#just to see what their personalities under less strenuous circumstances would be like | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

butchladymaria · 1 year

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Hello! I saw that you really like Adeline! 🐟🐟🐟 Jellyfish headcanon is adorable! Why do you think that she chose to join Blood Saints and Patients? Do you think this was really her choices?

HIIIIIII sorry for the wait!i’ve been chipping away at this one in my drafts forever but tysm for the ask!!!

jelly adeline’s concept was based on a mix of the fishing hamlet residents and the fact that some of the patients attack you with tentacle-like appendages out of their heads. i had seen a lot of speculation as to what was under the bags on the patient heads, but none of the theories i’d seen quite seemed to incorporate their aquatic elements. i’m so glad you like her!

i think before the church, adeline was a vibrant, perseverant, and intelligent soul with a deeply curious mind. i talked about this a little bit before, but my personal headcanon is that adeline grew up on a farm, the eldest of several siblings. when the family fell on hard times financially, they moved to the city which would eventually become the cathedral ward. adeline is able to help support her family by becoming a nun. in other words, she was used to handling a lot of responsibility. i also think this is around when she met and befriended maria, and in time they’d become extremely close. she easily builds a community among her fellow sisters, even in the dire circumstances which would eventually devolve into the beast plague, thanks to her unbreakable spirit and compassion for others. adeline is also incredibly clever — she developed an expertise in folk medicine growing up in a rural area with few doctors, and this coupled with her ability to work under pressure saved lives. finally, she was very well-respected by her peers, making adeline an obvious choice for sainthood. becoming a blood saint was a decision she made on account of her own strengths and abilities, and one she remained proud of even at the end of it all.

however, her time as a nun also sows the seeds for her to self-doubt and self-sacrificing tendencies. i’d liken it to the old saying about the frog in boiling water. if you drop a frog in boiling water, it will just hop out. however, if you put it in and slowly heat the water, the frog will boil to death because it grows slowly accustomed to worse and worse conditions. serving as a nun primed adeline to accept that she was only worth what she could sacrifice for others. i also think this is why maria disapproved of her sainthood. while she wasn’t aware of the church’s true face, maria could still see how it was weighing on the mind of her dear companion, and she didn’t want it to get worse for her. however, as the hunts would get longer and longer, she had less and less time to witness how bad it truly became. i also don’t think adeline ever truly confided in maria how terrible her treatment would become — she was conditioned to believe it was normal, that she deserved it. adeline ultimately chose to become a saint because she believed it was for the greater good — that despite the sacrifices she’d have to make, they would all be worthwhile. she still held unwavering faith in the church’s earnest intentions. this, of course, would prove to be a mistake.

her time as a saint only made things worse. her strenuous responsibilities isolated her even further from her friends and family outside the church, trapping her in an echo chamber. where once she was free spirited and curious, the stress of treating so many people combined with the intensifying abuse of the church made her subservient and broke her self worth. canonically, i would argue the church operates as a cult — with all the manipulation and abuse that entails.

i think what pushed adeline to become a patient of the research hall was likely the aftermath of the fishing hamlet. adeline hears the church is trumpeting a mysterious fantastical discovery — out of the eyes of the public, of course — but maria returns utterly broken. i personally don’t think maria ever told adeline the truth of what happened that night because of how much she abhorred herself over it. but from adeline’s perspective, maria had suddenly become detached and haunted for reasons adeline didn’t understand, and she was helpless to assuage her pain. what good is she if she cannot soothe the suffering of the people she loves most? even after everything she’s sacrificed of herself, it still wasn’t enough. after being isolated from her connections outside the church, she has no one to talk to who doesn’t reinforce church doctrine (whether consciously or not). maria was the only one left who would challenge those ideas in a meaningful way, both as an outsider to yharnam and an affiliate of the church rather than a servant of it. adeline feels helpless — and in her mind, if she’s helpless she’s useless, and if she’s useless she’s worthless. she feels she cannot confide in anyone or else they will see her as weak or unworthy of sainthood. i wonder if maria, in her despondence, ever told adeline that she felt she deserved the misery she was in, and if perhaps adeline saw herself reflected in that sentiment. after the church has ground her sense of self to dust, all of these emotions were the perfect and terrible catalyst which pushed her to volunteer as a patient.

ultimately, i do not think she chose to become a patient of her own free will, but i also don’t think she was physically coerced into it either. rather, it was an insidious process of psychological abuse which broke her powerful spirit in the end.

#tysm for the ask!!!! 💕💕💕#abuse cw #cult cw #i mean its bloodborne ofc but this post talks about manipulation tactics and shit so i feel it warrants it #saint adeline #percy headcanons :)#bloodborne #im insane over her #adeline has so much potential #and she and marias relationship is so goddamn Compelling to me bc of how the church just shatters it with hammers #in my hcs this process on adelines part is paralleled by how maria also is dehumanized etc etc but thats a post for another day #also in case it wasnt clear adeline being manipulated and abused is NOT her fault.#i cpuld probably say more but this is long enough already LMAO #anon #ask #long post #?#i guess lol

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spicyliumang · 9 months

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Hii! ♥ 8,9, 19 and 24 for the edgy oc ask game? :3

HI TRIXI!! ⸜(*ˊᗜˋ*)⸝ꕤ*.ﾟ

8. Would your OC ostensibly be able to get away with murder?

Enya on her own? Definitely not 😭 the guilt would eat her alive SDLALSDFS but if she had an accomplice...with a certain experience of that expertise...maybe🤔 😭

9. Do you have a specific lyric or quote that you associate with your OC?

If there's any song that literally screams Enya its

Caitlyn Scarlett - Happy When (Miko Waye Remix)😭 there are a few segments from it that rly suits her 😩

[Verse 1]

Try to keep you, try to wrap you up and set the feelin' For when I really start to need you, you don't belong to anybody So I just wait, try to give you time to want the same things Say you don't believe in soulmates, I know it's real 'cause I feel the hole in me-e-e

[chorus]

I'm just a piece of a two-part puzzle Nothin on my own, only happy when I'm lovin' someone Happy when I'm lovin' someone I'm drinking singles but I see double Lonely but I know I'll be happy when I'm lovin' someone Happy when I'm lovin' someone

19. How does your OC behave when enraged?

Enya normally has really bad outbursts and she tends to have a huge meltdown afterward, the worst was finding out Tendo killed her bio parents 😭💔, In that case, she had to literally be pulled off of him after he got knocked because she was so mad she would have killed him with no hesitation😣 in the past though Sometimes it would consist of throwing small things and screaming in a pillow, but that's when she was much younger and had to live with her stepmom 😭😅 24. What is an alternative life path your OC might have gone down? How different would their life be if they'd made those decisions?

Honestly, I do think about that a lot 😭 In Y7 if her parents lived and time went on as usual, she possibly would have encountered the gang in Kamurocho years later, but chances are she would have had an office job or possibly married to a salaryman or even inherited her family's business.. there's no telling how her encounter with the gang would be or even if she'd really be close to them, but I like to think maybe fate would bring them together 😭 and in terms of her being with Zhao, it would really depend, but I rly love the soulmate theory you have and a huge fan of it too😭💙 so it would really depend on whether or not she's married by the time she encounters Zhao or even the state of it (since let's face it, Enya's has a bad boy streak and knows how to pick em 😭) Not to say the guy would be Shoji 2.0... but Enya likes excitement despite her meek personality, so she would always try to seek out someone spontaneous and full of life, an office worker she'd be complacent at first... not to say she has a wandering eye, but chances are she'd break it off if it would be too mundane, or at least if she doesn't feel that... spark

Ishin!Enya is a different story 😭

IF nothing happened to Todo that day or even if she managed to help him just in time for him to be able to recover, with no question she wouldn't leave his side. She would probably nag him if he did anything too strenuous while his wounds are trying to heal because we know he wouldn't sit still for the life of him 😭 he's probably attempting to brush it off and go back to fulfilling his duty, but Enya would care and tend to him once he's better. Ideally, I like the idea of them getting married, but at the same time, I feel them maybe cohabiting for a while would be great at first. Enya knows better than to beg Todo to settle down so she'd be willing to go anywhere he does, as long as he's safe 🥺 this is the good ending at least

THOUGH

IF she never encountered Todo at all and remained living with Shoji, unfortunately, it would be far worse. She'd still have to live under the same circumstances, but soon would officially be bonded to him legally. So there are no more excuses why she can't sleep with him much less avoid him at all. She would eventually bear his children. Even if she didn't want to be a mother she would still care and treat them well, look after them, and teach them the best she could. She would protect them any way she could and would fight back if need be. Eventually, it does become too much and Enya runs away with her children. Maybe she'd have 2 or 3? And she'd raise them alone. I'd like to think she'd be supportive of those in the city who would allow it since she still has a terrible rep because of her dad and naturally the children have the same fate because of Enya "breaking her sacred marriage" with Shoji or something dumb like that, which she would raise them to have thick skin and encourage them. They'd be raised well and would go very far because of that

IF the same fate happens to Todo no matter what and Enya doesn't pass from broken heart syndrome, she'd work at Teredaya as usual. Otose would keep her company and help her with her duties at the inn. On a mundane day though Shoji would reappear and cause a real scene Eventually finding his way to Enya back even against her will because of the arranged marriage. Unfortunately, even poor Otose can't save her. Enya would also find out Shoji was actually in cahoots with Takeda unbeknownst to her and he would not hold back giving every detail of Todo's suffering pretty much tormenting her every way he could. He would make it even harder for her to run off again, letting everyone know to "keep an eye on her" and anyone trying to get too friendly risks their lives in the process, which most people wouldn't do. Enya would still have to bear his children in the end and live under his means. She'd be miserable but would try to put on a brave face for them trying to be a good mom. In order to keep herself grounded, she would plant flowers, much like the ones in her hair and the ones on Todo's kimono. It would be a comfort since her love was snatched away. And it's the only covert way where Shoji won't attempt to destroy or ruin anything of sentimental value, especially if it is something that reminded her of Todo. Since she wasn't able to get Todo's kimono from Teredaya successfully from Otose, she held on to it. hoping one day Enya will be able to break free. That day wouldn't come. For a long time, so it was kept in storage hidden away.

#New lore unlocked :D #hashtag bad ending :'D #Enya's life is a rollercoaster 😭#enya posting

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obae-me · 4 years

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Hi! It said requests were open so here is one. So pretty much how the brothers would react to an MC who says "I love you" after they had helped them with something. Thats something I do regularly, like someone helps them and they respond with "Oh my gosh I love you, thank you so much!" Cause. Affection. Idk, i just found the idea to be cute.

This is such a cute idea! I hope I pulled it off okay, for some reason Belphie’s is a bit angsty because I like pain I guess, but most of it is fluff! Thank you for your suggestion! 💜

Lucifer

He openly admitted it caught him off guard at first. What he will never admit is how harshly the air escaped from his lungs. Or how quickly his mind went blank at the words.

He had simply brought MC some tea, noticing how hard they had been studying. Working day and night to try to catch up and understand topics demons themselves had spent decades learning. He was proud of them for working so hard. He settled the tea down by them, watching them beam with appreciation.

“Is that for me?”

Their question elicited an amused hum from him. “Is there anyone else in here?”

They wrapped their fingers around it excitedly, entirely grateful. “Ugh, thank you, I love you, I needed this.”

He had been lucky he settled the teacup down before they spoke. Had it remained in his hands, he most assuredly would’ve dropped it, or spilt the contents at the very least. He was not prepared at all. They hadn’t been down here nearly long enough to fall in love with him, right? Was he that alluring? He must’ve done something wrong, he was sure he had been focused solely on being intimidating. He didn’t remember doing anything in particular to elicit such a response. He was flattered, but...maybe--surely-- he had heard incorrectly.

“You…” He blinked a few times as he shoved his emotions into the back of his mind, the silent screaming in his head muffled by his usual calm exterior. “..love me?”

MC covered their mouth with their hands, recognizing his confusion no matter how hard he tried to hide it. “No, no!”

Well now he was a bit irritated, and secretly disappointed even. Were they playing a joke on him?

They stammered and turned more in their seat to look at him. “What I mean is, I just kinda use the term ‘I love you’ as a general term, not an…” They blushed, “..intimate one. I say it all the time to people, I’m really sorry for confusing you. I’ll try not to say it as casually.”

It was a bit unusual to hear something like that thrown around so often, it reminded him of his days in the Celestial Realm, love thrown around at the drop of a hat. The Devildom was a lot less...affectionate. He shook his head, any sign of his surprise now completely gone from view. “Don’t change a harmless habit like that for me, I just wasn’t expecting it. I’ll know now for the future.”

It takes him quite a while to get used to it, taking every ounce of concentration not to blush whenever MC says that they love him. Once he does get used to it, he’s fond of it and may or may not continually go out of his way to perform some simple gesture to encourage them to say it to him more often. It takes even longer after that for him to finally respond with “I love you too” making them stop dead in their tracks, heart fluttering, mouth ajar, much like he did that first day when he brought them a simple cup of tea. He relished the look on their face.

How such a human stirred up these feelings within him is beyond his understanding.

Mammon

He was an open mess when MC first expressed it to him. He’d done what? Just find a pretty rock on the ground? It was shiny and smooth, surely worth a fortune, but when he went to see how much it was worth, it was declared utterly worthless. So he gave it to MC--but only because it was useless okay?! It’s not like he likes MC or anything, that’s not what this is about. Obviously.

He handed it over, acting casual, like it was nothing. Their eyes lit up at it, watching it glint mesmerizing colors in the moonlight, reacting like it might as well have been a diamond. “Whaaat, it’s so cool, I love you, thank you!”

“Don’t say I never do anything for-” It had taken a few seconds to process, but once he realized the words that had come out of their mouth, he went frozen. Rigid. His other brothers might’ve called it a miracle. His jaw was open, his glasses had somehow slipped to the end of his nose, threatening to fall off. He didn’t even blink.

“I’m sorry, I guess demons aren’t quite used to that huh? I use it as a friendly term, I used to say it to my friends all the time back home.”

He was still as stone for a good long time, gradually building up the concern in MC’s chest the more he was reactionless. Had they broken him? Once he finally gathered his one erratic brain cell in order, it was like someone hit a sudden unpause. He quickly puffed out his chest with both his hands on his hips. The explanation they gave him went in through one ear and out the other, as he was still focused on the ‘I love you’.

“Don’t freak me out like that, human, but of- of course if you were to love someone, it’d be me, eh? I don’t blame you, it would be hard to resist the Great Mammon.”

He’ll get a big head about it, strutting around, bragging to anyone who would listen--not that he gave them a say on the matter--that MC expressed they loved him. Doesn’t matter if there were romantic intentions or not, MC loved him, and he wouldn’t let it go. He’ll ignore the fact that MC will say that to most anyone.

“Yeah, well, when they say that about me, it’s different!” Or he’ll put on an act. “Yeah? Not like I care about some dumb human!”

The more he takes time to know MC, the more possessive he acts, and he gets a little bent out of shape anytime MC says ‘I love you’ so casually to anyone other than him. Mostly because he’s greedy for it, he wants those words to be his and his alone. He wants MC to be his...and his alone.

“Oi, MC, you can’t just go saying that to anyone...It’s our thing...you know?” He’ll get endlessly teased about it by everyone in the household, but no matter how much he gets pestered about it, he still wants to hear MC say it.

Only if things get romantic between them, will he be vulnerable with MC. Whenever they’re alone, he’ll get in close, melting against MC’s touch. With MC he can feel these strange and addicting feelings. With his hidden insecurities coming to light, he’ll ask MC the same question every night. “You love me, right? Like...love love me?...I...love love you too.”

Levi

MC had been convinced they gave the poor boy an actual heart attack. Although, to be perfectly fair, almost anything MC does puts Levi in a tizzy. It’s not their fault, he’s just sensitive.

They had been playing games together, nothing too unusual. Together, MC and Levi, the Best Friend Duo, battled an intense match against other real players. It had been close, but with both of their talents combined (admittedly Levi doing a lot of impressive carrying) they managed to strike victorious.

MC felt a rush, their head tingling a bit. They had been on the edge of their seat the whole time, positively exhilarated when they won. “Whoo! That was all thanks to you, Levi! I love you!”

First, MC heard the controller clatter out of his hands. They turned to look at him, his face went completely red, his eyes flicking back and forth out of control, not focusing on anything in particular. He had a hand clutching over his chest. Then to add on top of that, he completely collapsed.

“Levi!” MC’s shout was loud enough to bring some of his other brothers to check the commotion. After a short examination, they declared that Levi was fine, just dazed and lightheaded, although the color in his face refused to go away for quite some time.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you, I meant it in a friendly way.”

He’ll end up locking himself in his room for days on end after the event, trying to wrap his head around how ‘I love you’ and ‘friendly’ could ever be even remotely the same. That’s not how it’s supposed to go! It’s supposed to be like...like in fiction where both of the love interests are alone, finally having the chance to meet up under a pretty sky, possibly under strenuous circumstances beyond their control, inevitably forcing them to admit their feelings!

He’ll get over it, he always does, but when he comes back he finds out MC now deliberately avoids saying ‘I love you’ to him. They meant it for his own safety, truly, but his Envy is now rubbing away at his normal shy personality.

It'll get to the point where he can’t hold back anymore. “How come you tell everyone else you love them but me!”

“Because last time...you collapsed, and then went MIA for almost a week! I didn’t want to hurt you anymore. Is this not what you wanted?”

He ends up using his arm to cover his burning face. “I...I...I...I…” After several more consecutive ‘I’s, Levi finally tells MC that he didn’t want to be treated differently, he wanted MC to tell him that they loved him too. “Because I...lo..lo...lov...I appreciate you, MC!”

MC will chuckle a little, giving him one of his favorite headpats. “I love you too, Levi.” He doesn’t collapse this time, but feels his knees get a little weak. He refuses to remove his arm from his face because now there are fresh tears flooding from his eyes that he doesn’t want MC to see. He loves them too, so much his physical body can’t handle it. Even if he doesn’t have the courage yet to say it, he’ll tell them one day.

