Tumgik
#with supernatural most of the time i say its good because i like little things and cling onto them
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Etho cannot deny that in some way, the ocean is messing with his friends, and that he noticed far too late.
It targets Gem first, long before it goes after anyone else, so subtly it’s almost undetectable. Here’s the way he notices: her little boat is cute, but the mangrove wood on the trim seems old and rotten in some places, murky river water staining the paint that coats the sides. The lighthouse, when built, seems washed out, as if the color has been sucked from the stone that forms it. Etho finds this strange, but refuses to jump to conclusions- Gem is still his little sibling with the same warm smile, so he lets it be for now.
It’s really when the fishing craze begins where Etho starts having doubts about the normalcy of things. Grian is in no way an average person most of the time, but this level of dedication is new and sort of suspicious. It starts with the mending book, which is fine, since he’s decided to avoid villager trading this season. Etho comes over sometimes and jokes about the luck of the sea. Here is where it gets weird, though: when he comes over to make that joke again, Grian turns his head, oh so slowly, expression serious and eyes blank as he replies.
“The ocean will provide the book. It’s the next one, I know it.”
It takes a little more effort than it should for Etho to not turn tail and run. The tambre of his friend’s voice is off-kilter and strange, almost hollow in the way it echoes. And it’s the way he doesn’t say mending, he just says the book- Etho can’t help but feel like he isn’t fishing for enchantments anymore. The air smells of rot and slime. He swallows bile, gives a little uh-huh as a reply, and leaves as soon as he can.
Then there’s Pearl and Beef, obsessed with salmon, of all things. Pearl’s thing seems like a one-off, but Doc tells him that Beef has taken the joke about “big salmon” a little too far, claiming he’s gotten emails from them that have threatened the goat directly. Etho doesn’t really know what to make of that, or Pearl’s salmon head, or the continuous slapping of fish on noteblocks that’s driving him insane.
But he knows this: he’s never really liked fishing before, not for its intended use, anyway. It’s good to have in a death game, but not once has Etho found the monotonous motions of fishing appealing. Grian said it best himself: he used to think fishing was lame. And he did. Does. He thinks it’s lame. He thinks all of this stuff about the river and the boats and the ocean and the salmon and the rot is all really weird and not at all cool. He’s only here to make sure his friends are okay. Not to fish, because he doesn’t want to, just to keep Magic Mountain in line.
But Grian says it again: Etho walked up here and was like ‘this is lame’, now look at him! Etho, in turn, looks at his hands. When did he start fishing? Was the sun always that high in the sky? Did the ocean always sing like that? Was there always a magnetic force to the waves at the shore, pulling him closer with every lap of sea foam? Was the lighthouse always this beautiful?
No, no it wasn’t. He knows this. Something is very, very wrong. There’s something in the water that’s making his friends lose it, and there’s something supernatural that’s trying to pull him in. He needs to get out of here, back to the jungle, with its nice green grass and earthy smells-
To his right, Etho hears his death call. The bell rings, the swan sings, and the water keeps lapping at his feet. It’s too late, he knows it, in the way that his hands are gripping the fishing pole with white knuckles, in the way the lilypads seem to grow under his feet to get him closer to the great deep blue. The music continues, the serenade settling into his bones, giving him an eerie sense of calm.
In the magnetic pull of the moment, he doesn’t even realize he’s crying.
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softest-punk · 11 months
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I bet that, after finding out about Dream being captured and held prisoner for over 100 years, Hob starts keeping a much closer eye and ear on the magical community in case it happens again. This means he goes running to the rescue every time he hears about some supernatural creature being held against their will
This creature, whatever it is, is not Dream of the Endless.
It's the eleventh creature in the last three months that has not been Dream of the Endless, but has been captured by some sort of magical means.
After the second one Hob started to feel a little silly, but the third was really bad, and even if the creatures he's freeing aren't Dream now, can he take the risk? When he hears someone's got something, and it's not as though Dream has the good sense to go around telling people who and what he is so they'll know. Burgess thought he was Death. Everyone else believed he was the Devil.
Hob had never even gone to investigate, when he'd heard that. Not even after Dream failed to show up in 1989. Because he'd known his friend wasn't the bloody Devil.
Lesson learned.
This, he thinks, might be a demon. The smell of sulphur gives it away.
All the same, people ought not to be summoning them into spare rooms and keeping them in chains and binding circles. Leave them in Hell where they belong.
"Should I, umm..." Hob asks, once the chains are broken and they're clear of the abandoned house he'd found his newest friend in. "Send you back, then?"
He'd never thought he'd have to learn how to do an exorcism and he's a little upset that the Johanna Constantine of 2022 looks just like the Johanna Constantine of 1789 but she's all right, actually. She's been helpful in this. She even only makes fun of Hob for a few minutes every time they talk about his pathetic crush on the King of Dreams.
"You are owed a boon," the demon says. "The legions of Hell are not without honour."
"Oh, no," Hob says cheerfully. "Just doing my good deed for the day."
The demon raises an eyebrow. Then its eyes widen in what Hob is fairly sure is alarm, and he barely has time to see it disappear before he's whipped around, crowbar at the ready, tensed for a fight.
"Hob Gadling," Dream of the Endless—the real thing, this time—rumbles, hair fluttering in a nonexistent breeze, eyes black and glittering with starlight.
Hob lets the crowbar drop to his side.
"What are you doing?" Dream asks, tilting his head, peering over Hob's shoulder at the house behind him.
"Just umm. Being a good Samaritan?"
"You have been collecting favours at a rate such that your name is on every pair of lips I have spoken with this past month."
Hob wonders if that's terribly many, although Dream had hinted the other week that renewing diplomatic relations with just about every realm in the universe was on his to-do list. From the looks of it, he hasn't been enjoying himself.
"Being a very good Samaritan?" Hob tries.
Dream arches an eyebrow.
Well. He's been caught now. No sense lying about it.
"What if it's you?" Hob asks.
Dream straightens up from his perpetual slouch, coat whipping in even more non-existent wind. "You seek to put me in your debt by rescuing me?"
Hob blinks at him. How does Dream's weird little mind work. "What? No?"
Dream narrows his eyes.
"No, listen, people keep offering me favours but the most I've taken up was that I did have a pint with a sea nymph and mostly to calm her nerves and make sure she got home all right. I'm not... I am collecting the bloody things but I'm not calling them in. Should I be? For something daft or trivial? Am I holding a load of supernatural creatures under obligation to me?"
Dream tilts his head the other way, like he's never seen anything like Hob before in his life. "Most of them would not have the honour to care overmuch about a favour owed at a later date," he says. "I flatter myself that I am different."
Hob thinks he probably is. The kind of person who'd let his honour get the better of him.
