#but after years of thinking his family was gone

[upsidedownwithsteve]

A soulmate AU: Steve Harrington x fem!reader [3.7K]

THE TIMELINE

"There was something 'bout you that now I can't remember, It's the same damn thing that made my heart surrender. And I miss you on a train, I miss you in the morning, I never know what to think about. I think about you."

- About You By The 1975

V. HAWKINS, INDIANA: 1988

Two years had passed since the last gate had closed and despite the aftermath of the “earthquakes,” Vecna had yet to make any sort of reappearance. 

Max’s bones healed, eventually, and she regained most of her sight, relying on thick lensed glasses when she grew tired or the words in her books turned blurry. Nancy went to college, Jonathan tried it for a year, Hopper took El on a month-long camping trip to see something other than the town repairing itself and Lucas went to therapy. 

Soon, each kid followed suit, attending sessions that eventually helped them sleep a little better because even though they couldn’t tell the person on the other side of the coffee table about monsters and the world under their feet, there had been enough death and suffering to fill the hour with regardless. 

Dustin told Steve he should go too and Robin agreed. After Eddie’s funeral, the one where they all stood with Wayne, a guy from the garage Eddie worked at on weekends and the remaining Hellfire members beside a small gravestone, they had another one. 

A second ceremony near the woods behind Eddie’s trailer, close to where he died, to where Dustin had found him bleeding and proud. The kids cried and Joyce held on tight to Will while Jonathan hugged Nancy and Dustin punched a tree trunk. It felt better than the first one, easier somehow, when they didn’t have to lie and hide the guilt they had at knowing each and every one of them felt a little shame in having a hand in someone’s else’s death. 

But it was closure. 

The town healed, roads were repaired, houses rebuilt, new flowers planted in the park in memory of those who had been lost in the accident - the natural disaster that made headlines, the one that no one could have predicted. 

Steve helped Dustin clean Eddie’s grave when the spray paint covered the dead boy’s name. Robin stopped crying when she looked in the mirror each morning. Jonathan left his room. 

The kids got better. They smiled more, went to the new arcade on opening day, shared slushies and rode their bikes around town again. Joyce visited Wayne when she could, took him pies and meatloaf and eventually got him out of his armchair and into a coffee shop for a full hour. Hopper got his job back, had a ceremony that preceded the funeral he had years before and Robin managed to get her and Steve a sweet gig at the record store that replaced Family Video. 

It felt fresh. New. Clean. 

So why was Steve still dreaming about gates?

For the third night in a row, he woke up gasping. A yell stuck in his throat that tasted like metal, like blood, and he was drenched. Shirtless, his sheets stuck to his chest, the weight of them tangled around his legs in a sickly familiar way, vines tugging at his ankles. His room was dark, the house empty, too quiet. Quiet enough that his breath ripped from his lungs in harsh pants, his head pounding from the exertion of running in his dream, back in a place that he hadn’t seen in almost twenty one months. 

At first, he dreamt of death. 

Of Eddie and how they found him lifeless and in Dustin’s arms. How Max was barely conscious in the attic of the Creel House, her body broken in ways that no doctor could understand. He dreamt of how he had pulled Lucas away from her, the boy sobbing and yelling, fighting with more strength than he knew he had as Steve tried to restrain him just enough for the paramedics to get Max into the ambulance. 

Then the dreams turned empty. He dreamt of losing everyone, Robin, Dustin, Hop. El was gone, Will too, Mike nowhere to be found. Nancy’s house was empty, Joyce and Jonathan didn’t exist and Steve sat alone in a town that turned grey, crumbling to dust until the vines came back and the clouds turned red. 

He ran miles every night, searching for his friends, his family. Woke up to shaking breaths and sore legs like he’d really sprinted across a town that was no longer home and each morning when the sun rose, he sat with a coffee and his bare legs dipped in the pool in his backyard. He stared at the water until the ripples blurred and wondered how long it would take for Barb to come haunt him too, if she’d reappear in his dreams despite the years that had gone by, if she’d come crawling back out of his pool like she used to, dripping wet and with no eyes. 

But Barb never came and he stopped dreaming of the kids, stopped hearing Lucas’ screams, stopped seeing Max in a hospital bed with blood coming from her eyes and eventually, one night, he dreamt of a gate that he’d never seen before. 

It didn’t even really look like a gate. 

Not the ones Steve knew. It wasn’t framed by dead vines, it didn’t pulsate, it didn’t have a red glow coming from its innards. This one didn’t look like rotting flesh, like a wound in the earth that couldn’t be healed. This one wasn’t at the bottom of a lake, lined with wet moss and cracked rocks, it wasn’t in the Munson trailer nor in the middle of the woods. 

This one opened on a blank wall in Steve’s bedroom, replacing the shelves where his old basketball trophies sat, where he usually left his pile of clothes before falling into bed. In the dream, it started as a crack, a crumbling of plaster and blue plaid wallpaper and Steve watched it open, a yawning thing that split the room and bathed it in light. It was too bright at first, like blinking into a summer sun. And once the white-hot of it cleared from Steve’s eyes, he saw blue skies and he could smell the ocean. 

There were trees he’d never seen before in real life, something out of a movie, tall and green and narrow as they swayed in a breeze he couldn’t really feel from his spot on his bedroom carpet. The buildings were a pinky-peach colour, like clay, with orange slate tiles and there were foundations and statues carved into the walls, water trickling from the mouths of gods and vases that stone faced women held in their marble arms. 

It was like looking at a painting, a canvas between his bed and his old desk, framed with olive branches and large, red fruits that protruded from the gates mouth. 

Pomegranates. 

Steve could smell them, a sweetness that mixed with the ocean air, a kind of freshness that you couldn’t find between the fields and farms that surrounded Hawkins. In the dream, he wanted to move closer but found that he couldn’t, his eyes wide and his bare feet rooted to the spot as he stared at the scene. It felt like a memory the more he looked, the buildings becoming familiar, a baby blue door that looked like somewhere he’d once owned the keys to and the cobbled streets became a well walked way home. 

Then, as if he weren’t supposed to really see it, he spotted something move in an upstairs window. Two houses from the front of the gate, with rusted shutters and white linen curtains, he saw a girl stand between them. 

A pretty girl, with eyes he knew he’d seen before, in a white dress that he was sure he remembered the feeling of. 

The sight of her made Steve’s heart hammer, the dream making him dizzy, the realisation that he knew that girl making the line between unconsciousness and reality a little blurry. He didn’t know her name, or where he knew her from. He didn’t even know where he was looking or why the gate was there. 

But he stared and stared until the girls eyes met his and before he could lift his hand, or even try to speak, there was a crack that seemingly came from the sky - the one above Hawkins or the one inside the gate, he didn’t know - but something flashed, the gate went dark and the rip in his bedroom wall stitched itself back up. 

He woke up feeling like he’d remembered and forgotten something all at once. Like a book he’d read back in middle school, a photo he’d once misplaced, a song he hadn’t heard in years but still remebered some of the words too. 

He knew her. He knew her. 

Steve thought about the girl so much, so often, that it didn’t take him long to think of her, to refer to her, as you. You were someone he’d once known, from a memory or another dream, he wasn't sure. It was the same feeling as watching a movie and seeing a pretty actress on screen, in a different outfit with different hair but knowing her face and wondering what show he’d seen her in before. 

Except with this, there was an aching want that buried itself in his chest at the sight of you, an awful feeling that grew larger each night. And every time his wall cracked open again, it seemed like his ribs did too. A crushing feeling, a yawning expanse inside his body that made room for the way his heart seemed to grow and grow at the sight of you. 

Yearning, that’s what he thought it was. A slow, burning build of it. 

The second night, he dreamt of you in a garden. A sprawling, green lawn with a pond so green-blue it made his eyes hurt. There was an awning beside it, a pergola of sorts made of white stone and it had ivy growing between the pillars, covering the roof and reaching down to trail its flowers in the water below. You were closer than before, than you were in the window, and Steve could see the way your lashes hit your cheeks as you looked down, stitching something that you held in your lap. 

There was a wicker basket beside you, a loaf of fresh bread wrapped in a cloth and he could still smell pomegranates, sweet and tart. There was a space beside you on the blanket, enough room for two but no one else came. 

You were always alone. 

Steve tried to talk to you, to reach out and see if this gate worked like the others, if he could walk through into this other world, this other dimension, but it didn’t work. 

Not yet, anyway. 

You seemed to notice him more on the fifth night, as he watched you walk along the edge of a lake. Your hair was shorter now and your clothes had changed. They look more modern, more like his, the cabins behind you reminiscent of a summer camp, a holiday lodge or something. He could hear music, a song he swore he heard on the radio not too long ago and that night, you watched him back. 

It seemed like you were waiting for someone. And when Steve saw your face light up with a smile, his heart stumbled. You raised your arm, reaching out a hand to the edge of the gate, off to the side as if someone else was in Steve’s walls. He saw another hand reach for yours, larger, definitely male, with a freckle where the thumb joined the palm. 

The jealousy he felt was unmatched, a burning thing that scorched his chest and his throat, hot needles at the back of his mouth. Before the man came into view, the crack in his wall trembled and the gate stitched itself closed once more, leaving plaster dust and flakes of paint on his carpet. 

Apart from the small mess, no one would have ever guessed another world opened up inside of Steve Harrington’s bedroom each night. 

It took him a week and half to notice his hand had a freckle in the same spot. A small beauty mark he’d never really paid attention to before, painted in the space that joined his thumb to his hand. He tried not to read too much into it, tried not to hold onto the hope that maybe it meant something - because none of this made sense, not really. 

They were just dreams. Strange things, brain scrambling things. But it was a welcome reprieve from death and darkness and vines that held onto him too tight. He no longer woke up in a cold sweat, he no longer wished for morning to come, no matter how tired he felt when he opened his eyes. 

Steve wondered if anyone else was experiencing these kinds of dreams. If the rest of the party were getting glimpses of other worlds, other timelines. He wasn’t sure what they were, too scared to ask, too afraid to make everyone else worry. The thought that these dreams could be a trick crossed his mind more than once, a new tactic from Vecna, an infiltration of his sleep that was meant to lull him into some kind of false sense of security. 

Safety - an unknown feeling. 

But everyone else spent their days talking about school and their new bosses, the fair that was coming to town to celebrate the town hall finally being rebuilt. No one mentioned Vecna or dreams or gates or girls they knew from somewhere they couldn’t place. 

So Steve accepted the fact that whatever these dreams were - whatever they meant - they were just for him. Which meant that you were his too. 

Weeks went by with Steve viewing you from the split in his wall, sometimes hearing music, sometimes hearing your muffled voice. Never real words, never loud enough to hear and it didn’t seem like you could hear him either. But Steve watched, enraptured, following you around different parts of the world, new countries and scenes that he could never really place but, oh my god, each one felt like home with you in it. 

Then one night, he saw himself. 

He felt the surge of panic flood him even in his sleep, his body jolting against his bed as he saw the familiar face, staring back at him, nonplussed. He looked a little different, maybe older. His hair was shorter at the back, cropped closer to the nape of his neck but the biggest difference was how happy he looked. 

This Steve, the one in his dream, inside this gate - this Steve from another time, another life - he looked lighter. He didn’t have purple smudges under his eyes, no deep lines settling across his forehead from frowning so much. His clothes were different too, looser, less fitting, the colours more muted. He wore a pair of jeans that looked much more comfortable than his tight Levi’s, a soft burgundy sweater that had the sleeves rolled up. 

Steve didn’t recognise where this dream took place, but he knew it wasn’t Hawkins. America, yeah, the street signs and licence plates on the cars in the street giving that detail away, but he wasn’t too sure where. The buildings were bigger, shinier, more glass than brick but the skies were still blue and it looked peaceful, warm. 

Safe. 

Dream Steve strolled down the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets, looking back over his shoulder every now and then as if to make sure the real Steve was following him. He walked past storefronts and stopped to pet a dog, a golden retriever who was waiting for his owner outside of a bakery. When he came to a bookstore, Steve could see a large building in the distance, a huge billboard atop it that looked like it was advertising a new movie, or a show maybe. It didn’t have much details on it, no actors nor dates to tell what year this was supposed to be. 

Certainly not 1988. 

It only had lettering across it, big and bold and red against a pristine white background: “ANOTHER LIFE.”

The bell to the bookstore jingled and then Steve saw you. As pretty as you had been in every other gate, every other world, every other lifetime. Like a figurine inside a snow globe, like something from a fairytale. Steve had never seen you this close before. 

He watched your smile, the way it widened at the sight of his counterpart, this other version of him. You were so pretty that his breath got caught in his lungs, his sleeping body kicking out in shock when you lunged at the dream version of him, throwing your arms around his shoulders in greeting. 

Steve watched the two figures embrace on the street, he watched how this luckier man got to bring his hand to your cheek and hold to there to kiss, how his lips - Steve’s own lips - met your own and parted them, mouths melting together in something that was so much more than a quick hello. 

Steve didn’t have it in him to feel jealous then. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to. He watched the hand that held your jaw, the thumb that caressed your cheekbone as you grinned into him, your own hands clutching his waist now. There was a freckle, the same as the one he had on his own hand, in the matching spot on yours. This Steve took that hand and kissed that very mark, smacking kisses across your palm and up your wrist until you were laughing, head thrown back, eyes bright. 

Steve hadn’t seen anything so happy. 

He woke up before the dream finished, before the gate closed. Steve woke up with tears stinging at the corners of his eyes, his vision blurry in the navy gloom of his bedroom. It wasn’t yet morning. There was no gate on his bedroom fall, no new city between the plaid striped wallpaper. 

He thought it could’ve been Chicago, maybe New York. Perhaps Philadelphia. 

He wondered if he left and went looking for that bookstore, that street, that billboard, he’d find you too. If he was supposed to, if you were real, if this life was all he was supposed to get. 

Something told him otherwise, that open crack inside his chest that made him ache for hours after he awoke. He never forgot about you during the day, each life he’d watched you live, how you had grown your hair out and then cut it, how you seemed to change your clothing depending on where you were, from old petticoats to jeans and shirts with logos on them he’d never seen before. 

Steve felt like he’d lived a thousand lives with you. 

He wasn’t sure what he had to do to get you in this one. 

After two weeks of dreaming of this life with you, one that he was so sure would happen, he spoke to Joyce. He waited until the kids dragged Hopper out into the yard to help them with some sort of rocket they wanted to make and he found her in the kitchen. It was the closest kind of feeling he had to home - bar from the sight of you, but he wasn’t really sure if that counted when he was asleep. 

So he tried to sound casual when he leaned over the Byers kitchen counter, elbows avoiding the jelly stains that Mike had left after making a sandwich, and asked, “hey, uh, do you believe in soulmates?”

Joyce blinked at him, flour and butter between her fingers as she tried to turn the page in her recipe book back to the instructions for apple pie. The book flopped shut when she let go, her hands reaching for a rag instead. Her eyes never left Steve’s. 

“Uh, well. I guess so,” she paused, head tilted to the side as she watched the younger man, how his cheeks turned pink and his gaze fell to the floor. “I haven’t thought about it all that much. Why’d you ask?”

Steve didn’t know what to say then. So he floundered, flushed in the face and nose scrunched as he ran his fingers through his hair too harshly, hoping that no one else walked in. What was he supposed to say? That he was dreaming of gates in his bedroom walls? But it was okay? ‘Cause these ones didn’t have monsters or creatures set out to kill him, no, these gates held something that he thought he’d once had, that they held something he was so sure he was supposed ot have again?

Maybe, just not in this life.

Maybe, this time, something was broken. Wires were crossed, cut, unravelled. Maybe the upside down messed up a timeline, maybe it ripped apart whatever plan it had originally laid out for Steve Harrington. 

He didn’t know. But he knew it sounded crazy, even in his head.

So he shrugged and said, “no reason.”

And then that night, after Joyce gave him funny looks over the dinner she served him and the rest of his friends, the kitchen table full, he went home and lay on his bed, hardly bothering to pull the sheets over his bare chest.

He counted his breaths, hoped for sleep and wished for you.

Like always, his room grew darker, his lids heavier and the crack in his bedroom wall crumbled and split until the dust settled and he saw your face. You were alone this time, pretty as ever and in the same looking city he’d last seen himself in. The skies were blue behind you, the buildings still tall and shiny looking, all glass window panes and metal framework. If he concentrated enough, he could smell summer.

Hot tarmac and sunscreen, fresh fruit from one of the stores behind you, tart lemons and freshly ground coffee. 

