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thesunshineriptide · 2 years

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Hihi! I've recently been brain-rotting on this one au, and since you're one of my favorite twst writers, I thought I'd share it with you via request!

Basically, it's an au where all the twst boys have wings (except some are different because favoritism)

All the Diasomnia boys (minus Silver) have dragon wings, Silver has regular feathered wings (so do everyone else)

Jamil's wings were somehow damaged so he can't fly, bc his family sucks and also he would most definitely try or have tried flying away (they can't have that ig)

Riddle can't fly very well because his mom didn't teach him (rude tbh)

Octavinelle all have artificial wings, they're mostly for show/to fit it though. They can use them to fly, but don't really know how and/or are afraid to.

The rest is up to you! Hope this isn't too long of a request, I have a lot of thoughts lol. Have a great rest of your day/night!

Hi! This was a fun request, thanks for bringing it to me! You left a lot of stuff open for me to play with and I appreciate that a lot. Anyway, I’ve never really gotten into Wingfic but this was really fun to think about! Thanks for sharing your concepts, I hope I did some justice! Everything’s pretty short but I’d be glad to do more at a later date (depending on my mood tomorrow I might make some doodles? Riddle’s tiny cardinal wings will live in my head forever)

CW// wing m*tilation, angst, a little whump in Jamil’s, wings…stuff. Vil having feelings he hates/mental illness uuuh mentions of animal behavior? Idk if that’s a warning or not but it’s a thing! Oh also Riddle Mom angst. Characters acting a bit ooc

All the Diasomnia boys (minus Silver) have dragon wings, Silver has regular feathered wings (so do everyone else)

Silver curled himself deeper into his wings, the soft white and black plumage tickling at his nose. He sniffled and sneezed, eyes opening slightly.

Lilia was staring down at him, and he yelped in surprise.

“Morning, sleepy-head.” Lilia chirped, “I can’t say it’s my favorite time of day, but I made breakfast!”

Silver groaned softly, sitting up, “What time is it?”

“Four am!” Lilia said. He leaned back and stretched, his bat like wings speading with him. “I made pancakes with chicken!” He cheered.

Silver blinked. It didn’t sound bad, but he knew it would be. “What else did you add?”

“Strawberries and seaweed!” He said coming over. He pressed a kiss to his son’s head, “Now come on, before it gets cold, and we can begin training again.”

Silver groaned, but was cut off by the booming voice of Sebek and the sudden view of green, scaly wings in his doorway, “DON’T DISRESPECT MASTER LILIA IN SUCH A WAY!”

“It’s four am.” Silver argued.

“MASTER LILIA GRACIOUSLY MADE YOU BREAKFAST AND YOU GROAN?”

“Dude, shut up.” Silver said, finally getting up, “You don’t like to eat his cooking either.”

Jamil's wings were somehow damaged so he can't fly, bc his family sucks and also he would most definitely try or have tried flying away (they can't have that ig)

A servant is bound to their master through various methods. Money, convention, chains. Jamil looked over his clipped wings again, reminiscing on the days when he was far younger, then days he and Kalim could fly. Before he was punished and reminded of his place beneath him. Before he learned to hate Kalim.

Jamil fanned at the stoved, frowning at Kalim’s most recent failed attempt at cooking. The fire was soon put out - Jamil’s wings were undoubtedly powerful, despite them being clipped. They moved fast, the feathers of red and orange and blue covered in a thick layer of brown henna, standing their color.

“You cannot outshine Kalim.” He reminded himself every week when he had to reapply the dye, “Know your place, Jamil.”

When asked, you might think nothing was wrong.

“I simply prefer to walk.” Was something he said often. Vargas seemed to make concessions for Jamil, sending him on an errand conveniently at the beginning of any flight training and not commenting on how Jamil wouldn’t return until the class was almost over. Who would question the coach on that?

Few people knew about Jamil’s condition. It was considered barbaric - cutting or clipping someone’s wings was considered a hate crime in most places, something irreversibly horrible. It wasn’t something to be ignored. Especially not when people ask questions.

The last time Jamil answered honestly, the last time he let someone know, he’d nearly had his wings cut off all together as punishment. It besmirched his name, and worse, if someone found out the reason it happened was for Kalim…

“You cannot outshine Kalim.” He said, “And you cannot ruin his name.”

Riddle can't fly very well because his mom didn't teach him (rude tbh)

Riddle looked down from the ledge, nervously latching eyes with Vargas.

“Rosehearts, c’mon. You’re Easton’ precious time, just jump and fly across the field.”

The second year class stared curiously at the normally proud dorm leader.

It wasn’t too far from the ground - at least, not to someone who knew more. But Riddle’s wings were small, even for his age, and seemed more like a grand accessory than a body part. They puffed. He stepped back, frowning and shaking his head.

“I’m sorry, Coach Vargas, I can’t.”

A sigh of disappointment escaped Vargas, and Riddle winced. He stepped back from the ledge.

His chest heaved and he closed his eyes as he slipped behind a wall. He covered his face with his hands, rubbing at his eyes. He wrapped his wings close, finding no warmth gained.

He stayed like that for a while, ignoring the shouts of other students and even Vargas trying to get his attention.

They stopped after a while. He turned to find the class gone, and began to panic near immediately. Would he get a 0 for this? What would happen? Would he get detention? What if they tell his moth-

He felt a gentle hand clasping his shoulder, then moving down to rub his back in soothing circles. This was followed by a boisterous voice and the smell of sweat. He jolted, turning to look.

Vargas was standing in front of him, with Jade at his side. The second year gave him a soft smile and a courteous nod.

“Rosehearts.” Vargas addressed him. Riddle flinched again, and Vargas raised his eyebrows. He coughed, then said softer, “Sorry. Rosehearts, since you’re having a bit of trouble with flying, and Leech is as well, I’ve decided that you two will be taking private lessons with me after classes every day until you can do that test. Since this was your last class, we can start now.”

Riddle stares, wide eyed. “You…you’re going to teach me?”

“Tutor.” Vargas corrected, “Both of you. Frankly, you’re both abysmal at it right now. And remember, I’m taking time out of my busy schedule just to help you. No turning back now!” He grinned, gently patting Riddle on the shoulder.

“Let’s get started. Since you two seem so nervous,” Vargas grinned, turning to Jade, “We can start at a lower level. C’mon, let’s get flying boys!”

Octavinelle all have artificial wings, they're mostly for show/to fit it though. They can use them to fly, but don't really know how and/or are afraid to.

Azul stared at the giant three boxes sitting on the desk in his VIP room.

Idia shifted from foot to foot, watching him intently, “Well?! Are you gonna open it?” He blurted, then immediately looked like he wanted to sink in a hole.

Floyd grinned and laughed, reaching forward to take his box. Sliding the lid off of it, he was greeted with sleek, translucent wings that looked less like a birds and more like an insects.

Idia gulped and began to stutter an explanation. “Y-you asked for something interesting, so I studied flying fish in order to understand how they fly best. Th-these should fly just as well as organic wings, but they’re modeled after the m-modified fins of flying cod…” he said.

Floyd grinned even wider, “Fuckin’ dope as hell. Thanks a million firefly squid.” He said, letting out a delighted giggle. He turned, slipping on the wings to try them out. They fused to his back magically, and he let out an experimental flutter. “Hell yeah.” He said.

Jade opened his box next, being met with simple feathered wings in soft, slate grey with dark, dirt brown around the tips of them. He tilted his head, holding back a smile at the sight.

“You said you w-wanted an unassuming set of wings,” Idia began, “Statistically speaking, p-people tend to find neutral colors, other than blacks and whites to be s-soothing or unremarkable.” He gulped.

“Modeled after a finch’s wings, yes?” Jade said, running his hands over the feathers. “Your craftsmanship and attention to detail is commendable.”

“Thanks.” Idia whispered, then mumbled something to himself. He fidgeted with his hands before turning to Azul.

Azul, noticing his eyes, shot him a charming little smile before opening the box.

In his box laid a pair of large, sweeping wings, then when untucked would undoubtedly be near as tall as Azul himself. He looked back to Idia, quirking an eyebrow.

Idia began to relax, leaning forward, “I based the wing patterns of the bleeding heart pigeon, but you said you try and keep a distinct figure, so I made sure they were long. If they’re too long, I can always adjust them to the right length, I kind of had to guess with Ortho hovering near your height. Anyway,” he continued, running his own fingers across the feathers, “They have a shiny, blue-green color that I thought would match your dorm uniform, and some striping for intrigue.” He said. He looked up and grinned at Azul, who was smiling silently at him.

Idia gulped, retracting his hand, “If you don’t like them, I can-“

“I love them.” Azul said earnestly, “You did an excellent job. Your side of the deal is nearly finished,” he said. He lifted the pair, then slipped them on. Just like with Floyd’s, they quickly fused to his back and he turned, extending them slightly. He smiled. “I’ll have that file for you by tomorrow night. A deal’s a deal.”

The rest is up to you! Hope this isn't too long of a request, I have a lot of thoughts lol. Have a great rest of your day/night

Savanaclaw

I only added Savanaclaw due to the large beastman population. I don’t think they would have wings - naturally or artificially, for one specific reason.

They are creatures of the land. Born to run and stalk and hunt, not to fly. The merfolk of the sea might be content to galavant in the skies, or at least pretend they are, but beastmen have no such inclination.

Leona may have an artificial pair at home for political reasons, but it’s not something he would ever use.

It’s not as though they’re afraid, either. Broomsticks and magic carpets do exist still, and they aren’t afraid to use them, but it simply feels so unnatural to use wings in particular. It throws off the body weight, it’s annoyingly loud, and the skies always have at least five freshman thinking they own it, bumping into others and divebombing their pranks.

Pomefiore

Vil’s wings are reminiscent of the rainbow crow. Every movement and shiver, every time they puff, it looks iridescent. It changes from black to red, orange, green, pink, purple, and every color in between.

And yet still, despite the magnificence…

Every role is for a figure shrouded in darkness. A villain or a fiend, plotting and cursing at the sun. Every child in town coward away from him, whispering his name. Every time he wanted to play as a kid, the others turned their backs to him. Most of his memories of that time were of beautiful blush pink or soft grey or mottled brown or periwinkle blue wings, turned toward him as others said his name in hushed tones.

He preens at his feathers idly, fixing the few what wee slightly out of place, plucking those that were loose. He gazed at his wings disdainfully. They were soft, and fluffy, and contained very color he envied as a child, except for one.

No matter the years, black wings were still seen as evil. Every villain had them in every good story, and ever hero had lighter colored ones. Maybe they were a butter yellow or a soft silver or maybe a mix of colors. In any of Vil’s films, though, they were pearly white with grey tips.

It as perfect symmetry, wasn’t it? This idea of black and white, good and evil. Vil Schoenheit, destined to play a villain forever, and Neige Leblanche, the hero, the saint, the innocent.

Vil plucked a feather, glaring at it. He sighed, then dropped it. There were always potions to change it’s color. He could always cut them, and get artificial ones. He could change himself, fit every mirror image. Oil black feathers fell from his hands. He turned, walking silently away from the pile of them. He didn’t care to see how they would drift away in the breeze, or the way a child might gawk and cry in panic at the sight. It was simply too much to think about.

#twisted wonderland #twst #twst headcanons #twisted wonderland headcanons #jade leech #azul ashengrotto #floyd leech #riddle rosehearts #idia shroud #vil schoenheit #savanaclaw #sebek zigvolt #lilia vanrouge #twst silver #jamil viper #kalim al asim

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stinkyhyena9000 · 1 year

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Literally me today

[everything here is hc btw]

So basically on my walk home today, I had a very vivid idea of Clay and Boudreaux's band. Three Day's Grace's "I Hate Everything About You" perfectly shows off my voice HC for how young Clay sounded, as well as their band's overall sound.

Other bands that also work are the Foo Fighters, Taking Back Sundays, and Sleeping With Sirens. (Yes these are all popular emo/rock bands ik)

At the time, Clay was also dyeing his mane and tail black, or atleast the small bit of hair he could call his mane. He was already a good ~5years on testerone, but his mane was taking a long while to grow in, which is why he takes such good care of it and takes a lot of pride in it now. Also he no longer dyes his mane black now, but he still does dye his tail, as a fun little memory of the past.

Oh yeah did I also mention I'm putting my trans Clay headcanon in this? Yeah.

Anyways his band "Crimson Car Fire" advertised themselves a bit as a couple of hotties. Clay was into the idea too, even though he's definitely demi. He even went far enough to wear a fishnet tank with nothing under it to most of their shows.

He was terrified at first to try this though, since had much more recently gotten top surgery. Yes, we're back to that headcanon. Anyways, he was worried because his scars would show through his fishnet tank. Luckily (mostly) everyone was supportive, so he kept sporting it!

What else he would wear is some black cargo pants, with some chains. He also had some black leather fingerless gloves of course, black leather boots, and for necklaces he had a cross necklace and a necklace of his first guitar pic from his (late) father. He still wears these to do this day.

If he's not wearing only his fishnet tank, he's always wearing some tshirt from bands he went to concerts for. He also wears these to this day, and Ash and Johnny likes to refer to them as vintage. Although correct, Clay always insists that they're not vintage! (they definitely are).

Oh yeah back to the band. Clay is the main singer and playing some bass, with Boudreux (peacock) being the main guitarist, ane Julie (finch) fronting the drums and sometimes vocals. They're actually from the Sing equivalent of New Orleans (They did move to Calatonia and play most of their shows there, though).

As you can imagine, Clay was definitely shocked to see Calatonia again when he finally went to live their again with the Moon Crew. And to think they didn't keep a single drive-in movie theatre! (Will get back that with Clay and Ruby dates.)

Speaking of Ruby, she actually met Clay through the band. Was she a fan? No, actually, she though their music was too cheesy. She was just dragged there to one of Clay's bands shows by her friend. Clay may have winked at her and Ruby may have felt that.

The real crushing began outside of the show, though. They bumped into each other and Ruby recognized him from the show. I'll go more into this later, but yeah.

Now I did mention to other band mates, Boudreux and Julie. Boudreux was a hot shot peacock who played guitar, and him and Clay met at the end of highschool. There was a lot of unresolved romantic tension between the two, although it's gone now after they split up. He was definitely jealous when Clay and Ruby started hanging out, but what reason would he have to stop them? Him and Clay were never actually a thing, just a few in-the-moment instances.

(Oh yeah incase it needed to be stated, Clay is demiromantic, demisexual, and bi. Boudreux is a demiboy and flaming homosexual, and Julie liked girl in red. She also had a partner too who always supported her and came to her shows. They were definitely a colorful cast).

Anyways eventually the band split it. Julie had to move out of state to stay with her partner, and there was a little drama between Boudreux and Clay about Ruby.

Cut back to present-day, with Clay living with Rosita back in Calatonia, Clay likes to watch Ash's concerts, since it makes him nostalgic for his band days. (Picture Clay wearing an Ash concert t-shirt btw).

At one of her concert's his eyes actually catch someone familiar among the sea of heads. The impossible, unforgettable plumage of the one and only Boudreux.

Clay catches him after the show. Boudreux is surprised to see him again and gives the big lion an even bigger hug. Despite everything, they're still best friends, and they had a lot of catching up to do. I need you to realize, this is like 30-40 years later.

Boudreaux comments on how they both seemed to have grayed, and Clay can't help but give of a hearty laugh. They apologize for the rough ending back then, and some tears are shed. Boudreux asks about Ruby. "That girl was always at your side, where she at?" Clay is stuck, unable to speak. Lion's caught his tongue.

That's when Ash finally makes it ouside to meet back up with Clay. She notices that familiar grimace, and swiftenes to ask him what's wrong, "and who's this?"

Clay, seeing her daughter, that bright shining star, he gets back together again. He introduces him as an old friend. And then he continues "Boudreux, she's gone now. I'm so sorry."

Boudreux's usual snarky front immediately softens, and he quicky replies "No, no, why are you apologing. Stop crying this isn't your fault" and he begins to tear up, too.

Also yes, Ash is just standing their confused.

After a couple of minutes of silent sobbing, conversation starts back up again.

"Y'know, did you hear about Julie?" Boudreux begins.

"Oh my god, Julie. What happened" Clay responds in a hushed, weak tone, still recovering from the news he just gave.

"She, uhm. She was found somewhere in the upper states. Sam rushed her to the hospital. She uh, passed from a heart attack, I think."

Clay begins to smile a bit, despite the news. "That Sam of her was always there for, wasn't they?" He word out through his waterworks.

"Damn right they were. Perfect couple I'd say," the peacock answers.

Another silence passes.

Ash is on the side of them furiously texting her phone. Clay and Boudreaux forgot about her, actually. Ash is texting Buster and Rosita, saying they're gonna be a while, before putting back down her phone, out of courtesy.

#hoping you dont notice boudreauxs flame motif #would write more but i actually have work lol #definitely went way longer than i anticipated #yes boudreux did get a boyfriend #many actually #not anything healthy tho #also the band trio did smoke #but after clay met ruby he stopped entirely #julie switched to a more healthy alternative (weed)#boudreux still smokes tho #incase you didnt realize #julies partner sam is nonbinary djddjdj #yes i do actually have a cause of death for ruby #and no its not illness #shes just disabled and use different mobility aids #also clay still struggles with blaming himself for rubys death #also by romantic tension earlier #i mean it #like definite romance #of course they're over that now tho #anyways enough rambling i need to get reading for work djdjsjs #clay calloway #ruby calloway #sing ash #sing boudreux #sing julie #sing oc #sing 2 #sing 2021 #mysing

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alexenglish · 1 year

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alex alex alex i GOTTA know. what's been your Favorite Look for each member of stray kids.

oh!! this is a tall order, gunna go off instincts and vibes with the caveat that i'm not thinking about this too hard. ALSO i'm gunna go kinda with like...hair looks mostly? because i think there's a wide array of things i could talk about within 'looks' including various styling and makeup over the years, but i think a hair look is so distinctly an era so we'll default that . (if you want more in-depth member thoughts, you can send me an individual member but for all 8 of them, i'm not gunna give myself more work) anyway, let's start from the top <3

undeniably a chan three-tone enjoyer. i think this length is excellent on him -- the little blunt butch cut plus the tiered black, blonde, red. sophisticated scene hair. it makes me think of revenge era frank iero for no reason other than color scheme and emo vibe. the up styling, the down styling. when they'd do it kinda tousled and messy -- @ the stylists doing their current fuck shit with his hair: bring it BACK.

as much as i am DEEPLY compelled by the current LENGTH of minho's hair and the embodiment of boy gender he is gendering, my truth is tangerine lino is everything to me. my BELOVED kool aid dye. the way it washed out into that soft bronze. honestly probably made especially exquisite by the make up of the god's menu era, and i love it immensely.

uncontested queen of my changbin heart is this specific undercut look. with changbin, i want all the undercuts and there ARE others, but i love how close this one is and the shaved step design and the choppiness of his hair plus the styling 😖😖😖 when a man is perfect 😖😖😖

i actually don't think hyunjin needs to be perpetually blonde OR that the blonde hair needs to perpetually be long, BUT when he has both of those things, i DO need it half up and decorated with the prettiest little braids. it does make me think of being queer in high school and my hair being super short and girls flirting with me by playing with my hair, and if they gave me the little braids, i'd keep them in for as long as possible because it made them happy. anyway. girlfriend hyune. (special shout out to fire engine red hj though, the way that BLED all over his face and neck and clothes when he performed [rabid barking])

jisung is actually the hardest to me because i'm obsessed with him and also i think he looks SOOO good in different colors & i'm so partial to the blonde look because i wrote it into a fic and anytime he has blonde hair (and changbin has black hair at the same time) i'm like that's SOOO specifically my FIC jisung, but also i fucking love dark hair on him, especially if it's longer and the orange made me BONKERS and the grey is so good and they NEED to give me BLUE again, but actually my REAL answer is jisung in hats. love his boy gender of beanies and hoods, love when he is COZY. love when he wears a CAP, backwards OR forwards... i just think wow a boy... what a boy look. with his loose clothes and his nail polish and his headphones idk!!! idk!!!! baby!!!!!

okay...anyway

(domino blue felix is actually butting up under this but ultimately, this is my ideal) literally if i could challenge the stylists to a DUEL anytime they even THOUGHT of applying lightener to felix's hair for the rest of the year i WOULD. my ideal is LONG and BROWN/black -- DARK so his freckles POP. his little grunge gender! let me at it!!

i was actually two seconds away from being a seungmin bias during his purple era because it is so deeply compelling to me on a base level. my thoughts and feelings about seungmin are limited pre-2022 skz LA crisis (where he sung JBIEB (EW??) AND RUINED MY Life /pos) but if i have any, they are focused solidly on purple seungmin and what he means to me (bites him in half)

last but not least jeongin!! honestly the blonde is like. life changing. transformative. single-handedly trebuchets him out of the baby infant zone for the barest of moments before he's hurled directly back again (he will escape baby infant zone completely at some point and then i'll be in trouble, so i am actually savoring the fact that he is the opposite of a threat rn). he's top two blonde idols for me, and the other one is jimin. which is an immense scale. anyway. foxy blonde boy ily.

