"I see you, and I love you" + hurt/comfort ; requested by @oops-i-dropped-the-galaxy!
Danny can handle being a halfa. He’s had years to get used to it, switching between dead and alive, living boy and ghost, always living in flux. He’s settled into his identity as one of the few halfas in existence, navigating the living world and the Infinite Realms with ease after years of practice.
What he can’t handle is becoming an Ancient.
Apparently, while most Ancients are born into the role, ruling over their domain, some can grow into it. It’s rare, practically unheard of, but not impossible.
Danny is growing into the Ancient of Stars, changed from the inside out by his love of space.
He would be happy if it didn’t hurt so much.
Danny can’t sleep at night anymore. When the stars are out, he can hear them singing, each windchime voice echoing through his ears. Though he can’t see them from beneath Gotham’s cloud cover, he can feel them shining brightly far above him.
He lays in bed with Duke, curled up in his side, trying to muffle his whimpers as his bones creak and hollow, his soul growing too large for his body to handle. He is space contained in a human body. It wants to be free, to stretch from its suffocating confines and fill every dark space with cold light. His skin feels too tight and his teeth ache.
All Danny can do is clench his jaw, wrap his arms around his stomach as tightly as he can, and try to weather through the pain of changing.
The agony of it comes in waves. He doesn’t know how long it takes until it recedes enough for him to feel like he can breathe again, trying to suck air in as his lungs are crushed by his ribcage. Slowly, Danny pushes himself up, taking care not to wake Duke, and stumbles out of bed. His throat is dry and feels as if its been scraped raw by sandpaper, and all he wants is water.
He gets halfway down the hall when the next wave hits.
Danny collapses, gasping for breath, and can only watch through tear-filled eyes as his fingers go dark, the same black as deep space. His body shifts, bones cracking and muscles stretching like taffy, and suddenly he’s big larger than life a galaxy a black hole there is darkness everywhere it is alive it is full of stars the stars are singing the stars are singing the stars are si
“Danny? Hey, sweetheart, are you okay?”
That’s Duke’s voice. He’d recognize it anywhere, even from miles away, even when he’s sure he doesn’t have ears anymore. It takes all his effort to pull himself back to Earth, back into their apartment, blinking up at Duke as the stars in his eyes fade away.
Duke kneels before him, concern clear on his face, gentle hands reaching out to hold Danny steady. The feel of his warmth grounds him, keeps him more securely in his body. The pull of space is still there, tugging at him, trying to pull him out of humanity and into the form of an Ancient, but Danny can resist it so long as Duke keeps him tethered to the ground.
“It hurts,” he croaks, shivering.
“Shh, I know, baby. How can I help? What do you need?”
Danny leans forward, burying his face in Duke’s chest as tears slip out of his eyes. “It hurts,” he says again, voice shaking. “I keep changing and growing and my entire body is being torn apart and—” he gasps, cutting himself off. “I keep disappearing. I don’t want to disappear. I want to stay here but it takes me away and then I’m too big and no one can see me and I’m alone—”
“You’re not alone, Danny,” Duke says, holding him tightly as if his arms will be enough to keep Danny from breaking out of his own body, ridding himself of a mortal vessel, his only remaining tie to this world. “I see you, and I love you. Even if you have to change and go far away to be happy, I’ll find a way to follow you there, okay? I’m with you for as long as you want me.”
“I don’t want to hurt so much,” Danny whimpers, black fingers speckled with stardust clawing at Duke’s arms.
“Just breathe through it, sweetheart, you can do it. Let it pass through you. I got you, okay? Just let the pain pass and you’ll be fine.”
He wants to snap at Duke that it’s not fine, that the pain will be forever, it’ll linger in every one of his joints, that he can’t just stop fighting it because it’ll hurt even worse then. But his jaws are aching, his teeth sharpening, and there’s a black hole in his throat that he refuses to let loose. He lets out another pained whine, shivering, and in his chest a star is formed, burning bright and angry.
“Breathe, Danny, breathe,” Duke soothes, rubbing a hand up and down Danny’s back.
