#and the cycle repeats itself but im done the night

[24-0z]

So, Aftg covid Andreil headcanon let's go

You see, I currently have covid and while I live with my sister and my mom I still get kinda lonely since I'm quarantined in my room all the time, so alas I have brought you pretty specific things that I think Andrew, Kevin and Neil would do in the worse case scenario that Neil became covid positive and the three of them had to stay in their dorm room having close contact with a positive :

Let's get a little backstory, the university was making tests to every student, with a quick test checkpoint next to the library, and while Wymack made it mandatory for all of the foxes to go there at some point Neil has to get physically dragged by Andrew first thing in the morning to actually go there.

First of all, imagine Neil getting the news, because this man's first thought would be "really, I get through torture, the mafia, and one petty short Japanese motherfucker for this? The nerve

But, that's it chop chop chop everyone to their dorm to get their tests done and Andrew and Kevin are quarantined with Neil until further notice because they're roomates.

Andrew knew this would happen since he had seen Neil coughing the day before so he wasn't surprised.

Kevin wants to die since quarantine means no going out and no going out means no exy.

Neil soon starts to panic after realizing this exact same thought multiplied by 10 since his fever is starting to get higher, so it's panic time.

Andrew has his own little panic moment after realizing that he would have to suffer Kevin and his exy withdrawals plus a sick and emotional unstable Neil, so things were great.

They all just get ready for the ride while listening to Neil cough for their bedroom .

All the other foxes are negative by some miracle (including Andrew and Kevin) so Andrew and Kevin have to go all the way to either the girls room or Matt's room to go the bathroom since Neil had taken custody of the one in their room .

Neil spends all his time either texting the foxes or texting Andrew who surprisingly responds in no time since he actually has nothing better to do .

Sadly that also means that the 3am texts from Neil saying he can't sleep or move because of the fever and the coughing also go to Andrew which makes him a little worried for the junkie's health, just a little. ( he is actually quite worried and has texted Aaron multiple times asking if what Neil was going through was normal but shhhhh keep it quiet) .

They have to deliver Neil's food at the floor of his door just for Andrew and Kevin to see a very sick Neil smiling to a cup of tea as if is its his long lost lover.

Also the picture that Andrew and Kevin would make just waiting for Neil to come out of the room, waiting from the other end of the hallway just to see him pick up the food, both on their pajamas and with masks on, to see Neil close the door and proceed to disinfect the hallway.

Neil asking if there's someone close by before opening either the bedroom or the bathroom door : voice cracking and low " Is anyone around, Andrew? Kevin? If don't answer I'll open the door, " waits three seconds "fuck it (coughs) I'm going to the bathroom".

Also I'm 100% convinced that Neil and Andrew have conversations through the door, like Andrew would come by and ask how he was doing and if he needed something and Neil would just get really close to the door and would rest his forehead on the frame with a bonk and silently respond between coughs that he is fine or when he is on a fever peak that he misses Andrew and that he actually feels quite shitty .

On the other hand the only conversations that Neil has Kevin are short comments by his door like "hey, the Trojans just lost their match 11/13" "yeah Kevin I know, I could hear you scream" Or when Neil is mid trip to the bathroom he just sees Kevin by the edge of the hallway saying " Neil, you should stop coughing, really, we are going to get behind if we don't train and we can't afford to lose any players, so just stop it now " "Kevin , (coughs) it's not something (coughs) I can control, (takes a breath) do you really think I would spend one more minute on those same four walls? (coughs)

Andrew has by this point taken out the batteries of the remote to prevent Kevin for putting another exy match on their TV.

And, also a classic worried Andrew going to knock on the door saying : "Neil, you're coughing too much we're going to the hospital" silent forehead to frame bonk "Drew it's okay really I feel better since my fever came down, (coughs) now it's only the coughing that gets in the way, I'm fi-" "You're on thin fucking ice Josten, don't you say you're fine to me when you've been coughing non stop since the last 4 hours " "I know, I know (chuckles and coughs) but trust me, if it gets worse you're the first one I'll call, but until then (coughs) just gimme a couple of hours " " I'll be asking for your temperature every hour so you better not lie if it changes " "Yeah , yeah now hurry and leave because I know Kevin is dying to tell you about the new Trojans line up " "I hate you Neil" "Sure thing drew (coughs)".

I cannot make myself write more since I currently have a fever myself but when I get better I guess I'll write another one with shenanigans of Neil getting better, until then he is left to perish.

#the Trojans are a comfort team #so covid its not funny and im actually struggling but hey at least i can keep doing this #bonus points for kevin screaminv at the tv avoing andrews knifes #neil has already memorized every crack on the wall by that point #also none of you cant fight me on this one beacause i know for a fact that neil would text andrew on a fever high thing like #i miss you #im not feeling so good #could you get some more medice? andrew? #and then andrew would be like #God dammit neil call me for this things what if i dont wake up from the texts #but i didn't want to wake you up #and the cycle repeats itself but im done the night #people stay safe #wear masks #please #aftg #aftg headcanon #all for the game #andrew minyard #the foxhole court #andreil #neil josten #twinyards #aftg andrew #aaron minyard #kevin day #aftg series #aftg neil #aftg au #aftg fic

[wizkiddx]

unusable faces

i have exams hence why i needed to write something exceptionally cringe :)

PSA: this is completely inspired from one of my fave writers own blurb @blissfulparker​ --> completely recommend u go read hers its much better than anything i could ever write!!!! (and just her whole account) = link

Summary: pure exhaustion and mutual pining, Tom Holland x actress!reader

^(just thought this was cute, doesn't really fit aha but full credit to op!!)

A scheduling nightmare would be putting it lightly. Perhaps almost unavoidable but that didn’t make it any less of a hellish form a torture. Harry had very helpfully said it actually was a form of torture, that is sleep deprivation. Y/n loved her job - it was all she’d ever really wanted - yet that thought was quickly becoming not enough to get her through the day. Not when it felt like an interrogation tactic used by the CIA. 

To give a quick timeline of the past few days may give a little context:

Thursday - filming the fight scene all day plus an evening-turned-half-the-night-shoot due to some technically difficulties delaying the process.

Friday - flying to New York while doing read throughs of scenes for the next few days; followed immediately by getting glammed and filming the tonight show with Fallon; then a dash across town to the late late show with James Corden; then straight back on a flight to Atlanta that landed at stupid o’clock in the morning

Saturday - a full day of shooting in a mock grand central station set

The press trip to NY had been unplanned… to say the least. But the star of their studios other new release had taken ill - meaning they had slots booked on some of the biggest talk shows in America that would just be abandoned (angering the shows bookers too). It was a waste of perfectly good promo time and since the studio had their two other stars together doing a block of reshoots - it wasn’t a conversation. Much more a call demanding the two of them to be on the plane.

Normally this wouldn’t be such an unmanageable ask either, except the reshoot block was really rather time pressured. You see, the promo tour wasn’t far from beginning meaning they really needed the final film in the can. So really it was a bit of a mess. Just to free up that single day the two were in New York the whole schedule had had to be rejigged - in doing so they’d lost a rare day off too. It was just typical.  

The joys of success hey?

Well, that’s at least what Y/n was making herself think whilst her incredibly talented SFX artist was in the process of crafting a deep wound onto her upper arm. The reason why she would be ‘dripping with blood’ whilst at a train station was beyond Y/n to be honest - she hadn’t been allowed to read a lot of the script so even now as filming was drawing to a close, the story arc of the movie she was headlining was still a little ‘fuzzy’.

“So I watched your ‘spill your guts’ thing on YouTube” Ellie giggled whilst reaching over for more prosthetic putty- a technical term apparently

“I’m glad one of us enjoyed the experience” Y/n replied with a sigh, rolling her eyes at the mischievous smirk on her face - no doubt Ellie took great joy out of seeing her suffer through eating a thousand year old egg. Which Y/n swore the taste of was still in her mouth… and it seemed as though it’d never leave. 

“Oh don’t worry darling I did too” Nelli called over from the next chair along, where she was doing Tom’s makeup for the day of shoots. “Between that and the animals on Fallon, you made a hell of a lot of people laugh last night” Tom’s artist was referencing the fact one of Jimmys other guests was a zookeeper, so at the end of the interview he had you and Tom join in trying not to scream at the snakes and spiders.

“You mean laugh at us?” 

“Well of course darling!” Nelli exclaimed back in an overdramatic bronx accent making all three of the women burst out laughing, Ellie’s unceremonious snorts echoing through the trailer only egged them all on more.

Tom in response, who had otherwise been absent from conversation for the majority of the morning, exclaimed a curse and jumped up in his chair. While you and Ellie collected yourself, Nelli apologised to him.

“Oh sorry love, I’m interrupting your snooze with my uncontrollable comedic gift” She spoke sweetly, even if still taking the moment to flaunt to the other women, as she squeezed his shoulder compassionately.

“No no” Tom waved off her apology, attempting to rub his eye before Nelli swatted his arm away - a stern look for the risk of ruining all her hard work she’d put into making his face look half presentable. 

“I’m impressed you can sleep while they poke you with all these er instruments” Y/n added in, having only just realised Tom had been in a light sleep for god knows how long they’d been in that chair. It did seem a bit unlikely, being able to fall asleep as you were dabbed, prodded and brushed. 

“Maybe you should try though Y/n… your purple eye bags are proving a struggle even for me” Ellie quipped back, now it was Y/n’s turn to give the stern look. Tom took the explain though, shutting her off from whatever kindly meant insult she was about to throw back at her friend. 

“No normally never, I just….” He was cut off by an ear splitting yawn, appearing almost powerful enough to crack his jaw - which would be a disaster, for no one should ruin such a beautiful and sharp jaw line. “…uh-sorry. I just think I ended up taking my NyQuil and DayQuil the wrong way round in the madness of yesterday.” Only Tom, the poor kid often seemed to lacking in any form of common sense - even if those closest to him knew just how intellectual and passionate he could be about the right topic. Affectionately, Nelli scalded his idiocy by jokingly swatting his head with a little tut.

“I can’t believe your still standing then! I’m barely alive and I don’t have any sedatives in my system.” It was true, Y/n was at that stage where every part of her body felt ridiculously heavy… eyes included … eyes especially. 

“But I did sleep on the jet back while your stupid self was studying the script!” Tom replied with a pretty inarguable point - at the time he knew her actions were stupid;  when their flight took off at 11 PM he was certain that the most valuable asset to his ability to act in the reshoots today would be sleep - rather than character development. And he’d tried to convince Y/n that briefly, but gave up. She was bloody stubborn when she wanted to be. 

“Stop competing about who has it worse cos I think it’s me and Nell”Ellie announced - making Nelli agree empathically with her coworker, nodding her head as she looked first to Y/n in her chair then back at Tom.

“Yeh because we have to deal with your unusable faces!!”

After much sarcasm thrown back and fourth, the trailer slowly ebbed it’s way back into serenity and peace as both artists focused on their work. Once Nelli was done she excused herself, Tom staying in the chair in favour of studying (more like staring blankly) at the dialogue for this mornings scenes. His pretence didn’t last long though and while Ellie was busy adding the final touches of fake blood to the now almost completely believable gash that she’d crafted on Y/n’s arm - Y/n had her attention focused the opposite way.

At poor little Tom. He looked so childlike, his slightly puffy eyes looked as if they had weights tied to them - they way he was having fight against gravity to flutter his eyes open, before loosing the next second only for the process to repeat as they dragged downwards. The broad muscles of his neck occasionally seemed to occasionally let up a little, letting his head tilt slowly at first until it gathered enough momentum to throw him off balance. The then sudden movement of his head unconsciously pulling itself back in line caused his eyes to bolt open prior to the whole cycle repeating again. All Y/n wanted to do was let him lay down someone, her heart feeling a tug in her chest just seeing him like that. 

Ellie proclaimed her completion of the wound, leaning back to admire her work before looking to get an affirming nod from Y/n. Yet instead, she was too preoccupied gazing at the boy slouched across from them. “Someone seems a little distracted.” Ellie smirked, finally garnering Y/n’s attention, only feeling more and more smug watching a light tint appear on the actors cheeks. 

“I-well-no… we need to go.” Y/n ignored her words as though nothing had happened, instead rushing off the chair to get Tom out the chair and onto the awaiting set. They had places to be.

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||| (bcos im lazy)

Honestly when the director, Ed, called for lunch break, it was pretty apparent to be purely as a compassionate gesture to Y/n and Tom. Both of them had tried so hard this morning to fully commit, even so they’d both been almost completely useless. Y/n kept missing cues whilst all Tom’s actions and lines where slow, dragged out and at times completely prompted from someone behind the cameras. 

So when the lunch break was called there was only one thing on Y/n’s mind and what sandwich was available in the mess tent was not it. Still standing on the set next to her fake holdall bag she looked toward Tom, who was pulling himself up to standing from the train station bench - the pace of his movement making him look more like an old man. 

“You good?” His answer was predictable. 

“I’m so fucking shattered”

Tom swore he’d never heard anything sweeter come out of Y/n’s pink lips than her next statement.

“C’mon I know somewhere we can lie down.”

Without any sort of thought Tom blindly agreed, nodding as he took her outstretched hand in his. The gesture in itself brought a fresh wave of comfort to his aching limbs and as his feet stumbled to catchup with her slight head start he leant the majority of his weight into their connected hands. 

Neither would admit it but they were ‘a thing’… whatever the hell that meant. It was clear as day to everyone and anyone that worked closely to the two but neither of them had ever broached the topic with each other. They’d worked on a few films together over the years; each time they got closer and closer to the point any job without the other simply wasn’t as good. It was scary though, especially for two actors in the prime of their careers. If they weren’t working the same film they’d likely be the opposite side of the world to each other most of the time - quality time together would be few and far between, Really their jobs didn’t suit dating at all, yet it would be perhaps easier if one half of it worked a ‘normal’ job. Something with consistency, a regular structure. A level of dependability that neither Y/n nor Tom could offer to the other. 

So it was terrifying, acknowledging the growth in their magnetic attraction to each other. Both were acutely aware that doing that, confronting their feelings, would most likely signal the beginning of the end. 

Although none of this stoped Y/n from returning the gesture, tilting her shoulder into Tom’s left side as they took slow steps through and then out the set building. She steered the two past the hair and makeup trailer and round into a store and extra equipment trailer. Tom tilted his head as she climbed the stairs whilst beckoning for him to follow - it didn’t seem like the most obvious choice. Rolling her eyes, Y/n explained.

“It’s where all the blankets and coats and kept for the raining scenes plusssss no one will disturb us in here.” Again Tom was not in a position to disagree, eyes drooping as his shoulders sagged to the floor. Right now he’d take anything. 

So he climbed up the stairs and shut the door behind him, just as Y/n flipped the light on. She was right, it was well equipped and with an almost mountainous supply of red blankets that normally the crew and extra would all be wrapped up in after the freezing rain scenes with all the ‘waterfall machines’ as Y/n called them. However it was also um…. It was cosy. “Oh I don’t think I realised how small it was” She chuckled lightly, since now the door was closed her back was pressed up against the far wall of cabinets and still her front was mere millimetres from Tom.

“I…I don’t mind… if-if you don’t?”

“I’m too tired to care” She giggled in response, and Tom , now with her seal of approval, immediately started ransacking the piled shelves for all their worth creating a floor carpeted in the pale red of the blankets, in an attempt to make it more cosy. Joining in, it was almost remarkable how quickly their bodies suddenly agreed to move, with the new promise of rest mere moments away. 

Once the trailer was fully drowned, Tom kicked off his costume shoes and threw his jacket off - it haphazardly landing by the doorway. Y/n copied him, leaving her stood up whilst he had the advantaged of already settling down on the floor, her standing and looking down at him.

The space between the two opposing shelving units was not close spacious enough for two people to lie down whilst keeping a respectable level of personal space. Suddenly feeling a wave of awkwardness, Y/n stayed standing, wringing her hands slightly - whilst fairly certain Tom could hear her heart running at 100 mph. 

“You er… gonna stay there or?” Tom, contrary to popular belief, wasn’t a complete idiot - he could see she was suddenly self conscious. He got it too - they’d never crossed this boundary of choosing to cuddle into each other. It had happened once of twice accidentally over there 2 years of knowing each other. Both of those times it was completely accidental, falling asleep watching a movie with a safe distance of space b between the two, only to find hours later their bodies almost completely intwined. Tom would be lying if he said that his heart didnt skip a beat when he had awoken to Y/n’s soft and gently breath fanning into his neck. He’d loved it, but understood that was unconsciously breaking down part of the wall they’d both been the constructors of.

For fear of getting hurt. 

So now, as Y/n awkwardly bent down and lay on her side, he thought it was imperative to make her feel comfortable. Naturally then, his arm slid round her shoulders and pulled her down toward his chest, releasing a little breath as he felt her relax, her legs slowly wrapping round one of his. 

“This okay?” He murmured, now into the crown of her head as she lay half on her side half on his chest. In reply she nodded into him and Tom couldn’t help but grin- unbeknownst to him but Y/n was doing the exact same thing. 

The peace lasted all of 3 seconds until she groaned again.

“What?” Tom enquired as she wriggled out his hold and stood up. Instead of replying though she just leant over and flicked the one harsh light bulb off making Tom chuckle as she fumbled her way back onto the padded floor in the darkness, earning a few grunts from both as she accidentally kicked Tom’s thighs or banged her head on one of the now empty shelves. Fumbling her way back into a comfortable position, occasionally cursing when she stubbed her toe- or Tom did when she accidentally elbowed him in the ribs. 

