#those prev two. for like a split second | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

silvrash-797 · 7 days

Text

Glassbound

First | Prev | Next

Read on ao3

Chapter 4: The Escape

Summary: Four makes a plan!

“Four?”

A soft voice pricked at his consciousness, and the Smithy grimaced as he woke, light pain flaring across his body. He cracked open bleary eyes just enough to see the concern radiating from Hyrule's features.

“You were right,” he murmured, closing his eyes again as he tried to reorient himself. “They’re not very gentle, are they?”

He heard Hyrule's relieved laugh and cracked a smile of his own before trying to shift to an upright position. He scowled at the rattle of chains, the cool metal keeping his wrists pinned behind his back. “Well, that’s inconvenient.”

“I’m so sorry, Four,” Hyrule's voice was dejected. “It’s my fault you got hurt, that you’re stuck here, I –”

Four huffed as he made it to his knees, fingers questing at the top of his boots for the lockpick set he kept there. “I’m the one who came looking for you. If anyone's at fault, it’s those soldiers.” He finally found the rolled packet and deftly pulled out the tools he’d need, grateful for his organizational tendencies any time he channeled Blue.

“But still, I –”

“Rulie, stop.” Four glanced up from his place on the floor, making sure he had the Traveler's attention. “This is nothing, okay? I’ve been hurt worse than this sparring with Warriors.”

He felt the locking mechanism give and grinned, wide and smug. “Besides,” he added, pulling his wrists to the front, “I’m already free!”

He wished he had Wind's pictobox so he could capture the look on Hyrule's face.

“How did you…?” Hyrule stared as Four got up, stretching out stiff muscles. “How many of those do you have?”

Four retrieved his box, making short work of Hyrule's chains once again. “Picking locks is a hobby,” he stated, tsking at the new bruises around Hyrule’s ankles and thumb. “Have to keep my mind sharp. And I have as many as I need – as long as I can reach the locks, I have a set that can get me out. They’d have to lock me up like you to actually keep me trapped.”

He helped Hyrule down, then carefully rerolled and replaced the lockpick set. He gathered his things from the front of the room, then returned to Hyrule's side.

He shuffled through his pack, double-checking that the soldiers hadn’t taken anything. “How's your magic?” he asked as he sorted. “I don’t have any more potions, so I can’t help your hand, sorry. Do you have enough to get small so we can escape unseen?”

“…I’d need another day or two of food and rest before I can use the Fairy Spell.”

Four pulled out some trail rations and handed them to Hyrule before closing up his pack. “And how long d'you think we have before they come back?”

Hyrule hesitated, carefully swallowing his mouthful before responding. “If they stick to the current timing? Two days.”

Four stared, seeing nothing, locked in an intense internal debate. He needed to split, to let Vio speak his mind without Blue's interruption or Red's worry, he needed to work out how he was feeling, but he couldn’t, yet. Not here, in front of Hyrule, who may have been on the brink of death mere hours ago. Not now, when Hyrule was staring back at him like he’d grown an extra head.

His reasoning finally managed a single coherent thought. “Well then,” he stated. “We’d better set your thumb and get some rest, shouldn’t we?”

Setting Hyrule's thumb was child's play, and finding his Roc's cape for the Traveler to use as a blanket took a matter of seconds. Within minutes, Hyrule’s exhaustion won out, and the Traveler slept peacefully, comfortable for the first time in days.

Four took up his sword and crept through the main cellar, making sure they were truly alone. He found an easily defensible spot between some barrels that kept him out of sight from the stairwell and the room Hyrule was in, then drew his sword and pointed it towards the ceiling.

A familiar flash of light, a familiar pulling sensation, and Green opened his eyes, surrounded by the other Colors.

Red immediately scampered on quiet feet back to the room where Hyrule lay sleeping, to make sure the Traveler was alright and soothe his worry. Blue and Vio squared off, but the atmosphere was significantly less charged than it would have been if they’d split an hour ago.

“Alright, Brainiac, what've you got?” Blue demanded.

“Hyrule said he needs a day or two to recover enough magic to transform into a fairy.” Vio paced in a tight circle as he spoke. “We didn’t smell any food here in these barrels, so all we have is what’s in our pack. With that and conditions as they are, it will likely take most of the two days we have, especially if we want him to be able to function after using that much magic.”

“So, whaddowe do then?” Blue stood stiffly, opening and closing his fists in an attempt to release some of his impatience and aggression.

Maybe I should spar with him, Green thought. It would help both of them expend the anxious energy Four had been feeling since finding Hyrule.

Vio sighed, coming to a stop. “All we can do for now is make sure he rests and eats,” he finally admitted. “We shouldn’t leave him alone, so we can’t even go tell anyone where we are.”

“We could tell the Minish,” Red said, startling everyone as he crept back into their circle, snuggling himself under Green's arm. “They aren’t too far from here, and Wind at least can still see them – they could find the others and let them know for us.”

“But Wind can’t speak Picori,” Blue protested, “and our written Hylian is ancient by his time, so we can’t write a note either!”

Red pouted, and Green drew him closer. “It was a good idea,” he whispered.

Red wasn’t done, though. “Then why not just draw a picture?”

“I –” Vio cut himself off, then began pacing again. “That could work…but what would we…how to…” he descended into mumbled half-words as he thought.

Green smiled at Vio's distraction, then turned to Red. “Feel better now? Is Hyrule still sleeping?”

Red sighed happily, a small grin lighting his face. “I do! And he is.” The grin faded. “He’s been through so much, and he felt so guilty about getting us trapped here…I’m glad we found him.”

Green hugged him tightly. “Me, too. He’ll be strong enough we can get out soon, then we can rejoin the others.”

He released Red to peer out and check the rest of the room, ears twitching as he listened for anything coming. Satisfied, he turned to Blue.

“Wanna spar?” he asked. “We can make sure the soldiers are gone then find an empty room upstairs.”

Blue visibly sagged in relief, gratitude glimmering in his eyes. He gave a firm nod and left for the base of the stairs.

Green turned back to Red. “Will you stay here, keep an eye on Vio and Hyrule, please? Maybe help Vio with his note once he comes back to earth?”

“Of course!” Red chirped, pulling him close for another hug before perching on a barrel, making himself comfortable as he watched Vio pace.

Green followed Blue up the stairs, ears pricked for any disturbances. It didn’t take long to make their way through the keep. They kept an eye out for kitchens, larders, or any other place food might be kept, but came up empty. The place truly was abandoned.

Satisfied that they were alone, they went back to an indoor training area they’d found during their search. Taking up his stance opposite Blue, Green held his brother's gaze. With a grin and a nod, both Colors acknowledged their readiness, and they crossed swords with a harmonious clang that echoed like a symphony through Green's soul.

He lost himself to the easy give and take of the spar, relaxing into the familiar movements. He wasn’t Vio, but he was still a good planner and leader. He tried to pull together what he knew.

The giant Boss had mentioned Warriors owing them something, and that was why they’d taken Hyrule. So, probably a ransom situation, although he couldn’t figure out why there hadn’t been any demands made in the four days Hyrule had been missing.

The Minish were in the forest bordering the abandoned keep, and the rest of the Chain were staying in a town a few miles away. If these Minish could ride birds like his could, they could make it to the town in a few hours.

If he gave the rest of the Chain time to understand the note Vio and Red would write, arm themselves, and make their way to the keep, best case scenario they’d be here one more day, waiting for Hyrule to regain enough strength.

If the Minish couldn’t fly, it would take them most of a day to make it to town. If it came to that, it would be a toss-up of whether or not the Chain or the soldiers would arrive first.

Sparks from the clashing swords brought Green from his thoughts as he again locked blades with Blue. Both Colors were breathing hard; at his core he knew they’d both expended the anxious energy that had been plaguing them.

With one last grin and nod, both Colors disengaged, sheathing their swords with a flourish. They walked a slow loop around the room to cool down, then simultaneously flopped to the floor.

Green sighed, then gave a slight chuckle. “Do you think Vio that note figured out yet?”

“If he doesn’t I’ll have to punch some sense into him,” Blue immediately responded, deep exasperation in every word. “Seriously, how hard can it be to draw a picture?!”

Green leveraged himself to his feet, helping Blue do the same. “Guess we’ll find out.”

Back in the cellar, they found Red alone, sitting on the box under Hyrule's old chains. His face lit up when he saw them peeking around the corner, and he jumped up to meet them.

“Vio's taken the note to the Minish already,” Red told them quietly. “I talked him out of anything too complex – just a picture of a fairy and our sword inside a big building, plus the town and the path through the forest they’d need to take.”

Blue hummed his approval while Green asked, “Did he say how long he was going to be?”

Red shook his head. “He figured Hyrule would sleep for a pretty long time, so he wanted to forage for anything edible and refill our water skin on his way back.”

“Good call,” Blue commented, snatching up their pack to organize it again.

The three Colors set up a modified watch shift to while away the hours until Vio returned, allowing two of the Colors to clean and organize their pack or sleep while the third kept watch.

It was Green's watch when Vio arrived. He looked on silently as Vio dumped a bag full of mushrooms, berries, and nuts out on top of a barrel, along with some of the peculiar little cakes the Minish liked to make.

“Its not a lot,” Vio said quietly as he sorted, “but it’ll have to do. The Minish took the note, all we can do now is wait.”

Green nodded before resting a hand on his brother's shoulder, a small smile playing around his lips. “You’ve done plenty, Vio,” he declared. “Let’s get the others and rejoin. Hyrule doesn’t need the confusion of having four of us around, and the food will last longer if we’re all together.”

Green woke Red and Blue from their naps, then all three joined Vio in their circle of barrels. Four sword tips met in the circle’s center, and each Color smiled as the light flashed around them.

Four opened his eyes, taking a deep breath as his emotions settled. Every part of himself had been assured that they were doing all they could. They had food, they had water, and they had a time frame.

This time, he would keep his brother safe.

#SilvrAsh writes #glassbound #linked universe #linkeduniverse #lu four #lu hyrule #lu colors #this chapter got away from me LOL #it's literally 110% the length of the first three chapters put together 🙃😮‍💨#i loved Four's grin when he gives Wild his new sword in the comic so much that i included it at the beginning of the chapter LOL

32 notes · View notes

chronically-ghosted · 9 months

Text

Second Base.

rating: 18+

pairing: max phillips x f!reader

word count: 3712

summary: you try out second base; hand stuff only, but it changes things between you two, as much as you don't want it to.

warnings/tags: cute little outfits designed to drive max nuts, hand jobs (m and f receiving), more blood, fangs, one emotionally unavailable vampire

a/n: this contains one of my favorite lines i've ever written!

Prev | Next | Series Masterlist

🤍 Masterlist 🤍 Get notified when I post new works!

Second base.

Because you aren’t actual sadists or masochists, after the first bite, your sex life with Max went back to normal. Well, as normal as sex with an immortal creature of the night ever was in the first place. Okay – as normal as sex with an immortal creature of the night who is Max Phillips ever was in the first place. Which is to say, often, hard, and loud. It had been weeks since you’d seen that worried look of consternation, that sweet vulnerability he expressed, as if feeding on you might be the thing that kills you and not being railed against your couch for the better part of an entire day. Sometimes you wished he had much respect for your ability to walk upright as he did your jugular vein.

On some level, you were aware that his recent overexuberance was in part due to that vulnerability. As if you might lift the curtain and find that the man behind it all might leave you wanting. Truly a frat boy at heart, Max struggled to express anything that couldn’t be summed up with the three “ings” – licking, sucking, and fucking, obviously – but now, he had been exposed as someone capable of those deeper feelings, as if he had been the one to split open a vein for you. And despite the heavenly glow you indulged in after the first bite, you really weren’t quite sure how you felt about it all. You hadn’t started dating Max with any illusions about who exactly he is. In fact, you might have started fucking him in the first place because it seemed wildly out of character that he or you would get attached at all – to anyone or anything. The dating thing just sort of happened, when you both came to the same conclusion at roughly the same time: no one else was really doing it for you, so why not? So what if you only directly referred to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend in the privacy of your own apartment, or his? So what if half of the office was entirely clueless about your relationship and the other half was actively placing “secret” bets about how long you two had been fucking? Annoyingly, Tim had been the one to be almost right: “six months ago, I’m telling you, man. That’s when he stopped eating secretaries and she got so much nicer.”

Technically, he stopped eating secretaries about a month into your relationship, and what Tim accidentally overheard was not him “eating” a “secretary”, but you weren’t about to correct him. But Max found it all hilarious: “he’s right, you’re so much nicer when that pussy has been taken care of. But I like it when you’re mean.”

You actively choose not to think about what he meant by a “deep emotional connection” last time.

Fine, Phillips, I’ll show you how mean I can be.

“Nope, no, uh uh.”

You put your hand just over the frilly blue lace on your hip. “I’m sorry, I don’t see the problem.”

It had been about a month since first base and while Max had gotten notably more relaxed around you seeing him eat – he now occasionally walked around your apartment with his food in an opaque smoothie tumbler with a straw – he was still very strict about moving onto second base.

Which, if left up to him, meant you’d be wearing a straight jacket and thick flannel pajamas.

“Max, if we’re ever going to do this thing for real, you’re going to have to get used to seeing me naked. I’m not letting you fuck me and bite me while I’m in riot gear.”

“Okay, but, baby,” he whines and he can’t help himself from rubbing the satin bow above your crotch between his fingers. “You look like a birthday cake.”

Is the baby blue lingerie with a strapless bra that catches around your biceps with white lace a bit overboard? Yes. But last time was ridiculous.

Max frowns, his visible pout morphing into something subtly dangerous as he realizes he can unpeel your bra with a string in the back. “Can’t I just fuck you normally in this and then we’ll try again later?”

You swat his hand away as it sneaks across your ribs.

“No.”

“You know, if I wasn’t already dead, I’d think you’re trying to kill me.” Smirking, he drops his hands down to your waist and, not so subtly, curves them around the mold of your ass. Distractedly, he slips one finger under the seam of your panties. You press your hands against his chest and blink up at him coyly.

“Whatever gave you that impression.”

He shakes his head, squeezing your ass once. “And I’m supposed to be the soulless demon with a heart of darkness.”

“So you’ll do this?”

With a sigh and his eyebrow jumping, he nods. “Yeah. Fine. Go get on the bed.”

Trying desperately not to squeal, you tear away from his arms and all but run and leap on top of the white towel. Max slips out of his shoes, and starts unbuttoning his shirt. You bite your lip, nerves humming in anticipation, as you sit up on your knees to watch him. To your enormous dismay, no matter how hard you worked, no matter how much spit or cum you used, you could not make him purr again. You’d had wet dreams on the idea alone of putting your head against his chest as he vibrated but he swore it was involuntary. “And,” he added as a way to soothe your ego, “I’m pretty sure it can only happen when I’m feeding.”

“Does it happen every time? Like with blood bags or back when you hunted people?”

“No,” was all he said about that.

Max slips his shirt off over his shoulders and goes to work unbuttoning his pants. When they slide off his hips, you frown.

“The boxers with the hole in the waist? Ooh, baby, I’m so turned on when you make such an effort.”

He rolls his eyes as he climbs in next to you. “Look, I didn’t think you’d be seeing my underwear and I need to do laundry.”

“You didn’t think I’d see your underwear in a situation where we’re going to specifically jerk each other off?”

Attempting some version of contrite, Max’s gaze falls from your face to your throat, to your clavicle, to your tits, pillowed up for him beneath the blue lace. He leans in as if pulled by magnets.

“I’m sorry if I thought we’d both be a little more preoccupied.”

His broad palm smooths across your thigh, around your hips, to just above your tailbone, his nose drawing indistinct lines from your shoulder to your ear. You sort of hate how quickly he can make you not irritated with him. You shift to take him into the cradle of your thighs, when he winds your panties up in his fingers and tugs. The gossamer material tightens just over the seam of your pussy, teasing your clit, you choke. That heated, teasing Max Phillips smirk spreads like hot butter across his lips.

“What are the rules again?”

“Max,” you whine as you drag your nails over his chest and up his shoulders. But he hesitates, his hand knotting your underwear in his fist. One move and it’ll rub against you again.

“I’ll stop,” he murmurs in a half-sing-song voice. You huff.

“Silver. Bad touch, on your skin. Lightheaded or dizzy, I use the safeword. And,” you sigh. He’s so painfully handsome sometimes it hurts. He’d set out candles again, as if he needed any help in his seduction of you and he just sort of glows. You don’t know if it’s your anticipation or some vampire illusion, but every line on him is blurred. Soft, as if he doesn’t have your pleasure literally in his hands. There it comes again, that small bit of light in his eyes, the emergence of the early morning sun over the horizon. The way he looks at you makes your chest heavy. “And . . . only hand stuff,” you grumble.

He chuckles, pouting at you in faux-sympathy as he reaches out, other hand wrapping around the back of your neck. “Only hand stuff, she’s so sad about it,” he whimpers into your cheek with a high, mocking voice.

Your fingers dig into the skin on his chest, daring to hold him away as he goes for your mouth. “I swear to god, Max –,”

In one single fluid motion, he pushes on your tailbone, and swings your hips forward as he tackles your mouth with his own, effectively yanking you under him. You huff in surprise, before pulling away to find menace and glee in his eyes. Grins again as he nips with flat teeth on the curve of your neck.

He plants wet, hot kisses across your chest, heat blooms against your ribs and tunnels down between your legs, as he tongues the softer places along the hollow of your throat, then up the other side of your throat, teasing your earlobe.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes, “that was mean. What can I do to make it up to you?”

Pressing your chest up against his, knowing he can feel the squish of your tits, you wrap your legs around his waist and pull him towards you. His hard cock rubs up against your seam and he lets loose with a muffled groan into your mouth. You roll your hips once with him between you and he turns his head to your jaw, as you both pant at the sensation.

“You know exactly what I want.”

His teeth graze you gently. This is an exercise in restraint for you as much as it is him. Given any other night, you’d have his pants off by now, on his back, or behind you, but you refrain. You can’t squeeze him like you want to and that only frustrates you more, makes you heated and ruffled, makes you want more of his skin on you, around you, as if he could smother you. You want to merge your bodies. Your knees dig into his ribs.

He whispers something, too low and fast for you to catch it, but it ends broken and uneasy as if you’re touching something delicate within him. Bending back with one hand, Max reaches between your legs and cups you, one finger barely pressing the wet material back inside you.

“Was this waiting for me under all those layers?” You nod as he pushes deeper, your mouth dropping open. He kisses your chin, before tucking his head under your jaw again. “No wonder you were burning up.”

He inhales as if his face was pressed right up against your cunt, two fingers rubbing up and down over that sodden material. It scraps against your clit and it burns. “I could eat you. Just like this.”

“Max, c’mon–,”

“I know, baby, I know.”

Smearing that pink little bow with the smell of you, he dips his hand under the line of your underwear, past your damp curls, and soothes your overheated sex by filling it with two thick fingers. You arch, brow furrowing, mouth open, fingers clamping down around his shoulders, arousal crawling up your spine, higher and higher the deeper he goes. Max likes the build up, the tease, it’s why his thumb only hovers above your clit, the heat doing half the work for him, as he pumps his fingers in and out of you, the wet squelching almost embarrassing. Behind his hand, his hips swing in time. He groans, deep, into your ear, breathless.

“Could come like this, baby, could come right like this.”

The bend of his cock bumps the back of his hand as he thrusts against nothing. You hitch your pelvis up, opening wider, pussy easier within reach, and you forgo any teasing for him, hand sliding right past his boxers, molding your grip around him. He’s hot and leaking all over your fingers.

“‘Ngh . . . shit, baby.” The arm holding him up shakes. You want to lick the salty precum but there has to be a rule about that, right? If you aren’t so desperate for that final fuck, you would have been a bit more careless. His fingers inside you press up into the places only he knows can send you into oblivion, as if grateful for tearing him apart. His wrist flicks quicker, faster into you, fingers plunging deeper, up to the knuckles, bouncing you as if you were on his cock. You match his speed with your own hand and Max hums, a dark sound verging on distressed.

You bite your bottom lip, eyes drooping, the rocking motion scraping against your pleasure again and again, like a match scratching against the box one stroke at a time. “Maaax –,” He adds a third finger and you keen, high-pitched and desperate, the width stretching you out for a cock he won’t let you have. You grind against his fingers, the bounce knocking loose every sane thought in your head.

Opening your eyes, you realize he’s been staring at your tits this whole time. His chest warm and glowing with sweat, his eyes track every bounce and jiggle, the cups of your bra putting them more on display than if you held them up yourself.

“Where do you want it, darling?” His voice is strained, softer than it should be with your cunt sucking up his fingers.

Max Phillips doesn’t do cutesy nicknames. Not during sex, not ever. Your his slut. His monsterfucker. Not –

Your already unspooling mind struggles to grasp at darling before it slips away.

His cock is throbbing against the palm of your hand. If you could see it, it would be flushed red, the vein at the base protruding. You pump him faster and his hips stutter. He’s so close and so are you.

But he’s not talking about that.

“On my tit, Max. Bite me on my tit.”

With a groan that is all growl, all tension and feral hunger, his arm collapses and he sinks his weight against you. He manages to get his hand out, but yours is still trapped there, pinned between your tender cunt and his painfully hard cock. You writhe. “Max–,”

His kiss against your lips is a starving sort of one, one that steals the breath from your lungs, wiping any lingering ache temporarily from your body. He licks the inside of your mouth, swallowing the moan that races from your throat into his. It’s all need, desire, a blistering familiarity that you didn’t realize existed between you two. He’s trying to say something with this kiss.

He doesn’t give you long to read into it, as he pulls back, sinking more into his knees as he mouths the skin under your neck, above your clavicle bone, and in between the valley of your tits. His weight shifts off you, enough to pull your hand out. You arch, pushing your chest deeper into his mouth, using the back of his neck to pull you higher, he groans and licks, and you yank the tie of your bra behind your back.

“Max, you can –,”

His hand claws at your cups, mouth consuming yours again, the ropes almost stinging your back as they are ripped so fast across your heated skin. Before you lie flat, his hand cups under you, fingers pressing into where the threads burned and forcing you to maintain that bend in your spine.

The moment is coming. You can feel it. It’s different from a rising orgasm, or the first time he ever sucked your nipple into his mouth. Your lizard brain is sending off warning flares, but you ignore it once again. Those flares arc and bend, your arousal now fire hot.

His tongue pressed flat, Max draws a long stripe of spit from under your breast, over the weight of it, and up your nipple, where he swirls it between his teeth. Whether Max Phillips was an ass or tits man depended on the day of the week, or whatever was blowing in the air, but he laved attention onto yours like they were the first pair he’d ever seen in his life. The skin on your other breast shines from where his fingers mold around it, smearing your wet juices all over your pebbled skin. He switches over and laps up that smell off you.

He’s wavering, caught between drawing it out and doing it so instantaneously he might black out and miss the whole thing. Your heart racing, skin almost too sensitive, you feel like you might shudder apart.

“Max, please –,”

He chooses the second approach.

Without warning, his fangs spring out and he latches onto the skin near the valley of your chest on your right breast.

You yelp in surprise, pain and pleasure zigzagging like rough scissors from his bite out through the rest of your body.

Okay, that hurts.

You gasp, bucking, yanking on his hair. “Baby, baby, gentler, be gentle–,”

He swallows and the ache lessens. Hot blood pools out of the spot where his fangs punctured you. It runs warm then cold, teasing like a feather, as it rolls down your stomach. It’s not a lot, but it's more than last time. It stains his chest too.