#thank you this was soo fun #skztag #kp #mic check #anonymoose

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stuff-from-the-void-matron · 3 years

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Laurel Wreaths & Animal Teeth (9)

(c!technoblade x fem!reader)

(so people showed they liked chapter 8 well enough so I wrote chapter 9! also how miffed would everyone be if... this was also maybe a dreamxd x reader fic? like idk i’m just having some persuasive thoughts. also don’t forget to show this chapter some love or I won’t have the motivation to do chapter 10! reblogs and comments are the best! <3)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wilbur did not like this ‘Reader’ person. God she was just as bad as Quackity, coming into L’manberg and making demands and acting like they even HAD a say in HIS country. Now more than ever he wished he’d have just exiled Quackity instead of humoring him with this ridiculous election. There shouldn’t BE an election. HE was the rightful president of this country! He fought and died for this country. Put his blood, sweat, and tears into it! HIM! Not them!

“-ur?”

This whole election thing was a mistake. He should have just listened to his gut.

“ilbur?”

But he’d been pressured by everyone to ‘be fair’ or whatever. Nobody knew what was best for L’manberg but HIM.

“Wilbur!”

The curly brunet jolted a bit at the sudden shout to his left, he blinked and felt himself unfurrow his eyebrows before looking over at his vice president. Said teenager was looking at him curiously, eyebrows raised in a questioning way. No doubt wondering what his friend was doing just standing there silently and chewing on his thumbnail like a madman. He was still tense but gave a quick ‘sorry’ before saying he was just lost in thought.

Tommy gave a semi awkward laugh and joked that it looked like he was trying to catch the wall he was staring at on fire just by staring at it. Wilbur gave a polite chuckle at the younger man’s attempt at mood lightening humor before sobering instantly and saying in a deadly serious tone that had the blond stiffening up anxiously,

“I don’t like this ‘Reader’ person you’ve been hanging out with Tommy. She seems really judgmental and arrogant. Not to mention her attitude. She’s argumentative and childish. She very clearly doesn’t care about you or L’manberg.”

That last part hit Tommy right in the chest like the blow from a size 12 boot. How could Wibur say that? You did care! You did! You wouldn’t have-.. People who don’t care wouldn’t-..

Tommy’s hurt showed on his face, making Wilbur sigh in sympathy before clapping the younger boy on the shoulder and saying that it would be best for him to just focus on the L’manberg election. This Reader person was just serving as a distraction from Tommy’s job as vice president anyways. And Tommy didn’t want that, right? Wilbur had entrusted him to be his VP over everyone else. He couldn’t slack on that, right? Tommy just gave a mumbled ‘yeah, s’pose not’ but it was clear he didn’t have his heart in it, though that was all the affirmation Wilbur needed to think the conversation was over..

-0-

You sat in the audience with Tubbo and Fundy for a bit while the candidates talked to each other up on the stage. Fundy seemed sweet, if not a bit mischievous. Though you supposed that should be expected from a fox hybrid. You smiled when his ears went back after you asked why his uniform was a lighter color than the others, unable to not think he looked adorable. But when he huffed, pretty obviously upset but trying not to show it, you frowned. And you pursed your lips when he explained that it was in ‘baby colors’ because Wilbur thought it would be cute for his ‘little champion’ to have a different uniform compared to everyone else.

You couldn’t help but awkwardly ask, “Aren’t you an adult though?” To which Fundy gave a slightly loud and exasperated, “YES!” that made you feel sorry for the poor hybrid. You gave him a reassuring look and said that well if he didn’t like the uniform then he didn’t have to wear it. Or if he liked it save for the color then just dye it darker to match the others. Fundy looked a bit put out and replied that he’d thought about dying it or just not wearing it but then his dad would be all depressed and hurt. You couldn’t help but roll your eyes and say that he shouldn’t set himself on fire to keep others warm.

“You don’t have to do whatever your dad wants you to just because he’s your dad or cuz he’ll be sad. You’re an adult now Fundy. It’s time you make decisions for yourself in mind, not your dad.”

Fundy started up at you with wide eyes, like he’d never heard anyone tell him that before. Which was worrying but you put it out of your mind before continuing,

“Caring about others is important, yes. But you can’t let yourself be miserable just to avoid maybe making your dad sorta bummed out. That doesn’t seem fair to you.”

Tubbo chimed in from his spot to your left and said that the uniform was a symbol of their independence from the Dream Smp, they wore it to show they were loyal to L’manberg. He didn’t say it accusingly or even angrily, just in a factual matter-of-fact way. You said that might be true but then asked why Fundy’s uniform was different? Shouldn’t they all look the same if they supposedly stood for the same thing? If they’re meant to have a deeper meaning then they shouldn’t be altered for a joke. You said he had to see how that would make Fundy feel left out. You asked how Tubbo would feel if he were the only one with a different uniform and stood out. The brunet boy’s goatish ears drooped and he mumbled that he’d be sad. You ruffled his hair and turned back to Fundy.

“Look Fundy, if you wanna keep wearing the uniform as it is, that’s fine. If you wanna wear it but only after altering the color, that’s also fine. But if you wanna drop the uniform altogether then that’s fine too. It’s up to you, Fundy.”

Fundy looked contemplative, like he’d never thought he’d had a choice in the matter. But here he was with three whole options thanks to you. He honestly wasn’t sure which one he’d end up choosing, he had a lot to think about. But he gave you a grateful little smile and soft ‘thanks’ that made the corners of your lips quirk up. Though your chat soon came to an end when Fundy saw Niki approaching. He and Tubbo waved happily to her and gestured for her to come over. She stared up at you with mostly hidden surprise and said hello before Fundy introduced you both. Niki looked almost shy as she gave a short wave up to you. You chuckled and greeted her warmly and said you liked her uniform, pointing out hers was a different color than the others, like Fundy’s. She looked down at her blue version of the L’manberg uniform and flashed a grin and said,

“Yeah, I just liked the lighter blues better than the bright red and navy.”

You brightened and gently tapped Fundy’s shoulder with the back of your hand and cheerfully pointed out that if Niki could choose to alter her uniform from the original she was given then he should be able to do the same no problem. His ears twitched happily and he grinned, showing off his canines and nodding. This led Niki to asking him what you meant and him explaining he wasn’t happy with how his uniform was dyed. She agreed with you, if he wasn’t happy then he should change the color. But she joked that he should avoid any bright greens… Fundy let out a bark of laughter before Niki gasped and pointed out they, as in she and Fundy, had to go get ready. Tubbo raised an eyebrow and asked if they were still planning on running in the election. Fundy sighed and said yes, like he’d been giving that same answer repeatedly. He probably had been, sadly..

“Oh, you’re both running for president and vice president?” You asked good naturedly.

Fundy nodded, waiting for you to give some kind of remark about him running, or how it was against his dad, or something else. But instead you just flashed him an encouraging smile and wished him and Niki good luck. You glanced at the fox hybrid and the blonde next to him before nodding and commenting that they both looked smart, with good heads on their shoulders. You thought they’d do just fine. Fundy’s tail was wagging from the genuine encouragement, making Niki giggle a little. The two did actually have to go get ready, so you and Tubbo said good luck and waved them off before chatting about this and that. The election speeches would be starting soon..

-0-

He was watching her again.

He couldn’t help it. He’d started watching her just to ensure she wasn’t going to pose a threat to the server, but the more he watched her the more he started to actually enjoy it. She was like him and Drista, maybe not exactly, but more than anyone else on the server. But at the same time she was so incredibly different. Seeing her interact with villagers and mobs and now players was intriguing. She was so much more powerful than all of them combined, but she had no trouble blending in like she was just another player. End sake, most of them even seemed to gravitate towards her!

The only other time he’d seen a deity blend in so well with mortals was… Dream. But he tried not to think about that too much.

His currently invisible form phased through the building he’d been lurking beside, going up until he had a better view of the seats in the audience by the stage. He watched her and the small hybrid boy she’d endeared herself to bid a fox hybrid and blonde girl goodbye before taking their seats. He watched her sit and talk happily with the brown haired boy so easily. He wanted to learn to do that. It may be foolish but he wants to be like her. Happy, open, accepted, loved. He’s powerful, yes. He’s the most powerful being on this server without a doubt. But… it gets lonely. Sure Drista is around sometimes but she sleeps so often, preferring her dream world more than the waking one. And Dream… well that’s complicated.

His brother and him have a… tense relationship after the whole ‘falling from grace’ debacle that happened so long ago. Dream barely speaks to him anymore. Actually the last time they’d spoken face to face was after that silly little war Dream had been in not too long ago. He’d told him that he just wanted to sleep afterwards. At the time he didn’t bother to involve himself in the daily lives of the server’s players like Dream did so he wasn’t exactly sure of the intricacies of the whole ‘disagreement’ that led to the fighting. But according to Dream some players wanted to govern themselves because drugs? It all sounded utterly stupid to him so he just sort of didn’t absorb any of the details Dream was complaining about. To him it seemed like the more involved with the players Dream got the more stressed out and tired he became. Though he hadn’t spoken to Dream since their last talk when Dream had vented about all of this.

‘Perhaps I should visit my brother soon,’ the floating entity thought with a hum before he faded from the realm, drifting back to the End.

-0-

Some time had passed and during it you chatted with Tubbo casually, idly noting all the people who started to trickle into the seats around you. You recognized most in one way or another. Some more than others. Like you’d watched a good deal of the ‘main characters’ on the dsmp. And while you knew the names and skins of the lesser involved players you didn’t watch their videos much. Like Callahan, Punz, and Ponk. You knew the bare bones info about them. In fact most of what you knew was from clips and animatics you’d seen on youtube..

You tuned back into the election, watched from the front row as the rally began. It looked like Quackity was going first, alone too it seemed since George was nowhere to be found. Apparently he was ‘too busy being gorgeous’ to bother showing up. You pursed your lips when you noticed Quackity was sounding a touch nervous at first. Which you could understand, speaking in front of a crowd was always tough. Especially if you’re not really used to it, which even then you’d heard that public speakers said they never truly got rid of the jitters going out in front of a crowd causes. So you sent some good vibes to Quackity, he may not be the one you necessarily want winning this election but.. well you don’t want him to embarrass himself either. But it turns out he.. didn’t do great but didn’t bomb either. It didn’t help that the others running were making little comments through his speech.

He spoke about caring about the people of L’manberg and how his endorsement was KSI, despite the fact KSI hadn’t replied back to him. Not a great start. Also Jesus Christ himself apparently. That had actually made you laugh a little. And you laughed louder when you heard the chime to signify you’d gotten a message, only in multiple around you. Turns out everyone had gotten a message from Dream on the main channel.

<Dream> god endorses swag2020

Quackity laughed, cheering loudly while Wilbur rolled his eyes and Tommy sighed. Then it was Pog2020’s turn to show off their endorsements. The first of which being Vikkstar it seemed. You couldn’t help but think it was so surreal to see these… well normal people from real life being canon characters in the Dream SMP universe… apparently. Well that seemed to make the crowd go wild in disbelief and amusement while Tommy pounded his fist on the podium triumphantly while Wilbur cheered. After that Wilbur shoved Tommy aside so he could speak into the podium and said he also brought in an endorsement. And then he introduced…. Schlatt. You wanted to facepalm so bad. You’d actually forgotten this part from the videos. It had totally slipped your mind that Wilbur was the reason Schlatt even knew about the damn election in the first place.

And to top it off the man was clearly drunk or at least hungover. He didn’t even seem to know where the hell he was. Idly you wondered when he got unbanned by Dream as you watched the messages from Schlatt roll through on the message system. It was mostly him asking where the fuck he was and if the ‘big fuckin’ wall’ he was next to was the Great Wall of China. You facepalmed and heard Tommy say he was going to go fetch him. Quackity was laughing and saying one of their endorsements was ‘some old man’, and you rolled your eyes because little duck boy was gonna be engaged to that ‘old man’ soon.. But you kept that tidbit to yourself. Though when Quackity called the ram hybrid ‘babe’ and he said to not call him that, making Quackity laugh you raised an eyebrow, figuring they were already together! Nonchalantly you wondered how much stuff you’d missed.

And then came the yelling.

Schlatt started rambling about how democracy was overrated and he didn’t ‘need a president’, how he’d be his own president. All while Tommy and Wilbur tried to talk over him and get him off the stage. Then he started shit talking Quackity, asking everyone if they really wanted HIM to be their president. Then he went on a tangent about how Quackity’s vice president ‘stole his woman’, which just caused everyone to laugh, even you. You have to admit, the man was funny if nothing else. Made you wish he wasn’t an alcoholic drug using abusive asshole. Blah Blah Wilbur stole his heart, blah blah Coconut 2020, etc that you were half listening to.

About then is when Tommy, still laughing at this whole debacle, glanced down and noticed you and Tubbo sitting in the front row. He gave a bright grin and waved to you both, to which you both smiled and waved back. This little interaction somehow managed to catch Schlatt’s attention, even through his booze addled ramblings. He just stopped mid sentence and stumbled over to Tommy and asked that the fuck he was even doing. Tommy gave an awkward laugh and said he was just waving hello to his friends. Schlatt gave him a ‘wtf’ look and scanned the crowd for who the blond boy was talking about. His horizontal oval pupils finally landed on Tubbo, making the boy give a slightly stiff wave to the older male. Schlatt stared at the boy for almost a full 20 seconds, making Tubbo sweat nervously.

You could almost tell yourself that you saw a flash of recognition in the goat hybrid’s eyes, but before you could blink it was gone and he was instead turning to look at you. Your eyebrows lowered as his gaze perked up and a grin you’re not above describing as ‘sleazy’ crossed his features. His eyes raked over your form, making you give him an unamused look. Schlatt leaned over to Tommy, missing how the teen sorta leaned away from him, and asked who ‘the baddie with the fat ass’ was. Tommy grimaced and replied saying for the other man to not say something so gross.

“That’s Reader, don’t say nasty shit about her man!”

Schlatt laughed and told the younger man to not be such a little bitch, he had to see how hot this woman was! The hair, the horns, the ASS! Before Schlatt could continue to make lewd comments about your person Quackity smacked him with a golden carrot and started cursing him out in Spanish. While the two argued Wilbur went up to the microphone and said that the ACTUAL people running were going to be going into the White House to have a little chat and they’d be right back. Then he and Tommy ran off, Quackity, Schaltt, Niki, and Fundy hot on their heels. Leaving the stage totally empty. Everyone in the audience gave each other side glances before looking up when you stood from your chair and headed to the podium.

Tubbo blinked in surprise before hopping up and following after you, calling your name and asking where you were going. You ruffled his hair and said you just wanted to say one thing to everyone in attendance. He hummed and followed after you, curious to see what you were up to. You knew the outcome of the election, sadly, and didn’t think there was any way to change it really. But you wanted to impart some wisdom onto the citizens of L’manburg really quick before all those dorks came back after finishing their nonsense. So you sat down on the stage, legs hanging over the side by the podium, and grabbed the mic and sighed before saying to the crowd down below,

“Listen up everyone. I’m not part of the other campaigns or anything, but I wanted to just say something real quick to all of you.”

The crowd watched you with rapt attention, wondering who on the SMP you were. You started off with a light chuckle, saying you’d never been a public speaker so if you started rambling and not making a ton of sense then that was why. Then you took a breath and just said what was on your mind.

“I’m not here to endorse anyone or try to convince you to vote for this or that person. I just wanted to say that despite all the shenanigans going on today that this is actually supposed to be pretty serious. Goofing off aside, you all are going to be voting for the person in charge of your country. The person tasked with ensuring you are all safe and cared for. Being president is a big responsibility. One that shouldn’t be taken lightly.”

You looked at each person in the crowd, lots you knew OF but didn’t know personally. But you made sure to tell them what you thought a president should be.

“Being president shouldn’t be about having glory or power. It should be about working to make sure all your citizens are safe, happy, and above all; THRIVING. If the citizens are miserable or not being heard then the president has failed. So I want you all to think hard about who you want to vote into office. Who do you think will honestly care for your needs as a country? Who will defend you and ensure you’re all living your best lives?”

The crowd seemed to be listening to you, none of them had interrupted you anyways. And Tubbo was smiling, having apparently thought you’d done a good job speaking. But you heard the sound of approaching voices and sighed again. You’ve been sighing a lot today, but that’s not really a surprise is it? Instead of dwelling on it you conclude your speech with a simple,

“Just keep in mind who you’re voting for, because you’re going to be stuck with them for the next few years.”

Then you placed the microphone back on the podium and grabbed Tubbo around the waist, and to the boy’s shock you jumped down from the roughly 8 block high stage. He let out an involuntary high pitched yelp of shock that was abruptly cut off when you both landed on the ground unharmed. He blinked then started laughing, which made you begin to snicker. He shoved your shoulder and called you a bastard for freaking him out. You just teased him for even thinking you’d let him get hurt. He changed the subject when everyone saw Schlatt coming over, though you could tell he was happy to hear you cared. But the moment was over once Schlatt stumbled into the audience, looking more than a little out of it. He hobbled over to the bed Tommy had put down for him before he’d gone on stage and collapsed down onto it, for some reason in mismatched armor and clutching carrots. You had no idea where he got any of that stuff because he’d shown up with nothing but the suit on his back you thought.

But then Wilbur, Tommy, and Schlatt all came back from wherever they’d been while talking. And it didn’t look like they’d come to any peaceful resolution, though you’re not surprised. And you’re even further unsurprised when Quackity announced he was going to be pooling his votes with Schlatt. But that right now the debate was over and they just had to let the voting go on until the next day. So with that Wilbur ended the rally and bid everyone a pleasant rest of their day. And soon everyone had dispersed, leaving Tubbo and you waiting by the stairs that led up to the stage. Tommy walked down with Wilbur, the older of the two looking pensive. But as you all walked down the main path it seemed Wilbur was deep in thought. You watched him while Tommy and Tubbo chatted, but as the cobble path turned to wood the older brunet said he’d see them tomorrow and walked off to who knows where.

