. Shit. I need a shower. I need a nap. I need a round two--a lifetime of round twos.
I want to do that to him.
We relax, my nose pressing up against his jaw as his hands trace up and down my back. It’s serene, if only for a second, to hold him close to me. To feel his heartbeat against my nose, pulsing sweetly onto my skin as I breathe in, cheeks aching from smiling too much.
“Alright,” start, forcing myself up. He stares at me, raising a brow as I stretch. “Fuck. Shit. Alright. Got to shower.”
He pats around for his mobile, checking the time, then nodding. “Care if I join?”
I smirk, pushing myself off him and getting up. “Never thought you’d ask,” I tease, starting to head off into the bathroom.
There’s already soaps in there--posh ones. Some used, like the wash and shampoo, but the bar next to the sink seems pretty newly unwrapped.
Definitely was some maid that went through, then.
Which, of course, feels a bit odd.
Not too odd, since the Wellbeloves had one, but even the Wellbeloves weren’t this wealthy. This feels more “We’ve owned the country club before your bloodline existed”, rather than “I’ll give you 100p if you eat that weird looking grape” sort of rich.
Wonder what Baz sees in me, then. After all, I don’t have shit to my name (which is why I’m at Watford, really). That’s why I’m here.
I’m here because I didn’t have any of this.
I don’t know why he’s there with me, if he has so much money.
I sigh and pull at the faucets, letting them run until the shower stream’s steaming hot. Standing outside the shower’s door, I looking in through the glass and completely space out while focusing on this.
All I can think of is this.
How much better Baz could do--how much of a better life he could live, if he wanted. Of how he doesn’t need me (not that I ever thought he did), and if he didn’t want me, I could be a ragdoll tossed aside.
I close my eyes, head settling against the glass.
A hand closes around my hip, startling me back as he lets go. “You alright?”
“Hm?” I shake my head, rubbing my eyes as I sink back. “Yeah. I am.”
“You’re still thinking.”
I take a glance at him, doing a once over, before stepping into the shower.
He follows, pulling the door shut behind him.
“It’s the same thing,” I mumble, back to him as the stream flows over me. “It’s nothing too important.”
“It is if its wrecking your holiday,” he says pointedly, stepping beside me and nudging me a bit for the water. I let him, leaning against the tiles as he scrubs his hands over his face.
I swallow, studying the details of his arms, his hands, his face, his movements. Some being subtle rubs of his fingertips, others being the harsh pushing of his head. All making me feel dizzy. “I just don’t get it. If your family’s so rich, then why are you teaching? Why do you live on campus? Why don’t you just live as some playboy in London?”
He peers over at me, giving me a bored look. “You know why,” he says, and for some reason, it hurts. “I thought you knew me better than that.”
I stop, breath sucking in. “I…” He’s right. “I just…”
He stares over, lips twitching before he turns to grab soap. “I don’t want their money, or their lives. I want my own. I just reap the benefits of my upbringing, on occasion.”
I reach for him, hand brushing his waist. He lets me, but doesn’t move to reciprocate. “It feels like a waste.”
He snorts. “Then you don’t know my family’s relationship with money.”
“You’re right,” I say softly. “I don’t.”
He turns to me.
“I don’t know your family.”
His lips purse, then he exhales, offering a hand over to me. I take it, letting him pull me in as he starts to scrub soap over my arms.
“And I intend on keeping it that way.”
“What? Don’t want to be seen with a poor boy?”
He snorts. “Don’t want you to suffer the travesty that is my family for an extended period.” He kisses my forehead. “If you want to meet them, though, I’d be glad to set it up. It’s just beyond dinners that get excruciatingly lonely.”
I watch him through my eyelashes, chewing on my lip. “How so?” I whisper. I know what it’s like, childhood loneliness, but through a much different lens.
Alone with your thoughts, no books to write in, no real friends to chat with. Isolated socialization, barely learning to choke out words until you’re forced into school and not allowed to be silent.
“Long corridors,” he says quietly, hand trailing down my back. “Dark rooms, wall sconces. Suits at dinner. Being miles from anybody relatively friendly to play with, and when your cousins come to play, your father always talks business with their parents in the other room. Your father is always there. Your father likes when you’re cold and distant, because that’s what men in the family do. It’s right--it’s proper.”
I look up, and his face is borderline twisted, stuck in a snarl. I try to reach up, and he shakes his head.
“It’s lonely, Simon,” he whispers. “Feels like being suffocated slowly. Choking on your own spit.”
Choking. Drowning.
The death of childhoods and wanting something new--something fresh. Something unrecognizable.
“I know,” I mumble. “I don’t know in the same way, but I know.” I exhale, reaching for his face. He lets me, this time. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.” His eyes fall shut.
We’re still for a moment, watching one another under the beating of the showerhead before I muster it up. I push it out, swallowing back any apprehension from before.
“Baz?”
“Yes?”
“I want to be out this week.”
He goes silent, studying me carefully as I exhale and lean my back fully against the tile. It’s still cold, as compared to the heat of the water. It’s nice against my skin.
“I mean,” I start, watching his eyes travel. In a moment’s hesitation, I reach for his hand and squeeze it. “I want to kiss you in public, and hold your hand. I want to call you my boyfriend. I want everything that comes with being out while we’re here. Nobody knows us here, so what’s the harm in trying?”
He exhales quietly, raising a brow at me. “You’re really sure about that?” He’s quieter than usual, jarring me enough to be taken aback.
Still, I nod. “Call it a test run,” I whisper, bringing his knuckles to my mouth and kissing them sweetly. “A preparation for the real thing.”
#carry on#snowbaz#fanfiction#fanfic#fic#mine#proximity (the collision of lonely men)#p(tcolm)#simon snow#tyrannus basilton grimm-pitch#tyrannus basilton grimm pitch#baz pitch#simon#baz
38 notes
·
View notes
Text
cult following (m)
summary: in the middle of making a new movie, your co-star’s irresistible looks and explosive personality soon turn it into a porno.
genre: smut, fluff, pwp
pairing: actor!Jin x reader
words: 2.6k
warnings: spitting, boob jobs, degradation, kinda hate sex but not really, semi-pubic sex, sexual taunting (?), rough sex, unprotected sex, semi-clothed sex, choking, frenemies
(this gif will be the death of me)
The sweater the stylists gave you was a little too itchy for your liking, but they couldn’t find any replacements for it. They were already given a good scolding by your manager, but that still didn’t help your situation now – a tiny itch at the bottom of your back, growing into a huge nuisance. To say it was distracting was an understatement.
However, even with the itchy sweater, the shitty set, and the blinding lighting, the show must go on.
This was the climax of the film; you were supposed to scream for help, and just as Jungkook’s about to stab you, Jin emerges from behind the counter to whack him over the head with a fire extinguisher. The old “I’m-not-dead-yet” trope in horror movies.
Everything was going well so far. You were down to your final line before Jin’s cue. “They were our friends! I- We- We trusted you! What would you even gain with- with- fuck!”
“Cut!” Yoongi hopped off the director’s chair, nose crumpled in frustration. “This is the fourth time, ___. Could you please get your lines memorized? It’s ‘What would you even gain in doing this!” he repeated, digging his nails into his palm. Yoongi wasn’t the director anymore, he was just this small, shaking ball of rage. “It’s one simple line, ___. One simple line!”
Over the sound of Yoongi’s relentless yelling, you could hear Jin snicker, the man now leaning over the counter and whispering to Jungkook. “I told you she was perfect for the role of all boobs, no brain”
“Hyung, she might hear-“
“If only your acting was as good as your face,” you shot back at him, giving him a look that shot daggers. “Don’t get so high and mighty with me, Mr. Kim. You weren’t exactly so smooth with your lines three scenes ago.”
“Do you know how difficult it is to act with fake blood in your mouth?” he slammed the fire extinguisher down the marble countertop, an awkward silence immediately filling the set. “I could feel the unmixed cornstarch at the back of my throat!”
“Oh, no, princess isn’t used to having shit down his throat. Why don’t you cry about it to your PA?”
In the midst of the commotion, Jungkook managed to silently move away, mildly annoyed, but also very much afraid with the bickering going on between his two co-stars. He slid next to Yoongi, who was now mumbling curse words while rubbing his temples. Next to him was Jimin, scribbling something down on his clipboard before turning to Jungkook. “Ah, well isn’t this the perfect time to, uh, retouch your makeup! You won’t mind Mr. Jeon having a quick retouching right, boss?”
The assistant nervously laughed, clutching Jungkook’s arm tightly to drag him away from the chaos in the making. Yoongi didn’t even bat an eyelash.
“Okay, that’s enough!” He shouted, catching Jin mid-scream. “There will be no fighting in my set. Not in my set. You,” he punctuated with a finger flitting between you and Jin. “Fifteen minute break to get your shit together.”
Your respective assistants walked you off, making sure to lead you in opposite directions. Mina fussed over you, adjusting your clothes from time to time, and straightening your hair. “You were doing amazing, Ms. ___. Don’t pay attention to him, he’s just jealous of your star power. How about you visit Mr. Jeon’s trailer, he sounds like a sweet boy.”
Mina, though faithful to you, was also a nervous wreck sometimes. You appreciated the fact that she didn’t want to disappoint you, but she was also too much at times. “I really don’t want to bother Jungkook. I’m pretty sure he would rather not see me after what happened with Jin.”
The echo of your heels on the polished floor was the only thing heard for a while. Mina busied herself with double-checking your schedule and answering phone calls directed to you. She was in the middle of a call with one particular pushy client when she realized that you weren’t walking beside her anymore. “Ms. ___? Ms____!”
Unbeknownst to her, you took a right turn minutes ago to walk into a dimmed down set, the faint silhouette of a bed inside prompting you to come in. Your hectic schedule barely left you with time to yourself, much less time to sleep. At least a fifteen minute power nap and a few feet away from Jin were enough to be grateful for.
The bed was bigger than you expected, a king-sized one graced with a soft comforter and big, fluffy pillows. This way an opportunity way too good to pass off.
You kicked your heels off, stretching your arms a little, before plopping onto the mattress. You draped the comforter over your tired body, and curled into a little ball. For a few minutes, it was good. Until you heard heavy breathing.
“What the fuck?” you heard a hoarse voice whisper right next to you. Without a second thought, you threw off the covers, screaming and kicking the mystery man off the bed in the process. “Mina! Min-“
A hand clamped over your mouth. With your eyes adjusted to the dark, you saw Jin’s face awkwardly close to yours; his wide eyes matching your shocked expression. You licked the inside of his hand, making him draw it back in disgust. “Are you always so loud?”
“Are you always such a perverted stalker?” His face grew red at your comment, eyebrows furrowing with annoyance. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you owned the set now.”
“All I wanted was to rest. Just a couple of minutes away from you, but you just had to be in the same bed as I am.”
“Big deal. I’m tired too! How about you stick to your side over there, and I stick to my side over here. Then, we shall never speak of this every again.” He rolled over, his back facing you. You let out an angry whine, tugging the comforter harshly over yourself. Jin’s eyes flew open, the cold air making him shiver.
Wordlessly, he tugged it back, eliciting almost the same reaction from you. Soon enough, you engaged a mini tug-of-war over the blanket, both sides too stubborn to give up or just share.
“Why don’t you act like a gentleman for once?”
“Why don’t you stop being a brat?”
One harsh tug sent you crashing down on his chest, tangling you between his warm body and the comforter. For a few seconds, both of you were frozen. The unthinkable happened and now you were squished up against the world’s most dramatic actor. He seemed to have the same thought process, though his hands slid their way to your lower back subconsciously.
Without missing a beat, you he crashed his lips into yours, your mouths dancing in perfect sync to the kiss. His tongue prodded against your lips, asking for entrance- which you gladly gave him. You let him roam around your mouth before detaching your lips, a teasing smirk playing on your face. He groaned, harshly flipping you over.