“Comfy?” Tom asked a little sarkily as he squeezed her a little more into his side.

“Mhmmmm… I’m gonna sleep for 100 years”

“Yeh me… me too”

And with that they both almost instantly and in complete unison sagged into each other and the blankets - the pent up stress and tension of the past few days ebbing away.

What the pair had neglected to remember was that sleeping for 100 years wasn’t really an option. The whole crew of 50 people, who wanted to restart filming after 45 minutes, had not been told about Y/n’s little hiding place. The pair were so completely safe in their own little cocoon of comfort they were completely oblivious to their teams calling there names more and more frantically. Completely oblivious to the game of hide and seek the situation had descended into, completely oblivious to Harrys natural annoyance as the director asked him for the whereabouts of the two stars - as though Harry was childminder to the pair of them.

It was Nelli who found them first. She’d and Ellie and Tom’s manager had all been recruited by Harry as part of the man hunt. Both girls, having seen first hand the state of the two this morning, were fairly certain they’d both crashed out somewhere. So Nelli, already with a sneaking suspicion, opened the door gently, her figure blocking the majority of the light from seeping through to the dimly lit inside. The sight she was met with had her actually pouting at the cuteness - and yes its a cringey word but also the only one appropriate.

Between bedding down and barely an hour later the two had managed to become impossibly tighter pressed to each other. Y/n’s face was pressed into the crook of Tom’s neck and his arms seemed to have pulled her on-top of him almost completely. Her left leg was hooked under his right, which was then sandwiched by his left too. They both looked so pure and innocent and god did Nelli know they both needed any extra time they could get.

Nelli cared a lot about Tom, she’d been working with him from the beginning, from the child star days to now. She cared about him like her very annoying surrogate son and she wanted to see him looked after. She also so completely wanted the two stars to stop pining after each other. Because frankly it was getting a little frustrating for everyone else. 

So she chose to tactically forget about her discovery, sneaking a photo on the sly before silently pulling the door closed and leaving them to their sleep. 

#tom holland #tom holland fluff #tom holland x reader #tom holland x famous!reader #tom holland x actress!reader #fluff

[milkteamoon]

To Scale the Stars

Read on Ao3

Fandom: Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun Rating: general audience Tags: space au, introspection Relationships: Amane Yugi & Nene Yashiro It gets lonely up in space sometimes. Maybe it's being alone that's making Amane imagine a fish outside his window. Written for Ad Lunam Zine @jshkspacezine

It’s early one morning when he first sees her.

Or late one night. The clock above his bed reads 5:53 am, but time means little when you’re floating through space, stitched between the dawn and twilight, caught up in the milky expanse of the moon’s glow. 

Amane knows he should be better about keeping time. He’s been meaning to since college- work on that whole “getting your life together” concept. But life skips stones at the speed of light, and suddenly he’s twenty-one, twenty-seven, thirty-two. Suddenly he’s picking through his hair to see if that one particular strand is blonde or gray, sifting through the infinite amount of work contacts in his phone just to find his brother’s number, staring out over the tiny lights of the world below wondering if anyone misses him up here. He already knows the answer to that last one- Tsukasa asks him every day when he’s coming home (and every day he tells him “soon.” And every day his twin tells him “not soon enough,” and every day the cycle repeats). And though his middle school teacher would sooner drink pen ink than admit it, Tsuchigomori is all too quick to take him up on the offer to go get a drink sometime.

But seriously, Amane needs to get better about the whole time thing. It’s really ruining his sleep schedule (one he barely had to begin with), but he can’t help that his body simply won’t adjust to zero gravity even after six months of living it.

So it’s 5:53 am when he straps on his helmet, attaches his lure, and makes his way out into the inky void of the universe. It’s a typical space walk, like he’s done a thousand times before. Check the meters, skim the paneling, adjust the satellite dish that came loose after the station drifted through a cloud of space debris.

The usual.

He knows how it goes.

He knows how quiet it is out there, lost in only the vibrations of his own breathing and the soft whir of his suit.

He knows where his head starts wandering when left to his own devices.

And it’s wandering he assumes it’s doing when he spots the tiny nebulous cloud on the horizon.

Something….moving.

Swishing. 

Swimming. 

At least, that’s the best way he can describe it.

It’s enough to make him rub his helmet in place of his eyes, attempting to blink away some sleep-deprived hallucination or trick of the lunar light. Trying to convince himself that it’s just his imagination. That somehow the dream he had the other night about an alien movie he’d seen with his brother had wriggled its way into reality in the most tantalizing concoction of space dust and astral debris.

The reality check fails to dissipate whatever it is, so Amane does the next most rational thing.

Winds his way back around the space station paneling. Slips his way out of the vast expanse of space and into the comfort of his quarters. Takes two aspirin – just for good measure, reminds himself to get new contacts when he returns to terra firma, and does his best to force his mind into a fitful sleep.

He doesn’t drift off until about three hours later, but when he finally does, he dreams he’s at sea.

Floating. Drifting over an infinitely vast stretch of blue. One that he can’t see the bottom of, no matter how much he squints or how hard he imagines.

Which is funny. Kind of. In the ironic non-humor sort of way that elicits more of an exhausted huff than an amused chuckle. Because Amane never really liked the ocean. And he has an inkling that the feeling’s mutual.

~

It’s a fish, he decides. Or at least, something akin to it. Something with fins and gills that twists its way in between the satellite paneling and the tail of Ursa Major. That inches its way closer with every passing sunset, to the point that it chips itself out of his imagination and into the corporeal world just outside his window.

Amane’s first thought is that he’s losing it. 

Naturally. Sure, it’s not the first time he’s been up in space alone, but it’s certainly the longest. Shijima’s team wasn’t set to dock for another three weeks, and the little human interaction he could manage were emails to his brother and the occasional check-in from mission control. 

Which was....fine, he supposed. In all honesty, Amane much preferred silence or his own choice of music to the prattle of other passengers. The lilting hum of the spaceship and the occasional beeps from the dashboard to the snores of coworkers who managed a much better sleep schedule than him.

But Amane’s not stupid. He also knows how silence gets to a person. He’s seen it many times.

But he doesn’t linger on the possibility of a dwindling psyche. He’s much too intrigued by this odd little creature that has taken up residence outside his window.

And there’s something sorta funny about the whole situation, because Amane’s never liked the ocean. Never liked the possibility of millennium-old creatures dwelling in hydrothermal vents, of things waiting to drag him down beneath the waves. Never liked the way his classmates’ stares settled into the back of his head like eyes lurking in the deep. Space isn’t like the ocean. Space is infinitely vast and infinitely empty. Space is made up of numbers and theories and rocket-fuel and rocks.

Space is dead. But he’s okay with that. Amane likes the silence. Amane likes to be alone.

Amane’s always wanted to get away.

And he’s been true to that whole “space is empty” belief until now. Sure, alien life might be statistically probable, but it was biologically impossible. Not real. A fabrication. Nothing but pipe dreams. 

Amane sends a message to Tsuchigomori before he crawls into bed that night. One he doesn’t really expect a reply to, because it’s nearly 3 a.m. in Japan. That is, unless Tsuchigomori’s been up grading again. Amane knows he has a bad habit of doing so.

And it’s nearly four hours later when he rolls over to check his smartphone and finds it blinking with a response that irks him for just how typical it is of his old school teacher, blunt as ever.

Amane: do you think there’s life out there somewhere?

Tsuchigomori-sensei: sure, why not?

~

And that weird little creature melts into his life much in the same way of cream into coffee: sweetly, slowly, and then all at once. To the point that his days feel empty the moments it drifts out of his glass canvas of the universe outside, if days can exist in a world filled with infinite sunsets. Well, about fifteen that is. Something that started awe-inspiring, then grated into a nuisance, and finally dipped their way into becoming the best part of his waking hours. 

Because every sunset the fish would resurface, and Amane took the time to sit. Watch as the sun glimmered off the switchboard at the head of the cabin and twisted its way between the creature’s translucent scales. Breathed in the much too filtered air and breathed out a stillness he hadn’t felt in years. 

It never speaks — not that he thought it would — but he comes to know its language. Its erratic swishes when he comes to peek outside, its bouncing when he tends to the zinnias. Maybe in another life, it’d have been a gardener, or a mermaid, or a novelist. Maybe that’s why it slows to a halt and allows him to bask in every glinting, rainbow scale when he finds the courage to speak.

It’s not the possibility that he’s losing it that eats at him. Of course not. Amane’s always been the weird kid, the hot topic of back-of-the-classroom conversations and breakroom gossip, and he’s used to that. It’s fine. In all honesty, finding out that he’s hallucinating sea creatures would probably be the least of his worries.

But there’s that small sliver of a chance that manages to keep him up at night. That somehow he’s.....not. That maybe, just maybe, the fish really is swimming through the stars outside the space station, and that maybe, just maybe, it’s nothing more than that.

Just a fish.

Impossibly normal.

Not some eldritch monster from one of Tsukasa’s horror manga, nor some anomalous amalgamation of undiscovered extraterrestrial life. Not some figment of a loose air tank that was slowly spinning his brain to mush.

But a fish. Just a fish. One with gills and fins and eyes glazed in nictitating nothingness. Just a fish as simple as that moon rock he had as a child, or the sun being nothing more than a ball of burning gas.

Perfectly........ordinary. 

And that frightens him, but he’s not sure why.

Amane presses his face to the glass one evening and finds it cold as ice. And as he does, the fish follows suit, bopping its nose into the window and wiggling its horns (fins? He’s not quite sure) in a sympathetic gesture.

And Amane whispers into the space between.

“Are you real?”

Even though it can’t hear him.

And the fish stares glassy-eyed and keeps its mouth shut.

Always does.

Always silent.

Why should he expect anything different?

~

It’s a Wednesday that the fish fails to show at the day’s first sunset.

Amane sits alone.

Goes about his day as one would without a fish.

Once, he thinks he catches it skirting around the edges of the paneling. Clipping the last rays of sun before dipping back into the faint luster of starlight. Swimming just as brisk as if it were navigating the inky black waves that he used to fear as a child. 

And then it’s gone. Just a blip. Just his imagination.

It’s gone again on Thursday. And Friday.

Amane sits at the window. Waiting. Watching for something that might have been a fish, or might have been just his imagination.

And when the final sunset dies on the horizon, he crawls into bed. Forces himself into a fitful sleep – or at least, he tries to. Because the whirs of the station are much louder now, much heavier and dripping into the static silence like mercury. Much more rhythmic, in a sense, that it almost reminds him of ocean waves.

Crashing. Clawing. 

And then still.

~

Amane dreams of his old middle school.

Dreams that it’s still drenched in that awful teal paint and that the old wing still sits abandoned and unrenovated. 

Amane dreams of himself. That he never grew past five-foot, squished down by some old school cap he remembers wearing on orientation day of first year. Amane dreams of a weird sticker on his face, ironically scrawled with the word “seal,” that he’s certain would itch like peeling face paint if his hands were just a bit more solid and his feet could touch the ground.

Amane dreams of a girl, one with droopy eyes and messy hair. One with a voice loud as thunder with ankles to match, and one that calls him some weird nickname he can’t remember when he wakes up. She yells a lot, and he laughs, and then she follows suit. As they should. As if they always should.

Amane dreams of the moon, stretched across the sky in luminescent majesty.

That the celestial body still holds the same wonder as it did in the tiny rock he had as a child. That rabbits still dance on its surface and that an old youthful wish still crawls beneath his skin. 

Amane knows that he’s not going to the moon in his dream, but that’s okay. It’s okay when that funny girl drags him along, adjusts his cap, and calls him things he might be embarrassed by as an adult. It’s okay when the umbrella kid comes to eat donuts (plain, no less!) with them, and they laugh about a joke he doesn’t quite get.

It’s okay that he’s not going to the moon.

Amane’s not going anywhere in his dream, but he’s not so lonely this time around.

And it’s okay. Somehow, it’s still okay.

~

It’s 5:53 am when Amane is awoken by one, two, three knocks at his window. It’s just enough to pull him from the warm haze of his mind into the chill of the cabin, just enough to do a quick sweep of the monitors and valves. And logically he knows no one should be knocking on his window some 250 miles above the earth. That realistically it’s space junk, or rogue rocks, or even more likely his imagination. But it’s still 5:53 am, and it’s much too early to go back to bed. 

So Amane does the next most rational thing. Straps on his helmet. Attaches his lure. Makes his way out into the inky void of the universe glazed in the red hue of another sunset. 

Just another day in the booming silence of non-gravity.

Until it isn’t.

Until he makes it to the rim of the plexiglass paneling and spots what he’s been searching for for the past 2 weeks.

Something moving.

Swishing. 

Swimming. 

He doesn’t even need to stretch his tether to full length, because the tiny nebulous cloud comes to meet him. 

“You’re still here huh?” he asks, not expecting a response. Because the fish never speaks, never gives him more than a shake of its star-dusted tail and a blink of those black, nebulous eyes. 

And maybe a week ago he’d have been saddened by this. Upset. Angered. Lonely, like the ocean itself far below his feet.

But it’s okay.

It’s okay when it doesn’t respond as he whispers about going to the moon like he did as a child. About his dream to get away from those bandages that tied him down, and the infinite space to do so. About the silence, conversation just through pixelated text, a sky that pulls his loneliness from his chest and knits it across the stars for all to see.

And he watches the sunset until it slips beyond the horizon yet again. Until his suit beeps at half oxygen, and until he realizes he’s alone once more in the rungs of the night’s shadow.

Amane then does three things.

Makes his way back inside and peels off his chilled suit. Catch the faintest of glimmers on the horizon, of starlight and scales and gills that breathe space dust, just before it slips off into the twinkle between Alcor and Mizar. Heads to his desk, opens his messages, and sends a quick note to his brother promising to be home soon. Even though it’s only 6 am there, and Tsukasa won’t – shouldn’t be awake for another three hours.

The response is almost immediate.

Not soon enough.

And Amane laughs, just a bit, into the silence of the cabin before typing his response.

You can’t wait a week?

But he already knows the answer.

And for once, it’s something the both of them can agree on.

#jibaku shounen hanako kun #jshk #toilet bound hanako kun #tbhk #hanako kun #yugi amane #yashiro nene #my writing #round 2 of zine fics #jshk fic

[finastrashcan-blog]

— i need you.

member: jeon jeongguk

genre: smut + angst + college!au

word count: 1.6k

warnings: cheating / jeongguk is kind of an asshole

parts: 01

soundtracks: love$ick, mura musa ft asap rocky + sidelove, astrid s

+++

gukkie (02:24) – you up?

You shouldn’t respond to his texts. You know you shouldn’t. But the bright light emitting from your screen has you rolling over, blurry gaze drifting over the message, a strange feeling sinking into your stomach. You were meant to be sleeping, but sleep had recently become virtually impossible lately. And it was all because of the name flashing across your screen. You don’t know why you do it but you sit up, elbows digging into the pillow that was once beneath your head, and reply.

you (02:27) – yeah. why?

gukkie (02:27) - can you come out? wanna talk

He wants to talk. That’s rich coming from him. Especially because he’s been blatantly ignoring your texts. You quickly flick through them now, cringing at your desperate multiple texts that were all left on read. It makes the vein in your temple twitch, how quick he was to ignore your attempts at communication but here he was at ass o’clock in the morning, demanding you come out to hear him talk. If had asked you to do that a week ago you would have given in, trotted out neatly like an obedient pup. But you’re sick of this cycle now. He was always pushing you away when you needed him most and dragging you back in when you thought it was finally over. He’s not going to get what he wants – not anymore.

you (02:30) – no.

gukkie (02:30) – what why?

gukkie (02:31) – y/n please i really need to talk to you

gukkie (02:31) - ?

gukkie (02:32) – y/n

gukkie (02:35) – can i come in? im at the door

You jolt up at that, the sheets you’d cocooned yourself in tipping towards the floor. There’s a beating in your chest that makes your throat close up, palms clammy as your fingertips swipe furiously across your keyboard.

you (02:36) – why? leave. i don’t want to talk to you.

gukkie (02:36) – can we talk please fuck don’t make this difficult

you (02:37) – me? i shouldn’t make this difficult? you can fuck right off jeongguk you have no right to say that. leave me the hell alone.

gukkie (02:37) – im sorry i know i fucked up please im trying to fix this let me in please

The sorry takes you by surprise. Jeongguk was not a person to say sorry. Ever. He usually found a way to apologise without ever uttering that word. It was one of the things about him that you hated. His lack of concern about how his actions affected others. That air about him because ever treated him like he was above apologising, like he was perfect. In a weird way he was. You should know, you’ve been friends since kindergarten. You’d watched him bloom into the person he was today; from a shy quiet kid who hated losing at anything to the tall confident athlete he was today. You don’t know when he developed that particular god complex – maybe when the girls in your class realised Jeongguk was pretty cute and his locker became stuffed with love letters and marriage proposals. You didn’t expect him to get any worse in university but somehow did. That arrogance of his landing practically all the girls on campus into his hands, like putty. You never expected to fall for that person, the person he became. But you did, like every other girl in this school, swooning over his buff arms and stupidly boyish grin. It was the tattoo that did you in though. The ink looked delicious over his skin, swooping black marks that curled from his shoulder into his bicep. It was so pretty, bold against his sun-kissed skin. Maybe if you had never seen it, you wouldn’t have done what you did (you know that’s a lie, you would have landed in Jeongguk’s bed regardless).

