Water Wrinkles
Seven demon brothers sat solemnly in a circle around you. You did your best to ignore them. It wasn't often that you got to spend time at the human world villa, and you were intent on soaking up as much sun as you could before returning to the Devildom.
You reclined your beach chair back, crossing your arms under your still-wet hair. It was a gorgeous day. Perfect for being at the pool.
Leviathan let out a muffled sob. As the demon with the highest affinity for water, he blamed himself.
"Let us take you to a hospital," Satan insisted for the tenth time.
"They're going to laugh us out of the ER," you nonchalantly repeated.
Satan lowered his eyes and muttered, "I couldn't find any traces of a curse in the water... So how...?"
Asmodeus had his head in his hands, unresponsive. Sometimes his fingers curled around the ends of his hair. You briefly glanced over to make sure he didn't pull his hair out - that would be grounds for a real emergency.
"I can't bear to watch. Lucifer, do somethin'," Mammon whined. He was fidgeting all over the place and winced whenever he looked at your feet.
The oldest glared at you. You knew it was out of concern, but his fears were unfounded. Even Lucifer refused to listen to reason when he thought you were in danger.
"Actually, yeah. Lucifer, can you pass me a towel?" you asked. It was embarrassing having seven shirtless demons intensely staring at you. If they wouldn't let you go back in the water, maybe covering up would make you feel less self-conscious.
Lucifer didn't move. It was Beelzebub who plucked a spare towel off his younger twin and handed it to you with a shaking arm. He looked like a wet puppy, having been the one who first discovered your "condition" and swept you out of the pool.
Belphegor hadn't gone in the water that day. He only hogged the plush towels because of how comfortable they were and, following Beelzebub's lead, dumped them all onto your chair. Now he sat, wide awake. He was anxiously squeezing a loose chunk of concrete but at some point, without realizing, it got crushed to powder in his hand.
You had more than enough towels now.
"In half an hour you're going to forget this all even happened," you said to reassure the worry warts.
"In half an hour, you might be gone!" Mammon snapped back.
"You're going to be a wrinkled mess of skin and bones," Asmodeus weeped quietly.
Leviathan pressed his hands over his ears. Though, with nothing to cover his eyes he was forced to look at your wrinkled hands again. Based on the noises he was making, you'd think someone was torturing him.
"As I've said!" you reiterated. "All humans get wrinkly in water. Look, now that I'm drying off it's going back to normal."
Beelzebub grabbed your ankle, raising it for the brothers to observe at eye level. "I don't see a difference."
You didn't expect the sudden manhandling and slunk several inches down the lounge chair while the demons stared at your foot. Kicking and twisting your leg was futile. You modestly crossed your free leg.
"I think it's getting worse," Satan said.
"We need to take action," Lucifer decided.
Asmodeus was actively quivering now. Belphegor and Leviathan had crept behind you and started picking at your wrinkly fingers. You tried to swat them away to no avail.
"Give me 25 minutes! Literally! Probably even less, this will go away on its own! I just need to dry off."
"We need a solution now," Mammon asserted. The cogs in his brain were turning. "We need fire."
You tried to sit up, to jump up and stop Mammon before he burned the whole villa down in an attempt to dry you off, but Beelzebub had not let go and you stumbled. You grazed your knee on the concrete and winced.
A second round of panic overcame the demon brothers. Beelzebub let go, Lucifer picked you up, and Belphegor wrapped your knee with every available towel he could lay his hands on. Asmodeus and Leviathan were crying on each other's shoulders. Mammon came running back, oblivious to the second disaster that just occurred, with a flaming stick in his hand that Satan tried to keep at bay. If you got burnt on top of everything else, they'd probably go insane and destroy the human world.
In the midst of the chaos you caught a glimpse of your hand. It was practically dry. You couldn't even see the wrinkles anymore. You angrily wiggled in Lucifer's grasp as various hands fussed over you.
"Stay!!" you shouted over the clamor.
The brothers went tumbling to the ground, save for Lucifer who fought to stay rooted in place. You could finally hear yourself think again. There was primarily one thought on your mind.
"I just want to go swimming."
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Oh man y’all the fucking combat medic bot killing off someone that’s not able to continue fighting immediately is definitely something
Like the way it just writes him off, and is directly responsible for his death, for him being disabled for a bit is pretty reminiscent of how the us government at least treats our soldiers/vets. And it being what I’m assuming is ai, thus being completely unfeeling but able to mimic it in the wrong way, and just the powers that be that programmed it to eliminate disabled soldiers without care of their families that rely on them or their ability to eventually recover from their injuries
(Speaking from experience as an american with veteran family members who’re now permanently disabled/dying from shit like agent orange idk how the Brits treat their veterans)
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Ok. TRT business and a question, cause I need feedback from readers at this point.
First: the final chapter of the Raven What If fic should be posted this week, I'm about done editing it.
The bigger, much more important question:
So I have a potential chapter for tomorrow. I've been worrying and fretting over posting it, not because I think it's bad, but because it's short by TRT standards, currently around 2k words, and it both frustrates me and makes me feel weirdly guilty at the thought of dropping what's so much less than my usual. I'm used to being able to write longer chapters, being able to squeeze everything I want into them, and I have a literal outline of this goddamn chapter that has this good stuff in it and I know what needs to be written. I can see it right there. The movie is playing in my head just fine.
But the truth of it is, my writing is slow at the moment thanks to post-covid brain fog. I'm checking in with my doctor, I've started taking specific supplements (which I'm hoping to see results from in the next few weeks), I'm clawing my way back bit by bit, but I continue to write slowly, mostly because I either can't focus or I have to stop every few sentences to struggle with a word I can't remember. It's incredibly frustrating. The thing is though, at least I *am* writing, which gives me hope. But this is where you - the readers - come in. Because right now we have two possible paths for updates going forward for a bit.
Option 1: Longer gaps between our usual chapters. If we go this road, it'll take longer but as I chip away, I'll eventually have the full planned chapter, which I'd post. This would be a chapter closer to what we've had most weeks for the past oh god like 2 years. At current speed I'd drop it in a few weeks, and then hopefully the next one would come a little faster, until eventually we're back to our usual. So basically, you'd get your big chunks when the updates do come, and the same natural endpoints and arcs as before. Drawback is obviously the time between updates, so you won't be fed as often (though I'd try to find things in my editing folder to clean up and drop, like the Raven fic).
Option 2: Shorter chapters but more regular updates. If we go this road, we'd be back to weekly updates of our adventures with Matt and Jane. There'd just be less than usual for a bit and then, hopefully as I improve, you'll see the word count begin to climb back up. So in this case, you'd be getting a weekly dose of TRT, the usual fluff and angst and action, but the catch is less overall to read (likely individual scenes rather than multiples), and potentially sudden endpoints/more cliffhangers as I 'end' at what was outlined as a scene change.
Which way I go will mostly depend on ya'll tbh. I think I can make either work, since I've managed to start writing a little again and I really, really am hoping the supplements help. But since this'll potentially alter the update schedule we've had for years, I wanted to see which you'd prefer.
So, Option One - longer gaps but long chapters - or Option Two - shorter chapters weekly. Which would you prefer?
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