Satan

He’s quite angry with himself for how he reacted, which isn’t a huge surprise. He does wish he would’ve handled it better, but he had no idea those three words would be sprung on him so suddenly.

He’s usually quite down to earth, but not even the many romance novels he’s read--and if you tell anyone that he reads gushy romance novels, he will kill you--had prepared him for this. Where was the buildup, the slow rising passion before the eventual confession? Despite occasional temper tantrums and pranking tendencies, he’s truly an old soul. He’s a ‘my dearest, shall we take a stroll, and perhaps, should our shoulders brush, would you permit me a show of boldness, of passion, I dream for the day our fingers intertwine’ kinda guy. So MC’s ‘I love you’ was many chapters early for him.

He’d crossed paths with MC near the front door to the House of Lamentation. MC had just gotten back from RAD, being kept by Diavolo himself. Every one and a while, after classes, Diavolo personally checks up on them to discuss the program. Meanwhile, the demon of wrath was just on his way out, a full stack of books in his arms.

“Hey, Satan, where’re you off to?” MC attempted to catch his gaze behind the many tomes stacked against his chest.

“Ah, off to return these books back to the Library.” Some hair fell before his face, but with the absence of free hands, he utilized a puff of air from his mouth to blow the strands away.

“I see, be safe then, love you!”

The words caught him off guard, and with his focus distracted, his foot caught against an unfortunate crack in the pathway. He tumbled, the books in his arms scattering themselves all over the front yard. MC turned and attempted to help, but with Satan’s panicked scramble, he ended up smacking his head against MC’s.

“My-uh-apologies-I-” He stuttered while he frantically tried picking up the books, only to have some continue to slip from his arms.

“Here, use my bag,” MC opened the backpack that had been around their shoulders. It was already full of some textbooks and assignments, but it was enough to lessen some of the struggle. He gave them a small thank you as he slung the bag over his shoulder, the remaining stragglers tucked under his arm. He waited till MC went back into the house, and then he angrily tore the front gate off its hinges. He looked like such an idiot just now.

He knows MC means not much of it other than general affection, once he thinks about it. Alongside Lucifer, anytime MC now says it, he’ll act unaffected by it. The truth is, the never ending rage burning beside him magically subsides anytime those words fall from their lips.

If he works softly and intelligently enough, perhaps he’ll have forged a tight enough bond where MC can say it for real, and the fire in his soul can find some peace.

Asmo

Honestly, despite his over dramatizations and flamboyant nature, he’s the least affected out of all the brothers. Trust him, he’s had plenty of demons try to crawl their way back to him after a night of fun, insisting that they’re in love with him. So, he’s heard it a lot, and it’s not his favorite. That being said, he discovered that MC is probably the only one he’ll tolerate the dreaded L word with.

He’d sat there, working on MC’s nails, giving them one of his—as he calls it—Asmo-tastic manicures. MC appreciates the pampering, even if Asmo uses it mostly as an excuse to hold hands and get close to the human.

When Asmo was complete, MC looked down at their newly soft hands with beautifully decorated nails, feeling a bit closer to the demons now that they had matching manicures. “It’s beautiful, Asmo, I love you, thanks!”

His chest did flutter a bit, and he let out a stream of giddy giggles as he pressed MC into him for a hug. “MC, you’re so cute, I can’t take it!”

He had sworn to himself that he wouldn’t use the words ‘I love you’ ever, no matter what, but if MC was using it so casually, why can’t he, it didn’t mean much of anything right? He quickly turns a 180 on the idea, and says it as often to MC as he can.

“Bye, MC, love you, dear! You’re wearing the outfit I gave you? I love you!” But his new form of affection is now not just centered towards the human, it’s now directed towards his brothers as well. No one is safe. “You’re giving me this, Lucifer? I love you! Beel, a snack for me? I love you!”

He’s such a hype man, and the affection spreading throughout the House of Lamentation by his and MC’s hand is infectious. Even if they don’t mean to, simply Asmo’s added influence has the brothers saying ‘I love you’ to each other more often, which has led to plenty of entertaining moments. Mammon said it once to Lucifer on accident, which admittedly filled the eldest with a bit of pride, especially at seeing Mammon’s mortified face. Beel and Belphie have no problem saying it between themselves, although it leaves them softer than they had been in a while. But perhaps the most shocking of them all was when Lucifer sleepily mumbled it to Satan, who then parroted it back to him without thinking. Both were a bit flustered, but Satan was so angry about it he wanted to tear both Lucifer’s and his own tongue out. The two refuse to talk about it, but they were both a little softer to each other that week.

But why are we talking about the others? This should be all about Asmo! You know how when someone continually says something out of irony after a while they end up speaking it unironically? That’s what was happening to Asmo, much to his confusion and unfortunately his fear. He had never...loved someone before, not in a romantic way, it was too much commitment, it was too much...emotion. But the more he continued telling MC he loved them...the more he started to believe it. The more he noticed the little things about them that he couldn’t get enough of. So one day, he stopped saying ‘I love you’ altogether.

MC met with him in private, concerned over his new out of character action. “Asmo? What’s wrong, I noticed you’ve been...distant, which isn’t like you.”

Of course they would notice, they always did. “Oh...MC...I…” For once, he was actually shy, covering up his own beautiful face to hide, an incomprehensible action. He could barely speak, he was so...scared? “MC I think...I...I think I love you.”

Beel

He was second place in the ‘staying calm’ category when MC said it. He’s a family man, loving those around him is in his nature. So hearing MC say those words, he merely took it as a family thing, and he was all too happy to bring MC into the family.

He noticed MC had been looking just a bit run down, and so, he shared a single snack with them. They practically glowed, looking up at him with a heart-melting smile. “Thanks Beel, I love you, thank you!”

Suddenly the food he was eating tasted ten times better, and he had been fully convinced for a while that it was some magic spell MC put on him. He almost ends up crying. Honestly, it’s been such a long time since he’s heard words like those. He didn’t realize how starved he was for affection. He pulls them into a tight hug that lasts for several minutes. He let them go eventually, but only because he needed hands to eat. He continued to scarf down the mouth-watering food, although the ache in his stomach wasn’t as pronounced as it had been.

He ends up giving MC a little snack anytime they say ‘I love you’, because he finds them adorable, and his way of reciprocating affection is with food. He loves MC immensely, so it’s only natural he shares his favorite things with them. Only, he was unaware that he was more or less training MC and himself by doing this. In fact, it was unbeknownst to everyone save Satan, who is very aware of what Pavlov’s Theory is. Satan doesn’t say anything though, he wants to see how this plays out.

The more MC says ‘I love you’ the more they get rewarded by Beel, and the demon has now conditioned himself by associating food with MC’s tenderness and endearment. MC steadily increases the time they spend with the demon of gluttony, almost stuck to his side as often as Belphie. MC finds they can’t help but smother him with love and affection, which Beel can’t get enough of since gluttony is his sin. And Beel discovered that he always has some sort of treat on hand that he refuses to touch because it’s MC’s.

The day MC finally caught on was the day Satan finally intervened. He himself spent some private time with MC, and, much like Beel had for a while now, he gave MC an unsolicited treat.

They hardly looked at him as they instinctively stated, “I love you!” Then ended up pausing for a long time. Satan teased them mercilessly before he explained, and MC felt their entire body grow hot with embarrassment. However, they took this opportunity to do something for Beel in return. They prepared a big meal for him, texting him to bring him down into the dining room, just for the two of them. His eyes grew wide at the sight of the banquet, but for once, his first instinct wasn’t to eat. He wrapped MC tightly in his arms, tears almost streaming down his face. MC’s presence seemed to satiate him almost as well as a twelve course meal.

“I love you, MC! I love you so much!”

Belphie

As shocking as it is, Belphie reacted the most severely. Which if you actually take the time to think about it, probably isn’t that surprising at the end of the day. It was the last thing he expected to hear, especially after everything that happened.

All he had done was run into MC in the hall. Lucifer had called Light’s Out and anyone who didn’t want to be punished would be heading straight to bed. Since he sleeps all day, he was fairly awake at this hour, not to mention recently he had felt annoyingly restless. Finally free to roam the house like he wished left him wandering and wanting. There was still something he needed, but he wasn’t sure what. MC stepped past him to get to their room, already looking exhausted, a large yawn escaping their lungs.

“Heading to bed?” They asked him, and he still found it difficult to bring his eyes up to theirs.

“Maybe soon.” He acted nonchalant.

MC rubbed their eyes, gently touching his shoulder as they passed. “Okay, love ya, get some good rest.”

He was grateful MC had immediately walked into their room, because he wasn’t prepared for how extreme his body would react. He found the energy upholding his legs went missing, and he had to lean against the closest wall to keep from crumpling to the ground. He continued to try to trick himself into believing he didn’t care. They were a human, he didn’t care, why would he care? Why should he feel guilty for everything he’d done? He was a demon, a monster, he’d embraced that when he fell, or he thought he did. But...being around MC...it made him feel like he was back in the Celestial Realm, filled with hope, with love, something he was sure he’d never truly feel again.

He recalled before the inevitable fall what his dear sister had told him before his life had been shattered before his eyes. “Remember Belphie, I love you.”

He couldn’t hold himself up any longer, clutching his pillow to his chest as the hole in his heart he had filled with sleep and anger crumbled away. He pressed his face deep into the fluff of the cushion as he sobbed. His heart felt like it was stinging like wounds often do when they’re cleaned and healing. It hurt. It threatened to break him. He had tried avoiding feelings. How could MC be so nice to him after everything? What had he done to deserve it?

Beel, influenced by the magical connected emotions to his twin, left everything he had been eating behind to come get him immediately. The intense pounding in his chest worried him to no end, he needed to find Belphie now. He found the demon of sloth curled up on the floor of the hallway, convulsing and shaking from violently crying. Beel hated seeing his beloved brother like this, but on the inside he was secretly thankful. He knew Belphie couldn’t keep acting like nothing mattered, it wasn’t healthy. He was finally coming to terms with everything, opening the door to finally, after all this time, being able to move on.

The next time the human sees the youngest brother, they see that he’s a little more aware, maybe not quite awake, but mindful of the people around him. For once, he talks about what he’s going to do in the future, looking forward instead of repeating broken events of the past. He finds that being around MC, if they’ll let him, helps the feeling in his ribs hurt a bit less, that the personality he thought had been locked up was starting to escape. Life itself matters a bit more than it used to. He has to be ready though, because he can’t afford to cry in front of his brothers the next time MC tells him ‘I love you’. Even if they think nothing by it, it means more than the world to him. But as always, he’ll act apathetic about it.

He’s working on it though, and all because MC showed him a bit of kindness despite his unforgivable actions. All he needed was a bit of love.

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me headcanons #obey me imagines #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me levi #obey me satan #obey me asmo #obey me beel #obey me belphie

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consumeconstantly · 4 years

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Those Who Are Kind

1| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 (you are here) | next

Summary: Siblings are the last thing on Marinette’s mind as she begins her frantic search for Tikki. Really, she can’t even consider them siblings, not yet. But they’re along for the ride, whether she wants them to be or not.

Duke doesn’t know what to make of the current situation.

He’s always known that the Waynes are crazy, insane, even, but he loves them all the same, in the begrudging, cautious way he cannot shake. (This approach has served him well over the years, allowing him to avoid multiple schemes that Tim or Jason typically start up to rile up Damian. From there, everything is guaranteed to snowball. The only time things get really bad is when Cass gets involved.) To him, it’s always been a bit uncanny how similar all the brothers looked, despite the fact that none of them shared blood. All of them had the same sharp jaw, piercing blue eyes, chiselled cheekbones and defined bodies. Only Tim and Damian differed slightly, with Tim having a dancer’s figure instead of that of a body builder or demolitions expert, and Damian having green eyes instead of blue. It’s also disconcerting that everybody the Waynes are more intimately involved with have some sort of alter ego. He often joked with other members of the Justice League that heroism ran in Bruce’s blood.

With the new addition of Marinette to their family, he has to say that he’s been proven right.

A girl who had absolutely nothing to do with the Waynes in any capacity other than the fact that she and Bruce share blood becoming a hero. The leader of a team. Fighting supervillains at the age of thirteen.

He’s very, very glad that he was not adopted by or shared blood with Bruce. He doesn’t think he could have handled being a superhero at age thirteen. He can barely handle being Signal now some days, and he’s an adult. The amount of responsibility on Marinette’s shoulders is difficult to understand. To be the sole wielder of magic that can revert an entire city back to its original state. To bring people back from the dead.

Dick is strangely quiet. A car is driving them from a pit stop near a zeta tube to Marinette’s hospital.

Hands down, Dick is the most sane male of the Wayne family, not including Alfred. But there are times when Duke sees the weight that he carries. All the times that he refuses to talk about the burdens that he bears. Moving forward with a smile when he’s in pain. When he gets in a mood like this, he’s hard to read. But given the circumstances, it’s fairly clear exactly what’s bothering him.

“He’s known about her this entire time,” Dick says, tinted windows allowing Duke a glance at his expression, carefully devoid of any telling emotions. “Nineteen years. He kept her a secret.”

“It’s Bruce.” The man is known for keeping secrets.

“Yeah, but Marinette is family. She should have been, at least. And now…”

Now she’s all alone when she should be surrounded by people that love her, praising her for her victory, for how she shouldered so much responsibility at such a young age. But by bringing her to a hospital in America, she’s been cut off from her team, and any support system she should have had is gone.

“You and her,” Duke says, looking for a way to comfort him. “You’ll get along. You’re similar, after all.” After they brought Gabriel and Lila to the a top security prison and sent Emilie to a hospital that couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her, they got two files from Tim. One detailing Ladybug and all of her exploits. The second, detailing Marinette’s life.

Duke has watched the videos. Has watched how Ladybug leads by example, comes up with the plan and begins the execution. How she shoulders more battles than she should.

He’s seen Marinette pull people together with a smile on her face, even while she’s running on empty after a strenuous akuma attack.

Dick and Marinette are alike.

“We’re too much alike,” Dick says. “I suspected for a long time that Bruce had another kid that he wasn’t telling us about, but I thought that if he was keeping her away from us, then maybe she’d have a shot at leading a good life. A normal life. Not the one she got. Sabine’s— Bruce’s biological daughter shouldn’t be somebody like me. She deserves better.”

Duke is acutely aware that Dick’s parents were also murdered, but whatever relation he had with Sabine is something he’s never been willing to talk about. There are pictures in his apartment of a petite Asian woman with a soft smile standing next to him, but whenever asked about her, Dick never gives a straight answer.

“Nobody has the ability to change the past.” Duke claps a hand on his friend’s shoulder. He sags imperceptibly under the weight.

Well— actually, it’s not out of the realm of possibilities, given the fact that magic, aliens, and metahumans all coexisted, supplemented by the fact that multiple members of Marinette’s team do have the ability to travel back in time, but that’s another matter entirely. There’s not a lot of information on the Miraculous, and all of their knowledge is coming from Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Zatara, and even the three of them don’t know everything.

“But you have the chance to do good by her. Be a good older brother, like I know you are.”

A thin smile appears on Dick’s face. “She’s going to need more than just one good influence on her life. And Damian is better, but you saw how he looked at her when Bruce brought her through the Zeta tubes. Tim’s not going to react well either, and Jason is a wild card. She’s not going to get the support she needs if she stays with us.”

Duke crosses his arms, knees brushing up against the back of the car seat. “The only person whose actions you’re responsible for are your own. Don’t worry about them. If they don’t like her, they’ll just avoid her.”

That’s certainly not true— all of the members of the Wayne family are notorious for going hard after all of the things they don’t like. But... it’s comforting to hear. Sometimes temporary and known lies are much nicer than harsh realities.

She’s gone.

All of her belongings are missing, the IV needle is hanging from the stand, the window open, and Marinette is missing from her bed.

At least she left a note?

Be back soon — Marinette

“Great,” Duke mutters under his breath. “Another incredibly vague, cryptic Wayne.”

Dick’s face turns to ash. “Her legs. Her head. She can’t go out so soon. Hold on, maybe Barbara can pull up some footage.”

“On the bright side, there’s no blood,” Duke says.

“That’s not a bright side.”

“It is,” Duke argues. “She fell in the worst places possible, right on top of that broken glass casket. If she’s not bleeding that clearly means she didn’t pull her stitches on her mad escape out.”

When Ladybug fell, they’re not exactly sure what happened, because the screen showed Ladybug collapsing almost gracefully. When they arrived on the scene, she flickered between Ladybug and Marinette as her earrings beeped. Her legs were slashed from falling on the glass with a seemingly unnatural force— simply falling would not have garnered cuts that large— and her head was twisted at an odd angle, debris bloodied beneath her.

Somehow, the Miraculous Cure seemed to be working backwards. Not from the epicenter out, but rather from the edge of the damage, in. It worked slowly, every mile taking minutes instead of mere seconds. It hadn’t happened before in any of the battles.

It was useful in apprehending Hawkmoth and Pavona, who were still knocked out. But Marinette, even after the Miraculous Cure washed over her, didn’t get healed. Her injuries didn’t revert. There was still a gash on her stomach from Hawkmoth’s cane, still muscles exposed on the back of her legs and blood on her neck. When she was first brought in, the doctors feared that she may be permanently incapacitated.

Good at keeping to her word at least. She came swinging through the window with worry on her face and grief in her eyes.

“I need to go back to Paris,” she says.

Dick will undoubtedly say no. He’s a very protective person, and Marinette is the center of his current efforts.