Slowly, that same sort of miraculous fog sinks down into your bones. The grip on his hair eases, softens, and soon you are petting him against you.

You swear you feel his fangs scrape your heart.

“That’s good, Max, that’s so good.” Your eyes roll lazily in your head and you nuzzle his hair. “God, how does this feel so good?”

As though determined to remind you he is more than just fangs, his hand pulls away from the mattress and slides back between your legs. You feel only one finger brush against your folds through your underwear – you’re almost disappointed, go back to using three, Max –

His finger plunges deep, deep inside of you, and you gasp, feet scrambling against the towel, as a swell of pleasure almost smothers you in an overwhelming wave. You nearly choke from the force of it. You were so overly sensitive but the gooey haze didn’t let you realize it until it was too late. You come hard, harder than you thought possible, seeing eons of galaxies and stars behind your eyes, with just one of his fingers inside you and his thumb distractedly circling your clit.

He feels you gush around his hand, wetting his wrist, and with a moan you can feel in your ribs, he spills in his boxers, the spend running down his thigh and smearing on yours.

Your entire body goes slack, as if someone had made all your bones disappear. His hips jerk slightly as if his orgasm is still trying to wring him dry before he stills and plucks his head from your chest, unplugging his fangs from the holes he made.

Blood immediately bubbles up from the wound and without his fangs there, it spills freely and violently over your tits, your ribs. The whiplash between your orgasmic high and a full-body weakness sends hot nausea swooping into your stomach and the room spins.

“M-m-ax,” you murmur, barely opening your mouth, your voice weak and thick as if stuffed with cotton balls.

“Fuck, sorry –,” you can’t quite see him clearly as he moves and suddenly there’s a warmth over your chest, comforting and heavy. The blood trickles to a stop and you breathe deeply. The darkness of the room stabilizes as you fully open your eyes. The room spins but this time pleasantly.

“Hmm, whoo, wow, ah, okay . . .”

You don’t realize he’s gotten off the bed until the mattress sags again and he’s cleaning you up with cold cotton balls.

“So, I’m going to take that mindless babbling as a good thing.” He smiles gently, but he’s holding something back. He keeps his head low like he doesn’t want you to see his face.

You wiggle your shoulders, as he delicately wipes you down. “What, you don’t wanna clean me up with your tongue? And why do you even use disinfectant – there’s no open wound.” You poke him in the shoulder with your toe. “And you didn’t even purr that time! I demand a refund!”

“Next time, okay?”

You frown. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Just let me–,”

You sit up, the dried blood pinching your skin, and he pulls away. “Max, what is it?”

He pulls away so much, he’s on his feet by the dresser before you can touch him, the back of his arm tearing at his mouth to wipe it clean. Max is a lot of things but cold when you need aftercare is not one of them.

“It’s nothing.” The line of his shoulders is taught, tense. But he cracks his neck and takes the Gatorade from the dresser. He finally sits back down on the bed in front of you, offering the bottle to you. You take it, unease mounting, your fingers brush his, but this time he doesn’t retreat. Instead, gently, his fingertips ghost over your wrist, down the fine hairs on your arm, drop from your elbow and settle delicately on the blue material covering the crease of your hip. Where your blood had pooled, wet, and stained the blue to a deep magenta.

“I ruined your pretty underwear,” he says softly, forlorn.

You move closer to him, your knee touching his hip, but you refrain from seeking out the warmth of his hands.

“Max, I can get new ones, I don’t care about that. Please, talk to me. Did I do something wrong? Did I push you too far?”

His fingers flex around the towel, now also appropriately ruined. He shakes his head, more firmly this time. He snags his shirt off the floor, over his head, then moves towards the bedroom door.

“I don’t wanna talk about it. I’m sticky. I’m gonna take a shower. You wanna come?”

The invitation, it’s something, an encouragement you genuinely feared he might not give. Maybe it’s not you he wants to part from.

You didn’t enter into this for the emotional connection and neither did he. You have to remember that.

“Y-yeah. Of course.”

He invited you. He still wants you around.

Prev | Next | Series Masterlist

#max phillips x you #max phillips smut #max phillips fanfiction #max phillips x reader #max phillips #max phillips x f!reader #blood sucking bastards

92 notes · View notes

oblonger · 5 days

Text

Chapter 7 of TPiaG: Body Swap Au

Next [>]

[<] Prev

Start [O]

@sincerely-sofie It's the chapter you've wanted to see! The wonderful reuniting of these friends!

The tearful reunion with the Future Trio

Life was going...

Until it wasn't.

Twig and Kip were sitting at the table. Planning out their day.

It was mostly done by Kip, he figured that Darkrai obviously didn't want to, and Twig still couldn't really read.

"I think that should be everything." He looked and smiled at Twig. "Are you ready?"

"Of course!" Twig responded. "The rain is gonna make your attacks hit much harder! This should be a breeze!"

Kip glanced out the window that Darkrai was staring out of. The overcast clouds blocking out the sun. The lack of sunshine making everything feel a bit heavier. Just a bit more dismal.

"What are your plans Darkrai?" Twig snidely remarked.

Darkrai growled. "Perhaps if you would give me something to occupy myself with, I would have plans, wretch."

Anger flashed across Twig's eyes

"I thought you do have plans Darkrai. Taking over the world and all that."

Darkrai looked at her angrily. "My true plans are put on hold until I return to my body."

Twig scoffed while rolling her eyes. "What's stopping you from trying in what is your body now? You should give it a shot. It'd be cute." She spoke, deadpan.

The two glared at each other as Kip sighed.

Its been like this nearly every day since they moved. He didn't know why they've been at each other's throats.

"Okaaay! Well, we should get out there before the rain starts pouring!" Kip exited the house first through the back entrance of their home. A straight shot from here to Mount Trevail.

Kip began walking down the trail, turning and stopping where the path splits, with one trail leading to the forest near the property. He saw Twig talking to Darkrai, just lowly enough for Kip to not hear them. They hate each other, and now they're sharing secrets? What are they doing?

"Hey! Twig! We don't want the rain to start before we even get there!"

"Im coming, gimme a second!"

Kip laughed loud enough for her to hear. "And I thought I was the slow one!"

"Since when?" Twig jabbed. "I was so slow it took me like, three weeks before we could go on jobs again!"

Kip laughed as he took another step.

Instantly, something felt wrong...

Kip looked around to see what was wrong. His blood ran cold when he figured it out.

The air around him was shimmering.

Suddenly, the Passage of Time opened to his side. His back facing the forest.

Kip swung his head to look at Twig and Darkrai.

"HIDE!!!" He screamed!

Twig rushed to lock the door and slammed it shut. Kip saw her speed past a window, holding Darkrai in her arms. His expression was more fearful than angry.

Kip's eyes snapped back to the portal when Grovyle stepped out. Some papers sticking out of a satchel he had slung over his shoulder. His face lit up when he saw him.

"Kip!!!" He joyfully shouted.

Celebi flew out next. "Oh FINALLY! Do you know how many realtors we had to talk to get to this point?" Celebi gave a dramatic sigh. "Those people just never stop talking!"

Kip forced a smile as best as he could. "How... uh, how did you find me?"

Dusnkoir emerged from the passage before it shut behind him. His towering figure filling Kip with dread.

"Well, you didn't make it easy." Celebi pouted. "We went to the Treasure Town Post office, and the worker gave us these ads.~" She joyfully gestured towards the papers.

Kip quietly spat out a curse word.

Grovyle looked around with confusion.

"Where's Twig?" He asked.

Kip forced a laugh. "Oh! She's just visiting some family! She'll be back soon!"

Celebi flinched.

Grovyle's mouth hung open.

Silence fell among them.

Kip could hear drops of rain slap against the ground next to him.

The sky looked even darker than it was before.

"Kip." Grovyle spoke.

Kip looked up at him, taking a shaky step back when he saw the look of complete and utter wrath in Grovyle's eyes.

"She doesn't have a family to visit."

Kip's heart was racing faster than he ever thought possible. The adrenaline pumping through him made him feel sick. It felt like his breath wasn't reaching his lungs. Kip couldn't tell if that was sweat running down his face, or the rain.

He'd forgotten that these are the only people that wouldn't buy that story.

He just screwed everything up.

Again.

Grovyle took half a step forward.

"Where is she." he growled.

Kip tried to choke some more words out. All of them getting caught on the massive lump stuck in his throat.

He can't tell them where she is.

Grovyle looked like he was about to impale someone.

"Are you okay, Kip?" Celebi asked.

No.

No!

No he wasn't!

Everything is about to end!

And it's his fault it is!

He can't tell them.

If they find Twig, they'll-

She will-

He can't-

A primal instinct wrapped it's claws around Kip's heart and soul.

He spun around and started running as fast as he could into the forest.

***********

"HEY!" Grovyle shouted.

Why was he acting this way?

Was someone threatening him?

Were they holding Twig hostage and he couldn't tell them?

The three started to chase after him.

Grovyle was about to catch him, he was much faster than he was, when he stopped. Right inside the entrance to the forest.

Celebi and Dusknoir stopped their pursuit and turned to face him, as Grovyle looked back at the house they were near.

"Grovyle?" Celebi asked.

He clenched his fist.

"Go catch Kip." He demanded.

Celebi and Dusknoir flinched at him. "But what about-"

Grovyle turned his head to glare at them.

"Just do it." He hissed.

Celebi looked taken aback. Dusknoir stared at him before nodding. He spun around and resumed his chase.

Grovyle fully turned towards the house.

"Grovyle? What's wrong?" Celebi asked.

"The legend is in that house." He growled.

Celebi flinched.

"... Go find Kip. I'll handle this."

"Wh- But Grovyle! You don't know how powerful they are! They could-"

Grovyle shot a venomous look at Celebi.

"Go."

Celebi flinched. She stared at him for several seconds before wordlessly turning and flying into the forest.

Grovyle started walking towards the house. He rummaged through his satchel before pulling out a seed, that he popped into his mouth. He pulled the satchel's strap over his head. Dropping it on the ground. The papers sticking out from inside, wilting from the rain.

The heavy feeling that Dusknoir had described a few weeks ago, got heavier with each step.

The legend that had been hurting Twig was in there.

Grovyle tried to open the door...

Locked.

The leaves on his arms became as sharp as swords. Grovyle slashed them through the doorknob before kicking the door open. Pieces of the door, clattering as it landed on the ground.

He stepped inside.

It was nicely furnished. What little furnishing there was.

The atmosphere felt suffocating.

The only noise he could hear was his slow footsteps, and the rain pelting the roof and the ground outside.

Grovyle kicked open the door to a room he was near.

The room was empty, save for a hay bed, a lamp, and many blankets that lay next to it...

This was Twig's room.

Grovyle slowly walked over into the kitchen.

He opened the pantry door.

There was several foodstuffs inside. About a week's worth...

Enough for three people.

...

Grovyle's chest was burning with hate.

Whoever this legend was, they were forcing Twig and Kip to take care of them.

Now it made sense why they wanted them to buy a house.

They wanted to isolate them from the guild and Twig's friends.

Grovyle slammed the pantry door so hard that several things inside fell over. The door bounced back open, and a few cracks formed in the wall where the hinges were located.

Grovyle prowled down the hallway into the living room.

That's when he heard something shift.

Grovyle slowly turned around.

A closet door.

Grovyle stalked forward and quietly pressed his ear against the door...

A small eternity crawled passed.

The rain landing against the roof.

Grovyle's blood rushing through his ears.

His heartbeat, making his hands shake just a little.

The seed, uncomfortably wedged between his teeth and his cheek.

Sweat and rain, running down his forehead.

...

A quiet, stifled breath from inside the closet.

Found you.

***********

Dusknoir could see Kip. He was catching up to him.

Was this because of him? Did Kip feel too afraid of him to tell him where Twig was?

He wouldn't blame him.

Suddenly, Kip slowed down. Slipping on the mud, before sprinting to his right. Into the trees. Completely off from the trail.

Why was he doing this?

Dusknoir had to quickly search for gaps large enough for him to fit through, in order to continue his pursuit.

Kip was constantly tripping and stumbling over tree roots, but his small body afforded him a faster route than what Dusknoir could achieve.

Dusknoir almost caught up to him, he reached out to grab him.

He hesitated.

Kip dove into a hollow, rotting log that lay on the ground, Dusnkoir's fingers barely brushing against his tail fin.

Dusknoir hated this.

He grabbed the inside of the log and exerted his strength to tear the log in half.

Kip glanced at him, terrified tears running down his face. He quickly stood up and began running again.

Dusknoir was fed up with this.

He used Shadow Sneak to appear in front of Kip, before grabbing him and lifting him up to eye level.

"That's enough." Dusknoir muttered. "Why are you..."

Dusknoir paused. He's seen the way Kip was looking at him now already.

This was Dusknoir's fault.

Perhaps the Croconaw was wrong. Maybe there wasnt a legend involved.

Maybe they somehow knew that he was returning and they wanted to get away from him...

Dusknoir was staring at Kip when his cheeks puffed outward.

Kip fired water directly into Dusknoir's eye.

Dusknoir dropped the child, crying out in pain and falling to the ground as he clutched it.

"I'M SORRY!" He heard Kip shout, his footsteps quickly becoming quieter.

Dusknoir tried to open his eye, but the pain was even sharper when exposed to air.

The rain pelted against his back as he tried to feel his way around.

He couldn't see anything but the incredibly faint outlines of the trees.

Dusknoir tried to focus on the outlines, but he couldn't focus on anything other than the pain.

Everything was dark.

He was blind.

"Dusknoir!"

He heard Celebi shout from nearby.

He felt a small hand land on his back.

"What happened?! Are you okay?!"

Dusknoir took in a sharp, pained breath.

"He used Brine in my eye."

Celebi gasped in disbelief. Dusknoir could feel a warmth coming from her hands. The intense, sharp pain was slowly draining away.

"Why would he do that?!" Celebi shouted, both in anger and concern.

Dusknoir winced as he was able to open his eye, still stinging a lot.

"It may be my fault. They must have known I was-."

"That's not possible!" Celebi snapped. "There was no way they could have known that we were coming back! Much less know about you!"

Dusknoir wanted to believe her.

Dusknoir stood back up.

"Can you see alright?"

Dusknoir looked around.

He couldn't.

Everything looked blurry.

Dusknoir nodded. "We need to catch him."

Celebi sighed in relief.

********

One second Twig was hiding in the closet, holding Darkrai close to her.

The next, the closet door had been torn off it's hinges.

And now she was rolling against the ground outside, having been thrown through the window by Grovyle.

She looked up to see Grovyle hop down from the window.

She'd never seen this kind of murderous intent from anyone. Even the legends she fought against.

She was terrified.

Twig righted herself into a sitting position and held out her hand.

"Grovyle! Wait, it's me! Twig!" She shouted.

Grovyle stopped and stared at her for a few seconds.

Then he looked even angrier.

"How DARE you use her voice!!!" He yelled, he held his hands close together and an Energy Ball formed between them.

"Wait! No!" She tried pleading with him.

He launched the Energy Ball at her and, despite her efforts to move out of the way, It hit her in the chest. A Shockwave of pain launching itself through her body as she was flung backwards again.

She looked up to see Grovyle rushing forward at her, his leaves so sharp that they were reflecting light.

Twig sunk down into the shadows as Grovyle lept at her, swinging at empty air.

Twig rose back up behind him.

Grovyle spun around and slashed at her eyes with his claws. She raised an arm to defend herself. His claw raked against her arm, breaking skin.

She shot out her other arm and grabbed his wrist, and then used her defending arm to grapple his upper arm up near his shoulder. She spun him around before swinging him over her head and slamming his back against the ground, a small crater forming. He coughed up some blood upon impact.

Twig positioned herself right above him, pinning his wrists against the ground.

"Please Grovyle! Just listen to-!"

Grovyle bit down on something and several massive flames shot out of his mouth. A Blast Seed.

Twig cried out in pain and shock as the flames engulfed her head. She stumbled backwards before she felt the pain of another Energy Ball slamming into her. Launching her back to the house, she slumped against the outside wall and managed to look up at him. Her vision blurred from tears, and almost fainting.

Why wasn't the rain putting the fires out?

Why was it raining through the metal ceiling?

Why was Grovyle walking through the fires without being harmed?

Why was this happening to her?

Why did she abandon them?

This is her fault.

She deserves this.

She deserves to die.

******

It didn't take long for Dusknoir to track Kip down again. The muddy ground from the downpour aided greatly. Even if his vision was impaired.

Kip tripped over a root that stuck out from the ground. He tried to push himself back up, but his arms gave out.

"Kip! Why are you so scared! He's not going to hurt you!" Celebi shouted as she landed on the ground next to him.

Kip didn't acknowledge her presence. He was trying to drag himself forward. Tears running down his face, his breathing quick and labored.

What in the world has him like this!?

Celebi stepped in front of him and looked him in the eyes.

"Kip! It's okay! You're safe! We aren't going to hurt you!"

Kip stared at her.

Celebi lifted him up with Psychic and hugged him, getting mud all over her.

"There you go. It's okay. I'm here for you." Celebi gently caressed the back of Kip's head, as his breathing gradually became slower and more even.

"Wh- gh. Where's Grovyle?" He managed to choke out.

"He went to the house to make sure Twig is safe. It'll be-"

"No! NO!!!" Kip suddenly shouted. He pushed Celebi away, and spun around. He fell back to the ground and started dragging himself again in the direction of the house.

"TWIG!!!" Kip screamed, his breathing sped back up again. Tears rushed down his face faster than the rain could wash them away.

"That's it!" Celebi shouted. "I'm looking ahead!" She closed her eyes and pressed her hands against her temples. "I need to see what in the world has got you..." She trailed off. Her eyes opened wide in horror.

Dusknoir asked. "Celebi? What did you-"

"Twig is the legend." Celebi muttered.

Dusknoir flinched. Kip's body tensed up.

"Wh- How is that possible?!" Dusknoir nearly shouted.

"I- I don't know! Twig is just in Darkrai's body now!"

Kip was hyperventilating. Dusknoir was worried that Kip couldnt breathe.

Dusknoir spoke. "If Twig is the legend then that means..." his eye widened "Oh no..."

Celebi looked at him with terror. "Grovyle will-"

Celebi was interrupted by Kip bursting into loud wailing.

Dusknoir grabbed him and held him to his chest as Dusknoir and Celebi rushed to get back to the house. Praying that they aren't too late.

*******

Grovyle limped towards his target.

They stared at him with fear. Tears were running down their face.

Good.

Grovyle felt pain shoot through his body with each breath. That hit he took definitely broke some ribs.

He pushed the legend's chest against the wall they were up against, unfortunately they didn't have much of a neck to choke.

Grovyle breathed heavily as he raised his arm. The legend stared past him for some reason.

"This is for screwing with us for the last two weeks!" He shouted as he slashed his claw against their chest. The legend crying out in pain in Twig's voice.

Stop that.

"This is for forcing Twig and Kip to live with you!" He slashed it's chest again.

"And THIS" He slashed the legend again "IS FOR HURTING TWIG!!" He slashed it again.

Grovyle breathed heavily as the legend was barely able to keep their eyes open. The blood pouring from their chest being washed off by the rain.

Grovyle prepared a final leaf blade.

"And now. I'll make sure you never hurt her again." He growled.

The legend looked at him with a weird sense of acceptance.

That's right. You do deserve this.

"GROVYLE! STOP!!!" Celebi screamed from behind him.

Grovyle turned his head to look behind him. Celebi and Dusknoir were rushing out of the forest. Kip was being held in Dusknoir's arms. His eyes wide, staring at him with sorrow and horror.

"THAT'S NOT DARKRAI!" Celebi yelled "THAT'S TWIG!!!"

Grovyle hesitated before turning back towards the legend...

First they used Twig's voice.

And now illusions of his friends.

Grovyle's leaves became impossibly sharp as he prepared to decapitate this vermin.

He begun his final swing before stopping.

The legend in front of him, the one he was about to kill, was wincing the same way Twig does.

Grovyle lowered his arm.

It was her.

It really was her.

But why-

How did she-

Why was she-

Grovyle stumbled backwards before falling to the ground.

Celebi, Dusknoir and Kip surrounded her. Shouting things that were muffled. His ears were ringing.

Grovyle's eyes didn't leave Twig's bleeding chest as her muscles relaxed. Her eyes cloudy, and only halfway shut.

He just killed her.

Each raindrop landing on the ground around him made his head pound with excruciating pain.

The three's shouting became more panicked. All three of them were crying. Dusknoir picked up Twig's body and rushed her inside the house.

Grovyle felt that the ground beneath him would open up and swallow him whole.

He wished it would do that.

Grovyle saw Twig stumble out of the doorway, before turning around to look inside, her tail flame a deep pink.

No. It wasnt Twig.

Grovyle launched himself forward and grabbed the legend that took her body by the neck. Catching them off guard. He slammed them against the ground.

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER!?" Grovyle screamed.

The legend choked and gasped for air. Grovyle loosened his grip on their neck, only a little bit.

"I did nothing!" The legend hissed. A deep voice coming out of Twig's body. "I know not how we switched bodies, nor for what purpose!"

Grovyle's leaves sharpened "How do I know you're not lying!?"

"You don't!" He gasped. "But just know that what you have done on this day was the purpose behind Kip's disappearance!"

Grovyle recoiled. Releasing the legend, who started coughing and gasping for air.

The legend silently pushed himself off the ground and walked inside. Sneaking his way past the three pokemon tending to Twig. Shivering like how Twig used to.

Grovyle stared at her body, splayed out on top of the table. She was barely breathing. Celebi trying to heal her while Kip and Dusknoir desperately applied medicine and bandages to all of her lacerations.

The lacerations he gave her

It had been years since Twig last saw him.

And the first thing he did when he met her may have just been killing her.

Grovyle fell forward on his knees, Clutching his head. His sobbing drowned out by the pouring rain.