He directed his attention to your neck, sucking and biting at every inch until the skin’s been covered with purple love bites. He brought his hips down, pressing it against you crotch. You sighed at the feeling, starting to grind against his hardening member.
“So much for power nap,” you mumbled, hearing a silent chuckle from him. His hands moved to crumple your shirt over your breasts, tugging at the straps of your bra. “Off?”
“Not enough time. You have a spare shirt in your trailer or something?” you nodded, giving him a puzzled look. He just shrugged, pulling your bra under your boobs. He shuffled closer, retracting his hips from yours, a whine coming for your lips. He laughed, bringing his knees on either sides of your torso. “I fuck just as messy as I eat, princess.
”His large hands enveloped your breasts, kneading them slowly. He leaned down to suck on a nipple, his hand pressing a fingertip on the other one. He pinched at it, making you cry out, mind overwhelmed with the sudden pain and pleasure. Giving one last solid lick, he unbuttoned his pants, slipping it off with his boxers just enough to release his dick.
You boldly wrapped your hand around him, giving him slow strokes. He moaned, bucking his lips into your touch. Your pussy throbbed at the sight of him; the head red, pre-cum dripping all the way down to your boobs. He stared at you through half-lidded eyes, groaning at the mess he made on you.
You continued tugging at his cock, spreading the some of the pre-cum on his shaft and around his head. You let go, only to dip your fingers into most of the pre-cum that already made its way to your breasts. You spread it over the swells of your chest as best you can; Jin almost drooling as he watched you.
“For the record, I always knew you were a tits type of guy,” you smiled at him, bringing your head up to kiss the tip of his dick. He let out a hiss, hands flying back to grab your breasts, this time a little tighter; pushing them against each other. He repositioned himself so that his tip was rubbing against the underside of your cleavage. “That I am.”
He started to thrust into the tight space between your breasts, groaning as the supple, warm skin enveloped his throbbing cock. You raised your head a little to catch the tip of his dick with your tongue each time he thrust forward.
Jin’s moans sounded like sweet music – high-pitched and breathless – making your core wetter with each broken cry of your name. You felt your wetness soaking through your panties. It would only be a matter of time before you leaked onto the bed. Yoongi would certainly be pissed, but with the amount of money he gets with each film, you were sure he wouldn’t have a problem replacing it, much less replacing the bed altogether.
“F-fuck! Wanna make a mess on your tits so bad. You’d look so pretty with my cum all over you. Slap that shit on Playboy and show everyone who you’re a bitch for hm?” His lips stuttered, sending him into a frenzy. As much as he’d love to try the Playboy idea, he didn’t want to come yet. He pulled out, denying himself of his own release. “But not for today.”
Suddenly, you had an idea. It was bitchy, and downright mean to Jin, but after his snide comments from the last scene, you felt less guilty.
“Are you done? I was starting to get a little sleepy back there,” your voice was sickly sweet, punctuated by a fake yawn. Jin’s face instantly reddened, anger slowly replacing the blissed-out expression he had. “Or maybe you’re just fucking my boobs because that’s the only way you’ll make your dick look bigger.”
Sharp pain made its way to your scalp as Jin tugged your hair back. His other hand squeezed your jaw hard, making you open it. Before you knew it, a thick glob of his pit landed on your tongue, some of it starting to drip down your throat. He clamped your jaw shut again, forcing you to swallow the saliva.
“Spoiled starlets like you deserve nothing but cocks up your cunts,” he grunted, harshly pulling at your jeans and panties. He threw the material off the bed, but held onto your underwear, pushing half of it inside your throbbing cunt. “You need to be taught respect.”
He slapped your pussy, making you cry out. You clenched around your soiled panties as he brought his hand down again. He slowly took the wet fabric out, letting it join your pants on the floor. He dragged the head of his length from your clit to your folds, parting them as he shallowly thrusted in. “You need to learn how to obey.”
Without warning, he slammed into you, not giving you time to adjust before he started pounding mercilessly. Your previous words came back to bite you in the ass- he was nowhere near small. He wasn’t big on girth, but he sported a long cock, accompanied by a mouth-watering curve. He reached you deeper than anyone could.
As if you were going to tell him that. You wanted to play your game a little bit more, just to see how far you could push him.
“Is that the best you h-have?” you managed to say through gritted teeth, though your legs curled around his waist to bring him closer.
“I was just warming up,” he seethed, his thrusts speeding up. You bit hard on your lower lip to stop your moans; failing as a few whimpers slipped out here and there. You clutched the bedsheets tightly, knuckles turning white. Jin was fucking into you so hard you could almost see stars. But being stubborn as always, you continued to irk him.
“I can barely – mmphm – barely feel you inside me right no-“ Jin cut you off with a hand wrapped tightly around your throat. Your eyes bulged out before narrowing, allowing tears caused by pleasure to fall freely. Your body shook with the intensity of how good you were getting fucked.
“You talk too much for someone you can barely remember one-liners,” he snickered, followed by a guttural moan. You could feel your orgasm building up, Jin sensing it as well with how tight you were clenching around him. “I sh-shouldn’t allow you to cu-m but…”
Hot white pleasure crashed upon you, the broad-shouldered actor fucking you through your orgasm. Your nails dug into his flawless skin, leaving deep crescent marks, and long angry stripes of red. A silent yell caught in your mouth, Jin’s grip on you still tight, making you light-headed. The mind-numbing release and the lack of oxygen was close enough to put you into unconsciousness, when he suddenly let go of you, spilling his hot seed deep in your pussy.
You took in deep gulps of air, body shivering at your heightened sensitivity. After Jin milked the rest of the cum out, he pulled out and laid next to you- panting as equally hard. When you’ve had enough time to calm down, you could faintly hear footsteps approaching, but decided to push the thought away. You turned around to face him, guilt evident in your tone.
“I didn’t mean all the shit I said.”
Surprisingly, he laughed. A wide grin broke through his blissed out features, his eyelids fluttering open to look at you. “I know.”“
We are the most problematic stars, huh?” It was funny how mere seconds ago, he was giving you the hardest orgasm of your life, and now you were talking as if you just had coffee over lunch break. “Yoongi is going to freak out.”
The thought made the two of you chuckle.
“Mr. Kim, Mr. Min is looking for you,” The trembling voice of Jin’s assistant came from entrance. His boss rolled his eyes and wrapped an arm protectively around you, making you struggle to turn around. “He - uh- he sounds very mad,” he added, doing his best not to peek through the hand covering his eyes, making you giggle. Instead, he turned his head to the door, yelling a quick “Mina, I found them!”
In turn, you groaned, burying yourself and Jin inside the blankets. He held you close to him, trying to salvage as much of the ruined moment due to the sudden disturbance.
“If you’re not too busy after shooting, maybe we could have dinner together?” he asked in a tiny voice, in contrast to his eyebrows wiggling suggestively. You laughed, hitting his chest lightly.
“Sure, minus the assistants.”
A raspy chuckled followed, a sigh of agreement leaving him. “Yes, minus the assistants.”
#bts smut#jin smut#hyunglinenetwork#bangtan smut#jin x reader#jin#kim seokjin#bts#bts jin scenarios#bts jin imagines#bts scenarios#bangtan scenarios#smut
524 notes
·
View notes
Text
Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 4.4
Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.
Last time, Kokichi and Miu were selfishly withholding the weapons that could get everyone out of here in a heartbeat, Kaito was still trying to understand Kokichi and made an unsuccessful attempt to communicate with him using his fists, Himiko took Tenko’s final words to heart even more, and Gonta continued to be really heartbreakingly desperate to save everyone or be at least a tiny bit useful, but maybe we managed to soften that a little by finishing his FTEs and becoming such good friends with him.
Now, it’s nighttime, and we all know what that means.
Shuichi: (Alright, time to go to training. Kaito and Maki should be in the courtyard.)
It’s time for more adorable friendship!
When Shuichi arrives there, Kaito is wincing in pain.
Shuichi: “Kaito? What’s wrong? Do you have to go to the bathroom again?”
This is an even clearer indication that Shuichi really knew yesterday that Kaito’s bathroom trip wasn’t for the usual reason. If it was, then there’d be no reason to assume that he’d need to go again right now, especially not upon seeing him apparently in pain. Shuichi absolutely knows something’s not right and just doesn’t want to think about it too hard.
Kaito: “…”
Interestingly, Kaito doesn’t immediately reassure Shuichi that he’s totally fine. Perhaps he knows that there’s no way he’s going to be able to exercise at all tonight and is worrying about how to get around that while raising the least suspicion and showing the least weakness to his sidekicks.
Maki: “He’s been like this, because of what happened.”
I’m not sure why Maki says this, which seems to be implying it has something to do with Kaito punching Kokichi this morning, since that’s the only notable thing that happened recently. It should be pretty clear this has nothing to do with that, Maki? This is probably awkward localisation, but I’m not sure of what.
Shuichi: “What’s wrong? Are you not feeling well?”
Kaito: “No, I’m fine… My stomach just hurts, is all…”
Look at Kaito confirming that he is, in fact, not feeling well, but still insisting that he’s fine anyway. It’s just a minor thing that only means they should do something other than exercise tonight; it’s definitely not that it’s a serious problem or that it’s getting to him at all, nope, no way.
Kaito: “How about the three of us just talk?”
Maki: “Talk…? About what?”
Kaito: “Stupid! Nobody decides what they talk about before they start!”
I mean, generally when people end up talking about something without having really decided to, it’s because they never even really decided to talk in the first place and it just kind of happened. If you’re going to up and actively suggest talking as a thing to do, it’s usually because you already have a topic in mind. Of course, that’s not why Kaito suggested talking, which is why he has no idea what to talk about.
Shuichi: (Kaito picked a random spot in the courtyard, and we all sat down.)
Kaito: “… So what are we gonna talk about?”
Shuichi: “Didn’t you just say we didn’t have to decide that?”
Kaito: “C’mon man, that was… just a joke.”
Yup, turns out that if you actively decide to talk, you kind of do need to decide on a topic. Good job, Kaito. You’re great at this.
Kaito: “Let’s talk about Maki.”
And of course, Kaito then turns this into another excuse to help out Maki and encourage her to open up further. (Note that he chooses Maki, not Shuichi. He doesn’t think Shuichi needs that any more.)
Kaito: “For example… what blood type do you like?”
Maki: “What blood type do I like? Don’t you mean… what’s my blood type?”
Kaito: “Hm? Did I say something weird? Well, whatever! Ahahahahaha!
Maki: “…”
Shuichi: “Kaito… you’re kind of bad at this…”
He really is. Kaito is actually just a huge ridiculous awkward goof at anything approaching normal down-to-earth interactions and it’s adorable.
Shuichi: “Well, I *have* been meaning to ask… When we first met, you said you were the Ultimate Child Caregiver. Why was that?”
Kaito: “Shuichi, that’s way too direct! You can’t just cut to the chase like that!”
Kind of an indication here that Kaito did eventually intend for this conversation to turn into Maki talking about her issues with them, but he didn’t want to be obvious about that, perhaps because he was worried she still wouldn’t want to open up if he approached it that way. Hence him trying to dance around it with awkward small talk that he’s terrible at.
Kaito: “Alright then! Let’s play it safe and ask about her favorite spaceship—”
KAITO IS SUCH A DORK. I love that he apparently considers this a go-to conversation starter, because obviously everyone has a favourite spaceship, right?
But of course, Maki, being oblivious to social awkwardness, isn’t bothered by Shuichi’s forwardness and just starts answering his question anyway. She is ready to open up!
The BGM piece that starts playing as Maki starts telling her story is a melancholy one called Heartless Journey, which is the Japanese title of chapter 5, meaning it’s nominally chapter 5’s theme. This isn’t the first time it’s been heard, and some of the previous times included moments in chapter 3’s training scenes that were centred on Maki, so perhaps this is partially a Maki-related theme. That’s probably not a coincidence, considering the large role she plays in chapter 5.
Maki: “For some reason… kids like me. But I’m not particularly fond of taking care of them.”
Kaito: “Maybe that suits you better than being an assassin.”