It’s habit to relax into his touch. They’ve spent so many nights working through night terrors and injuries, comforting each other through gentle touches. The pain eases a bit, and Danny sighs, frost on his breath.
“There we go, sweetheart, that’s it. You’re doing just fine.”
Another tear slips down his face, but the ache in his entire body as his growing ghost form tries to escape begins to fade.
He’s spent so many nights in pain, waiting for the sun to rise to muffle the singing of the stars. If he can get any relief, he’ll take it, even if it means losing his human form.
Danny stops fighting. His resistance to this change falls away. There’s a moment where the pain disappears entirely, the world going still, but before he can let out a relieved sigh, the change hits him like an asteroid, sudden and instant and inevitable.
A cry is ripped from his throat, but it doesn’t sound like him. It echoes, deep and inhuman, and suddenly Danny is every dark space surrounding the stars, the arms of every galaxy, suns burning bright and dying, supernova, cold and ice and the slow drifting of planets in orbit. His body grows, expands, no longer a ghost but an Ancient, body curling into itself to stay within the walls of the too small apartment, large hands cupped around Duke to keep him safe.
He can feel the cold of space. Orbits dance in his mind. Meteorites and asteroids drift without pattern across his chest. Danny can see everything with too many eyes, and he can cup planets in his palms, so much larger than possibility. His chest opens and expands and his body can curl around Earth and keep it safe.
He feels settled in this new body, senses stretched in every direction and the universe is so much lovelier than he could have ever experienced it in a halfa’s body.
Danny, Ancient of the Stars, hums and the universe shivers, singing back to him.
The pain is gone completely. He wonders why he resisted so hard; this is what he’s meant to be. He’s never felt so right before.
“Danny?”
Duke’s voice is small, but only because he is small when compared to Danny in his Ancient form.
Duke, he tries to say but his vocal chords have changed. Instead of words, a deep hum erupts from his throat, similar to the purr of a particularly large cat.
“Hey, sweetheart. Feeling better?”
Danny nods, pulling himself back together to feel his body more keenly, no longer stretched across the universe, cradling every star in his reach. Duke reaches a hand up and Danny reaches back, folding himself back into his body. His human eyes return and he realizes the apartment is completely covered in darkness with stars sparkling all around them. It recedes as he fits himself back into his body, the black on his fingers fading away until his hand is indistinguishable from a normal human’s.
He takes hold of Duke’s hand and tries to stand. His legs are weak and unsteady and he falls onto Duke, who catches him with ease and sweeps him up into a princess carry.
“There you are, honey,” Duke says, voice warm and relieved. “You alright?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I feel a lot better.”
“Good. Do you need anything? Hot chocolate, heating pad, sleep?”
Danny thinks for a moment, then says, “Hot chocolate.”
“You got it. Let me just set you on the couch and I’ll have it out in a minute.”
He carefully sets Danny onto the couch, then tucks the blanket they keep folded over the back around him. Once he’s satisfied Danny is comfortable, Duke heads to the kitchen, flicking on the light as he does.
Danny sinks into the couch cushions, carefully moving all his fingers and toes to make sure they’re fine. He’s a little sore, as if all his bones where put through the ringer, but it doesn’t feel any different from when he has a particularly rough training day.
What’s more important that his physical body is the fact that he can feel his core, settled deep in his chest. It’s no longer the cold of ice, but it burns coldness, a white star embodying his soul, a changed core to reflect his transformation into an Ancient.
A baby Ancient, technically. He still has some growing to do, but the rest should be easier and, hopefully, less painful.
He closes his eyes and begins to drift off when he hears Duke return. It takes some effort to open his eyes, and his smiles softly and sleepily when he sees Duke set down two steaming mugs of hot chocolate on the coffee table.
“Love you,” he mumbles, freeing a hand from the blanket to try to pull Duke down to join him.
Duke goes to him easily, sitting next to him and pulling Danny in to cuddle against him. It’s been so long since he last felt so comfortable at night, not writhing in pain and biting through his lip to keep quiet, that he can’t help but sink into it. A purr starts up in his chest, and Duke startles.
“Sweetheart, are you purring?”