"Well, I'm not waiting around for someone to capture you again to get a favour out of you. What would I even ask you for?"
"Almost anything," Dream says. "My powers are not unlimited, but they are substantial."
"As is your modesty," Hob teases, taking a step in the direction of his car. Just as well he keeps one, since he can't very well go around carrying the kit in his backpack on the tube. "Do you need a lift somewhere?"
Dream follows him but, as is standard, doesn't give an answer.
"Why, then? You put yourself in untold danger on the off chance another mere human might once again get the better of me? I assure you it is unlikely."
"Impossible?" Hob asks, glancing at Dream. The night suits him. Even the warm sodium glow of the streetlights.
"Not impossible," Dream concedes as Hob reaches the car, tossing the crowbar and backpack in the boot with the rest of his kit.
Dream peers into it with him, and Hob feels like he's suddenly naked.
"I heard rumours," Hob says. He's told Dream this, but he's starting to think maybe it didn't register. "I heard rumours as early as the twenties that Burgess was keeping something in his basement. I never went to investigate, because it didn't seem like my problem, and you spent over a century down there because of it."
"It was not your problem," Dream says.
Hob turns to look at him. How can he know everything and still be so prodigiously thick?
"You were down there," Hob says. "I could've done something about it. I am never going to get over the guilt of leaving you there, all right?"
"You could not have known," Dream says.
"I could! I knew, or at least had fair reason to believe, that the bastard was keeping something captive," Hob says, slamming the boot with possibly more force than necessary. "I ought to have helped regardless of whether or not I knew it was you. I shouldn't have let it stand. If I've got to make mistakes like that then I'd bloody well better learn from them, hadn't I?"
"You propose to rescue every creature ever captured by anyone, in perpetuity?" Dream asks.
"Yes."
"In case, at some point, the creature in question is me."
"Now you're getting it," Hob says, opening the passenger door. "Are you coming?"
"Why?"
"It's cold out here and I want to go home and have a cuppa. You're invited. Or I can drop you off wherever you're headed."
"I meant, why would you aim to rescue me?"
"I know," Hob says. "I wasn't going to dignify such an incredibly daft question with an answer. You bloody well know why. You, Dream of the Endless, know exactly how this works. I care about you. You're my oldest friend. I have never wanted to see you hurt. If you want me to ramble about my silly little human feelings, you'll have to get in the car."
Dream looks at him for two, three heartbeats.
Then he gets in the car.
Hob, in a daze, gets in the other side and goes through the motions of starting it on pure muscle memory.
Dream puts a hand over his as he reaches for the gearshift. Hob's so proud of himself for not yelping like a frightened maiden being caught starkers that he nearly misses the look on Dream's face. The I'm listening look.
"You came back to me," Hob says softly, when it becomes obvious Dream wants to hear about silly little human feelings now, rather than later. "I don't know what it meant to you, but it was the highlight of my century and I know it's early days yet but there's not much that could top it. I don't know if you realise that my centuries begin and end with you. I did actually think you couldn't possibly have missed how I feel about you but I'm currently reassessing. I love you. I'm scared someone else is going to hurt you and I'm going to let it happen again. I know you're a big grown-up Endless who can take care of himself but maybe you don't have to. Maybe I could do a little of the looking after."
He had said he'd end up rambling, but he manages to cut himself off and stare out the windshield and wish he'd said about ninety percent less than he just had.
Thing is, it's been welling up inside him, just waiting for the barest nudge to spill out. And Dream went and nudged him.
"Sorry. Forget... all of that. I'm tired."
"Love me," Dream says after another few heartbeats.
Fuck.
"Yeah," Hob admits. No sense lying about that, either. Too late now. "Please don't go?"
Even as he says it he hates the way it sounds. Pathetic and desperate and so, so ridiculous. He might as well have told the moon he loves it for all it'd matter to Dream.
"I have not been loved in some time," Dream says. "If I ever have at all."
Hob finally manages to gather up the courage to look at him. He's blue-eyed, now, and back to slouching, hair starting to flop and his hand, Hob realises belatedly, is even warm.
Hob loves him so much more fiercely for a moment that he wonders if it'll burn.
"You've been loved for quite a while," Hob corrects.
Dream, slowly, tentatively, slides his fingers between Hob's.
"I think," Dream begins after a moment, with a voice like a rusty gate muffled by a pillow. "I think I would like to be loved. By you."
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linkspooky · 6 months
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GREAT TEACHER, GOJO
For my final commentary on chapter 236, I thought I'd talk about this panel the starter of a million flame wars on twitter dot com. The big controversy is Nanami stating that Gojo fought only for himself without mentioning his students which a lot of people thought was a last minute reversal on Gojo's character, or character regression.
I'm not going to call anyone stupid, or say if you have good teacher Gojo headcanons you're wrong. However, I'd like to point out that Gojo's always been more complicated than most shonen mentors. He's not Kakashi, and he's not Aizawa, and I'd argue the fact that he's not the standard "I'd die to protect my students" mentor we see in shonen manga is what makes him interesting.
The Springtime of Youth
Jujutsu Kaisen is a shonen jump manga that is very aware of the other manga that are running in the same magazine and uses that awareness to play with audience expectations.
To put it simply if you don't want to use words like Deconstruction - if you're reading Jujutsu Kaisen then things are probably not going to go the way you expect them. It's not Naruto, it's not My Hero Academia, it's a little bit like Bleach except characters actually die.
If you expect things to go one way in Jujutsu Kaisen, then you're going to be thrown a curveball. To name some examples briefly before diving into Gojo.
Yuji Itadori is a normal boy protagonist suddenly dragged into the world of the supernatural.
However, everything goes wrong from there. Jujutsu Sorcerers are not heroes. Yuji is told that much from the beginning by Megumi within the first thirteen chapters. The world of Jujutsu Sorcery is not a good place to be, Yuji is initially excited to be a sorcerer and to be a part of this world and then learns that lesson fast. I mean, imagine if Deku was accepted to UA, and then he immediately learned that students at the school die on the regular and all the adults are either terrible selfish people, or if they're not they die too like Nanami because being selfless means sticking your neck out for someone else.
Yuji's not really special in the narrative. He's just a kid who swallowed a finger. He doesn't have a secret technique. We're hundreds of chapters in and he's still just punching people. If he's cornered in a fight he doesn't unlock a secret technique either, he just loses.
Yuji has a superpowered evil side, like the nine tailed fox, or Hollow Ichigo except it's not really his super powered evil side. It's an evil parasite attached to his soul with a will of its ownt hat will manipualte him. Hollow Ichigo and the Kyuubi can escape temporarily and there's usually no consequence. Sukuna escapes twice, the first time he nearly kills Megumi, the second time he kills thousands.
Yuji is kind of like a main character who is not a main character.