#text post #pmd eos #fanfic of a fanfic #the present is a gift au #pmd #writing #fanfic #body swap au #pmd2 #cw blood #tw blood #Hey! I never did lie when i said it was a tearful reunion!#also yes i know Mudkips cant actually learn Brine.#but i also didnt hant him to use Scald and permanently blind him :/

9 notes · View notes

ashlingiswriting · 8 months

Text

do i know you? chapter six

[ 3.8k words ] [ prev chapters: one, two, three, four, five ] [ masterlist ] "maybe i just need to say something to you? get it out of my system?" richie jerimovich x reader, past mikey berzatto x reader, slow burn

by the time you get downstairs and push through the doors, you’re clutching that note like it’s a talisman of protection. richie looks up at the sound, and for a second, neither of you are pretending a thing. you’re so fucking happy to see him, you let it shine. he does too.

he looks dead tired but all right. the only new thing is a takeout bag from the beef sitting on the ground next to him, presumably some leftovers for a late night snack.

yo, he says, loud and hearty.

hello hello, you say. look what the cat killed, ate, and shat out on my doorstep.

he grins. you’re looking like a real vulture buffet yourself.

thanks.

yeah. he rubs his jaw with his knuckles. sorry i missed yesterday. i was busy getting arrested.

you freeze for a split second. then your brain catches up and you pretend that it’s fine, though you know it’s too little too late.

wow, congratulations, you say, a touch loudly. who’d you kill?

for that, he barks out a way bigger laugh than you think your lazy joke deserves. his laugh frays at the edges and he runs his hand over his hair, which makes you nervous, but you don’t press. you have time.

it’s more about who i didn’t kill, he eventually says. and, hey. he touches his own chest with exaggerated innocence. i was being a good boy. i was sticking by carmy like you said. but what do you know? kid couldn’t protect me for shit.

if carmy ever took a punch for your sake, you’d throw a level five tropical storm about it right in the middle of river north, you say, and he makes a little scoffing sound that confirms you’re right. was it the bachelor party?

yeah. barely a fight, you know those white collar criminals can’t punch for shit.

you consider him openly, failing to find any bruises on his face or neck, knowing that most of his body is covered up. your own head is so full of buzzing that you can’t really run a lie detector on his claims.

let me see your hands, you say.

you’re about to demonstrate, when you remember you’re still holding the note. quickly, you shove it in your pocket, then hold out both your hands in front of you, knuckles up. he takes off his gloves, shoves them in his pocket, and mirrors you.

the first thing you notice is a lack of cuts and bruises, but your eyes linger long past that discovery because you’ve never had a chance to stare at his hands before and you probably won’t get one again. his fingers are longer than you expected, a little reddened in the cold. no big scars, but a few little ones, what you’d expect from a line cook. the ghost of a fading burn licks the inside of his right arm.

silently, you turn your own hands palm-up, and he does too.

there’s no cuts or bruises here either, no defensive wounds. he could be pretending to be okay, but there’s no lying to you like this. the body always tells.

under the winter-pale insides of his wrists, you can see the veins running blue.

do they pass inspection? he says quietly.

you stick your own hands back in your pockets and say, derisively, do you ever fucking wash them?

he snorts. you sound like carmy. not bothering to put his gloves back on, he gets out his first cigarette of the night and lights it.

what’s the charge? you say.

aggravated assault. lawyer says he can negotiate down to probation, cause it was pretty much the other guy’s fault and i don’t have a ton of priors.

you lift an eyebrow at him. how many is not a ton?

enough, he says, playing it with such exaggerated nonchalance that he’s just begging for a smackdown.

very cool of you, you say, stretching out the first word like it’s taffy.

he just shakes his head, smiling. shut up, you goody two shoes. can’t fuckin believe i brought you spaghetti.

spaghetti from the beef? you spent the last twenty-four hours tossed around like a rag doll in an emotional hurricane of your own making, there’s no way you make it past the first bite without some kind of a public breakdown.

i’m not hungry, but thanks, you say. i thought carmy axed the spaghetti, anyway. wasn’t that like one of the opening battles of world war beef?

many a village was destroyed, yeah, richie says, but he made it for family, so i guess he’s admitting defeat long after the fact. and not a moment too fucking soon, i can tell you that.

and out comes the whole story, the tomato cans, cicero’s three hundred grand, and the joint dream carmy will be carrying on by himself. the reason the beef closed early and won’t reopen tomorrow.

when richie tells you the beef is over, he looks a little nervous, but the truth is: you don’t give a damn. if the beef died, that’d be whatever. but if it died and it took richie and carmy down with it, yeah, you’ve spent some time thinking on that. so you’re glad, now, that it won’t happen, and richie’s so wholeheartedly relieved, you really mean it when you say, i’m happy for you guys.

marcus and syd are back too, he says, and his relief is palpable. though as human resources, candidly speaking—

you’re laughing already. oh, this is gonna be good.

i’m just saying, i don’t know if we should let syd back in, given that—

abruptly, richie goes silent and eyes you speculatively.

what? you weird little man. truly. what?

are you gonna be normal about this? he says reprovingly, a poor imitation of a severe teacher.

no, i’m gonna throttle you till you go cross-eyed, you say promptly. what’d you do to her?

do to her? he splutters. what’d she do to me?

i don’t know, something completely justified?

one inch. he holds up thumb and forefinger an inch apart, like you don’t know what basic units of distance are.

what’s that, the length i’m about to cut off your dick?

no! what are you—she accidentally—he puts his hands up like you're aiming a weapon at him. she stabbed me. which i’m cool about, obviously, he says, as if he’s doing syd a huge favor. i’m a very cool guy.

he’s being so tremendously weird about this, you don’t get it at first, but at the same time he’s being so tremendously richie that it only takes a couple seconds to work it out. when you do, you almost laugh in his face. cause on one hand, there’s his natural desire to whine and moan and make a meal out of the situation, and on the other hand, there’s his (maybe a little bit reasonable) fear that you’d lose it if you thought he was actually hurt bad.

so fuck it. you play the part, you stay blank-faced for longer than you need to.

the blade went in one inch deep, you say.

like, inch and a half, tops.

this shit is fucking hysterical.

okay, you say, in a calm, measured voice. where’d she stab you?

in the kitchen, obvi—

where on your body, idiot.

he mutters it, the wind picks up at the wrong moment, and you can’t hear.

what?

in the ass! he yells.

that fucking cracks you right open—you can’t survive that one, not even for the sake of a joke. staring at him, voice pitching higher with incredulous glee, you say, what?

she stabbed me in the ass, he repeats sullenly, having realized that you were playing him all along. as you try to cut in, he just keeps raising his voice in a sour, vain effort to try and bully you into shutting up: and i think, as the person ultimately responsible for ensuring the HEALTH AND SAFETY OF THE ENTIRE STAFF—

all the while, you’re raising your voice too, not willing to let him shout you down: well, i think we should give syd a five star vacation AND A FUCKING MEDAL!

you both stop at the same time, stare at each other mulishly.

whatever, says richie. those three syllables are so full of disgusted offense that you crack up in peals of laughter, and he relaxes. in his normal voice, he says, she’ll get her michigan star soon enough. that’s practically the same as a medal.

i know you know it’s michelin, asshole.

that’s what i said, michelin.

you’re such a fucking child.

shaking your head, fond and exhausted, you pull a pack of cigarettes from your pocket. you've forgotten about the note you stuffed in there, so it gets dislodged by the movement, and as it slips out, the wind plucks it away and sends it flying. fuck.

richie lurches forward and snatches the paper out of the air.

what’s this? he says.

if only the fucking wind had carried it away.

nothing, never mind, you say, trying to grab the note from his hands.

nothing’s nothing, he says, turning away so you end up swiping uselessly at his back.

for fuck’s sake, you sigh. an admission of defeat.

there’s a fifty percent chance you’re well and truly fucked, depending on which side of the paper he looks at, and there's nothing you can do to improve your odds. all you can do is get out that cigarette and concentrate on looking as impenetrable as possible.

eventually, richie speaks.

the girl who loved wild horses, fables by lobel, the polar express, he says. are these movies?

they’re picture books, you say, hugely relieved, even grateful. your first piece of good luck all week, and it turned out to be a big one.

picture books? i’m on chapter books now, richie says. mrs. lowell says i might even be able to read harry potter by the end of the year if i start now.

no, dumbass. those are for you to read to eva.

oh. he keeps on scanning down the list. we actually have madeline already. she loves that shit. probably be reading chapter books herself any day now.

it never fails to tickle you, how much he believes that eva can do anything whenever she wants. he adores her so much, it bends his perception of the possible.

richie, you say indulgently, she’s five.

she’s almost six.

that’s still five. anyways, they’re really good, all the books i listed. most of them are caldecott winners. i remember my dad used to look for the little gold circle.

from the way he looks up at you, there’s no way his missed the first mention of your father. but, in a gesture of surprising grace, he just says, caldecott, what’s that?

it’s an award for kid’s books. only one winner every year.

he makes a face, and you have to laugh. partly from leftover relief, and partly because, richie, you’re such a fucking snob. it just means they’re good books, okay? you think i’d steer you wrong? only the best for eva.

always. he looks at the list again, a little puzzled, and finally says, thanks.

yeah, course, you say, experiencing a kind of joy that only thieves and liars get to experience: getting away with it. and you do, you almost get away with it, except that he folds up the note and sees your handwriting on the other side of the paper.

what’s this? he says.

don’t—

it’s too late.

just please don’t be a dick about this, you mutter as he reads. it might be the first time you’ve ever used the word please with him as anything other than sarcasm. you take one last long drag, then you stub out your cigarette, ready to flee if necessary.

is this for me? he finally says.

yeah, but—

did i scare you or something? he’s looking keenly at you now, you can feel it. you don’t dare look up.

no, you say. i scared me. god, how can you even begin to explain this? do you remember when you talked to me about that poem?

the caterpillar, he says.

yeah.

when you wrote those three sentences, you thought they were all you needed, but it’s so obvious to you now that even an essay wouldn’t be enough. you rub your forehead.

i think, you say, so quietly that the words are nearly deniable, maybe i just need to say something to you? get it out of my system?

yeah, says richie, subdued. shoot.

thanks. um. you rub your forehead for a second. look, all i know is that i can’t tell the future. like, with. it feels almost physically wrong, that have to force one of his names out, the one that richie will recognize. with mikey. i didn’t know. if i knew, i would’ve…

you look at him helplessly.

richie is looking back at you with the steady gaze of the only other person who actually fucking gets it.

nobody fuckin knew, he says.

you thought that looking back at him would be like touching a hot stove, but instead it feels like a lifeline, and you hold on as you keep talking, fumbling with your words, hesitant and slow. his blue eyes never flicker, never waver once. he is listening to you like the rest of the world has gone silent, like you’re the only one left, and you can feel every ounce of that weight.

i don’t know what’s gonna happen, is what i’m saying? it comes out of you like a question. and i think, maybe because you’re his, my brain got some signals mixed up. like, i can’t stop—

at the moment of decision, you find that you’d rather never see him again than tell him about the dreams. looking down at the concrete, you try to figure out something to say that you can live with.

there’s nothing. you end up saying something you need to say, whether or not you can live with it.

if you could just. you say. like, just…just fucking tell it to me, i’ll be good.

you have never had to put it into words before, and hearing yourself makes you feel so insane and abject and shitty and so fucking laughable, this must be some kind of dream. how the fuck did you get here.

the words on the note are: i’m sorry. i wish i was better at this. i want you to be okay.

you can hear the footsteps as richie comes closer: one, two, three. he’s close enough to touch you if he wanted to. you don’t want that. you don’t know what you want, except for this to be over, and you don’t know why you thought that putting out your cigarette would somehow make you able to leave. you’re holding perfectly still.

well, good news and bad news, richie says. a little quiet, but not precious. nearly conversational.

yeah? you say, soft.

bad news is i’m not suicidal, he says evenly, so you were wrong about that.

you’re so fucking overwhelmed, you can’t even begin to read him. and you certainly don’t know whether or not to believe him. it’s crazy: he says it perfectly, exactly what you wanted to hear, i’m not suicidal, and yet it brings no relief.

okay, you say woodenly. what’s the good news?

good news is i got that, uh, anxiety and depression—he over-articulates both diagnoses, an-xi-e-ty, and, de-pre-ssion—so you were right about that shit. he pauses. kinda shocked you figured it out, actually. nobody else has, unless i pop a xan right in front of them.

you look up.

bottom line? he says. the cadence is still conversational, but his blue eyes are so fucking sincere. i got eva and carm and a whole lot of enemies i don’t wanna give the satisfaction. i’m not giving up on any of them.

you try to give him a small smile. he deserves a whole lot more, but this is all you’ve got.

you don’t believe me, he says.

how the fuck does he know?

i don’t know what i think, you say. you got me all turned around.

deliberately, without taking his eyes off you, richie steps closer. he’s done this before, crowded you, gotten so close that he’s your whole world, but before it was always a challenge you had to stand up to and now it’s something else. it’s not an invasion, it’s an offer. he’s never been well-armored, especially not against you, but standing there and looking at you like that, he might as well be naked. you can smell him, sweat and fryer oil. his presence is so palpable it feels like hands on your face.

he repeats, you don’t believe me? and it feels like a promise.

you’re on dry land now. no more footholds, no more fear of slipping and falling. you can lay down here. you can rest.

you take it.

okay, you say.

with one last look, he steps away. you’re almost tempted to follow or ask him to stay, but that would be complicated, so you just lean against the wall next to him and light up another cigarette. savor that, and the piercing clarity of a dark night so cold that its clouds can’t even shed snow.

guess it’s my turn to ask you not to be a dick about this, richie says eventually.

no, i’m glad you did it, you say, and you mean it. getting medication, a diagnosis, all of it. i think it’s really good.

thanks, he says. i just meant, like, don’t be a dick about this new thing i’m about to say.

you look over and try to guess what fresh hell this is gonna be, but you also keep the door open to the possibility that this is a joke.

well, what are you gonna say? cause being a dick is kind of in my nature.

can you make an effort?

sure, you say, a little cautiously.

richie stubs out his cigarette.

i want you to be okay too, you know? he says, looking over to prove his sincerity with his eyes, and then looking back out at the street. you’re not wrong, right, i am actually fucking depressed, but like. it only took you one day to decide that something bad had happened to me.

this is so fucking unfair.

bad things happen all the time, you have no idea, you say.

his voice rises. i have no idea?

no, i didn’t— in your defense, you were thinking of a shadowed factory floor when you said it. that’s not a defense you can make, though, so you just say, i didn’t mean that.

richie accepts that, or at least he goes on.

it’s not just tonight, he says. sometimes the way you look at me, or the stuff you won’t talk about. secret agent aside, like. it’s so much, man.

god, the way he’s saying it, he’s been thinking about this for a while. on some level, you always thought that you were looking at him through a one-way mirror, always thought you were the one doing the seeing. you have no idea what to do with the news that you, too, were being seen.

he says, are you okay?

well? are you?

uh, yeah. you’re all hollowed out, and yet you’re still standing here, fucking talking, and. yeah, no, not really. but, you know, don’t worry about me, cause i got. who is it that you have, again? too much to do. i’m just too fucking busy to kill myself.

after a second, he says, and you got me.

yeah, you say. i got you. it comes out simple, natural. he’s offered it, so you don’t have to make a claim he can reject, and you’ve got no reserves of strength left to fight it either.

you look over at him, and this truth is the closest you’ll get to saying the other one. you say, i don’t wanna smoke without you.

you watch his face as your words land on him, and in some distant chamber of your mind, you think: so that’s what that looks like.

there’s one blessed minute of silence. then richie says, voice a bit thick, so if it’s not depression—

oh, jesus christ. it’s fucking not. you know you can’t just leave it there, because he won’t let you. it’s not because of his persistence—you’re every bit as stubborn as he is—but he wants to understand, and that’s the inescapable thing.

everything is going to shit, you say, after a second. i can feel it happening, but there’s nothing i can do about it. that’s all.

yeah, he says softly, after a second. i know the feeling.

no he doesn’t, but how could he? he’s thinking of the disappearance of the city he loves, the long slow slide from ceres to funeral. you’re thinking of how soon you’ll get what you deserve.

look, i already told you i’m a piece of shit, you say. and that’s it, that’s the whole fucking thing, richie.

yeah, i heard you the first time, he says. and then he says the worst thing he could possibly say, i don’t really buy that.

there’s no chance. there is just no fucking chance that this man is ever gonna get it.

i don’t know what you want me to say. at this point, your body itself is doing weird shit. you feel heavy enough to sink through the concrete, brittle and light enough to get disintegrated by the wind. i can’t, you say. i’m gonna go. i’m dead on my feet here.

richie stoops down and picks up the takeout bag with the tub of leftover spaghetti inside, then holding it out in the space between you, offering.

take it with you, he says. i know you’re not hungry right now, that’s fine. you can have it for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. spaghetti for dessert. something.

you don’t have the heart to say no to the ticking time bomb, and you don’t have the energy to pick it up either, so you just fucking look at it.

carmy cooked it, he says, and if only carmy could hear the way he says it, like: of course you want to eat it, everyone wants to eat it, michael fucking jordan would be so lucky to get a taste, cause carmy cooked it. the sauce is berzatto family recipe, it’s really fucking good.

richie, you say, i know it’s good.

you can practically fucking taste it, which is maybe why you’re on the verge of crying.

he lowers his arm. the plastic of the takeout bag rustles a little against the pant leg of his track suit. you turn, throw away your cigarette, and go.

you’ve got your hand on the door when he calls out, hey.

you don’t turn around.

richie says, i don’t wanna smoke without you too.

[ next chapter ] [ masterlist ]

@garbinge, @narcolini, @drabbles-mc, @beingalive1, @eternallyvenus, @cerial-junkie, @jackierose902109 — if anyone else wants to be tagged, let me know.

thanks to everyone for the lovely comments, and i'll try to keep posting twice a week for as long as i can. <3

#richie jerimovich x reader #richie jerimovich #the bear fx #the bear fanfiction #the bear fanfic #mine #readerfic #do i know you?#the bear imagine #to be honest i am really proud of this one 🥹#diky

51 notes · View notes

ohforficsakelibrary · 7 months

Text

You Brought Me Poison Flowers

Chapter 2: Yarrow - It draws the attention of those you most want to see.

prev / series masterlist / masterlist

Series Summary: Joel and Ellie settle into life in Jackson, one more easily than the other, until Joel is reminded of what normal feels like. The kind of normal that he perhaps never had. A series of one-shot glimpses into a relationship (no true plot here, people.) Soft!Joel. Two touch-starved babes. Slow-ish burn.

Chapter subtitles taken from Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs by Scott Cunningham. Although herbal preparations are consistent with historic uses, nothing herein is to be construed as medical advice.

Pairing: Joel Miller x Herbalist!OFC (age-appropriate age gap)

Word Count: ~4.1K

Rating: Eventually explicit 18+ / Minors DNI.

A/N: Joel fucks up a plant ID. Lennie feels him up and has him hang out for three.

Thanks very much to everyone who read and left some love on the first chapter of this little adventure. I honestly love these two, and I hope you all will come to as well.

Lennie’s processing comfrey for drying when Joel returns a week later. The shop is empty this time, he figures probably because they’re serving lunch down at the Mess Hall.

“Hey, Lennie,” he glances over at where she’s splitting stalks, “I brought you yarrow.”

Lennie casts her eyes up momentarily and the sight of him very nearly makes her cackle.

He’s freshly washed, having just returned from a morning patrol shift, silvered hair raked wet off of his face. Brow knitted. Mouth frozen in that scowl that he never quite realizes is perpetually plastered to his face. But he’s got a massive bouquet of white flowers clutched to his chest.

And not a moment after she looks away her eyes cut back to him.

The comfrey is hastily abandoned.

“Yeah, just, go ahead and lay that down on the table there.” Joel obliges as she wipes her hands on the edge of her apron and quickly swings around the bar. “How long ago did you pick those?”

“Uh, dunno, an hour, hour and a half maybe, sorry, I know they wilted a bit…”

She considers his face carefully before glancing at up the clock that hangs above the door as she closes the distance between them. “Did you eat lunch before or after you picked those?”

“Haven’t eaten lunch yet.” Suddenly she’s in his space, toe to toe. Immediately his back goes rigid.

“Ok, good,” she starts calmly before grabbing his face in her hands to hold him in place, staring intently into big brown eyes that have flown wide.

And now he’s been struck stupid.

“And you didn’t eat any part of those plants?”

“What? No.”

Her hands are quick yet determined as she lays the back of one across his forehead for a moment. He’d daresay he’s amused.

Bringing a woman flowers seems to go much farther these days.

“Open your mouth.” It’s a command. He does and she stands on tiptoes.

He finds himself enough to very nearly reach up to stop her the second she thumbs his bottom lip to get a better look.

And he would have. If he wasn’t starved.

The kind of hungry you don’t realize until the scent of food wafts in on a breeze.

“Did you happen to touch your face at all after you picked them? Rub your eyes, your nose, touch your mouth?”

“Uh, no? I dunno.”

“Are your eyes burning? Numb?”

“No.”

“Nose?”

“No.”

“Mouth?”

Yes.

“No.”

“Shortness of breath?” Her left hand is on his neck now, eyes on the clock, fingers gently applying pressure and readjusting until she finds his pulse and he swallows hard.

You mean not from this? What even is this?

His mouth drops open and “no” falls out. In response to her question, nothing else.

Christ, Miller. Like a fuckin sixteen year old.

“Sorry, what are you…” He finally finds his words, but she makes a soft noise to shush him.

A few seconds later “good” comes out on a breath that’s meant more for herself than for him.

“Do you feel nauseous?” Her small hands take both of his by wrists she can’t fully encircle, carefully poring over his palms.

“No.”

"And you haven't thrown up."

"No."

“Headache?”

“No.”

The backs of his hands fall under her scrutiny before she carefully examines his fingers.

“Sorry, may I?” She points at his chest and then at her ear. He nods before the thought finishes processing and in an instant she’s popped another button on his flannel and pressed her ear against his naked heart.

“You feel dizzy?” Her head is still on his chest and he realizes that his hands are poised in space, hovering just above her shoulders.

Yup.

“No.”

“You’re more than likely going to be fine.”

The fuck does that mean. Good sense is back.

“Lennie, what is going on.” He takes a step, hands held up before his chest in surrender. “Is this from that plant? You didn’t tell me yarrow was dangerous.”

“It’s not,” she finally vacates his space but instead of relief he registers loss of warmth.

“It’s actually incredibly safe outside of pregnancy and it’s one of the few things I can freely recommend for children, but you didn’t bring me yarrow.” She’s over at her bookshelf now, scanning quickly before slipping a text out of line.

“You brought me poison hemlock.”

Means you’re a fuckin’ idiot.

He glances down at the flowers. “What.”

“Poison hemlock,” she returns to him and perches on the edge of the table, feet on the bench. “Of Socrates fame. Take a seat.” He obeys her, mostly because he’s in a daze. “Hey, look at me.” He does. “It’s actually an incredibly honest mistake. You got any plans in the next three?”

“What the fuck Lennie, did I just…” big brown eyes are wide and he goes to scrub a hand down his face.

“Don’t touch your face,” she’s fast and grabs his elbow before he can make contact. “And no, you didn’t.” She stops meets his stare. “You’re more than likely going to be fine.”

“More than likely,” he nearly mocks, “how the fuck do you know? I thought you couldn’t touch that stuff.”

I know because its my fucking job to know, don’t test me, Miller.

“That’s a myth, all but the most sensitive people won’t have a reaction to just touching it and even then it’s just contact dermatitis, it has to get into your blood to do any harm.” She lets loose his arm as her words come fast and easy. “You didn’t eat it, so we’re good there, and you don’t have any fresh cuts on your hands, but you’re not sure if you touched your nose, mouth, or eyes, so that’s an open question.” She’s gone back to flipping pages, searching for something as she rattles this off. “Your pulse is strong, pupils a normal size, your heart is in normal rhythm, body temperature seems normal if a little warm, but we’re…”

“I run warm.” He’s not sure why he feels the need to clarify in this moment of all things.

“…concerned about cold here.” She finishes simultaneously. “You’re not sweating or salivating, no dizziness, nausea, or vomiting, no tremors, and finally, here we go.”

She appears to have found what she’s looking for.

“You’re staying here for the next three hours though.”

Ah. A finally a fuckin’ unit.

“You said I’m fine.”

“Symptoms can appear anywhere from 30 minutes to three hours after exposure.” Lennie reads out and clamps the book shut with one hand. “You haven’t touched your face since you’ve been in here, meaning the absolute last time any sap and therefore toxin could have made it into your system is right before you walked in that door. I figure give it three hours max for you to be completely in the clear.” She drops the book behind her on the table.

Somehow, he actually does follow her math.

“And if I do show symptoms…I assume you have an antidote?” “There is no antidote.” Lennie leans over her knees so her face is level with his. “It works by paralyzing your neuro-musculatory junctions…”

The dazed look is back.