Then Tubbo gave you and Tommy a secretive glance and said to follow him, which you both did without complaint. That’s when the brown haired boy started saying he’d been ‘hoping for the best but planning for the worst’. Tommy asked what he was going on about, ‘planning for the worst’?? So Tubbo explained that he’d made a little thing for if things went bad. That’s when you noticed he was leading you both far from the main area and towards the edge of the L’manberg territory by one of the border walls. And there hidden under the water thanks to some craft sign placement was a hidden entrance into a secret tunnel. All of which led to a bunker. Tommy was in disbelief at the sight, frantically asking his best friend when the hell he’d even had time to make this! Tubbo just gave a vaguely cryptic reply of, “I don’t sleep.” Which you scolded him for. You placed a hand on his head and rocked it back and forth a little roughly and said he was a growing boy who needed sleep!

“Sleep is when your body grows! If you don’t sleep you’ll be short forever!” You huffed.

That made Tommy burst out into borderline hysterical laughter while Tubbo shouted in outrage. You laughed a little and easily blocked the hits Tubbo was weakly trying to land on you. But once they both settled down Tubbo actually showed off the supplies, like potions and such, he’d prepared for Tommy and Wilbur should anything go sour. Tommy, still shocked but appreciative, thanked his friend and said they should go tell Wilbur. They asked if you wanted to come or if you’d like to sleep for the night. You just shrugged and said you weren’t really tired. But you told them THEY needed sleep however.

They groaned but you shushed them and made them go back to their place and sleep. They said they didn’t have a bed for you but you just pulled out a book and said you’d read by the fire until it was time to read the election results. They complained that they weren’t tired but you hushed them and said you could see how they were more sluggish compared to how they’d been that morning. And after some weak whining they eventually gave in and placed their beds down, took their armor off, and crawled under the blankets. Meanwhile you sat by the furnace, book in hand and hummed to yourself softly as you read. The two boys fell asleep faster than usual, chalking it up to the busy day they had. Not thinking to link it to feeling safe as they laid in bed.

-0-

It felt like barely an hour had passed before the sun was creeping up over the horizon. You’d finished going through the enchantment book forever ago, and it sat on your lap while you stared down at the fire in the furnace. You wondered when the election results would be read out and breathed in slowly, feeling tired but not physically. With nothing else to do you got busy making some breakfast. Just something simple, eggs with toast. But it worked to wake the two boys up, the smell of the fresh food rousing them to the land of the living. They practically devoured the breakfast before slipping their armor on and saying they should go now. It was a decent time to start the day. So they led you along to Wilbur, who had been in the midst of leaving his ball house. The two boys said they had something secret to tell him, and he actually hadn’t wanted to talk ‘government topics’ with you around. You rolled your eyes behind your mask but agreed to go wait by the stage until they were done.

So you sat alone in the audience, watching people slowly arrive as you did. Ponk was the first, his signature fire colored mask and lab coat(?) revealing who he was. Then right after was HBomb, dressed almost like a pirate for some reason? Or maybe he was a referee? He was in black and white stripes with a headband so you’re unsure, could go either way. And then Punz with his stylish white hoodie and gold chain. Then you saw Niki coming down to greet Eret. He was in full netherite and nobody gave her a second glance which sorta surprised you. They’d betrayed everyone hadn’t he? You admit you don’t know much about her. But they seem to be on good terms with Niki at any rate. Regardless he stood to the side, not really sitting with anyone. So maybe things weren’t as gucci as you thought. You were distracted from thinking about it as a man in a L’manberg uniform and headset arrived. Jack Manifold you think. Walking past him was George and Dream.

You narrowed your eyes at Dream, something about him felt off? Which was weird considering you’d never met the man in person before so you’re not sure how you could tell if he was ‘off’ or not. But something about him was just… weird. Maybe it was the hood and mask obscuring his entire upper body save for some dirty blond hair poking out from said hood. Or maybe how his body moved fluidly like a person but… it also didn’t seem to be in the right proportions. His arms and legs felt a teeny bit too long while his torso seemed shorter than it should be.

‘Maybe it’s the cut of the hood and pants making it look that way..’ you thought to yourself.

Wilbur speaking suddenly caught your attention, and when you looked up at the stage you saw all the candidates standing there while Tubbo was hurrying over to the seat you’d saved for him next to you. Seemed they were starting now. The little goat hybrid gave you a nervous smile before focusing on the results. Wilbur started reading but paused to ask Tommy why he was standing with his own mic, and then said he should be standing behind him. You watched them bicker a second before Wilbur gave in and let Tommy stand with his own mic. You smiled and shook your head fondly when Tommy gave a silent cheer for himself ‘winning’ that one. Once that was done Wilbur began explaining what was going to happen. They weren’t just reading off the results, they were also going to be inaugurating the winner as president. And then explained how the new president would make a decree and how the first decree was very important.

“My fellow L’manbergians, and by that I mean Ponk, HBomb, and Tubbo. And the others in the crowd as well, including Tommy’s tall friend…” he said while gesturing to you.

Tubbo loudly cheered for Wilbur, making Tommy and Quackity laugh. You giggled a little at his antics but mostly kept silent to hear. Wilbur announced he had the election results in his hands, then held up an envelope and continued by reading off the four competing parties: POG2020, SWAG2020, COCONUT2020, and SCHLATT2020. And there had been a total of 220,000 votes. This of course confused everyone and Quackity pointed out there were barely 10 people in the audience, so how had so many votes been cast. Wilbur let out a tired sigh and elaborated, saying he’d accidentally opened the vote… to all the other servers when he’d broadcasted the election live…

Everyone started kicking up a fuss, some upset strangers from other servers were weighing in on a server they weren’t even a part of while others found this all hysterically hilarious. Wilbur settled the crowd down and explained there’d been some voter fraud as well, but he’d gotten rid of all the votes that had come from the same communicator protocol. But then he pointed out that all the fraud votes were only voting for one party.. then stared directly at Fundy and Niki. They glanced away from everyone else and Quackity said through laughter that they should be disqualified. Tommy agreed and said there was only one coder in the Coconut2020 party.. But Wilbur sighed when Fundy was silent before saying diplomatically that they should count all the votes regardless of their CP address… Everyone started laughing until Wilbur shushed them and started actually reading off the results, finally.

“In last place is Coconut2020 with 5%,” Fundy and Niki cheered for the votes they did get. Tommy gave them a slightly sarcastic congratulations while Quackity cackled. Then Wilbur continued,

“Then in second to last place with 9% is Schlatt2020…” That was actually surprising to everyone since Schlatt was a very charismatic guy on most fronts and usually never had issues with luring people to his side.

The current president turned to look at Quackity and George then glanced at Tommy and said that the two final running parties were Pog2020 and Swag2020, and coming in third place was…. Swag2020 with 22%. And Pog2020 with 31%. Tommy’s eyes went wide and he practically screamed his joy, nearly tripping backwards in his excitement. He rushed up to Wilbur and demanded to know if they’d won, and when Wilbur said they did Tommy missed the rest of the statement telling him to wait. The blond boy was too thrilled to stop and listen and without thinking he yelled down to you,

“MUM I WON THE ELECTION! WE WON!!” practically bouncing off the stage.

You gave him a grin, mentally cooing over him calling you mom and not even noticing but inside your stomach was churning as you waited for the other boot to drop.. And after Wilbur calmed Tommy he made clear that Quackity and Schlatt had made a deal to pool their votes. Meaning together they had 31% as well. Meaning it’s a tie. This caused an uproar between the parties, everyone seemingly arguing while you puzzled over it being a tie! That hadn’t happened originally… But it was Niki who quieted everyone and pointed out something rather jarring…

“All four of our votes only equal up to be 67%... there’s a chunk of votes missing!”

Everyone was silent before George barked out a ‘what the hell?!’ that made everyone start arguing again. Schlatt was insisting that Wilbur counted them wrong while Quackity demanded they be recounted. Meanwhile Wilbur adamantly said he’d counted right and they were wrong. It took Tommy snatching the slip of paper out of his hand that had the election results typed out on them to get Wilbur to stop shouting. As Tommy read the list of results he mentally counted up the percentages and frowned before saying Niki was right, that was only like 67%! But then Fundy chimed in and asked what was written on the back. Confused Tommy turned the paper over and his eyes went wide. He was in shock and spoke in a normal tone, which just got drowned out by everyone. Seeing he was being ignored he shouted,

“OI! DICKHEADS! You missed the ‘other’ section of the votes!”

That grabbed Wilbur’s attention easily, he’d forgotten all about the ‘other’ voting option. And hadn’t even known anything was written on the back of the slip of paper. He ripped it out of Tommy’s grasp and rushed to read the back, his voice getting more subdued as he spoke…

“With the most votes at 33% is…. Reader..”

---

@salinesoot @lady-bee-fechin @kacchasu @putridjoy @lunawritesstories @galaxypankitty3030 @paradigmax @zachariethememerie @killmewithafanfic @trinity-1002107 @hufflepuff-demigod @truthdaze @exorcisms-with-elmo @redbloodtea @heythereimhaylz @olyink @jackalopedoodles @nikkineeky @artsimatsu @hufflepuff-demigod @corpiet @beepa99 @anxiousnarwhale @bananaaddictmilkshake @realitycanbeajerk @lostandsouciant

#technoblade x reader #techno x reader #technoblade #dsmp #dream smp #mcyt x reader #c!tommy #c!tubbo #c!wilbur #c!fundy #c!niki #c!quackity #c!schlatt #c!george

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autisticandroids · 3 years

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Okay so this was a while back but im preety sure you had mentioned an au of yours where dean is a serial killer and cas successfully stalks him but i don't think you talked about it more than that and i just really want to hear a bit more bc that idea sounds so tastefully fucked up

okay so. weeks later i finally end up answering this ask. it inspired this post btw. anyway spn is a show that's like. all about justifications, as i said in the post inspired by this ask. it's about having no choice and doing what you have to do. and like there is the phantasy embedded in it, a phantasy that is both indulged and punished. but most importantly it's justified. the monsters are super strong to show how brave our heroes are for fighting them, the main characters let out great wails of grief every time their lady loves are violently ripped from them (even though now they are free to do whatever they want), the narrative twists to show our heroes as correct whatever they do. the fantasy (of being allowed to enact violence, of being free from feminine "control," of being right) comes first. the material construction of the universe of supernatural comes afterward. whatever the fantasy is, the universe of supernatural will provide material conditions to justify its acting-out.

and what this means is that our protagonists, dean in particular, are constantly doing just horrific things, which in any other circumstance would be unconscionable. but the universe of supernatural provides justification for these acts. the point of my serial killer au which i think about so so so much is to ask the question: what if these justifications melted out from under their feet? what if dean was left holding nothing but a lie and the weight of everything he's done?

therefore, the premise of my au is such (under the cut because this baby is long):

john and mary winchester, in the mid seventies, joined a doomsday cult known as the men of letters. the men of letters were rather unusual for a doomsday cult, in that they believed that the apocalypse could be prevented by human behavior. this started as correct living, correct worship, yadda yadda, the kind of behavior and thought control that cults are known for, but with the justification of: if you don't do this, the world will end. eventually, this escalated to human sacrifice. the men of letters managed to untraceably kill two homeless people in the late seventies. but they eventually fell apart. however, a month after john and mary left the men of letters (mostly john's choice, mary still believed), mary died in a house fire. john took it as a sign from god that actually, the men of letters were right, and the world would end unless john himself did something about it. so he took some of the (intensely numerological) theology of the men of letters. and he worked out his own formula. and he applied it to the yellow pages. and started ritualistically killed people to prevent the apocalypse, with his two sons in the back of the car.

now, obviously, this is some kind of grief induced temporary madness on john's part, shaped by the mental abuse he suffered in the men of letters. but the thing is, once you've killed a couple of people to prevent the apocalypse. well. there's this thing called the sunk costs fallacy. john wasn't gonna question his own beliefs after that.

and he raised his boys to believe it, too, or at least he raised dean to. they didn't tell sam what they did until he was twelve, and sam didn't buy it, tried to call the cops on them several times but in the end, they always prevented him. eventually sam ran off to stanford, where he now lives under a cloud of guilt that he's too loyal to his family to rat them out.

john died a few years back of a heart attack, but dean is convinced it's because he messed up a ritual two weeks before it happened, so it pushed him further into this belief system.

dean's killings (and john's before him) are ritualistic and distinctive, obviously the same killer each time. but they happen anywhere in the united states, seemingly at random, there are inconsistent amounts of time between each one (sometimes as short as days, sometimes as long as years), and there is no particular victim profile. obviously, since our killers are following an arcane mathematical formula to make their choices for them, but the police don't know that.

castiel novak is an unemployed shut-in with a small inheritance which he's living off of, a cryptography degree, and an obsession with all things morbid. he spends most of his time on the reddit true crime forums, playing amateur sleuth. by complete chance, he happens to recognize one of the symbols frequently used in corpse displays by the so-called sioux falls satanic slaughterer (so named because the first time three of his victims were in the same part of the country, it so happened that they were all in sioux falls, south dakota. this was in the late eighties.) as being mostly only used by a little known cult group called the men of letters, which dissolved in the mid eighties.

he only notices this because, as a teen, he had a special interest in cults and fringe religious groups. the men of letters weren't a particularly notable or well known phenomenon; they were small, and a lot like every other cult that formed during the seventies cult boom. (no outsider ever heard about the human sacrifice; there were rumors, of course, but they were garbled, sensationalized, and mixed up with satanic panic fodder.)

(the men of letters' two sacrifices were nothing particularly romantic or fantastical. they first lured panhandler josie sands back to their compound with promises of food and a warm bed when she admitted she couldn't get a bed at a shelter, and was thinking of getting caught shoplifting just so she could be under a roof in the county jail. the men of letters' leader, a man who took on the name alistair, forced his inner circle to dress in the ceremonial black robes he had given them when he initiated them into his nearest and dearest, and which his wife had sewn out of old bed sheets and dyed black with home made oak gall dye. these robes still left black smudges on the wearer's skin occasionally if they sweated too much. josie was laid, bound, on the altar, a slapdash thing constructed over the course of two days from scrap plywood and a couple of milk crates. a rich red tablecloth purchased at macy's for $3.99 hid its ugliness and gave it grandeur. alistair attempted to kill the struggling miss sands by bringing a sharpened kitchen knife down on her bosom and piercing her heart, but, having never killed a human or even slaughtered an animal before, was unaware of the problem presented by the human ribcage. after rather ineffectually poking at the area beneath sands' bosom with his knife while she shrieked in pain and terror for about ninety seconds, alistair tried a different tack, and slit her throat, which worked just fine, and she bled out quite nicely. the second and final victim of the men of letters was a local vagrant named larry ganem, an older gentleman who walked with a limp. he was lured back to the compound in approximately the same manner as sands, but instead of being bound, he was fed stew laced with sleeping pills. even if alistair hadn't slit his throat, he wouldn't have woken up. it's actually arguable whether he was still alive at time of sacrifice; mary winchester (eight months into her first pregnancy), who, as a member of the inner circle, was in attendance, actually tried to take ganem's pulse as he lay on the altar (now covered by a different tablecloth; the red one had turned stiff with sands' blood and been subsequently burned) and found nothing, so it is entirely possibly only sands' death can be directly laid at alistair's feet, and ganem's is the fault of mrs. ellen harvelle, who prepared the laced stew. regardless, these two deaths are lessons in the nature of human evil: it is very rarely skilled, suave, or smooth. it's often slapdash, half-hearted, and just plain incompetent. but that makes it no less grisly. alistair may have begun to drink his own kool-aid, as it were, and escalated this far out of genuine belief that the apocalypse was coming and it was up to him to stop it, but it is far more likely that he sensed the imminent collapse of his little empire, and wanted to bind his subjects to him through the horrors of shared guilt, considering two lives a small price to pay for the continued loyalty of his inner circle. and the tactic worked: the men of letters didn't start to collapse in earnest until almost four years later. perhaps if alistair had continued the killings, the men of letters could have lasted for far longer, maybe even up until the present day. but it seems that alistair, a psychiatrist by training and unused to violence, simply didn't have the stomach for it. unlike, say, john winchester, who before his time with the men of letters had done a two year tour in vietnam, during which he had killed three living, thinking human beings with the american government's go-ahead.)

anyway. castiel is the first person, ever, to make the connection between the men of letters and the sioux falls satanic slaughterer. and once that connection is made, castiel begins to research the men of letters far more in-depth. and he notices something: the theology of the men of letters was intensely numerological, filled with patterns, significant numbers, and even spiritual equations.

castiel thinks of the seemingly random selection of the slaughterer's victims, and has an epiphany.

he cracks all his fingers, and gets coding.

six months. it takes castiel six months to discover an equation that could fit the slaughterer's pattern. it's complex, but also clearly based on several of the men of letters' holy numbers, and accounts for every single one of the killings. it also suggests that there should have been two or three more deaths scattered across the years, but more than likely those did happen, it's just that they weren't reported as part of the slaughterer's portfolio.

but much more importantly, castiel's model can also make predictions. there will be two killings, fifteen days apart, in a city seven hours' drive away, six weeks from now.

so castiel waits. and he books a hotel room. and two months later, he's waiting outside 217 oak street when a shadowy figure climbs up a tree and lets itself into the upstairs window.

dean winchester is feeling particularly all alone in the world when he breaks into maisey banks' home (217 oak street). his father has been dead for half a decade, and he hasn't spoken to his baby brother for twice that. it's not like this whole grizzly saving the world business makes him a lot of friends. so once he's done killing maisey (which is easy, she was ninety three and dying of cancer anyway. she doesn't even wake up when he slits her throat) and arranging her corpse in the appropriate manner, with prayers and sigils, he turns around. and sees a man standing behind him.

smiling slightly.

as he watches dean gut this old woman.

dean freezes.

the man takes a step forward.

"you're very attractive for a serial killer who's been operating since the eighties."

dean is silent.

"family business, is it?"

silence continues.

"i'm not here to report you to police. i'm just here to see if my algorithm worked right."

and dean finally breaks his silence: "what the hell is wrong with you?"

what's fun here is that dean knows (or rather "knows") that he isn't a serial killer. so he finds what cas is doing, this amoral serial killer stormchasing, morally repugnant. because cas has no way of knowing he isn't a regular serial killer.

there's also the fact that that cas proceeds to flirt with him. aggressively. and follows him back to his motel.

but the thing is that dean is all alone in the world. and as cas continues trailing him around, he starts getting, well, flattered. and feeling a little bit less alone.

it doesn't take very long before they fall into bed. even if cas is an amoral stalker with a fetish for what dean considers a distasteful yet necessary vocation.

so. they fall into bed. they fall in love. they make a little life together, in dean's big sexy car. dean tries to explain to cas that he's saving the world. that these people's lives are a necessary price to pay. and cas seems to listen.

of course, castiel doesn't believe a word of it. but he's found that he likes dean. really likes him. and he realizes that the collapse of dean's belief system would destroy him.

so he sets about becoming as complicit in it as possible.

even to the extent where, when dean is hit by a car and ends up into the hospital a day before one killing is meant to take place, castiel agrees to take on the job. (he doesn't actually kill anyone, obviously. but he does use his extensive skill with computers to create three fake newspaper articles which make it look like he has.)

but five years later, something goes wrong. really, really wrong. dean miscalculates the formula. and by the time he checks his work, the actual date of the next kill, as demanded by the formula, has passed. in fact, so have three others. and the world didn't end.

dean collapses. he hyperventilates. all those people. all those people. for no reason. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people.

cas seems totally unfazed. dean stares at him in shock. but cas just takes dean in his arms, and whispers in his ear: "oh, dean, i never believed in the equation. i love you no matter what you've done."

and dean buries his face in cas' chest.