If you still believe he's the main character, then you can agree he's punished for thinking he's the main character and therefore things are going to be easy, because nothing is ever easy in Jujutsu Kaisen.
Megumi is a riff on the chosen one. He's supposed to be the Gojo Satoru of his generation, born with the strongest technique that ca even surpass the limitless and he's nowhere near the level he's supposed to be. This is because Megumi has been continually failed by every adult figure all his life, starting with his father who sold him, then Gojo the man who SAVED* him techically but with a big asterisk that he needed to become his student and do jobs for Jujutsu High School otherwise Gojo would just let the Zen'in take him or let them starve I guess. Megumi has no adult figures to rely on, and has been given very little freedom about who or what he wants to be in his life, and therefore he's a very passive, repressed individual who's riddled with insecurities. Megumi doesn't want to be the strongest like Gojo, or like many hero / rival characters in shonen manga. Megumi doesn't even know what he wants to be, because he's never been given any choice in life.
If you don't think Megumi's a deconstruction of any sort of character type, look at those posts on twitter that are like "Look at the black haired depressed shonen boys" and then look at Megumi, he's never actually like any of these boys because he's much deeper and probably closer to being the main character than Yuji is.
Then we get to Gojo who is very unlike all the other mentors in shonen manga.
If Yuji and Megumi are both riffs on a main character, a hero in a world so cynical he's not allowed to play hero and actively punished for it, and a chosen one who doesn't want to be the chosen one then you have Gojo as the mentor who's nothing like the classic mentor.
The problem with mentor characters in fiction is that number one they die a lot (spoiler warning Obi Wan Kenobi dies in Star Wars just so you know) and number two they're not usually the most complex character in the cast.
What is the mentor there for?
To Mentor (duh.)
What this means is they are usually a fully formed adult who can teach a lesson to the main character, who in shonen manga is typically a teenager.
I say they're usually less interesting because stories are about characters changing, or characters learning lessons. A teacher presumably already has learned his lesson. They are usually at the end of their journey and not the beginning, that's why they can offer wisdom to the main characters. They're not usually their own separate characters because of this - a narrative doesn't have time to waste on a character that's not going to change.
Jung had a term for this character, it's called the Wise Old Man.
In Jungian analytical psychology, senex is the specific term used in association with this archetype. Examples of the senex archetype in a positive form include the wise old man or wizard. In the individuation process, the archetype of the Wise old man was late to emerge, and seen as an indication of the Self. 'If an individual has wrestled seriously enough and long enough with the anima (or animus) problem...the unconscious again changes its dominant character and appears in a new symbolic form...as a masculine initiator and guardian, a wise old man, a spirit of nature, and so forth'.
The role of the wise man archetype is to help other people along with their ego development, because usually they are already fully developed individuals.
Obi Wan is the most typical of typical mentors, and he dies in Star Wars because after he finishes teaching Luke he has nothing to do. This is Luke's Hero's Journey. Obi Wan's already happened offscreen, he's at the end of his journey there's no room for change or growth in him because his story purpose is to exist to advise Luke and to do that he needs to be a fully grown adult figure.
The subversion to this when the mentor has their own agenda (Gandalf), or the mentor is as flawed as the main characters themselves and so therefore he has something to learn.
Gojo is kind of a combination of both, like Gandalf he is the mysterious but seemingly all powerful wizard (er... or rather sorcerer) with his own agenda, and he's also practically the fourth member of the main cast who are otherwise all teenagers. In fact, Gojo spells out his agenda in the same panels that everyone uses to constantly assert that Gojo is a good teacher who only wants to protect his students.
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He wants to make the Jujutsu World a better place (good) which is why he is raising students so he can turn them into his political allies to make a regime change (hidden agenda).
It's a means justifies the end type scenario. In Gojo's mind the means (raising kids as tools in support of his political agenda) justifies the ends (a better jujutsu world for those children). His motivation is still the same. This is what I think people most often get confused about with Gojo's character. I think he is one hundred percent genuine about wanting a better world.
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"I have a dream, I want to reset this crappy Jujutsu World" is his motivation, but not his means. He uses his students as a means to achieve that end. Even if it's purportedly for their sake, he's still using them. I don't even think this is subtext it's text, both Megumi and Yuji call themselves cogs.
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"But senpai, what's your function...?"
You could say in this case that the ends don't justify the means. Is Gojo really protecting these kid's youth, if Yuji and Megumi are going around calling themselves cog and acting like they don't matter in the grand scheme of things? In fact the narrative is inviting you to question if Gojo's ends justify his means.
Gojo's ideals can be one hundred percent real, but he can also pick faulty ways of choosing those ideals that fail to live up to them. In fact most people fall short of ideals, that's why they're called ideals. Gojo is taking these kids in because they have strong potential as sorcerers and he wants to recruit them, that's his hidden agenda. It's confirmed in databooks in Yuji and Yuta's case, and even if you don't trust databooks as canon then look at how he treats Megumi.
Megumi is explicitly Gojo's student, not his son. He only intervened in Megumi's situation on the caveat that Megumi work for him. Presumably, if Megumi didn't want to be a sorcerer and just wanted to be a normal kid, Gojo would have either let the Zen'in have him or do nothing. The option of just calling child services and getting someone to foster Megumi until he was older didn't even seem to cross Gojo's mind. There's the help he gives (Food money, rent, protection from the Zen'in) and then the hidden agenda (Don't work for the Zen'in who are my political rivals, you're my student now).
Yet at the same time Gojo is shown going to find Megumi after Geto's defection, probably because of the words he said to Yaga "You can only save those who want to be saved," when he realized it was too late for Geto. Was he intervening earlier for Megumi because he learned from being too late with Geto? Did he think Megumi needed guidance, or did he think Megumi needed protection in his youth so the Jujutsu World wouldn't corrupt him like it did Geto, or did he think he just needed to make it so Megumi was strong so he wouldn't fall behind him because Geto fell so far behind him once Gojo became the strongest. There's ambiguity there, because the hidden agenda is you know... Hidden. That's what I mean with Gojo though, you can look at him from multiple angles, he's not just (I love my students I'd die for them) because that character would only have one purpose in the narrative and that'd be being the perfect mentor who teaches them all the right lessons.
Gojo's not like other mentors, and in fact he's a commentary on the mentors that everyone is always comparing him to and expecting him to be like.
Literally everyone who reads Naruto has the exact same response, "I hate how the manga never talks about how it's a bad thing to send these child soldiers into war, and nobody breaks the cycle."
There are a lot of people unhappy about the same thing in My Hero Academia, "Why does nobody talk about how wrong it is that the adults make these high school students fight on the battlefield."