Maki: “It’s not a matter of whether it suits me or not. I never had the right to choose from the start.”
She’s admitted it! She’s finally, explicitly admitted that she never chose this for herself.
Kaito definitely always knew this from the start, so him suggesting that it’s about what “suits” her isn’t him obliviously assuming that she ever thought being an assassin suited her. I imagine that he instead says this because he’s already thinking a few steps past the part where Maki admits she never wanted this and is trying to encourage her to start thinking about what she does want, to which obviously being a child caregiver would be a more appealing choice than killing people.
Maki: “When I was around 10 years old, these strangers started visiting the orphanage…”
SHE WAS TEN WHEN THEY FORCED HER INTO THIS. God, that is so fucked up.
Maki: “I didn’t want to go, but I heard they would donate a huge sum of money if I did… I remember thinking that I had to go.”
This is a misleading way of putting it that’s going to be corrected by something she says in just a little bit. It’s not remotely that she wanted those kids to be able to live in the lap of luxury.
Maki: “I think I had some natural talent to begin with, but I worked incredibly hard as well.”
I appreciate that this Danganronpa universe (even if I’m talking about the in-universe universe here, since their talents are technically not real), actually tries to have characters whose talents were mostly earned through effort. Kaede was the biggest example of that, but she’s not the only one. The Hope’s Peak universe having a thing about how (most) talents are basically just superpowers that someone is born with and never did anything to earn really kind of bugged me.
Maki: “If I couldn’t keep up as an assassin, the orphanage would no longer receive funding.”
This is the real truth of it. A later FTE of hers will make it explicit that the assassin cult was the only source of money for the orphanage. If she didn’t do this, those kids would be left homeless and starving. She had no remotely reasonable choice in the matter, especially not since she was ten.
Maki really is the Ultimate Child Caregiver after all. Not because of how good she is at taking care of those kids, but because of how much she was willing to sacrifice for them.
Maki: “But after vomiting and crying over and over again, my heart gradually became empty. Eventually… I got used to it. It was the same after my first job. For a while, I couldn’t eat or sleep. But after doing this for such a long time, I felt numb.”
So, really, all the hellish training didn’t make her heart “empty” at all. If she truly had no heart after the training, her first kill wouldn’t have affected her like that. All she was really learning to do was suppress her pain more and more – but when she started dealing with a different kind of pain, she had to learn how to suppress that pain from scratch too.
Maki: “There were times I wondered why I had to kill these strangers… But I eventually stopped thinking about that.”
Because wondering why makes their deaths seem unfair and unnecessary, and if she doesn’t think about that then it doesn’t hurt as much.
Maki: “I adapted to the lifestyle… of killing people… of stealing their lives… And… of being a horrible person.”
Guh, she’s so blunt about hating herself. But still, the fact that she’s even admitting that she hates herself is a huge step forward. You’re getting there, Maki Roll.
Maki: “What would I have been like if I stayed at the orphanage? I still think about that… all the time.”
The real reason she thinks this all the time has to be that she’s secretly still wishing she could have stayed at the orphanage and had a normal life. But she can’t properly admit that to herself, because the only way she’s been able to cope with this is by accepting it as her reality and resigning herself to it.
Shuichi: (Maki sighed deeply after baring her soul.)
Maki: “…That’s all. It wasn’t an interesting story to listen to, was it?”
Maki. Gah. The way she keeps being so dismissive about her own suffering like it’s the most boring and trivial thing out there is heartbreaking. Of course it makes sense that this is how she’s coping, but still.
Shuichi: “‘Interesting’? No, Maki, that was… The burden you’ve been carrying all this—”
Aww, Shuichi, trying to tell Maki that her burdens matter. If only he knew…
Kaito: “Geez. You’re carrying way too many burdens for someone so small.”
…just how excruciatingly hypocritical Kaito is being about how much his burdens matter right now.
(But Kaito says that Maki is too “small” for her burdens. That’s not the case with him, right? He’s a big, inspiring hero, so he’s supposed to be able to deal with his burdens all on his own, isn’t he?)
Kaito: “Well, I could say the same to Shuichi…”
Can you, Kaito? Are you sure Shuichi isn’t big enough and strong enough by now to carry his own burdens all by himself? Are you sure he still needs your help with them?
(Shuichi does. But.)
Kaito: “Don’t try to shoulder everything on your own. You gotta trust other people.”
This brings up a contrast between Maki and Shuichi. Maki never shared her burdens with anyone until recently because she didn’t trust anyone. Shuichi was already trusting enough that he was looking for someone to help him carry his burdens from the beginning, leading him to get so attached to Kaede and then Kaito so quickly.
But also, what Kaito is unintentionally saying with this is that… he doesn’t trust his sidekicks, if he’s not willing to share his burdens with them? And as inconceivable for Kaito as that sounds, it is true, in a way – he doesn’t trust that they would still have faith in him and depend on him if they knew what he was struggling with. Why would they want to share their burdens with someone who can’t carry his own?
Kaito: “Once you’re able to share your burdens with your friends, then you’ll be stronger.”
And now Kaito’s unintentionally implying that by not sharing his own burdens, he doesn’t even want to become stronger. And in a way… that’s kind of true too. He wants to be strong, but he doesn’t want to have to go through the process of getting stronger, not in front of his sidekicks. He has to be strong right now, or they won’t be able to rely on him.
Kaito: “Well, if Maki Roll was able to talk this much, it means she’s gotten a bit stronger already.”
Maki: “…It might be thanks to the training.”
All of his own issues aside, though, of course Kaito is proud of Maki for coming this far, and Maki finally somewhat admitting that it’s thanks to Kaito’s help is adorable. That probably means a lot more to him than he’s letting on.
Kaito: “Well, obviously! My training’s based on a systematic method!”
Shuichi: “That’s… kind of vague.”
Yes. The most systematicest of methods. You definitely know exactly what you’re doing, Kaito. Shuichi is totally convinced.
It is maybe notable the way that Kaito responds to Maki finally admitting that he’s helped her by being ridiculous and over-the-top instead of just sincerely accepting her thanks. Like he still doesn’t think this is enough, and he needs to do even more for her and be that invincible luminary he constantly tries to be.
Shuichi: (We spent a long while talking about whatever came to our minds. Most of it was meaningless conversation, but…)
(did Kaito find an excuse to talk about his favourite spaceship after all)
Shuichi: (It might have been the first time I was able to actually have fun and forget this place.)
THEY’RE FRIENDS. Friendship is exactly what you need to help you cope with an awful situation like this. I love these three so much.
Look at how adorable they are. Even Maki is smiling.
Shuichi: (To protect my friends… I need to reveal the truth of this academy. I need to face the truth and reveal it to the world. I have to… to keep my friends alive.)
As lovely as it is that Shuichi is so determined to protect them… he doesn’t necessarily need to find the truth of this academy to do so. All they need to do is escape. Especially in Kaito’s case, since he’s dying and what he really needs the most right now is to get to a hospital A-fucking-S-A-P. If Shuichi knew that, then that would almost certainly spur him to forget about finding the truth per se and just focus on coming up with a plan to get them out of there as fast as he can.
What I’m getting at is: Kaito’s stubborn, idiotically selfless insistence on carrying his burdens all by himself is literally the reason he dies.
(His illness is not incurable, since it’s not really a mysterious space virus from a meteorite at all. It was given to him by Team Danganronpa, and not only would they have needed to vaccinate the rest of the cast so that nobody caught it off him (since everyone else is supposed to be immune), they also wouldn’t have wanted to risk him giving a deadly incurable disease to a “real person” on the production staff. They’d have made sure to pick a virus that medical science knows plenty about how to deal with. They could totally step in and save Kaito any time they wanted and are choosing not to because his impending death is making an entertaining story.)
Meanwhile, Kokichi is plotting with Monokuma.
Kokichi: “This fun and vicious killing game is the only thing on my mind!”
Technically, that’s not a lie. He may hate it, but he very much has become single-mindedly obsessed with “winning” it on his terms, which is exactly why he’s about to launch into this needlessly convoluted plan which will cause multiple unnecessary deaths instead of just ditching the killing game altogether and helping everyone escape right now.
Monokuma: “With that said, you’re not even gonna try and use that motive?”
What were you expecting him to do with it, Monokuma? I mean, as it turns out, he is planning to use that motive to incite a murder, which is exactly why he’s asking for Monokuma’s help here, but if he hadn’t done this then I have no idea how else Monokuma was expecting him to use the knowledge of the supposedly-dead outside world to kill anyone.
Kokichi: “Ah-haha, you don’t get it… A crazy motive like this should be used in a more… dramatic way, no?”
This here is Kokichi basically saying “the story you were trying to write for this chapter sucks; let me write you a better one”. ‘Cause, I mean, he’s right.
And by doing that he’s just playing right into Monokuma’s hands, good fucking job Kokichi, I thought the goal of your plan was to anger him, not make him happy. He may be telling himself he’s only co-operating with Monokuma temporarily for the sake of his plan, but in doing so he’s still co-operating with Monokuma and giving him exactly what he wants. Kokichi knows by now that this is all fiction and that therefore Monokuma’s main goal must be to make the most exciting story he can manage, and yet he’s doing this anyway. This is the first reason of several that his plan is actually kind of terrible.
Monokuma: “You can trust a dishonest man to be dishonest. It’s the honest ones you wanna watch out for…”
Meanwhile, here’s a rare Monokuma Theater that’s meaningful for a reason other than breaking the in-universe fourth wall. Since this is the last Monokuma Theater before Gonta becomes a murderer, I’m pretty sure it’s talking about him.
Monokuma: “Cuz you can never predict when they’re gonna do something… incredibly stupid.”
Like try to mercy-kill everyone because they’ve been tricked into genuinely believing it’s the only way to save them from despair. Yeah, that kind of thing does rather creep up on you without warning from those honest people, doesn’t it.
Monokuma: “By the way, the recent trend of encouraging honesty is actually a lie. You see, it’d better for liars if there are more honest people in the world to deceive.”
Exactly. It’s talking about precisely the kind of honest person that Gonta is – someone who’s so honest that it never occurs to them that other people aren’t, which is why he’s so tragically gullible.
Monokuma: “They’ve been lying about that trend so there can be more stupid honest people.”
Not that Kokichi is responsible for Gonta being gullibly honest here, but man, I absolutely wouldn’t put it past him to do that kind of thing in another situation to get himself more people to take advantage of like he does with Gonta.
The next morning, before heading out of the dorms, I examined Kaito and Maki’s doors.
Shuichi: (Last night was really fun… Spending time with Kaito and Maki was strange… in a good way. Perhaps all thanks to Kaito’s ridiculousness.)
Did you know they’re friends! And it’s also great that he emphasises that it’s Kaito’s ridiculousness that brought this about. Not his strength, not him being a hero like he keeps trying to be – just him being the ridiculous dork that he is.
Shuichi: (I wonder if Maki had fun that night too… No, I’m positive she did. Because I’ve never seen Maki’s face so calm before.)
Maki was happy as well! I like how Shuichi is aware of this because of how calm she looked – usually Maki’s constantly guarded and has all kinds of mental walls up to protect herself, but around the two of them, she feels safe and able to just be herself without being afraid of what they’ll think of her.
On the way to the dining hall, there is a Kaito! This is actually the only time we ever bump into him in the morning like this. I guess usually he just heads straight to the dining hall to set a good example for meeting up, but today he’s got something on his mind.
Kaito: “Like I said before, my training is based on a systematic method.”
Yes, and we all definitely believed you when you said that.
Kaito: “Even if I don’t need it myself, in order for you two to grow…”
Of course Kaito doesn’t need any extra training, right. He’s totally fine and already strong enough and doesn’t have any worries at all.
Kaito: “I feel like we should add something like martial arts or some kind of mental training…”
I’m really not sure how necessary this is, when last night’s “training” being just sitting around and chatting like normal friends probably helped more than anything else has. I think this is less about extra training being genuinely needed, and more about Kaito trying to show that his sidekicks still need him, that he can still help them out and make a difference by training them like this.