You were looking right at him and even in his sleep, Steve smiled. Your eyes were pretty, too pretty, the colour bright and your gaze excited as you gazed at him. Like you’d been waiting. You held out a hand, coaxing, kind, soft, patient. And for the first time, when Steve reached out too, his hand slipped through the gate. 

He was right, about the season, about it being summer. The air inside this world was warm on his skin, like the sun was on him despite being sprawled out in the blue gloom of his dark bedroom. It felt like a July morning, right before the heat hit. 

He was almost touching your fingers when he woke up alone again.

#steve harrington #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x you #steve harrington x y/n #steve harrington fic #steve harrington fluff #steve harrington imagine #steve harrington fanfic #steve harrington fanfiction #steve harrington oneshot #steve harrington au

[enbysiriusblack]

wolfstar au where remus is trying to find a cheap place to live (he's been crashing with dorlene for 7 months now and they are very much sick of him and his inability to use coasters). so he finds this cheap place to rent that says the owner doesn't fully live there but does come and go so it's sorta like having a part-time roommate). he moves there. owner has just left him a note and already mailed him the key so he doesn't see him.

then he's been in the new place for like 2 weeks and still absolutely no sign of the owner but he has his number for emergencies. then after a month, remus comes home from work to find a complete puzzle on the table, an empty mug, and fresh muffins in the oven.

a few weeks go by and remus comes home to a half decomstructed motorbike on a tarp in the middle of the living room. the motorbike remains there for a few days until it magically vanishes again.

and its like every few weeks the owner seems to come in just to relax and do some hobbies but remus always just misses him.

until almost a year after remus had moved in, and he comes home to a giant black dog running up to him. he has a collar on with the same phone number that remus has for the owner. but he thinks like, the dogs gonna be here for a few days or something as the owner seems to always leave his stuff for at least a few days before its gone again. and remus is just panicking because he has not ever looked after a dog, only some chickens and sheep and once a goldfish. and after an hour, remus notices the bowl of water the owner had put out was now empty and the dog seems quite antsy so remus grabbed the lead the owner had left behind and decided to take the dog for a walk.

he comes back a bit later and finds a guy with long black hair, dressed in black leather and a led zeppelin tshirt, who's absolutely panicking. he spots remus by the door and runs over (remus backs away because there's a stranger in his apartment running frantically right at him), and then the stranger drops to the floor and rolls over with the black dog on his chest.

stranger glances up to remus after a few minutes of the dog and stranger seeming to console each other and just smiles before beginning to rant about how the dentist wouldn't let him bring his dog in and someone called james was currently overseas visiting family and the stranger wanted to go with him but james' cousin doesn't really like dogs and he couldn't find a sitter in time so now he has to videocall james everyday and time differences are very strange and did he like those muffins he made last week? they were a new recipe he has been trying and there's this new cafe that opened around the corner that he just has to go to, and does he like eclairs? because he's thinking about making them next because his cousin, the one he talks to, is in france right now and said she found the best recipe that he has to try, and is he finding the water pressure okay? because he's been tinkering with it the past few weeks but he wasn't sure whether to go for more a harder or softer pressure

and then the stranger just glances up at remus after the fifteen minute rant. and remus stands there, unable to answer the 50 questions the stranger had asked, and just blurts out

"i didn't think you'd be hot".

and then proceeds to trip over the dog's lead and get a nose bleed.

#we love loser!remus here #marauders era #marauders #wolfstar #remus lupin #sirius black #wolfstar fic idea

[desi2go]

Importance

pairings: dad!Chan x mom!reader

warnings: angst, fluff

summary: Having a child with an idol isn't easy...

author's note: I'm sorry that I couldn't post anything the last two weeks. But here I am with a new one!

Marriage wasn't easy. Especially when your beloved husband was an idol. The Bang Chan, leader of Stray Kids.

Between tours and busy schedules, there was little time for your relationship. But even though it was hard and you missed him like hell when he was gone for a long time, you still didn't regret to come to your best friend Changbin's party years ago. There, you had met him.

Well, he didn't see you and accidentally poured his drink over you. When your eyes met, he was fascinated by your breathtaking beauty. Maybe it was destiny back then. It felt surreal, like he was your soulmate. The missing piece in in your heart and life.

Apologetic, he bought you a drink and after a wonderful night together, asked for your number.

Soon, he took you out on a date and there followed a second and a third, becoming a huge part in your life.

Without noticing, time passed and Chan proposed to you.

You immediately said yes and became Mrs. Bang.

The second you were married, your family asked when you both would begin to try for a baby but Chan and you wanted to wait some time before thinking about an addition to your family.

You still were young and Stray kids took much time and you understood that. Your job was also one of your top priorities and wanted to earn more money.

But it seemed that the universe had other plans with you two. Seven months after the wedding you started feeling sick. At first you brushed it off and thought that it is just a stomach bug or the stress due to work.

As the lovely but overly concerned husband that he is, Chan took you too a doctor to get a check up. Even though you found it a little bit overdramatic, he still insisted and the reason why you felt nauseous was soon found. You were indeed pregnant and already two months into pregnancy.

Sure, it wasn't planned but you and Chan felt excited to have a small addition to the family. And sooner or later it would have happend anyways.

Chan promised that when the pregnancy was farther along, he would take some time off and help you. You agreed to that and decided to work some more months too before you need to go into maternity leave.

The months passed fast and soon, you welcomed your newest family member. A girl. A sweet girl with already some black locks on her head and the same brown eyes that you fell in love with.

Chan was over the moon. Even though during labour, he was terrified. Would he be a good dad? But all these thoughts washed away when he saw the beautiful angel you both had created with your undying love.

He was the first one to hold her as her crying filled the room. Exhausted, you observed the picture in front of you. Your husband with his precious daughter that already looked like a smaller copy of him.

He was told to undress his shirt and to lay the little bundle of joy against his bare chest to help her breath and keeping her warmth while the doctor checked on you because you had lost a lot of blood during birth.

The first weeks were exhausting. Your little girl, Nari, held both of you awake most of the night. Yourself needed to heal and time to recover from the labor, so you relied mostly on your husband who took such good care for his girl. Fortunately, he got some weeks off to settle into parenthood before going back to the boys even though they nearly saw each other every day.

Since you got home from the hospital, four days after birth, they visited you to meet their 'little sister' as they called Nari. Oh lord, they were so smitten. The only one that seems not so sure about that little human was Seungmin but when he thought that nobody would watch, you catched him drawing circles over Nari's hands, smiling when she wrapped her hand around one of his fingers.

When Chan went back, the house was suddenly so empty. After weeks of being together 24/7, the sudden quiet was unfamiliar. In the mornings, Chan was already out, you loved to lay on the couch, your daughter on your chest, snuggling close to you while sleeping.

When Chan came back home in the evening, he greeted you with a kiss and immediately ran off to his daughter to tell her about his day even though she was already sleeping. You loved to observe him while cooking. You loved this little family. It was something that you ever wanted.

You really loved Nari. But after the pregnancy and early motherhood, you needed some space for yourself. You would love to spend an evening with your girls. Just making yourself look pretty and have fun without watching over a child.

Especially since you almost never leave the house except for some stroller walks and buying errands.

You asked your husband if he comes home some hours earlier so that you could enjoy your night. Immediately, he agreed and you were so grateful that he understood you.

On that day, you took your time with getting ready while your daughter slept. You hoped that Chan would be home soon so that you would be on time since you hated being late.

Minutes passed as you sat on the couch waiting for him. Minutes turned into half an hour and you wrote your girls that you would run a little late today. They were understanding.

More minutes passed and you waited already for a whole hour. You tried to call him since he was always so focused on his work so that he sometimes forgets the time.

He didn't pick up and you were already half an hour late. Your girls were already seated in your restaurant, waiting for you to show up so that they could start ordering food.

Sighing, you texted then that you couldn't make it and they shouldn't wait up on you. Frustrated, you cleared your face from the make up that was hours worth of work.

You took off the new dress that you had bought. You were so excited to wear it because it made you feel so pretty again after the pregnancy made you look bloated and your belly was still not the same then before.

You didn't know if you felt rage, sadness or disappointment that you needed to stay home because of your husband.

It wouldn't be so bad if it was the first time after he got back to work. He used to come back at a normal time to have some time with you and the baby. But as the weeks passed, he stayed later and got up earlier so that you saw him just for some minutes per day.

It was like you were all on your own here in your home. You knew from the beginning that Stray kids was really important to him but after entering parenthood you had hoped that he wouldn't stay till past midnight in the company.

You heard the key unlocking the front door and your husband finally decided to come home after he had promised you that he would be here three hours ago. He greeted you with a small peck on the forehead as you waited for him in the living room.

He looked so calm while dropping his bag to the ground and sitting down on the couch.

"Why are you standing there honey?" He asked. You crossed your arms. He didn't even remembered that this was supposed to be your night out.

"Why are you so late?" You tried to remain calm since your daughter slept in the neighbouring room.

"I was working on the newest song for stray kids" he explained.

"Oh really? Because you said you would be here hours ago" you didn't want to pick a fight. You hated fighting with him. It made your heart clench but this night was important to you.

"I'm sorry honey. But I needed to get it done"

"Well, I had plans for the night, Chan."

"Really? I'm sorry honey. I forgot and this song was important"

"The song was important? My reservation with the girls was important to me" you said and couldn't hold the calm tone that you wanted.

"I already said I'm sorry, Y/n. I got caught up in work" He grew annoyed.

"Like always. You're always so late that I wonder if you even remember that you have a family at home" You knew you were mean and unfair but all these things were twirling around your head for days.

"Of course I remember! I'm sorry that I make money for us" he exclaimed sarcastically. His voice loud, nearly shouting.

These words hurt you. He knew damn well that you aren't dependent on his money and that you make good money as well. Even though you currently took a maternity leave.

"Fuck you, Chan. You aren't the only one working. I was asking you for just one thing. Just being home a little earlier so that I could have some time for myself." You said loudly, your voice cracking in the middle as some tears stung in your eyes.

"Y/n. I-" he tried but you stopped him.

"Nari is your child too. Currently, I'm the only one she sees whether it's in the morning or in the evening. And I'm tired. Tired of being the only one raising her."

You heard cries from the other room. You must have woken up your sleeping daughter. Sighing, you excited the room and headed to Nari without waiting for an answer.

Chan knew that he went too far and that he was more away than home. And it pained him to not spend so much time with his daughter. Slowly he followed you to your daughter's room.

It was dimly lit and you sat in the rocking chair next to her crib with Nari in your arms, rocking her. He hated seeing her in distress and guilt crept up. He was a terrible father and an even more terrible husband.

You felt Chan's hot gaze on you. You knew that the guilt ate him alive right now. He couldn't fool you. Therefore you knew him too well.

After placing Nari back into her crib, giving her a light kiss on her soft skin that smelled so sweet like a baby. Your baby.

Then, you took Chan's hand and lead you outside to the kitchen, farther away from your daughter.

He just followed you, deep in thoughts.

"Y/n, I'm so sorry. I should have come early. And I know that parenting a child alone is difficult. I didn't want to lash out on you like that. I know that the meeting with your friends was important to you" he said and caressed your hand.

"I'm sorry too. It's obvious that you try to be around Nari as long and often as you can."

"No, you were right. I need to be here more. Especially with you both. I shouldn't let work take over so much" he said and pulled you into his arms.

His arms circled around your waist while yours travelled upwards into his fluffy locks. Exhausted he let his head fall on your shoulder, all the tension leaving his body.

"I love you Chan" you whispered.

"I love you too. You and Nari are the most important things in my life"

#stray kids x reader #skz imagines #skz x reader #stray kids fluff #bang chan x reader #bang chan #bang chan fluff #bang chan angst #bang chan imagines #stray kids #stray kids angst

[on-leatheredwings]

Meeting the Family

based off this! but can be read alone.

Yandere! Fem! Reader / Yandere! Bruce Wayne

> romantic with bruce, platonic with the boys. the boys could be read as pre-yandere if you wish. > tw/cw: reader is a yandere, yandere-typical thought patterns, implied drugging, mention of self-harm, implied drugging > request: thoughts on co-conspirator!reader meeting the boys? > a/n: Hmmmm, i feel it’d be a meeting of interrogation where they see you’re clearly unstable !! > word count: 1.4k

You walk towards the threshold of a Wayne Manor sitting room. You have this hallway nearly memorized. You’ve viewed it through your 24/7 surveillance cameras and glanced upon it during your visits, but never has this hallway seemed so daunting until now. Luckily, your lover is nearby to reassure you. Bruce slips his hand into yours, and you inwardly swoon. You share a warm glance with him.

“They’ll adore you,” he says. You let a smile peek through your anxious expression. “I know I do.” At such sweet words, you feel your cheeks heat. Ugh, this man, you think affectionately.

Your Sunday best is the armor you don to meet Bruce’s children. It seems like you won’t even be able to meet them all – only the ones in town. “They just want to interrogate me,” you whine, letting yourself be pulled towards the impeccably decorated room.

“They just want to get to know you,” Bruce returns, humming. You can’t retort because already, you are in full view of his brood. The three of them look up from their phones and books. You swallow, under the scrutiny of two pairs of blue eyes and one pair of green.

“... Hi,” you say, waving a stupid hand. One smiles in return, thank goodness.

“I’ll just let you all get acquainted,” Bruce says, retreating. You swerve to him, blinking dumbly. That was not the agreement. The agreement was that Bruce moderate the discussion– and he’s gone.

He leaves the sitting room, and leaves you in the lion’s den to fend for yourself. And boy, do the lions pounce. 

The eldest, Dick – he’s positively godsent. He’s the first to shake your hand, immediately going into a friendly babble about how you’re all Bruce ever talks about and how he’s been excited to meet you. And thank God for that, because it manages to ease the tension you still have in your shoulders. He introduces himself and his brothers, melts the ice by teasing them as he does it. He offers you a seat across from them, offers you tea and cookies. He shares an anecdote of Bruce’s less polished moments to make you laugh. 

You soon realize he was a sleeper agent. He was merely buttering you up, lowering your defenses with well-placed platitudes and good-natured jokes.

It’s Tim who begins the true assault.

“So,” Tim begins over a cup of tea, looking upon you owlishly. “Isolation for 10 long years… How was that?” You blink, startled, before smiling weakly. At least no one was treating you like glass. Sometimes, that made you feel even more like a freak.

You try to give him a Sparknotes recollection, but it doesn’t satisfy him. At his badgering, you do relent more details. You are slipping your innermost thoughts without much of a fight, to your surprise. Dick’s empathetic gaze and Tim’s enraptured attention have you spilling dark thoughts it took you months to even tell Bruce… 

It was long. It was traumatic. Mind-altering. You have breakdown after breakdown. Self-harm after self-harm. There is a part of you you can never get back… So, 'how was it?' Why, just awful, thanks for asking!

Dick comforts you with “you’re so strong,” as Tim nods. He seems happy with his findings. It seems like you have piqued his academic interest – you can basically see the gears churning behind his mind, the factoids he’s storing for later. For what, you don’t know, but you’re glad to help. Throat dry, you down the rest of that blasted tea, but the boys aren’t quite finished.

Damian, however, is brutal in his questioning, sparing any of the pleasantries or dithering his brothers employed. He asks rapid fire about your past outside of your years in isolation. What was your childhood like? Your relationship with your parents? Did you ever graduate high school? College? What was your major? Do you like animals? His father houses two dogs, a cat, and a cow – you do know that don’t you? 

“What are your intentions with my father?” At that, you flinch.

“Nothing… nefarious, to be sure,” you say, sweat beginning to bead on your temple. It’s true! Aside from all the dastardly actions you wanted to inflict upon Bruce in the bedroom, nothing nefarious!

“And his other suitors? They don’t bother you?” 

At that, your smile wilts. Not from any offense… you simply don’t enjoy the reminder that others do seek Bruce’s affection. 

“They… don’t worry me,” you say succinctly. Dick doesn’t think you realize how your smile has grown sharp. Damian doesn’t let on whether he approves or disapproves of the answer. And Tim simply watches.

“And my father’s controlling and possessive tendencies? You’re fine with that? What would you do if you caught him in a lie? Or if a woman he was involved with confronted you?”

You gape like a fish. Man, what a character this one was. Damian blinks slow and catlike, before he sniffs. “I’m asking for one of the siblings who couldn’t be here today.”

“Um…” you return, discombobulated. You shoot off your answers as rapid-fire as he posed them. “I haven’t noticed any tendencies. And I can handle myself! If he lied… I’d hear him out. He probably had a good reason, of course.”