Well there you go. That's Gojo. His dream is to make it so Jujutsu Society is a place where teenagers can survive until adulthood. His method of doing so is to... raise those teenagers to be stronger than the previous generation, but you know still letting them be child soldiers on the battlefield just stronger ones. He does this because if he's working within the system the his two choices are raise a group of people who can age out and replace the old regime, or just kill everyone at the top.
Everyone complains about how no one talks about the child soldiers in Naruto or My Hero Academia, but here you go, we have a manga that is centered around how messed up it is to send high school students to continually fight these curses before they even turn eighteen. Gojo's sending these kids out there still even if he wants to change things, and it's supposed to be a little messed up and also a contradiction to what his ideals are supposed to be.
Because in My Hero Academia you have characters like Aizawa and Kakashi who are "I will die for my students" but then they just send those teens out to fight in a war, and seem totally fine with that. It's a hole in the writing, but this time it's done on purpose, to ask why these adults are always comfortable sending teenagers out to fight for them?
Jujutsu Kaisen provides two answers, number one the system is inherently corrupt and it sees the youth as cogs because the system is rooted in traditions that keep the elderly in power. Number two, in Gojo's case at least this is exactly what it was like for him growing up as a child. Gojo is just repeating with his students what was done to him, subconsciously.
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The reason Nanami said this, and then repeated it in this most recent chapter is Gojo was born to be a Jujutsu Sorcerer. Being a Jujutsu Sorcerer is a highly deadly occupation for everyone else, except for Gojo. Not only that but because he's so good at it, and he's so lauded for it he's built his entire identity around it. Nanami's not just saying that Gojo is selfish, he's also saying that Gojo thinks being a sorcerer is a good thing. It is the end all, be all of Gojo's existence.
He doesn't want to make it so sorcerers don't have to fight, or make it so all cursed energy is gone for the world like Yuki Tsukumo, his dream is actually kind of limited in scope he doesn't want the school days of his students to be destroyed by the outside world the way it was for him and Geto.
Gojo looks at the symptoms and not the cause. Geto defected, Haibara died, Yaga wasn't really able to do much for his students in both scenarios. Gojo deduced it was because the elders and regressive policies were holding people back in favor of keeping the regime in charge (correct) and that because of that the sorcerers in Gojo's high school years just weren't strong enough to keep up (this is just what Gojo thinks).
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His words to Megumi are encouraging him to be strong so he won't get left behind, which as I speculated above might imply Gojo thinks that part of what went wrong with Geto was that he simply wasn't strong enough to keep up with Gojo or stay on his level. If not then he still encourages Megumi to get strong before everything else, he's not taking care of these kids emotional needs, he's pushing them to get stronger because in Gojo's mind that's the be all end all solution to every problem.
"Nanami's line was not saying that Gojo doesn't care about children, it's saying that "You live for Jujutsu." It is the lens through which Gojo sees everything, and so therefore he doesn't think of breaking kids out of the Jujutsu World, just making it a place that's slightly more safe for them. Gojo's ego is so strong that he only ever sees things from his point of view, being a sorcerer was fun for him, his high school days were the happiest time in his life before they got ruined by outside forces.
He's trying to protect those days for his children, but he's not arguing against the existence of an institution like Jujutsu High in the first place. He's not saying the teenagers should never be sent out on missions, he's saying we need to make the teens stronger. If they're stronger than they won't die (that's probably true but they'll be even safer if they don't have to go on missions in the first place).
Now we have a reason! Why do Aizawa and Kakashi send out child soldiers into the battlefield if their goal is to protect their students? Because it's a shonen manga and the main characters are all teenagers.
Why does Gojo send out teenagers to fight for him if he wants to protect them, well I just explained it.
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In fact, the entire purpose of Nanami in the story is to give us a character who explicitly treats children like they are children and not miniature adults. Who acknowledges that this is emotionally hard for children to deal with and they shouldn't have to do that.
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Nanami's lines of "I'm an adult you're a child" and "Being a child is not a bad thing." would not have the weight they carry if they weren't so different from the way that every other adult in the story (including Gojo) treats children.
Nanami and Gojo have the same goal of making being a Jujutsu Sorcerer easier for children, but Nanami practices what he preaches. He tells Yuji to stand back and that he doesn't need to fight if he sees an enemy that's too strong, to let the adult on scene handle things first.
When he sees that Yuji is disturbed by the idea of killing former humans that Mahito had changed with his technique, he consoles him. He knows that Yuji is a sensitive kid and tries to spare him as much of that grief as possible. When he leaves Yuji behind he tells him explicitly that he's the adult in this situation, he shouldn't be forcing a child to help carry that burden if it's not necessary.
He also explicitly tells Yuji that being strong or jumping into life threatening situations =/= as growing up. Nanami is a character aware that the problem isn't that the children are not strong enough, but that too much responsibility is being thrown on these children. That there is a difference between what children and adults are emotionally capable of. Gojo doesn't see that difference because he reached enlightenment as seventeen. He even explicitly chose Nanami because Gojo knew he wasn't good at that stuff.
Nanami was not saying that Gojo doesn't care about children, Nanami was saying Gojo lives to be a sorcerer, Gojo who loves sorcery doesn't understand why being a sorcerer is too much of an emotional burden on a child. He just doesn't. He literally says his students are flowers.
Now, here's the kicker. Nanami dies.
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Nanami wanted Yuji to not take on too much responsibility, and he died leaving Yuji with more responsibility than he could ever carry. Nanami failed in his goal, despite the fact he is the most responsible and well-meaning adult in the story who treats children like they're children.
The reason he dies is because this is what happens to people like Nanami in Jujutsu Society. The whole of society is built to condition people into being cogs and Nanami who's just one person can't overcome it on his own. I can write a whole meta on how Nanami's way of dealing with children is way better than Gojo's and yet they do essentially the same thing, throw way too much responsibility onto Yuji even though he's just a kid. They're both too ingrained in the system to make any sweeping changes, and that's why the child soldiers keep on child soldiering.
Gojo as a Character
The second reason as eluded above that Gojo is not meant to be read as a perfect teacher, or even a good one really is because he's the fourth main character of the cast. If you are a main character, then you need a flaw, and an arc where you either improve upon that flaw or you succumb to it in tragic fashion.
Gojo's not the perfect adult mentor, because he's kind of in the same place as the kids themselves. I think there's a reason we never learn anything about Gojo's backstory, we know nothing about his parents, the Gojo clan, because those details aren't as relevant. The most important thing about Gojo is the three years he spent at high school, because that was the only time he felt like a person, and also because he is trapped there mentally.
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There's a reason that Gojo's dying dream is him imagining everyone reset to seventeen years old, because that was where the clock stopped for him in his youth, and that was where all of his regrets as an adult come from. His motivation to help teenagers today only comes from his own youth being ruined, and the adults in his life failing to protect him.