But she doesn’t look injured. He eyes her stance. She’s standing with no effort, walks with no limp. No hospital dress, no blood on her neck, no bruises in all of the places he was expecting them to be. Marinette does not look like she just faced a world ending threat less than twenty four hours ago. She certainly doesn’t look like she’s permanently lost the use of her legs. There’s the familiar Wayne Brand Stubbornness in her eyes— no way she’s not Bruce’s kid— that tells him that she’s going to get to Paris one way or another, and that they’re either lucky they were even notified in the first place or that she wants to use a resource that they have that she does not have access to. It’s fairly obvious what that resource is, considering that Paris is nine hours away by any normal plane and it sounds like she wants to get there in minutes, and not hours. Duke also knows that if they don’t take what she’s offering now, she’ll use an alternative method that definitely won’t be as nice or clear cut.

He jumps in before Dick can say anything. “We’ll take you as long as we go with you every step of the way.”

Oh, he’s going to get in so much trouble for doing this. Dick is looking at him with his Disapproving Dad glare, and he can imagine Bruce going into brooding silence when he hears that Duke allowed this to happen.

Marinette’s lips pinch together, but she nods. “Where’s the nearest zeta tube?”

Barbara gets Dick’s text and sighs in frustration.

She’s already got her hands full with watching Tim, who’s spiralling trying to find information about the Miraculous, muttering under his breath in the way he does when he gets a particularly hard case to crack. He’s gone through six cups of coffee in the last hour, and he kicked off his research with a combination of 5 Hour Energy, Monster, three packets of sugar, and 10 caffeine shots. Soon, she’ll have to start limiting his caffeine intake, but right now it’s clear that any attempt to get him to stop his research now will fail spectacularly. At least she’s not in charge of Damian and Jason. Wherever they are, they’re definitely on the move and not happy.

She never thought she'd be able to say she’s happy about being paralyzed from the waist down, but she certainly doesn’t want to be chasing after one of the two hellions. Cass definitely has her hands full and whoever’s watching Jason— wait, is anybody even watching Jason? Typically Roy gets stuck with Jason-sitting duty, but he’s been out for a while.

Barbara groans. Jason is probably on his own, wreaking havoc.

Great.

She’ll deal with that later, even though she has no doubt she’ll regret that decision, but if Marinette is gone from her room, Dick needs the footage, and somebody needs to find where she is. The nurse put in her latest report that her legs were almost healed and that she didn’t show any signs of a concussion, but Marinette was in bad shape when she got admitted to the hospital. Even though Barbara doubts that there was any misdiagnosis, given that Bruce sprung for a VIP room in one of the pricier hospitals, in a world where magic and aliens are present, who knows what’s true or not.

“Tibet!” Tim jumps up from his hunched over position for the first time in hours. “I’m going to Tibet, the closest zeta tubes are three hours by car away, but I can get somebody to loan Wayne Industries a helicopter while I’m over there.”

“Sit down, Tim.” Barbara takes her glasses off and pinches the bridge of her nose. Why can’t Bruce rein in his children? Why is she the one stuck babysitting? “Marinette left her hospital room.”

That certainly gets Tim to put the brakes on his movements towards the zeta tube in the bat cave.

“What?”

“I said, she left her hospital room. Just sit down while I send the information over. It’s not going to do you any good to rush into things anyways.”

A quick review of the surrounding CCTV shows that Marinette didn’t travel far, just around the hospital. She’s looking for something, calling out for it, too. Barbara grabs that file and slows it down so she can read her lips. “Dickie? Do she and Dick know each other already?”

A quick text back to Dick reveals that Marinette has already returned to the room and—

Oh, hell.

“Well,” Barbara pushes her laptop away from her, letting Tim watch the files she’s pulled up. “It looks like we’re taking a family trip to Paris.”

Somehow, Marinette almost manages to lose all four of them within the first four minutes of roaming around Paris.

Luckily, their family has an almost absurd amount of luck between all of them (not all of it good) and the person Barbara was half sure she could only find in prison, beating up Hawkmoth and Pavona, runs into Marinette on the streets and herds her back to them.

“Lose something?” Jason asks, arm slung around Marinette’s shoulder, the smaller, younger girl looking rather upset at having her plans thrown off.

“I told them that they could follow me,” Marinette argues without much real bite. It’s not my fault if they can’t keep up, is the clear meaning of her statement.

Again, Barbara is very impressed that the barely nineteen year old somehow managed to shake off vigilantes with decades of experience with ease. But it is, at least, partially due to her disability. Every time she goes out in her wheelchair, her heart aches a little, especially as the civilians she passes eye her with pity. Barbara doesn’t want pity. Doesn’t need pity. She shouldn’t feel anything when people look at her like she can’t keep up, because she can keep up.

Most of the time, anyways.

It doesn’t matter how she uses her tech skills to modify her wheelchair and deck it out with all the equipment she could ever need, or that she can easily get up to speeds rivalling sports cars for short periods of time before the power runs out. When she’s stuck in her wheelchair, she loses the maneuverability she had when she wasn’t paralyzed.

She couldn’t follow Marinette through the alleyways because she was stuck. Barbara was the one who noticed her escape first. If only she were more capable, she could have—

But it’s okay now. Jason ran into her. Marinette is back with them.

“I need to search for something, and none of you can help.” She’s not intentionally being rude when she says it, and if anything, sounds apologetic. Barbara sees the similarities between Marinette and Bruce. It makes a lot of sense that the two of them are father and daughter, when the two of them are so insistent on keeping major issues to themselves. Marinette twists herself out from underneath Jason’s arm, clutching her purse. Her head doesn’t move, but her eyes are wild.

“We can help,” soothes Duke, ever the voice of reason. “You know who we are.”

“And I’m guessing you’ve all either deduced who I am or have been told my identity,” counters Marinette. “Which means you should know why I can’t have you helping me.”

Barbara and Duke exchange pointed glances.

“That’s not really clear to us, actually,” says Barbara. Marinette isn’t moving, but the way her shoulders tense makes her believe that the younger girl is ready to run at the drop of a hat.

A small group of people from the parade on the streets tumbles into the alleyway they’re resting in. They smell like cheap booze and sweat.

“What are all of you doing in this alley?” one says, after he finished vomiting up his last (very colorful) meal. “You should be out there partying with the rest of us! Celebrating Ladybug and her team.”

“Fuck Hawkmoth and Pavona,” says another solemnly, with neon face paint and pigtails with glitter string intertwined. “Their defeat should be celebrated by even the darkest souls.”

Jason, easily amused by their antics, looks very willing to join them. “Yeah Marinette, we should be celebrating Ladybug not—”

As one, everybody looks at the place where Marinette was, just moments ago. The alley is decidedly empty of a small asian girl with blue eyes and pigtails.

“Fuck,” Jason curses.

“Fuck is right,” Duke agrees, placing a hand over his temple.

Marinette manages to disappear for three hours.

Three full hours.

“She’s good,” Tim says, typing into the holographic computer embedded into his sleeve.

Paris’ CCTVs are painfully easy to hack into, though he suspects that the lack of attention to them may have to do with the fact that everybody in the city is celebrating. Policemen, politicians, artists, students, scientists— people from all walks of life are in the streets today, screaming and shouting and being free for the first time in years.

He spies more than just a few dozen people bawling their eyes out within a few minutes. But that’s not surprising, considering how long Parisians have had to suppress their emotions for.

Dick and Barbara are still in the midst of profiling Marinette, trying to determine the most likely places where she’d stop by, either as Ladybug or herself. All of Ladybug’s usual haunts are decidedly devoid of the young heroine, though Tim does manage to catch a good amount of footage of the other young heroes like Carapace and Rena Rouge, who are most definitely in a relationship based on their makeout session on top of the eiffel tower (one of the first places Tim checked), Viperion, who seems to be the only one from Ladybug’s team to be seeking out the crowd which seems rather atypical considering that the hero never frequented interviews or was spotted on news coverage all that frequently, and Chat Noir and Queen Bee who Jason insisted were in a relationship as well, though the rest of them believed they were only embracing each other out of comfort— Chat Noir looks like he’s been crying for hours, and Queen Bee looks like she’s barely holding it together.

Ryuko has not shown up on camera once today. Neither has Ladybug.

The second place Tim checks is the bakery. She is not there either, though another girl is. It doesn’t seem like the girl has any ill intent, but Duke is more than happy to pull up past files to see if she’s been there before, if she has any reason to be there, and who exactly she is.

Just as Barbara and Dick are debating the chances that Marinette would be at Le Grande Paris, she walks past one of the cameras focused on Tom & Sabine’s Boulangerie. Tim has the system rigged up so that any facial matches for Marinette automatically alerts the room. He hadn’t been able to replicate that with Ladybug’s face for some bizarre reason which is why he, Barbara, Dick, and Jason are manually combing through the areas where Dick and Barbar think she may be (magic is why, but Tim has always believed that technology can be used against and with most forms of magic) so it’s lucky that she enters as Marinette.

“Kagami Tsurugi,” Duke says triumphantly. “She visited often when Tom and Sabine were still alive. Potential candidate to represent France or Japan for Sabre in the next Olympics. Definitely friends with Marinette.”

“Thank God,” sighs Dick. “Now let’s get over there.”

It’s truly, truly unfortunate that they set up shop quite a distance away from the bakery.

They take too long to arrive.

Perhaps it was a mistake, telling Kagami first.

No, not just perhaps. It was a mistake. A bad one.

But Kagami was pushing so hard, and Marinette was so tired and so alone without Tikki at her side, without the knowledge that her parents would be waiting for her. Kagami pushed and pushed and pushed about why the house felt so empty, why there was dust on the floor, why the bakery was closed for so long, and where were Tom and Sabine? Why weren’t they there for the team yesterday, when the battle was won, when they knew how important it was to be there for Adrien who had just lost all three of his parental figures?

The moment the words fall from Marinette's lips, she knows she shouldn’t have revealed it at that moment, because Kagami draws in on herself, lips turning downwards, hands curling into fists.

Kagami has come a long way from the girl she was in lycèe. The thrill of victory is still something she enjoys, but not something she needs to feel secure in her place in the world. She has trouble expressing her emotions, but when it comes down to it, she communicates everything necessary to understand why.

With the news of Tom and Sabine’s death, she withdraws into herself, shifts back into that thirteen year old Marinette first met. Logic and rationale thrown to the wind in favor of cold anger.

It’s no secret that Ryuko, Ladybug, and Viperion are the main strategists of their team. Viperion, out of his duty of using Second Chance and his ability to keep a level head in the face of constant death. Ladybug out of necessity as her position as team leader and the power of Lucky Charm. Theoretically, the two of them should have been enough. But over the years, Kagami became Marinette's favored confidante; though Ladybug trusts all of her team to keep a tight hold on any information she gives them, Kagami is one of the few who is able to pick apart a given situation and transform the monsters they face into manageable pieces.

Today, it is Kagami who has broken to pieces. Very angry, razor sharp shards that seek to hurt.

“You lie to the media, tell them a pretty tale of how they died due to a break in. Why do you avoid pinning their deaths on Lila as you should? To absolve a quality woman from guilt?”

Marinette can’t look Kagami in the eyes.

Her parents deserved a peaceful death. To pass on in old age, hand in hand. Not looking on as a family member died, in fear of what would happen next for their daughter.

“The police know. The judges know,” Marinette protests weakly, but without much eight behind her words.

Kagami just scoffs. “Tom and Sabine were kind people. To not tell the media what truly happened— that’s preventing Lila from getting the full force of what’s coming to her. What happens if she gets out of prison one day? Without any real deaths to her name, she could just flee to another country to escape it all. And when another person loses their life because of her…”

She doesn’t need to finish her sentence. If somebody else gets injured in any way, shape or form at the hands of Lila Rossi, it’s Marinette’s fault. Marinette gets what Kagami is trying to say. She thinks the same thing, after all.

“My parents would not want their death publicized in that manner.” It’s the truth, but it’s said so weakly that the words come off as little more than a weak defense, and Kagami takes the words and twists their truth.

“You know little of your parents, considering that you’re their daughter.” Kagami stands stock still, not a single extra muscle moving. “Perhaps if you spent more time with them as Marinette instead of unsuccessfully gallivanting around as Ladybug, you’d have realized that Tom and Sabine admire truth above all else, even if it is painful.”

Kagami does not ask a single question about where Marinette was last night, or how Marinette felt over the loss of her parents or when she saw all those she held dear lying still on the ground after Hawkmoth and Pavona’s final attacks. She just purses her lips and sweeps out the door.

And then she’s gone, and Marinette is alone once more.

The bakery is bone-achingly quiet.

Every step Marinette takes creates such a disturbance in the peace that moving hurts.

But she can’t stay here. She can’t stay here. She does not deserve to stay here. Kagami is right. Marinette was a bad daughter. She could have prevented their death, could have given them justice sooner, could have—

And Marinette can’t breathe. She tries to, she tries so hard to, but she chokes.

She kneels down on the floor— Kagami is right again, the place is dusty, because Marinette couldn’t bring herself to use the living room and kitchen without her parents, could barely bring herself to sleep in her bedroom because she knew that her parents were not sleeping soundly in the bed below hers— and scrabbles at her throat, vision coming in and out.

Her legs burn. She knows that during the final battle, her legs were cut towards the end of it, and they should be healed, she should be okay now, she’s better than this, she’s—

Somebody gathers her in their arms. They smell slightly of Lotus flowers, just like Maman, and cradle her ever so gently.

Marinette’s eyes open— black hair, greyish eyes filled with understanding and love and—

She can breathe again.

She falls asleep.

“Cass?” Dick’s eyes widen at her unexpected appearance at Marinette’s home.

“I thought you were on Damian guard duty,” Barbara says, fixating on the red around Marinette’s eyes and the barely dried tear tracks on her face.

“Where’s that Kagami girl?” Jason scuffs his shoes on the hardware floor, silently marking the footprints on the floor and getting a general idea of what occurred before they were able to get here based on Marinette’s current state and the other girl’s absence. “I want to have some words with her.”

Cass inclines her head sharply, eye sparking with anger. Jason’s fists rise unconsciously— Cass rarely gets angry, and whenever she gets angry at a specific person, that means they’ve done something very, very wrong— ready to hunt down Kagami. Marinette sniffles and shifts in Cass’ one armed embrace, to which Cass places a finger over her lip and shakes her head, a universal sign to be quiet.

Jason scowls but settles down.

They’re quiet as they wait for Marinette to wake.

@biodad-bruce-month

Maribat tag list(to be added onto this pls send me an ask/dm): @our-precipreciousss @my-dear-friend-anxiety

Who Are You (and what will you become) tag list (to be added here just comment): @anjuschiffer @theunquiet-dead @certainmuffinbagelcalzone @cresentmo0n @allulily @myazael @zalladane @rebecarojas07 @keepingupwiththemalfoys @frieddonutsweets @all-mights-asscheeks @thornalchemist23 @trippingovermyfeet @jiso-lee @redscarlet95 @ira-sairain @screechingflapbiscuitpeach @ramos123 @cutechip @theunquiet-dead @sleep-deprived-aroace @enternalempires @lilkymilky @woe-is-me0 @officiallydarkgeek @miyla-lokidottir @queencommonsense @demonicbusiness @iamablinkmarvelarmy

@emark7 (i will have the edited version of these on ao3 eventually but i think the link to ch 1 on this one works)

where i ended this doesn’t feel very good but ehhhhhhhhhh my writing process is summary then word vomit that barely correlates which means nothing makes sense unless i edit but looking back at my work makes me cringe so at a crossroads yayyy

also can you guys tell which prompts ive written these for because i’m curious

#bio!dad bruce wayne month 2020 #bio!dad bruce #maribat #marinette dupain cheng #bruce wayne #duke thomas #jason todd #dick grayson #damian wayne #barbara gordon #tim drake #cassandra cain #batfam

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jimlingss · 5 years

Text

The President’s Son [15]

Chapter 14 - Chapter 15 - Chapter 15.5 OR Chapter 16

➜ Words: 2.7k

➜ Genres: 100% Fluff, Slice of Life, Bodyguard!AU

➜ Summary: Kim Taehyung is the President’s son, mischievous and playful, and infamous for being a troublemaker. When everyone’s given up, they call for you to be his personal guard. There’s no other choice when your dad’s assigned you to it and surprisingly Taehyung doesn’t mind either. Maybe because you happened to grow up with that brat.

It’s getting harder to understand Taehyung. And even harder to comprehend your reaction.