You want to push him away, forget what happened that night despite being incapable of doing so. But your heartaches too much, the sorry making your eyes swell, hot with tears. It’s what makes you roll out of bed and pad to the front door, glad that Chaeyoung was gone for the weekend.

You don’t expect to see him like that when you open the door.

His eyes are red, dark marks beneath them. The sight alone, makes your heart drop to your gut, an unsettling feeling resting in your chest. It’s an oddity, to see that much raw emotion in his eyes. Triumph, glee, joy – those were common. But Jeongguk is staring at you with such wide doe eyes, an emotion you’re afraid to identify buried in his brown eyes. He blinks like he can’t believe you’re right in front of him.

“Hi,” He croaks out, voice uncharacteristically soft.

“Hi.” You whisper it, terrified by how run down he looks. Jeongguk cares about his appearance, deeply. To the point of vanity if Park Jimin didn’t exist to take that title. But he looks haggard, hair a tousled mess instead of its neat style and a ketchup stain on his white hoodie. He’s holding it around him like a child clinging onto a blanket, back caved in on itself instead of the usual self-assured stance.

“Can I come in? He kicks his scuffed sneakers into the ground. “To talk.”

“To talk,” You repeat, trying to sound firm. Your early morning calls with Jeongguk usually never ended in just talk.

He walks in carefully like he’s stepping on glass. You would sympathise with him if he hadn’t stomped all over your heart already. You watch as he sits down on the couch Chaeyoung had stolen from her sister’s place and then pick the seat furthest away from him. When you sit, the shirt that you’d tossed on to sleep in rolls up your thigh, revealing a lick of skin that has the air growing cold around you. Something in you wants to crawl closer, nearer, on top of him. Any position that brought your skin together.

You yank the shirt over your bare thighs, acutely aware of his trained gaze on the ground.

“So,” You hiss out. “Talk.”

“Eunbi dumped me.”

You freeze, skin prickling at the revelation. Kwon Eunbi. His long-time girlfriend. The girl you absolutely abhorred because she hated you for no reason. Until there was a valid reason to hate you.

“Oh.” You said, clamping down hard on the questions rising in your throat. Jeongguk wasn’t your best friend anymore – why should you care about the details.

“Yeah,” He mumbles, pathetically really, fingers picking at the rips in his jeans.

“Sorry. You’ll find someone else.”

He looks up at that, eyes sharp. “You’re not going to ask why?”

“Why should I?”

“Why should you – fuck! Please, stop making this hard for me.” His gaze is hot, frustration making his jaw tick. You want to punch him.

“Why is it always about you?” You retort, voice rising out of your control. “Why should things be easy for you? You’ll be alright, Jeongguk. You’re fine – stop being dramatic.”

“I’m trying to fix what I fucked up! You’re not helping with that attitude! I know I messed up and I came here to make it better. Please, I don’t want to fight with you.”

You pause at that, chewing your bottom lip because he looks wounded. You don’t want to fight him with either but you’re still so angry. You can’t help the words that fly out of your mouth

“What do you want me to say, Jeongguk? I’m sorry your girlfriend dumped you. Here’s my pity. And then what, I roll over and let you fuck me?”

It’s so quiet you can hear the blood roaring in your ears. Your cheeks feel wet and there’s a ringing in your skull. He just stares at you, mouth a hard line.

“Why’d you say it like that? Was that all it was to you?” His voice wavers and it makes your heart seize up. Why was he acting like the victim? Who was the one who was played with here? Tossed around like a ragdoll? Called upon only when he had a use for you?

“That’s all it was to you,” You bite out, shaking slightly from how furious you feel. “Why would I treat any differently?”

“That’s what you thought?”

“That’s what I know.”

He pauses, brief shaky, his hands clasped together tightly. “I put my relationship on the line for you. I lied to her for you. You weren’t just a quick fuck, y/n. You weren’t.”

“But you acted like I was,” You murmur, voice small. Jeongguk exhales loudly and then he’s on you, squeezing you so tightly that you’re paralyzed for a moment, the press of his firm chest against yours making the air in your lungs vanish.

“Why the hell are you so difficult?” He whispers into your skin, shifting around to pull you into his lap. You don’t like how your body melts, finally getting what it’s been craving for weeks now. Your brain can’t formulate an answer to his question, focusing on memorizing the curve of his muscles beneath your fingertips. His skin felt warm, eliciting a tingly feeling across your own skin, leading straight to your core. You can feel his eyes on your face, his hands cradling your waist gently like he’s afraid you’ll bolt. You want to make a home in his hold instead, a place for yourself only. You hope he can’t read the desperation in your eyes. You need him more than you want to admit.

“Can I tell you why Eunbi broke up with me?”

You nod, heart skipping in your chest. He waits for you to look up, his gaze steady on you. A determination in his eyes that makes you shiver. Then he says it, the words you’ve been aching to hear since this all started. Since the first night that you’d stumbled into bed together, too drunk to care about the consequences.

“I told her I didn’t love her anymore. I told her I loved you.”

#jungkook smut #jungkook x reader #bts smut #bts x reader #jungkook angst #bts fanfic #jungkook fanfic

[awful-roffle-archive]

6, 8, 16, 17, do two of any of those four for callie and the other two for adrian 🙂

fuck you im doing all of them for both

6. Describe their eyes.

Adrian - His brown eyes seem so full of life, but his eyes feel rather aged and tired compared to the rest of him - like he’s been through a lot, despite him being rather young. You also get a sense he’s not telling you everything; like something’s been hidden for a very, very long time.

Callie - She also has brown eyes, although instead of there being the spark of life you’d expect, they seem guilt-ridden and full of regret. From the expression she’s giving you, you decide not to ask further about it. 

8. Any phobias?

Adrian - Has a fear of a very specific late night television show called Once More, in which a man sits in an empty room for hours on end. As each hour passes he gets up, and another person enters the room. This cycle repeats through a variety of different people before returning back to the original man. Although the show is mostly filmed in silence, occasionally they will talk directly to the camera - in some unintelligible language. Everyone Adrian has talked to about the show hasn’t seemed to understand what he was talking about. He also has a fear of clowns.

Callie - Has a fear of being alone, although it presents itself in many different ways. She also fears everyone she’s close to will ultimately betray her, or that she’ll do the same to them. She fears her actions are not her own, and that something, or someone, else is controlling her at times. 

16. Do they have any mental illnesses? If so, what are they and how do they make everyday life harder?

Adrian - Has ADHD, that effects his memory and distracts him quite often. Although medicated, his apartment does tend to be filled with sticky notes all over the place reminding him of what he needs to do next. Potentially has more, but I haven’t figured it all out yet.

Callie - Has PTSD, that gives her a lot of paranoia and guilt. Although she tries to repress as much as she can, it does come up at times and makes it very hard to get anything done. There have been quite a few times where she’s stayed in bed for days at a time - although her partners try not to let this happen anymore!

17. Did they grow up poor, rich, or somewhere in between?

Adrian - Grew up somewhere between poor and average class. He didn’t have the most as a kid, but his family was able to live at least somewhat comfortably - even if they had bad moments.

Callie - Also fairly average - as average as it could be, anyhow. Enough to get a fairly decent education and live somewhat comfortably. 

#THIS WAS FUN #my ocs #adrian #callie #calypso #what tag did i use for her idk #furbyq

[coconut-cluster]

Okay Prinxiety prompts. Uhh.....Roman has noticed Virgil sneaking out at night and follows him to see what he's up to? (Meh I definitely could have said that better. I'm blaming my cold....)

ohhhHH imma mix this one with @icequeenoriginal‘s comment, “I just had a nightmare. I’m sorry I woke you up.” (sort of, i changed it a little bit bc i realized im a fool and set it up wrong)

edit: im done and also a liar. “a drabble” i said. a drabble i did not do.

When Roman redecorated his room after Thomas finally escaped his teenage emo phase (oh, the emo phase), he added many things he’d seen online and conjured - theoretically, of course, because contrary to Logan’s beliefs, he did plan things out before acting quite often. He crafted a new desk with leaves carved into the corners and legs; he hand-sewed shimmering curtains that shifted from a fiery, golden orange to a deep red, depending on where you stood in the room; he added gold trim near the ceilings, a fluffy white rug by his bedside that made getting up in the morning just a bit more pleasant, and, most notably, a string of fairy lights. 

They were rather pretty, in his opinion (though everything in his room was pleasing to the eye). Little stars strung together in a line, dripping soft light across his cream-colored walls and shading his furniture in gold as they twinkled throughout the night; he was no space aficionado like Logan, but he had his own slice of the stars, and he was perfectly content with it.  

Except for now, that is.

It didn’t particularly help that he’d been up for hours by the time the clock on his desk struck a mocking tone, signalling three o’clock in the morning and a monotonous ticking that seemed to say “Why aren’t you asleep yet, you fool? Do you want to look like a sloth with seasonal depression? Or perhaps, say, a raccoon, is that it? A sad, tired, idea-dry, burnt-out raccoon with a penchant for being not only an impotent moron, but also a colossal idiot?” 

Perhaps he was projecting a bit. Whatever.

Nonetheless, it was the constant, albeit subtle, flickering of his fairy lights that drove his tired mind over the edge. They brightened and waned and brightened again in a mind-numbing cycle; Roman’s eyes, no doubt bloodshot, drifted to them over and over again as he struggled to force his thoughts back to his work, the stacks of unusable video ideas sitting in precarious towers all over his desk, but he couldn’t focus on either, so everything just seemed to blur together before him, and the only thing that pierced his haze was that godforsaken flickering-

“Nope.” Roman braced his hands on the edge of the desk and pushed off, spinning aimlessly across the polished wooden floor in his chair. “No,” he said into the nothingness of his room, “nah, nuh-uh, no thank you, not today, Satan.” He was done and very annoyed with all of this, and he was taking a break. 

(He wasn’t sure what exactly ‘all of this’ pertained to, but whatever it was, he was not having it.) 

And so he stood up, rolled his shoulders, and shuffled to his door, snapping a pair of fluffy slippers onto his feet as he stepped into the darkened hallway outside his room and began his descent to the kitchen. The house was quiet; he was usually the one who changed that, but it was also three a.m. and he did not want a repeat of his last late night excursion (who knew Logan could throw things with such accuracy? Had it not been a letter opener and aimed at his head, Roman would have been impressed), so he just took a deep breath and inhaled the silence like oxygen. It was admittedly very calming. There was a soft buzz to the air, like the quiet was trying to make itself known, establish itself in the space it currently inhabited, a fair contender for the attention of whoever came across it. Roman quite liked it, actually - a different kind of music to his ears. Maybe he should be quiet more often...?

Nah.

He hopped over the last of the steps and glanced around the living room, taking in the darkness-draped furniture before weaving around it. Flipping the lights on in the kitchen, he shuffled to the fridge, examining its sparse contents with a disconcerted and rightfully disappointed frown. All they had was a thimble’s worth of milk (thank you, Virgil, he thought bitterly), half a jug of apple juice Patton reserved for breakfast, and a single water bottle labelled “LOGAN’S - ANY TAMPERING WILL RESULT IN IMMEDIATE TERMINATION” on a neatly printed, taped-on index card.

Well, he supposed he could always run out and get more apple juice before Patton noticed.

He grabbed a cup from the cabinet and swiped the jug of juice from the fridge, fully prepared to indulge in some apple-y goodness, which he imagined tasted even better when you were sleep deprived and desperate for any other stimulation than flickering fairy lights, when he noticed movement outside the window. 

In an instant, he was on guard, fingers curled around his still-materializing katana (the fact that he was still dressed in a plain white shirt and pajama pants with shiny crowns all over was both irrelevant and inconsequential) as he shifted the blinds a smidgen more to inspect the figure on the sidewalk in detail. With some very heroic and brave-looking squinting, he could just make out messy hair, elbows stuck out, like the figure’s hands were in their pockets, and a mysterious and suspicious lump of fabric that looked somewhat akin to a hood-

Oh, Virgil. It was Virgil. 

Roman tossed his katana aside and let it dissipate into the air as he went to the door, poking his head out before stepping onto the porch. He watched Virgil kick a pebble down the sidewalk for a second in silence. 

“Virge?” he said finally; that rock was really getting beaten up, and it was kind of his thing to save damsels in distress. Pebble in distress? 

He regretted opening his mouth (there’s a first time for everything, right? That phrase would be fantastically relevant to this situation, except for the fact that Roman actually regretted just about everything that came out of his mouth as soon as it came out of his mouth, but wow, what a possibility for apropos idioms) as Virgil nearly jumped out of his skin, eyes wide and shoulders tense as he whipped around to face what he probably thought was a murderer or ghoul in the shadows. Roman put his hands in the air and put what he hoped was a reassuring smile on his face until the anxious side’s posture relaxed again. 

“What are you doing out here?” Virgil called down the sidewalk, voice oddly soft and shaky with the hush of the neighborhood. 

“I was getting a drink and saw you through the window.” Oh, good, cool, not stalkerish at all, Roman. Save it. Fix it now. “I thought you were a robber.” 

Nice. 

But Virgil just gave a short laugh, nose crinkling up a little. Roman’s heart skipped a beat. “What, you think I’m gonna rob my own house or something?”

“I couldn’t see who you were at first!” 

“Well, here I am,” Virgil sighed, spreading his arms in a vaguely tada gesture. “Not a robber, unfortunately; you can go back and get your beauty sleep, Prince Smarming.” With that, he shoved his hands into his pockets once more and turned on his heel, and returned to kicking that poor pebble down the sidewalk. 

But Roman didn’t move. He just frowned, eyebrows knit together as he watched Virgil shift oh-so-slowly across the cement, shoulders hunched in on himself. Roman picked out the shake in the anxious side’s voice moments ago. 

“Are you alright?” he called; Virgil paused. 

“Yeah.” 

“...are you sure?”

“Yes.” Virgil turned for a second - only a second - to cast a curious glance at the prince, still hovering by the door on the porch, but Roman could see an inherent lack of eyeshadow and the rather prominent presence of dark circles under the other Side’s eyes. “Go back inside, Princey. I’m chill.”

“Virgil, if something’s wrong-” 

“I just had a nightmare.” His voice was cold again, wavering at the end with what Roman could only assume was a memory forcing its way into the anxious side’s mind. “I’m sorry for bothering you, Roman, but it’s good now.”

“Oh.” The silence around him is no longer flickering or buzzing. It was forceful now, pressing on his throat; he didn’t like this silence, the need to say something and make it better, comfort or advice or whatnot - Patton and his fatherly habits were far more suited for it all - but Roman could never just push past the tightening in his chest when that quiet overtook him. “Where are you going?”

Virgil’s heavy sigh only made the tightening worse. “I don’t know.”

“Oh.”

Quiet. Again. 

“Are you just gonna stand there all night, or do you need an invitation to get back in the house-”

“Do you want to see some stars?”

The snark painted on Virgil’s face melted away in an instant as he blinked at the creative side, eyebrows furrowed. “What?”

“Stars,” Roman repeated lamely. “I couldn’t sleep earlier- well, right now, I guess, and I have these lights- they’re relaxing- usually, I mean, but that’s a different story, ‘cause I couldn’t sleep because I don’t have ideas and whatnot- but they’re nice! The lights, of course, not my ideas that I don’t have, but...” He stopped, took a breath and squeezed his eyes shut to gather his thoughts. Stupid, rambley, hopeless romantic. Maybe he should just embrace his clock’s prophecy and commit to the image of a very, very sad raccoon. He’d embarrass himself less.

“Sure.”

“What?”

“Sure,” Virgil said again, ambling to the porch, hands still tucked into his patched-up pockets, “stars sound nice, even if I barely understood anything you just said.” He leveled his gaze at the slightly shell-shocked prince, a smirk hinting at his lips despite the exhaustion in his eyes. “Cute, but ridiculous.” He nodded at the door. “Lead the way, star boy.”

Roman managed to give a trademark offended scoff at the nickname, elbowing past the anxious side, though the gesture was devoid of any malice. They made their way back through the living room and up the stairs, shuffling down the hallway with feather-light footsteps until they reached the cherry wood door to Roman’s room. The lights were off - as Roman had left them - and he got the admittedly satisfying honor of flicking the lightswitch up, eyes trained on Virgil for his reaction.

The anxious side’s plain frown flickered away as the stars around Roman’s room twinkled into luminescence, his eyes widening the slightest bit as he took it in. Their warm glow added a golden hue to Virgil’s pale skin, lighting his freckles like a constellation in themselves, and his eyes, so dark that his irises were hardly distinguishable from his pupils, lit up brilliantly with the fairy lights’ reflection, which shifted gently as his gaze fluttered around the room. 

“You like them?” Roman asked hopefully. 

Virgil looked at him with those sparkly eyes, eyebrows raised. “Yeah- did you make these?”

“Well, I conjured them, so I suppose, yes.”

“Huh,” Virgil breathed, turning his attention back to the lights, a crooked smile pulling at his lips. “You should add some to my room sometime.” 

Roman let his gaze linger on the anxious side’s face a second longer before considering the lights himself. “I could do that.” 

(What Roman didn’t see - and how could he, as he had already looked away and was not an omniscient narrator, which were natural in fairy tales, which he was not in; but every story had one somewhere, and this happened to be the place where said narrator decided to cut in - was that Virgil was mesmerized by both the lights and a certain prince beneath them, with his easy, content smile and adorably stupid pajamas, and as Roman looked away, the anxious side took the opportunity to let his gaze linger, too.)