It's very likely that Gojo who lives for Jujutsu probably would never have realized the problems in his current society, if his youth wasn't ruined by those same adults he's now fighting against.
The reason most mentor figures in fiction are not main characters is because as adults they don't really need to grow up anymore. The obvious solution is that you just need your mentor character to just fail to be an adult in some glaring way.
To show how Gojo falls short as an adult, especially in regards to these children and how he treats them is to drag him down from all powerful, all knowing wizard, and make him struggle with the rest of the main cast. Gojo is not a positive adult figure in these kids lives despite having the best of intentions, because he's not really an adult.
I guess if you were already the best and strongest person in the world at seventeen, smarter and more capable than all the adults around you, you wouldn't really feel the need to grow up. Coupled with the fact that you are alienated from other people and do not relate to them on a personal level that's not going to help with your identity formation.
I mean I constantly compare Gojo to Superman, but to be fair to Gojo instead of bullying him like I usually do Clark Kent was raised by parents who raised a boy not a superman, and who constantly tell him that he's just a normal person, his powers don't make him great, it's his heart.
Nanami says that Gojo only fights for himself that ""You don't wield Jujutsu to protect something, you use it solely to for your own sake. What a weirdo" it's likely Gojo only fights for himself because he's never ben told that's he's more than just the six-eyes and more than just the limitless.
The best way to make a mentor a part of the cast, is to make them through some way or another have failed to grow up properly in their youth and therefore they need to do it while the story is taking place. We know how Gojo failed, his springtime of youth ended early, it ended the day he couldn't stop Geto from leaving, the day he can be the strongest sorcerer ever and still fail because sorcerer society is too corrupt for one person to handle alone. We also know he didn't really grow up past this point, because he still thinks the solution is to make people be stronger. Why does he not do anything about Geto for 11 years? In story terms he's basically suspended in time unable to grow past Geto. Kenjaku literally uses the trauma from his youth and the memories that seeing Geto alive would provoke in Gojo again, to trap him because he knew it would make him freeze up. Gojo is frozen in the past, he failed to grow up in story terms and must now grow up while the main story itself is taking place along with the children he's trying to raise.
This is how you make a mentor interesting. You have to make them flawed in some way that makes it worth having them onscreen, because a perfect mentor only serves one purpose to teach a main character and then he's gone.
Dazai Osamu from Bungo Stray Dogs is a character that's almost as massively popular as Gojo. Similiarly, he is a teenage genius who found trouble relating to other people who is now as an adult attempting to mentor two children.
However, Dazai's faults as a mentor are made much more explicit.
Dazai suddenly punched Akutagawa in the face, preventing him from finishing his sentence. Akutagawa flew back onto the ground, his head bouncing off the stone flooring with a thud. "Perhaps I made it look like I wanted to hear excuses. Sorry for the misudnerstanding," Dazai said while rubbing his knuckles. "Urg..." Akutagawa moaned. He'd hit his head so hard that he couldn't even stagger to his feet. "Give me your gun," Dazai ordered one of his men. The subordinate was hesitant but nonetheless handed over his weapon. Next, Dazai removed the magaine from the automatic pistol, took out all but three bullets, then put the magazine back in. He immediately pointed the gun at Akutagawa, who was still on the ground. "I have this friend who's supporting several orphans all on his own, you see," he continued his weapon still drawn and aimed at the boy. "AKutagawa I'm sure Odasaku would've been patient enough to give you the guidance you needed had he been the one who'd found you on the brink of starvation right in the slums. That would have been the 'right' thing to do. But 'righteousness' doesn't take very kindly to me. And there's only one thing people like me do to useless subordinates." Dazai mercilessly pulled the trigger the moment he finished his sentence.
(Don't worry, Akutagawa lived). Dazai is a character who had a troublesome youth he never grew up from. He was too smart for the world as a kid, and because of that joined up with the mafia because he wanted to feel like he was more connected to life and other people by getting closer to death (weird dazai logic I know) and was the best of the best at it, but it only drove him further away from people. He makes one friend, and loses that friend similiar to Gojo. Just like Gojo too, that friend is the one who gives him his purpose as an adult that drives him to mentor young people.
"Odasaku.. What should I do?" "Be on the side that saves people," Odasaku replied, "If both sides are the same, then choose to become a good person. Save the weak, protect the orphaned. You might not see a great difference between right and wrong, but... saving others is something just a bit more wonderful."
Is this not what Nanami said just in different words. Odasaku tells Dazai point blank, I know you're selfish, I know that you don't really have any concept of good or evil but you can choose to save others anyway.
Isn't this what Gojo does?
He is selfish. He doesn't really consider the morality or his actions or get hung up on the idea of protecting the weak like Nanami or Geto do, but he still does go out of his way to live for the ideal of saving children.
Both Gojo and Dazai are characters who are struggling with this ideal of saving the children, because while their ideals are good they themselves as people are morally gray. Adding onto that, they're also children and a good deal of their backstory is devoted to showing why they never really grew out of the mindset that they held as children.
The story doesn't call them horrible monsters for it, it's just saying that they need to grow up or face the consequences of not growing up.
"I have one regret," I said. "I never got to say good-bye to my friend. He was always there for me as 'just a friend.' He was bored of this world and always waited for death to come for him." "That man was in search of a place to die just like me?" "No, not exactly," I answered. "I thought you were similiar to Dazai at first, rushing into battle and wishing for death without even considering the value of your own life. But he's different. He's sharp-witted with a mind like a steel trap. And he's just a child - a sobbing child abandoned in the darkness of a world far emptier of the world we're seeing." He was too smart for his own good. THat was why he was always alone. The reason why ANgo and I were able to be by his side was that we understood the solitude that surrounded him, and we never stepped inside it no matter how close we stood. But in that moment, I kind of regretted not stepping in and invading a little.
Does that sound like the narrative is condemning Dazai for being who he is? No, it's Dazai's best friend offering empathy and understanding for how lonely it must be, and how if Dazai made real connections with people then he could have a chance of growing up like everyone else. That's what the narrative challenges Dazai to do while empathizing with why it's harder for him to and why he's still trapped in his youth, because to take care of children you need to be an adult yourself. Otherwise if you're a child, and I'm a child, then nobody's driving the plane.
Rupert Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer is another mentor who faces the same moral dilemna that Gojo does. In fact his entire character revolves around the fact he knows deep down he's sending a kid to her early grave.
Buffy is the Chosen One TM. One girl in all the world is chosen to fight the vampires. Much like sorcerer society, there is an entire bureaucracy dedicated to identifying the chosen slayer and then raising her up and guiding her as a weapon to be used against the threat of vampires and demons.