“Where your nerves control your muscles,” she rephrases, “and causes paralysis, which is a problem when it comes to, you know, breathing. But that’s not going to happen.”

Lennie springs from the table and moves behind the bar.

“Me not being able to breathe is not going to happen, but I have to stay here for three hours and you have no antidote.” He’s not quite yelling but he’s not calm either.

“There is no antidote, and don’t touch YOUR FUCKING FACE,” she is though, seeing that he’s nearly gone to rub his eyes in frustration. “If you start to show any symptoms at all, I will notice, and I can get you over to Jane at the hospital sooner rather than later. She can treat the symptoms until it processes out of your system.” She drops down, disappearing for an instant before popping back up and dropping a pair of black rubber gloves on the bar top.

“I need your knife.” Lennie crosses the distance to stand in front of him, hand outstretched. Joel weakly reaches back for the pocket knife he used to cut the blooms.

She tosses it on the table next to the flowers.

“Come,” Lennie takes both of his hands in hers and he allows himself to be led to the sink. He’s not in shock, not by a long shot, but he’s not all here right now either.

These past few months here in Jackson have been the first time in the last twenty years that he didn’t want to. You know.

He has a house. His brother back. He isn’t tossing fucking bodies onto a burn pile.

He has Ellie.

And now here he might have actually gone and done it to himself. Finally.

Unless he missed again.

The water runs cool and then warm against his skin before Lennie soaps up her own hands and massages the suds into his skin, idly taking note that his hands are massive. Strong square palms and thick fingers.

Earth hands.

She continues in silence for a full minute before reaching for a nail brush. It takes him another minute of her scrubbing before he speaks.

“I know how to wash my hands, Lennie.”

“Well, that’s good,” she guides them under the water until they run clean and then some. “Your face now.”

Joel looks down at her with an expression she doesn’t bother to unpack. Instead she holds the bar of soap up between them and he takes it.

“Wash everything around your eyes and mouth first, keep ‘em shut tight.” Lennie calls over her shoulder as she heads back to the bar top. “Rinse for 30, repeat that once, and then gently take the soap over your eyes and mouth. Scrub that beard. And your neck too.”

She slips the rubber gloves on and grabs the Reaper’s bouquet that’s resting on the table. “Keep going till I get back,” she calls, passing him on her way through the door to the left. He hears the creaking of something heavy and the click of a screen door and two full wash cycles later hears the sequence in reverse.

“You should be good now,” moments later a gentle hand rests on his back and a washcloth is pressed into his palm before she turns the water off. Joel dries his face first, then his hands and finally opens his eyes as he steps back from the sink. All he can manage right now is to slump down at the table. Face in his hands.

Behind him, Lennie is at the bar, pouring soap into a metal bowl. She fills it with hot water and drops it off near him, slipping the rubber gloves on again. She washes the table carefully, starting with areas she knows are clean, before moving in to where he was sitting before, anywhere he could have touched with sap-sticky hands. She’s so thorough that she wipes the cover of whatever text she was flipping through too.

Joel watches her while she works.

He’s not really sure what else to do.

Faded jeans are rolled up at the cuffs and at some point she had taken off her sweatshirt. Underneath she’s wearing a yellow t-shirt upon which Smokey the Bear urges him to help prevent forest fires.

What if you are a fucking forest fire?

He doesn’t know how he hadn’t noticed before but her left arm is adorned in a black and grey sleeve of foliage and bones.

She has the arms of someone used to throwing heavy stuff around all day. He likes that about her.

What a fucking thought process.

He’s hungry and delusional from nearly having poisoned himself, he figures. Or potentially having lightly poisoned himself.

“Elbows up,” she says gently from across heavy oak. She’s quick with the cloth and allows him to get back to sulking in no time at all.

Lennie spends at least five minutes on the spot where the flowers were before his knife is flipped open and dropped into the soapy water. She’s careful to clean that spot too. She takes the whole bowl to the sink and deposits it into the basin to soak before dropping the rubber gloves into the bowl too. Lennie then moves to the front of the shop, flips the “Open” sign to “Closed” and pulls dark blue curtains over the front windows.

“Alright,” she turns around, resting her hands on her hips before pointing at him. He has no idea what she means, but knows it wasn’t meant for him. The kettle is filled and placed on the hot plate and she disappears again, this time through a door to the right, returning in five with a fork and a plate of thickly sliced ham, cheese, bread, and salad greens dressed lightly in oil.

“Sorry it’s not very cohesive, but it’s the quickest thing I have.”

“It’s fine,” Joel tears into the ham, honey-sweetness on his tongue reminding him of his manners.

“Thank you.”

Ten minutes later there’s weird coffee in front of him and he could not be more grateful. She finally comes to rest opposite him with her own cup, and rakes a hand through her hair as he shoves a bite of crumbly bread into his mouth.

“I’m sorry for all of this,” he says as he swallows.

“Don’t apologize, Joel. It’s an honest mistake. And I probably should have made it more clear.”

A few moments pass in silence before he mumbles, “a thousand leaves.”

“What’s that?”

“You said the leaves were the key. Soft and lacy. Thousand leaves.” He downs the last bite of greens, staring idly at a knot in the wood. “The leaves were different, that thing had carrot leaves.”

“It’s a member of the same family, yeah. Which is actually how most poisonings happen,” she takes another sip from her mug and rests a cheek in her hand. “Good observation.”

“What did you do with them?” He asks between bites of cheese.

“They’re in a lock box out back until I can process them.”

“Process?”

“Even poison plants have their uses.”

He’s curious but not ready to know.

“So what now?” He finally meets her eyes.

“Well, when you’re finished there I’m going to check you again for symptoms, and I’ll keep doing that every thirty until we’re clear.”

“And what do you want me to do?”

“Whatever you want Joel.” She stands and makes her way back to the bar. “You can read a book, tell me your life story, take a nap, sit there and scowl.”

At this, he throws a scowl back over his shoulder at her.

And for the first time today she grins.

She runs through her checks again after he’s through, and much to her surprise, he opts to help her finish processing the comfrey, portioning and binding bundles for drying. After that he pulls a book from the shelf and takes a seat at the table facing her as she sets to work straining tinctures.

Lennie smirks when she sees what he’s chosen. The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien.

_____

They continue like this, in silence save for the clinking of mason jars and the metallic scrape of lids, speaking only for her to run her checks.

And yet discomfort remains at bay.

She catches him occasionally, dark eyes angled at her up over Flann’s pages. She can’t see his mouth but from the knit of his brow she knows the scowl is there. He doesn’t dwell long each time, but each time he dwells longer than the last.

He likes how she looks with her wild curls pulled back. Likes the rebellion of the errant ones at the nape of her neck. She isn’t a frail thing, whether from conscious nurturing of strength or what life has seen fit to deal. And yet the promise of softness in all the right places shows through baggy denim. Under the yellow cotton of her shirt. That gold against tawny skin. He clears his throat and shifts in his seat.

A sip of water helps.

Lennie isn’t innocent here. She’s just sneakier. His hair has dried by now, accentuating the silver streaks in ashen brown. The way his massive hands make the novel look small. It’s impossible not to notice the way brown and red flannel clings to his shoulders, stretching around his biceps when he brings the glass of water to his lips.

Those lips. Far more plush than they have any right to be.

Man walks in with big hands and broad shoulders and you’re fuckin’ nineteen again.

Just the hands will do these days, apparently.

She takes it out on chicory root with a cleaver.

_____

About ten minutes after a third round of checks Joel pipes up again.

“Hey uh, you got a bathroom?” His bladder is protesting the coffee. Tea. Whatever the fuck that thing is, and the glass of water that she’s been keeping full for him.

Lennie is a good host even in a shit situation.

“Yup,” he watches as she looks up from where she’s splitting roots of god knows what and points her cleaver at the woodstove in the corner. “Left and then another left.”

He follows her instructions, seeing that there’s a mudroom to the right after the first left. He can’t help but take quick stock. A door to the back garden. Jackets for all seasons hung on cast iron hooks. An array of practical shoes lined up neatly in a tray. He idly notices the pair of rain boots far larger than its companions before he slips into the tiny wood-paneled bathroom.

“Soap you’ve got in there smells nice.” This when he returns.

She smirks as he walks back in, amused that this broad, rugged thing likes scented soap.

“Oh so it does know how to wash its hands.” She grins up at him before answering in earnest. “Thanks. Think I’ve got…ponderosa? In there?” She reaches out a hand.

It takes him a moment to realize she’s asking for his hand to confirm. He obliges, and a corner of his mouth twitches in amusement when she takes a quick whiff.

“Ponderosa. You want a bar? Give me a sec.”

She wipes her hands on her apron and turns behind her where small wooden crates are stacked nearest the window. She shuffles through a few boxes before selecting a bar for him.

“I don’t have anything to trade.”

“What are you talking about, you brought me poison flowers. Those are my favorite.” She returns to her chopping with a smile.

He very nearly laughs. Instead, he returns to his seat and his book, absently pressing the bar of soap to his nose as he reads.

It’s funny how when everything went away, smells went with them. The good ones at least. Replaced with decay and dry rot. Gunpowder and shitty whiskey. Burning bodies. You stop paying attention.

To register is to be repulsed.

It apparently takes scented soap to make you want to inhale again. Warm vanilla without sticky sweetness. Earth. Barely there lavender.

“How’d you do this?”

“Uhm,” she takes a moment to simplify down to component parts. “Soap is some kind of fat and a base. A few years ago I started using whatever was left over from the prior year’s infused oils and tallow as the fat and some janky steam distilling equipment to eek out a bit of essential oil from fresh plants to boost the scent. It takes a lot of material and it’s not a particularly productive process but I figure everyone deserves a little frivolity. Something normal like before.”

“But there’s benefit to the plants being in there?” He still has the bar idly pressed up under his nose in a way that makes something jump in the pit of Lennie's stomach.

“Great question, there’s more benefit to the infused fat than the essential oil, but the essential oils carry the smell.”

“Hmm.”

Is he learning?

He finally pops the bar into the front pocket of his flannel.

Thank god flits across her mind.

The way that pleasure registered on his face every time he took a whiff didn’t go unnoticed.

It sets something long-dormant to churning.

Twenty minutes later he says, “I think it’s time for you to feel me up again.”

She snorts and glances at the clock seeing that it is indeed.

Paying attention and learning. What a guy.

“If I didn’t know better I’d say you’re beginning to enjoy this, Joel.”

She washes her hands and he stands up, smoothing the front of his shirt for a reason he can’t explain.

“Any shortness of breath?” Lennie starts, taking his face in her hands, studying his eyes in the late afternoon light. She can see easily that his pupils are a completely normal size, but now she notes softness in the brown. A subtle shade of gratitude.

She doesn’t bother with his mouth this time, leaving lips to tingle in unfulfilled anticipation.

She sees something flit across his eyes for a moment but doesn’t dwell. Instead, her fingers brush over his stubble to fit under his jaw. She’s learned by now that his pulse jumps just behind the bare patches in his beard. A handy shortcut that a part of her perhaps didn’t actually ask for.

Lennie breaks his stare to hold the clock’s gaze, and for a few seconds, Joel takes the opportunity to really look at her. He had noticed a round ago that her brown eyes are flecked with gold. But he can’t for his life figure out how old she is. Long strands of aggregated silver curl from her widow’s peak and temples. Faint lines in the corners of her eyes belie that perhaps at least she was able to find some joy in this hell.

Her mouth was impossible not to notice, but up close it strikes him that her lips aren’t chapped. They look—soft.

Soft? An adjective that fell to the wayside.

“Alright, good,” she breaks his reverie. “A little faster, but still within a completely normal range.” She steps back instead of leaning in.

“You’re not gonna listen?” He points loosely at his chest.

“Do feel out of breath?”

Gasping.

“No.”

“Like it’s skipping?”

Fuckin hopscotch.

“No.”

“Racing?”

A mile a minute.

“No.”

“Do you want me to?”

He takes too long to answer and she takes it as a “no.”

She returns to the bar top and her roots and Joel sits back down and finds his last-read page.

_____

The next thing he remembers is the hand resting lightly on his shoulder.

“Joel?”

“Yeah?” He sniffs as his eyes pop open. The shop is filled with pink light.

“You’re free to go.”

“It’s three hours?”

“It’s a little over four, but you looked like you could use the rest. You’ve been asleep for about two. It’s getting to dinner time and I figured Ellie would be looking for you.”

He scrubs his eyes with the heels of his palms before lightly scratching his beard.

“You didn’t wake me up to check.”

“I checked your breathing every fifteen until you started snoring, so I just listened for any change.” She slips him a scrap of paper on which is scribbled a few time entries and numbers next to them ranging from twelve to fourteen.

“Every fifteen?”

He lets it go without units.

“Well, you weren’t awake to tell me if anything started feeling off.”

“You really do care," he snarks.

“I mean, I try.” Lennie smiles and rakes a hand through curls that she’s freed from the scrap of fabric she had tied them with.

He stares at her for a second, hair wild from what she’s just done. Her sweatshirt is on again and she’s got her hands stuffed in the back pockets of her jeans.

“Yeah. Yeah, I should head out.” Not because of the time, though. He stands and tentatively stretches his back. “Can I borrow this?” Joel asks, holding the book up.

“Yeah, of course.”

“You comin’ to Mess?” He slips his clean knife into his back pocket.

“I’ve actually got some leftovers from a rabbit I trapped the other day, so.”

“Yeah. Yeah ok,” Joel starts for the door and turns back. “Hey, thank you, Lennie. For today.”

He sticks out his hand again and it makes her want to scream.

He does that. His reserve. Makes her want to scream.

“Yeah, of course,” she gives it a firm shake instead. “Anytime you uh, feel like you’re dying. Hit me up.” She grins.

He returns it. With teeth.

“Have a good night, Joel.”

“Goodnight, Lennie.”

She latches the door behind him and presses her back against it before sliding down to the floor.

Heavy breath hisses from her lungs.

“Not what I needed.”

Exactly what she needed.

“Fuck.”

Old chapters are hosted on the OFFS Library page. New chapters will be posted to Ohforficsake - follow me over there for future updates.

Shoot me a message @ohforficsake or comment under this post if you would like to be added to the taglist for updates! Thanks so much for reading.

#joel miller #the last of us fanfiction #joel miller smut #pedro pascal character fanfiction #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal #ohforficsake #YBMPF

39 notes · View notes

iwahajii · 1 year

Text

• stars don’t sparkle (3)

He may have lost his memories, but you lost the love of your life.

prev // next

warnings: mentions of an accident, amnesia

•

When spring came, it truly felt like a breath of fresh air not just for Iwaizumi, but for you too. Somehow, the pain caused by the unfortunate incident that happened faintly ebbed in your heart, replaced by a calm hope that things would get better. After all, he finally remembers some snippets of your memories together.

He remembers a lot of things now, many of which are recent memories from the time you two met and some even just before the accident. Still, his recollection is more spontaneous much to your dismay and there were still days when he tends to shy away from your presence because he gets overwhelmed.

His slow recollection began last winter when you asked him to stay over when he walked you home drunk. Although the situation was mortifying, it served as a trigger for some of his memories to come back. He must’ve spent quite some time awake and alone in the apartment while waiting for you to wake up. To say it was awkward when you woke up was an understatement but the two of you threaded over it carefully. You were glad you weren’t hungover, at least not yet so when he told you he remembered a few things from his sudden visit at the apartment, you were somehow coherent to receive the news.

He remembered that you always slept on the right side of the bed, you prefer sunny side ups over scrambled, your favorite movie is Light Between the Oceans, and you have a tattoo on your collarbone. The last one he wasn’t sure which was why you were surprised when he yelled “it’s true” all of a sudden while you leaned down to reach for a plate.

At your questioning look, he explained, “I wasn’t sure whether you really had a tattoo on your collarbone or not.”

“Oh,” you exclaim, surprised.

“What does it say?”

You blinked, unsure for a split second before finding yourself pulling your shirt to the side, displaying the inscription of alis grave nil on your skin. “Nothing is heavy to those who have wings.”

You watch him look at the words engraved on your skin, his eyes bright with awe as though the ink on your skin is a piece of art. Fueled by his fascination, his fingers tentatively meet your skin slowly tracing over the letters. You can feel your heart race and the burst of cold coming from his fingertips made you take a shaky breath which disrupted whatever spell was cast between the two of you. He quickly pulled his hand away, coughing out an “I’m sorry” before taking a step back. He covered his face with his hand but he was blushing hard up to the tips of his ears there was nothing he could do.

“I have another one,” you told him, deciding to tease him some more. The second he turned his head back at you, you raised your shirt not giving him a chance to ask.

“Fuck!” he cursed and you felt his hands on yours, pulling them down together with your shirt. You didn’t know it would be possible for him to get redder than before. Unable to control it any longer, you threw your head back laughing. “What are you doing? Jesus!” he continued, sweeping a hand through his hair.

“I thought you were curious,” you explained in between laughter. Your laughter was cut short by a pounding in your head and you groaned, feeling the slow tell-tale of a migraine coming soon.

“I am, but you didn’t-“ he paused, “you don’t just-“

“Calm down. It’s not like it’s anywhere obscene or something. Besides, you’ve seen this so many times already…”

In a split second, the playful mood you had was gone, replaced by an awkward tension you never want to navigate ever again. Thankfully, you never have to because before you could apologize, Iwaizumi beat you to it.

“Show me.”

Surprised, you looked up, wondering whether you heard him wrong or not. You search his face for confirmation, some sign to assure you that it wasn’t just some hallucination, and when your eyes meet his, you knew it was real.

“Show me,” he says again.

You could feel from his words the need, the hunger… for what you didn’t know. With trembling hands, you pull your shirt up just until the bottom of your bra could be seen.

You watch as he read the words on your skin, once and then once more, tracing the letters with his eyes and then with his mouth before a shaky breath leaves his lips. When his fingers meet your skin this time, they burn with the kind of warmth you want to brand on your skin the same way the words are. Forever.

Dazed, you almost missed the words he uttered before meeting your eyes.

“Stars don’t sparkle…” he whispered, like he was saying the words more to himself than to you.

You opened your mouth to speak but words and your voice eluded you in that moment, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered at that point because all you could think about was that he knows. He knows and he remembers and maybe this is just the start of things he will remember, but he knows and he remembers. You could feel the tears fill your eyes and before they could fall, you hear him say the words that meant everything.

“They burn.”

prev // next

@bitchotine @pressuredtreasure @naturakaashi @lostgirlsstuff @noodlenerd101 @kiwibao @ lavender-pink-socks @queenirish @kuroots2 @ fuglytoes-0288 @kibiscribbles

#haikyuu!!#haikyuu #haikyuu fic #haikyuu angst #Iwaizumi Hajime #iwaizumi x reader #iwaizumi fanfic #angst

59 notes · View notes

arlecchno · 1 year

Text

asphodelus [ scaramouche x reader]

4. sparrings and duels.

prev masterlist next

first look of the dendrobrium's secret lair down in to the dark forest, and there, scaramouche comes to realize how much of a great asset you actually are for this deal.

warnings: allusions to murder, suicide, abduction, death mentions, not 100% proofread

a/n: look at the end for a/n since it'd be too long here :P 4k+ words

“so.” scaramouche started, scanning his eyes over the area. “is this where you live?”

you let out an offended gasp, turning to look at him. “how low do you think of me?” you asked, which earned a shrug from the violet haired male.

the cave was dark, except for the couple of torches planted by the walls. there were some old furnitures— a tall cupboard, a table and a chair, there was even a bed, though it looked like it had been centuries old.

if it weren't you showing him this place, he would've thought an old geezer lived here instead.

he wasn't sure why you had brought him here in the first place, but nevertheless, the two of you needed some privacy for this operation, so it'd be best to be out of the public eye, he figured.

you brought him to a secluded cave far away from the city and into the dark forest, a secret cave concealed by a dazzling waterfall. judging by the area, he had already assumed this was your lair.

“i have an apartment of my own in the city. we get paid loads for each of our target, and i'm not the dendrobrium for nothing.” you said, walking further into the cave with your hands shoved in your pockets.

the way you talked about murder and death so nonchalantly made scaramouche sick to the stomach.

you strode over to an old table, and scaramouche followed along. there, you reached for a box full of matches, and took one out. you sauntered over to the other side of the cave, lighting up the match and throwing it in a dead fireplace.

watching the fire burn embers, you turned your head to look at scaramouche. “nice place, wouldn't you agree?”

“mine is far better than this.”

“oh? and where do you live, balladeer?” you challenged.

“in a manor.”

your jaw dropped for a split second before you recollected yourself. “oh, i've forgotten. you're one of those people.”

scaramouche crossed his arms. “what people?” he pressed. he wasn't sure why you didn't sound too surprised.

“you know.” you walked over to the corner of the cave. there laid a small area full of weapons, scaramouche noted. though, they only consisted of various versions of daggers and knives.

and if scaramouche could add, there were even swords and rapiers standing idly by the weapon rack you had.

just how many weapons do you have?

“those snobby rich people, the ones that never cease to look down on people like me.” you explained, stopping in front of your weapon rack.

scaramouche didn't need you to explain further to understand what you meant. the nobles of snezhnaya are a bunch of prudes, people like them never bat an eye on the poor, let alone dare go near them.

and even though his aunt nahida was a part of those said nobles, she was absolutely nothing like them. nahida has a mind of her own, and only plays by the rules. her wisdom and knowledge of all things was what made her stand out from the crowd, earning her a position to serve the royals in urgent matters.

you picked up a new dagger from the rack, steel glinting underneath the light in each turn. “i've always hated the nobles.”

suddenly, you threw the sharp weapon in scaramouche's direction after having said that.

with its speed, you thought that scaramouche wouldn't have enough time to react. but out of nowhere, the ravenette caught the hilt with his fingers.

if it weren't for his fast reflexes, he would've been long gone by now.

you smiled. “nice catch, balladeer.” you praised, reaching for another weapon.

“i'm not part of the nobles.” scaramouche said. “well, as far as i'm aware, i guess.”

“but you're lord kusanali's foster child, aren't you?”

scaramouche gripped the hilt of the dagger in his hand as his eyes widened. “...how'd you know?” he asked, and you let out a scoff as you played with yours.

“i've seen your face in the newspaper some time ago.” you explained, looking at your vague reflection on the steel of your weapon. “lord kusanali is one of the only trusted allies of the royals. it's no surprise that you'd have quite the name yourself, balladeer.”

scaramouche took a moment to think. if he could recall correctly, the only time he's ever been in the newspapers was when he was promoted for a position as detective in the department, and the only reason he even appeared in the newspapers was due to the royals fancying him and his caretaker for dinner at the palace as celebration.

and scaramouche got that promotion well over two years ago.

have you been eyeing him all this time?

he thought that you might have a strong memory and have probably seen him when the newspapers were out at first, but as he thinks again, he had an inkling there was more to it.

“focus, balladeer.” your voice pulled him out of his thoughts. once again, out of nowhere, you threw the dagger in hand at him.

it barely grazed his cheek as it swept through beside him, its abnormal speed not giving him enough time to react this time.

the sharp edge of the steel met with the head of a training dummy far behind scaramouche, slashing through the wood.

scaramouche widened his eyes, looking back and forth from the training dummy to you.

“if you want to be on this team, you've got to show me what you got.”

“...why do you get to decide if i'm worthy of an ally or not?” scaramouche asked after recollecting himself from the previous scene, crossing his arms. “why don't i get to value you as well?”

you chuckled. “you're talking to the dendrobrium here, balladeer. we both know who's above who.” you said confidently, shrugging as you turned your back to him and tended to your weapons.

without giving it a second thought, scaramouche came up behind you in a swift motion, the dagger you've thrown at him from earlier grazing at the skin of your throat.