I mentioned before that I really love both of the bonus scenes in this chapter, but one thing that’s especially fun about them is that they’re essentially parallels of each other. The first one was nominally about Himiko’s growth, but was also about Gonta being desperate to be useful in even the slightest way. This one is going to be nominally about Maki’s growth – but it’s also about Kaito being desperate to be useful too.
Another point of note is that Kaito clearly hadn’t thought of this during their hangout yesterday evening or he’d have suggested it then, so he must have been thinking about it at some point during the night. Meaning… he probably hasn’t been able to get much sleep, has he. And of course Kaito would take his mind off his own sleeplessness and the reasons for it by thinking about how best to keep helping his sidekicks.
Kaito: “Alright! Let’s not wait till night! We’re gonna do this special training as soon as possible!”
Which is really because, A, this is a bonus scene and those don’t happen at night, and, B, nighttime is going to be the trip to the Virtual World and the murder. But even so, it’s totally in character for Kaito to want to do this and prove to his sidekicks that he can still help them out as soon as he can.
Miu and Kokichi aren’t at breakfast. Miu is almost certainly working overtime on the computer to set up her murder plot. Kokichi… most likely doesn’t want to give anyone the sense that he’s plotting something too and make people try and talk him out of it before it’s about to happen. Maybe he’s afraid that Kaito really will get through to him if he keeps giving him a reason to keep trying to.
Gonta: “Gonta still thinking… since yesterday… How can Gonta be useful? But… Gonta no can think of anything! So… frustrating!”
Gontaaaa. Even helping Himiko with her training yesterday (if we pretend that the game’s writing would acknowledge that despite it being an optional scene) wasn’t nearly enough for him.
Kaito: “Okay, but you don’t need to make such a scary face… Besides… it’s not just you. That’s something we all gotta think about.”
Yes. It really isn’t just Gonta, is it now, Kaito.
Himiko: “Use your self-destruct system to save us. That’s how robots make themselves useful.”
By the way, why on earth is Himiko such a robophobe? We already put up with enough of Keebo being pointlessly bullied by Kokichi; why did the writers feel the need to have another character who should be much less inclined to do so randomly be an uncalled-for dick to him too? Himiko is otherwise not an unkind person. What the hell.
…That said, this particular line is also maybe foreshadowing, since it is Keebo’s self-destruct which finally blows a hole in the wall. He could almost certainly do it just using his laser gun without sacrificing himself, though.
Tsumugi: “I’ll… keep thinking about it too. If I come up with a good idea, I’ll tell you guys.”
Yes, Tsumugi, I’m sure you’re trying your absolute hardest to help us.
Kaito: “Now that that’s settled, let’s eat! If you don’t eat well, you can’t think well!”
I wonder how much food Kaito has actually been able to keep down lately. Probably not much.
Shuichi: (We were completely unaware… that an unspeakable malice was brewing.)
Hello again, future-Shuichi who ominously knows more than present-Shuichi and is just here to tease us. This is also really not that necessary, since the audience just saw Kokichi plotting with Monokuma and therefore already knows that something big and most likely painful is just around the corner.
Anyway, time to do Kaito’s bonus training with Maki!
A weird thing about the staging of this scene is that for some reason, Kaito is directly behind Maki relative to where Shuichi is standing, meaning that when the camera pans between them, it has to awkwardly zoom in and out through Maki’s sprite. It’s distracting.
Maki is not amused by the fact that the training involves a sword. She tells Kaito (who wasn’t there when she told Shuichi about it before) that she once botched a mission with one.
Kaito: “Oh, I see…”
Maki: “Don’t make that face. I know you didn’t mean any harm by it.”
Kaito: “No, it’s my fault for making you remember something that makes you feel bad.”
Here’s Kaito essentially apologising for this, even though he had no idea it would make her feel bad and could not possibly have made any more of an effort to not do so. Shuichi maybe owes Maki a brief apology, since he’s the one who suggested using the sword to train and should have remembered this, but Kaito has nothing to apologise for. Yet he’s doing it anyway, because he upset his sidekick. There’s that exception to his usual principles again.
Kaito: “Alright! Tell us about it now! I’ll listen to all of it!”
Naturally, Kaito then turns this around into another excuse to help Maki open up and talk about her problems. And it’s also notable the way he specifies that he’ll listen to it. Look, he’s being helpful to his sidekicks, even if all he’s doing is listening!
Kaito: “It’s difficult to talk to people about your failures. I get it.”
Yeah, Kaito. You definitely get that, more than most. Heroes aren’t supposed to fail, after all.
Kaito: “But didn’t I tell you? Being able to share your burdens with others… that’s how you get stronger!”
Kaito is still being a huge hypocrite about this. But I don’t think he’s doing this to deflect from his own burdens and lie to himself that obviously he doesn’t have any. I think he’s perfectly aware of his burdens and just genuinely doesn’t think they matter next to those of his sidekicks, because he’s that idiotically selfless – just like Maki didn’t think her own suffering mattered until very recently. This is the exact problem that he’s helping Maki to overcome and yet somehow manages to not realise also applies to himself – not the accepting that he has burdens, but the acknowledging that he shouldn’t have to deal with his burdens on his own and that it’s okay to ask other people for help.
Kaito: “Don’t hold on to your past forever! You gotta confront it to move on! And I’m gonna help you with that!”
The real reason Kaito’s saying this has nothing to do with the hypocrisy of it. It’s all so that he can encourage Maki and make a big point of how he’s going to help her with her burdens. She still needs him, right?
To Kaito, the big difference between himself and Maki in terms of their burdens is that Maki has nothing to lose and everything to gain by sharing them. But if Kaito shared his burdens, he’s convinced that it’d make him no longer able to help his sidekicks, something he’s already terrified of thanks to the fact that he’s weak and dying. That’s why he’s starting to get more and more insistent about how much he can help them, to cling to that feeling that he’s so afraid of losing.
Maki: “…What are you saying? You’re ridiculous.”
I dunno, Maki. Kaito is often ridiculous, but there are a lot of words that could describe his behaviour right now, and “ridiculous” isn’t really one of them.
Maki: “Anyway, that failure doesn’t bother me anymore.”
Maybe she’s calling him ridiculous because to her, the failure really isn’t a big deal and she’s bewildered at the way Kaito’s acting like it’s some huge difficult burden that she’d even need his help with. Which does kind of serve to show how overzealously unnecessary this endeavour of Kaito’s is.
Maki: “Just be warned, it’s a boring story.”
Maki, your stories are many things, but they are never boring.
Maki: “For this particular target, he normally worked late into the night… But when I looked further into his schedule, I found out he was into some nerdy hobbies.”
Kaito: “Nerdy hobbies? You mean like Tsumugi is?”
Maki: “Yeah, just like her. He especially liked cosplay.”
Well, isn’t that just a massive coinkydink.
This whole story about Maki’s screwup at a cosplay convention is really just Tsumugi being incredibly self-indulgent when writing her characters’ backstories.
Shuichi: (Never in a million years would I imagine hearing ‘cosplay’ from Maki’s mouth.)
It’s more likely than you think, Shuichi.
Maki: “Unfortunately… I had the same height and hairstyle as a popular character, who also carried a katana.”
Hairstyle, sure, but I don’t see why people would think that her having the same height meant she was cosplaying that character. Height is one of the few things a cosplayer can’t hope to match about their subject, short of maybe slight adjustments by wearing platform shoes or something. (And yes, I know Tsumugi can apparently somehow magically change her height to cosplay her characters, but funnily enough most cosplayers aren’t actual fucking shapeshifters.) If Maki commented that it was also her clothes that were similar to the character, that’d make a lot more sense.
Please appreciate how noticeably younger Maki looks here. She was murdering people back when she was, I don’t know, twelve, thirteen? Gah.
There’s also the part where I highly doubt Maki would have been able to get a real katana past the security at a cosplay convention – apparently such things often confiscate even clearly-fake props just in case – buuut since this didn’t really happen and is just Tsumugi being self-indulgent, I can let it slide.
Kaito: “Hahaha! I was wondering what this ‘serious failure’ of yours was going to be!”
You were the only one acting like it was a “serious” failure that she definitely needed your support with in the first place, Kaito.
Maki: “Don’t laugh… For me, it was very serious… I was branded as a failure, because of something so stupid. If they didn’t donate to the orphanage anymore… then it would’ve… been the end…”
But maybe it really was more serious to Maki than she was trying to tell herself earlier, now that she’s properly remembered it again. Those assholes in the cult wouldn’t give a fuck about the awkward circumstances and would only see it as her failing to complete her mission.
Kaito: “Yeah, you’re right… that’s not funny. I’m really sorry for laughing…”
Shuichi: “Yeah, me too… Sorry for laughing, Maki.”
Aww. They both completely understand after last night how important that orphanage is to her and how much of a big deal this must have been.
(At least Kaito is correct to be apologising here. For once.)
Maki: “Y-You don’t need to apologize. I’m not mad.”
(Maki turned her head to the side with a pout.)
Hee, pouty Maki Roll. She’s being a person!
Shuichi: (There’s still so much I don’t know about Maki and Kaito… I hope Maki is right. We can learn more about each other after we get out… No. We will become friends! We will definitely get out of here!)
As adorable as this is, it’s also awkward that Shuichi is talking like they’re not already friends. Of course they are! They’ll just be able to be even better friends when they escape! (Which all three of them are definitely going to be able to do, right. Gaaghjfsghjdfk Kaito you selfless idiot.)
Shuichi: (After a bout of training with the sword, I returned to my room.)
They did end up training with it after all! Even if Maki doesn’t like using swords on missions, she’s still trained in how to use them, so I’m sure she ended up leading the training session and teaching Shuichi and Kaito a few things. (If Kaito… even actually participated. It’s entirely likely he used his excuse of “I totally don’t need any training” to avoid the truth that he’s just in too much pain to be doing any exercise right now.)
---
[Next post]
7 notes
·
View notes
Note
tell me about badgerstripe but also the demon i mean heather c
badgerstripe
badgerstripe is an oc i’ve had literally from the time she was born to the time when she became leader, so i’m very fond of her. she was originally conceived as part of a group of characters my friends and i came up with -- a litter of riverclan kits who were orphaned during a flood plot we had going at the time. her siblings were called frostkit and rosekit.
she does eventually become leader in her timeline, succeeding a cat called morningstar. morningstar was her mentor and more or less raised her in place of her mother. she also... died fairly early into badgerstripe’s deputyship, which is a big driving force behind how anxious and uncertain badgerstripe tends to be.
a lot of her self-doubts and insecurities actually stem from an incident that happened during kithood that she never fully forgave herself for: she and her siblings were kidnapped at one point by rogues (drama) and she and frostkit ended up getting into a huge, vicious argument that ended with frostkit leaving and joining the rogues.
he renamed himself ‘frost’ and grew up to be pretty terrifying; at one point we had a disaster of a plot for him and badgerstar (as she was at that point) to reconnect that involved him infiltrating riverclan by injuring himself and faking amnesia. badgerstar was going to be driven by her guilt and self-blame for how he ended up to take him in even against the advice of her senior warriors and it was gonna be GREAT.
because i love to talk about her and her siblings, she’s extremely close to rosebloom and even sort of codependent on her. she made rosebloom her deputy, kind of evidently not for the healthiest of reasons, but they admittedly do work well together. she was eventually going to find out that rosebloom was having a relationship with a cat from another clan which.... would have shattered her. poor badgerstripe had so much suffering on her plate.
in hindsight, i am 500% sure badgerstripe isn’t straight because like. our old site culture featured a lot of heterosexual pairing characters up and i could just... never find anyone who felt right for badgerstripe. I Should Have Known.
a lot of bullshit magical powers existed in her verse and she was actually the victim of them at one point (this list is just slowly accumulating evidence of how cruel i used to be to my characters), so now she doesn’t trust that sort of thing as a rule. she’s going to frown a lot at denny.