The watchers are all adults. The slayer is a teenage girl. The slayer slays. The watchers watch. Just like in Jujutsu Kaisen, there is a necessity for the Slayer to exist, because the alternative is just letting vampires eat people. Yet even if the slayer needs to exist, at the end of the day a bunch of adult men are sending a teenage girl to fight for them.
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All Slayers die young. All of them without an exception. No matter how good of a mentor is, no matter how much he cares about her, Buffy is going to die one day, and Giles is going to watch. Because that's what the watcher does, they watch. Sending her on missions means Buffy's in danger, not sending her means innocent people are in danger.
It's a scenario that's pretty much like Gojo's, and the narrative of Buffy makes it explicit that Giles really can't be a father figure to bufy in this scenario. A father would have to choose to put their child above the world and keep them safe, not send them out straight into danger.
It is a choice that Giles makes over and over again. He is always her watcher and never her father. There's a season 3 episode where Giles literally drugs Buffy as a part of a test to prove she is "worthy" of being a slayer. A test that deliberately puts her in harms way that he complies with - because the system told him to. A choice to be her watcher and act according to what the council of watchers wanted and not what Buffy wanted. A choice that shatters the illusion that Buffy had of him, showing her that Giles is only there to teach her to be a Slayer, not to take her to the iceapades or buy ice cream with her.
In this scenario Gojo is very much like Giles as no matter how much he may personally like these kids, he is not their father, and there is only so much he can do for them when he's still feeding them into the same system. Giles loves Buffy, Giles wants to protect Buffy, Giles is a part of the system that exploits Buffy. Giles is an adult asking Buffy to risk her life to save the world.
Gojo goes out of his way to recruit Megumi, Yuji, and Yuta among others. Gojo still doesn't let them be anything other than sorcerers, and as sorcerers they're still guaranteed to one day die and probably die young. Gojo wants to revolutionize the system he is, but he still sends out his students to do missions as part of that system. He's not letting them escape it, he's just making them be stronger sorcerers.
Not only is Gojo not a father figure to Megumi, he is exploiting him more or less. The option of Megumi not being a sorcerer isn't on the table. No matter how well-intentioned he may be, or how good his ideals are he's still an adult telling a child to make a sacrifice for the world.
So, there are two character conflicts with two different mentors that both reflect Gojo. Gojo cannot grow up because he's still trapped in the tragedy of his youth. He himself is not an adult, for various reasons (lack of connection to other people, trauma in his youth) he's egocentric like a child but there are children in his life who need him to be.
Gojo also cannot be a proper adult, because he is part of a system that exploits children. We see what the system does to proper adults like Nanami, he shows us just how much well-intentioned adults struggle to help kids under sorcerer society so how about Gojo who thinks being a sorcerer is really fun. A proper adult would never send kids on those missions, they'd find some way to shield them but Gojo cannot do that. Because sorcerers are short staffed and innocent people will die if he doesn't. Because Gojo isn't the sorcer-king of Jujtusu Society and is working within it to affect change. There are reasons, but still Gojo is failing to live up to his desire to protect children because he's not doing what a responsible adult should do in this situation.
Gojo's failures are two-fold, and yet it's because of those failures that he was a main character who got as much special plot attention as he did. If Gojo was a perfect teacher he wouldn't be a character. After all, we relate to the struggles of other human beings we see onscreen in television and in movies so why would we care about a perfect character?
Gojo has a lot more to say about teachers in shonen manga, and also about childhood vs. adulthood as a bad teacher struggling to be a good one, then a teacher who's already perfect. Nanami said those lines because he wanted us to understand the audience that this is who Gojo is, he is a selfish and egotistical person who nonetheless was trying to do good things.
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franklespine · 6 months
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Something interesting about the rare occasions that Sam and Dean actually talk about their childhood or their parents that I've noticed is how it reveals really how little Sam knows about his own family. Like in s1 when they have to return to their childhood home after Sam has a vision he asks Dean how much he remembers of the night their mother died. Dean tells him he carried him out the house and Sam is shocked at this development; clearly this was a day that they haven't talked about at all. Despite that night being the foundation of what drove John and Dean to even start their relentless hunt in the first place, it was always this unsaid thing that Sam never understood to the same level as they did.
Later in the episode Dark Side of the Moon in s5 Sam is put in the position of a passive observer to Dean's memory of a moment with their mother. Even in this good memory Mary has an argument with John over the phone and Sam is suddenly struck with the realisation that their life pre-Mary's death wasn't this ideal picket-fence family dynamic he thought it was. John and Mary's relationship was strained and even before the age of four Dean was 'cleaning up' their father's 'messes' (as Sam calls it). To me its such an interesting concept because no wonder Sam felt like the odd one out in the family (and this is not considering the whole demon blood freak thing). He was constantly in the position of hovering on the cusp of understanding this unsaid past, which is the key to understanding Dean and John themselves. No wonder he wasn't inclined to be a hunter; to him Mary was was an absence of a mother, and yet to John and Dean it was at the very core driving them to relentlessly peruse this lifestyle.
And its frustrating because neither John or Dean seem to ever want to acknowledge of even try to understand this position Sam's in. Dean continues to berate him for 'abandoning his family', when really Sam was being suffocated under a lifestyle that had been forced upon him, forever unable to fully understand the all consuming grief that came from Mary's death like John and Dean did. To me this idea seems to culminate in Dark Side of the Moon, which is also an episode where Dean frustrated me the most. Because of course I understand why Sam's memories of running away from home and going to Stanford being considered as good memories would hurt Dean - family is everything to him. But it really shows how Dean just refuses to even try to understand Sam's perspective in this. These aren't good memories to Sam because he abandoned his family, they're good memories because they are the pockets of moments in his life where he has ever felt any agency over himself. Sam tries to explain himself to Dean but no it's about as good as justifying your actions to a wall and this is something that Dean has held over his head since the pilot. And then he's apparently so angry that he throws away the amulet Sam gave him?? My god, like I wasn't already screaming at my screen.
These complexities to their relationship really wouldn't bother me so much if every time these interpersonal issues were brought up they weren't resolved with Sam having to acknowledge that he was the one in the wrong. Like I get Flagstaff obviously dregs up some real bad memories for Dean of their father but come on, Stanford?? Surely after this many episodes we can understand that Sam was just perusing something he wanted to do for once. What's worse is that all Sam really wanted out of it from his family was for Dean and their father to be proud of him. He compares their situation to 'normal families' saying that most families would be overjoyed that their son got a full ride to Stanford. And that's really at the crux of all he ever wanted from them... Anyway sorry this is deeply unstructured I just have some Thoughts occasionally whilst watching Supernatural for the first time in 2023. Currently on the first chunk of s7 and jesus the whole shit with Amy is the other Dean thing that has made me yell at him in frustration but I won't open that can of worms. I swear I do love Dean and his messed up complexities... I just like Sam more and find him to be a more sympathetic character (which I am beginning to think is an unpopular perspective but what do I know; I've been watching this show for like a month).