“do you assassins always have the tendency to be cocky?”

“maybe.” you replied, not flinching even an inch from his actions. to be fair, you did purposely act defenseless while riling him up just now. and you honestly loved the thrill of it.

scaramouche's breath fanned against your ear. “hope you won't be too confident now after this.”

“oh please.” you rolled your eyes. “as if a fatui officer could ever scare me.” you emphasized the word, as though the fatui are a bunch of lowly idiots.

and in your eyes, they are.

in a split second, you gripped his arm that held the dagger and forcefully pushed him away, stealing the weapon in the process as you turned around. knocking him to the ground, you hovered above him, pinning both of his wrists above his head with one hand as you straddled his waist.

“again with the cockiness.” scaramouche gritted his teeth in annoyance, making an unamused face as you smirked deviously. “do you even have a plan to take down the leader?”

you shrugged. “maybe i do, maybe i don't. who knows?” scaramouche was visibly even more frustrated by your answer, given his harsh actions on attempting to get out of your tight grip.

“you can't be fucking with me, dendrobrium. why even strike a deal if you don't have anything planned?”

your eye twitched. “that was obviously a joke, you oaf.” your grip on him tightened. “of course i have a plan. and if you're gonna keep up with that attitude.” the tip of the dagger that you were currently holding hovered just above his tuft of violet hair.

“then say goodbye to your luxurious purple hair.”

scaramouche never thought anyone would go that far as to threaten his precious hair.

his face contorted into one that can't be described, but to you, it looked as hideous as an ogre.

“save that stupid face for later.” you rolled your eyes, retracting both of your hands from him as you stood up. “torturing you now won't be fun.” you left him on the ground as you dusted yourself off.

scaramouche sat up, hair all tangled. “what do you even mean by that?”

his question was left unanswered.

he tried standing up, but abruptly stopped halfway when you suddenly threw the dagger your were holding earlier to the other side of the cave. it went by so swiftly that scaramouche didn't have enough time to process everything.

his indigo eyes darted everywhere to find where you had aimed for, and when he finally found it, his eyes landed on a board, a few feet away from the both of you.

he tried focusing on the exact spot that the dagger had landed at, but couldn't as it was too far away from his view.

“are you seriously that blind?”

well, not for you, it seems.

scaramouche stopped squinting his eyes, standing up properly as he glared at you irritatingly. “why'd you have to be such a show off!? we know you're the dendrobrium, just let that go already!” he retorted.

“you buffon!” you jutted out your index finger to the direction of the board. “i did such a badass opening and you can't even act like you can see for the sake of the grand entrance to my master plan!?”

you stomped your way over to the board, scaramouche reluctantly trailing behind. “how would i know you were trying to do that? and for pete's sake, that's exactly what a show off would do!” you only took a second to stop and send a death glare towards him before continuing your walk.

the both of you stopped in front of the board, and scaramouche had to do a double take to look at the whole thing.

the board was filled with loads of information regarding the fantomatique, including newspapers, dealings, written letters, and whatnot. it seemed like you've been doing this for quite some time now, way before he was even in the picture.

“these are all of the things i've been gathering since the moment i started working in this organization, long before i met you.” you folded your arms as you glanced at your work. “six, seven years, maybe.”

scaramouche traced his gloved fingers over the papers pinned to the board. “you look rather… young, to be working for so long under such a scummy leader.” he noted, in which you chuckled at.

“my, a compliment from you? that's a first.” you raised a brow in amusement, earning a grumble from the male beside you.

you heed no mind as you skimmed your eyes throughout the many papers.

but you didn't directly answer his comment.

were you… avoiding personal talk?

scaramouche finally saw the dagger you had in your hand earlier, slashed through the wood of the board. there, the weapon was directly pinned on a paper, with a hand drawn picture of a woman. it seemed like the tip of the sharp dagger had landed just exactly at the tip of their head.

“who's that?”

“viktoria novikova.” you said, glancing at the drawing. “what do you know about the fantomatique and its leader?” you turned to look at him next.

scaramouche huffed before replying. “...the fantomatique is a criminal organization that was introduced over fifteen years ago during the reury orphanage tragedy. at first, it was only the leader and their most trusted allies.” he flickered his indigo eyes to you.

“but each passing day another new member joins the organization, and thus became the biggest criminal group it is today.”

you arched an eyebrow. “come on, the fatui couldn't possibly only know that useless information.” you replied.

“the leader's one and only goal is to take over the palace and be the future of snezhnaya.” scaramouche continued, glaring at you. “every criminal in the organization are assigned to take down every ally of the royals, and you, are especially one of them.”

“that's all?”

“...unfortunately.”

you raised a brow. “fifteen years and the fatui haven't even gotten past a lead that quite literally everyone knows?” scaramouche scoffed at your question, as if deceiving the deadliest criminal organization was as easy as how you made it sound like.

“can't be knowing everything when half of the people here are a part of the devil.” he countered, causing you to purse your lips.

the ravenette wasn't wrong, the fantomatique recruits almost everyone in the city, and there is barely anyone who can be trustworthy. as of now, only the fatui and a couple of nobles were on the royals' side, apart from the citizens.

“why… the dendrobrium? why did you decide to use that flower as your m.o?” he asked out of the blue, leaving you dumbstruck for a moment. the sudden question as to why you've branded yourself the dendrobrium was left hanging for a while before you answered.

you walked away from the board. “people like to associate everything related to death and betrayal with the dendrobrium.” you bluntly said. “don't you think that's enough reason for me to brand myself that name? i am the person who is most feared in snezhnaya, after all.”

“but why go out of your way to name yourself a flower that isn't even from this nation, yet one that is far away from ours?”

you turned around to face him with a cold look. “the dendrobrium is the most loathsome and deadliest flower there is. everyone fears being associated with it, given its meaning and purpose. it goes the same for me with my work of assassinating targets each passing night. isn't that good enough reason for you to understand why i'd go for that stupid flower?”

“besides.” you continued, not sparing him a second to butt in. “a rich snob like you wouldn't understand nor care to know what the dendrobrium thinks, so i'd advise you keep your pretty lips shut and cease from asking such useless questions to a lowly commoner like me.”

scaramouche didn't dare to fight back your statement.

you shrugged before walking away. “aside from that, the dendrobrium is just a really pretty flower in general. well at least in my eyes, that is.” your conclusion caused scaramouche to give you a dirty look.

“you could've just went with that instead of spouting out bullshit.”

“i enjoy seeing you contort your face into weird expressions as i talk.” you pulled out a chair by the table before sitting down with your arms crossed. “you're quite the eccentric one, balladeer.”

scaramouche groaned in annoyance, pinching the bridge of his nose with his eyes closed before snapping them to you. “what do you even plan on doing with this viktoria woman?” he asked rather impatiently.

“i'd have to elaborate everything i know regarding the fantomatique for you to understand why she's our first target.”

“target? are you trying to rope me into your filthy assassination schemes?”

you looked over your shoulder from the table to glare at him. “why would i want you to interfere with my job?” you scoffed, rolling your eyes as you do so. “i only kill when i am ordered to by the leader, or if i didn't have any other choice.”

scaramouche merely hummed as a reply before you continued.

“the unknown leader's sole goal is to make snezhnaya a better place.” you pointed to the board. “they've made it well known from the very start.” a piece of paper caught scaramouche's eyes, and he took a good look at it before widening his eyes.

it was a newspaper, with its other pages torn, except one. the edges of the paper were dirty and seemed like it was years old, and when scaramouche finally focused on the main picture of the newspaper, his heart dropped.

the reury orphanage tragedy.

scaramouche knew he was going to come across this one way or another, but looking at it now made him nauseous.

the newspaper talked about how the tragedy had impacted a lot of people to the point that it gained the royals' attention.

in the newspaper, it wrote that the fantomatique had left a short message for the people, a message that scaramouche knew so well he didn't need to read the next line to know what it said.

this is just the beginning.

those five words were the thing that almost made scaramouche lose his mind when he had his hands on the investigation many years later.

you looked at him, confused, as if there was something about the tragedy that plagued his mind for him to be so quiet suddenly. a bit of worry flashed your eyes before you shook it off, huffing as you do so.

right. he's your supposed enemy. you two have agreed to not interfere in each other's personal business, so there's no reason for you to have even the slightest of sympathy or concern, especially for someone like him.

scaramouche snapped out of his deep thoughts when you spoke. “when the fantomatique was formed, the leader recruited twelve people to be their most trusted allies, they're called the crusaders.”

“although, over the years, one by one wind up dead. now, there are only five crusaders remaining.” you informed, absentmindedly playing with the box of matches on the table as you focused on the object.

scaramouche arched an eyebrow as he turned to look at you. “what do you mean by 'wind up dead'?”

“they were either assassinated or killed themselves due to corruption and betrayal.” you heaved out a breath. “...if you must know, there's no turning back once you're a part of the fantomatique.”

you flicked your eyes to him. “it's either kill or be killed. if the leader knows you've betrayed them, they will hunt you down until your last breath.” you emphasized the word.

“wait.” scaramouche stopped you. “so, does this mean…”

nodding your head, you sighed. “if the leader finds out about this deal, i'll be done for. which is why i am hoping we could cooperate and end the organization as fast and as precisely as we could.”

“but aren't you considered the leader's favorite pet? you're the most powerful assassin in the city, if the leader kills you then they're just going to lose their greatest asset to their organization.” he asked, rather confused.

you snorted. “'pet' would be a bit of an exaggeration, balladeer. i just follow whatever order i am told. and if anything, the leader loathes me the most.”

“what?”

it was your turn to be confused by his reaction. “just because i'm the greatest assassin alive doesn't mean that the leader respects me.”

and then you were silent.

scaramouche waited for you to continue whatever you had in mind, but it seemed as though you had brushed it off to avoid personal talk. once again.

the ravenette returned his focus to the picture in front of him instead. “so, what about viktoria again?”

“oh.” you snapped out of thoughts immediately, standing up and walking over towards scaramouche. “both the crusaders and the leader are hard to track down, nor do we know each of their identities. but the leader had given the crusaders separate forces to take care of.”

“and that includes?”

“well, as far as i am aware, there's weaponry, which is led by the third crusader. although the crusaders' identities are unknown, they're relatively easier to track down than the leader. i've heard that most of them are in the hierarchy of the nobles, even.” you informed further, stopping in front of the board as you stood next to him.

scaramouche nodded in understanding. “so, is this viktoria one of the crusaders?” he inquired, in which you shook your head.

“i wish it was that easy.” you sighed, bringing up a hand to point out to a piece of paper besides the picture of viktoria. “weaponry is one of the most important assets for the fantomatique to rise up in both status and strength, so import of weapons have always been operated illegally in order to get the best ones across the seven nations.”

the paper you've pointed at was a letter with an intricate handwriting. it wrote about information of new stocks of imported weapons to be docked by the shore soon. at the bottom right, it signed off with a red stamp drawing of a ghost.

after careful inspection, scaramouche realized it was the official stamp of the fantomatique.

scaramouche wondered how you managed to get a confidential letter out of someone's hands.

“viktoria here, albeit not being a crusader, is in charge of an incoming stock. she's not exactly someone of importance to the fantomatique, though she is rather… egotistical. she's under the third crusader, so if we could just get under her skin, then it'd be easier to track down the third crusader.”

scaramouche looked at you skeptically. “how do we know she would lead us to the third crusader? you did say that their identities are unknown.”

“yes, unknown to most, i'd say. of course almost every member of the fantomatique aren't aware of the identities of the higher ups, but there's a slim chance that some do.” you explained, causing scaramouche to furrow his brows further.

“so you'd rather take that risk and target this woman?”

“sweetheart, i'd take as many risks as i can to destroy the leader, even if death awaits me in the end. i'm taking this chance while i still can.” you patted his shoulder.

scaramouche clicked his tongue before shoving your hand away. “don't call me that.”

“call you what?”

he snapped his head to look at you. “that hideous name.” said scaramouche.

“sweetheart?”

“yes…?” scaramouche replied rather hesitantly, as if that wasn't the obvious answer.

you grinned, walking away as you stretched your arms in the air. you didn't comment on his answer, which left scaramouche completely bamboozled.

he wasn't sure why you would just smile deviously and walk away without giving him any snarky remarks back.

scaramouche darted his eyes to the dagger stuck in the wooden board, and his indigo ones shifted into something else, determined to take that weapon out.

the ravenette took ahold of the hilt before pulling it out, using his strength. it was jammed for a few seconds, but scaramouche managed to fully take it out without any complications.

he played with it for a few seconds before twisting his head to look at you, back turned to him.

scaramouche took a moment to think.

if this was the dendrobrium, the most deadliest assassin in snezhnaya, then this is his chance. even though he's had a duel with you, both during your first meeting and from earlier, scaramouche needed to see how it'd look like if you were the one being striked this time.

angling the dagger to your direction, scaramouche made sure to do it as precisely as he could. then, without sparing a second, he threw the weapon, and the sharp end headed towards you.

it was swiftly flying through the air, and scaramouche thought he would be successful with his attempt before the weapon stopped midway. the ravenette frowned before looking at the familiar gloved hand holding the hilt.

you looked over your shoulder, back still turned as you held the dagger in your hand, the weapon just exactly beside your head.

you had just caught it effortlessly.

and scaramouche was sure that that was just child's play to you.

“how'd you do that?”

you fully turned around, smirking as you played with the dagger in hand. “a decade of… practice, brings you a long way.” you hesitated. “instinct is simply one of the things i must learn in order to become the person i am today.”

scaramouche folded his arms. “you sure have been in this field for a long time. how old are you even?”

“hm, i don't know. how old do you think i look?”

“thirty.”

you gasped, fully offended. “i'm not that old! your view of me is truly atrocious!” you fought, but scaramouche still looked at you blankly.

“so, how old are you?”

“there's no fun if i'm telling you straight away, is it not?”

scaramouche arched a brow. “thirty-four.”

you gasped once again.

“thirty-eight.” he raised the numbers higher, and your gasp sounded even more higher than before.

scaramouche smirked devilishly this time. “forty?”

“twenty-five!” you immediately cut him off after he had said that, eyes staring daggers at him as you gripped the said dagger tightly in your hand. “i'm twenty-five.” you said again.

it was scaramouche's turn to look confused. he tried connecting the dots, and shortly after, he stared at you, almost speechless. “you've been assassinating since you were fifteen?”

“well, i officially joined the fantomatique when i was seventeen, so i wouldn't say i exactly started brutally killing people at that age.” you shrugged. “oh! i did kill someone with my bare hands, though.” you finished, and scaramouche looked mortified as he received that information.

after a few seconds, he sighed, bringing up a hand to cover his face. “how are you so unbothered with saying all of this…” he mumbled lowly.

it seemed like you didn't hear him, as you were still fiddling with your dagger, twirling it around with your fingers as if you were playing with one of your prized possessions.

“so.” you flickered your eyes to him, changing the subject. “shall we get started?”

this was only his second meeting with you. he was still unsure of many things about you. but if there's one thing scaramouche could describe you for the duration he's spent time with you, he'd say you were… quite the eccentric one, with a tinge of fatuousness.

he won't deny that your intelligence and strength makes up for most of it, but he thinks your boastful and slightly barbarous personality is what ticks him off the most.

however, he thinks that's exactly the type of person he needed in order for him to destroy the monstrous organization.

and maybe, you might just be the right person for it.

scaramouche turned to look back at the board in front of him. “...yeah. let's get this over with.”

you didn't dare comment on the way he smiled as he said those words.

m.o = modus operandi

hello hello everyone!! i'm truly sorry for the huge delay on this chapter. i've been heavily unmotivated to write lately, and i'm suuuuper busy irl right now. writing this chapter took me all my might and mental capability, so i apologize if there were any mistakes on my part. hopefully after this i can start uploading new chapters weekly, and i hope you're still here for the ride. see you in the next update!

taglist; @cxpidsrevolution @sxjlx320 @asukahiriko @vvrie @tcfffff @maroon32 @thatpersonnooneknows @kunikame @kaoyamamegami @kunikuzushiit @percyval-archives @romyoia @albedonwanderer @ghosted-fr @yuuki4646 @beriiov @scarammouch @supperrsecrwt @talledale @lez-zuha @vivinsoul @asterifiic @raideneiari @alatusorrow @shadowmist0706 @myspacekuni @kn1zu @zukaniscr @peregrinus0301 @tynan-cries @honeycapped @averagehuman-notsuspicious @hito_furi

come and join the taglist!

#h✧˖— asphodelus #scaramouche x reader #scaramouche x you #scaramouche fanfic #scara x reader #genshin x you #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact reader insert #genshin imagines #genshin x reader #scaramouche fluff #kunikuzushi x reader #wanderer x reader #genshin impact imagines #this chapter killed me

67 notes · View notes

ashiemochi · 1 year

Text

anubussy - xi (i)

✠ Anubussy ↳ sorry, i don't want your touch ↳↳ it's not that i don't want you

➶ pairing: OC x Leon S(exy) Kennedy. ➶ genre: fluff, more angst, gore, longer smut/suggestive themes ➶ word count: no

NOTE: ✠ = time skip ✠✠ = switching povs/characters

prev -> next

Running down the corridors with Chris was crap because he was pulling a Speedy Gonzales on her with his long ass legs.

Running down the corridors without Chris was even shittier because she seriously had no clue where to go. Nonetheless, Chris knew how to leave a mark behind.

Like the dead bodies of Arias’ associates.

She could take the rifles they had but as deep as her hands were in blood and murder, looting a body wasn’t on her list – unless it was for information on how to get rid of the chip.

So Ah peeked around the corner, focusing her hearing on the distant heavy thuds as if some giant was walking. Ugh, she did not want to encounter that tyrant or George right now. Her eyes located two dead bodies right outside a room, the thumping of footsteps and gunshots came from inside.

That must be important – Chris’ must be inside.

Moving quickly towards the room, she stopped at the entrance just as she saw Chris fly across the room and hit the wall with an audible groan.

Huh?

Then a big figure made its presence known – oh god, it’s Bane’s dad!

He essentially looked like the Hulk from those comics Leon said he owned – just not green, and actually horrifying to look at. She much preferred when he was far with a minigun at hand because then his face wouldn’t be the last thing to see before she’d be crushed to death.

Every muscle in him was enormous with metal appendages over his spinal cord. He also had giant steel bracelets screwed into each wrist, the metal trailing down to his knuckles and fingers, acting like brass knuckles. Tubes protruded from his chest, attaching themselves to his shoulder, similar to the ones on his upper chest as if they were collar bones.

His metal faceplate covered his actual figure like a mask – she could only imagine how he really looked under it.

She didn’t want to imagine it actually, fuck that.

Remembering the A-Virus was flammable, she hurriedly took out the incendiary grenade from her belt – sadly, the only one she stole borrowed. Whatever the big guy was, he didn’t seem to have noticed her yet, his entire focus set on the BSAA operator.

Then a metal clanked by his foot, stopping him from proceeding. He stepped back to look down. It was a red grenade. He snapped his sunken eyes to the girl by the door, seeing a pin hanging from her finger with an oh shit look on her face.

For only a split second, he most likely mimicked it before he was set ablaze.

He bellowed into the air, the fire covering him completely. He barely thrashed before he fell to the ground, seemingly dead – and still on fire.

Chris squinted at the flames and looked over at the panting girl, “Who gave you the bomb?”

“I… Did.” So Ah answered coyly, stepping inside the room and eyeing the giant warily, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah…” He huffed out, pulling himself up to his feet, “Shouldn’t you be with Leon?”

So Ah gave him a silent look and then heard soft laboured breathing. Rebecca was on the bed, chained to it.

“Oh my god, Rebecca.” She skipped around the body to her and Chris joined her.

She was in a wedding dress, oddly enough, and her skin was as pale as snow with her prominent veins coloured in deep blue.

“You okay?” He asked her, a hand on her shoulder.

Rebecca whispered hoarsely, ever so relieved to finally see familiar faces, “Chris… So Ah…”

Chris seemed a bit lost, looking down at his watch only to see less than ten minutes left before she’d be too long gone. He turned to face the doctor in the corner and approached him with rage in his eyes.

“No, no, no.” The doctor stammered, “Wait, wait–”

Chris pressed his boot against his chest, pinning him to the ground with a gun in hand, “Where’s the vaccine?”

“Nice dress,” So Ah gave Rebecca a small smile, not paying attention to the interrogation happening behind her.

Rebecca barely smiled back, wheezing, “Thanks.”

So Ah looked up and to the side – stars appeared in her eyes. Right there on the wall, is a map. She jogged up to it, basically running over it with her eyes like a scanner.

“Chris! Look!” So Ah beamed, catching his attention and she pointed at the wall, “A map! That means the vaccine must be…” She trailed away when he stepped up behind her, locating the green A icon in one of the rooms, “Here!”

“Okay, we get Rebecca safe at the Osprey, then I’ll get the vaccine.” Chris planned out, rushing to unlock the chains.

“You got it, captain.”

✠

The night breeze was the first thing to greet them and So Ah blinked at the distant smoke clouding the city. It must be the aftermath of Nadia and DC handling the tankers. Chris had Rebecca hanging onto him, his arm around her back with his hand on her shoulder.

So Ah had her gun out, scanning the wide roof from her spot as they went to move but gunshots stopped them. Rebecca shrieked, a bullet grazing her leg, and Chris stumbled away to hide behind the wall.

“You just had to try to save her.” Arias’ voice came from the other side of the roof, “You’re so predictable, Chris. That’s your weakness.”

So Ah skipped back, eyes shocked at the unexpected attack as Chris lowered Rebecca to the ground. The Han girl went down in front of Rebecca, worried as she let her eyes check on the wound.

“It’s just a graze, but it’s best to cover it.” So Ah informed, reaching for her knife but it dawned on her.

In an instant, her mind went back to Leon – was he still okay?

Chris noted her expression before lowering his voice, “Notify the Osprey to come around – I’ll take care of him.”

“Okay,” She nodded and he went to stand behind the wall, shooting at Arias before his gun clicked. With a curse, he switched to his handgun and went off once Arias stopped shooting.

So Ah gave Rebecca a sympathetic look, helping her lean against the closed elevator doors. She pressed her two fingers into her earpiece, pinging her location.

“DC, Nadia, are you there?” She asked, keeping her eyes on Rebecca’s wound.

“Right with you,” DC’s voice came through.

She flinched at the repetitive gunshots from the other side of the roof, almost stammering, “I – Chris needs you to get here as soon as possible.”

“Roger that – coming your way right now.”

“Okay, thank you.” She breathed out and shifted her attention to a quietly breathing Rebecca.

She set her hand on her shoulder, “Rebecca, you’re going to be okay, just hang on a little longer.”

Rebecca looked at her through half-lidded eyes, “So Ah… Is Chris…”

So Ah frowned deeply, peeking from behind the wall to see Chris and Arias were in a strange-looking fight with a single gun. They kept yanking it from one another like a kid’s toy.

“He’s okay.” She told her.

“So Ah…” Rebecca wheezed out, paling eyes widening at the virus spreading in her, “You have to kill me.”

A sense of familiarity washed over her, exactly like it did when Helena Harper was severely injured and would tell her it was no use saving her. She hated seeing people close to her get hurt – and while she wasn’t as close and was still alive, she was still her friend.