speaking of denny, i’ve toyed with the thought of giving her a way to find out about the whole rosebloom thing and that may like... send her into a bluestar-esque spiral that keeps her clinging to tigerstar even once more of his true colors are revealed. i guess she’s not done suffering yet,
on a completely different note, my old rp partner (who used to play rosebloom) is now in los angeles getting into some screenwriting and - i’m not sure if she still has plans to do this - but at one point she was toying with the idea of writing something (humanized) based on rosebloom and badgerstar’s relationship. i’ll never forget that because i just found it so touching.
hm... oh her mom was never more than an npc that got killed off in the background but! her name was shadowflight and that’s always stuck in my mind ‘cause i thought it was a cool name.
heather
i’ve always liked/found it interesting that heather is not only prone to making a shitton of pop culture references, but also has shit like “the bell jar” just lying around in her room. therefore i’ve come to the conclusion that she’s secretly a nerd. real talk she actually does enjoy reading if she can do it, like... on her own terms. she detests being forced into anything and thus loudly complains about school-assigned stuff.
i’m 90% sure her daemon is going to be a bengal cat but i haven’t worked out too many details beyond that. get ready clairbourne,
things like “you were poisoned because someone literally hated you that much”, “literally everyone you ever went to school with almost died”, “those boys who probably coerced you into sexual situations but were also big part of your social circle are now dead”, and “your best friend almost died trying to stop her murderous boyfriend” are all bulletpoints on the list of Shit Heather Does Not Know How To Process. she generally suppresses and reverts to somewhat self-destructive behavior as an outlet, which is her go-to coping mechanism anyway, so.
she hasn’t told anyone what jd did (didn’t even take the opportunity to do so at the warrens’ dinner party). she tells herself it’s so she has something to hold over him, but in reality it has more to do with the fact that she really doesn’t want to talk about it, with anyone.
she misses heather mcnamara and heather duke. it’s revolting and achingly noticeable and she doesn’t know how to articulate it or how to feel about it.
is absolutely a confused angry bisexual, apologies to veronica bc that probably accounts for at least 40% of her behavior towards her
movies that feature parent death are just about the only things in the world that make her openly cry. she has no idea why. she fucking hates her parents. duke and mcnamara have been sworn to secrecy.
does, in fact, already own a red thneed on denny.
is lowkey itching to give ed some kind of wardrobe makeover, but is currently too leery of spending much time with him to pursue it. maybe ed is the one who starts the cult rumors to keep heather away from him,
her favorite place is the beach and she likes collecting seashells, but that’s a thing almost no one knows about her -- not because she’s particularly intense about hiding it, just because it’s not the sort of casual, personal thing she’d ever naturally bring up in idle conversation.
#slowly working through these in between episodes of sunburn dying#im gonna take a break now to get dinner tho#thanks spear!!!#larkspear
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
Post-Post Traumatic: The Second Time 9-10
Post-Post Traumatic [fanfiction] NaruSasu (in progress)
A series of “drabbles” following the events of Post Traumatic.
Previous Parts
The Second Time
9-10 under the cut
Part 10 is a kick in the face, sorry. The last three parts of The Second Time going up tomorrow.
- 9 -
“Why does shit always happen at the damn Chuunin Exams?” Naruto complained, lying with his head on my stomach, his legs dangling off the side of the bed.
“It’s a gathering of all the most powerful leaders in the world with minimum security?” I suggested. I stared up at our bedroom ceiling, rubbing down his bare arm absently.
“I should put you in charge of security,” he muttered.
“And I would tell you to not even bother with the international exam, just let the villages deal with promotions in-house.”
“But it’s really important for like… peace and good will, and all that crap.”
“Mm-hm.”
“Anyway, it’s already happened. Another fucking attack on the arena.”
“But this girl really had the rinnegan?” I asked. I’d heard it from Suigetsu, but it was still hard to believe.
“Best-kept goddamn secret in all of Lightning.”
“You’ve been swearing a lot lately.”
“Does it offend it?” he grumbled irritably.
“No, but I like my sweet Naruto.”
“Did you really just say that?” Naruto asked, jumping up so he could cover my face with kisses.
“No,” I growled.
“You did, too, I heard you.”
“Can we talk about the rinnegan?”
“You jealous that you’re not the only one with the rinnegan now?”
“Of a teenage girl who couldn’t even pass the Chuunin Exam? I think not.”
“She only didn’t pass ’cause of the attempted kidnapping.”
“Wasn’t she under age anyway?”
“Yeah, but she’s from Lightning, and they still haven’t signed the age agreement, so…” Naruto said with a long sigh.
“So this unknown Kumogakure female was born with the rinnegan and is now Shukaku’s jinchuuriki? And some cult-like group attacked the Chuunin Exam and tried to kidnap her?”
“Yeah, that about sums it up,” Naruto muttered, nudging me onto my side so he could spoon me. “And Shukaku’s just like, yeah, man it’s totally cool, I want to be trapped inside of her.”
“What was she like?” I asked, tracing the bulging blue veins popping out of Naruto’s arm. It was a hot summer night.
“Whaddya mean?”
“I mean, what was she like?”
“A teenage girl? I dunno.”
“Was she powerful?”
“She will be.”
“Anything else?”
“What do you want to know, Sas’?” Naruto murmured, nuzzling behind my ear with his nose.
“Are you getting romantic?”
“Mm, a little.”
“Can we finish talking about this?”
“Yeah, if you’d get to the point.”
“Naruto. This girl. This Getsuko. Our generation has already played out. She’s the next generation. She’s the next power. This is important. And also, how the fuck does she have the rinnegan?”
“Her chakra…” Naruto started and stopped. He kissed my neck, sucking lightly.
“You’re acting like me,” I said, pushing his face away.
“Well, someone has to,” he complained, hooking his arm under my knee and lifting.
“Fuck you,” I grumbled, but then my eyes fluttered shut as he pressed his body fully to mine. “It’s just… how did I not know? About her?”
“Because A hid her,” Naruto said, anger creeping into his voice. “Can we not talk about this right now? I haven’t sorted it all out yet. And I’m working myself up to a decent half-chub.”
“I didn’t know that talking about politics and splinter groups was such a turn on for you.”
“I haven’t seen you for weeks,” Naruto murmured, kissing the sensitive spot behind my ear. “You could belittle and demean me, and I’d be turned on.”
“No, see I already knew that you were into that-”
“I’m not into that! It makes me very sad and hurts my manly feelings!”
“So I shouldn’t belittle and demean you?”
“You should say nice, loving things to me.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, turning my face back towards him.
Naruto smiled, giving me a little peck. “I’m waiting.”
“You’re… not bad,” I offered.
“Jerk,” he said, pushing my face away.
“Hey, if you can’t say anything nice either…”
“My smart, beautiful, wonderful, amazing husband,” Naruto said, kissing down my shoulder.
“Show-off…”
“It’s easy, you should try it,” he murmured, rubbing between my thighs.
I shivered, rocking back into him.
Naruto went back to kissing my neck.
We moved together slowly, lazy and relaxed.
“You’re…” I started to say, but couldn’t think of anything nice that didn’t sound cheesy or trite.
“Tell me?”
I swallowed.
He tightened his grip on my thigh, firm and reassuring.
“I… like you…” I concluded lamely.
Naruto snorted, a puff against the back of my neck. “I like you, too.”
I could feel the weight of him sliding against me. I squeezed my thighs closer together and he gasped hot in my ear. “You’re…” I tried again. “You’re… everything,” I finally concluded.
“I’ll take that as a something nice,” he said, threading his fingers with mine.
I let my eyes slide closed and just felt.
“Hey, love?”
I opened my eyes, disoriented like I was waking from a dream.
“Are you… hard?”
“Huh?” I said, looking down, but I was covered with a sheet.
“No, really, I think you are!” Naruto said, all excited like a puppy.
I thought about it, and there did seem to be something going on down there.
Naruto’s hand got there first, wrapping around me tentatively.
It wasn’t exactly rock hard, but it was more movement than I’d seen in months.
I found my face being redirected for a quick peck before Naruto was disappearing under the sheet.
“Oh… fuuuck…” I breathed, burying my fingers in his hair. I threw the sheet away from him with my other hand, watching his blond head move.
Naruto pulled away with a pop. “I’ve missed you,” he cooed, nuzzling my erection.
“Please stop,” I groaned.
“You want me to stop?” he asked, looking up at me in confusion.
“Not the blow job,” I clarified. “The other stuff.”
“I’m just getting reacquainted with an old friend.”
“Naruto…ooo… ahh…”
I didn’t even try to stop him when he kissed me with his cummy mouth afterwards.
We both passed out, exhausted from weeks of sleeping apart.
We woke up to one of the little kids jumping into bed with us. She crawled right into Naruto’s arms, and the two of them went back to sleep.
I got up and smoked a cigarette, then decided to go downstairs and make coffee.
“Sasuke!” Mari said, attaching herself to my leg. “Good morning!”
“Morning,” I said, patting her on the head.
“Can we practice taijutsu today?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, sure.”
“Thanks!” she said, letting go of me and skipping off.
Karin came dragging down the stairs, looking tired. “Hey.”
I handed her a coffee.
“You’re a prince,” she said, taking a long drink. “So Naruto came back with two more brats?”
“Don’t ask,” I said, shaking my head.
“Where does he keep finding these kids?”
“I don’t know.”
“Try and learn their names this time?”
I stared at her.
“Okey dokey, boss,” she said, patting my cheek and walking away.
“Huh?” I muttered, unclear on what she was okaying.
“Morning, gorgeous,” Naruto said breezily, smooching me on the cheek. He had that little girl on his hip, and she leaned up to smooch my cheek, too.
I blinked at her.
“Thanks for making coffee,” Naruto added, pouring a cup for himself.
“Can I have some?” the girl asked.
“I don’t think you like coffee, but you can try mine,” Naruto said, offering the cup to her.
“I like it!” the girl protested, taking a sip. She proceeded to wrinkle her nose.
“Bitter, right?” Naruto said, dumping some sugar into the cup.
“What are you doing today?” I asked him.
“Nothing, glorious nothing,” he said, setting the girl down and turning his attention to making breakfast. “Who wants eggs?”
“Me!” came a chorus of answers.
“Jugo and Suigetsu should be back this afternoon,” I said. “I want to have a meeting about the rinnegan girl.”
“Yeah, sure, just tell me when,” Naruto said, pulling the eggs from the refrigerator.
I watched him cook, the kids all clamoring around to get the first omelet.
Naruto looked happy again, smiling and light. I wanted him to stay like that, instead of the drained zombie he’d become lately.
Suigetsu came home first, promptly disappearing into his room. Karin was nowhere to be found either.
“Can I have Karin’s room?” Mari complained, tugging on my shirt.
“What for?” I asked.
“She’s not using it…”
“Ask her then,” I said. “Let’s go train.”
Mari followed along happily. She had no intentions of being a ninja, but she liked being able to defend herself. She was a little budding feminist, though I wasn’t really sure where she’d picked all that up from.
Two of the little kids came with us into the desert, trying to imitate Mari and I as we trained, though they were really just playing around. If they’d been a little older, I would have yelled at them. But there was something nice about little kids playing at being ninjas, giggling and having fun.
Mari was more serious. Her form wasn’t bad. When I told her so, she beamed.
I don’t know why she respected me so much. She found me at my lowest, and I never seemed to go up much from there. In fact, I’d come full circle since we’d met, off my meds and losing my mind again. Yet there she was, grinning up at me like I was the greatest person to ever live.
I kind of got why people had kids. It just hurt too much when they went away.
Jugo didn’t get back until late. We all sat together in the living room, Taka and Naruto, ready to discuss the failure that was the existence of Getsuko.
I was on my fifth cigarette of the meeting.
“No one knows who her parents were,” Jugo reported. “She was born with the byakugan, but no connection to the Hyuuga could be determined. She was found in the woods, alone. It was right after the Fourth Shinobi World War, and one of the Kumo ninjas found her on the way back. She brought her to the raikage, and he sent her to be raised in the mountains.”