They fell silent again. Roman noticed, with an easy sigh, that the lights no longer flickered, there was no buzz in the air, and he could breathe fine in this quiet. No, this quiet was soft, warm, golden; this quiet was comfortable. 

...Just as comfortable as the bean bags he summoned immediately thereafter, which he and Virgil collapsed quite ceremoniously into, and they let the silence and the gentle twinkle of lights soothe the tension from their shoulders and the unwanted memories from their minds - it might have been a temporary solution, but it was a solution nonetheless.

And Roman found he was content with his slice of the stars once more.

#Prinxiety #Roman Sanders #Virgil Sanders #Sanders Sides #my writing

[vincent-frankenstein]

different anon, but heck yeah u should definitely infodump about lucid dreaming!! im really interested in it

aaaaa okay !!! uh hold onto ur ears yall im abt to talk em off lmao

so !! if u didnt know, lucid dreaming is basically when you become aware that you’re dreaming while youre in a dream. once you’re aware, you can take control of the dream in literally any way u want — u can do anything, go anywhere, meet anyone, all with the knowledge that nothing can hurt u and nothing can stop u

its a fascinating concept and, the feeling when u actually become lucid for the first time? its better than anything else in the world. its the most invigorating thing u can ever feel, i think. but actually becoming lucid is, ,, , , hm. a time and a half. 

putting the rest under a cut bc, hooooo boy this is gonna get long

first things first! you absolutely have to keep a dream journal. forgetting ur dreams is all well and good when ur not trying to accomplish anything in them, but if you become lucid and then wake up with only the vaguest memory of what you actually did? thats painful.

u can either go all out and get a fancy journal and write them down physically each morning, or u can do what i do and just download an app. i personally use the app Dream Catcher, which lets u tag ur dreams for easy organization. just get in the habit of writing down your dreams every morning, and if you really, really cant remember anything, just write down that you didnt dream anything that day. you’ll train your brain to remember your dreams better

secondly! reality checks! are absolutely imperative! the idea behind them is that, if you do something throughout the day that “proves” your reality, eventually you’ll start doing it in your dreams as well. for example, a common thing in my dreams is that i’ll have extra fingers, so i check my hands a lot throughout the day. 

it can’t just be a casual thing, too. if all you do is glance at your hands and b like “yo looks normal, we gucci”, then you’ll do the same in your dreams even if you have Weird hands. trust me, Dream-You is an idiot, you gotta be obvious with this stuff. take a few moments, look at your hands, count out your fingers, and really think to yourself “am i dreaming?”

try to get in the habit of doing that at least 15 times a day, and eventually you’ll start doing it in your dreams too. 

now, if you just stick with doing those two things — which is what i’m doing right now — your chances of becoming lucid will raise astronomically. even just those two tiny things can train your brain into realizing when the world around you is real and when it isnt. you can also attempt something really easy called a MILD — a mnemonic-induced-lucid-dream — which can help your chances even more without upping the effort 

whenever you go to bed, just take a few moments — even just five minutes can help — and just. lay there. and think to urself, again and again “the next scene will be a dream” or “i will become lucid in my dreams tonight” or something similar. get ur brain really focused on lucid dreaming right before you fall asleep and chances are, those Vibes will bleed over into ur dreams and you’ll become lucid

practice those three things consistently, every day, and pretty soon you’ll start becoming lucid. it takes time, though! dont be discouraged if you end up not becoming lucid for the first few weeks, or even months. sometimes your brain just needs a bit of extra training

that’s what ive been doing for the past year or so — bc damn do i Not have the energy to actually put in too much effort — but!!! there are other techniques!!

my personal favorite is the WBTB, or wake-back-to-bed method. with this technique, you set your alarm for roughly 5-6 hours after you go to sleep so you’ll wake up inside of one of your REM cycles, specifically one where your dreams will be the most vivid. dont do anything, just roll over and go right back to sleep. 

you can even use a MILD along with this, repeat whatever mantra u usually use as you fall back asleep. you should start to see hypnagogic imagery — blobs of color and vague shapes floating before your eyes. just observe them. at one point, they’ll start forming more familiar shapes, and places, and maybe even people — and there should be a moment, a snap, where you go from observing these images to actually being in the scene. you literally build the dream around yourself, its magical

i have read that WBTB can cause sleep paralysis, but i’ve never personally experienced any problems with it, aside from the fact that im always tired the next day.

another thing that could severely increase your chances of being lucid but also involves Effort — meditation. specifically mindfulness meditation. the act of bringing full awareness to your Existence, honing in on just Your body, Your mind, Your breath, will make you a more aware, mindful person, which in turn makes you more perceptive of dream signs. also, the ability to clear your mind and center yourself with a moment’s notice really comes in handy when the dream becomes destabilized and you have to take control

if ur an adhd lad like me — or neurodivergent in any way, really — the idea of meditation can be,,,, terrifying. honestly, i havent meditated in like six months now, because it really wasnt?? doing anything for me?? mostly because im absolutely incapable of sitting still for that long without Something to stimulate me

so! loophole! guided meditations. having someone else guide you through the process can make it a bit easier to focus. just find one that works for u on youtube. there are even guided meditations made specifically to prime ur brain for lucid dreaming!

so thats how you get lucid. now for when youre lucid

at first, lucid dreaming is going to be extremely hard. dreams fall apart very easily — if you get too overexcited or if a dream-character looks at you the wrong way or if you cant seem to do what you want to do, your lucidity can fade and you’ll either go back to being your normal dream self or you’ll wake up. dreams are volatile and hard to control, and even harder to master

thats where meditation comes in handy. youll have a much easier time controlling your dreams if you can look at the world around you, take a breath, center yourself, and know that you can control it. that being said, you can absolutely learn to take control without ever having meditated a day in your life. its all about your mindset!

you have to go into it with confidence. the key to controlling your dreams is knowing that they’re your dreams. you cant forget that you’re in control. thats why i feel like learning to lucid dream doubles as a lesson in self-confidence — you have to learn to trust yourself, trust that you can handle any scenario thrown at you and come out on top.

if you can achieve this mindset, you can literally do anything. ive had maybe 50 lucid dreams since i started learning about them — which… is honestly a really low amount, but. i havent really had the time/energy to really throw myself into it  as much as i want to. but just in those dreams, ive flown, ive shapeshifted, ive met my sides, ive teleported to vast, gorgeous lands and seen some of the most beautiful things ive ever seen. anything is possible in a lucid dream; thats why its so worth it to put in the effort

but when youre first starting out, itll be extremely hard to maintain that mindset. like i said, Dream-you is dumb as shit — you’ll forget youre dreaming, you’ll be unable to control anything, you’ll wake up before you manage to accomplish anything. more often than not, the dream will destabilize, which is Not Fun

if the dream starts to destabilize — basically, if things start going fuzzy or vague, if you suddenly cant see, if you can feel ur body in bed, basically anything that points towards you waking up — there are ways to fix it. literally just spinning around helps for some reason? spin around, fall down, run ur hands along anything u can find and feel the texture, or just demand that the dream stabilize itself. most of the time, thatll work

and if it doesnt, dont be discouraged. theres always another night to dream

so basically: start a dream journal, do reality checks, mmmmaybe meditate if youre up for it, and your dreams will become like. at least 10x more interesting. trust me, try flying: its literally the best feeling in the entire world

its just !!! such a huge, incredible thing, and its so fascinating to learn about too. all the different ways you can train your brain, all the different things you can do, all the studies done on the subject. i suggest reading about Steven LaBerge or keith hearne. hearne led the study that proved lucid dreaming existed in the first place! he got a lucid dreamer to signal to him that he was conscious while asleep using REM (rapid-eye movement), because lucid dreaming happens during the REM state. also, robert waggoner’s book Gateway to the Inner Self is really fascinating too!

hm wow i really went ham here lmao

thanku for giving me a chance to infodump im very happy rn

#me: /spends a full half-hour infodumping abt something most people havent even heard of/ #now if only i could remember this much when it comes to schoolwork lmaooooo #ty for the Infodump Permission im !! vibin rn #lowkey highkey this makes me wanna get back into it. . . might do a wbtb tonight... #personal #logan talks #lucid dreaming #Anonymous

[sicklilspidey]

I Love You 3000 (appendicitis)

It's currently Saturday afternoon and Peter had nothing better to do than sit on the couch and watch movies with his sister Morgan. Peter absolutely loved days like this, between his patrolling and training with his dad, he felt like he didn't spend as much time as he would like with his little sister. Peter started thinking about when he was her age and how different his life was back then. Don't get him wrong, he loves his life now with the Stark's but sometimes he missed his real parents. He also missed his aunt May but knew she had his best interests in mind when she gave Tony full parental rights over him.

“ Look bubba, he touched the butt” morgan said laughing, which snapped peter out of his thoughts. They were watching finding nemo for what felt like the fifteenth time that day. Peter couldn't help but giggle at how enthusiastic Morgan was. Suddenly he got a sharp pain in his stomach which caused him to hiss. It caught morgans attention.

“Are you okay bubba” she asked sympathetically. “Yeah, bug im fine, dont worry about me” he responded trying to reassure her. 

“I'm not a bug, you are” she giggled. “ no silly, it was just a nickname, but you're not technically wrong” he laughed, even though he was still in pain.

“ I think im gonna go get some food, do you want anything” he asked. “ POPCORN” morgan yelled. Peter had never heard here say something that excitedly and he couldn't help but smile. While he was in the kitchen, he searched through the cabinets looking for something to soothe the throbbing in his gut.

“Can I help you find something” the voice made peter jump. 

“Woah kid, i didn't mean to startle you” tony said through his laughter.

 “Dad, you know not to sneak up on me” peter said, face red with embarrassment.

"Your spidey senses off or something” tony asked while ruffling his son's hair.

 “Stooooop, and i don't know, maybe they're just being slow because im tired” peter whined. 

“How could you be tired, all you've done today is watch nemo a thousand times” tony replied.

 “Hey, in my defense it's a good movie” Peter said as they both laughed.

 "Back to my original question since we got off topic. What were you looking for" Tony asked. Peter hesitated. He didnt want his dad worrying about him because he had a stupid stomach ache.

 “Just looking for some tums, all the popcorn we've been eating is giving me indigestion” peter replied. ‘Really Peter, indigestion. That's the stupidest lie ever’ he thought to himself. Appearently it wasnt too stupid because Tony seemed to have bought it. 

“Okay, well if that's the case i'd say lay off on the popcorn then” tony said as he walked out of the kitchen.peter knew he couldn't risk getting caught, he had too much going on this coming up week and he couldn't afford a sick day. He made his way back to the living room and plopped onto the couch. 

“ Hey! Wheres my popcorn” he hear morgan say from the floor.

 “Shit, i'm sorry. I totally spaced it” he replied

“Language “ she giggled. Peter dozed off soon after that.  When he woke up it was dark and he noticed morgan wasn't in the room anymore. He also noticed a blanket on himself. 'mom must have put it on me when she got Morgan' he thought. He went to sit help and realized the pain in his stomach was still there and it had worsened. He decided it would be best to sleep it off. 'Maybe if i get a good night's rest in my own bed it will help' he thought. Little did he know, he couldn't have been more wrong. 

When peter woke up to say he was in agony was an understatement. He was in so much pain he didn't want to move, but he knew he had to. He had a show to put on for people so no one knew that he was sick. He decided he'd skip on his morning patrol, which was unusual for him, he just knew not much would happen in the morning. He made his way done to the kitchen and the smell of bacon hit him like a ton of red bricks. 

"Hope your hungry. I've been cooking for two hours to make sure I had enough for tony, Morgan, you, and that monster you call a metabolism" peper laughed as she saw Peter walked through the doorway. Tony and morgan were already at their usual spot at the table.

"Hey, Albert Einstein called and said he wants his hair back" tony said making fun of his son's bed head.

"Good one daddy" morgan laughed.

"Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week" tony said while bowing. Pepper laughed from the kitchen.

When breakfast finally made it to the table, peter couldn't stand to look at it, but he knew he had it eat it. He slowly forced himself to take bite after bite until he was sure no one would ask him any questions. When he was done he went back up to his room to shower, then he crawled back into bed.

The next few days were relatively the same. Peter would wake up wanting to scream because of how bad his stomach was hurting, he'd force himself to eat, throw up after words and repeat the cycle over and over again.

When he woke up on Wednesday morning something was different. The pain in gis stomach moved. It wasn't all over but now it made itself at home on his lower right abdomen. Peter moaned when he got up and did the routine he'd been doing since Sunday morning. He was about to climb in bed after puking his guts out when tony walked in.

"Hey kiddo, steve and Natasha are here and they want to spar. Get your workout gear on and meet me upstairs" he said before leaving again

Peter sighed. The last thing he wanted to do was spar, but he knew he had to keep the act up. So he got up, changed and made his way to the sparring facility upstairs.

"Hey spiderling, glad you could join us" Natasha said, shooting peter a smile. He nodded in response and went to sit next to his dad on the bench.

"Okay, listen up. Natasha, you're with Tony, and kid, you're with me" steve said walking into the facility. Peter wanted to bolt. He knew there was no way this would end well and he was right.

Peter's spidey sense was on the fritz and he was having a hard time concentrating. He knew he got a few hits in but that's all he could recall before Steve hits his right side at full force. Peter was done, he couldn't hide it any longer. He doubled over and started coughing.

"Woah kid, sorry didn't mean to knock the wind outta ya" steve said making his way to peter. When he made it to peter he froze.

"What's going on over there" natasha asked. When she didn't get a response she decided to go see what was happening herself. "Holy shit, tony you better come help your kid. Im calling bruce down here. I'll have him bring a gurney." natasha yelled while running toward the door. So many things were running through Tony's mind but he knew he had to get to his kid. When he made it to Peter, he wasn't expecting such a horrific site. Peter was now on the ground cradling his stomach and next to him was a small puddle of blood. Tony didn't know what to say he just knew he had to leap into action. 

" Friday, call pepper and tell her we need her up here ASAP" tony yelled.

"Already done sir, Ms. Romanoff and Dr. Banner are coming down the hall also sir" friday responded.

Tony picked peter up and rushed him to the door.

"Tony im so sorry i-" steve started but tony cut him off.

"Not now Steve, I have to save my son" he said with tears in his eyes.

Tony met bruce and natasha at the door and laid peters limp body on the gurney. 

"What is going on, friday said you needed m-" pepper stopped talking when she saw peter.

"What happened?" she asked, tearing up.

"I'm not one hundred percent sure yet but my best bet is appendicitis" bruce said before rushing peter to the medbay.

"Mommy what's wrong with him" morgan cried. " its okay sweetie, he's just got an ouchy in his tummy, uncle bruce and daddy are taking him to the medbay, and they'll make peter all better" pepper told her distraught daughter. "Y-you promise" morgan stuttered. " I promise" pepper replied.

Pepper couldn't help but think how she didnt notice something was off with her son.

"I didn't know, i'm so sor-" steve began to say to pepper.

"Save it steve, i've got to get to peter" and with that she picked up morgan and ran to the medbay.

When she got there she saw four doctors hooking peter up to different machines.

" bruce confirmed its his appendix, they're getting him ready for surgery" tony told his wife. " how could we not have noticed. I honestly feel like i've failed as a father" Tony added while starting to tear up again.

"Don't say that! How could we have known. He was keeping it a secret and he did one hell of a job keeping it" pepper said.

The doctors wheeled peter out of the room and into the OR.

"Mommy, where are they taking him" Morgan asked.

"They're gonna go fix your brothers ouchy and make him all better just like I told you" pepper said.

Time began to pass and both Tony and Pepper were becoming impatient. They just wanted to know their son was okay. Just then Bruce walked into the room.

"Is he okay? Did everything go well? Did save my kid?" Tony started spitting out questions left and right.

"Yes, peter is just fine he's in recovery right now and should wake up in about half an hour. If you come with me i'll take you to him." bruce said.

Before they went anywhere, morgan walked up to bruce and said " Thank you for fixing my bubba's ouchy, uncle Bruce". Bruce couldn't help but smile at the five year old.

When they made it to peter, tony was taken back. He's seen the kid in a hospital bed multiple times because of being injured on the job, but this time it was different. Peter looked so small and fragile, like the smallest gust of wind could shatter him into a million pieces.

Soon peter began stirring and he opened his eyes.

"Hey my little spiderling, how are you feeling" pepper asked.

"I've been better" peter mumbled

" ill say, why didn't you tell us you weren't feeling well. I wouldn't have asked you to spar with us." tony said.

"Tony chill out, he's only been awake for a few minutes. The lecturing can wait. Let's be grateful our son is still here" pepper said.

"You're right, im sorry. I'm really happy you're okay" he told peter. Peter nodded in acknowledgement

"Mommy, can i get up there with him" morgan asked. Pepper looked at Peter, who nodded.

"Yes baby, but you have to be careful" she said picking her daughter up. She set her on the bed. Margan careful made her way up to peters face. 

"Don't ever scare me like that again, mister" she said shaking her finger in his face. Peter smiled.

"Im sorry bug, i didn't mean to scare you. I love you" he said to her.

Morgan grabbed Peter's face and smushed hers against it. "I love you 3000" she responded.

"Wait hey, that's our thing" tony said pretending to be shocked. 

Everyone laughed.

It took a few days but peter healed up quick and was back out patrolling and kicking his dad's ass in training.

#peter parker sickfic #peter parker sickfics #irondad #iron dad #iron man #spiderson #spiderman #stark family #pepper potts #morgan stark #natasha romanoff #steve rogers #spiderman sickfics #i love you 3000 #captian #black widow #mcu #marvel sickfic #marvel

[a-copper-butterfly]

Title Suggestions Needed!