“Hold my book for a second, dumbo.” He rudely chucks it aside, and you barely manage to catch it. It’s piled on top of the other textbooks you’re holding for him like a maid, the tower tipping back and forth, nearly spilling all to the ground. Your glare is unforgiving. “Can’t you ask me nicel—” Taehyung suddenly drops down. “Your shoelaces are untied.” “O-oh.” The college student ties your sneakers gingerly, making sure they’re secure. He loops two bunny ears around the knot and then stands up with a smile. “All done! Now you won’t trip. I can’t always be there to catch you.” Taehyung takes his book off the pile you’re holding and walks off. You’re left staring at his backside before you pick up the pace, unable to help feeling a little perplexed and caught off guard. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to understand him and predict his actions — but it’s not like they were ever predictable in the first place. He’s always had a knack for spontaneity. It’s your susceptibility to surprise, that’s changed. “I know you said you weren’t hungry—” Taehyung sits down across the picnic table and slides a brown bag towards you. “—but I got you the jelly doughnut. It was on discount. You liked this one, right?” “Y-yeah. Thanks.” You watch him go to town on his hash brown, chomping like a ravenous beast. You’re agitated, muddled, but also more than that. You’re not sure what this emotion is. It’s puzzling to pinpoint, challenging and strenuous on your mind. You just know it’s different from annoyance, disenchantment, and the usual disenthrallment. “Oh, look!” Taehyung’s pointing to your left shoulder. When you look down, you’re unable to see what he’s indicating. Running out of patience and without thinking twice, he leans himself over. You flinch back on natural instinct, but he’s undeterred, paying no mind to the reaction that’s conditioned you since childhood. You feel his chest hovering above yours, thin lips a millimeter away, and you hold your breath. But Taehyung’s eyes are nowhere near your body; his stare isn’t greasy or purposely flirtatious. It stays quiet for a moment too long before he draws back. “It’s a ladybug.” Taehyung shows you with a grin, one that had landed on your shoulder, and one he sets down into the grass behind him. “See you later, little guy.” You’re absolutely bewildered, though finally able to breathe again. There are times Taehyung’s unbearably cheesy and teasing, trying to get under your skin or vying for a reaction when he yearns for a kind of attention he receives from nowhere else, much like how he was when he was a kid. But the times that affect you the most are his unintentional actions — when he’s being sincere, genuine, his innocent self. You’re not sure what to think of it. It’s confusing. And the worst part is you can’t comprehend Taehyung lately — your own head’s become chaotic and you’re not quite certain of the reason for it. “Y/N, hang on tight.” Taehyung pedals harder and glances over his shoulder. “The road ahead’s under construction. It’s gonna be bumpy.” “Want to switch spots?” “Nope,” he sings. “Just hold onto me.” You obliged, grasping onto him, locking your wrists together around his waist. Apparently it’s not enough. “Tighter.” Your head leans on him, front pressed against his back, holding on. Taehyung laughs, the noise drawing out from his chest, and you can already envision his satisfied grin. “Good.” You wonder since when his laugh became so melodic and pleasant to listen to. It seems when he’s not trying whatsoever, he’s the most charming. When Taehyung’s not trying to flirt or retain intense eye contact or shower you in excessive compliments — and instead being his mischievous self, caring in quiet ways without making a whole show about it, laughing and smiling — he’s the most charismatic, much like his dad. The magnetism that draws people in seems to run through the Kim blood. Maybe you just never realized it before, but stepping back from your own biases and objectively analyzing him, Taehyung is rather appealing. He has a handful of good traits, and you’ve noticed the way females and males murmur as he walks past or stares across the room, not quite because of malicious rumours either or due to his status. He’s a tall, strapping, blonde fellow. Even before when he had shaggy hair and was trying to grow a moustache, he wasn’t terrible on the eyes. Now that you recognize it, you gotta give it to him...he’s impressive in many ways. You wonder why you’re only recognizing this now. Why you didn’t see it sooner. Maybe your childhoods that overlapped inhibited your perception and clouded your judgment, or perhaps you had learnt to overlook such trivial details. But if there’s one thing that you’re beginning to learn about Taehyung, it’s that he’s the most attractive when he’s serious. You wish more people saw him like this — they wouldn’t take his words or opinions for granted otherwise. Though now that you know this, you don’t really need a front row ticket to it... “You want to what?” “I want to draw you.” “Absolutely not.” “Why?” Taehyung pouts and he doesn’t know it’s because you don’t want him to stare at you intently, because it would be too intimate for your liking. As good as you are at pretending you’re a statue at social events, this is not part of your job description. The last thing you are is a piece of art. “I promise it’ll be quick. Half an hour, tops. I just need a rough sketch of someone as part of my portfolio.” A sigh befalls your lips. “Can’t you pick someone else?” “I don’t have anyone else. C’mon, it’s for school. Don’t you have to make sure I’m doing well in my schooling too?” “But…” You look down at yourself. You’re not one to pay mind to futile things like your outer appearance, but you know you’re not in appropriate attire to be sketched. Once it’s permanently on paper, there’s no going back or reversing time. “I’m not even dressed properly, Taehyung.” “You look fine,” he emphasizes and reaches over, grabbing your elbow. Taehyung walks you towards the center of the small studio. He turns you away from the sunlight, holds your shoulders and scoots you an inch to his right until it’s to his liking. “There. Good. Now stay still, okay?” He smiles and struts back, plopping down onto his stool. With a sketchbook in hand, he looks up and begins. The sound of graphite scratching against the paper fills the space between the four walls. It’s awkward, dreadful as you stare straight at him, and you release your held breath. “Do you want me to pose?” “No.” There’s a full ten seconds of silence. “Just stay still.” You feel out of place, stiff. The only thing you do is blink and barely breathe, not wanting to ruin his efforts. “Can I ask you something, dumbo?” Taehyung mutters out of the corner of his mouth, eyes still pinned to his sketchbook. “I...guess.” “It’s kind of a stupid question, but I’m really curious as to what you’ll answer. So….think about it before you answer.” He hesitates for a moment and then goes for the kill. “Would you ever date me?” “What?” You blink at him, unsure how to answer. “Don’t move,” he suddenly barks out and you freeze at once, catching yourself halfway to stepping forward. “Thanks. Anyways I said, would you ever hypothetically date me or go out with me?” “I don’t date.” “Yeah, but let’s pretend that you did,” he mutters again and doesn’t even look at you properly to read your expression. Taehyung’s still concentrated, brows furrowed, the tip of his tongue peeking past the seam of his lips. His pencil comes out to measure something and then he quickly returns to the sketchbook. It’s not uncomfortable when he’s not full on staring and waiting for you to respond. There’s less pressure when he gives you time to reply. “Well….that would be highly unprofessional. I’m your bodyguard—” “Then let’s pretend you’re not,” he says carelessly as if this is small talk or a game of ‘would you rather’ to pass the time and make you less bored. You hum, unintentionally relaxing in your spot as you give in and consider this what-if scenario he’s handed to you. “In a hypothetical world where I happen to have enough time and commitment to want to even date and I’m not your bodyguard and we happen to run into each other and we got the opportunity to go out….in a non-platonic sense…” “Yes.” “I….don’t know.” “Wow, that’s it?” The corner of Taehyung’s mouth curls, but it’s a dangerous question. You’re uncertain of what he wants you to say, what you want to say. The possibility of such a circumstance makes your palms clammy. “Well, I wouldn’t know.” You shrug. “You kind of have to be in the moment to know.” “Hmmmm, I see.” The artist at work nods to himself. “Interesting.” As reckless as it is, you find yourself asking, “How about you?” “Me? Yeah, I’d date you. If you’d even let me.” Taehyung laughs and a smile appears on your face. He announces it like he’s so sure of himself, and it almost makes you...nervous. But you’re probably sweating from the heat of the room. “I don’t see why not.” “But why me?” you question. “Like you said, I’m emotionally stunted. And I wouldn’t be able to offer you anything.” It doesn’t make sense to you — you’re not exciting, adventurous, or fun. The type of person you imagine Taehyung to be with, you can’t find any shred of it in yourself. In fact, you feel more like a drag on people’s lives. The sidekick or background character that helps them accomplish one mission and hints them to the next. Never the hero. Most certainly never the love interest. Taehyung’s hand pauses. He glances at you with a frown, earnest in his words. “Don’t sell yourself short. Seriously.” The student continues his sketch. “You’re responsible and hard-working and smart and capable. Most people aren’t like that. They’re not like you. And you keep me grounded. Make sure I don’t make stupid fucking decisions and end up breaking my legs.” The corner of your mouth pulls again. “Okay, fine. That’s fair. But is it really enough to date me in this hypothetical world?” “In this hypothetical world,” he pauses to inhale, “Yes. But there’s so much more than that. I wish you knew. I’d be the lucky one here. Not the other way around.” Your face heats. He gives you more credit than you deserve, but you appreciate the wholehearted praise. For once, he’s not trying to butter you to succumb to whatever he wants, to get you to roll your eyes and banter with him. There’s nothing he can gain from it. It’s meaningful and you’re brought back to the time he told you no one could replace you... “This is going to sound so lame and I know for a fact it’s one sided,” Taehyung mumbles as his eraser scrapes along the drawing you can’t discern from this distance, “but you’re my best friend, Y/N.” Your chest is tight and you meet his eyes, staring at each other. His pencil continues to move on the paper, having sketched your curves, the dips of your waist, the slope of your nose, shape of your lips and strands of your hair. “It’s not one-sided.” Taehyung smiles. He looks down and the rest of the time is spent quietly as he tries to finish, focusing. The conversation sinks down onto your shoulders and unlike his promise, it lasts longer than an hour. But you don’t find it difficult to stay in place anymore under his gaze. Eventually, he finishes and sets his pencil down with a grin. “Good enough. You wanna see?” “Yes. In case you wasted an hour of my life….” You walk over, dragging your sleeping leg behind you to peer over his shoulder. At once, your expression wipes away. He looks up at you in worry. “What do you think?” “It’s….pretty decent,” you admit with an approving nod. “I look so….” Pretty. Happy. The sketch isn’t so rough as he said it would be. It’s a clear drawing of you, standing with arms behind your back, facial expression melted into a sheepish smile. It’s uncanny to how you remember your mother when you used to look at her, back before she became worn down, cynical, disappointed in how her own life turned out. You wonder if this is how Taehyung sees you. In a way that’s so lovely and carefree. “It better be decent. My hand hurts.” He shakes it and stretches his arms above his head with a groan. “I’m beat too.” “Can I get a copy of it? When you’re done….” Taehyung sets his notebook down on the table and spins around in pleasant shock. “You like it that much?” A stupidly wide grin begins to expand into his cheeks. You try to shrug casually. “It’s not bad.” He walks across the room, falling onto the worn sofa in the corner. “I’ll let you have the original when I get it back. Come here.” Taehyung pats a spot beside him, but you glance at the watch on your wrist. “Shouldn’t we go get dinner?” “Yeah, but I’m so tired. Let me rest for a second.” Once you give in, moving to sit down beside him, he scoots closer to you. Side-eyeing Taehyung only causes him to smile. “Thanks, dumbo, for letting me draw you.” “It’s fine. Better than your idea of going bungee jumping.” “I still wanna do that.” “Maybe when it’s not my shift.” “So you can actually join me?” “So I’m not responsible if something goes wrong.” He bursts out with a scoff and a laugh before settling down, tearing his eyes away from the profile of your face he had tried to recreate on paper and failed. He shifts to look straight ahead instead. Another thought bubbles to the surface of his consciousness. “In a hypothetical world where we never grew up together, where you weren’t my bodyguard, if I wasn’t the President’s son, and we met here...do you think you’d be my friend?” “What’s up with you and hypotheticals today?” “I just wish things were different.” “Different how?” “I don’t know,” he says, but you think he does know. You don’t push him to tell you if he doesn’t want to. It goes quiet. Every blink that is taken is heavy. The exhaustion of the day catches up to you, muscles sore, feet aching. But you’re suddenly broken out of your trance when there’s a newfound weight on your shoulder. You flinch from the affection, yet Taehyung stays, chest rising and falling. He’s leaning on your shoulder, fast asleep. Your eyes soften, staring at the icy blonde strands of his hair. Your breath steadies and you sigh gently, allowing him to stay. You don’t notice the way Taehyung’s mouth tugs upwards discreetly, how he sheepishly smiles, noticing the change. Just a month ago, he had tried the same thing and you shoved him off without waiting a single beat…. And just like that, he falls asleep on you, lulled by your scent and warmth. It’s now that you’re sitting right beside him, peace allowing you to think, that you can finally put your finger on the feeling that’s been brewing inside of you ever since he embraced your body in his bed, underneath his covers, and the pair of you fell asleep in each other’s arms. You know it now. And it brings a whole plethora of emotions washing down on you — confusion, worry, fear. You’re agitated, muddled, but also more than that. It’s different from annoyance, disenchantment, and the usual disenthrallment. It’s fluster. Kim Taehyung’s made you flustered.

#bts fanfic #bts scenario #taehyung fanfic #taehyung fluff #taehyung #LOAD UP THE FLUFF

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ncfan-1 · 4 years

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I am to understand that there is a growing number of voices who take issue with Katara still being “so affected” by her mother’s death years after the fact, and umm, I don’t know how to tell you that it’s pretty understandable for a literal child to still be deeply affected by their mother’s brutal murder (seriously, being killed by a firebender probably does not leave a good-looking corpse; what’s more likely is that it leaves behind a corpse that makes starkly clear every last moment of suffering the victim underwent before they finally died) if you don’t already understand that yourselves, but that’s hardly the only thing that’s going on here.

Kya’s murder was the defining moment of Katara’s childhood, not least because it was the moment that marked the end of Katara’s childhood. And when I say that, I don’t just mean “Oh, the trauma of it destroyed Katara’s childhood innocence.” When I say that, what I’m also talking about is that once Kya was killed, Katara would have had to take on the majority of her mother’s responsibilities in the household, despite only being an eight-year-old girl herself.

Because think about it. Kanna’s pretty old at this point. There are some things she can do, but she’s old enough and frail enough that anything that involves real physical exertion, she needs to stay away from, most of the time. The other adult women of the village all have their own households that they need to tend to; maybe they can find the time to help her occasionally, but for the most part, their hands are full and they just don’t have the time to step in and help Katara out, except for things that wouldn’t take too long and wouldn’t involve them straying too far away from their own household duties. Sokka’s definitely not helping her with it, and by implication, Hakoda isn’t either, because his duties as the village chief mean he’s probably busy all of the time, and because do you really think Sokka would be so gung-ho on the Southern Water Tribe’s regressive gender roles if the father he adores hadn’t also supported them before he left to join the wars? So who’s doing either all or nearly all of Kya’s chores after Kya dies?

Yeah, it’s Katara. Kya’s eight-year-old daughter.

Like, it would be hard enough for a kid to get over the brutal murder of their mother under normal circumstances. But it must be so much harder when you’re a little girl stuck with a massive load of chores that you would normally never be doing by yourself or at all, because your mother, the person who would normally have been doing these chores, was murdered. Every time you do all of the family’s laundry, you remember that she’s dead. Every time your grandmother has to teach you how to do something your mother should have been teaching you how to do, you remember. Every time you look at the other girls close to your age or younger and see how lighter the load is on them, you remember. Every time you do something right for the first time, and you’re so happy and you want to show your mother that you finally got it right, except you can’t, because your mother isn’t here anymore, you remember. Every time you want to go outside and play, because you’re still a child and naturally you want to play, but you can’t because you just have too much to do and you don’t have time to go outside and play, you remember.

Like, Katara’s life after Kya’s murder was just an endless series of the wound getting picked open in small ways, over and over again, in ways that she couldn’t avoid because if she wasn’t doing these chores, who would? After all, Gran-Gran could do things like cook, but anything strenuous could hurt her. Dad was too busy and when Sokka wasn’t doing his chores, he’d just brush you off with some line about ‘women’s work.’ The other women in the village were way too busy to help you most of the time, and you couldn’t stand to ask the little girls around the village to help you, because they’re just like you were when you started doing all of this: too young to be doing this and it would be cruel to try to make them do it anyways.

Kya’s murder ended Katara’s freedom to be a child. It’s not shocking that she was unable to move on from that. What is shocking is that anyone could think less of her for being unable to move on from it.

#Avatar: The Last Airbender #Atla #Fandom shenanigans #Katara #Meta #Do not come to me with your she should have gotten over it years ago bullshit #also this adds another dimension to Katara's anger when Sokka wouldn't do his fair share of the chores #when they were first traveling with Aang #because in context it's not just Sokka refusing to help her because it's women's work #it's that for years Katara has not only been doing her chores but all of their mother's as well #and Sokka almost certainly never helped her even once with it because why should he? that's women's work #I can only imagine the amount of anger and resentment and grief building up inside of her #Sokka certainly never meant it this way but I wonder if Katara didn't take it as a sort of abandonment #like do you think she ever wonders if this was a deliberate refusal to support her after their mom's death on his part?

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pillsxcoffee · 3 years

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Short Story: “The Barkeep”

Each moment of our lives presents an excuse to pursue control. We sit in its grips and seek it while occasionally becoming validated by perceived successes at the practice. The idea of control is the biggest lie that the universe has ever sold us. But without its presence, who are we? I have often wondered why societies failed attempts at control result in such destruction and separation. My only guess is that it brings us down to size and allows us to descend further towards chaos. Our imperfections give our perfect world its imperfect equilibrium, and I believe that it has to be that way.

My attempts at deciphering control from the acceptance, the true from the false, the power to the power-less has led me right here, writing this all out for you. They may call this a manifesto of sorts. They will call me crazy, perhaps mentally ill, they will not remember their part, but they will remember the name, place, and time of the day when I finally broke down and said, "what am I to do?"

The evening began normally enough. I was sitting in a dive writing out my arduous truths while purposely sipping on a margarita that was far too sugary. My weathered glass stained a displeasing opaque brown. It was here where I began to consider my own mortality. At my misery's behest, I requested another. I downed half the glass before placing the drink on a crinkled, disgraced, and damp napkin that read: Cabalo Cantina, Just Like Paradise. While analyzing this feeble attempt at memorable marketing, the barkeep waltzed up to me and stared with an invasive gaze, his brow acutely furrowed. He looked as if he had just seen a ghost or witnessed something traumatic. He rotated himself towards the illuminated bar where bottles upon bottles of liquid relief occupied the splintering walnut shelves. Taking down a sorry excuse for top-shelf mezcal, he proceeded to grab a set of tumblers and swiftly pour two generous shots. He pushed one my way.

"Drink up, buddy. We're gonna need it."

He threw back the drink with an exaggerated gulp; it was almost like he wanted it to hurt. He winced, removed his Cabalo Cantina apron stained by bitters, rolled up the apron, and spiked it on the ground with surprising force.

"I can make ten times in a week on the trawler than I can here in a month. The tequila here is shit anyway."

Nobody batted an eye. He started through the tacky, Christmas light-infested archway and out the tinted double doors. Briefly, I was reminded of my father. I wished I had remembered what he looked like, but all I remember is that he, too, worked on a boat. He caught tuna deep in the unforgiving waters of the Atlantic. Thankfully, these thoughts were quickly supplanted by the view of the drink in front of me. I followed the dearly departed's lead with a shot of my own before returning to my notepad. If this is paradise, I would hate to see what hell is like.

After two more margaritas, I noticed the illuminated clock branded by some obscure Mexican beer company that I had never heard of: 12:50 PM, last call. I didn't need it; better to cap the night off at home anyway. I decided to exit the fluorescent arch and start my walk home. As the doors sealed behind me, I turned left to head to my flat. With my notepad carefully tucked against my breast pocket, I wobbled down the sidewalk. The street danced with a hand from the dimmed lights overhead, which created a greasy, orange hue. I made my way towards the day's end.