“Fucking A…” Naruto muttered.
I rested my free hand on his knee, squeezing gently while I continued to chain smoke.
“A teacher in the Land of Earth took her on after she passed the genin exam, and has been training her in secret. The Land of Earth is also where she encountered Shukaku and became his jinchuuriki,” Jugo continued. “It seems that the Covenant attacked her, and Shukaku saved her by entering her body. This is also when she awakened the rinnegan.”
“I need to know if she has a connection to the Uchihas,” I put in.
“I can’t answer that for you.”
“Her chakra…” Naruto started, then stopped. “I don’t like it,” he finally said.
“Why, because she’s more powerful than you?” Suigetsu asked with a snort.
“No,” Naruto said. “It just… it’s like the opposite my chakra. Not in the yin and yang kind of way that Sasuke’s is… It’s like my whole body rejects it, like the feel of it against my skin burns…”
We talked around in circles about the girl with the rinnegan. We talked about the Covenant, a group that Taka had been trailing for a while, unclear on their motives. They just seemed to be a mercenary group, using their ninja skills for cash. Had they wanted to sell the rinnegan girl to the highest bidder?
“Babe, your hands are shaking,” Naruto commented as we went up to bed.
“I’m fine,” I said, stuffing them in my pockets. “I want to smoke.”
“You just smoked like an entire pack…”
“Not cigarettes.”
Naruto was quiet as he locked the door.
I pulled out my pipe and lit it.
“I’d rather you not do that in our room,” Naruto said, sitting down next to me on the bed.
“Well I’d rather not go outside,” I said. “Stop looking at me like that. I know I’m a drug addict, let’s move on.”
“You want me to move on from you being a drug addict?”
“Yes.”
“Baby, what’s going on?” he asked, tilting my face towards him.
“Nothing,” I said, pulling away. “You’re being annoying.”
Naruto seemed at a loss. “I’m not being anything.”
“Then shut up and let me smoke in peace.”
I should have been suspicious when he actually did shut up.
The first hit of opium felt like relief. I breathed out, feeling relaxed.
Naruto was changing out of his clothes.
I watched him with a smile, taking another hit before setting the pipe aside. “C’mere.”
He turned to me, eyes red and sorrowful.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” I asked, not quite losing my smile.
“Everything,” he said, shaking his head.
“No way, it’s all good,” I said. I held my hand out to him, and he approached slowly, taking it. “We’re here. Together. That’s so good, Naruto. It’s so good.”
“I wish it was that simple.”
“It is.”
He hugged me to his stomach, still standing over me.
I melted into him.
“Sasuke? Am I a good person?”
I looked up at him, laughing. “Yeah, of course.”
“I probably shouldn’t be having this conversation with you when you’re high,” he said, shaking his head with the hint of a smile.
“You should be high with me.”
“Thanks, baby, but I’m okay,” he said, going back to being glum.
“You’re not okay,” I complained, pulling him on top of me.
“It’s not a big deal,” he said, giving me a quick kiss. He shifted, laying his cheek against my shoulder. “I just wonder if what I’m doing is right.”
“Of course it is.”
“Then why is everyone against me?”
“Who cares what they think?” I murmured, finding myself starting to drift. “Have some conviction. Fuck other people.”
“If you say so,” he said, hugging me.
“I say so.”
“Okay. Fuck other people.”
“That’s my baby.”
- 10 -
“You went behind my back,” I hissed, cold as ice.
“Someone had to!” Karin said, throwing her arms up.
“You had no right!”
“Look at yourself, you piece of shit!” Karin yelled back. “You’re smoking every day now! You’re barely getting out of bed! You’re depressed as hell, and you’re a fucking drug addict, and I’m not just gonna sit here and watch you destroy yourself!”
I threw the couch across the room.
Karin gaped at me.
“It’s none of your business,” I growled, rage rolling off of me in physical waves of chakra.
She backed away, looking terrified.
I was lost, knowing only my fury at Karin for telling Maiko. For telling Naruto.
I wasn’t that bad. So I smoked opium. It wasn’t illegal. And I got out of bed. I trained. Sometimes I ate. I did. I wasn’t falling apart. I was in control.
The desperate denial that I was in only made me angrier.
Karin had no right to do this. Now they were trying to lock me up again. It was her fault, and I was going to make her pay for it.
“Sasuke,” she whispered, still backing away. “I was just worried about you. I was trying to help…”
“I’m not going back there!” I shouted.
“Back where?” she asked, brows drawing together.
I took another step forward, menacing.
“I just wanted you to get help,” she whispered, bumping into the wall.
“I don’t need help!” I screamed, charging at her.
The natural energy enveloped me, and I felt my chakra draining away.
I woke up chained to a bed.
I started screaming.
“Sasuke,” Jugo said firmly.
“Please don’t do this, please don’t do thispleasedon’tdothis,” I whimpered, struggling against the binding.
“You tried to hurt Karin,” he said, touching my face. His hand was so big. He was angry, but he kept his touch gentle.
“I wouldn’t have hurt her, I wouldn’t have,” I whispered.
Any semblance of control was gone.
How had I ended up like this? I’d been fine. Maybe a little moodier than usual, though as Naruto kindly liked to point out, I was always moody.
But it had been getting harder and harder to leave the house.
And then Naruto had gone off to fight the Covenant and gotten himself stupidly injured. He would be fine, but he was in a hospital in Kumo. And I knew if I’d been there, it wouldn’t have happened. And that made me feel even more trapped in the house. I was a prisoner. I was always a prisoner. So I got high and escaped, but a hit wasn’t taking me very far, and even two hits wasn’t quite enough, and I was getting lost in a haze and I was trapped trapped trapped-
“This isn’t what we wanted,” Jugo said quietly. “Karin and I were going to talk to you tonight, together. Talk to you about those rehab pamphlets you found. As a family. No one was trying to check you in anywhere. Maiko suggested trying the outpatient program. We didn’t want to do this.”
“Then don’t,” I gasped out. My whole body was shaking.
“You tried to hurt Karin,” he repeated, taking his hand away.
“Don’t go,” I said, panicking.
“Of course not,” he said, pulling up a chair next to my bed.
“Where am I?” I finally asked.
“Suna Specialist Hospital.”
“…the mental institution?”
“Yes.”
“Do I have to stay here?”
“Yes.”
I started getting hysterical again.
A nurse came in and injected me with something.
Everything went black, and then I was awake again, and Jugo was asleep in the chair next to me.
“Help me,” I whispered, struggling against the chains. The feeling of being tied up was bad enough, but feeling my chakra being drained just put me in a state of complete helplessness. I wasn’t going back to all those years in Konoha, a neutered animal wasting away into nothing. I had my life back. No one was taking it from me again. “Help me!” I screamed, struggling. The chakra inhibitors burned into my skin. I remembered Koneko’s body falling, the smell of burning flesh, my eyes burning, the pain…
“Sasuke.”
It was Maiko, standing in the doorway.
“Please don’t do this, please don’t do this,” I pleaded.
She looked pained.
Jugo was awake now, giving me the same look.
“Fuck you and your pity!”
I raged and I fought and I screamed and I was sedated, and then I woke up calm until I panicked and raged and fought and screamed and was sedated again. Sometimes I got sick. Sometimes I activated my sharingan and had chakra-absorbing chains burn into my flesh. Sometimes everything just hurt and all I could do was cry.
The voices that I’d been ignoring for months started whispering louder and louder.
Naruto appeared at some point. He put cool towels on my forehead, and babbled nonsense at me while I hurled abuse at him.
I don’t know how many days passed.
At some point I got moved into a special room. There were seals built into the walls that drained anyone’s chakra who entered.
“This is better, right?” Naruto said, petting my hair.
I hurt too much to get out of bed. I did, however, feel better not being handcuffed and chained.
“When can I go home?” I asked, my voice barely audible. My throat was raw from screaming.
“When you’re calm,” Naruto said, smiling at me sadly.
“I’m calm,” I whispered.
“You seem okay right now,” he agreed.
“Then take me home,” I rasped.
“Baby,” he said, shaking his head. “There’s a hole in our living room.”
I vaguely recalled the couch smashing through the drywall. “I didn’t mean to.”
“What if one of the kids had been there?”
“They weren’t.”
“This isn’t just about you. This is about our whole family, everyone under our roof. And right now, I can’t say that everyone is safe with you home.”
I was glad that he looked miserable saying it, because he was the worst kind of traitorous asshole. I refused to speak to him for the rest of the time that he was there.
It was killing him, but he stayed and fixed my pillows, and tried to get me to eat, and cleaned up my puke until visiting hours were over.
I wondered if the chakra drain hurt him as much as it hurt me. Then again, he could just walk out of the room whenever he wanted.
Naruto came back the next day.
I was feeling more lucid and slightly less horrible, though they were still keeping me pumped up on some kind of sedative, and the opium withdrawal hadn’t quite finished with me.
“How are you?” he asked as the guard let him in.
“Shitty.”
“You look it,” he said, trying to smile. He came over to me, touching my cheek.
I couldn’t help but lean into it. “I hate you for making me stay here.”
He flinched, pulling his hand away. “I know.”
We both fell quiet.
“I didn’t know it was this bad,” Naruto finally said. ���I knew you were struggling, but I didn’t think… You promised you would tell me if things got bad.”
“Things weren’t bad. I had it under control.”
“You call this control?!” Naruto asked, his tone rising in frustration.
“No,” I said, my voice cracking.
He looked away, rubbing absently at where his arm met his prosthetic. “What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
Naruto sat down on the chair next to my bed. It was nailed to the floor, like all of the furniture in the room. He looked at me for a long while before crumbling into a sobbing heap.
“Naruto…”
“I can’t do this,” he gasped out between sobs.
I was frozen, terrified.
“Sasuke,” he said, still a mess but struggling to look up at me. He held out his arms. “Come on.”
I was confused, but I threw myself into him, clinging.
He kissed my hair, getting it wet with his snot.
I clung harder. I couldn’t look at him.
“I can’t do this.”
Was it over? Was this his breaking point?
It was all so pointless. I’d been fine, and then just for a little while I wasn’t, and now everything was fucked.
I thought about my brother.
My parents, dead on the floor.
“Hey.”
I found myself being swallowed up by blue eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said with a shaky laugh, holding my face carefully between his hands.
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
“I’m supposed to be the together one.”
“No one thinks that you’re together,” I tried to joke, but I was shaking.
“Don’t destroy my self-image,” he murmured, pressing his nose to mine. “I am sorry, though. I’ve kind of… taken a… whatsit, sabbatical from work. I mean the whole Covenant thing is wrapped up, so I think I should just focus on you right now, ya know?”
I loved and hated the sound of that. “You should focus on you,” I said quietly.
“Me?” he said, squinting his eyes at me.
“I’m sorry I fucked everything up,” I muttered, burying my face in his neck.
“Hey… well, okay, maybe you did a little…”
I let out a little laugh that was half a cry.
“But we’ll get through it,” he said, patting my head. “We always do.”
“Two broken halves don’t make a whole.”
“Why do you have to be so melodramatic?” he asked. He pushed me off of his lap and made me get back into bed. “You’re not broken, you’re just a little… messed up?”
“That sounds so much better.”
“Yeah, doesn’t it? ’Cause something that’s messed up can be put back together.”
“I’m not going back on those medications.”
“What are you going to do instead?”
I didn’t have an answer for that, but I did have a sudden stomachache that had me rushing off to the bathroom.
Jugo came in to find me lying on the floor, cheek pressed to the cool tile.
“Withdrawal,” Naruto said with a shrug. “Sasuke, I’m gonna go work on the house, okay?”
I waved him off.
“I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” he said, lying on the floor next to me and giving my nose a brief kiss.
I watched him go, then went back to feeling horrible.
Jugo started reading a book.
I stayed curled up on the floor for a while, then rushed to the bathroom again.