OK so i posted this before but i have edited it a bit and added a new intro. im still not sure if i should continue this but what the hay, have a look and give us some feed back. :)

here is my re-write of good omens where the ineffable husbands raise Adam.

Monday, five days before the end of the world.

It was sunny, well, as sunny as it every was in the centre of London.

For those you don’t know, London is a vaguely potato shaped blob about ten miles across, with its own weather system which is almost entirely different to that of the rest of the UK.

Warlock was moping along his nose glued to his phone (not literally, thought Crowley sometimes wished he could get close enough with some glue without the little nuisance noticing.) Warlock had perfected the art of nearly completely ignoring the world around him, but remining just aware enough that he could complain at anyone who might distract him. His mother was walking along admiring the sculptures, pausing now and then to read an information sign. She did this much in the same manner as most people the world over when they want to look more intelligent than they are. They don’t actually read what is written on the information board, just frown and nod like you agree with what ever had been said then point to it and repeat a few lines when a friend or family member joins you. Thus, the whole cycle repeats itself.

A little way from the stroppy pre-teen, representatives of both heaven and hell discussed the fate of the world.

“I mean, he could just disappear,” suggested the Demon. He was slouched on the wooden bench. This was a master level slouch of someone who had trained for years to hold his body in such a position. A normal person if attempting this would pull a muscle if not worse.

The Angel that sat prim and proper next to him frowned,

“I don’t see how hiding him would help?” he said, which earned a glare form his companion. The thick sunglasses that covered the Demons yellow eyes obscure the fond irritation directed at the angel.

“I mean kill him Angel,” he clarified.

The Angel shuffles in his seat uncomfortable about this conversation. He tried to change the subject, but not too much avail.

“Are you going to get him a dog?” Azriaphale looks over at Crowley, know full well that he had been asked to provide the hound and that this was purely a diversion.

“I thought you were going to sort that out.” Crowley responded, rolling his concealed eyes.

“Why are we getting him a dog anyway.”

Crowley gave a side glances at his companion, silently noting the use of “we”.

Azriaphale wasn’t done with his grumbling, “Do remember the hamster?” he continued.

“Sir hamserlot? Yeah.” Crowley cringed at the memory of the tan and white little rodent. The poor thing when through so meant names it was a wonder it didn't have identity issues.

“How meant times did we have to pull that poor creature back from the jaws of death?” Aziraphale says shaking his head. The poor thing had eventual snuffed it permanently when the boy had gotten it into his head that hamsters could swim. They can, much like rats, but being put in a crudely made ship and pushed out on a duck pond in the middle of winter would be terminal for most rodents or any other small mammal.

A dog is a bit bigger. This was the only argument Crowley could come up with at the time.

“Well” Azriaphale relented “he is a bit older now.”

Crowley shuffled further into his slouch.

“It's the end if the world Angel.” He muttered gloomily, “Just give the kid what he wants. And he wants a dog.”

Aziraphale flinched at this painful truth.

“Well you have a point dear. Fine, he can have a dog.”

There was a pause as they watched Warlock ignore the world around him and play on his phone. The cartoonish sounds of games annoying the people around him. Crowley smirked; apps had been one of his ideas. Well, according to hell they were. Humans were always doing his job for him; he just took the credit when the higher ups asked about it. He sighs and slips back into the conversation about the end of the world.

“We’d better be there when the dog arrives” Crowley said darkly.

“Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary. I think he can look after himself and a dog for a few hours. He is old enough now, don’t you think?” Aziraphale smiles nodding in agreement with himself.

Crowley shot the angel a withering look.

“I meant the hellhound and Warlock, not some overly excited puppy with a bladder size of a spoon. This is going to a monster. The biggest they have got, according to downstairs.”

Aziraphale lip touched in a pout. “Oh” was all he said.

“I'm going as waiting staff don't want people recognizing me.” Crowley continued. “Can you bring him?”

“He said he doesn’t want to go. Said warlock isn't fun to hang out with anymore.” Aziraphale said, fumbling with a button on his sleeve cuff.

“Too bad. He is going to seeing a lot more of him whether he likes it or not. That is if there is anything after.” Crowley responded darkly. He still hadn’t figure how they were going to make it through the next few days.

A sudden though shot through Aziraphale mind.

“I could be the entertainment! I’ll brush up on my magic!” he said excitedly, beaming at the idea.

“Oh no, angel, please don’t. Really, it’s humiliating.” Crowley protested, “You can do miracles, why bother doing sleight of hand when you’re not good at it?” Aziraphale bounced in his seat. This was going to be fun.

  One late august night just outside the small village of Tadfield,

 When a snake regurgitates its food, its normally because it had been grabbed or handle soon after eating or is otherwise subjected to stress.

As Crowley knelt in damp grass on the bank beside the road, he wiped his mouth. The light from the Bentley’s open door revealing the grey sludge that was even now burning the grass. The small part of Crowley’s mind that wasn’t screaming in panic wondered when the last time he had eaten was. Without the help of the rest of his brain, he guessed around six years ago.

Pushing himself up onto wobbly legs, Crowley slid back into the driving seat, switched on the radio as he did so. As he pulled the car back onto the road, Crowley checked the rear-view mirror. The carry cot was still there. This was real.

“Shit, shit, shit, why me, why me?” he muttered to himself. The radio crackle,

“BECAUSE YOU EARNED IT CROWLEY” came the voice of Freddy Mercury.

“Fuck…” though Crowley.

 Sister Annabelle Houghton was totally normal, much to the annoyances of her parents. They were traditional occultists who gave her supposedly cursed china dolls and pretty, frilly dresses in attempts to get her possessed. They had even moved at an old house which the nice estate agent had made very clear was the site of quite a few murders and ghost stories. It even had its own graveyard in the garden. Her swing was hung in an old knarred oak tree which legend had it was used as a hangman’s gibbet, but she never used it. When Annabelle eventually grew up, her parents had lamented and had sent her off to the Sisterhood of Chattering Nuns of St Beryl. Not too worried about this, Annabelle went along as she thought it might be interesting.

Now she sat looking out of one of the convent’s window keeping watch for the arrive of Master Crowley and the baby boy he carried with him. The Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of this world, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness. She was very excited; this was a big day and she, Sister Annabelle, would be part of it. A cup of tea sat on the windowsill beside her. It had gone cold hours ago, No matter.

A car came screaming through the gates of the convert an excitement jolting up her spine. Sister Annabelle leapt from her seat and began to quickly click her way down the hall towards the foyer. She turned the corner expecting to see one of her sisters talking to Master Crowley but broke into a run when she saw which sister it was. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Sister Mary Loquacious, she was a lovely person when you were sat having a chat, it was just that things, important things, tended to go wrong when she was involved.

“Mother Superior! Mater Crowley is here!” she half-yelled, her fists full of her skirt as she leaped down the three little steps leading up to the corridor. Crowley quickly ducked behind a column in responses to the shouting. Shouting mostly lead to pitchforks, torches and a bad time for him.

“Greeting Master Crowley” she said, tried to smile and make her voice sound cheerful but her eyes were screaming at Sister Mary Loquacious. If she wasn’t holding The Anti-Christ, she may have shoved her out of harm’s way (harm’s way meaning any damage Sister Loquacious could cause to others, not the other way around). Sister Annabelle stopped next to her sister, peering at the bundle in her arms. The baby gurgled quietly. She quickly curtsied to Master Crowley who was still looking between the nuns wondering if he could slip out before anyone noticed.

The double doors leading to the hospital rooms flew open and a furious old nun stormed through. This was not part of the plan. She ran her icy gaze over the two nuns, who both know the consequences of that stare. Her eyes found Crowley who was trying not to look like a rabbit in the headlights, he was a demon after all. There was no escape now.

Long hair, sunglasses, modern suit, snakeskin shoes? Not what she though one of hell’s best demons would look like. She raised an eyebrow and forced a smile.

“Master Crowley, you’re just in time.” she walked slowly with an air of control. Crowley drew himself up to his full height. The Mother Superior had the eyes of a school master and they are well known for making even the naughtiest individuals squirm.

“Sister Annabelle, please go and retrieve the child of the ambassador and inform the other sisters that the switch will be taking places presently.” she smiled at the terrified nun who swallowed and nodded, turning to hurrying down the hall. Crowley tried to sidle towards the door. He stopped dead when the older nun eyes dropped on him. He tried to give her a confident smile.

“Master Crowley, if you would just pop over to the desk, we have a few papers for you to sign just to keep everything in order.” she turned and glided over to the foyer desk and began to draw papers out of a file. Crowley reluctantly followed her, dumping the now empty carry cot on the desk before propping himself up on it.

Sister Mary Loquacious frowned. She rocked the Anti-Christ in her arms. He was chewing on his hand. She had checked, it didn’t have claws. She looked up at Master Crowley and frowned again. She walked over to the desk,

“Umm Master Crowley?” she asked and terrifying yellow eyes looked at her over dark sunglasses. Something in the very pit of her soul screamed and told her to run. It was the same part that makes skulls scary, even though they are always smiling. She took a step back,

“Yeah?” he grunted. Mother Superiors levelled her glare at the Sister. She didn’t notice, now over the shock of yellow eyes she felt bolder,

“What is going to happen to the spare baby?” she asked. Crowley rolled his eyes to the Mother superior who was trying to set the younger nun on fire via sheer force of will. Without taking her eyes of her pray the Mother Superior said,

“Yes, that was something I was going to ask you as well Master Crowley. We are willing to go through with the switch, but we want nothing to do with disposing of the baby,” her eyes now turned on Crowley “We may be satanic Nuns, but we are not monsters.” Crowley paused at this juxtaposition. He huffed and turned back to the paperwork, one of hells better inventions,

“Put it in the carry cot, I will deal with it,” Crowley replied absentmindedly. “Sure, why not?” Crowley thought “Not like it will matter in a few years anyway”. Sister Mary Loquacious ginned the kind of grin that would suggest she didn’t quite understand what was going on.

“Sister Mary, please take The Young Lord down to Sister Annabelle.” Mother Superior said as she started pulling out more official looking papers. Crowley slouched at the prospect of more paperwork. Sister Mary Loquacious nodded happily and pushed through the double doors leading to the hospital rooms. Now that The Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of this world, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness was out of eyesight, Crowley felt a weight off his back. He no longer wanted to vomit.

Sister Mary Loquacious had found a potable cot for the anti-Christ, in which he now rested. his red blanket tucked around him. She pushed him down the hall spotting sister Annabelle pushing a similar cot out of room 4. Sister Mary paused outside room 3 ready to make the swap. A putrid smell began to waft up the hall. Both sisters gaged. A similar smell began to rise form the baby in the cot in front of Sister Mary and the babies began to cry in unison. Sister Annabelle reached Sister Mary, her face pushed into her shoulder and her eyes watering.  

“I think our lord has made us an offering,” she gaged as she spoke, “and this little man has also given us a gift too”. She pushed open the door to delivery room 3 and hurriedly pushed the cot in. Sister Mary followed with her own charge.

 “You change the babies and I will fetch the carry cot from Master Crowley.”. It was clearly just a excuse to getting out of having to be in same room as the stench for any longer but Sister Mary didn’t want to argue. The smell was truly awful.

In the bed, Mrs Young turned over a frown wrinkling her brow, some internal mothering instinct told her that a baby needed changing but something else told her it wasn’t hers so sleep on.

Sister Mary hesitated as she plucked the Anti-Christ from his cot and laid him on the changing table beside the door. She unwrapped the blanket and dropped it back in the cot. The baby whimpered as she removed the dirty nappy and cleaned him. She cooed at him. “Imagine little me changing the Destroyer of worlds’ nappy and powdering his little tush.” Sister Mary thought to herself. The baby in the other cot began to cry.

The mother in the bed yawned but stayed asleep. In an attempted sooth the baby, Sister Mary picked the ambassadors baby up. He was a chunky baby and quite heavy. Sister Mary had to shift him about a bit before they were both comfortable. The white blanket was lost in this juggling. As she bounced the baby the door to the room opened. Expecting sister Annabelle, Sister Mary turned to face the door where a man peering around the door.

“Err Hello. I’m the father, the husband, whatever.” He stammered, walking over to stand by his wife. Looking up he wondered over to the babies looking down at the baby on the changing table.

“Is this him?” he asked in awe. The baby looked up at him and immediately began to cry. Terrified about what he had done he scooped up the baby and began to pat his back.

“Umm no, these two not yours. Your baby is with your wife over there.” She nodded towards Mrs Young and the cot next to her.

Sister Mary was beginning to gag over the smell coming from the baby in her arms, she laid him on the changing table and began to clean him up.

After soothing the baby in his arms, Mr Young laid the baby down in the empty crib. He picked up the white blanket and tucked it around the baby. He walked over to the cot next to his wife and looked down at the baby. A small part of him was hopeful that he would look upon the face of his child and instantly recognized it as his own. But when he looked down at the sleeping baby, he looked identical to the two with the nun. This one was a little smaller but there wasn’t a moment of recognition. Of course, he didn’t say that. He smiled and looked back at the nun who was disposing of the nappy in a small bin next to the table.

“You know he looks like me.” He said proudly. The Nun smiled at him, rewrapping the baby,

“Have you thought of a name?” she asked. There was a nervous air about her. That probably came with having to look after two babies at once. He had new respect for people with twins and triplets.

 They had discussed names but not come to any solid concoctions, they had a name if it had been a girl and after twitching the blanket back it couldn’t be used anymore. The baby snuffled in its sleep; Mr. Young jumped back afraid that he would make it cry like he had the other child.

“We haven though of any names for a boy,” he explained as the nun had finished changing the baby in front of her. Then, looking down at the second with a frown, she looked at the baby in her arms. After a moment hesitant, she seemed to come to a conclusion and plopped it in the second cot wrapping it in the red blanket.

 “Well, what about the classic like Luke, John, Adam. Bible names and the like?” She rocked the babies in the cots. Mr. Young though about this for a second as he looked back at his son. He didn’t really look like any of those names, but they were good honest names. Suddenly a nun scuttled into the room. She looked a little out of breath. She looked at Mr. Young the way one would look at a velociraptor. She managed to school her features and smile at him.

Sister Annabelle had returned to the front desk and immediate run into Mr. Young who had asked what room his wife was in. Directing the man to the room without a though until she had picked up the carry cot. She had just sent an imposter into the same room as The Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of this world, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness. Picking up her heels again, she took off down the hall and was now stood with Sister Mary, two babies and the carry cot. She turned her slightly manic smile on Sister Mary. She winked. Sister Mary Winked back. They smiled at each other.

 “Baby removal services,” she laughed pushing the baby with the red blanket out of the room. She pointed at the carry cot next to the remaining baby and nodded down the hall. Sister Mary nodded back. She placed the carry cot on the changing surfaces and placed the remaining baby in the white blanket in it. Scooping up baby and carry cot she moved to leave the room,

“Umm,” said Mr. Young using the tone of someone who doesn’t want to be a bother but is no doubts going to be a problem.

“Is there any paperwork I need to fill in,” he asked nervously. Always ready to be helpful, Sister Mary nodded and beckoned for him to follow her. It wasn’t until they entered the hall that she realized this might have been a bad decision. She could see Master Crowley’s back to her when Mr. Young held the door open. Trying to think fast she walked up to him putting the now full carry cot next to him on the desk.

 “Here is you son Master Crowley,” she said as way of explanation. The yellow eyes turned on her and the primal urge to run shot up her spine. Mr. Young was too distracted to notice, walking up next to her and leaned against the desk.

“Umm, does the birth certificate need signing?” he asked looking over the desk at all the papers. The Mother Superior who had been overseeing Crowley filling out all the correct papers in the right places. It wouldn’t do to have buggered up the paperwork on such a big job. She pulled a file over the papers and put on her best plastic smile. She flicked through the relevant files and produced a birth certificate for Mr. Young. She also pulled one out and handed it to Crowley. Conscious of the presents of Mr. Young, Crowley took the offered page. Mr. Young peeked into cot at the baby.

“He’s a cute one,” he says trying to rope Crowley into a conversation so he can talk about his own kid. Crowley doesn’t acknowledge him. Not deterred, Mr. Young filled in the birth certificate leaving the name till last. He still needed to talk to his wife about it.

“Though of a name yet?” he asked. Again, this was met by silenced. Mr. Young looked over at Crowley, he was well dressed and very out of places here. He didn’t have the look of expectant father. He looked worried.

“We were thinking about Adam,” he continued. This conversation was going to happen even if he had to do it himself. However, this got a reaction out of the other man. He laughed. He snorted then laughed out loud.

“Something wrong with Adam?” Mr. Young questioned, getting slightly defensive over a possible name for his son. The man pushed his long hair back away from his face. He was handsome, even Mr. Young had to admit that.

“No, it’s a fine name. But I knew an Adam once, he was a complete bastard,”.

Sister Mary giggled under her breath. But then frowned at the thought of how a demon knew the original Adam. She puzzled over this for the rest of the conversation.

Mr. Young let his shoulders drop,

“What would you suggest then?” he asked sheepishly. Crowley turned on him and Mr. Young had to squash a sudden urge to back away and make himself small. Crowley looks him up and down before speaking. His emotionless sunglasses making it feel like he wasn’t blinking. He wasn’t but behind the glasses no one could tell.

“Something royal may be. Henry, James, William?” he suggested. Mr. Young felt better about these names.