“What if it was infidelity?” 

You glare at them. “I’d get rid of her.” Why do they keep bringing up other women? 

At the boys’ silence, you realize your mistake. You wave your hands and bluster, “Not like– not like get rid of her– I would just tell her to… Leave. And I’d be… angry… at Bruce.” God, you don’t feel like you’re doing too well in this interview. You hiccup, filling your cup some more. What is in this tea? Man, it’s delicious.

“... Interesting.” 

“What if Bruce left you out of his own volition?” Tim points out, drawing your attention.

Your head snaps to him and you stare… That possibility had never even crossed your mind.

“He wouldn’t,” you say, confused. At raised eyebrows, you say, “I mean. I-I don’t think he would.” You have faith in Bruce. It’s been five months now, and your relationship has gone swimmingly. You had your insecurities… but Bruce had kissed all your worries away by now. Your fingers dig into the cushion of the couch. 

He wouldn’t leave. He couldn’t. He had already reassured you, and been so kind, and wonderful, and shown you what love was like– he couldn’t just leave you now–

“But what if he did?” and this time, the question comes from Dick, who, if you recall, hadn’t asked a single question yet. He looks serious, unlike his casual air from before.

You keep the desperation out your voice by keeping it chillingly level. “Then I’d convince him otherwise.” Good answer, good answer, you applaud yourself. All the boys nod, looking upon you with varying degrees of interest, curiosity, and understanding.

“Then… I suppose we have just one more question,” Tim says, plucking the kettle of tea out your hands. You pout.

“Thoughts on having children?”

At the question, your brows shoot into your hairline.

“... Are there not enough of you already?” you blurt.

To your relief, they all relax.

-

After that strange encounter, Bruce shows himself and sees you out. The walk outside is quiet. Comfortably quiet on your end. You hope you did good… no, you reassure yourself. Fuck it, you did great.

“So… how were they?” 

You glance at his face, and are surprised to see thinly veiled concern behind his smile. “Did any of them say anything… strange? And… did you like them?” You laugh, before floating up to kiss Bruce between the brows. Flight powers came in handy for stuff like that.

“They were wonderful,” you say cheekily. “Something they clearly get from their father.”

-

bonus!

Bruce re-enters the foyer. He shoots off a text, lamenting. If you hadn’t had him bug his own home, he could’ve spoken to the boys freely. He could’ve had Jason hide nearby, instead of having to listen in on Damian’s phone.

Bruce: Did that satisfy your curiosities?

Several ellipses in bubbles pop up, before his phone rattles with their responses.

Damian: Frankly, she comes off as airheaded and naive, but at least she seems to have some semblance of spine.

Jason: She’s crazy. Didn’t we tell you to stop sticking your dick in crazy

Dick: Well, I think that makes you guys a perfect match!

Tim: bruce i’m sorry, you cannot fix her. however, i would like to study her. and possibly, make her worse

Bruce sighs, albeit smiling. By all accounts, you seem have gotten their general approval.

#yandere batfam #yandere bruce wayne #yandere bruce wayne x yandere reader #yandere reader #mine #platonic batfam for once lol crazyyy #tim drake #jason todd #dick grayson

[writingroom21]

The Nanny

Pairing: rafe x nanny reader

Summary: Being Wheezie's nanny was great. The only downside is dealing with the oldest Cameron, Rafe. What happens when his fascination with the nanny becomes a reality?

Warnings: 18+, fingering, oral (m and f receiving)

wc: 4.9K

Chapter 2: Let the fun and games begin

The next day was a blur of anxiety as you didn’t know what to do about last night. Rose and Ward had left early this morning taking Wheezie to drop her off at her camp. That just left you, Sarah and Rafe all alone at Tannyhill. This normally wouldn’t have been a problem but considering Sarah is MIA it became one. Every room you enter fills you with anxiety and dread of seeing Rafe. How do you even look at him after what happened? After he caught you watching him fuck his fist. Alright you think as you start to throb just thinking about how his arms flexed everytime he stroked himself. This is getting out of hand, it was one thing for your thoughts to keep you up all night but it can't affect your daily routine.

What’s the worst that can happen right? So what if you stood there and watched him, he would have done the same in your position. Hell he probably would have taken it as an invitation if he walked in on you like that. But no matter how you tried to spin it in your head it all led to the same conclusion. You were utterly fucked. The past year was easy to blow him off, all you had to do was think about all the girls you saw crying over him. But now that you caught a glimpse of that side of him you can’t help wanting to get a closer look. It wouldn’t hurt to have a little fun, you thought. It really wouldn’t, he’s really handsome and if his reputation is right then he’s also really good in bed.

Then you think about Wheezie and how hurt she would be if something went wrong and you had to leave. The thought of hurting her alone was good enough for the thoughts to finally stop. No matter how attractive Rafe is it isn't worth it, plus his personality would probably ruin it before it even starts. Yeah the two of you are completely different, he grew up rich and thinks the world is his to rule and you grew up in the cut. If it wasn’t for this job you would still be living at home barely making anything to feed yourself. He only tolerates you because he thinks you are hot and you work for his family. Yup that it, right?

The tv plays in the background reruns of Grey’s Anatomy playing as you try to relax. It’s close to five o’clock and no one is in the house. Sarah is probably off with John B and Rafe is well he’s mostly likely off somewhere getting high. Derek’s voice plays in your ear as you focus back onto the screen forcing yourself to think of anything but the older Cameron. Watching as the surgery scene plays out your phone pings. Mom: Hi baby. Just wanted to let you know dad and I are having a cookout tomorrow night. We would like it if you came, we know you’re a busy bee but we miss you. You let out a sigh looking at the message. It wasn’t that your relationship with your parents is bad, they just expected a lot from you. 

It was always about getting good grades so you could get a good job and help them out with bills. They wanted you to take care of them once you had a stable job. So when you decided to take up a job as a nanny they weren’t too pleased.  The displeasure faded away once they found out it was being a nanny for the Camerons. Even though the paycheck was nice, well more than nice, it still wasn’t enough to cover their expenses and your own. It’s been a constant argument between the three of you. You type out a quick response before she starts sending you more. You: Hey! I miss you both. I’ll try to make it, Ward and Rose asked me to watch the house while they are gone. Your phone wasn’t even out of your hand before it went off again with another message. Mom: I’m sure they won’t mind you being away for a few hours. But if you can’t make it we will just see you another time then. Her message seems so understanding but deep down you know she's upset. Fingers go to respond but a voice scares you. The phone drops from your hand as you whip your head to look at who came into the living room. “Still pretending to text that boyfriend of yours?” Rafe says, making his way over to the couch and plopping down near you. Scoffing at him you respond. “No, I'm texting my mother.” “oh so you admit the boyfriend was fake.”

There’s a twinkle in his eyes as he grins at you, watching to see what your next move will be. “Yeah it was fun watching you get jealous but I decided to give it a rest for tonight.” The two of you just stare at each other for a moment, he’s looking at what you are wearing. You didn’t notice it at the time but it’s one of his old shirts that got mixed with your laundry a while ago. It looks like a dress on you blocking the view of your sleep shorts underneath. Which is a good thing because those shorts leave nothing to the imagination, barely covering you up from the world. Every now and then you wear it but only in your room, not allowing yourself to let him know you have it. 

“Nice shirt.” He comments scooting a bit closer to you on the couch. “You should wear it more often Sunny. Really makes your eyes pop.” Mhm you mumble knowing that he’s not looking anywhere near your eyes. In fact he’s staring at the exposed flesh of your thighs. Skimming up along your legs pausing for a moment at your cunt. Rafe’s eyes on you are making you wiggle in your seat as you try to focus back on the show. It is quiet for a moment as the voices of the characters fill the room. The sky outside starts to darken as the sun finally sets, the room painted in the soft lights of the screen.

Rafe is staring at you, looking at how the light washes of blue dance across your features as you try your best to not stare at him. Movement catches your attention as you see him slide further along the cushions to sit right next to you. “Where’s Sarah?” He whispers by my ear, his right hand brushes against your left thigh. “Um… I don’t know. Maybe she’s with John B or the rest of them.” Clearing your throat, the voice leaving you sounding weak. “Hmm so it’s just us in the house?” The question was met with his hand resting fully on your thigh. Lightly squeezing you as it slowly goes a bit higher right where the shirt ends, fingers quickly skirting underneath before going back to its original position. 

“Rafe.” The rest of the statement was cut off by him. ”Don’t do that. Enough with this game of cat and mouse. I know you want this as badly as I do.” A moan slips from you as his hand goes back under the shirt to tease you through your shorts. Rafe’s middle finger grazing you up and down, noticing the way your eyes screw shut. Creases forming around them as he keeps playing with you. “We shouldn’t do this, I literally work for your family.” You try to reason with him turning to be face to face, whimpering as the heat of his hand leaves as he retracts it. 

“I know.” He whispers as the hand that was touching your caresses your check, knotting into your hair to drag you closer. The other hand worms it way back to your shorts, sliding them to the side to finally feel you. “Fuck no panties? See you’re practically soaking those little shorts of yours.” You moan as he circles your clit with a feather-like touch. “Are you always this wet or do you like me touching you like this?” He chuckles as you move further into his touch. “You’re not special Cameron. I’m always this wet.” The response stops all movement, the grip in her hair tightening for a short second causing your eyes to open. Meeting the blue eyes that haunted you all night, you let go.  “Don’t stop.” 

Your lips crash into his, soft pillowy lips melting together, teeth nipping at each other's lips as Rafe’s fingers continue their assault. “That’s a good girl, Sunny. Fucking perfect.” The words tickle your lips, head thrown back as he makes his way to your entrance. Rafe pushes his middle finger in, dragging it along your walls in a delicious and intoxicating way. Moans keep slipping from your lips and only intensifies as his lips skate across your skin, latching onto your neck. 

A second finger joins his middle one curling just enough to hit your g-spot, tingles spread across your body, legs spreading giving him better access. “Right there.” You moan, your hand landing on his thigh trying to ground yourself when all you can feel is pleasure. Wet squelching fills your eyes only adding to the sensation of his thick fingers fucking you open. “That feel good, baby?” Rafe picks up his speed before taking his fingers out of you and putting them in his mouth. He moans around his fingers, pushing you back to lay down on the couch.  “Come on, pretty girl, lay down for me. Want to have my dinner.” 

Your brain is so hazy from having his fingers inside you that you don’t fight back. Lifting your hips, his hands wrap around your hips to pull the pathetic excuse you call shorts down your legs. The flimsy material being thrown off to the side, shirt pushed up to your waist exposing you to him for the first time. “God your pussy’s perfect. Look at it clenching around nothing. Want me to fill you up.” His lips start to kiss up your thigh, biting into the soft flesh when you don’t respond. “Please.” You whine 

“Please what? Use your words, I know a smart girl like you can do it.” The praise goes straight to your head, hips lifting off the couch trying to chase after his touch. “Please, sir.” The whimper halts Rafe and he stares up at you. After a moment of him not doing anything you look down at him between your legs. If you had a camera in this moment you would take a picture, he was a sight to be seen. Rafe’s lips are puffy and red but his eyes are staring at you with this hunger that makes you go to close your legs but he stops you. Both hands spread your legs as he dives into your cunt.

“Fuck that wasn’t what I was looking for but I’ll be damned if you don’t call me that.” His voice vibrates against you sending chills down your body. “Say it again.” His middle and ring finger push into you once again, pumping in a cruel slow pace. “Please, sir. It feels so good.” Your walls flutter around the fingers inside you, his tongue kitty licking your clit. “Such a good little slut. Begging me to keep finger fucking you like some depraved whore.” His words cause you to squeeze his finger and throw your head back with a moan. 

“Yeah you like being degraded?” A chuckle leaves him “Should’ve known you would like it. Prancing around the house in those little skirts. Just asking for me to bend you over some surface to fuck you. Bet you want me to fuck that attitude right out of you. Huh would that finally shut up that little mouth of yours?” With his fingers curling into you deeper and his mouth suctioning against your clit no words come out. Your mouth hangs open and all you can do is place your hand behind his head, keeping him as close as possible to you. 

A choked moan is lodged in your throat, eyes peeking at him through your lashes. His eyes are closed as he keeps devouring you, his hips thrusting into the couch to relieve the growing pain in his pants. Rafe wanted nothing more than to rip his pants off and shove his dick into your tight pussy. If you were squeezing him so nicely now, he can only imagine how good you would feel wrapped around his cock. He wanted to watch as you crumble into a mess of pleasure, taking his dick like a cock drunk slut. The thought of that alone causes his hips to stutter, the feeling making him moan into your pussy.

At this rate you can feel your peak creeping up fast. “Oh god Rafe. Don’t stop, please don’t stop.” Hips thrusting up to match the brutal pace his fingers have set. If you thought his arms looked good jerking himself off, nothing compares to watching it flex as he fucks you. “I’m not stopping, baby. I’m never going to stop. But that’s not my name.” Rafe means it too. Just the little taste of you has ruined him, no one will be able to compare to the sweet taste of you. “Sir!” you squeal. He's drunk off the feeling and taste of you, every clench of your pussy making him grind harder into the cushion. “I can feel you squeezing me. You want to be my good girl right? Cum for me Sunny.”

With a graze of his teeth on your clit, you were sent to ecstasy. Hips thrashing all around as he kept sucking on your clit, fingers pushing deeper into you riding out your orgasim. Once you come down he removes his fingers, quickly cleaning them with his tongue before diving back into you. Licking you clean and holding you down by the waist as you try to escape him. When he’s finally done he lets you go, leaning back, chest heaving looking down at you.

You were the prettiest thing he’s ever seen. So fucked out catching your breath with a peaceful look on your face. Eyes still closed you don’t notice him leaning back down, encasing your body with his. His thumb lightly dances along your cheek, waiting for you to open your eyes to look at him. “Thank you.” You whisper suddenly shy as if he wasn’t just eating you out like you were his last meal. Rafe laughs, kissing you deeply before moving off of you. “Such good manners.” He walks over to your shorts, throwing them back at you, making his way out of the room. “I have to go deal with something. I’ll be back later okay.”

Silence wraps around you, the tv displaying Are you still watching? Getting up you pull your shorts back on looking around the couch for your phone and the remote. Finding your phone you also notice something on the couch. A huge wet spot from where you were laying, heat rushes to your checks knowing you just soiled an expensive couch.

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The rest of the night was uneventful, Sarah never came back home so you were left all alone. Usually you and Wheezie would spend the summer nights outside swimming in the pool or staying up late chatting about god knows what. Without her there really wasn’t anything to do besides lay around or go to a party. After much consideration the only one that seemed right was staying at home. You knew Rafe would most likely be at the party, the something he had to deal with being selling coke. After last night and tonight you don’t even know how to face him again.

So staying at home was the best option in your books. A few hours were spent reading whatever romance book was on your bookshelf and making dinner for yourself. By midnight you were fast asleep in your room. Sleeping so peacefully, the sounds of the bedroom door opening weren't noticed. It was the door closing that stirred you from your slumber, looking at the bedside clock you noticed it was past two in the morning. Soft footsteps echo in the dark room, the person fumbling their way around knocking down whatever they made contact with. “Fuck” they curse the sound barely reachign you.

Scared and not knowing what to do you lay there slowly reaching for the bat by your bed. Even though this is a good neighborhood and people would have to have the gate code to get in you can never be too safe. The bat is now next to you in the bed, the side behind you dipping with the weight of the person sitting on it. “Sunny.” They whisper. Are you fucking kiddin’t me? “Rafe?” His hand wraps around you to turn you around, the bat coming along with you. “Jesus. Is that a fucking bat?”

Rafe slips it out of your hand placing it under your bed before going back to you. “Do you always keep a bat on you?” “Depends. Do you always sneak into girls' beds at two in the morning?” The moon shining through the windows dimly lit the room, contouring his face. “Only the pretty ones.” He whispers in the space between you two, telling you a secret he normally wouldn’t say. “I’m sure you say that to all of them.” You tease trying to put distance between you both. It’s weird having him laying in your bed, sure the two of you were friendly, things only changing the previous day. But this is different, he’s in your room, he’s laying in your bed next to you.

“Nah none of them need the sweet words to sleep with me.” Cocky tone matching the grin growing on his face. “Oh of course. Forgot that the kook king was also a king in the bedroom.” Rolling your eyes and lying on your back, you stare at the ceiling. Of course he would only say nice things to get into your pants, you don’t know why you could even think differently. Rafe’s face invades your eye line as he rests all his weight onto one arm to get a better look at you. His eyes are bloodshot, pupils dilated scanning your face hoping it can tell him what you are thinking. 