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jo-harrington · 19 days
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Unsolved (Eddie Munson x Reader)
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Pairing: Kas(?)Eddie MunsonxSupernatural!Reader
Summary: It’s their job to meddle with the unknown, and it’s your job to fix it.
Word Count: 2.1k
Warnings/Themes: Supernatural experiences, unseen demonic entity, angst, fluff towards the end possible? Hurt/Comfort, Open-Ended Ending (ask me if I’ll come back to this in a year)
Note: OK this idea has been in my head for a while, but I had no motivation or vehicle to write it so thank you @bettyfrommars @allthingsjoeq and @somnambulic-thing for your Stranger Prompts event. Because I got to fuck around with this idea. No intention to make it longer than this but maybe someday; it was fun regardless.
So for your enjoyment, please enjoy my take on Prompt #13: You're switching stations on your radio when you pick up the signal of someone on a Walkie Talkie. They say they're in trouble and give their location.
You can find more on my masterlist here.
Please do not interact if you are not 18+.
Enjoy!
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Nighttime. Darkness.
"There is it, you ready?"
The spirit box oscillates through channels.
"Can you hear us? Kas?"
Garbled speech, the sound of wings, and then the shrill crescendo of a guitar.
"Of course they're up to no good, they're cultists."
The flashlights flicker, then die, and someone screams.
"Join us on the next part of our ongoing investigation into the question: are ghosts real?"
Hawkins, Indiana - October 2018
Your boots crunch on gravel and dead leaves as you step out of your car and take in your surroundings.
You’re in the middle of a country road, surrounded by a forest; you passed a vast cornfield just a few minutes ago, and you know instinctually that there’s another farm ahead. It's as unassuming as most of the midwest is.
You know better though.
You've been called here.
Not by phone or letter, but in the way dark calls to dark. Now that you’re here though, you yearn for a chance to taste it. To possess it.
You spend most of your days alone and in silence, as bleak of an existence as you'd ever heard, but it's safe and it's yours. Painfully lonely, hermit by chance, not necessarily by choice, but you know it’s for the best. Better lay low until something greater than you rips through the fabric of reality to demand your action, as it did the other day.
Your television had turned on of its own volition and you watched two idiotic and painfully mortal boys fuck with something beyond their understanding, as they disturbed something that was better left alone.
Hawkins.
You'd knew of it, heard of it. Knew to leave it alone.
Something had happened here, something forgotten. Forbidden. There were phantom scars in the earth itself, but the wounds that left those scars didn't exist. They never existed. It was almost like nothing ever happened, like someone turned back the clock to prevent said nothing from ever happening in the first place.
Idiots.
There were rules to those kinds of things. Even you didn’t know them all and you were most likely to die long before you could.
Fucking with time was a delicate practice, and if one wasn't careful, some things would inevitably get left behind. Like a child's chalk that got left between cracks in the sidewalk after an afternoon of play. Little remnants of times forgotten—times abandoned—meals left uneaten on tables, houses built on the graves of people who'd never even existed.
Vans left abandoned on the sides of roads by someone that seemingly never owned a van, and plates that had never been registered with the state of Indiana.
You'd watched the boys play with their little instruments, fuck with powers they didn't understand, and wake something that was meant to be dormant. As the episode ended with them leaving their broken toys behind and your television screen went dark, you felt the call to action.
The need to go and fix what had been disturbed.
The need to pull whatever darkness that bled through the curtain of reality into this world fully.
Just like you’d been pulled through once upon a time.
You’d been chosen for this for a reason.
What would await you this time?
"Alright," you mutter to your master, its presence simmering beneath the frequency of this reality to ensure you didn’t fail. "I'm here. Let's get this over with."
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You don't have far to walk before you see the van, but suddenly your surroundings transition from the bright peak of afternoon to the hazy darkness of dusk.
It’s disturbing but these things happen the easiest under cover of night. So you’re grateful for whatever wicked curse hangs over these woods.
The mortal boys on the television arrived to their destination at night, so you'd only seen the vague idea of a van through their green glowing infrared recording, but in person it is much more unsettling.
It sits forgotten amongst a thicket of trees and aside from the places where Ryan and Shane disturbed it, nature has decided the hunkering beast of a vehicle belongs to it. Rust eats away at vulnerable corners, moss and leaves and a thick coating of pollen layer the body, and overgrown roots wind around the wind around the tires, rendering it inert.
A thick branch has pierced the windshield, and as you pace the perimeter of the van, you see it's impaled the drivers seat too.
You're about to reach out to touch it, almost compelled to, when your boot crunches on something.
Your eyes slide in their sockets languidly, down, until they hone in on the object of intrusion.
A radio.
"Spirit box," you whisper into the dead air.
You don't deny yourself the morbid curiosity; that's why you're there, right? To put an end to this so the disturbance is eliminated for good? So no one fucks with it again and makes it worse? You'd have to start in one way or another; it might as well be this way.
The plastic case is cracked from the boys desperate getaway, but as you fiddle with buttons and knobs, the LED screen turns on, and there is a startling crackle of static that shaves a year off your life.
“Shit,” you curse. You’re usually not this jumpy. But there is a heavy anticipation hanging around you.
Another button is pressed and the device begins its rapid-paced oscillation through one radio frequency to the next. You catch faint snippets of commercials and shock jocks and jingles, but nothing discernible.
"Is there anyone there?" you say aloud, parroting what you'd heard on the television, and you waited.
"Hey," comes the warped speech over the din of the channels flipping. You flinch and curse once more. You resolve not to show such weakness again. "Didn't...t'scare...you."
"You didn't scare me." It's true. Just startled. "There are far scarier things out there."
Your master is one of them.
"Monsters…here too.”
“I’m sure,” you mutter. "And where is that?"
No answer.
"Where are you?" you clarify.
"Upside." There's a pause and the spirit box warbles and crackles. "Down."
You think back to the Unsolved episode, the interviews, flashes of images as they explored around Hawkins, the spray painted side of a church: Cult of Kas. Lord of the uʍop ǝpᴉsd∩.
There is a brief triumphant feeling inside of you that you'd found the right spirit, the right moment. This will be over soon. There is a reason your master prefers you over the others.
"Are you Kas?" you continue, fueled by your hubris. "Kas? Do you know who that is?"
There's no answer, and that confidence disappears.
A name. Your master hisses right below your conscious thought. It's in a name.
You feel a sense of brief annoyance thrum through you now, either your master's annoyance with you, or yours with it. It's cloying, and you can feel it permeate from you like a death rattle as you continue your task.
"What's your name?"
There's a beat.
You wait.