 Crowley looked back at the almost complete page in front of him.

“It doesn’t matter, it will all be over in eleven years anyway.” Crowley mumbled glumly as he looked at the last section of the certificate

FIRST NAME:

It was blank. He stared at it. Did he have to name it?

“Oh,” Mr. Young said confused. In an effort to change the typic he looked into the cot again, “You know, he looks like an Adam.” he added.

Crowley huffed but he couldn’t think of anything better. Plus, it made sense in an ironic way. Crowley scribbled the name down on the final dotted line on the page pushing it towards the nun. He snatched the carry cot of the desk and strode out the lobby. Mr. Young tried to wave goodbye, but Crowley was long gone.

 Sister Annabelle handed the baby to the ambassador’s wife who looked down at him with the love of a first-time mother,

“Sorry that took so long Your Ladyship, he is such a scrumptious little man. Every nun in the convent had to coo at him,” Sister Annabelle sighed as she stood back, her job was done. She really needs a cup of tea now.

Mother Superior quietly pushed open the door and came in.

“Oh what a little lord,” she said causing all nuns in the room to smile. “Have you thought of a name?”

 The convent burnt down that night. However, the only paperwork that was destroyed was form that night. Apart from the birth certificate of one James Henry Young

 Crowley pulled the Bentley into a short dead-end road that was the entrances to a farmer’s field. He cut the engine and the lights of the snarling beast of a car disappeared, leaving only the dark hedgerow in front of him.

The silence enveloped the car, seeming to seep in through all the gaps in the doors and poured out of the vents. Soon Crowley was engulfed in it. He paused, appreciating the moment. The sound of the engine cooling was the only noise that could be heard inside the car. The carry cot next to him cooed. He looked over at his new acquisition and pulled it closer to him. He carefully pulled the small and oh so delicate baby out and laid him across his knees looking up at him. The baby yawned but seemed very much awake. The white blanket that was bundled around him stopping his arms from moving.

Crowley huffed and rubbed his faces pushing his glasses off slightly. He squeezed his eyes shut and began to mutter at the baby,

“Okay first test,”

He pulled his glasses off completely and crouched over the baby sticking his tough out. Letting the glamor over it drop so the tips flicked over the babies scrunched up little nose. His eyes almost glowed yellow in the darkness he didn’t show his true, true form just these small parts. The Baby screeched and Crowley jerked back worried, but unsurprised, that he had terrified the poor thing. When the screech turned into a gurgling laugh, he looked back at the baby who had wiggled free an arm and was grabbing at Crowley with a gummy grin. Slight confused Crowley rewrapped the baby in his white blanket and shifted it to be cradled in his arms,

“Okay so you passed the first test. Now we need to go other some ground rules if this arrangement is going to work out.”.

The baby babbled at him trying to wiggle free of his confines. He seemed fine with the whole yellow eyes and snake toung though. Probably knew no different, Crowley wondered leaning back in the driver’s seat.

“So I will house you, feed you and take care of you until you have worked out how to use a toilet after that we can look into the walking, talking, reading, writing business but there are some conditions that you have to uphold,”.

The baby sneezed, looked shocked at this strange turn of events, blinked a few times before looking back up at the demon. Now that he had the baby’s attention again Crowley continued,

“Firstly, the family you came from, the one that has the antichrist.” The baby watched him with uncanny eyes that seemed to understand what he was saying. That or more worryingly for Crowley he was ranting at a newborn infant that had no idea what was going on and was just watching him make noises in the dark car.

“Warlock, they called him Warlock.”

The baby gave him a half smile, hoping that the smile was from recognizing the name.

“You’re gonna have to be friends with that brat. secondly you will not get in my way or interfere with my work.”

The baby yawned at him. It seemed that all the excitement was getting the better of him its eyes began to slip closed. Crowley rocked him slightly trying not to enjoy holding the child, a small part of him that was thought to be long dead, started to thaw. He placed the baby back in the carry cot in the passenger’s seat. The baby whimpered at the movement but settled back in the crib snuggling into the blanket.

Crowley backed out and onto the road, where was the nearest mother care?

 Azriaphale had just got back to the book shop when the phone rang. He paused hanging his coat up on its peg, before picking it up, he suspected who it might be but wasn’t sure. He plucked the phone from the handle and held it daintily to his ear,

“I’m dreadfully sorry but I’m afraid we are closed at the...,” his polite but discouraging scripted was cut by a very familiar voice,

“It’s me Angel.”

It sounded although Crowley was making this call from a phone box. Oh dear, what trouble had he gotten himself into now.

“Crowley? Is that you?” he asked anyway knowing the answer,

“Yes. We need to talk.” He said matter of factly.

“Yes, I rather think we do.” Azriaphale thought of the conversation he had had with Gabriel earlier that day.

Crowley looked through the window of the Bentley at the sleeping baby inside. He hung up the phone and got back into the car. He looked over at the child. He was so small. Crowley stroked his cheek with a black nailed finger.

“You have no idea what is going on. I envy you Adam,” the baby sighed in his sleep.

#good omens #good omens fic #Ineffable Husbands #crowley x aziraphale #crowley good omens #aziraphale good omens #adam young good omens #fanfic

[twinkletoes-rp]

Wolf’s Rain: Bloodied Chances Ch. 4 - A Flash in the Pan

(Can also read on FFN / AO3 / Previous / Next)

They’re on their feet and inside faster than they can blink.

True to Hige’s word, Toboe doesn’t look good. He’s sweating and shivering at the same time, and his skin is flushed and much hotter to the touch than it was before. Kiba tries to touch him, brush his bangs from his forehead to make him more comfortable, but he yanks his hand back almost immediately. “H-he’s hot! Really hot! Like he’s burning from the inside out!” Watching and listening closely, on bated breath, Toboe’s heartbeat and breathing are quicker and shallower, too. Like he told them before, Kiba doesn’t know much at all about this stuff, always letting the moonlight take care of anything physical, but right now, he wishes he did. “W-what is this? Is it his wound? Hige, is it infected?”

Hige shakes his head vehemently. “It—it can’t be! We just checked and re-bandaged it two hours  ago, it all looked and smelled fine!” Just in case, though, he does check it, and he breathes a sigh of relief. “His wound’s fine. No gross yellow-white stuff like before either. Should be a good sign, right?”

The others can’t really say. Kiba purses his lips. “Well, if it’s not an infection, do either of you know what else this could be?”

“M-…-maybe…” Hige answers, though he doesn’t look sure as he watches their youngest worriedly, “…but I’m not a doctor or expert either. It’s—I haven’t really seen anything like this up close…”

Tsume’s been quiet the whole time, watching Toboe with a beyond-worried expression mixed with barely-controlled rage brewing beneath the surface. He wishes this was something he could fight—something he could bite and claw and kill with his own fangs. But as much as he hates it, the fact of the matter is, he can’t, and Toboe needs him, so for now, he takes a deep breath and does his best to push that aside. He closes his eyes and thinks back. Something about this feels familiar…

Then, it hits him, and he lifts his head. “A fever,” he murmurs.

Kiba and Hige snap toward him, the younger’s eyes narrowed and head titled. “A wha—?”

“A fever,” Tsume repeats, louder this time in turning to them. “That’s what the humans called it in the old world, at least. One of my—the younger humans working for me got sick once after a fight gone wrong, and it was just like this.” He thinks for a moment, his eyes going far away. “If I remember right, they kept him warm with a lot of blankets and put cloths soaked in water on his forehead. They made sure he drank a lot of water and ate a little—soup, I think, some bread dipped in it when he was a little better.” At the incredulous looks he’s receiving, he stiffens, then glares a bit, hoping the dark hides his light blush. “What?” he growls.

Kiba keeps his gaze steady, but Hige looks away and holds up his hands innocently. “Nothing! You just seem to remember a lot for someone who ‘never paid attention!’”

There’s the smallest edge of teasing to his voice, and if he’s honest with himself, Tsume can’t say their confused curiosity is undeserved. It’s just… Looking away, his voice lowers. “It was a boy, not much older than Toboe was back in the old world.” Gehl. “He’s the one who…fell from the roof that night…the night I met you three… I tried to catch him, but…I bit him instead, and he…” He doesn’t need to explain any more. Things are making more sense now, a whole lot more. Why he was so quick to drop everything to save Toboe the night they escaped, why Toboe didn’t flinch from his saving bite-hold, why Tsume came with them in the end…

It really was all because of Toboe.

Kiba breaks the thoughtful silence that’s settled. “We understand. You don’t have to say any more.” He smiles gently, proudly. “Thanks, Tsume. You’re a lifesaver.” Looking toward Toboe, he asks, “You said soaked towels and blankets, right?”

“Yeah. That’s what I remember, anyway. It seemed to work for Gehl, but…he was human. I don’t…”

“It can’t hurt to try,” Kiba presses. “For now, Toboe looks human, and instinct be damned, he’d probably have a worse shot in our true forms, so I say we do it.”

Immediately shucking off his jacket, he drapes it over Toboe. Following his lead, Hige does the same, then grabs a spare clean cloth. They only have a little bit of water left, but not a single one of them minds sacrificing their shares for this. Placing it gently on his forehead after carefully moving his bangs out of the way, they’re all relieved to see that Toboe looks a little more comfortable. Thank Paradise.

Hige looks over. “We don’t have any blankets, and that was the last of our water. We’re gonna need something a little easier on his stomach than what we had for dinner, I’d guess. Maybe that, uh…‘soup’ and some bread like Tsume talked about?”

Tsume himself looks conflicted about leaving Toboe again, especially now that he’s like this. Kiba doesn’t think they’re going to be able to convince him this time. “I’ll go find what we need. You two stay with him.”

“Whoa, what? Kiba, come on! Even you can’t carry all that by yourself!” Hige tries to reason, Tsume staring hard at him, too. But they know that look on his face…

“Then I’ll make a few trips. Toboe needs you right now to make him feel safe, Tsume, and Hige, you’re our backup healer.” He flashes them a small smile, already backing up toward the opening to eliminate room for argument. “I’ll be back soon. Howl if you need me.”

In a turn of heel and flash of white, he’s gone. It’s getting a little late, when most people would be home by now, but the shops here stay open later than most other towns they’ve come across, so he shouldn’t have much to any trouble finding what they need. Before, Toboe told them the birds in this town said it’s because of some kind of old-days crop cycle the townspeople haven’t dropped yet. The wolves thought it was strange at the time, but they’re grateful as hell for it now. They don’t want to think about what they would’ve done otherwise.

Hige sighs, but there’s a good-natured grin on his face. “Well, there goes our stubborn leader. Again.” His gaze flicks to Tsume. “Don’t tell ‘im I said that, okay? Any time anyone calls him the leader, he looks like he’s constipated or plotting our deaths or something.” Attention drifting to Toboe again, his smile falls. Hating how he’s shivering and his clothes are damp with sweat, he moves to push aside their jackets and unbutton the boy’s shirt before hesitating. “You said he’s overheating and freezing at the same time, right? Should we…keep him covered or air him out?” he asks, turning to Tsume. He doesn’t want to do the wrong thing and accidentally make the kid worse.

Tsume, having settled on Toboe’s other side and taken his hand like it’s second nature, ignoring its clamminess, hates what he has to say next. He’s sure it shows on his face, too. “Keeping him warm is crucial. Something about…letting the fever burn itself or whatever it’s fighting out of his system, I think.”

Hige wrinkles his nose. “That sounds awful…” He wants to ask if there’s a better way, but he knows Tsume would have led with that if there were.

“It was,” the older wolf replies quietly. Hige glances at him, surprised by the guilt and grief in his voice, and Tsume looks far away again, eyes fixed on Toboe. He must be remembering that kid from the old world again. “He was just a kid. Part of me wanted to help, but…around him, there was something… I couldn’t control myself. I’d lose focus and show my true form if either of us touched each other.” He huffs a laugh, smirking a bit. “It pisses me off a little, but you know, the only time I actually held it together was when I punched him to save him from Kiba when we first met and the half-dead idiot was killing every human who came near him.” Taking the cloth from Toboe’s forehead for a moment to wipe the sweat from the kid’s face and neck before putting it back, Tsume sobers. “Maybe it’s because he was the youngest of us. Maybe it’s because he trusted me—” for the most part, anyway, until that last moment; Tsume tries not to think about that, “—reminds me a lot of the runt. But something...hurt in me, watching Gehl suffer like that. I guess, that one time, even if I didn’t realize it until now, I made an exception to my distance rules.”

A moment’s silence. Then, “Good.”

Tsume snaps up to look at Hige, eyes wide. He blinks. “Hmm?”

Hige just grins toothily and snickers. “What are ya, deaf? I said that’s good! That you broke your rules and paid attention, I mean. Otherwise, we might be in a lotta trouble right now with our runt.” He softens, just a bit, reaching out to sift comforting fingers through Toboe’s hair. “Seriously, you really helped us out. When I ran to get you guys, I was panicking, thinking maybe I totally screwed up and hurt the kid even worse...” He sighs heavily, and Tsume can see how much those thoughts really were weighing on him. It’s in his slumped shoulders, tired expression, haunted eyes. “But then you came up with the answer like a Lunar Flower from Paradise.” He smiles widely. “Thanks a lot, Tsume.”

Thank goodness it’s night or Tsume almost definitely wouldn’t be able to hide the rather bright blush he’s sporting. Huffing a laugh, he reaches over to ruffle Hige’s hair roughly (but not as roughly as he normally would have). “You’re just lucky my brain’s the size of your stomach, Porky.”

“Yeah, se—hey, wait a minute!”

Laughter.

Half an hour later, Kiba’s back with everything in one haul. Apparently, a nice older lady near the store saw him struggling a bit and offered a large knapsack she didn’t need anymore. He’d accepted it gratefully and even her help folding most of the blankets into compact sizes so he could fit as much in the bag as possible. He’d brought back enough water, soup, and bread to last at least a few days and enough blankets (with some spare cloths thrown in) to cover each of them a few times over.

Helping him unpack everything they’ll need right now, Tsume throws the two back their jackets and covers Toboe with three of the blankets up to his neck. The boy whimpers and tosses his head, trying to throw off the blankets, but Tsume carefully pins his arms to his chest. “I know, kid. I’m sorry,” he sympathizes softly. “But these blankets should help you feel better, so I need you to leave them, okay?” There’s still a little fight left in the boy’s struggling limbs, and Tsume fractionally tightens his grip, lowers his voice that much more. “Do it for me?”

Toboe pauses, seems to hesitate, and then it shifts into an obedient pout as the fight leaves him entirely. Tsume sighs in relief and releases him, covering him back up and rubbing his arms gently where he held them. A small, proud, ridiculously-fond smile, almost a fiendish smirk, comes to his face. “That’s my runt.”

He turns to the others once Toboe starts falling back to sleep a few moments later, but he stops short when he notices Hige trying not to grin behind his hand (so cute!) and the startlingly soft smile on Kiba’s face. Again, thank Paradise it’s night so they can’t see his bright blush. He merely glares (he definitely does not pout!), mostly at Hige, and then goes on. “You think that’s enough for now or should we add more?” While he was covering Toboe, he noticed the blankets were maybe a quarter-inch thick. “They’re not the thickest, after all.”

Kiba hums, looks over everything. He wishes he could have found something better, but…well, the world is ending (again)… “Maybe two more? If we need more, we can always add them, right? But if we start out short, we might as well not have put on any at all.”

Hige frowns a bit, shrugging. “I don’t know. You’re the ‘fever’ authority here, Tsume.” Moving around them, he sticks his hand under the blankets to feel how hot Toboe is now. He winces and takes it out, blowing on and shaking it out. “Sheesh! He’s hot, all right, but not much more than before. I vote we put on at least two more. Better safe than sorry.” Switching out Toboe’s now warm and almost dry towel on his forehead for a cold, almost-dripping one, he wipes down his neck and face first. Some of the discomfort lines on Toboe’s face smooth out, and Hige yawns. “That should hold him for a little bit.” Rubbing his eyes, he says, “If I fall asleep, wake me up to check his wound and redress it in a few hours. Don’t wanna take any chances.”

Tsume looks between his two friends silently. They’re tired from the stress and worry of the day. He doesn’t blame them. He feels it, too. Of course he does. But he wants to stay with Toboe more than he wants sleep, so he doesn’t mind staying up with him. “I’ll wake you up, Hige. I’ll stay with him. You two should get some sleep.”

Hige raises an eyebrow, frowning deeply. “All night? Tsume, even you can’t do that.”

Kiba sets a hand on his shoulder, a small smile playing while his steady gaze never leaves Tsume’s. “It’s Tsume’s decision, Hige. If he says he wants to keep watch, we’ll let him. He’ll be the best at watching over Toboe anyway.”

Hige gives him an uneasy look. “Well, yeah, that’s a given, but still…”

“I appreciate the concern, but I can handle it, Porky,” Tsume breaks in, arms crossed lazily over his jacket-less chest. Taking a breath when Hige still looks unsure, he exhales helplessly. “Look, I’ll stay awake long enough for you to check him, and then I’ll sleep, but I’m not leaving him. Happy?”

The second-youngest is unimpressed. “It’s a start.”

Tsume snorts, then Hige, and then Kiba, and soon, they’re all laughing. It’s almost perfect.

When they get Toboe back, it will be.