Tears stung her eyes at her lost eldest sibling, she just met Rebecca and all she was offered was kindness. Rebecca was just a science geek – in Nadia’s words – and she did not deserve any of this. Not one bit.

“I’ve got you, I promise.” So Ah declared with determination heavy in her tone, “I’m not letting anyone innocent die – not while I’m here.”

She gripped her hand, giving her a stubborn look, “I’m not gonna fail you either, okay?”

Rebecca nodded tiredly, reaching up for her arm to let the Han girl help her stand. She swung her arm over her shoulder and held it there, then wrapped her arm around the back of her waist.

They started walking just as Chris ran up to them and So Ah looked at him.

“Where’s Arias?” She asked, not finding the body anywhere.

Chris gestured to the broken glass terrace, “Taken care of.”

“I notified DC and Nadia – they’re on their way.” So Ah informed, keeping Rebecca leaning against her, “We need to get the vaccine. I remember where it is, I can go get it. You stay with her.”

“Look who’s placing orders now,” Chris commented lightly, glancing at Rebecca and then back at So Ah, “Okay, let's get her someplace safe first.”

“What about that room over there?” She suggested, nodding at what seemed like a dinner or a meeting room.

Chris looked over at it, “Yeah, c’mon.”

He helped with carrying Rebecca to the other side of the roof, earning a small raspy from her.

“God, both of you… Stubborn.”

So Ah giggled a bit when Chris chuckled, “Yeah, well, we want you around.”

A distant roar echoed faintly, causing her to stop. She looked over at the glass terrace, brows furrowing in concentration. Chris snapped his eyes to her, confused as to why she stopped.

“What is it?” He asked and she returned her eyes to him.

“Did you not hear that?”

“Hear what?”

As if triggered, heavy footsteps shook the floor beneath them. Whatever it was, it was climbing the walls. It proved so when a large clawed hand gripped the cemented hedge, followed by another. Her heart dropped to her stomach at the sight – why must they always be horrendous to look at?

“That.” So Ah whispered just as the head popped up.

A smirk was on his flesh face as he bellowed, “Redfield!”

Chris released an exhausted sigh, obviously scared but really; a boss fight?

Mutated Arias climbed over the little hedge and stood in front of them, towering over them with ease. He was definitely bigger than Bane’s dad – oh, and the other guy’s face was on his chest. Disgusting guts-looking wires going through his wide open mouth and eye.

The rest of his body was covered in something black along with bits of flesh here and right to remind you like hey, these are the muscle!

Both arms and hands were black with sharpsharp claws. What caught her eye other than the disfigured face of his bodyguard was the pounding red glowing heart in his right chest.

Great, just what they needed.

Arias swung his large hand at them and they parried it by going down, earning a gasp from So Ah and a whimpered pain from Rebecca.

“So Ah, get her away!” Chris ordered, standing up protectively in front of the two girls.

So Ah instantly complied, hanging onto Rebecca to get her further from the fight. She had her lean against the glass wall and looked over her shoulder, seeing Arias had swiped Chris into his grip, tightening it by the second and earning muffled groans from him.

She knew she had to leave and find the vaccine. That was their plan – the plan she came up with. Yet, she hesitated to go, knowing Chris needed the help.

But Rebecca had a limited time.

Chris let out a strained grunt, causing her mind to begin panicking. She could only stare in horror before she jumped onto her feet, bringing out her Matilda.

“Let him go!” She yelled, shooting Arias in his arms in an attempt to get him to drop Chris – Arias wasn’t affected at all.

“Ah, Miss Han,” Arias grinned at her, “With everything he’s done to you, I’m doing you a favour.”

So Ah took in a shuddered breath, glancing over at Chris, “He had no hand in any of this – but you… You used my blood. You want me, not him.”

“What a generous offer, So Ah,” Arias cackled, his dagger-like teeth showing, “But I’m afraid I’m going to pick him over you. It’s not personal.”

He’s insane, She thought to herself, he’s gone absolutely fucking mad.

Ding!

Huh???

So Ah and Arias looked towards the direction of the elevator sound.

What now?

Rabid zombie dogs learning how to use the elevator?

A rumble of a motorbike caused her heart to skip a beat. It grew louder and rounded the corner, revealing Leon was more than okay – and on the goddamn bike.

He took out his gun to shoot Arias but the crazed mutant moved Chris to the front, blocking Leon from taking the shot.

So Ah could only watch incredulously as Leon tilted the Ducati to the side low enough to let it slide and knock Arias over, jumping off of it in the process.

A third question mark joined up on the top of her head.

How in the hell did he fit that bike in – ugh, whatever. I’ll never get the answers I need.

#canon x oc #oc x canon #resident evil fanfiction #resident evil vendetta #leon s kennedy #resident evil #leon kennedy #resident evil fandom #leon kennedy imagines #leon kennedy fanfic #leon kennedy x reader smut #leon scott kennedy #leon scott kennedy smut #oc x leon kennedy

40 notes · View notes

perpetualexistence · 3 months

Text

Sea Monster AU: Poor Unfortunate Soul (1/2)

'What's with the 1/2 in the title, that's new' you might be asking yourself. You see, this part right here was actually originally supposed to be just one Then, I realized I'd need to split it into two, 'Poor Unfortunate Soul', and the next part I'm not spoiling the title of yet.

Then I started going into this, looked at the time, looked at the word count, and realized it's for the best if I just split this up once more. Future Perp might end up renaming this chapter as the title definitely fits more for the second part than it does this one. Time will tell.

Either way, before we get to the post proper: Warnings! Oh boy have we got them for this part and the next!

Content warnings: Non-suicidal self harm, Body horror

Since the content warnings happen as part of a scene like rather than a brief mention, I've separated the more gruesome bits with asterisks. You can look all the way down at the bottom for a safer summary.

<- Prev | First | Next ->

Now that Noah has a book on magic, he has to deal with the problem that Chris could never get past: actually reading it. It's not in any language that Noah can recognize. Still, he's smart and can recognize patterns in text thanks to his poetry phase. He manages to work out the basic alphabet. Now that he's got that, his next step is simple. Create a program that will translate the text as he scans it. He'll get to save so much time, and might even be able to get what he wants faster as he can just search for whatever seems most promising.

The book snaps shut the first time. Noah can't excuse it as the wind when it happens again. After a few attempts, he finally manages to get a good scan of one of the pages.

One waterlogged phone later he realizes why there weren't any references for how to actually use magic on the sea monster database.

Magic really doesn't like cheaters.

So instead he has to translate everything himself using the alphabet he figured out. It gets easier as he keeps doing it, and eventually he no longer needs to look at his reference sheet in order to read it.

Before that can happen, he needs a new phone. Both because he's a young adult addicted to having a screen with him at all times, and because without one he won't be able to talk to Owen, who is currently one of the few things reminding him that there's some good in humanity, and that all of this pain is going to be worth it.

He doesn't have any disposable income. Yes, he has some of the treasures that Alejandro gave him from the ships they hunted. But the problem is actually selling those. Now that people are noticing the disappearances (thanks Alejandro), he can't exactly sell anything identifiable from those very ships that have 'gone missing'. His lazy ass had just sat on them assuming that he could sell them whenever he pleased.

Present Noah would slap Past Noah if he could.

So he goes to his mother to ask for a new phone. Which is a task in itself given her multiple jobs. He'd text her, but that's part of the problem. He'd also prefer not to get his older siblings involved because they'd just ask questions. The one good thing about having an overworked mother is that she rarely questions why you want things, and as the baby you can exploit this to its maximum potential!

Noah's a terrible son.

He'll make it up to her when he actually does manage to sell off his stolen goods. Like a criminal. Which he is. As an accessory to murder. Multiple counts.

He can either think about this too hard or he can have a new phone.

So he manages to track her down and asks her for a new phone. He doesn't ask for anything fancy, just something that works. She looked at him, gave him an all too familiar rueful smile, and told him they don't have the money right now, though he can try using one of his siblings' older phones.

Noah's not too surprised by this answer. Living as they are, it's always a gamble for when they do have spare cash. What does concern him is the look in her eyes of someone who doesn't want to burden others. Not just the burden of saying no.

The burden of hiding something. And there's only one things he's ever tried to hide from him. The loan shark's back.

He does this every once in a while. Usually when they're getting too close to fully paying him off. He'll hike up the interest rate or make up some bullshit fee. He'll expect a big immediate payment, and then lay off for a while until he's ready to wring them by the neck again.

He'd have pushed the bastard directly into Alejandro's mouth himself if he wasn't so good at covering where he was. The fact that he's in town means he's going to stay a while. There's no telling when he'll move out, or if he'll even do it by boat.

That's a problem for another time, as much as he loathes to leave it hanging. He's got to get more money from somewhere else. Not just for the phone now, but to get the loan shark off his family's back again.

Noah remembers Duncan. The guy made his reputation as a delinquent known just from the five seconds he got to know him, and spoke about going to juvie. It'd be a risk, but Noah's running low on options. He's not about to watch his mom work herself ragged again.

He gets in touch with him Duncan via Owen. After assuring Owen that no, he's not dead because it's been two full days since he texted, no he's not mad at him either, he just dropped his phone in some water. Luckily for him, Owen's willing to help the two meet without asking too many questions.

Duncan, meanwhile, has plenty of questions. First of all, who Noah thinks he is just asking for Duncan to fence stolen goods for him. Second of all where someone like Noah would even GET stolen goods. Noah lets him know that he can either have answers to those questions, or he can get a profitable cut. Duncan begrudgingly agrees (which has nothing to do with the fact that Noah accidentally lets slip why he needs the money, and Duncan's still got a bleeding heart).

Noah starts with just enough money for a new phone. He can't just dump everything onto Duncan, because then his curiosity/suspicion would definitely outweigh his willingness to help Noah.

Now that all of that is settled, he can finally get back to translating and studying magic.

He learns that in order to use magic, he needs proper tools to do so. And he can't simply buy these tools. No, for the magic to work properly, Noah needs to make these tools. The making imbues them with his essence and makes it so the tools will only ever work for him. Since he's working with sea magic, he's got to use it from materials he finds underwater.

The only place underwater he can safely look without Alejandro catching on is an underground cove he found connected to Chef and Chris's place. Which limits his options severely. So he decides to keep on reading for the actual spells to see what he'd actually need before figuring out how much of a migraine he's going to have.

One thing he notices rather quickly is that all of these spells must be prepared and performed underwater. This part wouldn't be a problem if not for the fact that unlike merfolk, Noah does need oxygen. So solving that problem takes priority.

He finds that solution in a ritual that will give him gills. However, it presents him with a choice. For there's two different branches of magic: the slower, safer process and the faster, more painful process. In this case, Noah can either take the time and effort needed to gather ingredients for a potion that will give him gills that he can open and close at will...or he can make himself a permanent set of gills.

Noah would love to pick the first one. But the longer he takes, the more Alejandro will eat, and the longer he stays a threat. So the second option it is. He starts wearing a scarf and uses the perpetually cold lie. Mostly for Alejandro's sake. Which is good because Alejandro does 'playfully' remove the scarf to see what's underneath the first time he sees it, and once satisfied that there's nothing, doesn't mess with it like that again.

Now Noah needs a knife of coral. Noah's lucky that the new cove he's in has agatized coral. With it being fossilized, it's old and has more of a connection with nature, making it a perfect magic implement. Noah's able to get pieces out, but now he has to make a knife out of it.

Who better to ask but the resident knife expert?

Noah does need a more reasonable excuse for this one, so he pretends that he only needs to learn how to make a knife due to self defense because he's getting paranoid with all the disappearances. Duncan points out that that's bullshit because Noah could just buy a knife then. Why the hell does he need to learn how to make one?

Duncan's asking too many questions, so Noah throws his hail mary. If Duncan can stop asking questions about pretty much any of Noah reasons and helps him out with learning how to make a knife and maybe a few other things, he'll use his hacking abilities to get rid of Duncan's criminal record. That's an offer Duncan simply can't refuse. So Duncan agrees to teach him, and over time, Noah crafts his knife of coral. He adds the runes that he needs to enchant it by himself. Both because that's meant to be a private affair, and so Duncan doesn't say anything despite his bought silence.

Now to actually do this.

***

Noah gets all the underwater runes and preparations done one dive at a time. He also makes sure to get makeshift medical supplies for himself. He's doing this as close to the surface as he can in case everything goes to shit. He'd prefer not to bleed out.

He stares at the knife in his hands. He's actually going through with this, isn't he? No going back. There will be permanent evidence that he's taking a stand against Alejandro if he finds it. The whole 'sea monster vs. sea witch' conflict he'd read about doesn't promise anything good when Alejandro realizes he's using magic.

He could seriously screw himself up. He's a genius, but he's no medical expert. One wrong cut and it's lights out forever. One wrong move and he's fish food either way. He's come so far, he can't afford to let himself get choked up now.

He slices the right side of his neck before he can let himself doubt any more. He's unable to stifle a yell of pain. He loses precious oxygen when he's just started. He has to finish or else this won't work.

He slices the left side of his neck to keep it balanced. More oxygen lost. Now that he's cut both sides of his neck, he can feel the cuts throbbing. It feels like the cuts are burrowing themselves deeper than he made them. They are creating new passageways into his lungs and they burn.

His instincts kick in and he begins to swim for the surface. The runes he set forth earlier start to glow and he finds himself unable to move far from the spot he started in. He's holding his breath in for as long as he can. There are more cuts to be made but he wants to pass out now. But he can't. He has to keep going.

It's when he starts making the second cut on the right side of his neck that he feels his first set of gills go from a burrowing sensation to a throbbing one. He's about to pass out, but it should be safe now. He just needs to breathe.

It's a battle of sheer will over his instincts to force himself to breathe in while underwater. He feels water go in through his gills yet not through his throat like an injection. It is shoddy and feels like when Noah is so congested he can only breathe through one nostril. That would likely be why he needs three pairs of gills total.

***

With at least enough air not to die, he forces himself to finish the ritual. By the end, he's underwater, breathing in and out. It's no longer panicked as he forces himself to take nice deep breaths. He has to pinch his nose shut to stop himself from instinctively breathing through it when underwater. He'll either stay here or keep coming down until breathing underwater comes more nautrally.

He still can't believe he's even thinking that. He's actually breathing underwater. He did magic. It can be done. This crazy, stupid plan of his might actually be doable.

It's a start.

[Safe for work summary: Through a lot of pain, Noah manages to make himself a working set of gills.]

#sea monster au #total drama #total drama noah #td noah #total drama au #giant/tiny #horror au #total drama horror au #cw self harm #tw self harm #cw nonsuicidal self harm #tw nonsuicidal self harm #tw body horror #cw body horror #td alejandro #total drama alejandro #alenoah #td alenoah #td horror au

14 notes · View notes

discodeviant · 1 year

Text

Not Duke, Not Prince - Part 5

(POV Hopper) Billy | Teen | 2.6k Alternate Canon/Divergence

And this is where the initial cracky silly plotline went awry and turned into something that I will be elaborating on down the line lol. Please enjoy <3

Made for @billyhargrovebingo!

Prev. | Part 1

Hopper sat in his van with a blanket over his shoulders, clinging to the police radio that crackled in and out since before sunrise. He’d gone through three coffees and a whole pack of Camels waiting for a sign, a sound, a rumble in the earth. Nothing. Nothing yet, at least, so he waited a little longer.

Two weeks prior, a man arrived in the hospital’s intensive care unit after showcasing severe, presumed, stab wounds and bruising over his chest. One Neil Hargrove, one Hopper knew of because his son was in the hospital only days before that with similar injuries, though much less severe. Much less deliberate, if Hopper were to think so, which made him queasy to consider.

Once he was conscious again, Hargrove Senior claimed that his son had done that to him. Jumped on, scratched, bitten; “Stabbed?” asked Officer Phil Callahan, the regrettable choice sent along to question him, but Hargrove shook his head. “He didn’t have a weapon on him?” And again.

“Teeth… he—he wasn’t—wasn’t human.”

It came out on the very same day that there had been reports of an earthquake from neighbors, thunder or explosions or God-knew-what. Commies, yelled one old woman, or winter fireworks. Her husband said it was like a herd of angry buffalo. None of that helped, obviously, because neither buffalo nor such violent political expressionists existed in the quaint town of Hawkins. Neither of those things were what shook the town just further than its outskirts, a few miles in each direction from the Hargrove household on Cherry Lane. One neighbor reported unusual rustling in his bushes, but even that wasn’t very useful.

Despite the odds favoring against him, Hopper had instincts that very seldom disappointed when it mattered. Callahan said something about a cougar, and then it finally made sense—maybe, if Hopper was right.

And he had been right once before, one night when he went to his cabin for a weekend getaway on the anniversary of his first daughter’s death. Whiskey, cigars, the cheapest pizza Hawkins could offer—that was his plan, and it was underway. On his day of mourning, he sat on the porch in an old rocking chair, beer in his hand, air in his gut that refused to escape, a cigar in his shirt pocket that he didn’t get a chance to light before tiny headlights caught his attention. Only for a moment, a split second in time, and then they disappeared.

So, maybe they weren’t headlights. A trick of the eye, perhaps. He was drunk and fuzzy anyway, distrusting of himself to see anything clearly, so he pretended to forget about it. Finished his beer, smoked his cigar, stood up to go back inside and sleep the pain off until morning. Before he could, however, there was a disturbance in the trees just ahead of him, something running and hiding from him until he threatened arrest. Had it been some delinquent teenager, it would have run away. It would have listened. Instead, it waltzed up to him with a long, red tail swishing behind a lean body, dark eyes that glimmered in the light of the new moon.

It was a fox.

Moments later, a little girl stood before him, naked and trembling, patches of auburn hair all over her body until they shed away later into the night. Hopper thought he was hallucinating, that his cigars were laced with something more illegal than they already were. The girl challenged more than feared him. She needed to get inside.

Three years later, she remained with him. A tattoo behind her ear read 011, and she called herself Eleven—or, the bad people did. Hopper started calling her El, which she took to quickly. When, one day, Hopper asked if the bad people turned her into a fox, she said no, she had always been that way, and she may have been a fox first. She didn’t know or care. Papa was long gone, the doctor was dead, and her stories only ever got more grim.

So Hopper waited for another earthquake, and then his radio crackled again.

“Come in, Jim, do you copy?” It was Callahan.

“Loud and clear, Phil. Over.”

“There’s a guy here harassing me for you… Says his name is—what’s your name again?” There was a garbled answer before Callahan repeated it: “Murray Bauman—Over.”

Hopper’s eyebrows turned in. “That Chicago prick?” he asked, having read an article written about said Chicago prick and the outlandish conspiracies he journaled about. “He’s here? In Hawkins. Over.”

“Unfortunately. Over.”

“What the hell’s he doing here?” Silence. “Phil!”

“You didn’t say, ‘Over!’” Hopper rolled his eyes. “I don’t know. He won’t tell me. He’s requesting you directly.” He could hear the inattentive look on Callahan’s face even from the middle of an open field. “And he’s not leaving until you talk to him. Over.”

“Christ,” Hopper said, muttering to himself. Then into the radio, “Fine. I’ll be there in twenty. And I’m giving him five. Over and out.”

“All I’m saying is, I don’t think it’s a coincidence, and before you cut me off again, there is historical evidence of house pets turning feral and morphing into other biological orders entirely—“

“So you’re saying the kid’s a cat with a tummy ache. Okay.”

Murray huffed and rolled his jaw, having gone through similar conversations with Hopper before because Hawkins was a strange little town, and he liked to keep tabs on it. They sat in the chief’s office, Hopper with his boots kicked up on the desk, Murray with his hands folded in his lap and a flat line across his lips. The combover was looking extra sharp that afternoon.

“If you’d let me finish, you’d be hearing that there are cases in the last thirty-odd years of this happening as a result of chemical mishandling during the war, and said chemicals causing permanent and significant damage to the animal kingdom. Three years ago, a woman in Memphis reported a possum sneaking into her hamster’s cage and eating it”—Hopper laughed—“but she inspected it more closely herself and determined that it was, in fact, her hamster that had transformed, based on behavioral evidence and markings on its skin that Mister Cheesy had as well.”

Smoke plumed from a cigarette resting on Hopper’s ash tray. “Those are a lot of words for a small man,” he said, maintaining an expert pokerface so as not to give away the returning curiosity of his own daughter.

“It’s not just cute, fuzzy little animals, okay, it’s wolves—“

“Werewolves?” He couldn’t help himself now.

Murray continued without missing a beat: “—and coyotes, cattle, chickens, ducks, toads, foxes, humans—“ But the buzz of Hopper’s alarm clock went off right when he said it would, five minutes after his ass met the chair. Murray stopped, stood up, straightened his jacket and said, “Well, I’m afraid my five minutes is up.” That smile made Hopper want to punch him. “Call me if you change your mind—“

“Wait.” He stood from his own chair and walked around the desk, closed the office door, drew the curtains. “Sit the hell down.”

Four days later, Murray joined Hopper in his van to drive to the clearing a mile out from Brimborn Steel Works. Max was in the back seat after having a long conversation with Hopper some days before, wearing his blanket over her legs. Neil was in no position to stop her going along for the ride, not that he knew. Susan didn’t particularly care. She clutched onto her skateboard as Murray asked Hopper, “And you’re sure this is the exact location he was attacked?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Okay.” He unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the door, pointed a stiff finger in Hopper’s face and said, “You stay here. You”—he looked at Max—“come with me.”

“Christ, she’s a kid, Murray. What the hell are you doing?”

“Let me handle this,” he said, and Max didn’t argue getting out of the car. Either she was eager, or her hair jumped up just enough to make her look it. That stiff grin on Murray’s face shut Hopper right up, and he pulled the blanket from the back seat to drape over himself.

From the van, he watched Billy’s little sister stomp over to the tree line and face the darkened wood with Murray. He looked so small, and Max looked even smaller. So clueless even though, by then, Hopper knew Murray was far from it. He had proved that he knew exactly what he was doing, but Hopper had trouble believing him anyway. After all, it was a lion they were looking for, and they were in its territory.

Both Max and Hopper laughed when the first roar came, more of a purr from Murray’s throat than something to fear or be threatened by. He did it again, pursing his lips, taking deep breaths in between each long, thick propeller-like mimicry. A few minutes of that, and Murray was off to the next sound: a raspy huff, complete with strained neck motions. It was primal, Hopper thought. And then Murray howled, and he rolled his eyes and got out of the van too.

“We’re not hunting werewolves, Murray!”

“Real lions don’t roar like the movies, Jim!” he said with outstretched arms and started up again, making faces towards Max like this wouldn’t have been embarrassing if he were anyone else.

They were breathy roars, not unlike Hopper’s groans when he sat in his lazyboy after a long day. It continued for a while, Murray adding heavy stomps into the mix that hardly made any noise at all—but he was the expert, as reluctant as Hopper was to entertain it, so there weren’t any more interruptions. Max crossed her arms and stood back; Hopper leaned against the roof of the van, blanket over him like a cape, and waited.

And waited.

And then it happened, the earthquake, the rumbling at the surface of his skin that made his hair stand up and his heart retreat into his chest. “What the hell…” He looked around, and everything rumbled again. Max’s eyes found his, frantic, excited, scared and confused all at once. Murray kept up the charade, and the real roaring got louder every few seconds, sending bass-heavy waves straight to Hopper’s bones and nearly knocking the girl to the ground.