As the pavement moved beneath me, the streets became less illuminated and more littered. I began to pick up the familiar putrid stench that coated the air. It was musky, thick, and sour. The smell reminded me of last year's charter out of Chatham; towards the end of the trip, the men became more offensive than the dead fish. Vagrants, beggars, tramps, and drifters proceeded to voice their typical pitches in hopes of finding a generous passerby. I didn't have anything to give them, but I would tell them to get lost if I did have some money in my pocket. Tonight, I stayed quiet, however. We were all in the same boat, one which appeared to be taking on some serious water.

Since I'll be gone by the time this reaches curious eyes, I have particular freedoms that I don't have while wasting away in the outside world. The only thing that is truly mine in this world is my secrets. Even though therapists, social workers, and the like have told me that I am only as sick as my particular omissions. Even if I wanted to share them (which I don't), I wouldn't know where to begin. The darkness harbored under the surface of those truths is a prison, far worse than the one that I would be sent to if they only knew. I have never been known for my veracity; I prefer to live in the realm of the obscure.

To understand the breadth of my circumstances, I provided a bit of a picture in the aforementioned "memoir," It is strictly for your eyes only, and I hope that it adds some context. For those not privy to my life story, I would like to acknowledge that I believe myself or my story to be unique in no way. Despite how much I would like to think that my experiences are so different in contrast to those around me, it simply is not the truth.

As I approached my apartment, I engaged in my predictable anticipatory sigh before entering the lobby. Whenever I get home, I remember what my life is and what it is not. I am reminded of the loss, both monetary and personal, that has occurred at my hand. I try my best to accept present circumstances for what they are, but living in the moment has never been my strong suit. The best that I can do at any given moment is to give in and recognize things for what they are: shit. Luckily, I always have some writing to do; it's what keeps me busy.

At this very moment, I am staring blankly at my laptop screen, which continues to mock me for all of my literary atrocities. Perhaps if I don't end up in prison, Oxford will have something to say. Strange sensations overcome me when I'm with myself at night. I don't become tired, but there's a particular energy that overcomes me, but for whatever reason, I am unable to move. This type of paralysis brings the only semblance of normalcy in my life.

My body feels like it needs to run away. I become stimulated and overwhelmed by feelings I cannot describe. I want to rise up and move, but Newtons' third law has other plans, so I remain still. I have come to embrace this purgatorial, dream-like state that overtakes me. I see visions of the past that seem manufactured specifically for my broken mind to consume. I call them my "could have been," the way that I wish things would have gone. I close my eyes and see a young boy.

He looks and sounds like me, even has that 2-inch scar above his right eyelid, but he is not me. He is smiling, he is talking, he is with his father, and he is happy. I can see him resting on the edge of a broad, aluminum dock. He seems comfortable watching all of the boats set sail in search of that next big haul. He sits next to his father, a slender man of 40 or so who looks far more seasoned than his age suggests. The two have considerable space between them, yet they appear to have some bond I cannot relate to. For the first time, I can see some communication beginning to form. I can hear his father as he turns to his son and says, "my boy, if you will listen to anything I ever say, make it this. There is nothing in this world that is certain. Many men consider themselves experts of their crafts, leaders of enterprise, and patriarchs of their family, yet they practice utter ignorance towards the truth." The eerily familiar boy looks back at his father with interest, "what is the truth then, dad?" A strenuous pause ensued. The tired old man brought himself upright and looked at his trawler docked several feet away. "Nobody really knows anything. Nobody really knows." The man handed his son a tattered notebook with a tan leather casing, "there are more truths within these pages. These are for you, son. Read as much as you see fit, read until you no longer need to, and then begin to forge your own beliefs."

The boy stayed silent while accepting this unexpected parting gift from his father. He remained dockside, salty waves kissing his narrow, swaying feet. He opened up his new notebook, the first page read:

He stands within the confines of his vessel

Between himself and normalcy is a one way mirror

The room is soundproof

Bustling passerby are aware of his existence, yet they are unable to make a connection

It is not their fault - he understands this

His only weapon is his voice.

He yells

Howls for an attentive ear. Anyone

Only to realize that relief will be found in his silence

But only until it kills him.

Reflection allows him to see the truth.

That the vessel is of his own design

He accepts that.

Maybe it is never too late.

The little boy, who now seems more familiar to me, remains locked in place, confused, and not understanding much of his father's writings. He feels ashamed and stupid and reads the poem once more. After his second attempt at reading this vague prose, he hesitantly peeks up, expecting his father to still be somewhat visible in the distance. He is not. The crawler has made its way, the silhouette of the faraway ship begins to mingle with the horizon. Now, it is only the red masthead light that is visible. The boy becomes angry, tears out his father's words, crumples up the paper, and tosses it in the ocean, sure that it will never be seen again. He sits back down on the dock's edge, starting at the next page that simply reads: Just Another Day in Paradise. I wake up. I remember that boy now.

End.

TBC...

#short story #writers on tumblr #writer #fiction #poets on tumblr #poetsandwriters #my writing #pillsandcoffee #psychological

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sarcastically-defensive17 · 4 years

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hiya ! i saw ur taking requests and was wondering if i could request something for michael clifford with 1, 4, 5, and 12 👉🏻👈🏻 if not that's totally understandable !! :)

1- “Your hair is so soft.”

4- “C’mere, you can sit in my lap until I’m finished working.”

5- “I’m not gonna stop poking you until you give me some attention.”

12- “no-no-its alright. Come here.”

Attention- M. Clifford

Requested: yes! Requests are always open!

Original story by sarcastically-defensive17

It had been 7 hours and counting since she sat down at her desk, typing away on her outdated and barely functional computer.

She had been aggressively typing out a lengthy essay regarding the affects of lingual discrimination on various historical figures and her brain fought against her eyes to remain open.

Her hair was haphazardly thrown into a messy bun and she was surviving the day on cake bars and with sweats cloaking her legs. It was safe to say, she was in a state of serene stress. She felt comfortable, and under any other circumstances she would relish that chance to relax in her comfortable clothes and gorge on food that would earn ridicule from her Personal Trainer sister, but at this time, Y/N wanted nothing more than to sleep away her worries.

She was approaching the end of last year of university, meaning the essay length was longer and her sleep was less frequent.

She enjoyed every second, her boyfriend on the other hand, didn’t.

Said man child was currently doing his best to remain quiet, as he tip-toed into the makeshift office.

He had been trying for hours to get her attention. It was true that he loved to have the attention on him, especially when it was Y/N’s attention, but he also didn’t want her to overwork and burn herself out.

“Y/N!” He stretched out the last syllable, making the woman and the small dog nestled on her lap lurch in fright.

She spun around in the chair, wide eyed and clasping Southy to her chest, “Michael, what have I told you about scaring us?”

She wasn’t yelling. She was calm, her voice barely changing in pitch. He had never heard Y/N yell or even get mad at somebody. She tends to approach every situation with a level head, barely even cracking under the pressure of anything.

“I’m bored,” he stated in a matter-of-fact tone with a smile on his face.

She smiled back at him, turning around and directing her gaze back to the computer screen and causing his face to drop.

“Why don’t you give Calum a call? I’m sure he would be happy to come hang with you while I do this.”

That was not the answer Michael wanted. He wanted his adorable girlfriend to abandon her stressful uni work for an afternoon and cuddle with him and their pooches on the lounge. Or just for her to relax for an hour or so. Anything to get her mind off of the strenuous essay writing.

A loud, and overdramatized sigh escaped from the blonde mans lips and a thud followed closely after. Y/N spun in her chair to see the man sprawled on the ground, spread like a starfish.

“What are you doing?” She giggled, placing South down on the ground so the small dog could attack the man with licks.

“I want attention -south stop, not my nose - I’m bored!” He desperately tried to stop the dog from licking his nose, a peeve of his, while maintaining the tone of abandonment.

“Mikey, I need to get this done, I’m sorry. You know how close the due date is,” she trailed off, her voice holding a sad tone he hadn’t heard many times before.

That was the moment Michael knew, he needed to get you to stop. If not for the rest of the day, at least for an hour or two to unwind.

He didn’t like seeing his girl so stressed, and to be quite honest, he was feeling particularly needy.

“Baby,” he stretched out the vowel sound. His mother always told him he resembled a toddler when he was bored, so today he is embracing it.

Y/N simply sighed, turning back to her computer and skimming her eyes over her work.

She truly felt bad for denying Michael the attention, but she rationalized the guilt because she knew if she didn’t have at least a portion of her essay finished by the end of the day, she risked a full-blown panic attack.

Something she wasn��t the most keen on showing Michael.

A soft thumping in the side of her rib she drew her attention, and after swatting away the offending being multiple times, she huffed, spinning in her chair to face Michael who was -now- poking her in the stomach at a steady rate.

She adored the man in front of her, but she had to admit that she was getting fed up.

“I’m not going to stop poking you until you give me some attention,” he beamed at her, and her frustration momentarily melted away.

Unfortunately that wasn’t enough to get what he wants. She spun back around only to feel the constant jab in her ribs continue.

He alternated where he was poking as not to cause the area to become too tender, but he was still causing a lot of frustration and doing a great job at distracting her.

She didn’t want to snap. She didn’t want to be rude. She wanted to be nice. She wanted him to be happy. She didn’t want to snap-

“Michael, for gods sakes, stop fucking poking me! I’m busy!” Her hands flew down her mouth after the words finished their escape. Her eyes were wide and Michael looked shocked.

He didn’t look offended he just looked surprised and apologetic. He had pushed her that bit too far and he knew it, and he felt bad.

“I’m sorry Y/N,” his voice was soft, a small apologetic smile on his face. “I didn’t mean to annoy you, I was just trying to get you to relax for a bit. I’ll leave you to finish up, okay?”

“No-no- it’s alright, come here,” she held her hands out for the man, pulling him closer to her and standing out of the chair.

She grabbed her laptop and textbook and trekked to their lounge room, flopping herself down and setting her stuff up on the arm of the lounge.

“I have a little bit left to do so I can round off this body paragraph, but once I’m done I’m all yours,” she smiled at him and his guilt washed away at the knowledge that she wasn’t mad at him.

“You sure bub? I don’t want to stop you from finishing your work when it’s causing you so much stress,” he sat on the lounge gingerly, not wanting to force her to relax when she wasn’t ready to do so.

“I’m sure, Mikey.” She moved her arms outwards, “C’mere, you can sit in my lap until I’m done working.”

He giggled at the soft smirk on her face, choosing to instead lay his head down in her lap and his long body along the length of the lounge.

They decided on the new Godzilla movie, and Y/N quickly became determined to knock the essay off so she could diverge her full attention to the movie that was capturing her interest.

Almost an hour later and her computer and essay were abandoned, having been finished to the extent she wanted.

Her hands were tangling in Michaels hair, and they were both enamored by the images dancing across the television screen.

“Your hair is so soft,” she whispered, threading her fingers through the blonde locks.

“Why thank you, I grew it myself.”

#5sos #michael clifford #5 seconds of summer #michael clifford x reader #luke hemmings #ashton irwin #calum hood #requested

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moonmint58 · 3 years

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Somerset Activity & Sports Partnership

Females Training Bursary Limelight 2

Content

Troon Hockey Club Junior Club Trains: Shona, Tracey, Catherine, Karen, Connie And Claire.

It Can Enhance Your Life.

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There are three generally accepted styles of coaching in sports: autocratic, democratic and holistic. Each style has its benefits and drawbacks, and it's important to understand all three.

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Troon Hockey Club Junior Club Trainers: Shona, Tracey, Catherine, Karen, Connie As Well As Claire.

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UA women offer sophomore first Power 5 home - Arkansas Online

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Posted: Sun, 17 Jan 2021 08:29:10 GMT [source]

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Who are the top life coaches?

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Women to Work concentrates on ladies's advancement, both 'into' the office and also 'within' the workplace. Training can be helpful in a range of scenarios; to sustain service startups, to help enhance performance at the office, to sustain job life equilibrium, to assist somebody with their profession. trusted coaching Women business coach Richmond is packed with essential features can be utilized in family circumstances, with young adults, with people experiencing difficulties in life and also in details areas such as training or sales. This is for senior women in the work environment to supply a private space to share, show as well as prepare their management method. We additionally trainer aiming women leaders to assist them accomplish board or collaboration positions. General training has been widely helpful for me as a reflective space where I'm able to evaluate previous experiences, what I did and also what I wanted I had done, as well as informing how I would certainly do points in a different way in the future. I feel I have an entire brand-new 'internal resilience' that will remain to expand and offer me in the future.

Coaching women through unplanned pregnancies - The Catholic Spirit

Coaching women through unplanned pregnancies.

Posted: Wed, 13 Jan 2021 21:37:19 GMT [source]

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unlockthelore · 4 years

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Nighttime Dance

Xion has a hard time sleeping at night but Roxas fares no better.

Part 1 of the Twilight Mirage series. For more updates, follow the twilight mirage tag on this blog.

Xion jolted upright with a sharp inhale, a sheen of light blinding her along with a familiar weight in her hand. A soft clink and a jingle drew her attention to the token lying in her lap attached to the chain leading to the hilt and guard of the key blade brandished at the dark shadows of her bedroom. She breathed in deeply, sucking in as much air as possible, releasing it through her nose slowly.

Gradually lowering her hand, the Keyblade vanished in a sheen of light and her fingers trembled. Although she knew every inch of this room from her desk with the cork board adorned with photographs and scraps of papers from her adventures to the stacks of books on the floor, and her collection of sea shells and star-shaped marbles on the bookshelf.

Her curtains pulled aside allowed silvery moonlight to stream through, casting a shadow across the floor.

It wasn’t anyone else’s to her relief. Just her own.

And yet somehow, that wasn’t comforting at all.

Drawing her knees to her chest, she wrapped her arms around them firmly and stared up at the moon. It wasn’t the heart-shaped prison that she had been helping to create. Rounded with small craters here and there, but otherwise untouched by her own hand or anyone else’s. It was almost comforting to see and she wondered what that light would look like reflected off the waves of Destiny Island’s sea. It was far too late to go sight-seeing, besides, Axel and Roxas would worry if she took off on her own to another world at night no less.

And the last thing she wanted to do was worry them after they’d all been through so much.

Guilt wrested in her stomach and she pressed her forehead to her knees, trying to rid herself of the image of their eyes. Axel pleading with her to simply return to how things were before. Roxas, confused and at the center of a conspiracy he wasn’t even aware of, just wanting to be friends again with no strings attached.

It was naïve but they both had been. They were simply following orders, trying to find where they belonged, and they found one another.

And that was the cruel irony.

They found solace in one another when they were each other’s greatest enemy. But now, they were each other’s greatest strength as well. Xion’s lips parted and she lifted her head, staring up at the sky.

After a moment, she shifted from beneath her blankets and slowly set her feet upon the ground feeling the cold chill from the flooring. Axel complained about it often and even told Isa they should think about carpeting all the floors. Isa refuted that the mansion should be left as it was made. Aside from decorating, they shouldn’t do anything strenuous.

No one argued with him on that. In hindsight, Axel might have been trying to lift the mood or erase painful memories. But those weren’t likely to fade.

Xion grasped her blankets a bit tighter then tugged them, bundling them up in her arms and following the trail of mess on her floor to the door. It was a juggling act opening the door while keeping the blankets from spilling over but she managed somehow. Easing her door shut behind her, she glanced down one hall then the other, somewhat disturbed by the silence.

It wasn’t unlike the Castle.

However, even there Nobodies were wandering about making some sort of noise in a way that they did. She would’ve been grateful even to see one of them slinking about the halls tidying things up or doing that strange wiggle dance they loved so much. Walking down the corridor, she glanced over the railing at the foyer where the television and game systems the others had procured were turned off, leaving it lonelier than usual.

Sometimes, they would come together for a game night. Tense silence becoming loud jeering and cheering as someone won and someone lost. It was easier to compete with one another, to try and work through rather than pretend. And some days when she attended, and one of the others saw her, they would give her a seat and a controller rather than make her wait or ignore her.

Perhaps it was their way of making up for treating her like a tool.

Or someone disposable.

She shook her head, standing outside of the room of the one person — no, perhaps the only person who would know how that felt. Hesitantly, raising her fist, she took a deep breath then knocked.

It took a second or perhaps longer but the door opened and Roxas stood there in his t-shirt and shorts, rubbing his eyes and blinking at her slowly. Clouded with sleep and head bobbing a bit, he yawned and stepped aside.

“Come in…”

Xion smiled faintly, grateful that he didn’t ask why she was there but he never did. This wasn’t the first time they’d done this and as Roxas closed the door behind her, she didn’t tense up or ask him to leave it cracked like before. It almost felt silly going to his room in the middle of the night when she had nightmare. Like she was a child when she wasn’t.

But Roxas didn’t judge her.

And that made a world of difference.

“You left one of your pillows last time,” Roxas said offhandedly, and Xion spied the pillow lying on his bed in the same place where she’d slept the last time she came. It was a soft white, contrasting to his darker grey and black pillows. Somehow, the colors together made her want to smile. Yet, she was curious as to why he didn’t just give it back to her.

And why was his bed still made?

“Were you sleeping at your window again?” Xion asked, looking to him as he wandered past her, sitting on the window ledge with his ankle resting on his knee.

Roxas stiffened up and though he tried his best not to look guilty, the reddened tinge to his cheeks gave him away.

“… Yeah…” he mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck with a downcast look.

Xion scowled, dumping her blankets on his bed and marching over to take him by the hand. His eyes widening as their hands touched and she resisted the urge to shudder. It was different. Holding hands without gloves. Nothing between them. Despite swinging key blades around constantly, his hands weren’t nearly as rough as she thought they might have been and they were incredibly warm.