#Wolf's Rain #Wolf's Rain fanfiction #Toboe #Tsume #Quent Yaiden #Chapter title is a reference to Ghel and his short life (and most importantly his short time in Tsume's) in case anyone was wondering #Any feedback would be greatly appreciated

[faithfulcat111]

Just Shapes - Chapter 11

Day 11 (Saturday)

RomanoTaco: hey pat, you ok? PattyCake: ya lo wsnt to mad RomanoTaco: did you tell him? PattyCake: most of it RomanoTaco: im gonna go w verg 2day PattyCake: ok

LBerry: Planets are to be pitied as they cannot know how big and cool they are.

Roman managed to slip out of the house with minimal berating from his mom about getting in so late, which he chalked up to a miracle in and of itself. He couldn’t find Elliott or Dr Picani during his late afternoon wanderings, but he did find Talyn back up on the roofs and the two quickly started making there way to the tracks with some more tin soldiers for Talyn to destroy. As they arrived and got into position, Talyn looked over at him and said, “You look horrible. Like you have been through way too many wash cycles, Killer.” Roman rolled his eyes, pulling up his legs and waiting for the train to pass before responding, “Look, it’s been a long week.” “Yeah, how much sleep did ya get last night?” Talyn challenged. Roman furrowed his brow as he tried to remember when exactly he went to bed, “I think it was 14 hours. So, less than usual.” Talyn gave some sort of indistinguishable sound of surprise and Roman looked over at them in confusion. “14 hours is less than usual?” Talyn gasped. “Dude, I’m lucky if I hit five.” Roman turned his head away before answering, “Look, I don’t rest well when I sleep. I feel more rested the more I get because of my nightmares.” Talyn hummed in agreement, “Now, nightmares I can understand. But you really shouldn’t be sleeping for 14 or however many hours you do sleep.” Roman didn’t answer, choosing to just lay there as the train passed by. Once it did, he chose to change the subject, “You know what Possum Springs is lacking?” “Wifi? Cell service? Any technology post-1980’s? A public pool?” “All of those, yes. But I was thinking that what Possum Springs is really lacking is-” Roman paused for dramatic effect, “-a serial killer!” Talyn raised a carefully coloured eyebrow at him, “Dude, don’t you count?” Roman huffed, “No, not me! A real bonafide killer who, you know, wants to kill people.” “Well, you did try to kill someone,” Talyn tried to point out. “No, I didn’t,” Roman turned his head away. “People think you did.” “I wasn’t trying to kill him. It was just a thing that happened,” Roman snapped, his voice trailing off as another train came by. Once it passed, Roman stood up and started to walk away. “Wait, where are you going?” Talyn called after him. “Don’t you want to see the monsters?” Roman turned back to them with a sad smile, “No thanks. I’m gonna go find my own.” Talyn’s whole face melted into one of confusion and horror. “Be safe, Talyn. Please,” Roman turned and walked away, not entirely surprised when Talyn didn’t come running after him. After all, he had given them no reason to.

Roman found Virgil at the Ole’ Pickaxe, giving about a hundred different warnings to his employee, Corbin, about what he would do if he came back and found even one part of the store out of place. Roman was impressed that Corbin’s face managed to stay fairly impassive through the whole exchange, only the slightest inkling of worry etching on his brow. As soon as Roman and Virgil finally left, Virgil lit up a cigarette and said, blowing the smoke into the air, “I hope I didn’t terrify him too bad. He’s a good employee.” Roman frowned, “He didn’t look hardly scared to me.” Virgil smirked as he unlocked the car, “Oh, he was freaking terrified. Corbin’s just really good at hiding it. Now buckle up, it’s a long drive.” “How long?” Roman asked as he shut his door. “90 minutes give or take, depending on how many people are out on the road,” Virgil said, snuffing out his cigarette before climbing in himself. Virgil was right, it was a long drive. Roman was extremely tired still, so he dozed on and off while Virgil blared loud music from the stereo. It was only when they pulled into a small town that Virgil turned the music down and Roman started to pay attention to the town. “I’ve never been to Gainesville before?” Virgil took another puff of the cigarette he was smoking, “Yeah, it is kinda small compared to wherever you went to school, but it has a university. Nice college town. Maybe you should have come here, then you wouldn’t have been so far away.” Roman grunted, “Yeah, maybe. Who do you even know here though?” “Old friend from high school, you probably don’t know her,” Virgil said as he started to pull into an open spot on the side of the street. “Really?” Roman questioned. When Virgil didn’t respond, Roman huffed and turned to look back out the window. He noticed the sign of one of the storefronts, “Hey, look! They have a scouts program here! Remember when we were in that.” Virgil hummed as he stepped out of the car, “Yeah, that’s where we met.” “Why did you even pick me out of all people to hang out with there?” Roman asked, closing his door behind him. “I started hanging with you cause I was new and you seemed smart and fun,” Virgil explained. Roman turned to him, “Well, what am I now?” “Fun,” Virgil deadpanned. “I hate how you keep saying I’m not smart,” Roman huffed, following Virgil who had started walking down the street. “Sorry,” Virgil said with a smirk. “I’m mostly kidding.” “Mostly?” Roman questioned but didn’t get a chance to continue as Virgil quickly snuffed out his cigarette, returned the other half to his case, and started down a set of stairs. Roman quickly scrambled after him, following him into what seemed to be a basement bar. A girl with short brown hair was standing at the bottom of the stairs, peering up with a glass bottle in her hands. As soon as she recognized Virgil, she exclaimed, “Verge! Where have you been? I was beginning to think you wouldn’t make it!” Roman peered around Virgil as he said, “Yeah, sorry about that.” The girl laughed, “Dude, it’s no issue. But I have a few possible prospects and I didn’t want to let that go to waste. Boy, you reek of cigarette smoke!” “This whole place does,” Virgil snarked, shoving his hands into his hoodie pockets. “Yeah, but it is wafting off of you. I thought you said you were gonna cut back and try to- who is this?” the girl had finally noticed Roman and was now glaring at him. Roman tried for a nice smile, holding out a hand, “Hi, I’m Ro-” “Everyone knows who you are, Roman Sanders,” the girl crossed her arms, one long fingernail against her bottle. “Oh, um,” Roman pulled his hand back as he struggled to find some way to respond to that. “Valerie,” Virgil cautioned. “I brought him. Now, what is the plan?” Valerie narrowed her eyes before turning to Virgil, “Dancing first. When the guys I have my eye on come back, then we move in.” “Are you sure?” Virgil asked, his voice dropping more and more into his deadpan. “Now, Verge, have I ever let you down before?” “Well, there was that one debacle with the-” “Other than that incident we never speak of,” Valerie cut him off. Virgil sighed then shook his head. “Good, let’s go.” “Man, she is intense,” Roman whispered to Virgil as they followed her out to the dance floor. “Yeah, well, she is just looking out for me. She was my only friend in high school,” Virgil said. Roman stopped as the reminder hit him, letting Virgil go slightly out in front of him before following once again. They weren’t out on the dance floor for very long before Valerie stopped them and pointed back towards the entrance. “I see them. Let’s go,” she grabbed Virgil’s hand and made to pull him towards whomever she had her targets set on, but Virgil dug in his heels quickly. He looked back at Roman, “You’ll be okay, right?” “Yeah, I’ll come find you when I’m done dancing,” Roman nodded. “Okay, no alcohol, remember.” And with that, Virgil was gone, following Valerie through the crowd. Roman continued to dance for a while but was beginning to think that he should get a drink when he spotted someone leaning against the wall. He slowly walked over greeting them with a loud hi. The mysterious person looked over at him, their piercing blue eyes staring directly at him from under their fluffy blue bangs, “Hey.” “Um, do I know you?” Roman asked, vaguely noticing a hint of black ink peeking out from under the person’s scarf. “Nope,” the person said, a smile on their face. “What’s your name?” “Roman. Roman Sanders,” he introduced himself with a slight bow. “Roman,” they repeated. “I like it. Sounds like it could be royalty if your last name was King or Prince.” Roman laughed, “Nope. But I could be a witch for all you know. Maybe I have hexed you with my name.” The undeniably cute person laughed in response, a dimple appearing in their right cheek, “Well, Roman Sanders. What’s your story?” Roman thought for a long moment. He could lie, but this cute girl, boy? Whatever they were, he just didn’t feel like lying to them. “I’m a recent college dropout,” he explained. “I am chasing a ghost or it is chasing me, I’m not really sure. I’ve had these dreams that I’m not sure were dreams, more like jumbled bits of history. I think I met god, but who’s to say. But I’m pretty sure the ghost kidnapped someone. I’m like 90% sure I didn’t imagine that, but my friends aren’t buying it. I came home in order to feel normal again, but that isn’t really working out. But then I came here and I saw you and…” Roman trailed off, looking up at those gorgeous eyes again. Upon realizing they looked extremely worried, he laughed nervously, scratching at the back of his neck, “I just realized I’ve never listed that all out at once before.” “Wow,” they breathed out. “I stole your life story.” Roman chuckled, ‘Yeah, I guess.” “Hey,” the person reached out to grab Roman’s hand. “Watch this,” they placed their own hand on top of Roman’s and then traced a pattern over top with a blue-painted finger. Roman instantly felt about ten times calmer. “Wow,” he breathed. “Pretty cool, huh?” they smiled, still holding onto Roman’s hand. Roman looked back up at those eyes, “Wow.” They chuckled and then they both just stood there for a long moment. Roman finally said, “Um, I’m gonna go let my friend know I’m over here. I told him I would let him know when I was done dancing.” “Okay,” they leaned in a little closer. “You do that.” They dropped Roman’s hand, leaning back against the wall. Roman took a step back, finding moving very difficult. “I-I’ll be right back,” he managed. “I’ll be here.” Roman took another two steps back before finally turning and ducking through the crowd, trying to find Virgil and/or Valerie and let them know he was going to be over there talking to that bombshell of a person. He found both of them talking to a couple of more guys. “Hey Verge!” he called out as he walked over to stand next to his friend, eyeing the glass bottle of bright green liquid in his hands. “Hey Roman. This is Nate,” Virgil said, waving at one of the guys who merely hummed, scratching at the stubble on his chin. “And I’m Sloane,” the other guy said, a smile on his face. “Your friend is pretty cool.” “Yeah,” Roman looked up at Virgil, noting how rigid he was standing. “Yeah, he’s pretty alright. Did he tell you I saw a ghost the other day?” Roman raised an eyebrow in confusion as Virgil giggled, but Sloane just asked, “Like Memento Mori?” “Yeah, yeah, sick transit glorya nerd,” Roman scoffed. When Virgil giggled again, he turned more towards him, “You’re laughing a lot.” “So,” Nate spoke up, apparently not having heard Roman’s comment. “Virgil, that’s an old name. Like something you hear in a book.” “A book you like?” Virgil suggested. Roman looked up at his friend in confusion. This was very weird. Did Virgil always act this way around others when Roman wasn’t around? That couldn’t be right. “I used to read a lot,” he spoke up, trying to redirect the conversation with the first thing that popped into his mind. “My grandad read to me when I was younger. Before he got dementia and died.” There was silence for a moment before Nate spoke again, “Sorry about your grandad, dude.” “It’s okay, it was years ago,” Roman shrugged. “Virgil’s mom is dead too.” Virgil let out another nervous giggle, hissing between his teeth, “Roman, stop.” “It’s okay,” Roman turned back towards the boys, purposely avoiding Valerie’s darkening glare. “I’m sure everyone here knows someone who has died.” There was silence for a long moment and Roman was starting to worry when Sloane spoke up, “My dog died last spring when my house exploded. There was a gas leak from when my dad hit the line trying to dig up the dog we had before that because we were going to move and my dad said he had to come with us.” There was silence for another long moment as everyone stared this time at Sloane. “Wow,” Valerie finally said, breaking everyone’s stares. “So, Nate, what are you majoring in?” Virgil asked, trying to get the conversation back to where it was before. “Political science,” Nate said, taking a sip from his own bottle, the liquid a murky brown. “Oh, that’s cool. Are there a lot of jobs in that?” Virgil asked. “Oh, I don’t know,” Nate shrugged. “I just find it really interesting. I think you have to be pretty materialistic to go to college just to get a job afterwards.” “That’s interesting because-” “Whoa, stop!” Roman cut off Virgil, his voice low. “Check out rich kid over here. Gonna pay zillions of dollars to go to school just cause something ‘is interesting.’ Verge, check this guy out. You ever worked a day in your life, prep?” Nate took a step back, frowning, “I interned at my uncle’s law firm, yes.” “Well, I bagged groceries,” Roman growled back. Virgil laughed lowly before saying, “That is so interesting. Roman, do you want to go dance some more?” Roman looked up at him, but before he could answer, Virgil gave him a subtle push, “You should go dance.” “Yeah, my parents own their own business, so,” Nate spoke again and Roman chose to stick around while Virgil was distracted again. “Oh, tell me about it,” Virgil asked with genuine interest. “I know a thing or two about running a small business.” Nate smiled, “Wanna go across the street and get a pizza?” “I could eat,” Virgil said. “And it’s a small business!” “You speak their language,” Nate laughed. “You can get us free slices.” Roman growled. He was sick and tired of this guy. “Verge doesn’t like spoiled rich kids, Maggie.” Valerie cut in, “I would like to go with you guys if you don’t mind.” “Sure,” Virgil said with a smile. “The more the merrier.” Roman was done with this whole situation. Why was Virgil acting so weird? He was obviously still super tense, but wanting to hang with these spoiled brats more. The lights of the bar were starting to blend together in Roman’s peripheral vision, but he had his sights set in on a certain guy who still stood out clearly from the crowd. “Hey Michael, let me tell you something about Virgil Alighieri. He is super on top of things, super smart, and super responsible. He runs like the biggest store in Possum Springs.” “Roman, no,” Virgil whispered. Sloane spoke louder, confusion on his face, “What the heck is Possum Springs?” “It’s west, in the mountains,” Nate explained. Roman just kept going, his eyes flashing, making the red more obvious, “While rich kid over here is studying politicians or whatever, Virgil’s out in the real world. Not like you college kids.” “Roman!” Valerie gasped, her hand clenched so tight that if her bottle was plastic, she surely would have crushed it. “What?” Nate looked over at Virgil in confusion, while Virgil just stared down at the ground, nervously giggling to himself. “I’m kinda over the whole college thing myself. Virgil and I basically run Possum Springs except there’s like a ghost or something,” Roman continued. “You two live in Possum Springs?” Sloane questioned. “Yeah, got a problem with that?” Roman snapped back. “Wow,” Nate whistled. “You drove all the way here from Deep Hollow County? Isn’t that like two hours away?” “No, I…” Virgil trailed off, trying to hide the shaking of his hands. Nate barked out a laugh, elbowing a confused-looking Sloane, “These two drove all the way from Deep Hollow! That’s rich!” “But, aren’t you like a student?” Sloane asked, confused. “Yeah, well, you see, I’m,” Virgil stammered. Suddenly his bottle fell out of his hand, crashing to the floor, spreading sticky soda everywhere. He put one hand up to his mouth and turned and ran, disappearing up the nearby stairs. “Wait! Virgil!” Valerie quickly took off after him. “What was that about?” Roman heard Sloane ask behind him. “I don’t think he’s a student here,” Nate sighed and a sloosh followed. “So?” Sloane still sounded utterly lost. Roman turned to give them a warning growl before running after Virgil. At the top of the stairs, he found Valerie across the street, calling for Virgil. Valerie spotted Roman running across the street and ran to meet him, her eyes dangerously dark. “What the hell was that?” she screamed. “I was going to ask the same thing!” Roman yelled back. “How in the world did you mess that up! He needs this! And now he’s who knows where! I swear, if anything has happened to him, I will personally end you,” she snapped. “Okay, geez!” Roman held up his hands in surrender. “Okay,” Valerie took a deep breath. “I’m going to go up the street, you go down to the docks. We find him, make sure he is safe, and meet back here. Got it?” “Got it,” Roman agreed and the two split, intent on finding their mutual friend. Roman ran down the side of the street, scanning everyone around him through the mist, trying to just spot his friend. Finally, he spies the docks up ahead with a silhouetted figure sitting at the end of one. He makes almost completely there before finally collapsing a few feet away. The figure turned around, Virgil’s dark brown eyes looking at him with contempt. Roman just gasped for air, “Sorry, I just ran all the way here. And it wasn’t even that far. I’m just really out of shape.” Virgil huffed and turned back to the river. He didn’t speak until Roman finally could breathe again and asked, “What happened back there?” “What happened?” Virgil snapped. “You ruined that chance I had! A chance at feeling normal for once in my shitty life! I don’t know if you could even realize how bad it is. My entire life ended the day my mom died. Now I have to take care of what is left of my family and every single day what little chance of a future outside of Possum Springs I have left slips away. You gave up the very thing I want so bad and I can’t help but hate you for it!” Virgil’s voice cracked finally as he lowered his head into his shaking hands. Roman pushed himself back up into a sitting position staring down at his own hands, eyes on a scar running along his left thumb. He muttered, “You don’t know anything about it.” Virgil’s head snapped back towards him, his face faintly flushed red under his foundation, “What is there to know?” Roman growled back, “You judge me, but did you ever ask why I left?” “Yeah. Your first day back.” “Oh,” Roman deflated, the little bit of righteous anger left leaving as his whole body sagged. “Right.” There was silence for a moment, as Virgil looked back out at the river. “So,” Virgil finally asked. “Why did you leave?” Roman blinked, staring at the strangely shaped boats across the river, “I… I don’t know. My head is in pieces right now. Any answer would sound nuts.” “Oh, well that’s illuminating,” Virgil deadpanned with a roll of his eyes. At this point, only his hands still shaking betrayed that he wasn’t totally emotionless. “Shut up,” Roman growled. “All this stuff going on all week? Ghosts and shit? I met this god thing for crying out loud. And look, we’re both trapped. But we’re trapped together. And I’m sorry.” Virgil looked back at him in surprise, “I don’t think you’ve ever apologized to me for anything.” “Well,” Roman shrugged. “I guess I’m full of surprises.” After another long moment, he asked, “Would we be friends if he weren’t stuck together?” Virgil sighed before admitting, “I don’t know.” After another long moment, Virgil groaned again before lowering his head back into his hands, “My life is so embarrassing. Why did I even come here? I almost didn’t. If you hadn’t said yes, I would have cancelled on Valerie.” “Hey,” Roman scooted closer so he was sitting next to his friend. “You are genuinely one of the strongest people I know. It takes a lot of bravery to try and change the entire course of one’s life.” Virgil snorted, his smile more genuine then any other he had given that night, “And I guess you aren’t as big of an idiot as I say. And you’re a genuinely good person.” Roman smiled, turning to look back over at the misty river, “I’ll take it. And tonight was a complete loss. I met a cute… someone.” “Really?” Virgil looked over at Roman with a cocked eyebrow. “What’s their name?” Roman opened his mouth to answer, but stopped, his eyes wide, “I-I don’t know. I didn’t even get their contact information. Virgil, we have to come back sometime!” He reached over, grabbing Virgil’s sleeve and shaking it with wide eyes while Virgil just laughed. “Okay, okay, we’ll come back,” he said as he pushed himself to his feet, holding out one still-shaking hand to help Roman to his feet as well. “We should make good time going home, it is such a clear night.” Roman looked back at the misty night behind them in confusion, before turning and chasing after Virgil.