Danny flushes and tries to hide his face. The purr doesn’t stop. He’s always been able to purr after becoming a halfa, though purr is just an easier way to describe it. It’s less of his vocal chords vibrating and more of his core rumbling in contentment. Usually, it’s unnoticeable, barely able to be felt let alone heard. Apparently, becoming an Ancient and therefore a much stronger ghost means his purrs are also stronger and louder.
“You’re so cute,” Duke says, pressing a kiss against Danny’s forehead. “Drink your hot chocolate, and then we can go back to sleep.”
He makes grabby hands at his mug, and Duke laughs and picks it up for him.
“Love you,” Danny repeats, voice less muffled.
“Love you, too,” Duke says. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
“I’m glad you were there to help me. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“It’s a good thing you’ll never have to find out. I’ve got you, sweetheart, always.”
Believing him is the easiest thing Danny has ever done. If Duke says he’ll be there for, then he will.
Always, always, always.
.
.
.
[send me ghostlights prompts!]
242 notes
·
View notes
Oh, hey, remember these cute lil kiddos who totally aren't evil or anything?
Yeah, they're in color now. And still very much actually evil.
pay no mind to the lazy background behind the orphans
Some more headcanon rambles under the cut:
Prior deets are here.
I've thought a little bit more about each Bishop's backstory kinda? But not too much - mostly just deciding how they met, and having fun assigning deaths to their families to allow for a continued cycle of abuse (in a sense). Each of the Bishops' families died in a way that relates to their eventual domains as gods, enabling them to lash out at others with the very things that left them as orphans. Because I'm nice to characters like that. And by nice I mean horrible. :D
Shamura:
Shamura's parents were already part of a cult, and had learned too much about a group of enemy heretics they'd been spying on, and thus their rather large family was slaughtered alongside the rest of the family's cult in the midst of the ongoing war. Shamura had been away to run an errand before the attack, and thus was unable to do anything about it (in parallel to how they did very little to protect their siblings from both Narinder and the Lamb). They were very close to their family, and the loss drove them to start finding new family in the form of other orphans they came across. It wasn't just the four who became their adopted siblings, but the others either did not survive, or simply couldn't keep up with Shamura's ambitions - to end the gods whose followers took up arms and cut down everyone Shamura knew.
Throughout their journeys, they intensely studied the ways of war, weaponry, and spellcasting, particularly curses; because, after all, gods could hardly be killed with mere mortal weapons. They also researched a great deal into the gods' crowns, as well as certain immortal entities who weren't quite gods, as the three birds seemed strangely neutral, and amenable to helping anyone who crossed their paths, all without asking for anything in return. Shamura's studies and research grew much easier once they met Kallamar, due to the circumstances of his upbringing.
Kallamar:
Kallamar's well-off but isolated family was wiped out by disease, spread intentionally by those who wanted to quickly wipe out proclaimed heretics, and Kallamar himself nearly died from the sickness, as well. He was found by Shamura, who had only been intending to rob the manor he lived in, but offered to nurse him back to health if he would grant them use of the place as a base of operations. He agreed, so Shamura did as they offered, with some assistance from their entourage, which by that time already included Heket.
Once Kallamar was on the mend, he was informed of precisely who was responsible for the obliteration of his family. He chose to join Shamura's group in seeking vengeance, and began to learn how to utilize various weapons from them. Due to his cowardly tendencies, though, on his own time, he focused more on subtler methods that he could use up until being backed into a corner - poisons, mainly, before expanding to contagions created from a mix of curses and natural elements. Kallamar's manor remained a base of operations for the siblings up until the beginnings of the Old Faith were established, and their respective temples constructed.
Heket:
Heket was an only child, and her parents both starved to death; they were farmers whose livestock died out across several consecutive crop failures. Those failures were made worse by intentional sabotage from several feuding cults situated nearby, as none of them wanted to risk letting their enemies barter for critical food supplies. Heket managed to survive by consuming her own parents' bodies, as well as those of dead cultists she came across while trying to go on living as close to normally as she could, though when it was realized that she was alone, her home was invaded while she was out looking for more food. Furious at the audacity, she torched the place with the interlopers still inside, and set out in search of a new home - and more food, which she was not picky about.