“Penny for your thoughts.” Your eyes shut trying to form words with all the things you want to say. That he made you feel something no one else has been able to do, how you want to keep chasing that feeling, but more importantly that it was a mistake. It doesn’t matter that it felt amazing, that whatever it was would only lead to heartbreak. You’ve seen this film before with all the girls he flaunted around the house. “This.” You clear your throat, averting your eyes to the window. “This can’t keep happening.” 

Rafe takes a hold of your chin turning you to look at him. “Do you want it to keep happening?” The loaded question fizzling in the air was replaced by a quick “No.” leaving your lips. “But it doesn’t matter what I want.” “It does matter.” Blue eyes burning into your own pleading for you not to take away these moments. Communicating with you that he needs this as much as you need him. “It can be our little secret. I promise I won’t tell.” You giggle, his head burying into the crook of your neck, kissing the junction where your shoulder and neck meets. 

You try to push him by his shoulder but he won’t budge, kissing up your neck until he meets your ear. “Stop letting life pass you by. You stay cooped up in this house with Wheeze all day, she’s not a kid you know. When was the last time you let yourself go?” His breath tickles your ear before biting it and continuing to kiss your skin. Rafe’s right, you don’t do anything fun anymore. Before you took this job you would go out constantly, always with friends running around the island. Wheezie shouldn’t even need a nanny, the only reason you have this job is because Ward was scared. Sarah running away and Rafe doing drugs all the time made him paranoid, he doesn’t want the same to happen to her.

“I don’t know, I would say what we did on the couch would count.” His kisses travel to your jaw, then check, and finally meet your lips. “Yeah I would say it counts. Fucking soaked the couch from how wet you were.” You tense for a moment, embarrassed that he noticed the mess you made. “Nah nah don’t get shy on me pretty girl. You’re just as dirty and depraved as I am.” Pretty girl, that's the second time he’s called you pretty since he sneaked into your room. “You’re high, you should go to sleep.”

“Not high, that shit is practically out of my system at this point.” Kissing your lips he weasels his way on top of you. Your legs widening allowing him to slot his hips between yours, his dick rubbing you in the right way. You are still wearing the shorts from earlier, his dick making the fabric  stick to your folds. “Just want to feel you.” Rafe’s words punctuated with his hips slowly thrusting against you, lips kissing any exposed skin he can get to. “I’m not letting you fuck me after you’ve been taking drugs all night.”

You can feel him smile against your skin, giving you a peck and moving his head to meet your gaze. “So what I’m hearing is you would let me fuck you any other time.” scoffing you roll your eyes flicking his forehead. “Yeah dumbass that’s what I’m saying. It's too bad. I guess we’ll have to find another way.” “Another way?” There’s that smirk again, a fluttering feeling starts in your stomach. Shaking the feeling away you pull him up by his face to kiss you, using all of your body weight to get him on his back. Throwing your leg over his hip you straddle him. 

Rafe is the first to break the kiss, watching you from below as you start to grind against him. “Tell me princess exactly what is this other way?” The hand that was resting on your neck makes its way down the valley of your breast, teasing you nipples through the shirt with a pinch before finding its home on your hip. Viewing him from this angle is breathtaking, the moon painting him in a light blue. “Let me suck your dick.” His hips thrust up into your after hearing how you want to suck him off. “Yeah? Want to put the little mouth of yours to good use.” You grind a little harder leaning down to kiss his neck.

There’s a slight taste of sweat on his skin, probably from partying too hard, it doesn’t stop you from sucking on his pulse point. Pecking up to his ear and placing kisses right behind it, gaining moans from him. Bingo. Sucking on his sweat spot he uses his grip on your hips to move you back and forth. “Yeah. I want to feel you in my mouth, want to taste you.” This causes him to groan bucking into you. “Fuck! Yeah, yeah you can have whatever you want baby.” The words are like a reward, smiling as you look down at him, your hair covering the two of you from the outside world.

“Good boy.” Two simple words, two words that had him wrapped around your finger. The grip on your hip tightens as you kiss down his body, pulling his shirt over his head so you can nip at his skin. Your hands reach between your bodies undoing the belt and pants button easing the pain the zipper was giving him. He’s so painfully hard he can’t even remember the last time he wanted someone this much. “You like being my good boy just as much as I like being your good girl. If you admit it I’ll suck you so good.” You whisper, eyes flickering up to look at him. 

If his ego wasn’t so big he would admit it, he would tell you just how fucking bad he wanted to be good for you. But that’s not who he is, admitting something like that would just show you how weak he truly is, he can’t do that. “Oh you begging for me to fill that mouth up of yours and fuck that tone out of you.” He taunts from above, grasping at anything to give him the upper hand. “You’ll definitely be filling up my mouth. It’s just going to be under my rules.” Pushes his shorts and boxers down his cock springs free bobbing in front of your face. Reaching up you grab him and give him a little squeeze, electing a groan out of the boy laid out on your bed.

You kiss his left thigh before licking him from the base up to the mushroom tip that was red, begging for attention. The taste of pre-cum invades your tongue as you wrap your lips around him, sucking just the tip. He’s heavy in your mouth and you only have the tip in but based off of the quick glance you got you knew he was big. Like huge, he’s also wide, stretching your lips as you take more of him in. If he’s stretching you out like this then you can only imagine what fucking him would do. As if Rafe was a mind reader he calms your nerves. “Don’t worry baby, we’ll make it fit. Just…just keep sucking like that.” 

Humming around him, you start to move your head up and down, making sure to hollow your cheeks and give him a nice long suck on the way up. Repeating the motion you get into a rhythm, right hand wrapped around what you can’t fit helping you along. “Fuck that feels good. Who knew that mouth was good for something else other than talking back.” The vibrations of your chuckle send pleasure through Rafe’s body. He doesn’t know whether to watch you or to shut his eyes and enjoy the moment. But looking at the way your eyes are closed, worshiping his dick has him throwing his head back. His eyes closing, moans escaping him as he wraps your hair in a ponytail in his hands. Guiding your pace he pulls your hair this causes you to moan around the sensation making you wet. 

“Touch yourself.” The command takes you by surprise, following it, your unoccupied hand makes its way into your shorts. You're wet, wet is an understatement, you were soaked. You would never admit this but you liked the feeling of him in your mouth, the feeling of him rutting into you. “You get off on this shit don’t you?” Your fingers rub faster on your clit, already so close to cumming just by sucking him off. “Knew you were a cock slut. Damn baby.” He huffs between breaths. 

All you can do is moan and keep sucking, picking up the pace of your bobbing, moving your arm to slip a finger inside yourself. Rafe lifts his head at your movements, entranced by just watching you. His beautiful little Sunny being perfect, your eyes flutter open and his breath hitches. He’s going to remember this moment forever, it’s going to play on repeat in his head every minute of every day. Whatever happens after this is worth it in his eyes, this right here made it worth it. “If you keep going I’m gonna cum.” He moans, head falling back onto your pillow. 

Disconnecting from him a string of saliva and pre-cum kept the two of you tethered. “That’s kinda the point, pretty boy.” You continue your previous movements, on the verge of cumming yourself. You can feel him throbbing ready to explode in your mouth so you squeeze his base tighter, letting him know it's okay and you want it. “Can you be a good boy and come for me sir?” Not even a second later he lets go, white ropes of cum filling your mouth as you cum right after him. Swallowing around him, you let him go, releasing him from your mouth, the hand in your pants laying motionless. 

Rafe lets go of your hair, grabbing your arms to pull you up his body. The motion was so fast that you had to catch yourself as your body tumbles on top of him. He reaches for your hand, still glistening from your sum to pop them into his mouth. Rafe’s tongue swirls around the digest, licking them clean and releasing them to kiss you. “Taste just as sweet like before.” He kisses you, turning your bodies so you are both laying on your sides.

He has a soft smile on his lips, hands rubbing up and down your arm as he regulates his breathing. “Did so good, sunny.” His eyes are barely open, fighting off the sleep threatening to overcome him. “Yeah?” You whisper resting your head on his shoulder, feeling a sense of comfort with his arms wrapped around you. Snoring mets your ears as sleep takes you along with it. For the second night in a row, you go to bed with the taste of him still lingering on your taste buds.

#rafe x reader #rafe cameron smut #rafe smut #rafe obx #obx #rafe cameron

[shuttershocky]

What do you think of Nasu basically spoiling Mahoyo 2 in FGO, even though Mahoyo 2 doesn't exist (yet)?

lol

lmao even

I will make an even better call.

He did not stop at spoiling Mahoyo 2, a VN that doesn't exist in any way, shape, or form yet. No. In fact, Nasu has gone above and beyond, also spoiling a critical new story element for the Tsukihime Remake's Red Garden, hidden inside the Mahoyo event.

Why do I say this? There's a scene in the collab event where the gang discusses the matter of reviving the dead. Aoko's little incident at the end of Mahoyo inevitably gets brought up, but Alice shuts down the notion that Aoko can revive the dead, because what Aoko does is time fraud, essentially running a scam, and therefore does not count.

If you are killed, but Aoko makes it so you don't die, she does so by taking the time you were killed and propelling it into the far future, way after you would die of old age anyway. In Mahoyo, Touko is aghast at the methodology because messing with time would absolutely incur some kind of terrible debt to the fabric of reality that will have to be paid eventually, while in FGO, Alice believes it doesn't count as reviving the dead, probably because you never died (because the time that you died is far, far sway).

What does this have to do with Tsukihime?

Now, in the original Tsukihime, Shiki was basically a dead man walking; his body was animated by Akiha's life-force / soul after saving her from an inverting SHIKI, and while it's never explained beyond "Akiha has powers no one else in her oni family has", no mage has been able to revive the dead, or keep a body that can no longer live on its own moving by making it a parasite on their own life. Others that cheat death such as Touko or Roa (or Meltryllis in FGO) move bodies instead, they cannot save a body that has been damaged beyond saving.

Only Aoko and Akiha have done that.

Now, we know due to some bad ends in the Tsukihime Remake that Shiki is still unknowingly dependent on Akiha, because she's able to control his life and even make him pass out by cutting him off (at least until he gets possessed by Roa), BUT we don't know if the accident with SHIKI was the only thing that happened in the past.

The Tsukihime Remake no longer takes place in Misaki town like the original did. This means that Shiki no longer encounters Aoko walking around her home town. She would have had to go to a hospital in Souya town, and coincidentally run into 9 year old Shiki terrified of seeing death everywhere.

I don't buy that their meeting was a coincidence anymore. I think Aoko knew he would be there.

There is now an unexplained gap between when Roa was Elesia, and when he was SHIKI. In the original timeline, Elesia would have been born around 1975 and fully overwritten by Roa when she was 16, or at 1991. If Arcueid killed her quickly, Roa would have had to find a new host fast, and the incident with SHIKI happened in 1992, 8 years before the events of Tsukihime. No gap.

But now, Arcueid defeats the possessed Elesia in 2001, and the incident with SHIKI doesn't happen until 2006 (8 years before the events of the Tsukihime Remake in 2014). There's now a 5 year gap.

Now, Nasu might just be really bad at mathing out his timeline, but based on entirely no evidence whatsoever, I'm gonna say the 5 year gap between Roa's victims is intentional.

Roa had one more victim in between Elesia and SHIKI, which would be Shiki himself, way before Shiki would gain the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception.

Roa got confused. He meant to target Tohno SHIKI, heir to the powerful Tohno family, and instead got Tohno Shiki, their child slave whose family name got replaced. Roa goes wild inside a Nanaya's body, but ends up running into Aoko (who we know due to Melty Blood Type-Lumina that she has orders from the Clock Tower to defeat and interrogate Roa), who gives him the fuck you laser and incinerates Roa in an instant. Roa gets told by Dr Arach (who is obviously a fucking vampire) that he had the wrong Shiki all this time, while Aoko uses her bullshit to restore Shiki himself.

Unlike with Ciel, whose soul is now "Roa" and thus became immortal because she cannot die while Roa is still recognized by the World as alive, Aoko's method of reviving the dead doesn't heal them of death, she just magics all that shit away.

This makes Shiki avoid the magic loophole that Ciel gets trapped in, becoming an ordinary boy again with no vampiric connection (because Aoko made the whole incident never happen).

That distinction is important, because not dying when being killed is why Shiki has the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception in the first place. He experienced death and his mind now comprehends its true nature. Aoko reviving him doesn't trigger it because like Alice says, Aoko doesn't revive the dead.

Akiha on the other hand, triggers it because Shiki was mortally wounded and his life can no longer move his body, instead relying on Akiha's life force to survive. This makes Shiki dead but functionally alive, manifesting the mystic eyes of death perception.

When Aoko heard that the little boy she unkilled somehow managed to die again just a little later only to reawaken at the hospital, she had to come and see him for herself, leading to that fateful meeting outside the hospital.

TL;DR - Mahoyo event spoils that Roa in the Remake timeline switches it up, possessing Shiki first before ever touching SHIKI, which Aoko deals with.

_____

I have zero proof about any of this by the way which is why it sounds like complete bullshit, because it is. I just saw an opportunity to post Tsukihime Remake speculation on a barely related topic and ran away with it.

BUT, consider this: I correctly predicted that in the Remake Arcueid route, Roa would see a skull staring at him when he finally realizes Shiki is "Death". I know what Nasu plans for Tsukihime, it is all revealed to me in my dreams.

#Tsukihime

[mactavishenjoyer]

Unlike Ghost Soap's family wasn't murdered. Just a series of advents. Suicide is what took his father. Alcoholism is what took his mother. She ended up passing after two years of dialysis. That's what soap remembers the most about her. That she didn't listen to anyone that tried to help her. That she was mean in those last two years. That he had felt guilty when he was just tired of taking care of her. Him and his brother ended up in foster care. Getting split up but finding each other surprisingly quickly when his brother hit 18. His brother died in a car crash a year later. 19 was too young to go but death didn't care. His brother was the only person Soap buried. He deserved to rest somewhere nice. Instead of sitting in a box shoved into some closet like their parents. Soap must have been around 27 when he had actually spread his parents ashes. It only took 15 years to do so but he did it. Something he'd never admit out loud was that he didn't care. It felt wrong but it just wasn't a big deal. The only time he remembered crying over his family was burying his brothers smashed and unrecognizable body. Soap doesn't talk about it. Not because he wants to keep it hidden but because he is tired of the train of "I'm sorry" that comes with telling people. It annoyed him. He would also never say that out loud. He'd never tell someone that it was a waisted sorry. That he truly didn't care that his parents were gone. Paired with his career people would think he was crazy. They'd think that he lacked emotions when that was far from the case. He knew his emotions well. He knew the feeling of dread that washed over him when Simon didn't finish a solo mission in the estimated time. He knew the fear that ran through him that he'll pick up a call just to hear that Kyle didn't make it. He knew the terror that coursed through his body when Price would go dark. He knew the panic that would set in when Gary would get split up from another member. He knew he loved his team. He knew this was his family. He knew that he'd be lost without them.

#call of duty #cod mw2 #call of duty modern warfare #john soap mactavish #simon ghost riley #soap mactavish #gary roach sanderson #ghoap #141 x soap #price x soap #call of duty roach #cod roach #Roach x soap #soap mw2 #captain soap mactavish #soap #ghost x roach x soap #ghost x soap #soaproach #soap x gaz #gaz x soap #soap x everyone #soap angst #cod fanfic #fanfic idea #soapghost #soapgaz #soapprice #soap x price #soap cod

[shmowder]

In P1, it always felt like Artemy glossed over his father's death, like he didn't give much of a reaction nor act like someone would in a state of grief. You get more lines to address it in P2, more opportunities to reminisce about the past and Artemy's childhood. It feels like you go through the stages of grief with him. You watch him miss the dad he had whilst accepting his death. He kneels at the pit of mass graves with the thread in his pocket, witnessing the dead speak and his only question was if his dad can hear him one last time. A stark contrast to how cold-hearted he seemed to onlookers in P1.

It made me question if he even cared that his father had died, if it even mattered to Artemy. Sure he always has shown concern to who killed his father and diligence to fullfill his role as menkhu, but nothing beyond that. Nothing personal, as if he was using revenge as a distraction from facing his emotions.

Sometimes, in P1, you get lines like these.