#spn #asks #anonymous #abuse tw #violence tw

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goddess-pan · 3 years

Text

Ore Hybrid!Reader x Dream SMP

Dsmp x reader prompt; Ore hybrid!Reader in the Dream SMP. Credit would be appreciated so more people can find this and make their own things based on it.

Requested from my idea list by @smolbox-png, if you would like to request something, you are still able to.

Mostly fluff and crack type prompt, but could be used for angst at some parts.

TW! Manipulation for one bit, and what could be a non-descriptive panic attack in another with it marked in bold (both the start and the end) for people to skip and remains as coherent piece with either or both removed/skipped. Also slight talk of blood, but non-descriptively in few places.

---------------

Let's start of with the reader being an ore hybrid in general and then later move on to the specifics of the ore types if there are any unique features related to that ore specifically.

The reader's skin has a greyish tint to it and is covered in veins of the ore they are a hybrid of. The veins as well as their nails are made of their ore type. In some cases were they are more ore than human their bones are also made of the ore and their blood is a molten version of that ore. Most are at least slightly fire resistant, but not necessarily resistant to lava.

If the reader's ore can be made into armour they naturally have half of the protection wearing that armour type would provide. If their ore type doesn't have an armour set they only have slightly stronger skin, but still harder than a regular humans.

The reader would feel most at home either under or in the ground around the y-level the ore of their hybrid spawns at, and in the right dimension. So they would most likely have an underground base, whether that base is actually in a cave, a mine, an abandoned mineshaft, inside a mountain or a hill depends on preference and what’s available.

I think among the other people on the server who would have natural affinity to them depending on their ore type;

For Phil it would instinctually be any ore hybrid whose ore is shiny, in this case; Iron, gold, diamond and emerald. Plus redstone, but only if it's activated, and netherite, but only if the gold parts of them are visible.

For Techno it would instinctually be gold and netherite.

For Foolish it would be instinctually be gold and emerald.

For Fundy it would be instinctually be emerald, but only by a slight margin.

Some ore specific things that some of the different version can do;

Netherite hybrid wouldn't have the grey tint to their skin due to not only being a refined ore (an alloy, more specifically) but also due to not being based from an overworld ore. If one looked closely they could see tiny specs and streaks of gold in the veins. They are also the only one immune/resistant to lava and fire.

Gold hybrid passively pacifies piglins similarly to wearing gold armour. The only ore hybrid whose skin could be tinted grey or red, depending on whether they are overworld or nether based. Their favourite biome would be either the badlands (the mesa) if overworld based and the nether in general if nether based.

Iron hybrid would be able to use themselves to set things on fire if they have a piece of flint. They would also feel a weird kinship towards iron golems.

Redstone hybrid would emit a light if they get hit or tapped due to getting activated that way.The light lasting for about a minute before stopping. The redstone in them gets activated by active redstone like redstone torches and blocks of redstone.

Lapis lazuli hybrid would need one less piece of lapis lazuli to enchant since they can just use their nails to write or coat the enchantments on whatever they are enchanting. Their blood dyes anything it touches very easily and it's almost impossible to wash off.

Coal hybrid would have strange affinity to wither skeletons that they don't quite understand. They can light their fingers on fire and use them as an impromptu torch. Probably the only one who could make their base on the surface overworld and still be comfortable.

Emerald hybrid tends to get a lot of discounts from any villagers they trade with. Their favourite biome or most specifically the one they are most comfortable in would be the mountains/extreme hills.

Now on to some small scenarios of them interacting with others on the server or the other way around;

Tubbo definitely wanted to perform some experiments with them to test their powers/abilities similar to the way he did to Ranboo when they found about his silk touch hands.

TW! Panic Attack Ranboo having a mental breakdown, because he wanted to make the reader some gifts with their specific ore type (for ex. having a piece of it as the center piece of jewelry he made) but now that he thinks about it he isn’t sure of whether they would be delighted or horrified that he technically used their kin to make things that he would gift them. Aaand now he’s facing the moral dilemma of whether this is ethical or not. Techno ends up finding him spiraling and goes to try and calm him down, but then Ranboo ends up telling him about it. Techno starts to think about the times he’s not only gifted them things, but also about the times he ended up using the ore without even thinking with them in the same room as him. And now they are both spiraling. When Phil finally finds them both, he had to call the reader on the comms to ask them about it so that they would have definitive answer and calm down. TW! End

Several people have made the joke “Could this be considered blood money?” when the reader has bought something using their ore type (since it technically could be).

Ranboo has on few occasions while sleepwalking picked the reader up and moved them to another place. Should the reader try to move away while he’s still around he would end up getting agitated, but still move them back. So in short; they have to wait for Ranboo to either leave the area or wake up. This would end up happening to the emerald hybrid most often due to their veins’ colour reminding him of grass blocks.

All of the people on the list of people who had an affinity for a certain ore type; Phil, Techno, Foolish and Fundy, have on multiple occasions walked straight into something or tripped due to them staring at the reader. Primal brain go brrr when they see them, especially if it’s unexpected, and then they forget to watch where they are going. Phil is the prime offender and he gets so very easily distracted by a person sized shiny thing before crashing straight into something. Foolish’s brain goes “Shiny! Kin?” and ends up staring longer than he thought, it ending up with him walking straight into a tree with him laughing it off. Fundy’s thoughts go more on the lines of “Ooh, want! Take? Steal? Wait, no, no, no! They’re a person, bad brain, bad brain.” and while he is scolding his thoughts he ends up walking straight into a wall. And Technoblade, well uhhh, here’s the funny thing... if the reader is a gold hybrid he might just stare at them at first, but after few seconds if he didn’t end up walking into something or tripping, he’s barreling straight towards them. If the reader’s holding onto someone or the other way around they just get a bunch of jealous snorts coming the other person’s way. However if no one is in contact with the reader or they are alone he is going to pick them up and carry them until he either; snaps out of it or he has stored them safely in his home.

TW! Manipulation. Both Technoblade and Dream were very interested on if one could use the reader’s blood with molds to make resources out of them. This would be possible if the reader’s blood was the molten variety of their ore, but if the reader was a very human ore hybrid it would be less so. While both of them are interested in the prospects of it they have very different ways of going about it. Techno would ask the reader about it and if they were okay with trying it. If they said no to it he would sulk for a bit, but then accept it, only theorizing about it without experiments. While Dream would go down one of three routes; Route one being budding up to the reader and guilt tripping them if they said no when he asked, Route two being acquiring a favor from the reader and cashing it in to try it, and Route three being kidnapping them and doing it anyway (whether it would be him that did the kidnapping or someone he convinced to do it for him is up for debate). TW! Ends.

Once Quackity has gotten Las Nevadas set up enough he might hire them as “eye-candy” for the casinos. The reasons for that being; that he would have noticed that they get stared at by some of the other people on the server if they were any of the hybrids that a person had an affinity over, their hybridization being eye catching in general and of course the obvious connection people’s mind makes from seeing ore; wealth. The position reader would have as their actual job title would depend on what he think they would most likely accept whether that be; a dealer, the entertainment, a bartender, a server or a security guard. After all not that many people like to be hired for their looks.

#mcyt x reader #dream smp x reader #dsmp x reader #mcyt fanfiction #dream smp fanfiction #dsmp fanfic #Pans Writing Prompts #tw blood #tw panic attack #tw manipulation

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guro-giri-letters · 3 years

Note

imagine... the dabi hair dye scenario but one of the league finds/sees him and decides to help? my heart

(SO, I totally meant this to be shorter but I got a little in my feels. Plus the lowkey Dabi and Mr Compress friendship is so underrated, I adore it. Anyway, here it is, a little comfort fic.)

The Boy Can't Cry - By Guro. ♡

/Dabi gets overwhelmed dying his hair to cover up his past and Mr Compress comes to his aid. Any fics like this where it’s just the league interacting together I’m going to lovingly tag ‘League of Family’. Hope you enjoy! ♡/

/Tags l Tw ; Dabi being emotionally unstable, some cursing, Mr Compress being fatherly, friendship, league of family. ♡/

“How can a man head a group of villains…” Sako murmurs aloud to himself, pulling another card from the messy pile upon the small table between his knees. Sighing, he flicks it into one of several other smaller piles he’s made around the main one, tsk-ing to himself quietly. “...but he can’t keep a pack of cards together. Really.”

Pure boredom, and an inability to get himself over to sleep, is what inspired one Mr Compress to take up and look through Shigaraki’s deck. It’s late in the night now, maybe early morning, and he’s sorting each of the cards into their respective groups by lamplight. It’s a comfortable, mindless task, the showman dressed down to his shirtsleeves and balaclava. In the rare quiet he lets his mind wander, and wonders where Shigaraki had gotten the cards from.

Had he stolen them? Or were they given to him? Gifts from his master, maybe. Either way dearly cherished, he decides, running his thumb over the faded face of an ace of hearts. He’s pondering still when the quick tip-tap of feet on metal steps reaches his ears.

“Mr Compress!”

Blinking, he lays down his hand and turns to find Toga halfway down the rickety staircase, hand cupped around her mouth dramatically as she whisper-yells. Her eyes are big and wide in the dim light, uncharacteristically appearing almost… frightened? What? Right away Sako is on edge, cards forgotten. “What is it dear?” He asks, lowering his own voice in response to her whispers. His worry only grows as Toga’s lips seem to tremble, looking over her shoulder before back to her elder.

“It’s Dabi…” She replies quietly, hugging her arms around her nightdress-clad self. “Somethings wrong with Dabi.”

Sako isn’t sure what he’s seeing at first as he nudges in the bathroom door. Toga is at his back, gripping his sleeve and peering around his side as the door falls slowly open. The old tiled room is lit by dim, yellowed light, and he can just make out Dabi’s shape hunched over the tub at the far end. “He keeps talking to himself-” She murmurs, only to jump at the sound of an open growl, Dabi’s form twisting to glare over his shoulder in their direction from the shadows.

“Get out, Toga.” The burnt man snarls, sending the girl flying away without hesitation. Sako watches her go, a little shocked at her fear in the face of her own comrade. Dabi doesn’t even seem to be looking right at the doorway, stark blue eyes wide and lost. Vacant. Thick, inky black lines run down his face and throat, dripping off of his chin. What the hell is he doing?

“What’s going on, man?” Sako demands, crossing the threshold and approaching Dabi where he kneels. “What’s gotten into you? You’re scaring Toga.”

“Fuck you.” Dabi snaps back, fingers digging into his hair. The same black sits in smudges over the back of his neck, staining his pale fingers. In the dark it almost seems like the villain has been infected, taken over by some dark, miasmic mess. Squinting up, Sako reaches and with a gloved hand, twists the hanging bulb around in it’s socket. Suddenly the room is filled with brighter light, everything coming into focus, and he looks down at Dabi.

His eyes widen a fraction.

Dabi’s coat lies discarded on the dingy floor at his side, the villain kneeling, almost unnaturally bent over the shallow bathtub. His body is shaking, chest expanding and falling rapidly as he scrapes at his own scalp. His hands are trembling, veins visibly risen up on their backs. It seems like he’s working the blackness into his hair almost desperately, hushed words falling barely audible from his lips. “-away. Get away.”

“Dabi?” Sako tries again. And this time he gets a reaction; Dabi’s head twisting to glare in a manner almost animalistic. The black has run in streams down his face and into his eyes, scleras bloodshot deep red and burning. He can’t even see right now, Sako realises, without the ability to produce tears to get rid of the chemicals. Being so close for the first time, he takes note of the sparse, white hairs appearing in his league-mates' thin brows. Oh.

“Get out, Compress. Get out-”

“Do you need help?” He ignores Dabi’s demands easily. The young man isn’t himself right now, and his voice is hoarse, even more gravelly than usual. In response to his question Dabi’s hands clench in his hair, tight, tendons bulging as his knuckles turn white. Sako can hear the strands tearing and grabs for Dabi’s quivering hands. “Good God, man. Stop it!”

“Get off of me!” Dabi practically howls, twisting out of the older man’s grip and slipping, slumping shoulder-first against the side of the tub. He seems to deflate all at once, his head hanging low. Sako can only stare at him, his heart pounding with adrenaline and hands still outstretched, Dabi’s breath comes quick and loud, his own hands coming up to cover his face. He’s an utter mess, what Sako has now deduced to be black dye staining his hands, shirt. Everything. A stretch of silence passes between them, and then Dabi makes the last noise his companion expected to hear.

For a moment he thinks Dabi is laughing, finding some kind of twisted amusement in all of this. But then it starts coming louder, his shoulders shaking, chest and throat convulsing uncontrollably. A dry, hacking cough leaves his throat before he presses his palms harder against his face, knees pulling in close to his body. A noise like barely concealed sobbing reaches Sako’s ears.

He’s crying.

Well… no, the boy can’t cry. He knows this; Dabi’s tear ducts have been damaged beyond repair for years now. But his body still betrays him, shuddering through bouts of broken weeping, dredged up from somewhere deep inside of him. It feels almost wrong, Sako thinks, to see him so vulnerable. It’s clear he’s witnessing something deeply personal. A moment of distress so jarring that Dabi holds fast onto his own arms and curls in on himself, almost like he’s trying to comfort himself.

Almost like he’s done this a hundred times before.

The feeling of Sako’s arm wrapping around his shoulders makes Dabi jerk, looking up with bleary eyes as he stoops down to his level. “What are you doing?” He snaps weakly, but there’s no real conviction in it. His nose is running, his voice broken up. Whatever kind of mental breakdown Dabi is currently having, the older man simply can’t bring himself to leave him. Doesn’t want to leave him to fall apart on his own.

“Quiet.” He admonishes, crouching before Dabi and pulling him closer bodily, so that his head comes to rest on Sako’s shoulder. Still breathing raggedly, Dabi stares at a space somewhere on the wall beyond Sako’s shoulder for a while before his eyes close, a worn out sigh leaving his lungs in pieces. No attempt is made to shove him away this time. He gives in.

At one point in his life, another entertainer had told Sako that when a child hugged them, they should never be the first to let go. ‘Because you never know how badly they might need it’, they had said. Keeping his arms around Dabi and remembering that message, he tightens his grip a touch, resigning himself to remaining in a crouch and getting sore knees. Not that Dabi is willing to be held for very long. He pulls away with a sniff, hand on Sako’s shoulder to keep himself steady. “Fuck- my eyes.”

He’s not wrong. His eyelids are irritated and swollen, both his regular skin and the grafts beneath. Sighing, Sako loosens his grip and lets Dabi lean back, against the side of the tub. “Put your head over.” He advises, straightening to his feet and pulling off his ruined gloves.

“Why?” Dabi rasps.

“To wash the chemicals out of your eyes, Dabi.”

Dabi considers this with a glance at the dirty tiles then nods his head once. He looks, to put it in a word, drained, straightening himself up and turning to rest his elbows on the tub's edge. Sako watches him as he finishes rolling up his sleeves, shaking his head slightly.

“Where on earth do you young people find the energy to get so worked up?” He chides, not cruelly, turning the faucet and cupping his hand beneath the sluggish flow of water. With his free hand he brings Dabi’s head over the lip of the tub with a nudge, and brings his cupped hand to the fire-user's face. Dabi hisses but doesn’t recoil as Sako rinses the remnants of dye from his face and eyes, pausing only to say; “I’ll do your hair.” and washing the remainder from his unruly mane. His skin will stain for a while, but it’ll wash away in time. He’ll be alright.

To his credit, Dabi has stopped shuddering and seems to be slowly coming down. Slumped against the lip of the tub he lets out a long, slow breath, sniffing and wiping his nose on his forearm. “I feel like I’m gonna throw up.”

“Hold it, I’m almost done.”

With the sting in his eyes finally dulling, Dabi cracks them open halfway to watch the blue-black water flow down the drain. His throat feels suddenly raw, aching. His face hurts.

“Compress.” It hurts to talk. Jesus.

Sako shuts the water off when Dabi’s hair is running mostly clear, a brow arching beneath his balaclava. “Yes?”

“...don’t- Don’t go telling them.” He manages, fingers twitching where he holds the edge of the tub. “I don’t-”

“I understand.” Offering the cleanest looking towel in the room, Sako gives Dabi a faint smile, nodding when he pulls it from his grip. “It’s not for us to know… Are you alright?”

Dabi rises slowly, using the ledge to pull himself up before rubbing at his freshly dyed hair. There’s a moment of hesitation, then; “Yeah… thanks, Compress.”

Sako smiles fully now, spreading his arms and giving a short bow. “I do what I can.”

Dabi snorts, pulls the towel down around his shoulders. “I owe you, I guess.”

“Well… how do you fancy aiding my endeavours to organize Shigaraki’s card collection?”

“No thanks.”

“Understandable.”

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alittlebitmaybe · 3 years

Text

tying you to me

For @sugar-and-spice-witcher-bingo

Prompt: crafting

Pairing: Geraskier, implied Geralt/Yen in one line

Rating: T for language

Warnings: None

Summary:

As they lay in bed, Jaskier snuggled and breathing humid against his chest hair, Geralt remembers the pattern from Novigrad. A sweater with stretchy ribbing around the wrists and bottom hemline, a high collar. Intricate cabling criss-crossing up the front, making the fabric thick and sturdy. The scroll is stuffed into one of his saddlebags where he’d put it after purchase when he’d cursed himself for wasting the coin.

Jaskier snuffles closer, his grip tightening around Geralt’s waist as he soaks the added warmth through his skin, and Geralt has an idea.

Or: Geralt doesn't know about the boyfriend sweater curse.

Read more on AO3 or below the cut!

Geralt learned to knit out of necessity. Winters in Kaedwen, especially up in the mountains, are bitter cold, and require not only animal skins but woolen socks, hats, scarves, blankets. They keep a flock of sheep for the very purpose. And before—when there were others, even occasionally a proper staff—it would be part of the normal workings of the castle to have several sets of hands dedicated to knitting up useful garments to keep them from freezing their balls off when the frost came.

There are fewer hands now, but also fewer balls in danger of freezing. Geralt and Vesemir handle the bulk of it, these days—Eskel with fingers too big and clumsy to be much help, Lambert too fidgety and quick to rip out all his progress into a tangled mess of wool in a fit of frustration. In the evenings they sit by the great hall fire in mostly silence and take turns spinning the roving into yarn, winding skeins, chipping away at the endless miles of plain stocking stitch, and seaming panels together. (Sometimes Geralt will embellish the design with cables, or a moss stitch—unconventional patterns he’s started to see in the larger cities, sold by the fancier merchants. He may have paid a few crowns for the scroll describing the pattern for one particular sweater he saw in a shop in Novigrad. He has not mentioned this to Vesemir.)

It may be necessity, but Geralt would choose it even if it wasn’t. These are the things his hands are good for: wielding a sword; harvesting various glands and organs; curling into fists; crushing windpipes; skinning rabbits. Bandaging Ciri’s scrapes. Bringing Yen’s pleasure. Curling around the back of Jaskier’s neck, drawing their lips together. And, when it’s over, when there’s nothing to kill and no one to care for, he can create. He can put it all to the side and count off to himself, knit-purl, knit-purl, knit-purl, knit, knit, knit, around and around, back and forth, and this thing will grow from the rhythm of his fingers, from the steady loop and pull that he’s done thousands of times, taught by some witcher instructor decades ago whose name he no longer recalls. He had bushy eyebrows that waggled as he worked. That’s all the memory that’s left of him.