She would steal anything she could to eat from campsites and cult grounds, and for good measure, she would set anything she couldn't carry with her ablaze before moving on - equal parts distraction and a means to starve out potential enemies. She crossed paths with Shamura by chance - alone - and attempted to rob them of their food. They were more clever than she expected, though, and by now already used to desperately hungry orphans trying to nick a meal. To her surprise, Shamura invited her to eat with their small group, and between the food and the talk of bringing down the many warring cults one by own, Heket decided to continue traveling with Shamura - whether they wanted her to or not. Fortunately, they did, as she was already quickly learning the tricks to thievery, and had a knack for utilizing explosives. (I will die on this hill. She blew me up so many times, Kallamar had nothing on her.)
Leshy:
Leshy's nomadic family was killed in a freak accident - a lightning strike right in the middle of a random ambush by traveling cultists. Being little more than a toddler, Leshy initially survived by burrowing out of sight, and then by disarming the attackers with how deceptively cute he looked. On a whim, one of the cultists decided to try to indoctrinate him, and he was carried along with the group until nightfall - after which, in a fit of pure unhinged toddler fury, he wrecked their campsite AND their faces before fleeing underground. He survived just short of feral for a while, catching his food (animals and people) in the pit traps he'd learned to make from his family. After that, he wound up wandering close enough to Kallamar's manor to spot a group of kids heading inside, and decided to be the little menace he is.
He started off digging traps around the manor - and definitely ate at least one of the orphan kids - before graduating to breaking and entering. He nicked food, toys, and/or weapons each time, mostly just for the fun of it, before Shamura eventually managed to catch Leshy in a trap he couldn't burrow or bite his way out of (and his cute puppy eyes were not going to work on them anymore - not after the first two dozen times). Kallamar attempted to make Leshy fix all that he'd broken in the manor, as well as return everything he'd stolen, with very minimal success. Heket wound up being the one to bring Leshy more or less to heel, mostly by feeding him and showing off all the cool ways she could blow things up, which he found entertaining enough to become slightly more bearable around other people. For a long time, however, having him around was more or less like living with a half-feral and all-manic hyperactive animal without any concept of or care for social niceties. Kallamar did not appreciate all the property damage, but conceded to Shamura's certainty that Leshy's...unique skillset would be useful going forward. (Naturally, they were not wrong.)
Narinder:
In keeping with parallels - more than one this time, even - Narinder attacked and killed his own family. Eventually, at least, and as retribution, because his parents saw him as the runt of the litter, too needy and not worth the effort it would take to keep him alive. He was not merely abandoned, but sold off for a pittance to cultists, who wanted to sacrifice him to the then-god of death. Being as small as he was at the time, however, he was able to squeeze out of his shackles and wriggle from his chains on the way to the cult's ritual grounds, sneaking away while his captors were distracted. He did not go far, however - he was too furious with them for that. He trailed after them, instead, waiting until nightfall, and strangled the leader in their sleep with the very chains they'd put on him, before cutting the throats of the rest of the sleeping cultists. He then attempted to track down his traitorous family by following scent trails, but was soon thwarted by a downpour. Still, he vowed to find them one day, and sacrifice them the same way he would have been had he not escaped.
The deets for his meeting his siblings are in the prior post, so that really just leaves his family's deaths. After Shamura began their rise to power, their growing influence - along with help from the other siblings - made it easy for Narinder to discover where his parents and littermates had taken refuge. With his own influence in Shamura's budding cult, he faced no issues with ordering his "family" to be brought to him for sacrifice, though he did briefly fly off the handle and cut down his father for being the one to suggest selling the runt. Speaking of which - Narinder was quite delighted to let his so-called family see how much bigger he was than all of them by that point. He was equally delighted to behead every last family member himself, and to desecrate their remains by putting various pieces of them on display around the cult grounds. I'd say his adoptive siblings were disturbed by this, but. Obviously, every last one is fucked up enough to where we all know they weren't. <:]
At some point I'll share the toxic obsessive Narilamb AU that draws from this backstory, lmao, but for now I need to sleep. X_X;
76 notes
·
View notes
Okay okay, I have a cute little idea. So I'm a ranter. Theres time when I just start talking about things (most commonly my most current special intrest) and I've been told by some people that I talk so much and fast that they can't understand what I'm talking about and get lost.