And it's sudden, abrupt, and completely takes you off guard from how out of tone it feels. How just the mention of his father has him suddenly getting agitated, ignoring the facts. Each time any character mentions Isidor and talks about him freely, Artemy gets the option to tell them to shut up and that they don't know what they're talking about, that they can't possibly understand. It can lock you out of quests.

In one conversation, you get that option 3 times in a row, and you have to avoid choosing it each time so you don't end the quest. Artemy actively has to stop himself from snapping at people left and right so he doesn't throw away all of the progress he has made.

A literal explosion of emotions after days of silence and going as business usual, pretending that nothing is out of the ordinary.

Mind you, that dialogue line above happens in the same conversation as this one below. So by that point, Artemy snapped at someone he considered a friend.

Artemy is grieving, Artemy is distraught, and he doesn't know how to deal with these emotions in P1. So he supresses them, doesn't acknowledge the lines Isidor writes about wishing his son was by his side in his dairy, doesn't accept any condolences nor pity.

He puts a facade of composure since he stepped foot off of that train, a mask of apathy so he doesn't appear weak to anyone in this town. He can't be Artemy the son, he needs to be Burakh the wise menkhu, the warden of kin, the healer his father diligently raised him to be.

He has no time to think about it, he needs to invent a cure, he needs to protect the children, he...needs his dad but that dad is gone.

In P2, he hasn't seen his father in 5 years, but in P1? 10. A decade came and went. How lonely it must have felt, how long the ride on the train back home must have been. How suffocating that anxiety of facing your family after a decade without contact, wondering if his farher would be proud of who he has become. That feeling that you're in trouble when a parent addresses you by your full name and urges you to come see them, it's like he was 10 years again. How could he have known that in the same night he'll come back home to being the last remaining Burakh in town.

#♧Artemy #♧Isidor #♧character study #artemy burakh #pathologic classic hd #pathologic #isidor burakh #pathologic 2

[nunalastor]

Hi! next part of Snow White + Tangled AU (still taking suggestions for a name, I'll probably end up writing a whole fic)

Alastor was losing his patience.

He never really cared about the "King of Hell", but ever since the little man arrived at the doors of Charlie's hotel, it's just been one disappointment after another.

And, of course, he trusts Roo not to give him valuable information! It's always the same with her, she will only give you enough information to work with, only to punish you if she doesn't like the results, or take credit if you somehow end up doing exactly what she wanted.

At least Charlie wasn't a relevant project for her. But it really would have been useful to know her origins, he could have gotten a lot out of that information. Anyway, it's not that that's important now, he's not going to be bitter about it. After all, so far the results of his decision have been satisfactory.

Honestly, there was a time when he thought Roo could be Charlie's mother, but he ruled it out as time went by. It's a relief, motherhood isn't for everyone, and Roo definitely shouldn't be on that list...just like Queen Lilith apparently.

The first time he saw the king was interesting, he tried to attack him as soon as he saw him after a brief conversation with Charlie. It was so fun to see his daughter putting the little man in his place. But then she explained who she had just kicked out of the hotel and it was just disappointment after disappointment.

In their second meeting, the king was no longer going directly to try to kill him, but that did not make him any less calm. He just kept accusing him of Charlie's kidnapping, which is fair, the king doesn't have to believe him and he doesn't have to justify himself.

He suggested to Charlie that, when the king returned with the supposed evidence he had gone to look for, it should be just her and the king. Charlie was just worried that this situation would change something between them, but he dismissed it, nothing has to change.

From that moment on, Alastor's patience has been tested. The king turned out to be like all the rich men of his time, buying people with trinkets, trying to dazzle everyone with their wealth and power, pampering their legitimate children and only throwing a few coins to their bastards if they remembered that they had.

Alastor has kept his distance. Not only does he want to respect Charlie's limits and her possible relationship with her biological father, he also wants to show her that, unlike the king, he can behave like an adult in this situation. On the other hand, the king, every time he sees him, has to make a conscious effort not to attack him either physically or verbally, and that makes Charlie nervous, which amuses Alastor a little, but mostly makes him uncomfortable. He knows that this whole situation makes Charlie tense, and the little king is not helping with his childish attitude (according to his height, honestly).

What ended his calm was seeing how the little king simply seemed to lose his patience just a couple of months later, dismissing Charlie's ideas and trying to take her away. Simply telling her that her whole idea of a charity hotel would be counterproductive because sinners would only take advantage of her, and anyway, it's not like sinners deserve better, they do horrible things after all, like kidnapping innocent babies and taking them away from them families.

And Alastor simply had enough. He doesn't really care what the king thinks of him, he doesn't want to meet him, and the feeling really is mutual at this point, but after all that talk, saying how much he missed his daughter, he hoped the king would take the time to meet to Charlie instead of just pretending like nothing had happened. As if Charlie had not spent almost 100 years, all of her life, living with sinners, as if she had not spent her entire life learning from him and from those who have surrounded her until now.

The king is not entirely wrong, many of those in hell deserve to be there, it is supposed to be punishment for their decisions, in fact, there are those who deserve worse, but he cannot just so easily dismiss the ideals that Charlie formed by seeing sinners up close.

And, of course, he is not a good person, he has never pretended otherwise. In fact, if he had found any other sinner the day he found Charlie, he would have put them in an oven with the same ease that he put Charlie in her crib every night. If he had found any other sinners, he would have boiled them in a saucepan with the same ease with which he put Charlie in the bathtub when she needed a bath. With any other sinner, he would have written a recipe book as easily as he wrote children's stories he remembered so he would have something suitable to read to Charlie. But the truth is that it was not just any other sinner, it was Charlie, a baby that he decided to take care of with the memories of his mother always in mind. The one he found in a basket was a baby, whom he accompanied, stayed by her side, held her when she screamed and cried because of a nightmare or a minor injury. Whom he educated and guided, who he encouraged to make her own decisions, who he taught how to be respected. Who he took to his friend Rosie to make sure she always had a safe place to go. Whom he watched from afar when she played with other children in the Cannibal Town square. Whom he saw grow up while being just as feared and respected as him by her own means. Who tried to defend him when someone who was his friend for 30 years betrayed him and tried to attack her, which immediately ended their friendship.

It is when he feels the presence of his daughter, hugging him from behind, that he realizes that he said all that out loud. It is when he realizes that the king is there, looking at him with a look that reveals confusion, surprise and horror. The king has not moved from his place next to the portal he opened when he tried to take Charlie, but he notices that he is shaking, while he seems to think of something to say.

Alastor sighs, regains his composure as he walks away from Charlie and approaches the king, and with a snap of his fingers he makes two thick books appear. They are copies of a photo album and a scrapbook. He also makes the basket in which Charlie came into his life appear, with the blanket and clothes included. He gives everything to the king and is firm when he tells him to take the time to get to know Charlie, to stop being a king (if he ever was one), to stop being a wallet and start being a father if it's what he really wants.

The king leaves without saying a word, with all the items held firmly in his arms. If among the pages of the books the king finds the note that told Alastor to take care of the baby, with a characteristic signature, well...no one can refute that Alastor could have simply forgotten that it was there.

Two weeks pass, and Alastor feels a chill down his spine, a chill that is supposed to be a caress, supposed to be a reward for a job well done. He's confused, but at least it didn't backfire on him.

A month passes for the king to appear again. He literally just appeared in Alastor's room, looking haggard, exhausted. Alastor supposes that he can let the impertinence slide just for the pleasure that such a pitiful image brings him.

"Can you tell me about my d...can you tell me about Charlie? Please?"

👀

#hazbin hotel #nunalastor asks #alastor #radioapple #lucifer #snow white #tangled #tangled au

[clearcloudlesssky]

People don’t talk about Idia-Ortho role reversals enough

Consider Ortho, young and naive, just a child who longs to go on an adventure, just like the heroes in his video games.

He reveres his older brother, who he views to be on the same level as those heroes, if not better, because while heroes are cool, his older brother is the best.

They laugh and hope and dream, cradled within a tech labyrinth of magic and monsters. They subside on daydreams and each other’s presence. The thought of the journeys the two of them will embark on excites Ortho for the future.

He’s the apple of his brother’s eye. Whatever he wants, Idia gets, with a sharp, triumphant smirk and a laugh of;

“Just leave it to your big brother.”

Then Ortho asks for an adventure. And Idia agrees.

Imagine the initial excitement, the sparkle in Ortho’s eye and the grin on Idia’s face as they sneak off the island. The security systems are down, the fluorescent lights are black, and Ortho can hear every step they make, echoing down the halls.

Imagine the spider that crawls up Ortho’s back as he hears something clatter around the corner.

Imagine the fear when he and Idia realize that that something is decidedly inhuman.

His brother tells him to run. He does.

….

The researchers and caretakers tell him that it isn’t his fault, to blame it on Idia.

Idia was the one who agreed.

Idia was the one to shut down the security system.

Idia was the one to release the phantoms.

And it’s Idia’s own fault that he’s dead.

But Ortho knows the truth. Idia didn’t kill himself. The murderer was him.

After that, testimonies say, Ortho was mute for a week, silent and cold in a way the lively boy had never been.

Then he bounces back. He’s bright and cheery, effervescent and seemingly open. But his liveliness isn’t so lively as it is a porcelain mask. The spark in his eyes isn’t there, his optimism feels forced, and something in the boy just feels off.

He throws himself into his studies with a harsh fervor. He stalks the researchers, smile affixed to his face, ever so careful to keep his inquiries polite and sweet. He desperately wants to press, but he can’t afford to get kicked out. Not yet, at least.

Books and metal scraps collect on the work table in his room, and his room’s light doesn’t turn off until late, late into the black night.

Everyone waves his new behavior off. With Idia gone, Ortho is the new heir. What a nice boy, some say. A pity his brother died. Such a shame that a genius was lost, but at least his replacement is hardworking.

Ortho blots their voices out of his ears. Idia won’t be gone for long. He could never replace Idia.

Idia is a hero.

Ortho is no genius, he could never truly reach Idia’s level and prowess in all fields, but he is still a Shroud and by the gods will he try.

Idia’s copy of Star Rogue sits alone on the shelf, painted with a blanket of dust.

Ortho glances at it from his desk, and determinedly thinks;

“Just leave it to your little brother.”

……

When Ortho emerges from his room one day, manic gleam in his eye, smile threatening to tear his lips apart, every Styx faculty member can feel something wrong.

But to Ortho, this is the first time in years that he’s felt right.

…….

A few years later, a new student is admitted to Night Raven College. He is a bright, cheerful young man, the supposed heir of the Shroud family. There is a mechanical being that towers over his smaller figure, sharp and sardonic, fiery artificial hair rolling down his back. They are brothers, the Shroud heir claims.

At this point, no one dares to tell him otherwise.

#twst #idia shroud #twisted wonderland #ortho shroud #shroud brothers #twst headcanons #headcanon #twisted wonderland idia #twst ortho #who let stella write

[allastoredeer]

I just had to agree, that a huge Alastor fight scene is really all I want for season 2!

During "Stayed Gone", Valentino mentions a time that Alastor almost beat Vox, which implies that he narrowly lost in a fight between them.

He was badly injured in the fight with Adam, and had to retreat.

By the rule of three, it would be so poetic and amazing, if we got a fight scene where he doesn't back down, but continues to fight with everything he has, and emerges the unquestioned victor, wiping the smiles off the Vee's faces for good.

Bonus points if he actually accepts help from his found family, in the form of backup and helping him heal afterwards. He's so stuck on being a lone wolf (well, deer...), that him slowly learning to trust others would be such delicious character growth!

Actually, the way I interpreted Valentino saying that Alastor "almost beat Vox," is that during their fight Alastor was about to beat him. Like, if it continued, Vox was 100% going to lose. But the battle didn't see an actual end, with an actual victor, because, in my headcanon/theory, Vox was forced to retreat.

If Vox won, even narrowly, I don't think he would've been nearly as defensive or annoyed at Valentino for bringing it up. If the fight ended with Alastor retreating (or even losing), Vox would've milked the shit out of that. He would never let Alastor live that down. Hell, if the fight was recorded in any way, he'd be playing that shit on loop.

I think with Vox losing, it'd make him simultaneously eager for a rematch, but also nervous to fight Alastor head-on again considering he nearly lost (which might also explain why they never came face-to-face in season one. They only interacted from a distance, through their different mediums), and why he was SO happy when Alastor lost during the Extermination. He was living vicariously through Adam during that fight (Adams victory was HIS victory) because Alastor finally got a taste of the humiliation and defeat Vox felt all those years ago (and STILL feels, even now).

And considering all of that, I will go FERAL if there's a fight with all the Vees versus Alastor. I want to see what they can do. There are different ways to be powerful out side of strength and magical ability (see Rosie who's not physically or magically as strong as the other Overlords), so I want to see what Valentino and Velvette can do in a fight or on an intellectual level. The brains and the brawn (and whatever Valentino is.) I would laugh so hard if Valentino is actually the muscle of the Vee's. He's got very few braincells, but he can lift 2x his own weight, all they got to do is point him in the right direction. He's all muscle.

And I want that fight to be a close one too. In fact, if Alastor LOSES in that fight, my god, would that be such an angsty, complicated, even more humbling experience for him. Vox would be fucking THRIVING. He would be reveling. He finally beat the Radio Demon. He finally beat Alastor (and the complicated emotions. GOD the emotions that they'll both have during and after that)

But I also don't want Alastor to lose T.T He's my fav, and he already been so thoroughly humbled once, I think I'd collapse if he lost again. BUT if he were on the cusp of losing, got his second wind, and ultimately came out the victory, I would be screaming, jumping out of my seat, frothing at the mouth. I fucking LOVE that shit.

And super, serious 100% extra bonus points he gets help from his found family in the form of back-up or patching him up afterward. I think that would be amazing character growth for him. I WANT IT SO BAD ANON WHY DID YOU MAKE MY OBESSION AND YEARNING GROW I AM NOT A VERY BIG PERSON YOU'RE LITERALLY GOING TO MAKE ME EXPLODE WITH ALL THESE EMOTIONS

#ALASTOR CHARACTER GROWTH #I'm so excited to see his arc through season 2 #I can't wait to find out his past relationship with Vox #its confirmed to be “sad and complicated” by Vivenne Medrano and I WANT THE DETAILS SO BAD #guys its going to hurt #its going to hurt so much #im not prepared but Im so eager #hazbin hotel #alastor #hazbin alastor #hazbin hotel alastor #the radio demon #hazbin hotel vox #vox hazbin hotel #vox the tv demon #the vees #vees #hazbin vox #hazbin velvette #hazbin hotel velvette #hazbin hotel valentino #valentino #asks #anon #anonymous

[glorfindel-of-imladris]

Glorfindel Week | Day 1: Valinor Headcanons

Glorfindel headcanons for his time in Valinor for @glorfindelweek 💛✨

I primarily write in the Second/Third Age, but I do have headcanons for Glorfindel in his youth and in Valinor that do influence my writing. I thought that today's prompt gives me a good opportunity to share them!

Born after Turgon, around Galadriel and Aredhel’s age. Glorfindel's actual age has never actually come up in my writing (other than he's Very Old), but the idea of it does influence his dynamic with other characters. He is younger than Turgon, and in a way defers to him beyond Turgon just being his king. Turgon is like an older brother to him. Ecthelion is slightly older, but barely; Egalmoth is a little younger, but also barely. Glorfindel treats them as peers as well as his best friends. Galadriel is also a peer and so he interacts with her as such, especially after his return in the Second Age and well into the Third Age. Glorfindel's age also somewhat affects his dynamic with Erestor, whom I of course write him with plenty. While I also now mostly write Erestor as having been born during the Years of the Trees, he is always specifically younger than Glorfindel. I don't think I ever mention it though and I'm not even sure if the effect is noticeable, but it's there. 🤭

Mostly Ñoldorin, but part-Vanyarin, cousin of Elenwë. This is an old but popular headcanon for Glorfindel, considering how: 1) it was said that Glorfindel crossed the Helcaraxë out of his kinship with Turgon; and 2) he has golden hair. I adopted it very early and just ran with it all these years. One thing that has changed over the years is that although I have written him as a pure Vanya before, I have now resolved to have him as part-Ñoldorin, simply because he was the only one among Fingolfin’s host that canonically didn't take part in the kinslaying at Alqualondë. I do not like the idea that some clans are better than others, that violence was a mark of the Ñoldor while “goodness” is ascribed mostly to the Vanyar, who happen to be the whitest of the white among the races in Arda.