Jugo glanced up when I appeared in the doorway again. “Everything okay?”
I stared at him.
He shrugged and went back to his book.
I dragged myself to the bed. I flopped down heavily, groaning. My body ached. My stomach was a mess. And Jugo was angry at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. It was all I had to offer.
“I appreciate that, but it’s not enough.”
I curled up into a ball, pulling the blanket on top of me. I was shivering from the cold.
Neither of us said anything, and I drifted asleep a few times, only to be woken up by the pain.
Naruto came back after lunch.
My tray was on the night table, untouched.
“I’m eating your pudding,” he declared, opening it and digging in.
“I’ll go now,” Jugo said, standing up.
“See you at home,” Naruto said. He had a chocolate stain around his mouth.
I didn’t say anything.
“That was so good,” Naruto said. He patted his stomach contentedly. “You gonna try to eat something?”
“No.”
“You’re gonna get all skinny and gross again.”
“Did you just call me gross?”
“Yep.”
“My stomach hurts,” I said pathetically.
“Yeah, well, that’s what happens to drug addicts.” He was trying to sound teasing, but he was serious.
I decided I deserved it and stayed quiet.
I felt the mattress dip under Naruto’s weight.
“I’m angry and I’m being petty, okay?” he said, stroking my hair.
“You’re fine.”
“I think we all just kinda feel… unprepared? Like no one saw this coming, and we’re all raw and stuff.”
“I get it.”
“Good, ’cause I don’t.”
“What can I do to make this right?” I asked. It was hard to say.
“Just focus on getting better.”
After the worst of the withdrawal stopped, Maiko started talking the future with me.
“In order for you to be released, I’m recommending that you go on a mood stabilizer, antidepressant, and antipsychotic.”
I couldn’t even feel betrayed. I’d done this.
“I’m not saying this is forever,” she said. “I want you to be able to live your life medication-free. But it’s going to take a lot of work to get to that point. Do you understand?”
“I understand that I’m a slave to this disease and I’m never going to be ‘better’.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” she agreed. “You already knew this.”
“I thought I could control it.”
“You know that you can’t.”
“But if I… if I was stronger… better…”
“You still couldn’t do a fucking thing.”
“I don’t want to accept that.”
“Well, too bad. Take your damn meds when the nurse brings them to you.”
I did.
1 note
·
View note
Text
Prompt #1
So. Lets combine Soulmate "first words on the wrist" style, with Dungeon and dragons.
- I like the idea of lichdom being akin to TaaaaaZ's style of liches. More spectral, able to possess things, if you have a spare body you can inhabit it.
Most of the time, the transformation from mortal to lichdom ends with its soul anchored onto something. More often then not, this is knowledge. Its why so many liches are labeled under the evil category, because logic can be cold when its left alone. But also, most of the time, wizards that turn to lichdom do so out of a search for knowledge. And in turn, that knowledge is what they anchor onto, leaving them with only knowledge to run off of.
My boy? Nah homie he went the chaos route. Without a flesh suit, he's anchored himself onto emotions. Which is like, while its going to keep you sane much, much longer, its also going to be an absolute BITCH to control most of the time. He runs entirely off of emotions, and it takes a lot not to be what you think of when people compare others to water. Always changing, always turning. He has NO control over that.
Anyway, he also just has a hard time thinking straight (Which like same) as a lich. So until he gets back to his body, he's going to be rambling nonsense.
I'm aware this is not how lich work in actual DND. I do what I want.
- As for soulmates, I'm more fond of the idea that soulmate isn't inherently romantic, so much as it means that it will be someone important in your life. More over, for an au like this one, you can have multiple soulmates, either romantic, platonic, ect ect ect.
So it's like. Your soulmate isn't guaranteed to love you. After all, love takes work and time, and effort, and sometimes fate just doesn't guess a personality right.
However, no matter what they will come into your life. Somehow, somewhere. And they WILL impact it. And thats the important part.
(That said, you know this beotch a SLUT for shipping, come AT me with that shit)
Oh, also I like the idea that the sentences on your skin evolve to fit the words you know. So babies down have much but like, a line. Toddlers will have broken up words and phrases, younger kids will be more simplistic. Though, about by the time most are 13, their full statement should just about be there (Unless, you know, somehow the soulmate drops a word they wouldn't know until that exact moment)
Finally, Slight warning. The main plot of this rp deals with a Atropals, which is like literally a god fetus that's been aborted. So like, if you're uncomfortable with that kind of enemy. Whoops
Anyway, that world building and warning aside.
So, who thinks that a good way to "stop a not so all the way there ex from resurrecting a dead god fetus to raise it to it's true potential" is by becoming a lich and working entirely on your own because involving anyone else might get them killed, but also you don't feel so bad about getting YOURSELF killed.
Well. Certainly Thales Depressed Ass.
Notedly, he's a LOT more finicky when he's not attached to a body.
He either has a one track mind, or his mind is all over the place. Once he's back in is body (and while he is able to leave it) He acts a lot calmer, and far more collected. But he's still kind of, new to this lich thing? Like you know those liches that have been at it for at least a hundred years and have their shit together and just kinda wanna devour souls? Yeah no that ain't him, he's been at it for a year and a half and he is ALL over the place.
However, when he has a body to possess? All of his stats went into like, Intelligence and Charisma. Dex and Wisdom got like a little more. Constitution and strength?? Oh no. Oh noooo....
He's a fuck boy. Just like, a fuck boy that can die multiple times, so.
In his human flesh suit, Thales is 6'2, with smooth long hair about down to his mid-back. He has a tendency to lean twards glam fashion over anything else, because whats the point of having magic if all eyes aren't on you? Paints his nails, hairs always in a different style, deffo has at least four or five rings on the same finger sometimes. Would in fact wear the wizard hat.
Lich wise.. its as I mentioned. Think more, spectral skeletal figure mixed with dementor, type of deal. His magic is silver based, so I imagine his spectral would end up leaning to the same. Have the like, bright red eyes though, and keeps that distinct skeletal figure.
He has a twin brother that he ditched, that probably will end up becoming relevant sooner over later. That chump is fucking pissed.
As for the character type I'm looking for.. Species and gender wise? I'm not picky. Personality wise? I'm kiiiinda leaning to characters that are more on the chaotic end of the spectrum? Like. Maybe not ENTIRELY assholes (though I love asshole characters and would never dare to deny them) but you know. Characters that got a little umph to them. Maybe some with just as questionable morals.
That said, this is /not/ set in stone. The idea of this Chaotic Neutral Gremlin getting paired up with some Lawful Good chump thats just standing there HOLLARING as he grows ANOTHER body is also VERY appealing to me.
So. Hm, Guess I'm not picky about personality type either then, just something that can be amusing.
Also, your character can have as much or as little an idea of whats going on with this situation as you want. Did they start snooping where they shouldn't have?? Just kind of pick the wrong guy to argue with at the bar? Kicked out of the Cool Kidz Cult for necro-crimes? All up to you, world is your oyster. Ect Ect Ect.
Theres a line of gold on his wrist.
It matches his brothers perfectly. It's not something he questions, for the longest time. You don't question the freckles on your cheek, nor the color of your eyes. It was something that was just /there./ It was apart of them, and to question its existence wasn't even an offense, so much as unthought of.
He points it out to his twin one day, when he realizes that no one they've met has one quite like theirs. It's basic, for all intent and purposes. Just a bold line of gold, shines against the light like a bracelet. Like paint, even.
"Ma doesn't have a band around her wrist," He says, as he traces the line in his own skin, "'Lae don't either. I think it's just us."
Their mother answers them with a smile when they ask.
"Well, You were always together," She points out to them, as they hold out their wrists to her pointedly. She gives them a small smile, and carefully holds each of their hands, "It's never been important, for you to know what you'd say to eachother. It's simply important that you know it's there. And well.. There you are," She lets go of their hands, lets a soft breath out, "People love to talk about the bonds of family, but its rare for family to actually be bonded by fate. Don't ruin what She gives you, boys,"
Their mother was smart, and they were not. So they nod along, even if they don't fully understand. And it takes them years to truly realize what she meant.
~~
Theres a red one on his wrist, snug carefully under the golden line on his wrist. Its crimson, and brilliant, and he finds himself mouthing the words to himself time and time again.
His brothers has a very ugly word on it, according to their tutor. He blinks at it time and time again.
"I'm not even sure how you know that word," His tutor frowns, then - "Ah Right. You're Kioko's children. Your mother should take more care to watch her mouth around the two of you."
"Ah, you're that motherfucker that the word has been about as of lately around?"
His mother laughs herself silly at his brother's bond, when he asks. Sticks his arm out right to her. It's obviously not fully formed, the words are simple, still changing. But the swear stays thick on his arm, and she tells him not to repeat it with a pat on the head.
He rubs his own at night and wonders about it till dreams take him away.
~~
He dates a girl when he's 16, and then a boy when he's 20.
The girl, she's beautiful. She had these beautiful, teal eyes that just lit up when she spoke about something she loved. She had a passion for hammers, knew how to swing a punch. He'd once saw her deck someone straight across the room.
She finds her romantic soulmate because of him, ironically enough. An Aasimar woman, skin bronze that has an affinity for flames.
Their first words are
"I know I'm a little drunk right now, but I think I just saw an angel."
"You shouldn't act so surprised, It's just the alcohol talking."
They've no hard feelings between the two of them, and once or twice they take care to take a job or two together.
The man is more complex. A centaur blessed by the forest in whispers and prayers. His figure is thin and hind reminds him of a dears, and he's eve got these elegant horns to show.
He's a bit older then himself, maybe six years or so. He studies magic, all the same as him. Gets lost in his studies and forgets about things easily. He has this beautiful blonde hair, and a hand carved stave, and-
Their break up is sloppy, and leaves him torn up for months.
"You shouldn't look at people like that, they might get the wrong idea, lad."
(He never does find out how his conversation goes. Maybe he should return to that forest and find out one day.)
~~
He starts researching necromancy not for use, but for archiving.
It's an easy lie to play off of. He wouldn't make the lie too broad an say that the magic did not, at least, fascinate him.
And certain spells are easy to incorporate into his magic pool. False life is incredibly handy for when they come across being that see them as little more as targets.
Vampiric Touch has given him a sharp heal far more then he'd like to admit, and he finds himself using Circle of Death on men far more menacing then he.
But he keeps himself in the clean. Between himself and his brother? They like to travel. And as he travels, he writes down the oddest, most unique spells he can find in a singular book. He's never been sure what for, not immediately. But maybe one day he'll get use out of it. Maybe one day they'll actually know what to do with it.
They're 16, young, and dumb, and if you'd told him at the time he'd get use out of the most dangerous spell he'd collected he would have laughed in your face.
(They separate, later. Some stupid fight over some stupid issue. But he keeps the book near and dear to him, and doesn't let go.)
~~
The third man he dates is by far the most interesting.
By then, Thales is maybe 23. Allsuns... gorgeous. Again, a few years older then him, but thats to be expected with high elves. His soulmate has long since passed, something about a magical accident on the coast line. He laughs it off, tells him that it was a long time ago. Grabs his hand as he tells him not to worry.
It should have been his first warning, perhaps. It had always been weird when he'd phrased it like that.
Not to worry.. Not to worry....
But he's always been easy to trick with a pretty face. (Trick wasn't the right word. He always knew, of course, the man was dangerous. It was just easier to ignore when he had such a nice smile to him)
The man is really the reason he really begins to delve farther into necromancy. The push he needed into the pool.
~~
"Did you know there was suppose to be another goddess of fate."
Thales raise an eyebrow in Allsun's direction. They're in a library, reading over some book to dig out Information for the man's latest project. He always told Thales, you'd never believe how much knowledge you can find in the pages of a book. It might not be what you're looking for, but you can apply knowledge anywhere.
And you know. Thales was included to agree.
But he was tired, and the book offered him little use.