So now I'm imagining in the beginning of the relationship Finn felt sorta insecure about his ranting (we know that poor boy is) and then the first time the listener invites him over to their house for the night. He's a little shy about sleeping in bed with them and stuff and they get into bed and he's ready to lay down and cuddle and sleep but Sunflower just sits up and starts ranting and going on and on and on about whatever it is that was on their mind in that moment and Finn just sits there with the most lovesick eyes ever. Like he's just loving life. Like he gets lost on what their talking about but not cause he can't understand them but cause he's just lost looking at them.
OMG he's just so cute I wanna squish him like a bug sometimes🫶❤️
Ranting love.
Finn felt his nerves move all over his body as he got comfortable on the bed. It's been a while since he has had anyone with him on it, not since....Finn decided to just ignore hat and focus on his lovely partner. Who was already snuggling into his blanket and pillows like a cat giving him a cheeky smirk too.
"Don't worry I won't kick you off the bed if that's what your thinking of!" Chuckling was their answer as Finn finally got into bed. He faced Sunflower and opened his arms a bit, they have been cuddling for a while and he kinda wanted to hold them right now. Sunflower gave a loving look and slipped into his embrace, Finn felt giddy by their actions.
"This is nice." Softly saying as Sunflower hummed both looking at each other and then Finn continued. "So anything exciting happen today?" His partner hummed some more thinking of all the things that happened today.
"Well there was a customer that came in and had a cool pin from a movie I liked! It was so cute! It was from Howl's moving castle!!" Reaching for the bedside table they got their phone and showed him the pin, "I was able to get permission to take a photo of it! Isn't it so cute??" It was Calcifer, a small but powerful fire demon that was in this cute art style in the pin. Finn cooed at it, he remembered how Sunflower wanted to show him the movie. It was really good!
Sunflower asked their boyfriend if anything interesting happened with him, "No not really, but there was a debate between two friends in front of the story about that one show you like." This made Sunflwoers eyes widen as they blurted out.
"OH MY GOD! I just remembered that there is this one coworker that watches the same show as me right?" Finn a bit taken aback from the shout they let out nodded, "She tried to act like I knew NOTHING about the show?? Like newsflash asshole I know everything about it because it came out in middle school and I got obsessed with it???" With awe Finn watched as his lover rant about the show, he watched it with them before.
But he never really saw them get worked up like this when telling him about it the first time. He was just watching them, be so in to the rant they were giving him it marveled him really because he was so use to the one ranting.
"AND THEN SHE WAS LIKE 'ThAtS nOt RiGhT' NO IT IS!!! I KNOW IT IS AND SHE JUST DECIDED NOT TO LISTEN TO ME???" Sunflower was erratically telling Finn about the interaction they had a work they almost forgotten to tell him! Basically there was a coworker that tried to tell them that Sunflower was wrong about a tv show they were obsessed with.
"And Finn, love of my life, the apple of my eye, the sun to my flowers! You want know what she tried to tell me about the timeline about the show???" Folding their hands on Finn's chest while looking at Finn who was looking at them with all the interest in the world.
"What did she say Sunflower?" Smiling as his partner passionate ranting about something they loved. It reminded him of how they always listened intently about his flower facts. Sunflower kept telling him how the coworker, Sheila, said that the main characters never liked each other. But really all Finn could focus on was his love for Sunflower right now, how pretty they looked glaring at a wall when thinking about the spread of misinformation about their favorite show.
"-inn? Finn are you okay?" Worry in his partners voice he snapped out of it and looked into their eyes again. They pushed themselves up more on his body, his arms instinctively wrapped around them flashing a smile.
"I'm fine don't worry. What happened next?" Answering caused Sunflower to giggle a bit and peck his cheek before continuing their rant. Suddenly he didn't feel so insecure about his ranting.
27 notes
·
View notes