Has sisters (and maybe one brother). I imagine Glorfindel as having siblings; he just has that vibe about him. I usually place him around second out of five children, with the older sibling to him being always a sister. The placement sometimes changes, and sometimes there isn't even a brother at all (or if there was, Glorfindel hasn't met him before he left with Fingolfin's host), but somehow key to my idea of Glorfindel is that he has sisters and he has a good relationship with all of them. He is therefore comfortable with women, is gentle with them, and relates with them easily. He does, however, stand a bit independent of his sisters, who share a close bond among themselves, and he is the only one in his family to join the hosts crossing to Middle-earth.

Bonus: Valinor, post-death

He has returned to Middle-earth at least once before the Second Age, by fighting in the War of the Wrath. According to The History of Middle-earth, Glorfindel was reimbodied shortly after his death, within the First Age. Given that he already was there when Eärendil arrived asking the Valar for aid, you cannot convince me that Glorfindel wouldn't have gone. There was hardly anyone in Valinor more motivated to help Eärendil than Glorfindel himself, Eärendil’s savior in Gondolin, and you can take this headcanon from my cold and dead fingers.

Emissary of Manwë, learned from Nienna. It was also said that Glorfindel became a follower and friend of Olórin (Gandalf) in Valinor, so this isn't much of a stretch considering Olórin's alignment as well as a Maia. Given also how Glorfindel was returned primarily for his "goodness", and the fact that he was steadfast against the kinslayings, and his care and love for people, Nienna as the Vala he most aligns with also is not a stretch.

#glorfindel #headcanons #glorfindel week #glorfindelweek #tolkien #the lord of the rings #the silmarillion #the history of middle-earth #ah yes timezone #what a wonderful thing lol

[mrs-barnes-rogers-writes]

Pretty As A Picture - Part 3

Marvel

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader x Bucky Barnes

Summary: When Bucky fell from the train, their soulmate was told he was gone. When Steve Rogers disappeared into the ice, their soulmate was again told one her soulmates were gone. But she didn't believe it. Couldn't believe it. Committed to a mental health institute, she dies of a broken heart. That's at least what the hidden S.H.I.E.LD files say, but if that's the case than why is there a photo of her. A photo that shows her side by side two redhaired Avengers.

Warnings will be per chapter.

For this fic reader will be British, but let your imagination replace if needed.

Chapter Summary: Everyone is confused, nothing makes sense and what does Romanoff know?

Chapter Warning: Mentions of vomiting, sad Steve, sad Bucky.

It didn’t take long for the team to jump into action, naturally separating to try and best support their soul brothers.

Sam and Tony followed the heaving of Steve into the bathroom, Rhodey started pulling out cold bottles of water from the refrigerator. Bruce, Natasha and Wanda knelt in front of Bucky as Vision took the photos Wanda was holding scanning through quickly for anymore of their soulmate before putting them and the frames back into the print room.

Steve had finally lost it, he thought to himself as he harshly threw up the sandwich Sam had made him at lunch. First he sacrifices himself and then he’s in the ice for seventy years, he wakes up in a fake room and his first thought is his soulmate, then Bucky, followed by ‘why is this room fake’, and he runs. Everything is different, absolutely everything. He’s never felt so alone. He meets the team and discovers their his soul friends, making them soul family. None of it makes sense. Why did he have a soul brother, Bucky, and a shared soulmate, for everyone else to be in this new life. It makes no sense and he still feels alone. Nat and Clint are close, Bruce and Tony bond over science and Thor leaves to return his wayward brother to Asgard. He finds Peggy but there’s no sign of their soulmate. They’ve been deleted from every statement, every plan, even archive footage and then in a lucid moment Peggy mentions their girl was admitted to a mental institution. Shipped home and locked up, she says, and for a moment she tells him how she tried to get a guardianship in place but then she’s gone again. Lucid moment over.

After the fall of S.H.E.I.L.D and before Ultron, Steve breaks down, too much Asgardian mead in his system and too many soulmate couples around. He doesn’t even have a grave to lay flowers at. Pepper and Nat wrap him in a hug, Tony starts looking through his Dad’s old paperwork, Sam starts looking for graves as well as looking for Bucky and then Natasha looks again. Not like she hasn’t looked a hundred times already and there’s no sign of their soulmate anywhere. Then Peggy’s estate is finalised and a British agent, double 0 something hands Steve a file during a liaison meeting and their soulmate is found. There’s no photographs but it’s full of information, her role within British Special Forces, a rarity even during the war. How Peggy had seen some of her mapping and plans and had snatched their girl away to work with her and The Howling Commandos and then the mental institution. Steve thinks about that file and decides he needs to look at it again, for what will probably be the thousandth time. He tries to get up but struggles. He hears Sam’s voice and there’s hands around him pulling him to his feet.

Sam guides him out of the cubicle and to the sink where he washes his hands and face. Tony appears from somewhere with a toothbrush and mouthwash. They both look concerned but also confused. Neither knowing what to say. The silence is broken by Rhodey entering the bathroom and handing Steve a bottle of water.

“You OK?” he asks. Tony and Sam roll their eyes.

“Not exactly.”

“That was a stupid question wasn’t it?”

“You think?” “Yep” came Tony and Sam’s replies.

“Barnes needs you. He’s not responding to the others.”

“Shit” and Steve’s feet are moving before the rest of him is engaged and he’s almost falling into the corridor before he knows where he is.

“Buck?”

The others pull away and Steve is pulling him to his feet. He hugs him with everything he can, even in his washed out state. Bucky pulls away and finally speaks again.

“It makes no sense Stevie.”

Broken. That’s how Bucky sounds and Steve is pulling him back into his arms. The team watch them as they seek comfort in each other. Wondering if this is how they were before but with their soulmate between them. Comfortable in each other’s presence. Bucky comfortable with affection and Steve open about his emotions.

“I know Buck but it means she’s here. We’ve found her. We’ve got our girl back.”

Tony brushed a stray tear from his cheek and cleared his throat.

“Does someone want to start explaining? And by someone, I mean you Romanoff, and don’t think you three are exempt from this either.” Tony said, pointing at Bruce, Vision and Wanda. “Do you remember when we came back here? When we came back together? We made a promise? No more secrets.”

“Tony.” Bruce went to interrupt, keen to defend his own soulmate.

“No, we don’t brush over this. You’ve known for how long? HOW LONG?” Tony snapped. The team jumped in surprise, even the super soldiers, surprised by his outburst. Tony could barely stand them at the moment and now he was sticking up for them.

“What’s going on?” Pepper’s voice suddenly added to the conversation as she joined them in the corridor. She wrapped her arms around Tony and he held her tightly. Pepper’s eyes scanned the team as she leaned out of the embrace. Wanda and Nat looked tearful, everyone looked puzzled. “OK, let’s try again, what’s going on? Why are you watching Steve and Bucky hugging? Should I call the therapist again?”

Sam was the first to break and let out a small laugh, nervous laughter but it set Rhodey off too.

“You know I didn’t think our whole soul family thing could be anymore fucked up but here we are.”  He laughed out.

“But really should I call the therapist?” Pepper asked.

Calmed by his soulmate’s presence, Tony was the first to answer.

“Pep, I love your dedication towards us figuring out this mashed up family but the therapist can’t help with this one.”

Steve smiled softly at them both, still wrapped in each other’s arms. Bucky pulled away from Steve and stepped towards Pepper, passing the photos to her.

“She’s pretty. Who is she?”

“She’s our girl.” Bucky almost whispered. It didn’t slip Pepper how broken Bucky sounded or that his eyes were bloodshot and his face was wet with tears or that Steve looked like he’d seen a ghost. He kind of had. It also didn’t slip passed her that their soulmate wasn’t alone in these pictures.

“You knew? You two knew? You promised me Natasha. You promised me you looked. That you tried to find her!”

Natasha went to speak but Pepper was quick to cut her off.

“I don’t want to hear it. Everyone in meeting room four now. Two days. I’m gone for two days and this happens.”

Pepper stormed down the corridor with a smug looking Tony trailing behind. He loved it when she was assertive.

One by one the team joined them. Bucky was first, sitting immediately across from Pepper and he didn’t miss that although the therapist may not have been present, she’d picked the room most like a therapists. Soft couches and pillows, with plants dotted around.

“Please may I have her back?” Bucky asked Pepper.

“Her?”

“The photos I mean, I’d like to look at them please.”

“Sorry Bucky of course” she replied passing them back.

“You holding up OK?” Tony asked, taking Bucky by surprise.

“Not really.”

Rhodey was next to enter, coffees in his hand, passing one to Tony and one to Bucky. Thank yous were muttered as a sheepish Wanda entered carrying a tray with a pot of camomile tea and cups, followed by Vision. Sam was next with more coffees, followed by an uneasy looking Nat and Bruce. Steve was last carrying the file. The file double o something had given him placing it on the table. Tony noticed the handwriting immediately. Peggy Carter’s.

The atmosphere was uneasy as Steve looked around the room, he glanced to his left where Bucky sat alongside him, full of emotions. He knew then he needed to take the lead, push his emotions to one side, piece this together and get their girl back. He sat straight in the chair and in what the team had called his ‘Captain voice’ broke the silence.

“Romanoff start talking.”

#steve rogers x reader #avengers au #bucky barnes #steve rogers #bucky barnes x reader #avengers #steve x reader x bucky #soulmate au #avengers soulmate au #steve rogers x reader x bucky

[ruershrimo]

take me back (take me with you) | f. megumi x fem! reader | chapter 7: conversation

ao3 link for additional author’s notes | playlist | prev | m.list

chapter synopsis:

' “I can’t believe you’re leaving us for a boy," she goes, rolling her eyes. She doesn't even blink.

“I’m not.” You are. '

---

Megumi calls you back. You leave for Tokyo again, like a soul yearning for its body.

word count: ~6k; tws: none for now :)!!

19-6-2018

“So you’re really going to let go of them now?” your father asks. 

“...yeah.” 

“That’s good. I’ll miss that Itadori boy, though.” 

You will, too. 

In a way you suppose Megumi and Yuuji are very similar. They’d go well together, be good, fast friends and all that. 

They’re both undoubtedly good people, no matter how they’ve beat people up before and how different their beliefs may be. 

In Megumi’s case, everyone knew how good a person Tsumiki was, her younger brother included. Her kindness and virtue extended itself, inspiring other people around her. But Megumi was a good person, too— polite, patient (most of the time, unless it were Gojo— but who wouldn’t be annoyed by that man, right?), kind in his own way. He cared for you in all sorts of ways in the past, even then you could tell, gentle with animals and objects and your hand. Gentle in his own way. Giving you reminders despite the tiny calumniations sprinkled in (they barely do as much damage as comb bristles can), being sharp because he must have had to, kind because it was in his very nature. Easy on the eyes, tall, deep soothing voice— he ticked all the boxes for that, too. You bet that if things were different, and the two of you had stayed in touch with each other, you’d have fallen deeply in love with it by now. Yet that thought only makes you feel sour now that things hadn’t gone that way at all. 

And Yuuji, too— there was no explanation needed for Yuuji. Even Megumi could tell he was a good person. And at some times he was almost like Tsumiki. You weren’t ever surprised that you’d caught feelings for him, because— who wouldn’t? He was always popular, even if he was ignorant of his own charm around others. But he wasn’t just a good guy with a ripped torso, he was honest, perceptive and smart in conversations. Smarter than he ever credited himself for. Smart in a way you could never be— people with cute faces, nice bodies and good social skills were in a league of their own, practically. You’d thought that for a long time. 

Did either of them ever know how you felt? 

Probably not. Your heart was guarded, intensely so, and you’d never lay your feelings bare and out so easily. You weren’t the type of person to say you loved people as easily as others did, even within your own family. 

This, you presume, is probably an acquired trait, now that you think about it. You were much more different as a child, free with praise and love and unabashed affection as well as appreciation for the people around you. What changed?

(Everything.) 

You miss 2010. You miss Tsumiki the way you miss your mother’s cooking, miss her the way you miss when you wrote emails and letters and text messages to her with multi-coloured pens or your old phone that eventually broke a year after. You miss the conversations the two of you had, miss how you used to be your parents’ little angel. 

And in the end it all comes back to that, doesn’t it? 2010. Nostalgia. Reminiscing on old memories in a way akin to how the elderly do in their youth. That just made you seem more pathetic, because, weren’t you supposed to be making those memories right now, at this time of your life? 

You’re a teenager. You should be going out with friends, and having fun, not rotting at home ruminating on the past, with the only friends you’ve ever had hundreds of kilometres away from you (you weren’t sure if you could even call one of them a ‘friend’ anymore), and your acquaintances not close enough to replace them (how could they ever? How could there ever be a replacement for Yuuji?) 

In a way you feel your life is miserable: awkward, socially-impaired teenage girl with her only friend practically out of her life at this point; nothing special to your name besides a cursed technique that most times does you more harm than good; stuck not being able to completely get over friends she met at eight who left her as quickly as someone can blink their eyes; with the thinking process of a nagging, stubborn mother sometimes, or if not that then a blurry, mingled train of thought that gets delayed or lost when moving from station to station; someone not of use at all. Not miserable, you think to yourself like a slap to the face, pathetic. 

You’re not sure how Tsumiki is now— maybe she has a partner, or better friends than you were, or she’s busy being president of the student council or something (she’d be a sterling leader, of that you’re certain, that girl who you’d always known was bound to go places in the span of her lifetime). 

Hopefully, she’s alright, and doing the best she can in life. That’s all you wish for when it comes to Tsumiki. 

At this point, there’s no point in wishing to join them, or to linger on them and memories of the past. It’s a mosquito in summer heat, which is why, if it stays, you decide, you’ll just suppress and ignore it until it goes away. Even if you didn’t know how long it would take you to get over them— weeks, months, but goodness forbid a whole lifetime or forever— you needed to accept that you’d be like this for nearly the rest of your life: pathetic, lonely— ah, that’s the word that so very perfectly delineates the situation you’re in— and then some. 

So that’s why, when you hear your phone buzzing on your bed like a cicada during a balmy night, you assume it’s someone else. Yuuji must be busy settling in (he’s been texting you, and you took that as a sign that he wouldn’t call), and Megumi must be… —Well. Megumi has made a promise, and it’s not that you don’t believe in him, but it would be better to expect less than what you’d like to in order to evade disappointment. 

Must be someone else. A prank call, or a scammer, or something. Or a telemarketer, but you’d be surprised if telemarketers were calling you and not your father. And you were never one to pick calls up mindlessly anyway, so if it were some stranger out to get you or swindle you, you’d just hang up or check the number. 

If not either a scam or a telemarketer (well you suppose both of those could be scams in certain contexts), though, then you’d suspect it would be either Yuuji (Yuuji’s the one who has been texting you, after all, conversations strewn over checking in with the other over the past few hours or snippets of advice from you telling him not to bother Megumi very much, and to be cautious and keep himself safe) or Gojo— definitely not Megumi, and probably not Gojo either, but still it was more likely that Gojo was calling you instead of Megumi, so you’re considering it— and you can’t really remember Gojo’s number anyway, so what if an unknown number wasn’t a prank call or something—

You wonder if you should just pick it up instead of burying your head in your study notes and overthinking everything. 

But you know it’s definitely not Megumi. 

You check the phone. 

Well, you’ll be damned. 

It’s Fushiguro Megumi. 

You know his number by heart, after all. Keyed it in too many times to forget, and it’s not like he’d have any reason to change it. Not with the way he cares for things, inanimate objects, not with the tenderly quiet, secretly caring, emotionally jaded way he maintains them. 

“Ah… hello?” 

Your heart thumps in your chest and heat flares up in your cheeks with a frenetic speed. 

“Hi,” you blurt out, shakily. You’re sure your voice is quivering, yet your mind feels like it’s barely functioning, almost about to drown in a seven-feet-deep pool, so you can’t really tell. You can’t really hear yourself. 

You don’t know why you feel like this— no, you know exactly why, actually. It’s because you haven’t gotten over him. Your thoughts are scrambled but you know, for sure, that you’re like this because you want to get rid of feelings like these but you can’t. Or because you’ve been saying that to yourself like a mantra, for so long, even though a part of you wants it to stay— out of what, that’s what you don’t know; maybe desperation or nostalgia or an inability to stop dwelling on days long gone. But you know what this is— you’ve seen the movies, read the manga, watched the dramas. It’s romance. Crushes. Something you’re not quite able to call love yet, something you’re too scared to properly name, still, but something you can understand is one-sided nonetheless. 

“…hi. [Name].” 