Anyway, it’s easy to allow the hours to pass until Vesemir excuses himself to bed and the fire burns down and takes the light with it. One such night, just as Geralt is squinting at his work to finish this one last row, the hall door creaks open.

“Geralt,” Jaskier says sleepily, “are you still in here? ‘S late, love.”

Knit, knit, knit. “Mm,” says Geralt. “I’m here. Just finishing up.”

“I’ll wait for you, then.” Jaskier pads in his sockfeet across the stone to the armchair Geralt occupies. He sits himself on the rug with his back against Geralt’s legs, knees pulled up to his chest. “Brr. ‘S chilly, too.”

Geralt drops the needle in his right hand, maintaining tension on the working yarn with his left. He runs his free hand through Jaskier’s bed-mussed hair, brushes against his cold ear, down to the soft skin behind it. “Not wearing a coat.”

“Well I wasn’t heading outside, seemed like a—” He yawns, jaw cracking. “—a lot of trouble just to come downstairs. But I now see my mistake.”

“Always have to wear a coat at night,” Geralt says. “Or be under blankets. Or both.”

“Or acquire a personal witcher furnace, unless he’s down here ‘til gods know what hour making yet more mittens for the princess.”

Geralt looks down at the large rectangle he’s been working on. “Lap blanket,” he says. For Ciri, when she’s studying in the library. It gets drafty in there even with the fire blazing.

“For the library?” says Jaskier, tipping his head back to see Geralt. “Good thinking. She’ll love it.”

Geralt releases him and goes back to his work, but knits at most ten stitches before Jaskier shivers again, his teeth chattering before he gets himself under control. Setting the blanket aside, middle of the row be damned, he concedes, “Let’s go back to bed.”

“No, you’re—you’re not done with—” Jaskier cannot finish his sentence for the yawn that overtakes him. “M’kay. Let’s go.”

Jaskier snuffles closer, his grip tightening around Geralt’s waist as he soaks the added warmth through his skin, and Geralt has an idea.

The next evening, after dinner has been consumed and cleaned up, Vesemir and Geralt move to the fire as usual. Vesemir is working up a new hat for Lambert, who has the shortest hair among them and has one practically pasted to his head all winter long.

Geralt spares a glance to his blanket-in-progress, and then veers toward the wooden chest that stores their yarn stash. He puts aside plain ball after plain ball, until finally he admits defeat and turns to Vesemir and asks, “Do we have any dye?”

“No,” says Vesemir, not looking up. He knits with the yarn looped around the back of his neck to keep the tension, instead of around his fingers. He says it’s easier on his old joints. Geralt thinks it looks preposterous, but it gets the job done. “Not a drop. And that’s never bothered you before.”

“I’m thinking of making a gift,” says Geralt. “I think they’d prefer it to be dyed.”

“Ah, the bard. Yes. I suppose he would.”

“I want him to actually wear it.”

“Indeed.”

“He says coats are too bulky and ponderous, and they dampen his spirits.”

“Foolish boy. He’ll learn.”

“So we have no dye? Of any color?”

“None,” says Vesemir. “Though it may be that there are some old skeins in the back of the cupboard by the linens. I recall that some of our forebears had rather expensive taste, for witchers. Quite wasteful of them. If you ask me.”

Geralt murmurs his thanks, pulls on a cloak, and makes his way through the frozen corridors to the cabinet in the laundry. Along the way he passes the study, and overhears Eskel dominating Jaskier in another round of Gwent.

“Eskel, you dirty cheating bastard, there is no way you just had that card.”

“Where d’you think I kept it, bard?”

“Up your sleeve, behind your ear, under the table, I dunno—”

“Down your pants,” Lambert chimes in, and Geralt hears Ciri giggle. She’s been spending too much time with the witchers now that Yen has departed for the season. Geralt should probably intervene more often.

“—maybe you magicked me with a sign thingy so I wouldn’t notice, but I’m sure you didn’t have it in hand a turn ago, I’ll swear that on—”

“Yes, Lambert, I’ve got Gwent cards lining my codpiece, naturally, even a few stuffed between my—”

Geralt rounds the corner and their voices fade away.

As Vesemir said, there is a small box pushed all the way to the back of the cupboard in amongst the linens. He opens it without much hope, but is surprised to find it full to the brim with yarn of deep reds and blues, all of some soft texture very unlike the itchy wool they’re accustomed to. Sniffing it, he decides it is from some type of goat. He also decides, based on its lack of musty odor, that it is not nearly old enough to have belonged to one of their forebears.

Well, in exchange for the use of the yarn, he’ll allow Vesemir his secret.

He carries the whole lot back to the great hall.

“You found it,” Vesemir remarks, now nearly done with the hat.

“Right where you said,” says Geralt. “You don’t mind if I use it?”

“As much as you like,” he replies disinterestedly, “if you’ll leave me the fuck alone while you do.”

Fair enough.

Geralt selects the red—a deep burgundy that will pair with the blush on Jaskier’s cheeks after a few glasses of wine. He pulls the scroll from his trouser pocket, and begins casting on as the pattern instructs.

When he hears Jaskier’s tread in the hall, he hastily pulls the half-finished lap blanket over his new project.

“Bedtime, Witcher,” says Jaskier, peering over his shoulder. “Didn’t make much progress on that tonight, did you?”

“It’s a big blanket,” Geralt grunts. “Eskel’s been practicing sleight of hand since we were boys. Don’t play him for money.”

“I bloody knew it,” Jaskier exclaims. He wheels around and stomps back out of the hall, suitably distracted. “Eskel! You’ll never believe what Geralt’s just told me!”

The sweater is slow going, since he does have to put real work into the blanket every once in a while to keep Jaskier’s suspicions to heel.

Over the next few weeks, it becomes near an open secret in the keep what Geralt is up to. Lambert catches him cursing late one evening as he is ripping back several rows to fix a cable he’d mistakenly crossed the wrong way.

“Whazzat,” Lambert says, crunching on a mouthful of tree nuts.

“Fuck off,” Geralt says. He squints and carefully tries to secure a dropped loop back on the needle. If it ladders down, he’s done for—there’ll be no fixing it while maintaining the pattern. He’s not nearly good enough for that.

“Looks like you’re fucking it up,” Lambert chews.

“I am. That’s why I told you to fuck off.”

“Thought that’s just how you decided to greet me now. That’s what Vesemir does.” He shoves another fistful of nuts into his mouth, though Geralt isn’t sure he’s swallowed the first.

“It’s not a bad idea.”

He manages to pick up that last loop before disaster strikes, and moves the stitches around on the needles to make sure they all look right. Then he shoves the left-hand stitches all the way up to the tip so he can continue.

Lambert leans down to examine the fabric, then runs his finger down the pattern with his eyebrow raised. “This is some fancy shit, Geralt, you giant poof.”

“It’s not for me,” he says.

Lambert swallows, belches, and says, “My point exactly. ‘S for Jaskier, innit.”

Geralt doesn’t bother answering as he approaches the cable he’d made a mess of the first time around. Lambert claps him on the shoulder with the hand he’s been using as a nut-to-mouth delivery tool, which leaves salt behind on his tunic.

“That’s okay. Your secret’s safe with me.”

“Thanks,” says Geralt wryly.

“Anyway, I’m outta here. This boring bullshit still gives me hives.”

He exits the hall and the door shuts heavily behind him. Geralt finishes recrossing the cable and, turning to check his pattern, finds it covered in greasy fingerprints.

Eskel, on the other hand, sits himself in Vesemir’s usual seat one night and sets to quietly whittling a whistle. After several hours, Geralt holds up the near completed front panel of his sweater and says, “Do you think Jaskier will like this?”

Eskel doesn’t even look at it. “Geralt, you could spit on a log and hand it to him and Jaskier would love it.” His knife stills. “Maybe don’t do that, though.”

To their credit, none of the other witchers say a word—possibly for lack of caring—and Geralt is able to rely on them to keep Jaskier occupied most nights while he finishes the front and back panels and seams them up.

Before he begins work on the sleeves, the pattern warns, the wearer should try on the body to ensure proper fit.

“Well, shit,” he says aloud. He can’t ask Jaskier to try it on and ruin the surprise. He holds it up against himself, trying to judge if they are similar enough size to judge whether it will fit Jaskier. Geralt, certainly, is wider in the chest and shoulders, but as long as he can get it on without stretching it too much he should be able to check the length. And, if it fits Geralt or is loose, it will certainly be too large on Jaskier.

It will have to do.

The next morning he rises early and takes the sack in which he’s been storing his project to Ciri’s bedroom. He knocks softly.

“Ciri?” he calls, mouth close to the door. “Can I use your mirror for a moment?”

“Mnnngh,” he hears. He takes this as an invitation.

The only visible part of her, when he lets himself in, is a tangle of hair escaping from under the pile of furs on the bed. He sets his sack delicately in front of the only full-length mirror in the keep and says, “Morning, Princess.”

“F’ off,” the fur pile groans. “No it’s not.”

“You really have been spending too much time with Lambert,” Geralt comments mildly as he pulls the unfinished sweater out and checks it for damage in transport, though he knows it was safe in the bag and only traveled up some stairs. “He’s a bad influence.”

“I’ve always been like this when rudely awakened at the crack of dawn,” Ciri says, muffled. “Don’t think any of you are special.”

“You cursed at the royal servants?”

“Quite regularly.”

Geralt shrugs the layers off his top half down to his undershirt while she continues to stretch and grumble wordlessly in the warmth of her bed. He pulls the sweater over his head; the neckline snags on his ears but otherwise he should be okay to try to get his arms in. He squeezes his right arm in and up, aiming for the proper hole—

“Geralt,” Ciri says icily, “what, by the gods, is that?”

He turns around, contorted in the confines of the too-tight sweater. She’s sitting up with her hair a wild tangle and her eyes wide in horror. “What’s what?”

“That garment!”

“It’s…a sweater? I’m making it.”

Geralt thinks he may be missing something very important.

“For yourself?”

“…No, for Jaskier. He needs another—”

“Don’t you care about the curse?”

Geralt finishes fitting himself into the sweater and tugs it down over his stomach while Ciri continues to stare at him in expectant horror. Thus no longer trapped, he decides to engage. “The what?”

Ciri slumps forward, briefly puts her face in her hands. “Good gods, Geralt, you really can’t be helped. But I also cannot allow you to give Jaskier a handmade sweater. Despite your…personal challenges”—at this, Geralt tilts his head and opens his mouth to ask exactly what the hell that means, but she barrels on—“I really have become fond of the two of you, so I cannot let you carry on with this foolish nonsense.”

Her voice goes more posh the longer speaks. Geralt thinks she will make a fine queen someday. “Ciri, I—”

“And really,” she continues, “it’s like you’re trying to sabotage a good thing. He does nothing but care for you, and this is how you repay him? Honestly. Melitele’s tits!”

“Melitele’s—? Where did you learn that one?”

“I’m hardly sheltered. And you’re one to talk, caring about my language when you’re about to lose Jaskier for good!”

“For good? Lose Jask—okay, Ciri.” He sits down at the foot of her bed, probably looking downright silly confined to a sleeveless sweater that is at least one size too small for him. He can feel it constricting the rise and fall of his chest and stretching tight in his armpits. “Look, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. What curse?”

The expression she aims at him is sharper than at least four of the blades in the armory. “The sweater curse, Geralt. If one makes a sweater for a person one is interested in romantically, that person leaves within a fortnight. Everyone knows this.”

“Oh, of course. How stupid of me,” Geralt says.

Ciri raises an eyebrow that says Yes, obviously.

“So you’re telling me that if I finish this sweater and give it to Jaskier, he will suddenly no longer be able to stand the sight of me and will stomp off on down the mountain, even with the good foot of snow and ice blocking the path.”

She sniffs. “Indubitably.”

“Hmm,” says Geralt. “I think I’ll take my chances.” He claps his hands on his knees as he stands and moves back to the mirror to inspect the sizing more closely. The armholes are definitely a bit small—he’ll have to let out the seam to increase the circumference—but the rest, if he tries to overlay Jaskier’s body onto his own, seems like it should be about right.

Ciri leaves the bed with a fur wrapped around her as a cape and comes to his side. “You’re impossible,” she declares, though the royal snootiness is diminished somewhat by her morning breath and tangled hair. Then she reaches out and touches the textured pattern between the cable running up the front. “Though, you know, it is quite beautiful, if horribly misguided.”

He grins indulgently at her. “Thank you, Princess.”

“Have you heard of the sweater curse?”

Vesemir snorts. “Poppycock. Who told you about that old superstition?”

“Just came across it.”

With a long-suffering sigh, Vesemir looks at Geralt over his spectacles. “I hope that it’s not bothering you.”

“No,” says Geralt. “Of course not.”

He has fuck-all in his hand of cards, but he stares down at them like they might contain the secrets of the Continent.

“It’s your turn, Geralt,” Eskel says.

“I know,” he replies, absently rearranging the cards.

“So…you gonna play or pass?” Lambert asks. He digs his hand into the bowl of nuts at his elbow.

“Not sure.”

“Is something on your mind?” Eskel, again.

“No. Well…do either of you believe in the sweater curse?”

They both look at him blankly.

“Nuh uh,” says Lambert with his mouth full.

Geralt says, “Pass.”

He speaks clearly into the xenovox. “Yen? Are you there?”

“Geralt?” comes the reply, as if she were beside him in the room. “Is Ciri all right?”

“We’re all fine. It’s good to hear from you, too.”

“If there’s no trouble, then make it quick.”

Now he hesitates, but he chokes the question out anyway. “Do you know about the sweater curse?”

There is silence.

“Yen?”

“For the love of the gods, Geralt, please don’t bother me with frivolous garbage. I’m much too busy. Is that all?”

“Yes, that’s all,” Geralt says, suitably shamed.

The finished, washed, and blocked sweater rests folded at the bottom of his wardrobe for more than a week before he works up the nerve to bring it down to dinner with him in his knitting sack.

Even with the flaws that Geralt, as the creator, inevitably notices—a few loose stitches three quarters down the back panel, the right sleeve is slightly longer than the left—he has to admit that it turned out well. He could fetch a pretty penny for it in a large city. Silky soft, thick, and vivid burgundy, it would be a stand-out piece among any merchant’s wares even without the detailing that stretches collar to hem and even down the outside of the arms.

Knitting it was a nightmare. He will never do anything like it ever again, so Jaskier had better appreciate this one.

Still, every time he resolves to finally gift it, Ciri’s words echo in the back of his mind. You’re about to lose Jaskier for good.

On the ninth day, he shushes that voice, takes the sack, and marches straight into the hall for dinner. After all, if Yen and Vesemir aren’t worried, then he shouldn’t be either.

Everyone but Jaskier is there already. Eskel looks up from pouring ale into each mug and says, “Hullo, Geralt. What do you have there?” and Lambert says, “Ooh, didja finish it?” and Vesemir digs wordlessly into his mutton.

Ciri’s eyes zero in on the sack.

“Hello,” says Geralt. “Is Jaskier still washing up?”

“Yeah,” says Lambert. “He fell in a pile of snow.”

“Lambert pushed him into a pile of snow,” Eskel amends.

Geralt glares at the accused, setting the sack on the bench at his usual spot.

“He asked for it. Bloody said ‘Lambert, throw me into that snow over there!’ didn’t he?”

“Since you were alone with him at the time, I don’t think I can confirm or deny—”

“Geralt,” Ciri interrupts, “tell me you’re not still planning what you said.”

“I am,” he tells her.

“You were standing not ten feet away.”

“My back was turned—”

“You’re a godsdamned witcher! Or have you gone deaf?”

“Even after what I told you! I thought you were going to think about it!” Ciri pushes back from the table. “I forbid you from giving that to him.”

Geralt snorts. “Or what, Princess? Look, I don’t think Jaskier is planning to leave—”

“Of course he’s not planning to, the curse will make him! Why are you tempting destiny this way?”

“I’m just saying, Lambert, that it wouldn’t be out of your character to shove an unsuspecting bard into a snowbank.”

“Oh, and hustling him at Gwent wasn’t out of your character, so maybe you’re actually the one who shoved him. Thought about that one, Eskel?”

Geralt says, “If he tries to leave, I’ll tie him to the bed until the urge passes.”

She wrinkles her nose in disgust, but then moves past that comment. “At least let me give it to him. I’ll say I brought it from Cintra, or bought it on the way here.”

“And let my hard work go unacknowledged? I don’t think so. And why would you have bought a man’s sweater?”

Among the arguments, no one notices Jaskier enter the hall and come up behind Vesemir, wide eyed. “What did I miss?” he stage whispers.

“Just open your present, bard,” Vesemir mutters, gesturing to the sack at Geralt’s knee.

“Ooh, a present? For little old me?”

He picks up the sack and tests the weight curiously, before opening it and drawing out the most marvelous sweater he has ever seen.

“Jaskier, no!” Ciri cries, and everyone else falls quiet.

“What, why?” he says, looking between Ciri’s stricken face and the furrow between Geralt’s brows. “What is this?”

“It’s for you,” Geralt murmurs. “I made it.”

“You made it?” he repeats dumbly.

“Yes. For you. Because you were…cold.”

“Because I was cold?”

Geralt gently takes it from him and holds it up so he can see the full design. “That night, you came in when I was knitting, and you were cold. I wanted to make you something warm to wear that you would like.”

Jaskier squishes the soft fabric between his thumb and forefinger.

“Do you,” says Geralt, “like it?”

“It’s stunning,” Jaskier breathes. Geralt may as well have hit him over the head with a hammer.

“I cannot believe you, Geralt of Rivia,” Ciri cuts in. “You never listen to anyone. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!” With that, she turns on her heel and leaves the hall.

Geralt grimaces. “Do you, er, have any particular desire to leave me?”

“Leave you? Why would I—Geralt, is this a breakup gift? Is it pity?” He panics, pushing the sweater back into Geralt’s hands. “I don’t want your gorgeous pity breakup sweater, Geralt. I’ve played that game before.”

Geralt steadies him, as ever. “No, it’s—Ciri thinks there’s a curse, or something. And that if I made you a sweater, you would leave.”

“Oh,” says Jaskier. “Well, I assure you I will not. And in that case I do want the sweater.” He shucks off his coat right there at the table and pulls the sweater on over his tunic. “There!” He spreads his hands wide. “How does it look?”

The smile Geralt gives him is answer enough. “Perfect,” he says. “You look perfect.”

“Not bad, bard,” Eskel says.

Lambert shoots him a thumbs up. Vesemir does not appear to be paying attention.

Jaskier leans in and kisses Geralt on the lips. “Thank you very much,” he whispers. “I adore it and promise to thank you more appropriately later tonight. For now, shall I go after Ciri?”

“That may be best,” Geralt says. “I don’t think she likes me much right now.”

“My pleasure. Say,” he says louder, “while I’m gone, don’t let my food get cold.” He opens the door and barely feels the usual chill of the drafty hallways at all. Over his shoulder, he adds, “You can get Lambert to tell you all how he threw me in a snow pile today! It was great fun!”

“I told you—” he hears, but then the door closes behind him.