From the trees, there were the headlights again, only now he knew immediately that they weren’t headlights at all. Trees rustled far in the distance, the light flickering as a heavy stampede started towards them, right in Murray’s path, but even that didn’t stop him. The lights shone brighter, earthquake growing more powerful with every leap over roots and creepers and bushes, and—

Silence.

Murray held a hand up in front of him, cautious but not afraid. Max was stiff as a board. Hopper’s eyes locked onto the animal, locked onto Max, hand tight on the door in case they had to haul ass out of there, but the lion was still as a statue. Striking eyes, white and blue and glimmering in the sun, only saw him for a time, and then they found Hopper standing far in the background.

“No sudden movements, Jim,” said Murray, still unafraid, still smart. The lion growled in his direction, huffed, roared something small and nonthreatening but… displeased, maybe. Like it had been tricked.

Hopper nearly had a heart attack when it kicked its feet up again to charge at Max, who Murray had stepped away from when she wasn’t looking. Hopper wanted to strangle him, immediately jumping to try and do anything to keep it from killing her, but then it roared at him, fully bared teeth, standing in front of her like a guard dog. Which, he supposed, it was. Maybe. If it was really Billy Hargrove under all that golden mane and fur, behind a sharp face with eyes just as determined as the kid he’d seen in the hospital.

“Billy, it’s okay,” Max said then, softly, like she still wasn’t certain that this was her brother. The lion huffed, roars shrinking back to the Volkswagen growl only Neil had heard before. Defensive, protective, like stay away from my sister. “They’re—they don’t wanna hurt you.” She reached a hand out to touch its back, which made it flinch but not enough to deter its attention from potential threat. Max continued with long, gentle strokes down its back, then up to the base of its mane which curled in loose, messy ringlets like Billy’s hair. It turned its head, sniffed Max’s own mane, rubbed a wet nose against her shoulder, and she burst into tears. “Shit, it is you.”

“Careful,” Murray said, warning. “He could still snap like he did to your dad—“

“Jesus, I don’t care!” She dried her eyes in Billy’s fur, then looked at Murray with a fury Hopper hadn’t seen on anybody since the war. “And don’t you ever call him my dad again, weirdo, do you hear me!” Small, nimble fingers gripped tightly to the mane, and Murray offered a quiet apology.

“Guess it’s a good thing we brought you along, huh…” Hopper said. Max just cried and cried and cried, and eventually they left her alone with him.

She sat with Billy on the grass for a long time, talking as if he could answer, curling into his side like she was his cub. In a way, maybe she was. In a way, she was all he had left.

Hours later, they remained. Hopper sent numerous radios back to the station that Max was safe, that he would keep them updated with any news—which he didn’t, because he needed a story that wouldn’t get picked up by the bad men. He knew they were out there somewhere, closer than he may have thought. So he and Murray got to talking, and Max was still oblivious as she held Billy close, assuring him more than herself that she was safe and still with him.

Then he exhaled, and kept exhaling for far too long, so she sat up from her position on his side and saw that he was changing back.

“Hopper!” she yelled, and it was hard for the chief to look as fur shed, muscle mass all but disappeared, bones returned to a human structure, and Billy was himself again. He blinked, stirring himself awake with a heavy groan, and slipped away from Max’s touch. “Billy, are—“ Their eyes met for the briefest of moments, and the question fizzled off of her tongue because the answer might have been obvious. It might have encompassed everything running amok in her head, every thought and worry and regret in thinking that she’d lost him forever.

Billy looked exhausted and worn dry. He leaned back on one arm, not bothering to cover himself up. “Why the hell am I naked?” he asked, grumbling, taking the blanket from around Hopper’s shoulders and shivering underneath it.

“Growth spurt,” Hopper said, which made Billy laugh.

“Shit.” He scratched his nose with a handful of blanket and yawned, then looked over at Max, already having forgotten about Murray’s presence. “Do we gotta go home?” She shrugged and looked up at Hopper for an answer. There was something dark in Billy’s eyes, then, that he recognized vaguely. Something akin to the way children pleaded for forgiveness after breaking something fragile; a scared, broken kid running from bad men in bad places.

Billy sounded like a kid too when he said, “Please don’t make me go home.”

Part 6

#.discowrites #stranger things #stranger things fic #billy hargrove #jim hopper #chief hopper #murray bauman #max mayfield #werelion #werelion au #werelion billy hargrove #fanfic #billy hargrove bingo

26 notes · View notes

ohthehypocrisy · 1 month

Text

Dusknoir for Pokemon Unite!

Season 1

Season 2

Prev: Cradily - Hatterene - Tropius - Cacturne - Ditto - Weavile - Ogerpon - Coalossal - Gogoat - Galarian Slowbro - Luxray - Breloom - Uxie, Mesprit, & Azelf - Wobbuffet - Obstagoon - Lanturn - Castform

The envoy of the dead, the ferryman of the underworld river, what many would call the Grim Reaper himself. Dusknoir has arrived on Aeos Island, but for what purpose? Has he come to reap the souls of the living, or are his motives far more sinister?

Whatever the reason may be, we must be prepared to shake hands with Death itself. It's time to look into what this begrudged boogeyman is capable of.

With massive stats in both defenses, Dusknoir seems like it was made for the role of a Defender. That would be true, but due to its Ghost typing, it suffers a bit from 'big boned' syndrome, where it isn't as fat as you would think. A low HP stat of 45 averages out those huge Defender numbers into what's essentially average bulk, but at least it has a decent Attack stat. In actuality, Ghost types like Dusknoir get most of their value from playing trick or treat with their enemies, using moves like Will-o-wisp, Confuse Ray, Curse, Pain Split, all of which can enfeeble opposing pokemon while empowering the user and their allies.

As such, for being well suited to the hybrid role of a Defender and a Supporter, I designate Dusknoir with the role of an...

All-Rounder

Basic Attack - Melee/Atttack

Becomes a boosted attack after 4 hits. Each hit marks an enemy with an eye icon. When the boosted attack is used, a shadow explosion deals damage to the enemy regardless of where they are, damaging any nearby enemies as well. The boosted attack ignores shields when damaging an enemy with a wide open eye mark.

Each hit of the basic attack marks the affected enemy with an eye shaped icon. The first hit marks them with a closed eye icon, which progressively opens as more hits land. The boosted basic attack has the pokemon attack all around itself with ghostly energy and affects all marked opposing pokemon.

When the pokemon uses its boosted basic attack, all pokemon marked by the basic attack will be attacked by a ghostly explosion that affects nearby pokemon in a small area.

The more the eye mark progressed, the more damage dealt. The first mark, the closed eye mark, deals 100% of the boosted basic attack damage. The second mark, the tired eye icon, deals 120% damage. The third mark, the open eye icon, deals 140% damage. The fourth mark, the wide open eye icon, deals 160% piercing damage.

With the big hands of Dusknoir and Dusclops, you can bet they know how to throw them. Duskull less so, but it's learning.

Those big hands also have a habit of cursing all who are touched, so when it hits something in Pokémon Unite, it marks them with a weird eye symbol. The more hits this basic attack deals, the wider the eye opens. And when the boosted basic attack comes out, all who are marked are seen by the user and attacked all at once with powerful curse energy.

Now, the basic attack will become boosted after 4 hits, but the eye mark isn't guaranteed to be opened all the way when this happens. In the heat of battle, you'll land one or two hits on an opposing pokemon, marking them with a weak eye icon. That's good enough, as the eye icon is the multiplier for the boosted basic attack. Now, it would be nice to hit an enemy all 4 times, but just once is good enough, as the boosted attack will deal damage regardless of where they are when it comes out.

It's also hard to actually land all 4 hits of the basic attack, as the basic attack doesn't ever reset. You could KO a wild pokemon while at 3 basic attacks, then throw your 4th attack at an opposing pokemon 30 seconds later, marking them one time before the boosted basic attack comes out. It'd be nice if there was a way to increase your basic attack speed outside of X Attack, that way it'd be possible to cycle through your basic attacks at least once.

As it just so happens, there is. It's Dusknoir's powerful aura called Pressure, and it's much more impressive than it seems.

Ability: Levitate/Pressure

Levitate (Duskull)

The pokemon’s Movement Speed increases relative to the Unite Move Meter.

Pressure (Dusclops/Dusknoir)

The pokemon’s Movement Speed and basic attack speed increase relative to the Unite Move Meter. Reduces the damage of all opposing Unite Moves.

Both Levitate and Pressure increase the user's Movement Speed relative to the user's Unite Move Charge Meter. For example, 50% Unite Move charge equates to 50% increased Movement Speed.

Both Levitate and Pressure are in effect even when the Unite Move is locked by the Level or by other effects.

In addition, the user's basic attack speed also increases relative to the Unite Move Charge Meter, following the same formula.

Pressure reduces the damage of opposing Unite Moves by 40%.

Did you know that when a round starts, your Unite Move Meter is locked? Obviously, yeah, you aren't at a high enough level to use it, but even so, it continues to charge while locked. This can come into play during certain Quick Battle modes where you level up so quickly, you can unlock your Unite Move before its finished charging. Now, this will never happen in a real match, but for the most part, Duskull's Levitate Ability gives it a slowly increasing Movement Speed boost when the game starts.

It helps that Duskull and Dusclops are bulky enough that they can defend an area, and then use that speed to retreat or rotate lanes when necessary. However, they don't quite have the attack power of a Defender to make use of their defenses just yet. This can make it difficult for Duskull in the beginning, but if you can evolve soon enough, Levitate will become Pressure, giving Dusclops some much needed firepower for the mid game.

Pressure not only increases your Movement Speed, it will also increase your basic attack speed, letting you hit fast enough to mark enemies with the watchful eyes of the underworld. Oh, and it improves your ability to defend by spreading basic attacks around much faster.

Speaking of defense, Pressure also reduces the damage received from opposing Unite Moves if you get hit by them. It may not help much if you're behind in EXP, especially when you're stuck as a Dusclops, but if you've evolved into a Dusknoir, it can give you some much needed bulk. Most opposing pokemon will pop their Unite Move to win a 1-v-1 or to make a power play, but Dusknoir's Pressure takes that option away from the enemy, especially when you're at equal Level.

It's a carnal type of fear when you're backed into a corner, and your Unite Move isn't guaranteed to work against the slowly approaching Ghost Type pokemon that's the personification of death itself. Spooky.

At the start of the game, Dusknoir will start out as Duskull. You can choose between Astonish and Leer as your first move. By Level 3, you will have learned both.

Move 1: Astonish (Melee)

The pokemon disappears into the shadows, becoming invisible to enemies. When the move is used again, the pokemon reappears and Stuns and damages any enemy nearby. 9s cooldown.

Astonish makes the user invisible for 5 seconds or until the attack is used. You cannot use any other attack or move until then.

Astonish damages all nearby enemies and Stuns them for 0.75 seconds.

Invisibility effects are annoying and difficult to scale to the player's skills, so there are loads of things to consider when giving such an effect to a pokemon. Is it fair when a Duskull uses it to help it launch a sneak attack? Maybe not, but it is in character for a mischievous little skull creature like itself.

The move Astonish is balanced out by two things. Firstly, it has a lengthy cooldown of 9 seconds and only runs for 5 seconds. This makes it difficult not only to lead an attack or an ambush with, but also deprives the user of an escape plan should the frontal attack backfire. Basically, if you open with Astonish, Stun and hit an enemy, what are you to do if this move fails to KO or deal significant damage to the enemy? Probably perish.

The second thing is that Astonish has short range and doesn't augment Duskull in any way beyond granting invisibility. Wherever you go with Astonish, you have to understand that you're committing to it. Remember, your Attack stat isn't all that impressive until you evolve into a Dusknoir, so make sure that this surprise attack counts.

The easiest way to do that? Play as a Supporter with Astonish and your other move.

Move 2: Leer (Debuff/Hindrance)

A bright flash of light is emitted from the pokemon’s eye, briefly blinding the enemy and reducing their defense. 7.5s cooldown.

Leer obscures the vision of enemies for 2 seconds and reduces their Defense by 30% for 4 seconds.

There are more pokemon out there with multiple heads than there are pokemon with single eyes, and that's one of the weirder things about pokemon in general. Being a Ghost type, Duskull doesn't have much need for physical senses, so it can afford to lose some depth perception. Of course, there is such a thing as equivalent exchange, so by losing one eye, it gained some special powers for using the remaining eye.

Leer flashes a debilitating light from its eye, blinding affected pokemon briefly and reducing their defenses afterwards. It helps Duskull soften up opposing pokemon to make up for its low attack power, but it also really helps out allies deal even more damage, especially if they can deal ranged physical damage like Raboot or Decidueye.

The blinding effect is also interesting. It only lasts for 2 seconds, but if Astonish is ready to go, you can follow up with that attack and go invisible, completely escaping the opposing team's vision! It's up to you on what happens next, as you can escape to safety or try and go for a KO on a weakened opponent. Remember, you're a hybrid Defender and Supporter, so whatever you do is supposed to benefit you and your teammate.

Coordination is the key here. You get a lot of EXP for KO'ing opposing pokemon, which is helpful for you as Duskull needs quite a bit of EXP to evolve. If you can manage that, you'll be one step closer to unleashing your full power.

At Level 6, Duskull will evolve into Dusclops. At the same time, Astonish will become either Shadow Punch or Night Shade.

Move 1a: Shadow Punch (Ranged)

The pokemon becomes cloaked in shadow, disappearing from the enemy’s sight. When the move is used again, a projectile fist is launched, dealing damage to any enemy struck. The fists can be used repeatedly until the move ends, but the fists will be visible to enemies. Each hit restores the user’s HP. 9s cooldown.

At Level 11, Shadow Punch becomes Shadow Punch+.

Increases damage dealt gradually while invisible.

Shadow Punch makes the user invisible for 7 seconds. During this time, using Shadow Punch again sends a shadowy fist out as a projectile. This move can be used repeatedly in this way with a 0.5 second delay in between punches. Shadow Punch goes on cooldown when the invisibility effect wears off.

The projectile fists are visible to opposing pokemon, revealing to enemies where you are hiding. Each hit of Shadow Punch restores your HP by 50% of the damage dealt.

The user will be forced to become visible if damaged by an opposing move. Shadow Punch+ has the projectile fists deal increasing damage the longer you manage to stay invisible, up to as much as 250%.

Similar to Astonish, Shadow Punch turns you invisible. However, Shadow Punch also turns your ghastly fists into straight slinging knuckle sandwiches made of phantom energy. I guess all you need to box like a pro is a good ol' pair of hands, and not necessarily a set of arms or elbows, or shoulders for that matter. Seriously, why does it just have hands?

Well, with a new evolution comes some improved stats, which makes it more feasible for Dusclops to go on the offensive with Shadow Punch. The invisibility effect hides you very well without any tell that you're nearby. Enemies will only know you're in the area if they see the ghost fists flying out of nowhere, but the invisibility will protect you from Sure-Hit moves like Glaceon's Icicle Spear.

But if something else hits you, Shadow Punch and the invisibility effect ends, forcing you to come out of hiding. This is different from Astonish, which kept you hidden even if you got tagged by a lucky shot. While Shadow Punch gives you range and invisibility, the move must be used carefully for the full effect.

As a reward for playing well with Shadow Punch, each hit restores some of your HP when they deal damage. This is useful for recovering from a fight or when a scuffle with the opposing team has worn you down a little too much. If you manage to safely use Shadow Punch to escape the opposing team, any potshots you take will serve to restore your HP and keep you in the fight for a little longer. The longer you manage to stay hidden, the more HP you can restore, putting you back in the fight.

Shadow Punch+ improves the damage these ranged punches can deal the longer the invisibility effect remains for, which helps you deal plenty of damage, especially as you'll have evolved into Dusknoir by now. It becomes easier to pick off weakened opposing pokemon with Shadow Punch while your own offensive presence is enough to ward off the enemy team.

Speaking of which, if you want to talk about offensive presence, consider Night Shade as an alternative.

Move 1b: Night Shade (Area)

The pokemon creates a shadow copy at the designated area while becoming invisible in turn. The shadow copy can be directed but cannot attack. When the move is used again, the copy explodes, dealing damage to all enemies in range and deals extra damage for each hit the copy took. 10s cooldown.

At Level 11, Night Shade becomes Night Shade+.

Resets the cooldown of this move when an opposing pokemon is KO'd.

Night Shade creates a clone of the user in the designated area while also turning you invisible. This effect lasts for 7.5 seconds, until Night Shade is activated.

The created clone shares your name and HP bar at the time of creation, but will not take damage or be affected by hindrances. It can still be targeted and attacked by opposing pokemon and moves.

The clone can be 'directed' by your own movement. You are essentially controlling two characters at the same time, but one is a decoy.

Night Shade can be used again to cause the clone to explode in a wave of ghost energy, dealing damage to all enemies nearby. Each hit of damage the clone received increases the damage dealt by this explosion by an additional 7.5%, maxing out to 150%.

Night Shade+ has its cooldown reset when an opposing pokemon is KO'd by this explosion.

Most, if not all, of the cloning moves in Pokémon Unite puts a computer in charge of the copy. The most you can do when using Double Team with either Greninja or Meowscarada is pick the best direction and hope for the best. But Dusclops has big hands and is surprisingly adept at pulling puppet strings in order to control Night Shade. As such, the ability to confuse and confound opposing pokemon depends on your own misdirection and sleight of hand.

The copy made by Night Shade shares your name and HP, which is good enough to convince nearby enemies that you're the real deal. The jig is up once the copy is attacked, as Night Shade prevents the clone from receiving damage or hindrances. It will also tell enemies that you are nearby, as Night Shade requires you, the puppet master, to be close by to control it.

If you are in danger of being revealed to the opposing team, you can trigger Night Shade to self destruct, dealing damage to all enemies near the copy. It will deal even more damage the more hits it received, returning the enemy's aggression back to them.

Of course, this only works on opponents that aren't paying attention. Smart players will back away from the copy when they see it isn't responding to damage or crowd control, as they know it will eventually explode. They'll start attacking blindly around the area itself, hoping to fish you out. You can do something sneaky and use Night Shade behind you, tricking the opposing team to overextend or waste their own Unite Move.

Keep in mind that this trickery is in service to the team. You're playing as a hybrid Defender slash Supporter, so your crafty Night Shade plays must be used to draw enemy fire safely away from teammates. You can afford to go on the offensive with Night Shade+, as not only can you reset the cooldown of the move with a successful KO, you'll also have evolved into the more powerful Dusknoir by then.

Speaking of which, Dusknoir requires quite a bit of EXP to reach its full potential, and for good reason.

At Level 9, Dusclops evolves into Dusknoir. At the same time, Leer becomes either Shadow Ball or Destiny Bond.

Move 2a: Shadow Ball (Debuff/Hindrance)

The pokemon launches a ball of darkness, sticking to all enemies in range, obscuring their sight, and increasing the damage they receive for a short while. The affected pokemon have their Unite Move charge rate decreased for a few seconds afterwards. 10s cooldown.

At Level 13, Shadow Ball becomes Shadow Ball+.

Further decreases the opposing pokemon's Unite Move charge rate.

Shadow Ball launches from Dusknoir's mouth and takes 0.75 seconds to come out, giving opposing pokemon a brief moment to escape from the move's range.

If Shadow Ball hits an opposing pokemon, it will 'attach' to them by covering up their heads, obscuring their vision for 3 seconds. When this effect wears off, the Shadow Ball will clear away, though the move's other effects are still active.

Shadow Ball will also increase the damage received from all pokemon by 35% for 6 seconds.

In addition, affected pokemon have their Unite Move Meter fill at a reduced rate for 10 seconds. Unite Move charge will be reduced by 50%, whether it be passively, from KO'ing pokemon, or from scoring goals. Shadow Ball+ reduces this even further by 65%.

Because of Dusknoir's reputation of 'stealing' souls and taking them to the other world, it is a pokemon that many would approach with caution. The truth is, it's not actually taking souls. Rather, it's taking away and inhibiting one's life force in order to weaken them, which seems much worse.

Shadow Ball affects not only the pokemon it hits but also their life force as well. In addition to obscuring their vision, it enfeebles them and makes them more susceptible to damage from you and your allies.

But that's not the worst of it. Shadow Ball will also inhibit the generation of opposing pokemon’s Unite Move Meter, extending the time it takes for opposing pokemon to receive their ace in the hole, so to speak. This gravely affects pokemon with slow Unite Move Meter generation, but it can also inhibit those with fast meter gain, like Blaziken or Dragapult, making their high powered moves less reliable.

Shadow Ball does have a bit of a windup to it, though, so if an enemy sees it coming, they'll either move out of the way or retreat. Their best option is the latter, as the blinding effect and the defense reduction make them vulnerable to follow up attacks from you and your allies. The upgraded version also reduces the charge time even more, though this will be difficult to take advantage of in the late game.

Instead of inhibiting the Unite Move Meter, Dusknoir may instead opt to steal it.

Move 2b: Destiny Bond (Debuff)

Casts a curse on all enemies in range. While active, the affected pokemon have their Unite Move charge rate transferred to yours. If an enemy is KOd while cursed, gain more Unite Move Charge. 15s cooldown.

At Level 13, Destiny Bond becomes Destiny Bond+.

Expands the area of effect.

Destiny Bond affects all pokemon within close range to Dusknoir. Affected pokemon have their Unite Move Meter transfer any charge amount to your own Unite Move Meter. This has no effect on wild pokemon.

If an affected opposing pokemon is KO'd while cursed by Destiny Bond, you gain an additional 10% Unite Move charge.

Destiny Bond+ expands the area of effect by 25%.

A fellow traveler is a stranger you'll know for a long time. Maybe they'll tell you their life story, or teach you a really good recipe for dinner. For Dusknoir, its travelling companions are often the dearly departed, so what it hears from these strangers are tales lost forever, known only to the pokemon itself.

Now, because of that, Dusknoir doesn't have a lot of experience handling company with the living, so when it uses Destiny Bond, it ends up taking the energy of their souls forcefully. You and me both, big guy.

Destiny Bond does only one thing, but it is powerful in its effect. By taking the Aeos Energy away from opposing pokemon, it prevents their Unite Move Meter from charging for 5 seconds. Any Meter that would be charged are transferred to Dusknoir instead, which is great, because its Unite Move is also pretty powerful, but more on that later.

By preventing opposing Unite Moves from being charged, you stall their generation for 5 seconds, meaning you have 5 extra seconds before the enemy can use their trump cards. Unfortunately, this doesn't have any effect on opposing pokemon that already have their Unite Mvoe fully charged, so Dusknoir will be in a bit of trouble if it tries to use Destiny Bond on such pokemon. Well, it would be, but its Pressure Ability reduces damage received from these Unite Moves, so it'll be fine for the most part.

The hard part is actually using Destiny Bond. For such a powerful effect, Destiny Bond suffers from a whopping 15 second cooldown, which can be argued to be way too much. If the opposing team knows you are running Destiny Bond, they'll be more wary of being near you, or they'll become a bit more trigger happy with their Unite Moves.

Crazy as it sounds, this is exactly what you want. You're an All-Rounder with the rare hybrid role of a Defender and a Supporter, so it's your job not only to distract the opposing team, but also to draw their fire. That's why its Pressure Ability works the way it does, and how Shadow Punch and Night Shade are designed to confound the opposing team. By influencing their decisions in when and where to use their Unite Moves, you've already done half of your job as an All-Rounder. Every second's worth of hesitation is extremely valuable to you and your team, you just gotta know how to spend it.