“Hello…” 

What happens when two estranged childhood friends with a book’s worth of history behind their relationship that happen to be socially awkward teenagers actually have a conversation semi-beyond what keeps them estranged in the first place? 

“Hi— no, wait… how are you?” 

Pot, meet kettle, because you’re going off nothing but the fact that you’re at the very least surprised (the other emotions are too complicated to explain) that he’s speaking to you again, and not just on text, but he’s calling, and he sounds like he’s reading off a script, but the script is in a whole other language, somehow, and the uncertain nervousness in his voice is tangible, even for a deep, low voice like his. 

Script or not, you appreciate the effort, though. 

“I’m good, um… I’m happy you were able to call. It’s been a long time.” 

“That’s good.” 

There’s silence on the other line; time feels like it’s moving achingly slowly. But you’re mildly happy. 

Not happy, maybe, but you definitely feel light, as if you’ve been severed from the heaviness of everything else that has happened lately. This is the first time in years something like this has ever happened. 

“Ah, wait, I forgot to ask! Sorry, um.. how are you?” 

“I’m doing alright, too. Oh, wait, I should apologise. I didn’t tell you— thanks for helping with my injuries the other day. Gojo told me about it after you left. You… you didn’t have to, though. You shouldn’t have risked your health like that.” 

You shake your head. “Don’t mention it. You know why I do this, anyway.” Out of necessity or a need to be useful, you’re not even sure yourself, but he must know, to some degree, right? It seems as if he’d be the one to know the most of this, of you— at least, when matters came to this. “And I’ll be fine, don’t worry. Dr Ieiri probably ended up helping more with the bigger ones once the three of you got back. I mean, she did, right?” 

“…no. She said that she didn’t want to waste her time, so if injuries were more minor like mine, she wouldn’t heal them fully.” 

“...ah.” More minor? Seriously, doctor? You’d normally not question her judgement over matters that she had more expertise in dealing with, but seriously? 

“I’ll be fine, though. Most of the bandages have come off, and all.” 

“I’m glad to hear that.” 

You wonder where he is now, on the bed, maybe, or sitting on the floor. You’ve seen the classrooms, but not the dormitories— you hope wherever he is, that it’s comfortable. That he’s okay. 

“We’re going to see a new student soon.” 

“Really? Have you met them before?” 

“No, but Gojo said she’s from the countryside. But we’re meeting her in Harajuku, for some reason.” 

“Oh, Harajuku! I miss it,” you let out a plaintive sigh, “I can’t wait to be back in Tokyo. You know, whatever happens, I still love that city like nothing else. I know how many people hate it, but I love it so much.” And you love it so much in the first place, mostly because of Megumi and Tsumiki. “Maybe she just wants to chase a bit of the sweet city life— I mean, you know how it is when country bumpkins go to the city for the first time… kind of. Or when they love the city— yeah, that’s a better way of saying it. I was like that, kind of.” 

“...if you’re worried about the train ride here and want to travel alone, I could always pay for you. Uh… wait—” 

“Oh, no, no! There’s no need, uhm— thank you anyway, it’s just—” 

“It’s Gojo’s money anyway.” 

“Pft,” you snort. Anything to seep out some of Gojo’s money like gluttonous leeches, right? “Nah, I’ll be fine. I mean, I don’t even think I’ll be able to come back in a few years’ time, and by then I won’t even be relying on my parents’ money for this stuff anymore— I mean, I will still be relying on their money, but I’ll be managing it as my own.” 

He chuckles lightly over the line, the silent way he shows his emotions, the way that goes unnoticed if one is not attentive to it. It feels like he’s whispering directly into your ear, and the heat on your face (which you weren’t even sure was still there until that point). Your heart skips a beat and it completely, absolutely shocks you. “...the offer still stands.” 

Yeah, you can get behind it if he’s like this now. What happened to him, anyway? Puberty hit him like a brick and gave him, like, one more ounce of emotional maturity? 

You shake your head like a character in a piece of crappy romance fanfiction. No way. Not now, at least. Calm down. 

(...you’re just a girl.) 

“Well, no take backs from now on, okay? Even if it’s, like, five years into the future, you’ll still be using Gojo’s credit card to cover for all my travel expenses.” 

He does it again, that low, soft, attractive sound. Makes you want to hit him and hit yourself at the same time, and then kick your feet up in the air giddily, and then throttle yourself, if it were possible, out of sheer embarrassment. “Yeah.” 

You’re having the time of your life. 

“Anyway, how is everything else? Like, are your studies and grades okay? Is the training you do alright to handle?” 

“My grades are pretty okay,” he answers, “Not like Gojo cares, honestly. And the training’s fine, it’s nothing I’m not used to.” 

“Gojo seems like he’d be a good teacher. When he wants to, he can command respect pretty easily, too. I guess he just… chooses not to. But I saw it yesterday, when you and Yuuji were passed out in the hospital.” 

It still strikes a pang of guilt in your chest, your inability to have done anything else besides calling Gojo over for help. 

“...I suppose he does.” 

“Yeah.” 

“How about you? Itadori, he… he can be an idiot sometimes, but he speaks of you really admirably. He talks about how smart you are a lot.” 

The thought of Megumi calling Yuuji an idiot of all things doesn’t feel like it falls short from him, but it still makes you frown— though, you realise that that’s just his way of expressing things, because in a way he’d treated you somewhat the same in the past, even if he hadn’t shown it outright or expressed it very vividly. Classic Megumi. 

“Hey, he’s smarter than people give him credit for, okay? Wait until you see how talented he is at things other than sports and martial arts. You’d be surprised after trying the meatballs he makes. Would be good if you asked him to give you the recipe sometime; I make them, like, once a week, at least.” 

He sighs, “...I will. But the point is, he cares for you a lot.” 

“Yeah, beautiful soul, that guy. Loves people the way curious children love nature.” 

“That would be a fitting way to put it.” 

“How are the dogs?” 

“My shikigami?” 

“Yeah. Do they have names?” 

“The black one is Kuro and the white one is Shiro.” 

“You named them black and white?” 

“Look, I named them when I was barely six years old, and six year olds aren’t exactly the best when it comes to these things…” 

You giggle, “So the name stuck?” 

“Yeah, sort of.” 

Real cute. 

“What about your father? How is he?” 

“He’s okay, but, well. I guess we’re not that close anymore.” 

“...I see.” He probably can’t imagine a version of you who wasn’t immensely close to her parents. You couldn’t then, either. 

“We’ve been talking even less now that my mother’s in the hospital, but at least I get to talk to him before he eats, maybe. I’ve been doing most of the cooking now that my mother isn’t here and my father doesn’t really know how to handle himself in our kitchen without her guidance.” 

“Oh… if you don’t mind me asking, what happened to your mother?” 

“Cancer.” 

You can practically hear the gulp he’s taking, the bobbing of his throat— sensitive topic. “I’m… so sorry to hear that.” 

“It’s okay, don’t be,” you reassure him, “I should have told you that day anyway. I was just… exploding at everybody on that night. I should apologise— I’m sorry for how badly I treated you.” 

“No,” he goes, “No, you shouldn’t. I understand why you were like that that night. And it was mostly my fault, too, so…” 

“No, no, I’m serious! Feel free to ask almost anything as long as I have actual answers to your questions and all.” 

“Still… I just wanted to know. Sorry if I caused you any trouble.” 

“No— you didn’t do any of that at all, don’t worry! I’m alright with people asking about this. Ah, anyway… besides Yuuji, do you have any friends?” 

“Itadori and I aren’t friends.” 

“Trust me, if I asked him, I bet he’d beg to differ. Yuuji’s like that with people— soon he’ll be more important to you than you could have ever thought at first.”  

“Whatever you say,” he sort of grunts, “But I don’t have any friends, I think… except you, maybe. What about you?” 

You were honestly expecting him not to consider you a friend at all, and at this point so much has happened that wouldn’t even be that bothered if he no longer thought of you as one but called you anyway out of his commitment to his promises, or as an apology. 

“I’m surprised you can still call me a friend,” you say. Calling people instead of talking to them physically does something to your inhibitions. 

“...should I not?” 

“No, no, I’m happy,” you say over the phone. You’ll forget this conversation tomorrow, at least, when the sun has risen and the night returns back the hold you have over yourself, your composure, to you. You’ll act like this never happened. So you’ll say whatever you want to now, disgorging yourself of years of withheld secrets. “I’m happy that we’re still friends. I think I like that. 

“Yeah?” 

“Um— yeah, it seems like a good place to start,” you grin slightly. “And I, well. I don’t really have any friends beyond Yuuji,” —You’re not even sure if Tsumiki still sees you as a friend— “Even if I may have acquaintances like Sasaki or Iguchi it still feels like Yuuji’s one of the only people I can give that kind of title to, so, um… the more the merrier?” 

“That’s… nice.” 

“...it is, isn’t it?” 

“Thank you.” 

Why? “Okay.” 

The two of you go through the next few seconds in silence, time feeling like it’s blending and bleeding into a mix of years and events. You can hear the light, steady sound of his breathing from the other line. If you could, you’d sleep to it— fuck the phone bill, you’ll be the one paying it in your father’s stead this time if it was for this. 

It’s comforting, and you don’t want to break it— the quiet. If he can hear you now, can hear how you’re breathing through a smile with your chest only slightly moving, you hope it feels the same as the sound of his breathing did for you. You hope it feels just like home. Like a warm pillow in the one place you love the most that you bury your head into when the weather gets especially cold. 

“Fushiguro!” 

Oh dear. 

Wincing at the sound of the creaking door’s shrill shriek as it's opened and then hits the wall, you know exactly who it is— you’d recognise that voice anywhere. 

“Is that Yuuji?” 

“Oi! I told you not to barge into my room like that!” Megumi shouts. 

“Huh? You’re calling someone? Sorry. Wait, is it [Name]?” 

“It’s none of your business.” 

“Hi, Yuuji.” 

“Can I talk to her?” 

“Is it alright if we do, Megumi? Just for a few seconds.” 

“Fine,” he sighs. You can practically hear that eye roll. 

“Yo!” he cheers. 

“Has everything been okay lately?” you ask. 

“Yeah. We’re meeting a new student soon.”

“Ah, yeah. Megumi told me.” 

“—Oh, and my uniform came in! It looks pretty neat.” 

“That’s good. Maybe you can send me a picture once you start wearing it, then.” 

“I will!” 

Things are going better than you thought they would. 

21-6-2018

It’s been a few days now. 

You don’t know Sasaki and Iguchi well enough to call them friends, but the three of you do know each other. You had never decided to change any contacts with them, and considering that they and you were never closer than acquaintances, friends of a friend— you had never really regretted it. But now that Yuuji is gone— and you know he’s not dead, but still— you wonder whether you should have gotten closer to them, just to be less alone once Yuuji left, even if it could not be the way things were with Yuuji. (“I thought I was a pretty lonely guy, and sometimes I still do. Like— I mean, you’re a lonely girl too sometimes, I think,” he had told you as you patched him up.) 

Still, Yuuji and you were two peas in a pod— so they’re bound to ask what happened to him soon enough, especially Iguchi. 

You’ll have to start getting used to spending your Thursdays alone. And then you’d have to start getting used to every other day without him, too. If you went to the arcade or watched movies or sing-screamed the lyrics to English songs you don’t know the Japanese translations of without his presence there, you know how it wouldn’t feel the same. In life it’s not what you do that matters, you’ve come to realise— it’s who you’re doing these things with. That’s what puts meaning to it all and makes all things done in your life worthwhile. 

The two of them pass you by during lunch. 

“[Last Name]? —Oh, hey!” Sasaki says as she turns around. 

You almost scream and run away like a mouse fleeing from the eyes of a vicious house cat, tremors in your voice. “Hello…” 

“Where’s Yuuji, by the way? The occult club’s going to fall apart without him.” 

You pause. “He transferred to another school…” 

“Huh?” she goes, Iguchi almost reeling back in shock. “Transferred? But why? We’ve barely even made it to the middle of the year!” 

“I… I don’t know, it was something really urgent,” 

23-6-2018 

Your room is a cluttered mess— lucky as you are that it’s the weekend, the past week has been a rollercoaster that knocked your room’s usual standard of cleanliness off track. Scattered all over your desk were worksheets, notebooks, graph paper pages and foolscap paper, chicken-scratch writing and meticulous notes scribbled all over them to compensate for your absence the day after the incident took place. 

It isn’t the time or the discipline you lack— it’s just that it’s going to be awfully tedious. You’ll have to wipe your desk again, and clean the walls, and sort through all your clothes, too, since you haven’t been folding them in any way that isn’t merely fastidious and nearly careless. So as you get to work, you suppose that calling someone wouldn’t hurt. 

Maybe you could call Megumi. That would be okay. 

For the past few years, you’ve never noticed it. So when you do, it hits you like a bullet train at the fastest of speeds. 

You miss him. Not just in the way you miss 2010, the way you miss the past, the way you miss and mourn the person you used to be. It had been so obvious for Tsumiki, but not for him, and now that you know this it’ll be another quiet revelation— another rediscovery of fragments of yourself concealed by memories. 

You miss him— all of him; you yearned to be his friend again because he was unlike Tsumiki who you knew cherished you as you did her; you miss him regardless of who he is now, because somewhere inside him is the boy who read dog books and brought you to the school library and ran your finger through water when you burned it. Somewhere inside him is the person who offered to hold your bag as he walked with you through a snowy garden, and helped you when your nose bled. 

So it would be okay to call Megumi right now. 

“Fushiguro speaking.” 

“Hi, Megumi. Are you busy?” 

“Not right now.” 

“Want to call?” 

“Fushiguro!” It’s Yuuji. “Wanna go—” 

“I said I’m not going!” 

You chuckle, “Be nice. Were the two of you supposed to go somewhere?” 

“Nothing important. Gojo said he wanted us to ‘bond’ with each other, so he concluded that we could watch a movie. Some kind of gory horror film or something.” 

He’s… actually making an obvious effort not to scold Yuuji that much or call him some insulting, derogatory term this time… wow. 

“Ah, yeah. Yuuji likes his horror movies.” 

“Anyway, anything urgent you wanted to tell me?” 

“No, I’m just… uh—” you laugh nervously, “I’m just a little bored.” Nowadays you’re not really sure what he’d do— scold you, maybe, or roll his eyes so hard that you can hear it over the line, or he may even flash into a quick bit of awkwardness and hesitation through his words. 

Or maybe— and this was the worst of it all, he’d ask why you were calling him, and his bouts of awkwardness would have only been something temporary, soon to be replaced once again by anger and annoyance, the same he gives to everyone else— even if you knew he didn’t always mean it, per se. No more special treatment for you. 

“Oh.” 

“Yeah, uh… I have to clean, and usually it’s not as much as what I have to do today, so I just thought that since the only other person in the house is my father and we don’t really talk much anymore, we could, um… chat for a while. Yeah.” 

“Okay.” 

“Uh-huh, so.” You stand up, leaving your phone on your desk and putting the call on speaker mode. The mountain of papers and books is a wasteland and your desk has been degraded to a landfill— the state of it would make your mother a wailing mess— no, she’d faint instantly as soon as she saw it, becoming worse of a mess than the table itself was. “Anything interesting happened lately?” 

“Not really.” 

“Oh—! Yuuji sent me a picture of his uniform the other day. Was that one special?” 

“Yeah. But they let students make adjustments to the uniform, and he said he hadn’t changed anything, so I think that was Gojo’s doing.” 

“Oh, well, that’s Gojo. It suits him, though, right? Not to sound mean or be presumptuous, but…” you chuckle, “When you wear the uniform, you look so formal. It’s not a bad thing— it’s just that Yuuji’s just always been more casual like that. And the red of the hoodie goes with his hair, too!” 

“I guess so.” 

“I can’t imagine you wearing anything other than the default uniform, though. Not to insult you, I mean, you still look good in the normal uniform, I just— can’t imagine it.” You remark, sorting the materials and books by size and subject. You’ve got to handle some of the drawers, too, now that you’ve started and can’t stop your momentum just yet. You can already feel the dust particles that have gathered on whatever is inside them still, jostling around once you’ve taken them out. 

“If you’re going to say it like that, you can just say it outright.” 

“No, no! I mean that I just can’t imagine you wearing, like, Yuuji’s uniform. Wait, what do the other students’ uniforms look like?” 

“The second years?” 

“Yeah. Did they choose the normal ones?” 

“Inumaki did. They have three boys and one girl, but only two of the boys wear the normal uniform. Okkotsu has a special uniform in white.” 