#my fic #geraskier #the witcher #geralt x jaskier #geraskier fic #someone pls teach me to write drabbles i'm dying

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darthmaulification · 3 years

Note

15 with Maul for the Angst Prompts? 🥺

A/N: dropping this at nearly midnight, but i’ve finished it and i’m proud of it so here’s a late night snack. 😤

also, the song that inspired this one was hard feelings by lorde (also technically loveless, which is the 2nd part of this particular audio, but mostly hard feelings) and i do use a lyric from it in my story. 😊

thank you for requesting the prompt, and i hope you enjoy!! 💗

prompt: 15. "i think we'd be better off alone."

content: angst (but a tad more mild), gn!reader, a break up yet again, but also more mutual, like two people collide to share just enough of a relationship that it hurts when they part, but also the relationship is implied to be Toxic, an embarrassing amount of figurative language, slice of life type deal going on here

word count: 1,504

You met Maul when the weather was good. The vast sky had been pulled taut in all directions— a cerulean blue overwhelming in its vibrancy. Most days nothing had broken up the azure, cloudless and thus without rain, but the sun, which followed it’s charted course day in and day out dutifully, bringing with it a near boiling heat.

When you met Maul, the sun had been sitting in it’s throne like a king, at the very peak of the crest it would slope down as hours ticked by. It shone so brightly that it bathed everything, exciting the flowers that rose to meet it and angering your fellow farmers who complained that the intensity was too much for the infant crops. It obscured, only for a moment, when Maul’s ship had passed beneath it.

He caught everyone’s attention, even yours, but only you caught his.

He approached you amidst the wavering haze above flat ground, that tricks the eye into thinking it’s there. You thought he was part of the mirage, how could you not? The strange visitor from his silver ship, his skin a flaming red and tattooed, wearing black robes far too heavy and dark for your planet. You almost had yourself convinced until he closed the distance between the both of you so hastily that it was like he fully intended to be standing amongst the crops alongside you all along.

(Later, Maul would tell you that he had only stopped for fuel, but had caught sight of you in the fields, angelic in your white linens.)

“Hello.” He had said, his voice like the thick purr of a Loth cat and his gaze the molten glaze of honey. He smiled, and his teeth were pitch black and glossy.

(A dye, he would also tell you later.)

“Hello.” You had replied politely, and when he extended his hand to shake yours, you had marveled at how his black-decorated, crimson skin felt like the heat surrounding you, only a living warmth instead. Maul then exchanged his name along with a suave flirt, and you gave him your name as well, gifting him with a blush on your cheeks. That’s when you learned he was bold and did everything with confidence.

The interest only grew from there, of course.

All the while, the sun sat stiff and blistering in the blue, blue sky and the air was dreadfully torrid, made even more unbearable by the lack of a breeze, but there were no shadows in sight, not while you and Maul talked, or when he offered you a drink, or when he walked you to his ship with his arm in yours, or when you both laughed and smiled and drank and swapped stories and even cuddled.

All in all, a good sign. A very good sign.

Until it wasn’t.

Maybe it was the lack of wind.

You learned very quickly that Maul was not only the charming, intelligent, if not hot-headed and cocky, Zabrak that you had made him out to be. You cottoned on very quickly and abruptly to his aggression, his brutal temper that would flare at the slightest provocation to the thin thread it hung from. Maul demonstrated to you, on multiple occasions, his wrath, and his willingness to kill instead of maim, or otherwise show mercy on his selected enemy. It bothers you as much now as it did then, and you would consider his anger a billowing red flag.

But at the time he was so new to you that you forgave his outbursts and strokes of cruelty because you had thought that since people could change, Maul surely could as well. And to be fair, you did what you could, successfully quelled his fury more often than not. But it was still hard to want to be close to a man who burned so intensely at his core that it hurt to be near.

And that made the dry season even hotter. For better, and for worse.

(Mostly worse.)

As weeks passed with Maul, and the summer reached it’s fever pitch, you and Maul had softened up enough to each other that you shared intimacy and closely-held secrets, often both under the delicate watch of the moon, when the night brought with it security and a tender break in the heat. Nighttime was always easier, you realize now, when there was no pressure from wandering third parties from the village, or duties to attend, or the sun to make you squint.

It made you realize just how difficult daytime could be, how consumed those hours were by work and people, how busy it all was. It made you loathe the dawn, wanting to keep the star-dappled midnight sky for as long as possible because that’s when you didn’t toil away in the fields, and when Maul was yours and only yours, and when you didn’t have to worry about his temper igniting, or the switch of his lightsaber, or the pain he’d inflict, or the crimes he’d—

Thinking of it now, your only good memories with Maul took place during nighttime.

Except one. The last memory you have of him.

You had been drained and tired by the oppressive heat that the sun had wrought during the day, and the almost constant pleading with Maul not to slice down any more of your fellow villagers that were terrified of him. You were drained by the effort of dousing his fire, the glares of your once friendly neighbors who’d believed you betrayed by picking Maul over them, and of course the heat made you sweat the life from you.

And of course, it was that night when the darkness didn’t quell the oven-like heat suffocating you.

You and Maul argued. It was venomous, spiteful, hateful— but you won’t dwell on it, it doesn’t mean much anymore anyways, besides the last few words you spat at one another.

“You are an ungrateful, pathetic bitch!” Maul had roared at you, his lips pulled back in a snarl and nothing but contempt in his eyes. It had felt like a slap in the face at the time, but now when you think of that moment in all it’s infamy, you only sigh and shake your head. Maul only ever knew cruelty, how was he to act without it?

“And you are evil!” You had screamed back like some wild animal howling, sobbing so hard it sounded like shrieking. Maul only laughed, humorless and mean, and he cocked his head, palm flitting to rest on the hilt of the lightsaber that you knew could flash it’s fear-inducing red at the press of a button.

“Have you just noticed?” Maul had cooed, and that was the first time you had ever been scared of him.

“I want you out of my home, my life. I think we’d be better off alone.” How you managed to say that to him when you had been so stiff with icy dread and a wavering voice, you still don’t know.

Apparently though, it may have been the heat that hammered the final nail into the coffin because Maul left, bitterly throwing you one last insult by telling you that being in your house was like choking on magma. You didn’t say anything back, not while the fear still gripped you by the throat, but once he was gone fully that’s when you cursed his name, his bloodline, his everything. You let yourself get as angry as him in the privacy of your home, for as long as your body allowed it, and until you were shaking and raw.

And despite everything and yourself, and how much you knew he didn’t deserve that hypothetical satisfaction, you wept. But strangely, and a bit curiously, it felt more like the relief of the dry season’s long-awaited rain, not the heartbreak of the love, if any had really been there, lost.

It was comforting.

Months later, when Maul is long gone and the wistfully childish part of you daydreams, you think of all the possibilities that could have been, had the heat not been so sweltering. Maybe, in some other reality, a different timeline where different choices were made, you and Maul met when it was raining. Maybe then it could have worked out, if everything had been dampened, simpler... more cold.

But the sun shines bright, sucks all the moisture from the ground and leaves plants wilting and the freshwater low, and it means you are once again sweating in the middle of a crop field tending to the struggling new shoots.

You sigh, a long exhale from your nose, and you wipe the gathered droplets from your brow. The sun rays beam down, infinite and unforgiving, until you walk to the canopy of a tree, to the shade where they can’t touch you. The semi-coolness dimples the skin of your arms with goosebumps, and the drop in temperature is a welcome change.

You sigh again.

I think it’s time to let go of this endless summer afternoon.

#star wars #star wars darth maul #darth maul x reader #darth maul x you #darth maul #writing prompts #angst prompts #anon ask #anon #orion answers

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rodeoxqueen · 3 years

Text

SMELLS LIKE QUARAN-NEROKIRI SPIRIT

Nero/Kyrie

“In quarantine, Nero and Kyrie spend time together.”

Rodeo’s Two Pieces:

First time writing for Nero/Kyrie. Tread lightly with my take of their dynamic.

(I)- Dalgona Coffee and Cookies.

Despite how everything was shut down and the grocery was found vacant of basic necessities, Nero was grateful to at least be with someone he loved the most.

“Look, we probably need some time off from kickin’ demon ass anyways,” Nico explained, smoking a cigarette during the video chat.

“Yeah, not like demons care about being six feet away. People don’t even do that.” Nero looked at himself in the little square in the corner of his phone. Clad in a grey hoodie, he hadn’t even bothered putting on anything over his boxers. No one had come to visit since the mandate to stay inside, what was the point?

Nico was in her garage again, from what he could see in the camera view. Cigarettes and old cups of coffee littered her desk, warbled country music playing off-view.

“Who knows, maybe I’ll make something to fix that. I was thinking a mask-gun, rapid-fire reloading.”

“Artisan of Arms, huh?” Nero laughed, getting up from his bed.

“You fuckin’ bet. Now I gotta go. Got some things to weld.”

“See ya, Nico. Stay safe, alright?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He gave a peace sign before pressing “end video call.”

The video chat ended and Nero tucked his phone into his pocket. Even banter just wasn’t the same virtually.

“Who was that? Nico?” Nero made it down the hallway to see Kyrie, bustling about getting things from the cupboards.

“Yeah, still building stuff as usual.”

Kyrie had been in their apartment’s kitchen, deciding to try her hand at some recipes she saw online. A bag of flour, too many bowls, and more chocolate than Nero remembered buying, all laid out on the table.

Just when he wanted something to eat, he’d have to wait or his girlfriend would practically make enough to feed an army and be surprised when he didn’t want anymore.

He opted for a cup of water instead.

Nero admired her hair, how it looked when it wasn’t in a ponytail, how it sat perfectly on her shoulders. Seeing how she started to measure some ingredients, he took the hair tie on his wrist, careful fingers bringing it into a low ponytail.

“Oh, thank you.” She commented, opening her booklet of recipes she had handwritten. Neat, slanted cursive in a smattering of blue, red, and black read out recipes for cookies, cakes, and bread.

“You look busy, planning to make all of those?” Nero rested his chin on her shoulder, shrouding her with warmth.

“Well, I don’t know how long we’re going to be stuck at home, might as well try some recipes out. Maybe we can deliver some to the orphanage.”

“That is if I don’t eat all your prototypes first.” She laughed, birdsong to Nero’s ears.

“As long as you help me I don’t mind if you do.” Kyrie handed him a measuring cup. Nero sighed, taking it. He always lost count of how many cups of flour he was supposed to put in the bowl.

A jar of porous dough caught his eye as he sifted some baking soda in his white mixture. He took it from Kyrie’s side of the island.

“Whoa, what is this? A science experiment?” Kyrie chuckled, watching Nero scrutinize the date on the white tape to the top of the mason jar.

“No, it’s a sourdough starter! It’s basically wild yeast. We can make bread with it since people bought out all the dry yeast in the grocery store.”

Nero shook it with curiosity and then opened the silver lid, making an “eh” face at the smell.

“It’s yeast alright.”

Kyrie continued whipping up the sugar and butter mixture, Nero helping himself to a handful of chocolate chips.

“Have you talked to your uncle and father? They must be staying at the shop in Redgrave.”

Nero shrugged.

“Most likely, I haven’t talked to them yet. Dante probably didn’t pay the phone bill and Vergil doesn’t know how to use the phone anyways.”

“Let’s just hope they’re getting along during this time.”

Nero thought back to all the “family outings” he had since his uncle and father returned from hell, mostly just jobs becoming contests of strength that turned to friendly family fights. Endless banter and elbowing.

Honestly, compared to that, standing next to his girlfriend while they shaped cookies for the oven was heaven.

Once the chocolate chip cookie dough was done baking, Kyrie insisted they make some whipped coffee while they cooled.

“I thought you didn’t like coffee, Kyrie.” She stooped down to find something in the lower cabinets. A robotic hand that was colored dark blue and black, his old Devil Bringer, appeared with a tiny whisk duct-taped to it.

“Yeah, but that TikTok made it look so good.” Nero handed her the glass container of instant coffee.

Turning on the Devil Bringer, the tiny whisk spun to life, rapidly mixing sugar, coffee, and water together. With her back turned, Nero popped a thing of cookie dough in his mouth.

“Honestly, Nico should have patented these Devil Bringers, make a bunch of money, and maybe she’d stop trying to rip me off all those times.”

“Support local businesses, Nero.”

He looked over her shoulder, surprised at how an abysmal brown mixture had become fluffy and thrice its previous volume.

Two cups of milk poured, the practically instantly whipped coffee laid on top like a decadent Mount Everest next to a still-warm plate of cookies.

“Cheers!” Kyrie clinked glasses with him, stirring her mug vigorously with a spoon. He copied her, taking a sip of surprisingly light and sweet coffee.

When he lowered his cup, Nero both revealed to the world a mustache of whipped coffee.

Kyrie snorted into her cup, covering her mouth as she bit back a laugh. Embarrassed, Nero went to wipe it off when Kyrie pecked him on the lips. She drew back to reveal an imprint of the ‘stache on her own upper lip.

“We match now.” Kyrie giggled, helping herself to another gooey cookie.

Half a plate of cookies and two mugs properly drained of its contents, Kyrie and Nero loaded up the dishwasher to do the work.

“This is coffee, why am I tired?” Kyrie yawned.

The couch was this god-awful IKEA purchase that took hours for Nero to just figure out what the instructions meant. But right now, it perfectly supported both of them while they slept away their food coma.

(II)- Curl Up And Dye.

After the second time the mandate got lengthened, Nero could sense that Kyrie was starting to wane in her ever-positive attitude. The news had nothing good to say, and the number of shows they had binged left them indifferent to watching anything more.

They did a lot of singing during quarantine, Kyrie always being the musical one. Evanescence was one of their favorites to sing together, Nero’s guitar skills and Kyrie’s ability to hit those high notes left many memorable nights of laughter.

After a while, Kyrie began to just sit on the couch a lot and have Nero pay her company.

“What’s wrong?” Kyrie sighed heavily, curling into Nero’s hoodie as he opted to stay shirtless.

“I don’t know Nero, it just feels like everything is the same. We go through the same things every day and I just feel...trapped.”

Nero kissed the nape of her neck, humming in agreement.

“Look, I’m usually the one going to you for stuff like this but...it will get better. It’s been a really hard time for all of us, and we’re just watching everything go downhill. It’s not a good situation but, you got me. Always. And there’s still a lot of things we can change up if that helps.” He stroked her hair and rubbed her back, feeling her take a deep breath.

“You’re right Nero. That really did help. Thank you for listening.”

“Of course.”

While he scrolled on his own phone, he didn’t heed all the things Kyrie was watching. She touched her own long hair, seeing the way other people recorded their own home-salon trims.

“Things to change, huh?” She mumbled.

So here they were now.

“It looks so bad!” Kyrie exclaimed, her face in her hands, hair on the bathroom sink. Nero shook his head.

“No it’s not, Kyrie! You look fine, just let me fix it!” In the mirror, Nero cringed at the way her hair was ridiculously over-layered.

“Um, what did you try to do-”

“Curtain bangs! Oh Nero, I shouldn’t have tried to change up my hair!” Kyrie was thoroughly upset, seeing how her bout of bravery lead to her bangs being mauled by her own hands.

Nero hugged her, noting that she had been wearing his shirt while she trimmed her hair.

Okay that shirt’s gonna itch for a while until all the hair comes out.

“It’s okay, let me see if I can fix it.” Kyrie blushed in the mirror, groaning at how bad her hair was cut.

“There’s no way you could make it worse than what I did.”

Nero gingerly took the scissors Kyrie put in the sink, a little bit too small for his hands but good enough. Although he was no stylist, he could tell where Kyrie had either cut too much off or unevenly.

Eventually, they did manage to cut it in a way that hid the previous mistakes. Kyrie took another deep breath.

“I shouldn’t have been so impulsive.” She murmured, arms crossed.

Nero chuckled at her rare emotional outburst. He was glad to have been able to be there for her. She always hid how she felt, helping others her way of expressing herself. Now with no one around but him, he totally understood that she felt helpless.

No one liked being helpless.

He kissed her cheek and a lightbulb went off in his head.

“You wanna dye my hair?” Kyrie turned around in surprise.

“What?”

“I mean, who knows how long this shutdown is gonna be, it’ll be fun,” Kyrie noted how Nero had forgone shaving, his peach fuzz becoming something more.

Honest blue eyes peered at her, wondering what she would think. Her surprise softened to a sort of relief in their solidarity.

“What color, Nero?”

“Neon green-”

“Nico’s going to make fun of you.” Kyrie giggled. Nero shrugged nonchalantly.

“I don’t mind it.”

(III)- Can’t Get Out Of It, Get Into It.

“Nero, you look so fucking ridiculous.”

“Shut up, Dante.”

His uncle finally managed to figure out how to work the virtual chat on his fossil of a computer, and Nero was already prepared to end the call.

His father sat slightly off-camera, not in the mood to entertain Dante’s antics to ridicule his son. Although, he did look oddly radioactive with his washed-out green hair and strong quarter-past five o’clock shadow.

“Quarantine did not do you a favor, good lord,” Dante commented, kicking his feet up on his desk. Nero flipped him off.

“Good to know you’re still living in shambles, not surprised neither of you cleaned up after yourselves.” The number of bottles on the floor was a travesty and the couch littered with poetry books Vergil had slowly begun to hoard.

Nico entered the zoom call, smoking another cigarette Nero was lucky to not have to smell.

“Nice broccoli head.”

Nero flipped her off as well. Kyrie came into view, smiling at her boyfriend’s family and their shared friends. Nero decided to get a drink, clicking a few buttons before letting Kyrie have the seat.

As they discussed how the business would continue with Devil May Cry, Kyrie sat next to Nero.

It was mainly business, until it got to a certain line that Dante said.

“I don’t know, it just feels like things are just going to keep staying like this. Hate to break it to you Nero, but it’s going to be tough for a while.”

Kyrie finally heard enough, scooching Nero aside so she could talk.

“Kyrie, wait-”

“We’re going to get past this. As long as humanity still keeps coming together for the sake of benefiting each other, and we keep working to make sure to keep safe, we will get past this. We just have to keep hoping, and sure, hoping isn’t always going to make you feel better. I would know. But in a time where we do feel helpless, we should connect with other people in a different way. That’s why we succeed, we keep moving, we keep adapting! And hope, hope keeps that going.”

Kyrie took a long breath. Looking at the dumbfounded group, she waited for a response.

“Um, Kyrie. You were muted.” Nero finally said. Kyrie realized her blunder and how Nero’s hand was attempting to unmute them.

“Oh.” Kyrie flushed, looking embarrassed.

“I have no idea what you just said, but that’s okay.”

“I’m sorry, that was so awkward.”

“Don’t worry yourself, Kyrie. I bet it was real sweet whatever you had to say,” Nico assured.

The zoom call was full of laughter since, a business call turned to a time to discuss how each person was doing.

Dante and Vergil had spent days and nights sparring, Vergil learning more about humanity from Dante, and “making their own pizzas.”

Nico had continued welding and making weapons for her own curiosity rather than based off of commission-based instructions. The van finally had the vinyl player fixed and she apparently gave herself a stick-and-poke.

“So what did you two love birds do?” Nico asked, lighting another cancer stick.

Nero and Kyrie looked at each other, smiling at their shared memories of this strange period in human history.

“Where do we even start?” Kyrie said, thinking of all the days and nights that seemed to breeze by and also slowly progress.

Nero ruffled his longer messy green hair, Kyrie tucking her curtain bangs behind her ear. As they were two peas in the pod, Nero had decided to get another set of gray sweats for Kyrie, matching finally.

Kyrie bit into a cookie, offering Nero some.

“Smells like quarantine spirit, huh?” Dante finger-gunned.

Nero chuckled.

“Hell yeah.”