Roxas seemed just as mystified, transfixed on their joined hands as if lost in a trance.

“You need to sleep in bed,” Xion managed to say, pulling him back toward his bed, avoiding the spherical lamp on the floor adorned with stars and mini rocket-ships. It was cute and cast a decent enough glow that she didn’t feel threatened by the shadows.

“The window’s not that bad,” Roxas mumbled, hiking his shoulder in a half-hearted shrug.

With the reddened imprint on his cheek likely from where his face had been pressed against the wood, she begged to differ.

“You were rubbing your neck, Roxas…” She pointed out, letting go of his hand once her legs bumped against the bed side and she smoothed out her blankets atop his own, sitting down. “Clearly, it isn’t that great.”

Roxas huffed, his lower lip jutting out in a slight pout. Under any other circumstance, she might have thought it was cute but not this one.

“I didn’t… realize I fell asleep until I woke up…”

A dull ache and stabbing pain wrenched at Xion’s heart. Even before gaining one, she knew what it was like to feel pain when someone she loved was hurting. And Roxas did this far too often for his own good. Scolding him wouldn’t do any good. It wasn’t as if it was his fault that he had nightmares. Bitterly, she wondered if he ever dreamt of her and the fights that they had.

Shifting back, she tucked the blankets around her legs and looked up at him, sighing softly before she spoke. “Lay with me?”

Roxas averted his gaze from her but when she asked, his head whipped around so quickly that she thought he might have casted Aeroga.

“I— Wh—“ Ruined protests parted his lips and eventually, he sighed, dragging his hand along the side of his face a few times before dropping it at his side. “Outside or inside..?”

Xion glanced between the options presented, looking down at the spherical lamp then toward the wall. It didn’t matter to her really. She just wanted to be close to him.

“You pick.”

“Mmmm….” Roxas tipped his head one way or another then looked toward the wall. He nodded his head and Xion shifted to one side, letting him climb over her and pull back the blankets, settling in close to the wall with the blankets tucked around his waist.

She was always thankful when he gave her the space to be able to leave when she wanted. Feeling trapped was the worst possible thing. And whenever they slept together like this, Roxas always let her have a clear view of the door and an escape route should she want go.

Right now though, that wasn’t what she wanted.

“So…” Roxas started, trailing off with a slight flex of his fingers as if he was unsure what to do with his hands, opening his arms to her hesitantly. “… Do you want?”

Xion resisted the urge to smile as she shifted closer to him, easing her arms around his middle and tucking her head against his shoulder, pulling him down against the pillows. Roxas followed her easily, his hand resting on her shoulder with a gentle squeeze. His hair still carried the faint scent of the ocean. Something salty and earthy, reminding her of Destiny Island but also the beach in Twilight Town where they played one afternoon.

Closing her eyes, Xion relaxed at the gentle rubbing to her shoulder and between her shoulder blades. Roxas’s touches light and shifting though never going much further than there.

“Hey Xion…?”

“Yeah?”

Roxas shifted his hand slightly, caressing her shoulder with his thumb idly brushing back and forth across her skin. “Do you want to just sleep like this from now on?”

Her eyes opened and she lifted her head, looking at him confusedly. “… Really?”

They had their own space partly because it was what they were used to but more often than not, they spent the nights together. A familiar dance to find some vestige of sleep.

Roxas stared up at the ceiling and though it was hard to see, his cheeks were flushed a light pink.

“Why not?” He asked, tipping his head to one side, coming nose to nose with her as he offered a little smile. “We always were better at fighting together. And who else is gonna keep me from sleeping at the window?”

Xion’s eyes widened. He was right about that. They made a good team. Even when it was just the two of them. And Roxas deserved to have peace in his own bed and his heart.

If she could give him that then it wouldn’t be that bad.

“… I’d like that,” Xion muttered, curling up closer to him, her head resting against his neck.

Roxas tensed up and the slow swipe of his fingers stilled, his hand lifting from touching her with a soft noise of surprise.

“… Thanks Xion,” he muttered into her hair, his hand resting on her upper arm with a light squeeze.

He always thanked her. For the little things. For the big. But she should be the one thanking him. At least, that’s how she thought about it sometimes.

“Thank you too, Roxas…”

Who the next morning came, Xion woke up earlier than Roxas as per their usual. Soft orange sun rays filtered through the curtains completely drowned out the stars on the ceiling and bathed the room in a copper glow. Roxas was still asleep and Xion took the opportunity to admire him. Spiky dirty blond hair flattened and splayed across the pillow, his face lax with sleep and terribly cute. Everything about him seeming much softer when he wasn’t scowling or frowning.

Minutes ticked by and once Roxas opened, his clouded eyes clearing and focusing on her, he smiled warmly with a sleepy sniffle.

“Morning Xion…”

Her heart fluttered and for a split second, she wondered if something was wrong with her. But no, it was just him. And she could get used to him looking at her like that.

“Morning.”

“Do we have to get up?” Roxas mumbled, running his hand up and down her side, his touch featherlight and warm like sunlight.

She melted beneath it. It didn’t feel necessary to escape this. Not when the person she felt safest with was there.

“Not right away,” she said after glancing at his alarm clock.

Roxas hummed a reply, resting his hand against her side, his cheek resting against her head as he nuzzled against her. “Was never good at getting up,” he muttered, stifling another yawn with a hand pressed over his mouth.

Xion hesitated at the feeling. It was different — not bad but certainly different. Distracting herself with what he said, she hummed. She always had gotten up early for missions — wanting to be free of the Castle’s atmosphere as soon as possible. Roxas did seem to take his time whenever he came strolling into the Castle’s foyer, and once or twice, she did see him yawning.

“If we’re sleeping together, you might make me into an early riser…” he said, opening his eyes a bit, his lips tugging into a lazy smile. “Might.”

Xion laughed softly, poking his side. “It feels like you’ll turn my habit into yours.”

Though that wouldn’t be so bad, would it?

Sleeping in because she felt safe instead of waking up early to escape.

“Wait, so does that make a bad influence or…”

“I guess we’ll have to wait to see.”

Roxas smiled at her adoringly and her heart fluttered as he nuzzled her head, muttering softly. “Yeah, guess we will…”

Maybe the nights wouldn’t be as frightening anymore.

#kingdom hearts #kh #rokushi #roxas #xion #fanfiction #my fanfiction #twilight mirage

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dreamss-of-boston · 5 years

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The Art of Seduction ch3

Summary: Reader finds out Levi is a virgin and decides to attempt the impossible: seduction. *NOTE: set in the manga when Levi and his troops are watching Zeke in the forest-- DO NOT READ if you have not at least read up to chapter 107.*

Warnings: mentions of violence and blood, mention of character death, some major kissing and also top-tier comedy imo

read on AO3!

hello! ahahahahahaha i could give you a million and a half excuses for my absence, BUT! nobody cares hehe so have this long and lovingly written chapter as an apology for my hiatus. i'm back babey!! please enjoy!! <3

Chapter 3: ugh-- i like you

A soft, gentle breeze caressed your battered figure atop the walls-- you swayed slowly with it, though your gaze never faltered from what was beneath you.

You had crawled to safety atop the walls before Bertholdt’s blast; but you weren’t able to escape the flying bits of debris, and had since been knocked unconscious by something unknown hitting you upside the head. When you came to, you were met with the putrid scent of death wafting up even as high as the walls, accompanied with the unmistakable smell of burnt wood. Giant corpses from titans freshly slain by the Captain, and even more corpses of your comrades, smashed to bits by the countless barrages of rocks launched by the Beast Titan were what greeted you when you woke.

Looking behind you, the town on the other side of the wall was all but demolished-- and you could make out figures on the roof of one of the houses below you. Who else could they be but your comrades?

You felt a lurch in your gut as you quickly descended to the roof, stumbling to land beside Connie, who was carrying a very injured Sasha on his back. You dared not speak, but you could deduce what was happening: a choice between Armin and Commander Erwin was underway, in less than ideal circumstances. You’d never forget how hard Eren and Mikasa had fought to keep their friend alive-- you’d never forget the look on Levi’s face as he made his decision, either.

As you all vacated the area, you thought to yourself how gruesome a battle this was; how it had tested the very fabric of your own humanity. The choices made that day were ones you could barely stomach, and your heart ached at the fact that Levi was the one who had to make the hardest decision of all-- as if his life wasn’t already difficult enough.

You were surprised as much as anyone that he chose Armin-- you were sort of glad, because that kid held a soft spot in your heart.

Once everyone reconvened on top of the walls, a pitiful headcount ensued. It seemed as though this group were the only survivors of this battle-- but you refused to believe that were true.

It was your idea to use that time to search for survivors. Perhaps it was because you felt an enormous amount of guilt for having been essentially useless in the time it really counted. Still, you found a way to be helpful as you and Levi carried Erwin Smith’s body into one of the less-destroyed houses. The two of you gently laid him down in someone else’s bed (someone probably long since dead), careful not to disturb the crude wrappings on his body-- he deserved the utmost respect, after all-- even if he died after becoming the devil himself.

You and Levi found yourselves searching for survivors together. It happened naturally-- you wandered outside with him, and subconsciously began trailing behind him. Why, you wondered. Perhaps it was because it simply felt right-- and safe. You wandered the abandoned, destroyed streets in silence, occasionally calling out to make your presence known to whoever might still be alive.

No one answered, though.

After about an hour and a half of searching, you both decided to take a small break in a neighborhood that looked just like all the others. Crumpled houses, singed wood, miniature forests made out of grass and wildflowers invading the once human territory. With a sigh, you made your way over to a water pump and tested to see if it was working. After a few rigorous pumps with your good arm, water splurted out of the spickett and you smiled despite the circumstances. You cupped your hand under the running water and brought the little pool in your palm up to your dry lips. That water was the best thing you’d ever tasted, you were sure of it.

“Captain?” You asked, turning to him to see if he wanted any. He was sat on a stray boulder, hunched over. When he heard your call, he only glanced up and shrugged in response. You furrowed your brow in pity; he just lost his best friend and Commander, and you could only imagine how tired he must’ve been after the most gruelling battle he’d likely ever seen.

With the tiniest glimmer of hope, you entered the house behind him and re-emerged soon after with a remarkably unbroken clay bowl. You pumped some water into it to wash it out, then filled it to the brim and brought it over to him. He only looked at it; he knew he needed to drink, but he couldn’t really bring himself to stomach even water at the moment.

You frowned, and sympathy pulled you to crouch in front of him, careful not to display your emotions too obviously on your face, because you knew he’d be irritated.

It didn’t work; as soon as you came into his line of vision, he saw that familiar look of yours with a furrowed brow and wide eyes. Those same eyes he’d always make contact with in passing or in the dining hall, time and time again, he would always find your gaze without meaning to. He didn’t have the energy to be irritated with your childish sympathy-- he only gazed back at you tiredly.

“You need to drink, sir.” You encouraged, gently pushing the bowl closer towards him. With a sigh, he accepted the offer, his hands brushing yours as the exchange was made. He brought the cool liquid up to his lips, and drank with a hunger he didn’t know he had. The bowl was empty in a matter of seconds, and he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he gave it back to you. Wordlessly, you filled it again only to return it to his dry, dirtied palms once more; you just wanted to make the world softer for him, if you could.

As he drank-- slower this time, more like his normal self-- you wetted a rag you’d also stolen from the abandoned house. It looked to be the cleanest you could find, but you weren’t too picky at the moment. It felt as if all of your exposed skin and hair was covered in dirt, sweat, and possibly blood. You paused before wiping your face off, though, as you wondered if Levi would want to use the rag first before you dirtied it up. You yourself weren’t as concerned with ~germs~, but you knew how Levi was. So, you turned back to him, holding up the rag in question.

“Wanna clean yourself up a bit?”

Levi also paused, confused as to why you’d offer something so benign as an opportunity to clean himself. He knew most people weren’t as concerned with cleanliness as he-- in fact, he knew that it irritated and confused most people, but you seemed to be very much taking his value of it into account. That was… nice.

He wasn’t sure if he should accept-- was there some ulterior motive going on here? He was too tired to perform any favors at the moment, too impatient to listen to any demands--

His thoughts were interrupted when you crouched in front of him again, this time with a humorous smile. How you could manage to still look so damn pretty-- er, pleasant after what had just happened was beyond him.

“Not to be rude, but you really need this.” You said, and placed the damp towel in his palm. He pulled his lips into a frown, and mechanically wiped his face and hands. The towel, not surprisingly, was soon stained in a brownish, reddish color from whatever filth had been clinging to him since that strenuous battle.

Levi glanced up at you, who was splashing water on your face as best as you could with your one good hand. Eventually, you just shoved your whole head under the spickett and let the water run through your scalp and trickle down the soft contours of your face, down your jawline and neck to disappear into the collar of your shirt. Levi found himself following the trails of the droplets, and you caught him before he could look away.

You caught yourself smiling-- you quickly wiped it away, placed yourself back in your reality, among burned houses and a world that had just lost a significant amount of soldiers-- your friends. Still, the fact that Levi was looking at you with a sort of a soft focus…

You shoved away any sort of warmth that threatened to spread from your chest, and wiped at the remaining droplets on your forehead. “Should we keep going?”

Levi only sighed, and chose to focus on the rag instead. You were both coming to the conclusion that this was pointless-- just like everything in the Corps. “How in the hell can you smile like that?”

You swallowed thickly, gazing at the ground in shame. What an idiot, you thought of yourself. “Sorry.” You mumbled. “I know you must be hurting.”

“It’s not just now,” Levi huffed, “but, all the damn time. Expedition after expedition, you still manage to have a damn smile on your face.” His jaw tightened. “I don’t get it.” He mumbled.

You glanced up at him-- he was taking his anger, his grief, unprocessed emotions-- out on you, it seemed. With a sigh, you sat next to him, and didn’t say much; you figured he needed to let something out. This wasn’t personal-- and this wasn’t the first time you’d seen him like this after an expedition, either. You remembered for a moment his first squad, and the night that followed their death: two cold teacups resting on his office desk, and the two of you sitting on his sofa in front of the warm fireplace, both aching to be touched by the other and adamantly refusing to admit it.

Levi’s head fell, hanging loosely while his gaze was blank and trained towards the grass beneath him. He stayed like that for a while, elbows resting on his thighs, and you stayed with him, right by his side like you always were, while the sun moved slowly in the sky and shadows began to creep ever closer towards your feet. You couldn’t feel much of a breeze between all of the crushed buildings and rocks, but every once in a while, one would pass by just to remind you that you were there-- just like the grass, and the trees, and the corpses.

After a while, Levi finally stood, and you looked up at him, meeting his gray gaze without any resentment or anger. That, once again, confused him. You never looked at him with fear or anger-- you only ever looked at him with--

He sighed, and glanced away, suddenly guilty for ever laying eyes on you. Before he knew what he was doing, his hand had found its way to your head, giving you two gentle pats before returning to his side.

“Let’s keep going.” He said quietly, beginning to walk in a different direction than the one you’d come from.

You rose to your feet, following behind him faithfully, looking in this window and that. Finally, you gave him your honest answer.

“I think it’s braver-- to smile.”

He didn’t look back at you, but he was listening-- trying to understand.

“After everything… isn’t that the hardest thing to do?”

[-]

“I mean… He must know that he’s hurting me, saying stuff like that!” Kara sniffled into your shoulder, but when you opened your mouth to speak, another sob ripped through her body and she clung to you even tighter.

You only sighed, and gave her head a few sympathetic pats. Oh, Kara… she was a sweet girl, but she was causing you to be involved with way more drama than was necessary at the moment. Already, the group of soldiers on this mission had divided themselves into cliques, talking shit on whoever was causing the most recent problems-- and of course, Kara’s and Borris’ relationship was one of the hottest topics circulating the camp at the moment. You weren’t entirely sure what Kara was crying about this time, because she hadn’t really explained; she just burst into your tent about thirty minutes ago, threw herself on your cot, and began bawling her eyes out about Borris and how he said something… mean? Was he spreading rumors about their sex life or something?

While you were gearing up to go fight that little turd, a knocking on one of the sticks holding up your tent disrupted both yours and Kara’s thoughts.

While you started to say, “Who is it?”, Kara had already launched a particularly mud-caked boot of hers through the flaps with the intention to kill.

“Borris, I don’t wanna talkrightnow!!!” She screeched as the boot sailed through the air, face red and eyes wild. You gulped, though to your relief, you didn’t hear the boot make contact with anybody outside, so for now, crisis averted.

There was a brief pause, and then a tent fold was wrenched aside to reveal a very irritated Captain Levi. Even though he looked royally pissed, you were beyond happy to see him.

“Captain, hey!” You smiled, not even bothering to hide your cheer at his presence. You hadn’t seen him all day, with maintaining the camp, assisting in laundry day and the cooking of dinner for that evening. Plus, with Kara sobbing into your shirt, you figured you wouldn’t get a chance to sit with him by the fire tonight, either. However, his sudden presence in your tent gave you the mood lift you needed after this turbulent day; and Levi would be lying if he wasn’t surprised to see you smile at his presence, rather than cower in fear or admiration like the other cadets in this god forsaken camp.

You wore your every emotion on your sleeve; Levi did not. He kept his unimpressed, albeit now irritated, expression on his gorgeous features as his gaze shifted from you to Kara.

“Just what, exactly, was that about?” He asked, very quietly.

Kara gulped. “Erm… Sorry, sir, I thought you were--”

“You will be the sole caretaker of the horses for exactly eight days. Throwing shoes at supposed ex-boyfriends is… fuckin’ childish.” He wrinkled his nose, but his expression soon turned horrified when Kara began sobbing all over again. She threw her face down into your pillow, and with a sigh, you looked at Levi with a pained expression.

“Borris said some things…” You explained hesitantly,

and Kara’s head shot up from your pillow, “some awful things!” She wailed.

“...and now we’re dealing with that.” You shook your head, still completely unsure of what exactly the situation was. “A tragedy, really.”