“Oh, I see,” you nod your head, “It’s a nice uniform, though. I wish I could wear a uniform that pretty.” 

“You could always enrol yourself here,” he suggests, “They’d welcome you with open arms.” 

“Maybe they will,” you chuckle, “But my mother would be adamant on me staying in the ‘normal’ world. She’s unyielding like that.” 

“And your father?”

“Wouldn’t mind, at least I don’t think…” you say, “I’ll have to wonder when to tell him if I do end up in jujutsu high; you never know when he’s mad. He’s always unpredictable like that nowadays and it’s not… particularly pleasant.” 

“I see. It would be good if you were here, though. You would be closer to Dr Ieiri that way. And it would do good, because, um… well, I’d like you here. You’d be… good for the people around you here.” 

“Ah, you— you would?” you ask, slightly phased— not like he hasn’t been a bit nicer to you since you’ve seen him again (maybe it was the awkwardness, maybe it was the guilt). “Thank you,” you say, the corners of your mouth tugging up sheepishly, heading to the dusty drawer (you haven’t touched it in what feels like years, usually excluding it from your list of things to clean). 

After a scrupulous amount of wiping away at the dust outside of and surrounding it, you open the drawer with a slight bit of anticipation— you don’t expect much, but you’re a person who lingers on the past like a ghost that has forgotten how time has passed. There wouldn’t be much in this drawer to reminisce on, you presume, but you still approach it with an eager fascination— you’re the type to do so, after all. 

Of everything there, the most noteworthy are two things you grabbed almost immediately— you could never forget how they felt, and the weight that they held in your life back then: a letter, addressed but never delivered to the person you were talking to right now, and a cigarette with a hastily scribbled slew of numbers on it and a lipstick mark on its end. 

Oh, that letter. That letter.  

From what you remember, you’ve never rebelled against your parents before. At least, not with anything major— for a long time, you were their good girl, and you never disobeyed them, as much as you wanted to at times. You still are, still stuck with that age-old drive to be useful. (But was there even a point in that anymore? At least, was there one with your parents?). You didn’t picture yourself as any kind of righteous goody-two-shoes, but you definitely weren’t a rebel or a delinquent. You followed their instructions and seldom ever questioned what they told you, and so it had always been subtly implanted in your brain that they would be alright with anything you did or said. Yet the first time you did actually start to question them, you realised that their belief in your ‘obedience’ as pure love— and maybe it was; you loved them so much you were blinded and trusted them with everything and did anything they wanted their baby to do— you realised they only treated you so lovingly if you were not an actual person with your own ideals and beliefs. 

(But they still loved you, right?) 

Even now, you still do obey them and listen to them. If your father needed anything, he could consider it done; if your mother wanted her clothes to be patched up you’d try your utmost best to withstand the pricking of needles and bring it back to her hospital room with bandaged fingers. It was like that with your mother: even if at times it seemed like the only pain she wanted for you was callouses from a pen or pricks from needles, at other times you feel she could have known you’d end up like her, maybe. Maybe she saw it as a curse: the worlds the two of you were born in were different, and she wanted you to stay in yours, lest you die or live in a world of endless pain. 

You’ve been doing it for a long time: being dismissive of yourself, prone to self-prostration, subservient; the lovingness of a mother, the sweetness of a teenage girl (you hoped), the kindness of a caring friend. Maybe it was Tsumiki— maybe it was because you’d always seen this in Tsumiki. She was always smiling, always caring; taking on the weight of motherhood before she could carry the weight of her school bag. Hugging you with her saccharine smile; braiding her hair with gentle hands and holding your wrist with her hair tie on it even gentler. (You still have it with you. You had planned to start taking it off more once Yuuji left, but you suppose some habits take longer than a week to develop.) All while having that sickening, fantastical, mysterious sweetness of a teenage girl in what you now understand could have been a hidden misery— because caring for someone like a mother while suppressing the thoughts that spoke to you to act like a child was something you wanted to replicate until you realised you understood it. And then you no longer wanted to recreate it. (Maybe that was the way it was for every woman or girl you knew: watching someone you loved hurt themself or not being able to do anything to prevent it when they started. Life was a cycle that way. A very annoying, frustrating one full of unfortunate circumstances and wrongly-picked out decks of cards.) 

“…you know what? I think I may be able to come,” you tell him. 

“You don’t have to go against your father for our sake.” 

“No, don’t worry about it. I think I know who to ask for help. Thank you, Megumi.” 

“Hi, Dr Ieiri?” 

“Kid? That you?” she goes, the slightest bit of excitement stark against her usual deadpan tone. “I thought you’d never call because of that old man.” 

“Haha, yeah— sorry to disturb you, but, um, Dr Ieiri? I may want to take you up on that offer, by the way, but um, I’m still on the fence. I mean, I know I want to be like you and do what you do but… I don’t know, I’m not quite sure about leaving the two of them alone here and all. But anyway, I just called you because I wanted to ask if there was, you know, any way you could get me to Tokyo somehow. I need to pass something to someone, but, um… I guess I’m going with this with the hope that I’ll change my mind and join you. But I’m… perpetually on the fence for now, I guess.” 

“Pft,” she snorts, “You little rebel, I’m in. I’ll see what I can do.” 

“Thank you so much.” 

24-6-2018 

The decision and the plan were made as swiftly as you could. 

You decide to tell your father— you wouldn’t want to deceive him, after all. At least, you’d give him a quick notice. And then you’d leave. Like a snowflake before the first day of spring. He’ll probably tell your mother.  

“I’m leaving for Tokyo for a while,” you say, “I’ll be back before you can even realise I’m gone. Invitation from Dr Ieiri.” 

25-6-2018

“Why?” your father asks, the night before you leave. He suggested going out together at least once before you left. He always knew when you were making white lies. 

“I guess that maybe I’m just too much like you, Daddy.” 

For the first time in years he hugs you on the doorstep, patting you on the back on the day you’re set to leave. “Make sure you study and work hard,” he reminds you. 

“I’m leaving for Tokyo,” you announce.

“I can’t believe you’re leaving us for a boy,” she goes, rolling her eyes. She doesn’t even blink. 

“I’m not.” You are. 

“You know, your father travelled all over the country to see me again after we’d first met.” 

“Oh. Okay?” 

“And he’s always been dedicated to his job and dedicated to helping people.” 

“Uh huh.” 

“I’m saying that the two of you are very similar. I’ve lived through this story before,” she states, “And you look just like your father right now.” your mother says. She hasn’t smiled the way she used to— you remember it vividly, that vibrant gleam in her, the liveliest and loveliest of life— in ages and you don’t think she will, not now of all times. 

“Really? Sometimes he says I take after you more.” 

“You will.” 

It doesn’t feel like a curse. Even if it usually would make your heart well up in guilt, it doesn’t feel like a curse. 

Maybe she knows that her time is running out. Maybe this is resignation. Whatever it is, you hold her hand first, but you’re also the first one to let the other go, your fingers slipping away from hers. You leave the door for the last time in a while, making another round in your life of that carousel of abandonment and reuniting and departures. 

25-6-2018 

Dr Ieiri greets you with a calm smile on her pallid face. 

“Good to see you again.” 

“It’s good to be back here,” you sigh. 

It is. 

You keep your hand on your other hand’s wrist, holding them in front of you. The cherry hair tie on it feels warm against your skin as you exit the station, summer heat embracing it softly. 

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#WE'RE FINALLY ON TRACK WITH THE AO3 VER WOOO!! #jjk x reader #take me back (take me with you) #jjk megumi #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen #jjk #megumi fushiguro #megumi #fushiguro megumi #megumi fluff #megumi angst #fushiguro megumi x reader #megumi fushiguro x reader #jjk x fem!reader #fem!reader #ruer writes #megumi x reader #jjk x you #jjk x y/n #jujutsu kaisen x you #jujutsu kaisen x y/n #megumi imagine #fanfiction #jjk fanfiction

[myneodream]

So, it's the first time in years that I write something, the first time I do it in English, from DC AND on Tumblr, but this prompt didn't want to leave my head and I'm doing my finals, so I had to get this out somehow. Maybe I will make this into a fanfic later, but for now, my first prompt.

____________________________________________

Prompt Idea: DC x Beauty and the Beast

Jason walked back to his house, nodding absentmindedly at their words, as his focus was on the interlocked hands, their fingers intertwined with his clawed ones. The warm feeling from their conversation silencing the anxiety and self-consciousness about his cursed appearance, slowly starting to accept that they really don't mind it. It was not his fault, after years of people reacting with fear and disgust, it was easy to think they were faking it, their reaction so different from the rest, but Jason was tired of hoping. It was easy to just accept, no need to have expectations just to have them broken on his face, and, despite how many times it happened, it didn't stop hurting, no matter how good he became at not showing it.

The other option was not better than the usual reaction, he would even say it was worse. Jason preferred to be looked in fear and disgust by people he couldn't care less a million times than to receive the looks of pity from his family. Reason why he left the Manor so many years ago. Sometimes, he would fake not noticing how Bruce looked at him, seeing the ghost of a kid, of a Robin long gone, too lost in the past to really pay attention to the version in front of him. Jason doesn't blame him. He, too, would sometimes look in the mirror, missing his old reflection, when he was a boy, a person, and not the monster the mirror is showing these days. His clawed and furry hands were full of scars from how many times the beast that looked at him in the mirror received a punch, glass shards showering the ground, piercing his skin. Not that it mattered, the scars were the least of his problems regarding his appearance.

Then they came out of nowhere and stubbornly stayed at his side, insisting on knowing him despite everything, despite all the walls that Jason kept building, despite trying to push them away, there they are, considering him safe and, maybe, Jason was starting to believe it too.

They enter the house, their house, with them going towards the kitchen, talking about their plans for dinner and Jason notices how this became a habit, how it became so easy to interact with them, to share with them. To live with them. Maybe, there was hope. Maybe the curse could be broken. Maybe, they both could learn how to love each other. Maybe, he could be free.

But as he looks at the corner of the living room, he freezes, their voice being tuned out, his hope shattering. Time stops, only the sound of his heartbeat in his ears as he looks at his most hated place of the house. There, almost hidden by a pillar, was a small table, with a glass dome on it. Inside, a beautiful red rose, that Jason was certain was mocking him.

A lonely petal still on the flower, the last one, trembling, about to fall with all the others at the base of the dome.

It was too late.

#jason todd #jason x reader #batfam #beauty and the beast #red hood #dcu #batman #dc comics #dc universe #what if #instead of the pit madness #Jason got cursed instead? #Jason as the beast #reader as Beauty

[samgirl98]

Mending a Family 36/?

Prev | Next

Sorry, didn't notice I hadn't uploaded this chapter to Tumblr yet. So here it is, late, but here

The New Year’s had come and gone. Jason had spent it with this family, including Roy, Raven, and Lian. They had watched the ball drop and celebrated the beginning of a new year. Danny had confirmed he wanted to stay in school, and Jason was almost finished with his car. Jazz had gotten better at sparring, and Ellie was getting bigger every day.

Life was good.

So why was Jason so depressed?

He tried to hide it from his family, but he didn’t think he was doing a good job if the subtle glances and frowns were anything to go by.

Jason stared at the clock. The green numbers read 1:13. He sighed and went back to staring at the ceiling. He felt a chill go down his body and added another blanket. Jason knew a part of his depression was his fire core being at odds with the cold weather, but he knew it wasn’t the whole reason.

Jason closed his eyes, hoping to fall asleep. He tried to ignore the heavy feeling on his chest. It felt suffocating. Time passed by, and he still couldn’t go to sleep. He sat up and looked at the time again. It was 1:49.

Jason decided to get out of bed. He shivered. Didn’t he have the heater on? Jason went to the kitchen and put water for tea. He stared at the distance, his mind empty, his emotions a maelstrom.

He was brought back to the present by the sound of the whistling kettle. He quickly took it off the stove. Jason stared toward the bedrooms, hoping he hadn’t woken anyone up. After a few seconds of silence, he sat down with his tea.

Jason stared at his tea, and, eventually, it cooled down.

Suddenly, Jason stood up. He had to get out. He had to…he had to go somewhere. He left a note to Jazz in case she woke up and found him gone, took a burner phone, transformed, and flew. Jason had a few hours before he had to take Danny to school.

Jason flew invisibly, not paying attention to where he was going. Eventually, he hit the border between the US and Canada. He sat on top of a tree overlooking a highway with a brown sign in the shape of Wisconsin welcoming him.

Finally, away from his family, he let his feelings loose. There was no one here who could sense his emotions, who could ask him what was wrong. That’s what he needed.

Tears trailed on his face, leaving steam as they evaporated.

Jason looked up. The stars were shining. He could never see a night sky like this in Gotham. Danny would love this. Maybe he should stay up one of these nights with his son and watch the night sky slowly change as it turned to day. With his ice core, Danny would fall for it.

Jason reached up toward the sky, his hand blocking the stars.

“Dad,” he whispered. Jason gasped at the sudden pain in his chest. It felt like something was breaking.

He hurt so badly. He missed his old family so much. Sobs started wracking through his body before they turned into screams. He wanted his son to meet his uncles and aunts. He wanted his new family to laugh, and cry, and scream with his old one.

Jason wanted his dad to see Danny and to love him. Jason wanted his father’s love.

He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

Jason would lose his son and his new family if he returned to his old family. They would see him as unfit and take what he had built away from him.

But, Ancients, it hurt to be away from one family. It hurt having to choose.

A despondent chirp left his lips. It wasn’t one of a parent looking for their child. It was a child calling for their parent. A chirp that fell on deaf ears.

____

Bruce groaned at the ringing phone.

He had just gotten into bed from a long night at patrol, and the last thing he wanted was to talk to anyone. But it was his private phone. A phone only his children would call. Without looking, he answered.

“Hello?”

No one answered. Bruce looked at the number; he didn’t recognize it.

“Who is this,” he growled. No one but his children and Alfred should have this number.

A breath hitched. Bruce sat up. He recognized it. By God, he knew it should be impossible to recognize anyone by just a hitched breath, but he did.

“Jay lad,” he breathed out.

Are you hurt? He wanted to ask. Where are you? He wanted to demand; I’ll get you.

There was a voice in the back of his head that sounded like Alfred told him not to.

“Dad,” Jason said, then there was a dial tone.

“No, no, no, no, no,” Bruce chanted as he called the number.

“The number you are trying to reach is no longer available.”

No! He had just had Jason on the phone, and now, now. He was gone again. Bruce raised his arm, ready to throw the phone. He stopped himself at the last moment.

Bruce had never given Jason the number, but his son somehow had gotten it. It was his only way to get in contact with Jason. Not to mention that he needed it for his other children.

This was a good sign, though. Jason had reached out to him. He hadn’t said more than one word to him, but he had called. Bruce had to cling to the hope that his son would return to him. He had to.

Bruce couldn’t go back to sleep. His thoughts were full of dark curls and a mischievous smile. He heard a sweet laugh echoing through his room. It was haunting.

Jason made it back home an hour before having to wake up Danny. He stood at his son’s doorway, looking at his peaceful face.

How could he have been so stupid to jeopardize his son’s safety just because he was feeling down?

Jason held on to him for a few minutes when his son woke up.

“Is everything okay, dad?”

“Everything is fine, chum. Everything is perfect.”

In the middle of the Wisconsin wilderness, a burnt phone was left smoldering on the snowy ground.

@itsberrydreemurstuff @idontgetpaidenoughforthisshit @skulld3mort-1fan @theauthorandtheartist @emergentpanda-blog @jaggedheart11 @fisticuffsatapplebees @booberrylizard @fantasticbluebirdfan @thegatorsgooseoose @cyrwrites @kjoboo91 @crystallicedart @amaramizuki666 @spekulatiusmuffin @meira-3919 @kilasmess @bubblemixer @lexdamo @wonderland-daisy @mj-arts-n-stuff @amyheart19 @dolfay @the-church-grimm @undead-essence @aph-mable @lizisipancardo @purrloin77 @writer-extraodinaire @charlietheepic7 @sinfulloccultist @nootherusernameworked @coruscateselene @chaoticchange @itsberrydreemurstuff @gmkelz11 @feral-bunny31 @paroovian @thatonegaybitch68 @d4ydr34min9 @overtherose @fandomwandererer @vipower001 @thordottir45 @blackrabbitt3t @rosecinnamonbun @bianca-hooks123 @epilepticnerd @dat1angel @consouling @flamingenchiladadragon @all-mights-asscheeks @ender-reader @fuyu-bitch @ravenswife

#mending a family #dc x dp #dp x dc