#nirvana and dominic fike reference?#nirvana and dominic fike reference #not much vergil in this work i do not care for the man today #nero x kyrie #nerokiri #devil may cry #devil may cry fanfiction #nero sparda #kyrie #dmc kyrie #dante sparda #vergil sparda #nicoletta goldstein

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sailorshadzter · 3 years

Note

Prompt: Joffrey reveals himself to be a monster to her towards the start of the stay at Winterfell .Knowing that her parents cant reject the match between herself and the Crown Prince without repercussions,she stages a kidnapping and slips herself into the group heading to the Wall. Maybe she cuts off her hair/dyes her hair/steals some of Brans clothes.Kinda like a Mulan AU I guess?

OOOOOH WOW

this is one of those asks that i have to scroll for a minute to get to!!! but i got to it!!! IM SORRY ITS TAKEN ME SO VERY LONG but inspiration strikes when it strikes. anyways, i might come out with a part 2 / dont tempt me to make this into another au i never finish but man the idea is GOOD.

anyways

i hope it was worth the wait.

As the night begins to dawn, Sansa Stark finds it hard to keep both feet on the ground.

She's lovestruck, falling hard for the golden haired Baratheon prince that's been put before her. With his charming good looks and regal posture, he's enough to make any maiden's heart flutter. In truth, even now with Joffrey and his parents, the King and Queen of the Iron Throne there in her own home, she's finding it hard to believe that she, she, of all people, will be the one to marry the prince. That someday she might be a queen as beautiful as his mother, Cersei Lannister, who smiles so sweetly whenever they meet, who speaks so tenderly, who upon after the betrothal was made official, calls her daughter, as if she so truly were.

"Come my lady, let us take one last walk." It's Joffrey now, bending over his arm in a bow as he approaches where she sits among the other young ladies of Winterfell. They erupt in giggles around her as she blushes to the roots of her hair but nods all the same, reaching out her hand to take his, allowing him to help her up onto her feet. Though she glances towards her mother, who sits engaged in conversation with her father and the King himself, Joffrey tugs on her hand and she can do nothing else besides follow after him. She knows it's inappropriate for her and the prince to sneak off alone like this, but she can't help but to excitedly wonder if he means only to steal her away for a private kiss. Besides, they are to be married in only a few short weeks, so what harm would it do?

They walk together out into the moonlit night, a surprising chill to the air that sends a shiver down her spine. If Joffrey notices, he does not speak on it, rather he continues to lead her through the courtyard where only a handful of guards and nobility mingle. It was astonishing just how many people came along with the King and his family and Sansa isn't certain there would ever be a way to remember all of their names. Along the back, they step into the gardens, the darkening sky pierced by the soft white light of the moon. "I will miss the moonlight of the North," she says as they fall to a stop before the brimming fountain, her lips curving with a smile. "But I suppose I will love it all the more whenever we return."

At her words, Joffrey turns, his expression not one she's seen before. It's not confusion, but rather, it looks like anger. No, it is something far beyond anger, and it frightens her down to her very core. Startled, Sansa begins to stammer an apology, but Joffrey silences her with a wave of his hand. "Return?" He scoffs, looking from her back towards Winterfell and back again. "We'll not be returning here once we leave," he goes on, shaking his head with a scathing sort of laugh that is far more chilling than the wind had been.

"Y-your pardon, I only meant... When we visit..."

"Did you not hear me, my lady... Once we leave here in two days, we shall not be returning. Not you and certainly not me. You will be my queen and you will stay South, where you belong." A strange feeling is creeping up within her; it's cold, it's deep, and it's so very dark. There is something about the way Joffrey says this that she knows it to be true. She realizes then, quite suddenly, that if she leaves with him as intended, she will never again return to Winterfell. She swallows. This isn't right, she thinks, he musn't mean it.

"I know the North is not entirely to your pleasure, but it is my home... I can't imagine never returning," she smiles, hoping her easy going tone is not lost to the shaking of her voice. "You may even grow to enjoy it here, if you give it a chance..." To her horror, Joffrey's hands shoot up and for a single instance, she thinks he means to strike her, but rather he takes hold of her by the upper arms, his grip like a vice. "M-my lord, you're h-hurting me," she whimpers, staring up into Joffrey's blazing eyes.

He leans in close to her, as close as he might have done for the kiss she had once hoped he'd bestow upon her, and breathes a simple reply. "Bid your home farewell, sweetheart, for we ride south in the morning." His grip lessens and then, he lets go entirely, taking a single step back from where she stands. The morning? She thinks, these words sinking in, realizing now that though she'd been told it would be another day before leaving... Evidently, someone had decided that there was no need to stay another night and no one had chosen to tell her. She wonders if this is cruelty on Joffrey's part or kindness of her parents, hoping to spare her the pain of knowing it was her last night home. Either way, it matters not, because she knows there's no way she can go South.

Not ever.

[ x x x ]

As she lays in bed, Sansa can do little else but stare at the ceiling above her bed and wish to be someone else. If she were anybody else, she would not be marrying the prince, and she would not be leaving home. Sansa had tried to explain her feelings to her mother, who had merely laughed and said it was nervous jitters. I had them, too, before I married your father, Cat Stark had said as she brushed out her daughter's hair for bed one last time. The next time she brushed this head of hair, it would be for her wedding day. The longer she spent with her mother that evening, the more Sansa realized she could not simply back out of this wedding. Sansa was not a stupid girl, though Arya might have argued differently, and she knew of the trouble brewing between the families. Between the kingdoms. She's overheard enough whispers and listened to enough speculation between her brothers to know that war was a very real possibility- some said only the good friendship between the Baratheon king and their father was what kept them safe. Sansa also knows, even just from the words spoken during their betrothal, that her marriage with Joffrey solidified the peace between them.

And yet...

The longer she thinks about it, the more she knows that despite it all, she cannot ride South. She knows of the stories, the ones of what happens to Stark men that go to King's Landing... What was stopping something terrible from happening to her as well? There had to be a way, there just had to be a way to free her from this wedding and ultimately, the prison King's Landing was certain to be.

It's just as she's resigning herself to her misery that something comes to her.

One of the stories she had read as a young girl, a story of a princess taken in the dead of night by an evil lord. Said princess was to be rescued by her true love, a shining knight of virtue that rides in on his white horse. And more is coming- it's not just her that is to leave on the morrow- but Jon, as well. Jon, her bastard brother, was being sent to the wall to join the Knight's Watch. He certainly would not be her knight, but if she could somehow slip in among him and the others heading out... Yes, it might possibly work.

But if it's going to work, she must work fast, as she knows the men are set to leave before morning light. And so she leaps from her bed and pulls on her dressing robe. It is late into the night, hours still from the morning call, but there is always the fear of a guard or even her father discovering her out of bed at such an hour. But she says a silent prayer to the Old Gods and then tiptoes from her room.

[ x x x ]

When the morning call comes, she's already gone, a single note hastily scratched in writing she hopes looks entirely unlike her own penmanship.

She's been gone well over an hour by then, for just as she had planned, she manages to slip away among those leaving for the Knight's Watch. With an old cloak draped over her shoulders, she keeps the hood up, shielding from those around her the red hair she's so well known for. Before leaving, she managed to snag some old breeches and shirt from the laundry, and she's braided her hair and tucked it up as much as she could. Luckily for her, she's mostly ignored by the other men, aside from one man who growls at her when she bumps into him halfway into the morning that first day.

The group walks for hours; far longer than she's certainly ever walked at one time. She's tired and she's hungry and she hurts in places she's never hurt before. But, there is a strange sense of warmth comes over her as she settles into a place of her own, away from the others, nearer to the river that runs through the forest. With no knowledge of how to build a fire, Sansa is thankful for the warmth of the summer night and hungry as she is, realizes she's far more tired than anything else. After a sleepless night and endless walking, she will forgo food if only it means she can sleep.

And so she wanders closer to the water's edge, where there beneath the canopy of darkness, she finally lowers her hood.

From where he watches, Jon finds himself intrigued by what he sees.

He can't really say what draws him to follow the hooded figure out to the river beyond simple curioisity. But now as he watches, he sees hands pulling what certainly must be pins from hair and to his shock, long hair comes tumbling down. Now he's really curious.

And just then, a cloud above them shifts and the moonlight illuminates her.

The red hair is vibrant, the pale moonlight weaving between the strands like ribbons. He's stunned, but his foot snaps a twig all the same. When she whips around, it's steel blue eyes he finds himself staring into and Jon wonders, despite sixteen years beneath the same roof as her, he's never noticed that look within her eyes. "Sansa..." Her name is on his lips before he can stop it and he realizes now that she is quite like a deer in the crosshairs, a creature torn between fight and flight.

She can't believe this.

Her fleeting sense of safety has fled, vanished into the night the moment those Stark gray eyes settled upon her. Of course, she can't now understand how she ever expected to avoid Jon forever, but she had hoped to at least be further out than this when they did meet. "Jon," she greets, taking a step away from the river and closer to where he stands. The moonlight is bright and it illuminates Jon in a way that makes her blink, makes her think. "Please..." It's the only plea she can offer, the only words that in this moment, seem right to say.

Jon studies her for a long moment; all things considered, she must have had a good reason to come. Sansa Stark wasn't the type to just... Throw it all away without a reason. Her dream of marriage to a prince was to come true, after all. Her golden haired Prince Joffrey had arrived in Winterfell only days before; a smug, ugly sort of kid that had grown tall, taller than even Robb, but one that had stolen Sansa's heart all the same. Jon wonders what could have made her do what she'd done. "I won't," he promises suddenly, earnestly.

Her face relaxes, she smiles.

She feels safe once again and it is far warmer than it was before.

#jonsa #actuallyjonsa #ask box prompts #i really could write more for this #my writing

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lluvguts · 3 years

Text

just pretend for now // reddie

(mostly posting my ao3 fics here for now // i’ll take requests too!)

pairing: eddie kaspbrak x richie tozier

genre/warnings: none! fluff

word count: 2,037

summary: a loser’s club wedding...but kids!

“Let’s just skip it.”

“Our own wedding, Rich?”

“We already got married, Eds,” Richie murmured as he turned over in the sheets to reach for Eddie in the mid morning light. He was well aware of the plans that had to be set into motion, as well as the many things they must actually be present for―like getting married, for one―but all Richie felt like doing was spending the rest of their Friday afternoon in the hotel bed. Well, Eddie had brought separate bed sheets for the hotel bed, but still the same idea in spirit.

Eddie pulled Richie closer and rested a hand in his tousled hair. Though he did not fully bring him to his chest―the wound had healed months ago, but Eddie was still extremely careful. It made Richie wonder what their wedding night was going to look like if Eddie wouldn’t touch him. Not like it made much of a difference considering all the other times…

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but we can’t just not go to our rehearsal dinner,” He stated, craning over Richie to stare at the clock displayed on the hotel nightstand with a groan.

Richie tilted his head up to stare at Eddie―or the foggy shape he assumed was his soon-to-be husband, having forgotten to put on his glasses.

“You don’t remember when we got married as kids?”

“I don’t think that a children’s cereal box ring counts towards marriage.”

“Oh, please. It wasn’t a cereal box prize…It was a Ring Pop,” Richie said with dignity.

“You’re gonna have to tell me the story of our so-called wedding, since there’s clearly some pieces I’m missing.”

Richie flourished a hand, in an old British clip. “With pleasure, Mr. Tozier.”

“Tozier-Kaspbrak,” Eddie corrected him.

“Nuance. Anyway, I’m pretty sure it was one hot ass summer when we were all sitting in Bill’s backyard, eating candy…”

The Denbrough’s yard was stifling that summer in Maine, and all of the Losers crowded under the aged umbrella from their outdoor patio furniture to stay cool in the grass. Mike and Stanley were huddled close, admiring a bluejay that had perched on the fence, while Ben passed around a plastic bag of assorted candies from Costello’s Market―one that his mother had purchased for him the morning of―and tried not to sneak a glance at Beverley’s smile, or the way the sun made her hair glow like an open fire.

“It’s so fuckin’ hot,” Richie whined, popping a cherry Ring Pop into his mouth.

Ben shifted uncomfortably on his place in the dead grass. “You shouldn’t say that word Richie!”

“Oh hush, Haystack. I can say whatever I’d like,” He replied coolly and fell onto his back to stare at the cloudless sky.

“There’s nothing to do out here,” Eddie said in a soft voice, still awed by Richie’s crude remark. The brown-haired boy had some color on his cheeks, but not from the heat. He was startled, and maybe a little captivated by how confident Richie was, and Eddie wondered if some of that confidence could work on him the next time Belch Huggins shoved him off the playground equipment at school.

Bill fished inside the shopping bag for a candy bar that wasn’t already melted. “W-We have some board games i-i-inside.”

“Let’s go to the library,” Mike murmured. “There’s a new issue of Superman out and if we don’t act now all the other kids'll take them all.”

Stanley leaned in toward Mike’s neck and used the binoculars he was wearing, pointing at the bird. “No, let’s go back to my house for my sketchbook so I can draw her. Look, she’s so pretty.”

The three argued about what to do when Richie pondered over his candy, then said thoughtfully, “We could get married.”

Eddie looked away, knowing full well that Richie’s finger poking into his side meant that he was talking to him.

“W-What?” Bill spoke above Stanley and Mike’s chatter. Ben was too busy sorting the candy to pay much attention.

Richie shrugged, wiping sweaty hair out of his face. “We’ve got the rings, right Eds?”

Eddie crossed his arms, scowling at the Ring Pop on his own finger and spoke to the ground.

“Don’t call me Eds. You know it’s not my name.”

“It’s just pretend…unless you’re too chicken to do it,” Richie challenged.

Beverly glanced between the both of them, her eyes finally landing on Richie as a wicked grin lit her face.

“I’ll be the lucky lady, if my daddy doesn’t find out,” She giggled.

Richie sat up, wiping the grass from his shirt. “I was talking about Eddie Spaghetti, Bev. But you can be my best man.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Stan said.

“Fine! I’ll marry Beverly, then Eds. Okay?”

Stan pulled his binoculars down. “You’re still not getting the point.”

“Oh, whatever. We’ve got a wedding to do,” Richie stood alongside Bev and held out his hand.

Eddie blinked at him for a speechless moment but took his hand warily.

“This is a bad idea,” He mumbled with a red face as the three sautnered over to the Denbrough’s rusting trellis, its vines once lively now hung dead across the scorching metal.

“Bill! Will you come marry us?” Beverly shouted across the lawn, even though the boys were only a few feet away.

“S-Sure Bevvie,” The boy immediately stood and went to her.

“Got yours, Bev?” Richie held up his candy ring, as well as the one on Eddie’s hand, still clasped in his own.

“Let go of my hand!” Eddie flung his arm back, nursing the Ring Pop in hopes that neither could see his expression. It was the only comfort he had, that sweet taste of blue dye, he’d left his inhaler at home.

Beverly showed them her ring, fresh from the package and shining a neon green on her pale finger.

Bill clapped his hands together, nervously looking to Bev. “Alright, uh, R-Richie go stand by Eh-Eh-Eddie, I’ll marry Bev and you f-first.”

Richie grabbed Beverly’s hands and grinned sheepishly at the young girl. The other three watched from the shade of the umbrella, a mix of amusement and anxiety filtering across their faces. Luckily Bill’s parents were not home to see the ceremony, but the Losers knew neither mother nor father would take much interest in their antics.

“Do y-you Beverly Marsh tu-tu-take Richie T-Tozier to be your, uh, husband?”

“It’s ‘lawfully wedded husband,’ Bill!” Mike commented, while Stan slapped his shoulder.

Richie winked at Bev, which made her laugh harder. “I do.”

Bill nodded in agreement. “Okay, D-Do you, Richie Tozier t-take her to be your,” He turned to Mike, remembering the phrase, “Lawfully wedded wife?”

“Sure do, Big Bill. Now, how bout a good one, right here, Bevvie?” Richie clicked his tongue and tapped a cheek with his finger.

Bev blushed and leaned forward to peck his cheek. Eddie closed his eyes, trying not to picture Richie’s lips on his face. She pulled back, smiling and waving around her ringed finger in the hot air. Richie did the same.

“Eddie, your t-t-turn.”

Beverly gave Richie’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze before dashing off to hide under the umbrella. Eddie ran his tongue across the dry roof of his mouth and stepped forward, accepting the boy’s sweaty hands.

He hardly understood Bill’s words, not because of the stutter but more so because of the way Richie cleared his throat, and the firm grip he had on his hands, as if it were an actual ceremony and not something thrown together in a small town backyard.

Richie was busy staring at Eddie and stammered out an ‘I do’ just in time for him to whisper the same.

Bill bristled at the next line, his eyes flickering to Richie, who nodded his approval and said, “You m-may, uh, kiss each other?”

“On the cheek!” Eddie squealed, but Richie used their locked hands to propel him forward, smacking their lips together with an unceremonious crash of saliva. Richie’s mouth moved quickly across his, with neither having the slightest idea what they were doing or what it meant, but were drawn further into the kiss by the sugary taste left from their Ring Pops.

Richie’s glasses drove up against Eddie’s face in the seconds that their kiss lasted, and when he moved away Eddie let a small smile break through his resolve at Richie’s crooked glasses and wet curls of messy black hair. Eddie wouldn’t realize it until much later in the day but that hot summer afternoon, and Richie’s cherry flavored kiss was a brisk line in the sand on his feelings, and the memory of it would linger in his mind every time the dark-haired boy passed by. He kissed me, he kissed me, his mind would scream with gleeful abandon. Now go tell him you like him.

“See? Just pretend,” Richie released Eddie’s hands and stuck the Ring Pop into his mouth, biting it clean off the plastic ring. He stuck his tongue out, it was still red from the artificial flavoring and Eddie could almost feel that cherry candy in his own mouth. He shuddered at the thought and hurried away from the other boy, terrified and amazed at him.

The patio door slid on its hinges, and a small mousy haired boy stepped out―George, Bill’s little brother.

“What's going on? Who got candy without me?” The boy commanded, looking hurt by the other’s failure to include him.

Bill rushed to his side, holding out what was left of his chocolate. “S-Sorry Georgie. We were just gonna ask i-i-if you wanted some.”

“Uh huh.” Georgie snatched the candy bar, then sought out the plastic bag that promised more treats.

“So what’re you gonna do now Richie, with your new husband and wife?” Mike asked. Stan was bent over his travel-sized birth encyclopedia, so lost in thought the boy was getting smudges of milk chocolate on the pages.

Once Richie went back to the umbrella he slung an arm around Beverly and Eddie’s shoulders and looked up at the sun with a weary grin.

“Take a nap.”

“See Eds? Married,” Richie sighed happily as he concluded his story.

“Rich, there’s no way that you kissed me in front of everyone at ten years old.”

“Would you like me to call Bev for clarification?” Richie said, lovingly resting his head against Eddie’s waist, smiling where the other man could not see―because for a minute Eddie did not flinch away.

Eddie eased Richie’s head away from him and slid off the bed, throwing open his luggage.

“I’d like for you to take back the past twenty minutes, because now we’re going to be late. Ask her tonight at our actual wedding rehearsal.”

Richie rolled over Eddie’s side of the bed and found his phone and glasses while trying to tug off the shirt he’d slept in. “Yeah, Bev? Remember that one time at Bill’s house when we got married?”

“You’re calling her, Rich?” Eddie disappeared into the bathroom so he didn’t have to witness the reason they were going to inevitably be late for dinner.

Richie stopped and listened, slipping into a pair of dress pants. He rolled his eyes and threw the phone onto the rumpled sheets with a childish whine.

“What did she say?” Eddie asked smugly, poking his head out of the door.

“She said, and I quote, ‘If you don’t show up in the next five minutes I am telling your parents you decided to elope at age forty.’”