Because Destiny Bond transfers the Meter gain from opposing pokemon directly to you, you can expect to get your Unite Move often, especially if you make good use of the move in spite of its high cooldown. But just so you know, Dusknoir's devilish delights do not end with Destiny Bond, dare I say. Its devious diversions devour and distract the dull witted deviants of the day with its dynamic destabilization and dramatic draining.

Dang, I depleted my deck of D words. Dusknoir's Unite Move, everybody.

Unite Move: Soul Steal/Soul Banish

Soul Steal (Recovery)

Absorbs the target's life force, stealing some HP and Unite Move Meter and adding it to your own. 20s cooldown.

Soul Banish (Sure Hit)

Grabs an enemy and drags them into your mouth, forcefully returning them to their base. If the target is at a low enough HP percentage, instantly KO them instead.

Dusknoir has two Unite Moves it can use, depending on the amount of Unite Move Meter it has. If the Unite Move Meter is anything less than 100%, it will be able to use Soul Steal. Both Unite Moves are available as soon as Dusknoir evolves.

Soul Steal takes 15% of the opposing pokemon's HP, dealing piercing damage, and restores its own HP equal to the amount. It will also take 15% of the opposing pokemon's Unite Move Meter, or whatever is available, and adds it to your own Meter.

Soul Steal will go on cooldown for 20 seconds after it is used, though this doesn't affect the Unite Move Charge itself or stop you from using Soul Banish when it becomes available.

At 100% Unite Move Meter, Dusknoir's Unite Move becomes Soul Banish. It will grab an opposing pokemon and forcefully returns them to their base. If the opposing pokemon is at 15% HP or less, it will instantly KO them instead. You will see opposing pokemon who are at 15% HP or less highlighted on their HP bar when Soul Banish is available to you.

Soul Steal is unaffected by the use of Soul Banish and is also unaffected by cooldown reducing items and emblems.

Neither Soul Steal nor Soul Banish have any effects on Wild Pokemon.

Because of Dusknoir's ability to influence the Unite Move Meter of itself and opposing pokemon, it has to be balanced out by having a very late evolution, similar to Tyranitar and Metagross. It also gets its Unite Move at this Level, and it can use two different kinds depending on the meter available to you.

Starting off, by the time you manage to fully evolve into Dusknoir, your Unite Move will be fully charged, becoming Soul Banish. It is a Sure-Hit move that summons a large phantom arm from Dusknoir's belly, grabs an enemy, and sends them straight to the afterlife. OK, not really, it actually forces them to return back to base. It's like a reverse Hoopa Hyperspace Hole, where you point at an enemy and send them away for a short while.

The attack CAN instantly KO an enemy if you grab them while they're at 15% HP or less. In that case, yeah, they get dragged into the void, never to be seen again...or for a couple of seconds, depending on their respawn timer. You do have to be within attacking range to grab them, though, and most competent opponents will back off when their HP gets too low. Your best bet would be to coordinate some burst damage from your team to reduce their HP and then grab the victim before they have a chance to get away.

While the Unite Move itself is on cooldown, you'll have access to a separate move called Soul Steal. Where Shadow Ball and Destiny Bond operate by inhibiting Unite Move Meter gain, Soul Steal outright takes it from the enemy, along with some HP for good measure. This not only sets the opposing pokemon back in terms of burst damage potential, it can shut out their Unite Move if it gets taken while at 100%.

This is really debilitating for the hapless victim, as most players rely on their Unite Move to win difficult 1-v-1 fights or to make a big enough splash that they can turn the tables in a team fight or to retreat from an ambush. By taking away that ace from up their sleeves, you drastically reduce an enemy's potential impact on the flow of battle.

The 20 seconds of cooldown is quite frustrating to deal with, though. You can't even affect it with cooldown reducing items and emblems, since it's neither a move nor a Unite Move, more like a 'pseudo-Unite Move'. Also, the amount of Unite Move Meter you stole will most likely be restored, with interest, by the time Soul Steal comes off of cooldown. It depends on what Unite Move the enemy has and how long it lasts for. You also won't get a lot of meter from select targets like Blaziken or Dragapult, and you have no idea how much Unite Move Meter an opposing pokemon has.

The point isn't to hinder the enemy by removing all of their Meter, though. By using Soul Steal whenever you can, you'll quickly gain enough Unite Move Meter to use Soul Banish, which you can then use strategically against troublesome opponents during Objective fights. It also combos well with either Shadow Ball or Destiny Bond, as the longer you can delay the opposing pokemon's Unite Move, the less damage they can deal to you and your team.

You don't just take their souls, you take away their hopes and dreams and spirits and will to fight.

Achievements

Use Soul Steal a total of 10 times in one battle.

Sometimes an achievement isn't about difficulty. Sometimes it's about teaching the player how to optimally use the pokemon in the most indirect way possible. I know that that's how I've been constructing these achievements this whole time, but it's important to remember when it's something simple like 'use this effect a couple of times in a fight'.

Of course, there's always a catch to these sorts of achievements, or some nuance that makes them harder than they seem. For Dusknoir, it has to do with the fact that Soul Steal is only available to you when you are fully evolved and have access to your Unite Move. You will eventually gain enough EXP to evolve into Dusknoir, but if it happens late enough, you may not be able to use Soul Steal 10 times before time runs out.

There's also the fact that, when you do evolve, your Unite Move Meter will be full, meaning it will become Soul Banish instead. It's a great move, don't get it twisted, but if for some reason you really need to use Soul Steal, you'll have to use Soul Banish first. You cannot decrease your own Unite Move Meter to use Soul Steal unless you are up against an opposing Dusknoir.

Using Soul Steal many times eventually means you'll take enough Unite Move Meter to fully charge up Soul Banish, so if you want to go back to Soul Steal, you'll need to target a high-priority enemy like an over-leveled opposing All-Rounder if you want Soul Banish to be worth its usage. And then you'll have to do this repeatedly throughout the match.

And that's how they get ya. In optimizing your gameplay to get this achievement, you learn not only how the move works, but also the nuances around it. If you're going to be spamming Soul Steal and Soul Banish as often as possible in a match, you might as well figure out who to target with these moves in order to improve your odds of winning the battle.

When you ask a ghost to put a little soul into it, they do what they have to do to make do.

Holowear

Unlike most other pokemon, Dusknoir is perfectly suited for many kinds of holowear, even with that big mouth it has for a stomach. It's human-like shape gives us plenty of creativity in coming up with a fashionable set of expensive digital clothing.

Starting things off, Phantom Thief Style Holowear gives Dusknoir a fancy top hat with stylish brooches and clips and feathers, as well as a big stylish cape that flutters in the wind as it makes a grand escape. Ninja Style Holowear gives Dusknoir a shaggy hood and cowl and a headband on its forehead, as well as a vest loaded with ninja tools like kunai and smoke bombs. Although, with Magical Style Holowear, it becomes rather flashy with an oversized witch hat, a cloak tailored to expose its belly, and a satchel of books containing mysterious spells strapped to its side. Speaking of mystical, Guardian Style Holowear decorates Dusknoir with strangely shaped pieces of armor, giving it the appearance of a warrior from the days of old. And finally, it would behoove me to include the Spooky Style Holowear to Dusknoir's holo-wardrobe, giving it a black and orange scarf wrapped around its head, a top styled after a carved pumpkin, and bat wings and skulls plastered onto its arms and body.

Strategy

When Dusknoir has fully evolved and chosen both of its moves, their function can be separated into two different utilities; the first option changes how you become invisible, whereas the second option sabotages the opposing team's Unite Move Meter generation. This is very strange for what's supposed to be a bulky All-Rounder, until you realize that it's meant to be a hybrid Defender and Supporter, in the sense that it defends and supports the team by hindering the enemy and messing with their Unite Moves.

Of course, half of the battle is actually reaching that pinnacle of power, so you have to optimize the first 5 minutes of the game to Level Up as much as possible. You aren't strong or fast enough to reliably clear the Central Area, so leave it for an ally to take. Instead, you should be focused on supporting an ally on their way to the middle of Top or Bottom Lane. To that end, EXP. Share is actually a very solid item choice for squeezing some extra EXP out of wild pokemon while also increasing your passive Movement Speed, especially when combined with Levitate and Pressure.

Wild Pokemon aren't going to give you enough EXP to evolve, though, even with the EXP. Share working for you. Most of the extra EXP you'll be getting in the early game will be from coordinating KO's against the opposing team, and Duskull is perfectly suited to help an ally get that head start. With Astonish turning you invisible, Stunning enemies with the sneak attack, and Leer to blind and debuff the opposing team, you can KO any enemy you manage to ambush.

That's the idea, at least. If anything goes even slightly wrong, you'll find yourself suffering from an EXP deficiency while the opposing team is running away with points. It'll be tough, but if you manage to eke out some Levels, you'll evolve into the much more capable Dusclops, and use Levitate's evolved ability, Pressure, to your advantage. By this point, your Unite Move is fully charged, even while it's locked by the Level count, so your Movement Speed and basic attack speed are very high. Use these passive boosts to your advantage to put pressure, so to speak, on the opposing team.

But just having increased Movement Speed and basic attack speed won't be enough to turn the tables for you. You do need an ally to take advantage of the opening you provide, which is difficult enough for most Defenders and Supporters to deal with when playing alone. If you're by yourself, you'll have to make do with some dirty tricks, so don't be afraid to deceive the enemy with either Shadow Punch or Night Shade.

Between these two options, Shadow Punch is slightly safer, as it offers you a ranged attack that comes with invisibility and HP drain, but one hit will cancel the move, making it a poor choice against anti-stealth opposing pokemon like Shadow Sneak Decidueye or Fire Spin Delphox. Night Shade, on the other hand, requires some clever thinking to fully abuse, as it requires not just crafty plays like deceiving the enemy with obvious ploys, but also unpredictable gambits. By that I mean, you can use Night Shade to make a clone to your left or right, but expert players may know your game and suspect you are somewhere close by. You can trick these foolproof fools by placing Night Shade right next to you, confounding them by thinking 4 steps ahead. I can't guarantee this won't work against less intelligent players, but to each their own.

As long as you are playing well with a teammate, you'll get most of your EXP from securing the KO on the opposing pokemon. Do this enough times, and you'll evolve into Dusknoir. With the extra Attack power, you can play the Defender part of your All-Rounder role much more easily, and you can continue to hinder the enemy by depleting their Unite Move Meter with either Shadow Ball or Destiny Bond.

Shadow Ball is a direct upgrade to Leer in almost every way, with the downside of being able to affect only one pokemon at a time. It also has a windup to it, allowing opposing pokemon to move out of the way if they see the move being charged in Dusknoir's mouth. But if it does manage to hit, not only will it blind the enemy and increase the damage they receive for a short while, it will also hinder Unite Move Meter generation for 10 seconds. This can be debilitating for those with fast Unite Move charge times, as well as those with slow charge times. Quite frankly, it doesn't matter who it hits, unless the Unite Move is already fully charged, no opponent will want to get caught by Shadow Ball.

Destiny Bond is a riskier move compared to Shadow Ball, but it has a much higher reward. By bonding and cursing nearby enemies, it transfers all Unite Move Meter gain to Dusknoir, effectively siphoning it from affected enemies. This works in Dusknoir's favor, as its own Unite Move Meter generation is very slow, so it has to take it from opposing pokemon using Destiny Bond or Soul Steal, but more on that in a bit. It can affect multiple enemies at once, drastically increasing the charge rate of your Unite Move. If it hits an enemy at 99% Unite Move Meter, it basically prevents the meter from increasing any further until the curse wears off after 5 seconds, or if Dusknoir is KO'd first. 5 seconds isn't a lot of time, but it doesn't need a lot of time to shut out one of the most powerful options an enemy can use. If an enemy gets KO'd while cursed by Destiny Bond, Dusknoir will get extra Unite Move Meter, whether it directly KO'd the enemy or not.

At the same time you evolve into Dusknoir and upgrade Leer into either Shadow Ball or Destiny Bond, you'll have access to your Unite Move, Soul Steal and Soul Banish. It's unheard of for a pokemon to have two different Unite Moves, one of which functions independently from the meter, but it plays into your extremely slow Unite Move Meter generation.

Soul Steal takes HP and Unite Move Meter from a targeted enemy, giving Dusknoir not just reliable recovery but also reliable Unite Move Meter gain by taking it from an enemy. If you steal meter from an enemy that had their Unite Move ready to go, you'll effectively have stalled their Unite Move from being used for a little while. Now, the game is optimized enough to the point where most players run items and emblems to shorten the cooldown for their Unite Moves, but even without these effects, Soul Steal takes 20 seconds to come off of cooldown, which is more than enough time for the stolen Unite Move Meter to be regained. It's great if you take meter from an enemy that's nearly fully charged, but they'll get it all back later eventually.

Stealing Unite Move Meter helps out the team by delaying burst damage, but it's mostly for Dusknoir's own benefit that the meter gets taken. Like I said before, Dusknoir's true Unite Move, Soul Banish, requires a lot of time to fill all by itself, so it augments this wait time by taking the meter from the opposing pokemon instead with either Soul Steal or Destiny Bond. For all of its effort, Soul Banish will simply grab an enemy and forcefully return them back to their base. It's like Sableye's Phantom Ambush, but faster and you can only grab one enemy. If you grab a problematic opponent like a Decidueye or Cinderace hoping to snipe the kill off of Rayquaza, Soul Banish sends them back to where they came from and gives you a good 7 or 8 seconds before they can return.

If Soul Banish grabs a weakened enemy instead, it will instantly KO them. You will see nearby enemies susceptible to Soul Banish and the instant KO effect if the Unite Move is ready to go and their HP is low enough by their HP bar highlighted, similar to how other instant KO effects like Lapras's Perish Song show that these enemies will be KO'd by the attack if hit. If one of these susceptible pokemon is a frail Attacker or Speedster, you could use Soul Banish to get the KO, but it's not really worth spending the Unite Move Meter on such an easy target. If it was an opposing Defender or All-Rounder that have a habit of restoring their HP back full when in a pinch, like say Goodra and Buzzwole, then Soul Banish will be worth the attempt.

Ghosts are mysterious as they are fantastical, but the dangerous ones are those that wander between the realms of the living and the dead. When Dusknoir is on the field, you better make sure your soul isn't snatched by its big burly hands.

And this has been Dusknoir for Pokemon Unite. I have a habit of turning less popular pokemon into potential players for Pokemon Unite, and I won't apologize for that. But of the popular pokemon that I do like, Dusknoir is one of them, and I would love to see everyone's favorite fat phantom join the fray one day.

That'll be it from me for this week. See ya!

#Dusknoir #Dusclops #Duskull #Pokemon Unite

5 notes · View notes

malumsmermaid · 10 months

Text

I’d Do Anything B.C 10

Hi I’ve been working on this chapter since I adopted Hestia back in like August but work and life and shit has happened. I was going to work on one of my other WIPs but decided to actually finish this one. So...here it is.

Word Count: 1.9k

Warnings: None

Prev.

Calum was spending the afternoon with Michael, having finished up with his work early for once. Before leaving for his friend’s house he had made a good night call to Lily and Ashton, his two partners back in Australia working on a new deal. Calum was supposed to fly out and meet them in a few days-he had just had a few things he needed to wrap up at the office this week before he could join them. He was stressed and worn thin from his projects he’d been working on, as well as the interruptions from their employees-some with reasonable questions and requests-but others just adding to his to-do list. He did his best to push all of that down while he was on the call though, listening to and celebrating their little successes for the day and trying his best to pick out some sort of positive aspect to his day to share. He managed to pick something since they had last called, as well as expanded upon a few of their text conversations over the last couple days. He finally wrapped up their call, ushering his partners off to bed and telling them his plans to meet up with Michael and play a new game.

However, when he got to his friend’s house, it turned out his plan had done a complete 180, from sitting inside on the couch with controllers in hand to walking in the park and talking. Calum ended up doing most of the talking, everything spilling out the second Michael asked about his week. Michael listened intently, his gaze only straying from Calum to check his footing on the path.

Calum sighed, closing, “And I don’t want to burden Ash and Lil with this when they call. Like, it’s all part of running a company right? Like, especially since they’re having all these little wins and doing some fun stuff out there. Meanwhile I feel like I’m over here taking one step forward and three steps back with all these little side tasks. It’s just easier when they’re here because we can split them up-Lily’s especially good at figuring out where each of us is in our day and which of us, if any of us, is able to carry out that task. And it’s not like I don’t do that, like some of the things I’m like ‘maybe Ashley or Jaime are better people for this particular thing’ and either message them or send that person their way. But at the same time, I don’t want the people who have come to me to feel like I’m dismissing them or pawning the task off to someone else, but like…I’m just one person, y’know?”

Michael nodded, “You know, I’m always here to listen, but Lil and Ash worry about you when they’re away too and can tell when you’re holding stuff like this back.”

Calum hummed, “Yeah, but I don’t want them to feel bad about it or for me or whatever. Like, it’s not their fault that I got this idea for something that, as usual, ended up much larger than I expected and…wait, what made you say that last part?”

“Shit…I uh…fuck…”

“Mikey?”

Michael looked away, scuffing his shoe on the ground, “Lily may have texted me after you guys got off of the phone and mentioned that you seemed off and that she was worried, got the same text from Ashton like two seconds later.”

Michael jumped as Calum let out a laugh. “Can never hide anything from those two, even on the other side of the fucking ocean. To be fair I do feel a lot better now, maybe better than I would’ve just playing that game with you, even if I was really looking forward to it.”

“There’s still plenty of time in the day if we turn back now…” Michael said with a smirk.

Calum nodded, turning around on the path and beginning the trek back to Michael’s car.

As they were walking through the parking lot, a flash of movement between cars caught Calum’s attention. Then it came again, this time rushing across the section of the parking lot they were walking through, from one side to the other. “Kitten,” Calum gasped, just as the animal ran under a car that three people had just gotten into-its engine roaring to life.

Michael gasped too, both men rushing over to the car, trying to get the driver’s attention before they put the car in gear. They must’ve made quite the scene, the woman in the driver’s seat opening her window just a crack to see what the two large men wanted. “A kitten just ran under your car,” Michael explained, trying to catch his breath while Calum ducked under the car’s rear bumper to see where the kitten had gone. It froze and locked eyes with him, in the shadow of one of the front tires.

He started calling to the kitten, tapping at the gravel with his fingers to try and coax it over. Just as he began calling to the little cat, the car’s engine shut off and multiple feet hit the ground around the car. The kitten looked up at the car’s chassis, then around at all the legs surrounding the car before darting towards Calum. He took the kitten in his arms, capturing her and making sure he had a good grip before slowly beginning to wiggle back out from under the car. “Got it,” he grunted as he slowly began to sit up, handing the kitten to Michael so he could get to his feet. All three people from the car began to coo and cheer as they looked at the small animal in Michael’s arms while Calum dusted himself off.

“What now?” Michael questioned, looking at Calum.

“I…I don’t know,” Calum said, watching as the kitten squirmed in Michael’s hold. “I mean, I guess we go to the shelter, make sure she doesn’t belong to anyone?”

“We’re in the middle of a giant park, Cal…” Michael started.

“I know…but I mean, what else? Isn’t that what’s right?”

Michael hummed, conceding, and began to walk towards his car, “There’s one not far from here.”

Calum nodded, following after his friend.

~~~~

“Good afternoon, how can I help you two gentlemen?” Greeted the shelter’s receptionist.

“Yeah, uh, we were just at the park and caught this little kitten in the parking lot as she darted under the vehicle of another visitor who was preparing to leave,” Calum stated as Michael stepped forward, still holding the small cat.

“We just wanted to make sure that she was okay and that there isn’t anyone out there missing her.” Michael explained, holding the cat out for the receptionist to examine.

“Well, it is kitten season,” they replied, smiling as the cat pawed at the air between them, “and this little one looks just old enough to not need mom for food anymore, they probably wandered off on their own and got turned around. But we can definitely put them on stray hold, just in case. Let me just page our cattery attendant to get this little one checked in.”

They grabbed a walkie-talkie from their desk, calling to one of their coworkers elsewhere in the shelter to come up front. Michael and Calum took a seat against the window, Calum reaching over and gently rubbing between the kitten’s ears. The receptionist walked over and handed Calum a clipboard to fill out, a sticker with a series of numbers and letters in the top corner.

As he finished writing down his information and where they had been when they found the kitten, another person walked through the doorway from the back. She smiled, approaching the two men and greeted them, quietly reaching her hand out to take the kitten from Michael. Michael gave the kitten one last scratch before handing them over to the worker while Calum stood to hand the clipboard back.

When he turned back he caught sight of Michael staring wistfully through the doorway the kitten had been carried through. He wasn’t the only one to notice either, the receptionist saying, “We’ve had a lot of people bringing kittens in the last few days, you can foster that little one if you’d like.”

Michael immediately brightened, “Can I foster two? So it has a friend?”

Twenty minutes and more paperwork later, they were back in Michael’s car, trunk loaded with kitten food and cat litter, a carrier containing two kittens secure in the backseat. Calum was smiling, listening to the small animals mewling behind him. They were almost back to Michael’s house, when suddenly, next to a strip mall containing a petstore, Michael gasped, “They need toys!” He checked around him before pulling sharply to the right, entering the parking lot.

“I’ll stay in the car with the cats, no going crazy in there, just toys, no furniture unless you’re certain you’re going to keep them.” Calum teased.

Michael parked smiling, “No promises.”

Calum shook his head, watching as his friend hopped out of the car, jogging through the lot.

Not long after Michael had disappeared through the door, Calum felt his phone buzzing in his pocket. He pulled it out, half expecting a text from Michael asking for an opinion, surprised to instead see his girlfriend’s picture on his screen. “Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?” he asked as he answered, teasing lilt to his voice.

“I can’t,” Lily whispered, snuggled under a blanket on the couch, “Miss you.”

“Just a few more days and I’ll be there,” Calum tried to reassure, but he could feel his own heart aching.

“I hope I’m not interrupting your afternoon with Mikey…” She started, but was distracted by a loud meow behind Calum, “What’s that?”

“Oh, you’re not interrupting, our afternoon was already interrupted. We found one kitten, and now Michael is fostering two.”

Lily sat up, trying to contain a squeal to not wake their sleeping boyfriend in the other room. Calum grinned, launching into the tale as, as he anticipated, a picture text came from Michael in the background of the call.

~~~~~

As promised, a few days later, Calum strolled into the penthouse apartment in Australia. It had been a long day of travel, made even longer by a maintenance delay in Seoul, leaving Calum pacing the terminal as his gate changed four times before they finally were able to board. He had told Ashton and Lily not to wait up for him, his expected arrival time now closer to 3AM than 9PM and was glad to see that they had heeded him for once. He quietly set his backpack on the table, removed his shoes and quietly made his way to the bedroom. He brushed his teeth and washed his face before shedding the clothing he’d been wearing since the previous morning.

He smiled sleepily as he looked down at the bed, looking at his two partners. They had clearly been cuddling when they first went to bed, but had since separated, plenty of room between them for him to occupy. He carefully climbed over Ashton, who was facing the doorway, Lily facing the windows. He snuggled under the strewn blankets, pulling both of his partners to his chest. Neither woke, but they did both sigh, cuddling to him. Calum felt a smile on his face, kissing them each gently before closing his own eyes and finding sleep for himself, content to be surrounded by their warmth again.

#poly!cashton #calum hood #ashton irwin #michael clifford #calum 5sos #ashton 5sos #michael 5sos #cashton #calum hood x ashton irwin #calum hood x oc #ashton irwin x oc #calum hood fluff

7 notes · View notes