“Honestly!” Kara’s muffled voice came from your now very moist pillow.

Levi pinched the bridge of his nose, his eyes now closed in sheer agony, you were sure. To ease this pain, you decided to keep your chipper attitude up.

“So, Captain, what brings you to my tent on this fine evening?”

“I was wondering where you were.” Came his bored response.

“Huh?”

“You didn’t show up. I came to see if you were alright.” Levi gestured outside. “Clearly, you’re fine, so let’s go.”

“Oh-- you mean to the fire?” You were, uh-- dumbfounded.

Levi’s jaw tightened visibly-- it was kind of hot. “You want me to spell it out for you? Yes, the fire.”

“Oh-- okay!” You tried very hard to tame the elation in your chest at the thought of Levi wanting you by his side, of him seeking you out if only for you to sit by him in silence. You were so very glad that he valued your time together as much as you did, that he was bothered at the fact that you weren’t with him tonight.

Sketchbook in hand, you left a quieter, sleepier Kara behind (she was probably exhausted from all that crying), and joined Levi’s side as you both made your way to the flickering fire.

“I hate being alone with that monkey.” Levi justified-- you only hummed in response. A particularly nasty root hidden on your path caused you both to stumble a bit in your stride, and so your arms pressed into each other in order to maintain balance. You only laughed it off, continuing your walk in peace, and so didn’t see the faintest blush that blossomed from your Captain’s cheeks.

’Damn that stupid root…’ He thought bitterly, suddenly overcome with the urge to rip it up from the ground so as to never embarrass himself like that in front of you ever again. Levi paused in his tracks-- why did he give a damn what you thought?

“Well, if it isn’t the prettiest and simultaneously rudest soldier in all of Paradis!” Came Zeke’s cheeky voice from the fire upon your arrival. Great, he was feeling talkative tonight… Levi became irritated all over again. Now he’d have to deal with Zeke bothering you and stealing your attention--

’Whatthefuckiswrongwithyou??’ He thought bitterly. It doesn’t matter. At least he’ll be bothering you and not him.

Levi plopped himself down on his log while you sat next to him-- were you aware of how close you were? He gulped and tried to ignore it. He must’ve been getting warmer from the fire-- nobody could ever become hot from simply being near another person. He poked at the fire, still irrationally irritated and very much on edge. Whatever conversation you and Zeke were having, he wasn’t interested. It made him very uneasy that you were talking so much with that stupid, ugly, bearded man. He wasn’t even that interesting. What could he possibly be talking about? Beards? Glasses? Who cares.

“Levi?” Your voice cut through his thoughts, and he glanced at you, startled.

“What?” He snapped.

You only raised an eyebrow. “You seemed like you were spacing out.”

“I was just tuning out the ape.” Levi muttered, refusing to look into your eyes.

“Such a pity, too, I was sharing some actual culture with you.” Zeke sighed sadly. “You know, in Marley, it’s almost unheard of for women to wear slacks--”

“Ny-it’s awmost unyeard uv two wear slaaacks!” You childishly imitated Zeke, sticking out your tongue and waving your palms beside your head. Levi glanced at you a second too long with a furrowed brow-- did you actually just do that? “Do you know how annoying you sound? Seriously, every time you open your mouth it’s just ‘blah blah, Marley, blah blah culture.’” You rolled your eyes.

“Well, at least I can speak with some intelligence.” Zeke huffed.

“You speak with pretension!” You fired back.

“Ooh, that’s a fancy word-- did you learn it today by listening to the adults?” Zeke jeered.

“Muuh, I’m Zeke, look at me, I’ve got a beard!!” You crossed your arms and sat up a little too straight, nose in the air as you ramped up your capacity for annoyance.

Zeke just so happened to cross his arms, unintentionally mirroring you. “Do you actually think--”

“What’s that?” You rubbed your pinky in your ear, leaning forward. “I can’t seem to hear you through all this fur in my ear! ‘Cause I’m the great Beast Titan, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I also have a thing for rocks--”

“Children,” Levi sighed, and rubbed his forehead. “Quit dicking around-- you’re giving me a headache.”

You bit your tongue to hold back any further remarks, (even though you thought you were being rather hysterical) and instead opened your sketchbook so that you could calm down and ignore Zeke and enjoy Levi’s presence.

But you heard Zeke mutter something under his breath as he brought his coffee cup to his lips, and you were obviously in a feisty mood tonight, so you leapt to your feet with your fists clenched.

“What’d you say, monkey?” You used your most intimidating voice-- which was not intimidating at all. In fact, you sort of sounded like a 12 year old bully but you’d never realize it yourself.

“Hm? Oh, nothing, I doubt you’d be able to comprehend what I said anyway.” Zeke said nonchalantly, and you felt like your blood was about to boil.

Man, fuck that monkey. And fuck Marley! And, you know what? Fuck Eren for kidnapping this motherfucker and dumping him in your lap!

Before you knew it, you were rolling up your sleeves and making a move to circle the fire in order to beat some monkey ass, but Levi was quicker and had his strong grip on your forearm in an instant, effectively stopping you.

“Borris.” He called up tiredly, and the young boy zipped down in a second, standing at attention.

“Sir!”

“Keep the monkey company while I escort this delinquent to bed.” Levi yanked you with him as he made his way back to the tents, much to your disappointment.

“Have a good evening, darling!” Zeke called after you, much to your irritation. But Levi was already dragging you back, his own irritation quite evident on his stupidly handsome features.

“Wait, Captain, I’m sorry--” You started, a blush heating your cheeks from embarrassment. You really could act like such a child sometimes.

“Technically, you’re a senior officer.” Levi sighed, finally relinquishing his grip on you. He crossed his arms and turned to face you, unimpressed as ever. “I shouldn’t have to fuckin’ babysit you.”

You bit the inside of your cheek.

“I’ve told you once before.” Levi huffed, and looked away, to the side (obviously uncomfortable, but for some reason he couldn’t seem to stop what he was saying??). “Sitting with you is-- ugh, one of the nicer parts of my time out here-- mngh, it’s-- nice-- to have-- someone I’m-- familiar with-- ugh…”

You were biting your tongue so hard it hurt to keep yourself from laughing in his face. He was trying to express his feelings? For you? Aw, shucks. It was no secret how much you liked him-- and he seemed like he was about to whip out a knife and slit his own throat from mortification if he continued any longer.

“Levi.” You held up your hands in surrender, and finally he reached your gaze. God, the pain and embarrassment in his gray eyes made you wanna leap on him and cover him in kisses and say it’s okay!! I want to hear what you have to say because I like you, too!!! “It’s okay-- you can express how you’re feeling without talking, cause… erm, no offense, but you suck at it.”

Levi narrowed his eyes, but he knew you were right and the tiniest littlest part of him felt some kind of happiness at your understanding, even though he had just sounded like a toddler trying to explain the economy.

“How?” He asked quietly, and you raised your eyebrow.

“How, what?”

“How can I…” He gestured helplessly, suddenly extremely aware of every move you and he made. “... erm, express... how I-- feelaboutyou?”

Levi was mumbling so much, he looked so unsure, you almost couldn’t believe this was the same man who had slain dozens of titans, killed vicious murderers like it was child’s play, fought past the point of exhaustion--

But then you remembered you were also looking at the same man who had brought you coffee in the mornings after he’d made a trip into town-- because he knew you preferred coffee over tea. This was the same man who’d pat your head when he knew you were sad and you wouldn’t admit it-- he’d pat your head because he didn’t know what else to do. But you liked that. Your heart swelled. This same man you’d admired and stuck with for so long was the same man before you, painfully inexperienced in caring for anybody, and he was standing close to you, asking for help so that he could understand you-- because you had come to so easily understand him, and you had cared for him, and he wanted to show you that he felt the same in a way you could grasp.

But he was giving you the lead this time, letting down his walls-- for you.

You reached forward, and stepped towards him just the littlest bit-- and you brushed your pinky with his, and you heard him inhale even though he tried to hide it. You bit your bottom lip when he looked into your eyes, and suddenly he felt very nervous and very comforted all at once. He chided himself for feeling like this; he could come face to face with a titan, but being this close to you made his heart hammer so hard he wondered if you could hear it.

You lowered your gaze to his lips-- lips you’d honestly fantasized about kissing for quite a while now. You brushed the tip of your nose with his, but he didn’t flinch back-- he leaned into the movement, like he’d done this a million times before, and you felt your chest tighten, and you carefully pressed your lips to his--

And he couldn’t believe anything for a moment, couldn’t really think of anything. Time sort of stopped, as dumb as it is to say. You moved your lips so gingerly against his, and was caught off guard when his arm clumsily-- earnestly-- wrapped around your waist. You took it in stride, and wrapped your arms around his neck to rest comfortably on his shoulders, and couldn’t help but smile when he tilted his head-- you experimentally parted your lips just a bit to dart your tongue over his bottom lip, and he stiffened and pulled away with a confused expression.

(When you looked at his face again, you just wanted to kiss him more and more.)

“What was that?” He asked-- no judgment, just curiosity.

“Uh-- my tongue.” You said obviously.

“I know that.” Levi rolled his eyes. “Why’d you do that?”

“Cause I wanted to.” You smiled, and his eyes darted to you lips. “Try it, tough guy-- I think--”

You were cut off when his mouth was once again on yours, experimentally running his tongue along your bottom lip, and you opened your mouth graciously to him. He took the hint and dove his tongue inside your mouth, lapping at the roof of it while you snaked your fingers into his hair to give a light tug.

He gave a sigh, and pushed you back into the trunk of a tree you didn’t know was there. You let out a little noise of surprise, and his grip tightened around you as he kept sucking at your mouth, almost hungrily-- you shamelessly felt the beginnings of an all too familiar warmth beginning to spread in your gut, and then further down.

If Levi thought kissing your lips was good-- hohoho, you couldn’t wait to show him the many other possibilities of where to kiss a person. You broke away from his lips, much to his displeasure, but soon eased his mood by pressing your lips to where his jaw met his ear, and then trailed your mouth further down, getting a bit filthier the more you went.

You bit down on his pulse, and felt him tense around you, crushing you even further into the tree to your delight, and you quickly licked the mark to soothe it. Levi’s hand suddenly tangled into your hair at the base of your neck, and pulled your head back to expose your collarbone and neck to him, which he quickly seized with his mouth, taking your lessons and running with them.

You let out a contented sigh as he licked and sucked at your neck, occasionally biting down to illicit unintentional sighs and suppressed moans from you. You felt him smile against your skin whenever you made a sound, but you wouldn’t give him that satisfaction so easily-- he had to work to get that gratification, and it was such a fun game to play to push his limits, and plus people might hear you and you knew that Levi would kill you and then himself were anyone to find out that he had feelings for someone.

Before you knew it, he was kissing you again-- with less fervor, most likely to calm himself down and hold himself back (but you didn’t give a shit; in fact you would be fine with him fucking you into this tree, you didn’t give a shit about splinters cause he looked so damn fine and you were finally getting what you wanted but it’s fine you wouldn’t push his limits).

He was panting a little, his eyes hooded and gaze aflame with a desire you didn’t think could ever be directed at you, much less from his eyes.

You swallowed thickly, licking your lips, which he glanced at again with a renewed hunger. Whoa, boy.

You tenderly placed your palm on his chest to gently push him back, since you both knew that you needed to take a break before you went completely berserk. This was a delicate situation.

“Goodnight, Levi.” You whispered, and he tensely nodded back to you-- he pressed his forehead to yours for a moment, eyes closed, and squeezed his hand into the small of your back for just another moment before breaking away, rolling his shoulders to regain his composure as he walked back to the fire.

You, meanwhile, leaned against the tree, tucked your hair behind your ear as you tried to sear the memory of the feeling of his lips into your brain so that you could remember it forever-- but you suspected that this wouldn’t be the last time you and Levi would be kissing in the dark; or, you hoped it wouldn’t be.

#aot fanfiction #snk fanfiction #attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #levi x reader #levi ackerman #levi fanfiction #levi ackerman fanfiction #attack on titan fanfiction #shingeki no kyojin fanfiction #levi x reader fanfiction #so sorry again for the haitus #im back tho!!!

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diabetestypeii-blog1 · 5 years

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Diabetic Treatment and Guidelines

type 2 diabetes treatment without medication Ok, so assuming you ultimately know your Diabetes reputation, supposing it turns out and about to be optimistic, just how should you go concerning the treatment of it? What is usually the best intervention wide open to you? What will remedy involve and just what would you should do or maybe refrain from doing to ensure treatment is successful? Just about all these concerns and a lot more will be answered in the following paragraphs.

type 2 diabetes treatment without medication

So here goes.

Typically considering that diabetes is referenced by simply an above standard occurrence of blood sweets (200 mg/dl or more-random plasma Blood sugar test as well as 126 mg/dl or more- fasting flat screen glucose test), it is the goal of diabetes treatment to guarantee that regardless of whether through medicine, exercise, surgical procedure, dietary modifications, etc. or even a combination involving all these, blood carbohydrates amount is regularized along with cut back to normal. Nonetheless such cure must help to make sure at the very same time the opposite won't happen-that blood sugar level does definitely not fall to uncommonly minimal levels (hypoglycemia).

Accordingly, the actual monitoring of blood sugars is usually an essential factor of diabetes treatment method. The particular first thing to take note therefore, supposing you are generally diagnosed with diabetes is the fact diabetes treatment equates to help diabetic management. For today strictly communicating, whether with regard to Type 1(especially for Variety 1) or even Type 3 (depending in your take in reversal), there is simply no treatment.

The second factor to note is in which therapy would generally require some style of living changes. These kinds of changes calls for a blend of some or each of the following; dietary adjustments, workout and the taking connected with diabetic medication like insulin in addition to metformin.

Type one particular diabetic is treated together with insulin, exercising and a new diabetic diet. Style two on the other palm is dealt with first using weight reduction, the diabetic diet and exercise. Along with second of all in cases just where this would not possibly be adequate, thereafter with diabetic treatment or insulin remedy as well as Blood Sugar tracking. As such lessons in self-management of diabetes is surely an crucial part of diabetes supervision.

That said, it is definitely important to note this remedy must be personalized to individual needs thus catering to individual diabetic differences. Such treatment really should therefore take into cognizance and address psycho-social, as well as lifestyle issues.

For the particular great majority of people having Type just one diabetes, insulin is the simply web form of medication they may require. For people along with Type 2 diabetes nonetheless, obtainable medication vary and also according to their circumstances, that they may can need in order to take one or far more of these medications. Why don't take a deeper check into treatment for Type a couple of diabetes.

Healthy and balanced eating

Even though there is no certain diabetes diet, since the aim is to minimize blood glucose, it is very best to reduce the ingestion of carbohydrate food, animal goods, sugar along with fats. As an alternative one should centre his or her or her diet close to greens, fruits and complete grains.

Foods using a lower glycemic index (foods which don't raise your personal blood vessels sugar quickly), typically loaded with fiber foods, can become helpful within assisting one particular to reach a comfortable bloodstream sugar level.

Regular training

In this article what is crucial is to incorporate physical exercise into our daily schedule. Your medical professional taking into cognizance your own medical history might be able to advise a well-balanced regimen for an individual. One which simultaneously would certainly be adequate, whilst not really getting strenuous.

A fifty minutes everyday combination associated with aerobic, stretching in addition to energy training exercise is advised and possesses been found to be able to be far better than both type of physical exercise (aerobic and strength training) only. Where you have also been sedentary for long, the item is best to begin slowly before gradually developing things up.

Blood Glucose Monitoring

Trying to keep your our blood sugar within the targeted or desired range ensures that you must regularly screen your current blood sugar degree. Your doctor must be able to offer you a rough amount of the amount of times any day you should period blood sugar reading. Many people check out their (blood) sugar stage before many meals and also before or perhaps after engaging in other designs of treatment such while workout or the getting of prescription medication. Illness as well as alcohol consumption is likewise identified to affect blood glucose levels thus one ought to watch out for all these.

Treatment

Whilst diet and also exercise alone is enough regarding some people to permit them obtain their goal blood sugar levels, other folks may require medication. In addition to though earlier, insulin has been the only diabetic drugs available, today the quantity of diabetic medicine has tremendously enhanced.

Commonly prescribed diabetic remedies today include insulin, metformin, januvia, actos, Victoza along with Byetta. Lets check out several of these in details.

Sulfonylureas; aids your human body to secrete considerably more insulin. The following drugs fall under this class, namely; glipzide (Glucotrol), glyburide (DiaBeta, Glynase) and glimepiride (Amaryl). Unwanted side effects may include weight acquire and reduced blood sweets.

Metformin is the 1st drug of choice typically approved in diabetes situations regarding Type 2. This specific drug by means of improving typically the sensitivity in the bodies tissue to insulin, enables often the body to use insulin more effectively. However due to the fact Metformin won't usually reduce blood sugar levels enough on it is own, it is suggested that concerned individuals must couple its uptake together with weight loss and much more physical activity. Side-effects frequent to Metformin are feeling sick and diarrhea but these kind of typically disappear as the actual body sets to this.

Meglitinides

Working just like sulfonylureas, these medications inspire the particular body to secrete a lot more insulin. They differ coming from Sulfonylureas however in that will they act more quickly in addition to don't stay active inside the system for seeing that long. With these school of drugs too will come a great associated risk involving weight gain as well as hypoglycemia. However this last mentioned chance is less than intended for that connected with Sulfonylureas.

DPP-4 inhibitors

DPP-4 inhibitors aid to lower blood glucose levels. Despite the fact that their effect is pretty simple, they don't however result in weight gain. These variety of drugs incorporate linagliptin (Tradjenta), Saxagliptin (Onglyza) and also Sitagliptin (Januvia).