"Odd topic, but I'll humor you. Go on,"
"Not odd at all. In fact, I dare say it to be relevant," the man snaps his book shut, pushes his hair back on his head, "Lady Istus was with child. However, a great sin was cast upon it. Poisoned, if it were, by an overly zelous god. Stricken by grief, she goes to her good friend," A wiggle of the eyebrow, metaphorical air quotes "The raven queen, and begs her to help. So, the goddess rips it from her womb!" He swings his arms up, and Thales can't help but hide a snort into his hand, "Problem solved, right? Wrong! Now they need somewhere to put this child, and-"
"An unborn child to a major god? That's just Her story," he tilts his head, lets an easy grin cross his face, "Try again."
"Im not! Consider it- Perhaps. Perhaps it is, fate, wouldn't you put it? That her child suffers the same route as she," and suddenly, it happens. He'd always been easy to read. The emotion showed best on his ears, and there was nothing more amusing then sitting back to watch
But this? This was different. This was serious. It was a tonal shift that might as well have shocked him awake, straight into a new conversation.
"See, the fetus? They needed to put it somewhere. What better place then the lands they rule? It was left to rot here-" he taps the floor with his staff, "not here, specifically. But here, on this plane, on these grounds. And know what? It fuels our fates, Thales. Istus thinks she's in control of our bonds, but she simply records fate."
"No, no. It's spoken to me. It is the one that ties the strings between us and and the gods," there's a pause in the man's voice, and it's in that moment he catches the glint in the man's eye. It's bitter, and numb, and the pretty face that hides his intent is gone.
He was serious. The joke was gone. This wasn't hypothetical.
"But it is so, very angry. And instead of rotting, it feeds."
Allsun's smiles, and the casualty of it chills his spine.
"/We're/ going to raise a deity, Thales."
Hey.
What, the fuck.
~~
He's use to traveling with his brother, is the thing.
Between the two of them, they're quiet good at getting attention on themselves. Thales has magic that's different from your everyday wizard. Knows how to put his own touch to it. His brothers a bard. His entire job is to entice crowds. And though he doesn't come off as such, his brother enjoys having the attention on him, on stage.
They're good at what they do. Put on shows, make some gold.
Allsun is different.
He uses his words, gathers crowd not by story, but by motivation. He tells people what they want to hear, sways them in his direction. At first, it had been interesting to watch. He'd sit back and scribble in the notebook how the man swayed the last crowd, watch as more people turned their attention to his gaze.
Once he begins to hear the poison behind the honey, he knows he can't stay. But Allsun has already planted his seen in the world, and its only a matter of time before he watches it take its root.
And he's terrified as to what this man can do.
~~
Despite this, He stays with him as long as he can.
At first it's easy. Don't show him what you've found, things that could possibly help his conquest. He likes to think he did some kind of damage to it. That he put it off for just a LITTLE longer.
But it gets harder. The Allsun quickly finds followers, finds people who gather under word of mouth. It's far faster then he ever expects them to gather, and by then he's no stop to the resources the man has access to.
It's not just Allsun that is dangerous. This, thing. Allsun had been all too eager to explain to concept. Explain what it could DO and how it could grow. He's not an easy man to rattle. Despite this, he doesn't see why the man is so eager to rise such a being.
But he knows, if anyone can do it... Allsun can.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. And he is so, incredibly desperate.
He turns the pages of his book of forbidden magic, magic he's collected after years on years of travels through ancient ruins and tucked away cities. Magic only people that have been forgotten by the sands of time would practice.
For now, he runs. Begins accounting for what he'll need.
~~
The spell is not simple.
Of course, anyone could tell you that. If necromancy were easy, if just any ol'chump could do it, then they'd have immortals casually wandering about. He thinks, maybe
Mystra made the magic neigh impossible not as a test, but to test the bounds of morality. Ask any who defy the laws of nature, why were they doing it? For what purpose did they have, thinking they could go against the gods and the order of things as they stood.
But he is no simple wizard.
No, no. He's motherfucking Thales Maheras. If anyone is going to become a lich, it is him.
~~
He wonders, sometimes, what his brother is up to.
Bet he found his soulmate by now.
His thoughts linger on it for a moment, but that hesitance does not linger for too long.
He had more important things to deal with.
~~
If life is a knit scarf, staying alive is keeping on strings
With every attack in battle, another string is cut. And most of the time, when you fall in battle- Loose all your hp, so to say, the strings are given to death to tie. You're pulled to the next realm with guidance or by force. Or perhaps you're pulled to a new body, if you're quick enough.
However, becoming a lich... it's taking those strings, and wounding it around your soul. Time and time again, until theres no where you can go but here. For that, being a lich is dangerous. Theres nowhere to go when you die, when you truly die. You're trapped to wander forever, or vanish into nothingness.
He finds that, maybe. The idea of nothingness isn't horrible after all.
~~
Lichdom suits him well.
He manages it with far less struggle then he'd imagined he would. The hardest part was getting the supplies. Necromancy was not a cheap class, and he finds himself stealing more then he finds himself buys. He knows, he could possibly turn to his mother for money. Knows that she would not hesitate to send him a couple thousand gold should he ask. Might ask out of curiosity, not out of accusation.
But it feels wrong. He can't ask her for money, something that he'd be using to buy the supplies that would inevitably kill her son.
He spends the money on bigger things.
A clone pod, a new stave, a new wand. He keeps the stave in his house, a little place on the mountains, where snow just falls and falls. It's cold, its unforgiving, but its private. You need to know where to go to get there. Has a teleportation Circle in place, just to make things a little easier to manage. Getting there is harder then leaving.
Its also, private. Privacy is important, and if people are around to hear his screams, they think its the wind.
But once he has the supplies, its as simple as... following steps. Practicing his magic. Something he's done for years, shoved himself into time and time again.
It only takes him a year. Between jumping around, collecting the supplies he needs, practicing the magic he sways, and avoiding men on his trail, it only takes him a year to become a lich. He supposed, if there were anything to be smug about, that would be it.
(When he looks down at the words on his wrist, they've turned black. They're the color of death. He wonders if he's severed his connection with a lover.
He wonders if this is his punishment, for messing with fate. He was hoping she'd understand, but.. bah. He has more important things to deal with)
~~
He leaves to find Allsun.
Allsun has grown powerful in two years. Both in influence and magic. He has men to do his bidding, watches him create men to do his bidding. If he's ever felt bad about his necromancy, he knows not to now.
And. It clicks, one night when he's just.. watching. Far enough away not to get caught, but close enough to see.
A warlocke. Not a wizard, a warlocke. The man is a warlocke, and he's made a deal with something far outside his pay-range.
Then again. So has He.
~~
He burns through his first new body on accident.
He's lucky. His old body hardly had even decomposed
It teaches him to be careful with the blood and body he carries, however. There could always be another incident. He didn't have control over his powers, and snapping from something like possession to burning
If he lost his body entirely, this would be so, so much harder.
His second body had been slaughtered.
He's foolish, with the second one. Doesn't wait until the third has finished growing to actually start doing shit. He's lucky the process only takes three months. He even considers, for a time, finding another clone pod to bid on- steal. But one was bad enough to take care of.
So, he quietly learns not to proceed with a plan until his body has grown once again. He needs not to be left without a body for three months again. It gives him time to practice his abilities, sure. But it leaves him alone, with no one but himself.
The third
And the fourth is.... Well...
~~
He was killed again.
Allsuns men got to him. He knows, then. Damn, he'd thought he'd been sly, too.
He's patient. Patient enough not to blow his cover, patient enough to linger in a limp body, allow himself to be carried and ditched. It's a long wait. His body grasps desperately for sleep, to leave in a state of ignorance. But he can't let Allsun know about this, his lichdom is the one thing he has up his sleeve. The power that comes with it, is the one thing that he has up his sleeve.
And he continues to wait. He allows himself to bleed out. Normally, he'd not suffer the pain that comes with dying so slowly. He'd sever the threads of life that remains, taint his own living body until his soul could rise and lash out on its own accord.
But he needs to know there's no one near by. He knows their men will linger, knows it's safer to let himself die a slow, agonizing death.
In a sort of Mccob way, it's.. beautiful. Relaxing, even. Hanging onto the last threads of life, just long enough to feel the way few settles on him. Long enough to feel himself settle into the earth, something he knows very well he will not do for a very long time. His breaths are fleeting, shorter with every passing moment.
He knows it's nothing more then a calm before the storm, and It's when the last string of life leaves him, does his world turn to flames.
His screech is one of murder, one of absolute hatred and anger. It's absolutely animalistic, and bloody, and filled with a poison he didn't know he had in him until he'd died.
It's hard to keep himself composed. He /doesn't/ keep himself composed. Its moments like this he's envious of those that run on logic, that run with their mind fully in gear.
But here? It's a pure show of emotion and power. His rage meets his magic, and together they create a spectacular show of light and flame. It circles around him, dances on the grass and trees, sparking like electricity and dazzling like glitter. It's not entirely harmless, but he takes as much care as he can manage not to burn this body. He's been careless before, and there's nothing worse then needing to slice your skin on a fresh body, just to grow another. The memories of it don't exactly give him control, but it stops him from burning his immediate surroundings to a crisp.
And when he's done he's left... Alone. His power falls off of him in waves, a display that was only moments ago a spectacular display now chilling him to the bone (haha.) It falls off of him in waves, trailing off into smoke, which quickly turns into heavy mist. It settles in the ground around him, lingers in between the blades of grass and fallen leaves.
But it's harmless, now. Any necromancy taint is minimal, And he's left alone, at the mercy of his own emotions.
...
Except.
He's not alone.
As his anger dies and the flames fall, leaving him floating there, he actually notices them for the first time
They're sitting close enough to him that they couldn't have gotten caught in the cross fire, but absolutely must have felt the heat of it. They look.. terrified? Pissed? It was hard to tell. He couldn't connect dots or emotions in this state, just knew that emotion absolutely should not have been a positive one. His eyeless gaze flickers over them, taking in the sight of them on the ground (broken leg? Bruised body. Possibly beaten by Allsuns men. What the hell did they do to them?)
They speak to him.
He blinks. Everything snazzy he'd thought he'd say in this moment- if his soulmate was the one to speak to him first. It's gone out the window. Something.. Vore. Something about wanting to be tied up. Something FUNNY.
He just feels dizzy. Thats hard to manage, when you've no physical form.
"Oh Huh," He says, thoughtfully, glancing down at his own, skeletal wrist. The words are still there, engraved in black under a dusky grey, "You know, I wondered how I was going to tell whatever poor bastard got stuck with me about /this/." A pause, and he doesn't even acknowledge that is on their arm forever, ("Guess that cats out of the bag.")
The laugh that follows is sad, and to a degree cruel. He wonders if they've been given a new soulmate yet- Another one. How ironic would that be?
Though, he thinks, perhaps this is istus' way of punishing him for his sins. Not by not giving him a soulmate. By tormenting them, his /soulmate./
Its not something he needs to be concerned about.
He hovers for a moment, glancing down at his own body. The strings that keep his soul tied to it have far since been severed, leaving him without a husk. Its a nonissue. He has another one grown, and he'll have another one soon enough.
"Look, as excited as I am to meet my soulmate. Thrilled, really, honestly, like genuinely it's hard to express this right now but- Fuck it. Okay," Keeping his voice from the terror it demands to be is hard, cruel even. He manages, "We don't have time for formalities. We need to leave. I burnt through this body faster then I thought I would," something about that is wrong. He knows, he knows he needs his body. He can't just fight without it.
"Come on, it's not safe."
He casts false life on them.
It's no pure heal, but it should fix them up long enough to get them out of here.
(It's a shame. The words "So, what are your thoughts on vore?" Would have been /hilarious/ on someone's arm.)
0 notes
Last Seen Blogs
3zalklam
مُحَمّدْ
way-to-healthy
HEALTH AND FITNESS
skyecrystal
Leaping through worlds~
metallesbianvampire666
Metal Music , Depression , and Passion
my-chat-logs
˘◡˘