#sanders sides #roman sandrs #virgil sanders #my writing #faith writes

[seekingwonders]

okay im a fckng attention seeker but the way i wrote the full moon in this fic makes me so happy here it is in its completely unedited since i first wrote it & un-beta-ed glory. content warning for vomiting, suicidal tendencies, and all that full moon fun stuff.

good job 2014!em

He had been wrong to fear Charms but right to think sitting down for two hours twice in the same afternoon would mess with his knees, his back, his neck and somehow, his wrist. He hadn’t even been writing.

“Can you help cutting that off?” Remus absently asked Peter as they sat down, again, this time for dinner. “And my right knee.”

“Sure, push up your sleeve a little.”

Remus yelped when the knife brushed to his skin.

“Sorry, Moony. Sensitive?”

“Yeah. Fucking burns. Don’t know what I’ve done to it.”

He left his left arm to die next to him, helping himself to his other one to rest his head on and wait it out. There was nothing else to do, anyway. Nothing that would change what would happen tonight. He’d eat food in a bit, just to have something in his stomach to throw back up as the moon rose but that was the extent of relief he could bring his body. (...)

“Evening Mister Lupin.”

“Evening.”

Remus paced to the other side of the room before Madam Pomfrey was done greeting his friends with reproaches to have walked him here despite her multiple warnings not to. In the background of his fast beating heart, his friends gave her every excuses and soon were making her laugh.

“How are you feeling, Mister Lupin?”

“Fine.”

“What’s this on your wrist?”

“Ice.”

“Right, good thinking. Will you need anything for the wait?”

“No.”

“I’ll be back in a few minutes then.”

“Ok.”

“So is it a snow night, then?”

Remus only understood he was spoken to at Peter’s third repeat. “What?”

“Want to go by the snow patch?”

“Don’t care.”

“We should go by the Really Big Tree.”

“Really fucking stupid name,” Remus contributed when he touched the wall by them, and went back toward the other side of the room.

“There are fairies there.”

He heard James roll his eyes at Sirius’ sulky tone. “We’ll let you eat the fairies. Perhaps Moony’ll help too.”

Remus’ stomach heaved at the thought. He stopped his ritual to take a deep breath. He wasn’t about to vomit before the Full. He was absolutely not letting his body do that.

“Joking, Remus. We’ll just fool around by the Really Big Tree and then come back by the snow patches.”

Remus came to the bed, sorry to have to sit in it before the three next days but not chancing anymore pacing.

“Do you mind…” He gestured toward the door and them as a whole.

“Sure. We’ll see you in a bit.”

“It’ll go well, Moony,” James assured, stopping to ruffle his sweaty curls. “Think snow!”

“I’ll think snow,” Remus mumbled back as he watched them cross the door. (...)

Remus laid back on the bed, ignoring the heat, ignoring the joints he would inflame, the bones he would break, ignoring that this was only the beginning of the sharp claws coming at him. (...)

“Would you like me to massage your hands?” Sirius asked, same soothing voice he used on his brother’s whims.

“No,” Remus sharply said, closing his eyes to escape anyone’s discomfort but his own. “Thanks. No, it’s fine.”

“You should keep pacing. That usually helps you.”

“No,” he said, and schooled his tone again: “I almost puked. I’d rather not.”

“Is there anything you would like me to do?”

“No.”

“May I touch you?”

Remus silently repeated to himself that whenever Sirius did leave with their friends, when Remus was alone, Remus did miss him. For some reason.

“This hand doesn’t hurt. Yet.”

To forego Remus’ unhelpfulness, Sirius sat down by him, Remus’ hand gently nested between his.

“Pomfrey is going to come back.”

“She knows, Remus.”

“What? No, she doesn’t.”

“She does.”

“Since when?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps since I asked her which healer group she would recommend we support.”

“What for?”

When Remus looked, Sirius had dubious grey eyes to show him. “The cure.”

“Oh. Right. Financed by the Blacks. Your great aunt would be pissed.”

“It was my thirteenth’s birthday present.”

Remus snorted. He shook his head, damning his own discomfort not to feel like kissing the lips of the boy by his side.

“Thanks.”

“Mm,” Sirius only said.

“I don’t want to do it.”

Remus let the silence stress the impossibility Sirius could do anything about that.

“I’m not even asking for a cure.” He took a breath. “I just wish I could skip the one.”

“We’ll find a cure.”

“I don’t care about the cure.”

He turned to Sirius’ side to put his lips to his, feeling them dry over Sirius’ skin and hopping there was any pleasure at all for Sirius even if there were none for him.

“Can I do anything?” Sirius asked after another stretch of impossible quiet.

“Just give me something silver and we’ll be done with it.”

Sirius did exactly what Remus always wanted him here for. He didn’t ask for Remus to cheer up.

Sirius stayed by him.

He stayed by Remus until Madam Pomfrey came back. He stayed by Remus through the dreaded walk in empty passageways and was still there when she opened the door of Remus’ cage.

“I don’t want to do it,” Remus said. He rushed to hold onto Sirius, hold him tighter, forgetting what Pomfrey knew or didn’t. “I don’t want to do it.”

“I’ll be back in a minute,” Sirius whispered to his ear, his soothing hands on Remus’ back. “I won’t leave for long.”

Remus shook his head, gripping Sirius’ shoulders. “I don’t want to. Please.”

“Mister Lupin, we have to go. The moon will be up in less than ten minutes.”

“Please, please, please-”

“You won’t be alone. We’ll all be with you. It won’t hurt as much.”

“It still hurts.” Remus’ voice broke. “I don’t want to.”

“Mister Black-”

“Leave. I’ll stay a little more.”

“Lord Black there’s nothing else we can do. Remus, be reasonable. You can’t ask anyone to stay with you. You know that.”

Remus hated that tone. That tone had told the same thing to him as a boy begging for his mother. That tone only wanted to protect itself.

“Leave,” Sirius repeated, colder, “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“You are under my responsibility as a student, I am not leaving you here.”

Remus took another breath of the scent that had kept him calm, the scent he would forever associate with the safety of Sirius’ arms. The scent the wolf didn’t know.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice wavering, “go. Go. I’ll… I’ll be okay. Go, go, go,”

“I’ll be there, Remus, in just a moment.”

Remus unwrapped his arms like they weighted a ton each, backing away from Sirius to find a wall to put his back against. He slipped down against it, bringing his knees to himself and burying his head down.

“Go,” he begged.

Remus never remembered them leaving.

To be fair, he never remembered them coming in and he never remembered the night.

His body was pure agony from start to finish. And then some.

Her palm – he knew Madam Pomfrey’s hand like the religious knew their salvation, her palm against his fingertips. He didn’t tap to it. He didn’t move. He hated having to move. Since his friends changed to be with him, he didn’t have to signal furious pains anymore.

But it still hurt.

It still wasn’t fair.

Her presence – like his mother’s, never leaving, always coming back to him for small adjustments to his aching existence.

He wished she would always feed him by that spell down his throat that kept him from malnourishment and puking both at once. But she never did. She always insisted on one less dose of potion, and one less, and one less until Remus woke up.

 Remus always woke up to another month to get through.

Remus never wanted to wake up.

 Twelve hours later on the dot, she started with his eyes. She dimmed the lights to a shadow atmosphere and slipped the tissue off.

He always thought to fight it, to refuse this second cycle of torture. But her palm rested against his fingertips and Remus opened his eyes.

She smiled.

He threw up.

 The process went like this: whatever she did next to bring him back to life, his body rejected it in violent contractions from his stomach to his mouth.

His nose was always the last sense she gave him back but he could still taste it on his tongue, the blood willing Remus to die.

 “Good morning.”

In the dark, with most of his senses numbed, Remus relied on the muscle memory telling him whose lips were kissing the ring finger of his left hand.

“I’ve given you your necklace back. We’ve had a great Full. How are you feeling?”

 “Evening, Remus. Guess how fast James fell asleep? He didn’t even make it to Care. He found an armour to fall into, this time. Great fun. You’ll be sorry you’ve missed it. I’ve drawn you a picture.”

 “I need about ten thousand naps, Moony. D’you think Pomfrey will flip if I sneak in with you?” James’ voice. Welcome for a second in the silence of the infirmary, and then the sense that he was moving around making Remus yearn for being able to do this so easily. 

“She probably will, James.” Peter’s voice. Strained. He usually was the first to get back on his feet after a night of what was for them animagi fun. But still. So much magic wasted to keep Remus company.

“I think you can find a way to convince her, actually.” Sirius.

“Like what?” James, perking up at the idea of mischief. 

“Impress me.” Sirius.

“Make it at a Sunday practice and I’ll try it, Padfoot.” James, no more tired, all challenge.

“I’ve already told you I’m not waking up early on Sundays. Besides you need to sleep some day of the week.” Sirius.

“Ugh… don’t talk about sleeping. I need sleep. I need so much sleep.” James, whining yet still moving, moving.

“Go back to the dorm, then.” Peter, rolling his eyes. Probably looking back to Remus to meet his eyes and share the mockery. 

“Wormtail! I, James Horus Potter, leaving Moony? Me? How do you think Moony would feel!” James, still so much energy, still so full of life.

“I don’t think he’s awake yet.” Peter, bored, some. If it wasn’t for them getting out of Remus that he did hear on the second day, even if it seemed like he didn’t, Peter wouldn’t have bothered talking to a corpse.

Remus remembers so much from hearing on second days. No one else knows he can.

“Mm…” Sirius.

“That alpaca wool looks sooo comfortable…” James, childish voice, childish needs.

“Isn’t that new?” Peter, perking up at the idea of something to talk about that isn’t a corpse. 

“There was a study done this summer that alpaca wool had some weight to it that felt good to healing patients.” Sirius.

“Can I just roll myself in it?” James, looking for mischief. 

“I’m sure Moony wouldn’t mind.” Peter, looking for entertainment. 

“I think he would, James.” Sirius.

“Neither of you are fun. Moony? Remus?” James, relentless.

“No one’s home.” Peter, helpless. 

“Fuck… And even if he wakes up, he’ll keep falling back asleep, anyway.” James, fighting the urge to give up.

“I’m sure Remus won’t take offence if you go back to the dorm, James.” Sirius.

“He might. What would you say then, James? Sorry I needed sleep more than I wanted to keep company to my recovering best friend?” Peter, finally entertained.

“I hate you Peter, I hate you so much.” James, still refusing to let Remus rot.

“Go to sleep, James. I’ll stay a moment.” Sirius.

Sirius applied his hand to his fingertips; the soft brush of his ring finally sending familiar signals to Remus’ nerves of something that wasn’t pain.

“Madam Pomfrey will be done with her diner in a few minutes. Would you like me to stay the night?” Remus didn’t move. “Does that mean you would like me to stay but won’t ask me?”

Remus tapped his middle finger to Sirius’ palm, not minding if the thought of flipping Sirius off was lost in the translation.

“She let us in because she believed you would start speaking to us. You’re three hours late in her book.”

He wished Sirius would move his hand in his, let him feel the softness of his skin over the sensitive tip of his fingers. He wished that and that Sirius would leave him well alone.

“James asked if you had mistakenly cut your tongue. She wasn’t amused.”

There was a shift in the room, the sweet taste of magic in Remus’ next open-mouthed breath. Sirius’ hand left his and found him again, this time brushing his fingers to Remus’ palm. Remus tried to shake his head, to tell Sirius not to stay close, to take his hands off. But first he vomited against the shiver.

“I was just thinking it had been long since you’d done this.”

 After his ears were freed from the magical wax, Pomfrey waited three hours to check he could handle the smells. Often, she had to wait three hours more for Remus to stop vomiting.

This time was not an exception.

Remus watched the sunset in the flowing shadows of his closed curtains. The second day was over. One to go. Until the next month.

 “Mister Lupin if you would talk to me.”

When he was little, there was a second part to that sentence. Sweets, often promises of travelling, sometimes whole holidays to Rome if he was a good boy. But at seventeen, the sentence was an order without gain.

“Thank you.”

Remus watched the sternness fawn from her mouth. “Good. You’re very welcome. On a scale of one to ten, how would you say you feel?”

“Five.”

“Leaning toward six?”

“Just five.”

“Good. Well, shall we start with solids today, then?”

Remus looked at her good demeanour, no-nonsense voice, that gentle smile ready to pat him on the head. And still all she ever did was to assist the pain, hand in hand with it yet never asking Remus like the healers had, would you rather die, boy.

“Sure.”

She didn’t ask that question nor did she relent with the potions or give in with coaxing Remus into doing always something more. He had barely stopped heaving when Peter and Sirius visited again.

“Did we miss the fun part?”

Remus lifted his numb hand to flip Peter off. He let it fall back down and turned his head away from them.

“James fell asleep in Transfig. McGonagall was not impressed at. All.”

Finally Peter gave in, wishing him a good night. Sirius’ hand was in his before Peter had crossed the door. Remus held onto the ring Sirius was brushing on the tip of his fingers. He drew over the crow of the Black seal, enjoying how weird the edges felt under his drugged fingers.

“I’ve missed you.”

Remus raised unconvinced eyebrows. “I haven’t missed me.”

“Would you like some water?”

“No.” He sighed, feeling the breath but not its effects. “I’m fine.”

“Would you like to come back to the dorm after you stop taking that last potion?”

“What?”

“I’ve talked to Madam Pomfrey. She thinks you could if you wanted to.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’d be nice.”

“Would you like me to stay until then?”

“No. No, actually. Do you mind if…”

From the corner of his eyes, he saw Sirius’ nod. “I’ll come back in the morning.”

“If I can go up to the dorm, there’s no need, really.”

“Well, then. May I… I’ll let you rest.”

“Hey,” Remus sighed as Sirius’ hand left him. “I’d like a kiss, too.”

Sirius smiled, leaning to lightly peck his lips. Remus gave what he hoped looked like a smile and not like he would have liked cutting off every part of himself that did not conform to the numbness.

“I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah.”

The door closed, leaving him to wonder why Sirius hadn’t stayed.

#wolfstar #i swear this fic isn't all angst it's just that well #full moon y'know #i can also post a bit about lily & remus friendship

[poemsbymg-blog]

It’s hard for me to look at you because all the memories flood my brain like they do in the movies. I remember how your lips feel on mine.

Each time I see you is no easier than the last. And although I know it will hurt, I sometimes hope to run into you at the store when you’re getting something for baba to make for dinner or at the gas station while you’re picking up smokes.

The days are easy. It’s the nights that kills me. When I lay in bed with just my thoughts, I can’t help but to trail of to you… wondering what you’re doing, who you’re with. Do you ever think of me like I think of you? Do you miss me?

It’s been over a year since we’ve parted ways, but it still hurts like it was yesterday. I think I lie to myself saying im over it. I tell myself that things are better. In a sense they are, no fighting, no crying, no reason to worry. But I do still worry. I worry about how you’re getting on with your days. I do still cry. I cry because I miss you. And I do still fight, I have to fight myself every day not to contact you or stop by.

I am still in pain. My heart aches just like we both knew it would.

And then I remember… I remember all the times you put me down, the things you said about me that I know didn’t describe who I was as a person. How my efforts were so easily disregarded. What was the point of pouring out my entire heart and soul to someone who was lacking both? I just wanted to love you and be loved. I wanted to feel whole and respected. I wanted lifelong protection from the world, not knowing the only thing I needed protection from was you. You hurt me in the worst ways. You let me die internally. You crushed my soul and didn’t look back.

Until you started to feel pain too. You started to mourn my absence. You realized what you’d done. Until I once again returned, hoping for a new beginning. But the same cycle repeated itself. The same sad story of our lives was on a loop…until I broke it off. Until I braved up and said enough.

One day this pain will fade. One day you will be just a distant memory. One day I will be ok.

Just not today.