Thiazolidinediones or maybe glitazones are one more established of medication used throughout the treating Type 2 diabetic. Like Metformin, many people boost the body tissues level of sensitivity to insulin. This mentioned though, they have been recently associated with greater possibility of weight gain, coronary heart disappointment, stroke and cracks. As a result they are certainly not first choice recommendation to get diabetes treatment and with truth rosiglitazone a alternative have been suspended from make use of in The european countries by health-related authorities specifically because connected with these difficulties.

Additional lessons of medication designed for diabetic treatment include SGL T2 inhibitors and GLP-1 inhibitors. A feature of SGL T2 functioning is in which carbohydrates is excreted available from the urine, whilst GLP-1 operates by slowing digestion along with thus the volume of sugar introduced at any once directly into the blood stream.

Possessing explained the above, that should be noted this insulin may also end up being prescribed for some style 2 sufferers of diabetic. These insulin types usually are; Insulin aspart (Novolog); Insulin Lispro; insulin isophane (Humulin N, Novolin N); Insulin glulisine (Apidra); Insulin determir (Levemir) and Insulin glargine (Lantus).

Ordinarily insulin is necessary to be injected because typically the intestinal process may affect often the workings of insulin obtained orally. Apparatus applied for insulin injections include things like needle in addition to syringe as well as insulin pencils.

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marshmallow-phd · 6 years

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The Experiments

Genre: Sci-Fi, Thriller, Experiment AU

Pairing: Fem!Reader x Exo (????)

Summary: You were a med school graduate who just wanted to help research cures for the world. Instead, what you got was a dream job at EXO Applied Sciences. That is, until you discover the secrets of Level Sixty-Six and the nine inhabitants that are stored down there….

Warning: None

Part: 1 I 2 I 3 I 4 I 5 I 6 I 7 I 8 I 9 I 10 I 11 I 12 I 13 I 14 I 15 I 16 I 17 I 18 I 19 I 20 I 21 I 22 I 23 I Final

By three in the afternoon the next day, you’d interviewed all nine subjects and even learned their names. While some didn’t have any issues talking to you, like Yixing, others you knew would take a few more sessions. Kyungsoo said maybe three words throughout the whole hour. From what you read in his file, he was the most closed off, but still cooperative. Even with his small stature, he was the strongest of them all, possessing impossible strength. You wondered if he was just afraid to hurt someone accidentally. He never let you come too close to him, shrinking back if you leaned forward or made any sort of gesture in his direction.

Jongdae was the first one that you actually wanted to smack. Over the years, it seemed he built up a defense of sarcasm. You couldn’t take any of his answers entirely seriously and he even winked at you at one point. It couldn’t be denied, you certainly admired his bravado in the face of his situation.

The one who really deserved that admiration, however, was Baekhyun. His happy disposition shocked you from the moment you walked into his room. He was grinning as you sat down in front of him. It took only about five seconds for him to give you his name and he loved telling you stories about when they were all together in the large dorm room, located on a different floor. You didn’t even have to prompt him with any questions. That was his way of coping with his life, you concluded, preferring to focus on the fun times they had with each other.

Minseok was another quite one. His form of silence wasn’t one of fear or hatred of you, just a neutral disinterest. The only reason that you even knew his name was because of Baekhyun’s description. Most of the communication was you trying to ask open-ended questions and Minseok simply shrugging or glancing at you before looking away again. He would be a tough one to crack, but you hoped he come around soon.

The one that concerned you the most out of all of them was Sehun. His fear of you and of his circumstances radiated off of him no matter how neutral he tried to stay. Pushed all the back into the corner where his bed met the wall, he kept his arms wrapped around his folded knees, tucked in tight to his chest. You stayed a bit farther away than you had with the others, doing more to try and sooth him and convince him that you weren’t there to harm him more than anything else. The expression on his face gave off the vibe of a high wall that you would have to climb extensively before he would trust you. No, his fear didn’t show on his face; his expression was more mooted than that. Almost like he’d given up.

As you typed out your observations, you constantly went back and reread the sentences, trying not sound as empathetic and heartbroken as you felt. If you wanted to keep these sessions going and stick to the promise you’d made them, then you had to stay professional. At least in Dr. Wang and Dr. Kwon’s eyes. It took a lot of time, but when it was at the hour to go home, your report was finished at last.

The door to Dr. Wang’s office was locked and you didn’t have your own drawer to lock the papers in until the next day. Dr. Wang preferred reports to be written rather than handed in electronically. Not entirely sure what to do, you decided to see if maybe you could track her down.

Sticking with your own hallway for the time being, you poked your head into the first two labs to find them empty. If you were less anxious, you might have spent some time looking around as you’d never really explored the other work spaces before. But you didn’t want to seem like you were sneaking around and they looked just like any other laboratory you’d been in.

You came to the last one, concluding that if she wasn’t in there, then you would just forget it and slide the paper under her door and hope she didn’t yell at you for it. Unfortunately, while she wasn’t in this room, one other person was.

Near the back were several computers and vital monitors hooked up to a cylinder tank almost as high as the ceiling. It was full of water, much like an escape trick a magician would pull. But it was no magician floating in the water.

It was Junmyeon.

His eyes were closed as he bobbed up and down in the water, his chest not moving. There was no oxygen mask over his mouth to help him breathe, only waterproof wires stuck to his chest and head. The beeping of the monitors was the only hope you had that he was still alive. In a sort of trance, you stepped forward until you were only an arm’s length away. Reaching out, you pressed your hand up against the cold glass, a sort of fog forming around it, creating a perfect outline of your fingers.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

You gasped, dropping your hand and swiveling around. Dr. Wang wasn’t looking at you as she stepped up next to you. Her gaze was fixated on Junmyeon, a strange look somewhere between admiration and a much darker emotion settling in her eyes.

“He can hold his breath under water for almost an hour without any internal damage,” she said in a breathy voice, like she was describing a painting. “It’s amazing how interchanging just a few sequences in one’s DNA can grant completely astounding gifts.”

“They’re an extraordinary group,” you agreed, although your opinion lingered on who they were as people, not the science that had been done to them.

Pulling herself away from the water tank, Dr. Wang looked over at you. “Was there something you needed, Dr. (l/n)?”

“Right, yeah,” you held out the report for her to take. “I’ve finished my first analysis. There isn’t too much to go on since it was hard to get some of them to talk, but I think if I keep going, I can get more data on their current mental states.”

“Excellent.” Dr. Wang glanced over the first page before tucking it under her arm. “I’ll go over it with Dr. Kwon. See you on Monday, Dr. (l/n).” She turned on her heels and left the room.

Just as you were about to follow her, Junmyeon’s eyes snapped open, meeting yours. You tried to convey how much you wished he wasn’t in there with your eyes, but you didn’t think it was enough.

You mouthed, “I’m sorry.”

He nodded, understanding. Knowing there wasn’t anything else you could do, you left the room as well.

Nada was already gone when you dropped your lab coat off and gathered up your purse to leave for the weekend. It was tormenting to know that you would be gone for two days, not knowing what was going on down in level sixty-six.

“(y/n)!”

Marcus ran up to you, panting from the short exercise.

“Hi, Marcus,” you greeted halfheartedly.

“You headed home?” he asked, putting his hands in his pockets. He was out of uniform so his shift must have been over as well.

“Unfortunately.” You were completely serious, even if he took it as a joke.

He seemed to take it that way, anyway. “You want to grab some dinner?”

You bit your bottom lip. As much as you really didn’t want to go home and be alone with your thoughts, you didn’t want Marcus to think it would lead to something more romantic. Your dilemma must have been written all over your face.

“It’s not a date,” he insisted, throwing his hands up, palms out. “My treat, but just as friends.”

“I guess that doesn’t sound too bad.” You sighed. “Okay, then. Where are we going?”

It’s a good thing it wasn’t a date, because you would be seriously unimpressed. “Dinner” was a hidden dive bar that was much too noisy for your liking. Marcus got a table near the back of the building and seemed to be on a first name basis with the wait staff.

Generic bar food was their specialty and nothing in particular stuck out to you. In the end, you and Marcus shared a plate of greasy nachos covered in too much cheese and not enough meat. You mostly just picked at it, not really hungry.

“Everything okay?” Marcus asked after you’d been silent for several minutes.

Wiping your hands on a napkin, you replied, “Yeah, I’m fine. Just a long day.”

“The therapy sessions getting to you?”

You weren’t sure how to answer.

Yeah, they were getting to you. It was hard to see nine people who had had their childhoods taken away from them and hadn’t had contact with another human being who wasn’t out to poke and prod at them while performing painful tests in over two years. The process had been draining, but there was a silver lining. Being able to connect with them, to make Yixing smile just a little bit or to let Kyungsoo know that he’s able to be around others without hurting them, that made you feel like what you were doing mattered. So much more than staying in a lab and looking into a microscope day in and day out. Perhaps you chose the wrong profession in college.

“They’re…,” you took a deep breath, “strenuous. There’s only so much I can do or say. Half of them won’t even really talk to me.”

“I think it’s a brave thing you’re doing,” Marcus commented.

You looked up at him. “Really? How so?”

“The reason everyone is able to do what they do down there is because they disassociate.” Marcus stopped to take a sip of his beer before continuing. “They make themselves forget that they’re people like you and me. It makes me sick, to be honest.”

The image of Yixing and the guards flashed through your mind and your stomach did a little churn of its own.

“But you,” he tapped the top of your head with his finger, “you’re talking to them one-on-one. That makes you see them as only human. An animal can’t talk back. To do that, you have to be willing to face reality. To me, that’s brave.”

With the tips of your fingers, you played with the straw that floated in your glass of water. It was nice to hear something like that for once. All Nada really wanted to know was what they looked like. She wasn’t completely shallow, but like Marcus said, she’d shut off that part that would remember whose blood you were constantly looking at and cataloging. Plus, she’s never seen their living conditions up close.

“I really appreciate that,” you said sincerely. “It’s kind of been like walking on eggshells. Not wanting to seem too sympathetic. I’m sure if Dr. Wang suspected anything, she’d yank me out of there in a second. I thought I could do it.” It was hard admitting all this. You ran your fingers over your hair, trying to keep your breathing even. “I knew human trials were to be expected within EXO. I’ve read the stories and I knew I would have to accept that they happened. But forced experimentation like this? The cases we read about were always about somewhere else. Like a ghost story. I walked right into this blindfolded and now I can’t unsee any of it.”

“Maybe you were meant to be here,” Marcus offered.

You laughed. “What? Like fate?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, genuinely. “I mean, what if you were meant to help them?”

“How could I possibly help them? They’ve been in that place since they were teenagers. What hope is there?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? Opportunity might be closer than you think.”

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the-formerone · 6 years

Note

Prompt #28 or 37 gaara/naruto.

37. “You seem somewhat familiar. Have I threatened you before?”

28. “Excuse me. I have to go make a scene.”

Naruto is only about ninety percent sure he’s worked on a job with this guy before. He’s got sharp red hair, which isn’t all too uncommon to Naruto, considering his mom and his cousins, and his eyes are blue, which isn’t weird considering Naruto and his dad. But he does have a face tattoo and no eyebrows. Which would make a person stand out, y’know?

The trouble is, Naruto sees all kinds of freaky shit on the day to day that some redhead with a face tattoo wearing heavy eyeliner isn’t really the strangest thing he’s ever seen in his life. Which sucks because he’s got the vaguest sense that he knows this guy from somewhere.

It wouldn’t bother him so much if the guy didn’t clean up so well. He somehow manages to pull off wearing a purple suit, something that not even Sasuke can do, and Naruto has seen him try.

This Gaara guy manages to look completely disheveled and untrustworthy (the hair, the face tattoo, the complete and utter lack of eyebrows) and simultaneously like an entire goddamn snack platter and it is a magic that Naruto does not even remotely understand.

He’s gorgeous. Drop dead gorgeous. A quarter in a pocketful of dimes. Naruto isn’t sure what he did to get Konan’s favor for her to send him out on an assignment like this while Sakura and Hinata were out somewhere extorting millions from investment bankers too cocky to cover their tracks. Even Sasuke was stuck on a bodyguard detail.

But Naruto got to wear a fancy suit and dance damn near glued to this guy. There’s no time to ask who he’s affiliated with or why Konan took out a contract with his employer. This isn’t really the place to ask anyway. Naruto’s just there to be arm candy, really, to be a distraction for Deidara’s coming shenanigans. Once he and Obito got things rolling, all Naruto had to do was slip out the back and hop into the van, switch places with Hidan so he could offer some extra muscle support, and wake up Shikamaru in case he was asleep at the monitors. Which he usually was.

But he kind of wants to ask. Because Naruto never forgets a face. He gets used to odd looking ones, like Hidan’s freaky religious face paint, and Kakuzu’s eyes. But he doesn’t forget faces. And there’s something about this Gaara guy’s that he’s sure he knows from somewhere.

“You seem somewhat familiar,” Gaara says. And his voice is all low rumble, quiet and raspy like he’s smoked all his life or like he shouted himself hoarse as a kid. That’s why Naruto’s got his own rasp, or at least that’s what his parents tell him.

Naruto’s about to open his mouth, bat his blond eyelashes, and say something coy enough to trap this guy into bed when Gaara continues with, “Have I threatened you before?”

Naruto blinks. Because that - that isn’t really a barometer for assessing interpersonal relationships, is it? Is it? It probably was for Sasuke. And Obito, too for that matter. And Deidara. And pretty much all of the people Naruto’s grown up with. With the exception of nearly all the women he had ever known, who were more likely to go ahead and hurt you without going through the trouble of threatening that they were going to do it.

“I - I don’t believe you’ve had the pleasure,” Naruto stammers. “Though you may know one of my associates?”

Gaara hums, his gentle hold on the small of Naruto’s back neither increasing or decreasing with the question.

“I don’t think so,” Gaara murmurs. “I know your eyes.”

And that’s the kind of thing that only guys in Ino’s trashy romance novels say. Not that Naruto would know. He’s never read them. Not even in high school.

“You may have seen me in the brief before you came out for this job,” Naruto offers, carefully circumventing any mention of the very illegal activity he is about to partake in. He’s wired for his safety, and he knows that Shikamaru won’t cover for him if he says too much.

“I did,” Gaara agrees. “I insisted on taking my brother’s place on this operation because I thought I knew you.”

From the corner of his eye, Naruto can see Obito, dressed as a waiter move across the room like he’s hunting something. He gives Naruto an imperceptible nod; two minutes until it was time.

“Did you go to boarding school as a child?”

Naruto blinks his gaze back to Gaara, surprised and not a little concerned.

His parents were freedom fighters. They had been in jail almost as long as Naruto had been alive. When his mom got caught first, his dad put him with his godfather Jiraiya. Then when his father got caught, Jiraiya put him in boarding school. The visits to his parents in prison were few and far between, but Naruto has always known it was only going to be a matter of time before it all worked out.

This job was one of many on the road to making that happen. His folks may still be behind bars, but the Yellow Flash and the Hot-Blooded Habanero hadn’t been as defanged as the feds hoped they were.

“I went to one,” Gaara muses, voice soft. “In Ame. Where all unfortunate children are sent, so they say.”

It also happened to be where Akatsuki was based. And it was where the children of fighters like Naruto’s parents were sent when things got ugly at home. Naruto had already been out of his hometown before he was sent to Ame. Itachi had to smuggle Sasuke out of Konoha. Neji’s father had sent him before he was executed.

“I don’t know how my mother would feel about me saying it,” Naruto says with a chuckle, “but for a time, I was an unfortunate child.”

There was no aging out of the system, not really. You stayed for as long as you needed to. Akatsuki had started originally as a kind of daycare service, protecting the children of radicals as a service to the radicals themselves. It was only when the first generations of those children had gotten older that Akatsuki transformed into what it was today.

Upstart brats like Naruto and his friends, ones that wanted to change the world that kept trying to kill their parents.

Gaara leans in close, until they are dancing cheek to cheek. He’s arm against Naruto’s face, still leading them across the dance floor.

“I used to carry around a brown teddy bear,” Gaara says. “I never went anywhere without it.”

And the memory splits itself open before Naruto’s eyes. A small red haired boy, constantly watched over by a hawkish older brother and sister. His sad blue eyes, how he would call for his mother, for his father. And the teddy bear.

“A black haired boy got tomato paste on it, and a blue eyed boy helped me clean it up.”

In Naruto’s ear there’s the sound of three sharp clicks, which is Shikamaru’s signal that it’s time to get to work. He desperately wants to ignore it in favor of the strange and wonderful man in front of him, who used to be a strange and terrified child.

“I -,”

“Excuse me,” Naruto says, loathe to interrupt him.

Gaara pulls back slowly so that he can look Naruto in the face when he speaks again. The intensity in his gaze isn’t uncomfortable. If anything, it’s only sincere.

“Yes?”

“I have to go cause a scene,” Naruto says sheepishly. “But I would like to talk to you again, if I can.”

Gaara nods, at once understanding the situation.

“I’ll ask my Tessen to speak to your Angel,” he replies, “to see if we could arrange a meeting under less … strenuous circumstances.”

Naruto beams at him, and Gaara’s intense expression softens somewhat.

“I’d like that. Now if you’ll excuse me?”

He drops his hand off Gaara’s shoulder and moves to take his hand back from his, but Gaara doesn’t let go.

“What kind of scene exactly do you need to cause?”

Naruto lifts an eyebrow. He’s very good at making distractions, and in the business of being obnoxious, two is always better than one.

“Can you fake a heart attack?”

Gaara tilts his head to the left.

“No,” he replies. “But my older sister is epileptic, so I know the warning signs of a seizure.”

Naruto lets out a low whistle, and guides his new partner to the center of the dance floor.

“Alright, Mr. Uzumaki,” he says. “You’re my husband, if anyone asks.”

Gaara cracks a smile.

“I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

Naruto gives Gaara’s hand a light squeeze, and he hopes that the rest of the guys won’t mind the extra in the van on their getaway ride.

#narugaa #gaanaru #uzumaki naruto #gaara #naruto #fic #ao3 #tessen is temari's code name and angel is konan's

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