Eddie grinned and straightened his shirt collar, exiting the bathroom to kiss Richie’s smooth cheek. At least he’d done one thing: shave.

He took Richie’s arm and they headed out the hotel door. “Let’s go then, Mr. Tozier.”

“That’s Tozier-Kaspbrak, according to you,” Richie grumbled.

“I said I was fine with Tozier.”

“Are you ‘fine’ with it? Just fine? ‘Fine’ is like, ‘I’m fine with my shitty low-end job.’ That sort of fine?”

“How about, ‘I’m more than fine with it for the rest of my life?’”

Richie chuckled. “Sounds good to me, Mr. Tozier. The wedding planner’s gonna give us hell, though.”

“We’ve been through worse.”

#richie tozier #richie tozier x eddie kaspbrak #reddie #it 2017 #it fanfiction #it fandom #reddie fanfic #reddie fic #gay richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #fanfic #gay fanfic #kid fic

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sushiandstarlight · 3 years

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“Scarf”: NaNoWriMo 30 Days of Prompts

Today’s Prompt

Read this story on AO3

Personal note: today I bring you tooth-rotting Christmas fluff. Also, I do not knit or crochet, though I have poked at both hobbies. Mostly, I take what little I know from the knitters and crocheters in my life.

“I've joined a knitting circle in town.” He had said it without preamble over dinner at their favorite restaurant.

“Knitting?” Crowley tried to recall what knitting looked like, “Something to do with string and big needles, right?

“Well, crochet actually. Right now, anyway. Apparently they go back and forth for new people. Crochet, they said, was easier to learn.”

“Crochet.” That, he assumed, also dealt with string and needles.

“Yes. I thought- I thought, you have your garden to muck about in... I should have something, too. Aside- aside from my books, of course. But, having no shop or customers-” the way Aziraphale said the word customers: it dripped, ever so, with disgust, “I wanted to find something to do with my hands, you see?”

“Sure, Angel. You crochet now, it's cool.”

And nothing more had been said about it that night. Or any of the following. On Thursday evenings Aziraphale would kiss his cheek and disappear for a few hours.

The house started filling, little by little, with bits of yarn. Squares at first, some parts of them loose or tangled, other parts stiff and tight. Tension, he said, he was learning tension. Crowley thought he knew plenty enough about tension, but didn't mention it.

He would come in from the garden once it was too dark to work (not that he couldn't see, but it was the human thing to do and they were living among humans) and find the angel in the living room, in his chair, lap full of yarn- the string was called yarn, he had learned- and tiny hooked needles. There was muttered counting and some amount of grumbled curses over “dropped stitches.”

Eventually they had a big pile of what he called pot holders in the kitchen. They were squares of all sorts of colors, Crowley supposed to go with the seasons. Or maybe Aziraphale got tired of one color and went to the next, hard to be sure. They were more uniform than what he had done before, perhaps he had learned about this “tension” he muttered about for weeks.

And then he became secretive. New projects stopped showing up around the cottage. Crowley would come in for the night and have the feeling that Aziraphale had hidden something swiftly right before he returned. Something about the near-manic way he would be staring at the book sprawled out on his thighs.

Their first Christmas after the events of almost-megeddon was fast approaching. He might not have guessed except the pot holders in the kitchen were red and green now, as opposed to fall colors. He wondered if he should get Aziraphale something for Christmas. He probably should.

“Don't come in here, Crowley, I'm on Christmas business!” Crowley stared at their bedroom door, now barred from entering it. He supposed that answered that.

“I'll be back, Angel, I'm headed to town.”

“Kisses!”

Crowley stared at the door for a further minute before shaking his head and heading out to the car. He returned some hours later with large bags from all the local craft stores. Who could have guessed there were so many kinds of yarn? What on earth were they all for? He had spent some time before he left, going around and touching all of the crochet projects he could find around the house, trying to guess the material. Or at least know it when he found it again at the store. But, that was an impossible method, he had found. Dumbfoundedly, he had stood in the yarn aisles- AISLES, plural- touching them one at a time.

“Whatever project you're getting them for, you should get the colors in one dye lot,” The overly-friendly employee of one store had said, “so they'll match.” Whatever that meant.

It wasn't so much that he bought out the stores, at that point. That would have taken a miracle to get home and would definitely have been noticed by his angel. But, he did settle on buying the softest of yarns. The ones that drifted through his fingers rather than dragging. Aziraphale enjoyed, nay deserved, soft things. He was soft and he had not had enough softness in his centuries.

“Oooh, what have you got there, my dear?” Crowley startled, clutching his packages to his chest, suddenly grateful that the stores had elected to give him unmarked bags. He was pretty sure they were all giggling about him, even now. Their smiles as they helped him and rung him up had been... conspiratorial. 'Happy Christmas, Mr. Crowley,' they'd smiled, 'I hope he likes them!' He wondered if they worked on commission.

“Nothing!” his voice hadn't squeaked, it really hadn't, “Christmas business, as you say. Nothing here to see.” He swept upstairs and hid the bags under the bed.

Christmas morning had dawned colder than expected, crisp even. He was happy enough to give the angel the gifts he had picked out, but he was even happier to stay right here, tucked snug and warm under the covers with him. But, fingers tickled along the tattoo on his face.

“Five more minutes,” he grumbled, not opening his eyes.

“You said that five minutes ago,” Aziraphale was smiling at him, he could hear it in his voice. Yeah, it was possible he had asked before, and it was possible he would ask again. He grumbled some more and slid further under the covers, wrapping his arms around the angel's waist.

Time passed, how much he couldn't say because he drifted. He felt fingers comb through his hair.

“Five more minutes,” his voice was muffled by the angel's bed clothes pressed against his face.

“Really, Crowley!” Aziraphale chuckled softly, Crowley enjoyed the bounce of his chest, squeezing him and nuzzling closer- the sound and feel of Aziraphale's happiness made him giddy. It also had the side effect of waking him up completely, at last.

“Happy Christmas, Angel,” he rolled on to his back and stretched, feeling the blankets fall down around his middle. It wasn't nearly as cold as he remembered it being... how ever many minutes ago, how ever many minutes he managed to bargain for.

“Happy Christmas, Crowley, you beautiful creature,” Aziraphale was draped over him and kissing him softly, a bit teasingly, his smile pressed to Crowley's lips. It was like drinking happiness, Crowley decided, this was like drinking Aziraphale's very joy. It made the already giddy part of him crow inside.

“Maybe,” Crowley snaked his arms back around Aziraphale's middle and tugged him down onto his chest, “maybe five more minutes.” He was smirking, himself, as he muttered against his soft lips. They pulled down into a frown. When he pulled back he saw it was mostly for show.

“I suppose you don't want your gift, then.”

“Got all I want, right here,” he squeezed him.

“Soppiness is not going to get you any more five minute reprieves.”

“It was worth a shot.”

“Hmm.” And then Aziraphale did his worst: get left the bed and took all his warm softness with him. Crowley groaned and pouted dramatically.

“Bastard.”

He heard chuckling fading as the angel padded down the stairs. He sat for a few moments more, hoping he would return, but then gave it up. He threw back the covers- extra messy so Aziraphale would make a fuss later- and stepped into his slippers. Slippers. He had slippers now. Who'd have thought? Grabbing his robe, he donned it and went downstairs.

The night before he had waiting for Aziraphale to fall asleep and then he had snuck down with his packages and piled them under the tree. Every skein was wrapped individually in shiny, red wrapping paper, tied with white ribbon. There were... a lot of little red packages. When he got to the bottom of the stairs, Aziraphale was in the sitting room, staring at them.

“Looks like St. Nick really delivered this year,” Crowley walked up behind him, hugging him and resting his chin on his shoulder to peer at the piles of packages, “You must've been a good boy.”

“Oh, Crowley, it's too much, isn't it?”

“Nah, could be half of them are fake. You won't know until you open them,” he was getting distracted by the line of Aziraphale's jaw and nuzzled his nose against it. Aziraphale's arms came up and rested over his, squeezing his hands.

“You're planning to spoil me, aren't you?”

“What? I got you nothing. This is all Santa's work. I might have to have a chat with him, he thinks he might win you from me with presents.”

“Pssh, really.”

“You should be spoiled,” he placed a soft, gently sucking kiss where his jaw met his neck and delighted at the shiver he felt, pressed as close as he was, in response, “I won't have it any other way. Sorry, you're gonna have to suffer it.”

“I suppose I'll survive it, somehow,” there was a beat of silence, “but I did not get you this many things.”

“It's not a competition. No tally's here. I'm sure I'll like whatever you give me, Angel. Just enjoy your presents, alright?” He let him go and went to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Something strong and earthy for him, something light and slightly floral for Aziraphale. When he returned with tea, there were three more packages under the tree: these wrapped in silvery tissue paper with black ribbon.

“Oh, did St. Nick make another stop by? Find something at the bottom of the bad did he? Bad form, should be more organized. He would be hell to live with, you know?” Crowley sat their tea on the coffee table and then sprawled on the sofa.

“I can feel the mussed bedsheets from here, you fiend. You're hell to live with.” The statement held absolutely no fire.

“Just so,” Crowley propped his slippered feet on the coffee table, to be a further annoyance, “Go on and open them.”

“All of them?”

“Sure, why not?”

“We could take turns?”

“Oh, go on, I want to watch you.”

Aziraphale dithered another moment before sitting on the ottoman beside the tree. He picked up the first one, pulling off the ribbon and finding the tape to pull it off gently. Crowley watched in growing madness as he carefully removed the paper, folding it and setting it aside.

“It's yarn!” and then his fingers dug into the skein, “Oh, it's angora yarn!”

“Best for you, Angel,” Crowley took a sip of his tea.

“Tell me they aren't all angora.” Aziraphale was staring, wide-eyed at the packages.

“Well, not all of them. There's some different wool blends. Some of it's alpaca? I think. And a few are made from bamboo. Amazing, humans, eh? I never would have looked at a bamboo plant and thought yarn. But, oh Angel, it's so soft. You had to have it.” Crowley watched him over the rim of his mug as he opened them all one by one, cooing over the softness and the variety of colors. And stopping to fold every. Single. Piece. Of. Paper. He couldn't decide if it was endearing or crazy. When he had them all unwrapped he stacked them gently under the tree. Then he grabbed the silver packages and strode over to the sofa. He sat them down next to Crowley and picked up his own mug, pausing to allow Crowley to snap it warm.

“Perfect,” he smiled over the rim, tucking his feet up under him and angling himself towards the demon, “your turn, love.”

Crowley put his mug down and picked up the first package. It crinkled under his fingers. Something soft. He looked over at the neat pile of wrapping paper Aziraphale had left behind and then back over at the angel himself. Then in a flurry of movements, he had the paper flying everywhere.

“You're such a child!” But Aziraphale was laughing, batting at the paper that drifted his way.

“Oh, but it's...” he picked up the pile of yarn and let it unspool over his knees, “Angel this is beautiful!” He lifted it, almost against his will, and rubbed it against his cheek. The scarf, black on one side and red on the other was buttery smooth against his skin. He wrapped it around his neck a couple times and then let the rest hang over his chest. Only now could he see that the ends were tasseled in the same colors, alternating. At the ends, just above the tassels were designs. On one side they matched his tattoo. On the other was a pair of wings. It would depend on if he was showing the red or black side, which one would show. He stared at the designs, a lump forming in his throat.

“You really like it? I mean, I'm still learning, but I thought it was okay.”

“Okay,” the word came out strangled and a moment later he was climbing over the sofa cushions and into Aziraphale's lap, “I love it, really.” And he leaned in and kissed him soundly, slipping his fingers into the hair at his name. Aziraphale kissed him back, holding him close for a moment. Then he pushed against him, smiling against his lips again.

“There are two more, you know? Do I get a kiss like that for every one of them? I might have tried to make you some more,” his eyes were twinkling with mirth and happiness and it made something in Crowley's chest ache with joy. He wondered if a demon could be discorporated from feeling this good. Surely, they weren't built to contain it.

“I could have the kisses now and the presents later,” Crowley peered at him through his lashes, nuzzling his chin into the scarf around his neck.

“Oh, do open them.”

“You don't want my kisses,” he pulled his face into a pout.

“Now, you know that's not true!” He was starting to look honestly worked up.

“Alright, let's see what's in package number two,” he pulled the ribbon off and put it atop the angel's curly hair and then he destroyed the paper in the same fashion as before so it fell like confetti over both of them. It was matching gloves in the same black yarn with his sigil in red on the backs. He reached for the final package, shredding it mercilessly, and found a black beanie with his sigil on the front. It was a whole set, just for him. He reached up and pulled the hat down on the angel's head, sitting back and smirking at him, “oh, I like that look, I do.”

“The mark of the beast, for sure.”

“I do say,” he tugged it down until it covered his eyebrows and nodded, his work complete.

“But you like them?” The angel's voice was small, quiet.

“I love them. I love that you made them for me. They're perfect. I'll wear them until they fall apart and when I do,” he rubbed his cheek against the silky yarn, “I'll think of you, even when I'm away.”

Aziraphale wiggled happily, grasping the ends of the scarf in either hand. Crowley cocked his head to the side in question.

“I'll have those kisses now!” and with a tug, he pulled Crowley to him by the scarf and took them.

Previous Prompt Ficlets:

Family / Hearth / Frosty / Ribbons / Wrapping / Cardinal / Coal / Unwrap / Blustery

#aziraphale x crowley #crowley x arizaphale #good omens #good omens fic #ineffable husbands #star light-reads #30 days of prompts #nanowrimo #nanowrimo 2020 #also in case i haven't made it clear:#you are more than welcome to reblog these ficlets!

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iwriterobots · 3 years

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Claw-Shaped Scars

Alice has a claw-shaped scar on her right thigh. I’ve seen it, even traced my hand along its rough edges. The skin is pulled tight around the three, raised marks on her leg where something once raked across her flesh. The muscle underneath is taught and twisted, hardened like her soul. I knew it was there, of course—we all did. Even if she didn’t show it.

“It’s from the beast.” She says, sliding to the edge of the bed beside me and yanking on her worn-out jeans.

“I’m sorry, that must have been very painful.”

Alice just looks at me, expression steadfast and knowing. I’ve seen this face before, of course—her brow unwavering but kind, eyes soft but intense. It is a face she wears often. With it comes begrudging patience, for weathering a storm of recovery, for repeating the same fake answers again and again. But I know how her scars still ache, how she must stretch them against the pain shooting through her leg and the guilt shooting through her mind. I know how Alice pushes herself, how she treats that pain like an old friend, how she greets it with gritted teeth each step of the way.

She heaves herself to her feet with a grunt, fetches her cane from where it rests against the night stand, and extends a hand to me. Together, we leave the small cabin at the top of the hill and head down the path towards the beach below.

Alice works mostly freelance these days. That’s what she tells people, anyway, though I still don’t know what kind of work that entails. I picture her cutting down trees in some ratty, old overalls, hauling the logs over her shoulder to a rustic timber mill in the middle of the woods. Something strong like that. It’s just how Alice has always been. Even before the beast, before the scars, she was determined to be known as the strongest friend. Maybe one day she’ll realize that she always has been.

We don’t tell the story that often nowadays, but when we do, we make sure to tell it right. You see, when the beast came hunting for Alice in our neck of the woods, I prayed for him. Poor bastard didn’t know the kind of hell he was in for, picking a fight like Alice. Sure, he could bite, but Alice could thrash just as hard. Sure, he could roar, but Alice’s snarl was twice as piercing. Sure, he had those gnarled, raking claws of his, but for each slash into her leg, Alice had three of us in her corner, ready to patch her up and hand her a baseball bat or metal chair. The beast was never going to win.

Alice tells it differently, of course.

“I hit him too, you know.” She tells us each year. “And as I wailed on him, he just kept howling at me, begging me to stop. He was spitting blood up at me, right into my eyes. Now I just see red.”

We hold her. And to each anxious gasp, we respond with reassurance—truth. A kiss that says, “It’s over now.” A squeeze of the hand that says, “We’re still here for you.” A gentle arm draped about the shoulders that says, “You are stronger than these scars.”

Alice winces as we make our way towards the others who are waiting for us on the beach. She stops after each big step, turning back to me with a gentle smile and offering a hand to help me down. I smile back at her. No, the beast could never truly stop you, I think to myself.

I can hear Owen laughing as we get closer, his voice warmer than the fire pit and ten times more inviting than the sweet, wafting scent of smores. As we take our first steps into the cool, gritty sand, he calls out to us with a grin.

“What took you two so long?”

“Alice didn’t want to put her pants back on,” I tease, and he guffaws, throwing his head back with laughter.

Owen’s neck is an intricate lattice of the cracks and fractures left behind by dancing flames. They promised to choke him, once. Now the white-hot whispers of their empty threats weave their way along his beautiful, pock-marked skin. But those scars will never outshine that smile.

I’ve known Owen since I was a kid. He ran around in my backyard so many nights and spent so many family dinners with us, my mom likes to say that she raised him too. But I know that he raised himself, really. We all do. I can see it in the faces he makes as he listens to someone talk, hear it in the way he laughs at our jokes, encouraging us to be ourselves.

Owen was a loud, talkative kid before high school. He learned loud, he played louder, and he hurt loudest of all. But I never minded. I remember our teachers in middle school would berate him for blurting out answers. They never cared that he was right, that he was brilliant. None of the other kids in our classes wanted to listen to him either. They knew a black sheep when they saw one. But I’ve always liked it when he dyes his hair darker.

Through the years, they built a pyre in his soul, stacked logs against his heart, struck a match on his spark of creativity, and then had the gall to ask him for a light, for his warmth. And when the smoke clawed as his throat, when his words smoldered in his mouth and the oxygen burnt up in his lungs, Owen got quiet.

We’ve spent the last few years putting out the fire. I still try to turn on the sprinkler system when we have some alone time, just to make sure it works. It had been rusted shut for so many years, backlogged with the tears that had evaporated in the heat of a blaze that screamed, “shut up.”

As we approach the campfire, Owen drapes a blanket across my shoulders and takes my hand, ushering Alice and I in to sit with the others before continuing with the story he had just been telling. He still coughs against the few lingering wisps of smoke that haunt his lungs, but they can’t choke him anymore. He shouts the funny parts of his tale and laughs along with us. It’s a loud, hearty laugh, the kind that makes you shake with your whole body until you’re wiping your eyes and holding your gut. And that’s just what we do. It’s the kind of laugh that makes you love him. And that’s just what we do.

When only embers remain, and the stars hum along to the gentle melody of the waves caressing the shore, I drape blankets and give good-night kisses on the forehead. The others sleep peacefully on the beach behind me, hearts full and tired as I walk through the sand to the old, wooden platform that protrudes out into the waves. Rippling blackness extends out before me, moon reflected in its stillness. I lie there at the edge of the dock, feet kissed by the lapping water below, as I trace a familiar face in the stars overhead.

I have a nail-shaped scar in the palm of my right hand where I once fought to hold onto you. Fought harder than I ever have. Harder than I will ever be able to again. Tears begin to blur the twinkling lights above me.

It didn’t matter in the end, of course.

I still lost my grip.

I trace the hardened indents with the fingers of my other hand as I lie there. I’ve grown used to feeling the aches of these scars softened by the love of another, cradled in the tender grip of a hand in mine. I wonder if the others can feel the desperation with which I grasp their love, too afraid of losing my grip again. I wonder if they can see themselves in every shared memory of you.

I still haven’t let go of you, have I?

#my writing #ptsd #sorry in advance #poetry #long #long reads #long post

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