It needs to work this time, otherwise you'll--
"Eddie."
Eddie?
"Eddie...Munson."
Just like the supposed owner of the van? The man that Ryan and Shane interviewed before their excursion to this cursed place. Surely not the 50-something tow truck driver that said vans weren’t his thing in the 80’s, that he only ever wanted a motorcycle.
There's an instinctual hitch in your brow as you contemplate the implications of an Eddie Munson here...and an Eddie Munson there.
Then again, you were someone somewhere at some point. Now you were here and you were somewhere else. And the you that you had been and the you that you were now coexisted beautifully.
That was your master's vision after all and, you assume, is the reason you've been led to Hawkins. History repeats itself. Like calls to like.
Suddenly there's a crackling, roaring crash that transcends every oscillating channel. It is the only broadcast now.
"Help, please help me." Eddie's plea is steady and clear. "It's here. It found me."
And you don't hesitate. Because those same words came from your mouth once, before you were saved.
The spirit box is forgotten but still clenched in your hand as you reach out and touch the branch that broke through the windshield, and from there, the cold metal of the van itself.
And you see.
A man and a monster, a rift, a creature. A bat, a bat, and a bite.
You see everything that never happened, happen. Everything done, then undone. You see the rift being created and this remnant—man and van alike—left over in a nether space that tied the two worlds together.
There’s a screech of a guitar over the spirit box now, different than the choppy messages or the fearful pleas that have come through already. It's a broadcast that steadily increases in speed and volume.
A rapid crescendo of fingers pounding on frets and plucking at strings. You can feel an ache in your teeth as if you were gritting yours together, and maybe you are as you try to hold on to an entire world that both existed in its own right and never existed at all.
Hold onto it. Open a door to it.
The van begins to burn.
The cold metal starts to glow--orange and hot like the flame of a candle--beneath your touch and slowly the glow spreads until the entire van is engulfed.
You hold on until you simply no longer can; where your control ends, your master's begins, and your visceral need to save this poor soul now becomes curiosity. What does this Eddie Munson that's about to emerge from the void look like? His name might not have been Kas...but was he a monster?
If he wasn't already, he'd be one soon enough.
The form of the van breaks and embers begin to flake off; the shape of this portal changes from a hulking thing to something much more refined. Legs and arms and wings.
Your heart stops in your chest with anticipation for a moment.
Would you have some glorious nightmare to ferry through a brave new world after all?
But soon the wings seem to burn away leaving nothing but the glowing form of a man and you try to stifle your disappointment.
Nothing fun ever happens to you.
This is the moment, you feel it linger and simmer just beneath the surface of reality. Your master and Eddie coming to a decision together, whether they realize it or not. It is a sight to behold and one you can barely remember when it happened to you, when you were given the choice to accept this fate or die.
You feel your hand instinctually crush the spirit box as the burning glow dissipates, the final connection to this displaced realm severed as a decision is made. As this being finally comes into being once again, as his hands continue to move up and down the strings of a guitar that is no longer strapped to him and would never be ever again.
He falls to his knees once the final bit of fire burn out, and once he realizes that he's alive, he pats his hands down his arms and legs and torso. He lifts his shirt and inspects swaths of skin, fingers scratching at, what you're sure are, phantom wounds.
"You're alright," you tell him and he startles as he notices you. "You're alright."
"What happened?" he asks rapidly. "O-one second I was, and then...Henderson..."
He frantically observes your surroundings, the trees, the leaves. It doesn’t seem like he knows what’s happened to him.
Interesting, you'd never seen that happen before. Even you had been painfully aware of your…departure. Arrival. Whatever it had been.
"Henderson! Dustin!" he yells as he tries to get to his feet, but his body is weak from being stuck in that perpetual time loop--an eternity that he's had to experience in the span of possibly a few minutes--and he falls to his knees again.
You hold your hands out to show that you mean him no harm and you close the distance. He is grateful to accept the help from you as he rests his weary form against yours, but he continues to asks questions.
"Where'd they go? Where are my friends? The bats? Vecna? Where are they? Where am I?"
"You're safe," you assure him. "For now, that's all that matters."
You try to keep him calm, try to answer his questions.
Fuck, but is he chatty though. This is the most you’ve interacted with another living being in a long time, the most you’d spoken in years.
You briefly consider killing him if he doesn't stop with his frantic whining and explanation of a Chrissy and a Hellfire and a Henderson. But then his hand clutches yours and there's a pause to your fragile patience and his frantic worry; there's a warmth that singes the lifelines as your palm rests against his.
No, he belongs here. With you? Possibly. For what, purpose? You cant be sure quite yet. All will be revealed in time.
The disturbance is resolved. But something still lingers, unsolved. Your master looms for reasons unknown, and the anticipation is unsettling.
You feel the shuddering breath shake through his form as he panics, finally feeling the external presence, but you calm him.
You school your face into the gentlest expression you can and he clutches your hand tightly, clinging to the comforting warmth.
"Eddie Munson." You try to smile and his eyes soften. "Welcome to the future."
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Tagging @deathbecomesthem because this definitely falls in line with their Estate Sale fic, so if you enjoyed this, please go check that out as well.
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sillyyuserr · 20 days
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Another mini terukane analysis :P
so we’ve all seen the picture of teru’s hand on akane’s head right? Seen it, loved it, yadayada
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but if you actually look into it, this is so cute.
i mean for one, thats his sword hand. From previous panels we’ve seen him use his right hand on his sword. While he is pictured with it in his left, when he actually fights, its in his right (old vs recent)
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“what about that being his sword hand” well, if you couldnt tell, theres a literal demon right infront of them, so he must be on high guard right? nope its in his left LMAO
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His better/dominant/more skilled hand is in the most gentlest way, comforting akane, rather than fighting the little shit off. Almost saying, he’s more important right now, akane’s comfort is more important than his own safety, reserving his better hand for him, rather than the stupid demon thing
then after he hits it, it shatters to glass, fading away. His face changes to that of a worried expression, and quickly turns around, takes akane by the little of his shirt he has left, and starts dragging him
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Clearly doesn’t give him any time to react, seemingly extremely worried ab something. but as the chapter progresses, we see supernaturals fading away such as hanako, and mitsuba. The bells signaling the start of the severance
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We can obviously put two and two together and realize teru thought akane was gonna fade away 😭 MANS WAS SO WORRIED
He was happy to leave aoi, defenseless, alone, in a realm he cannot reach, surrounded by countless evil entities, with very little time to save her, while she was clearly extremely unstable, with his only way of knowing if she dissipated or not being a little bell bracelet that he doesn’t even wear
yet he immediately turned around, full on dragged him/gave him ZERO time to get up, rushed him to the clock keepers asap without even time for akane to react or anything. Like gosh dude can you be more obvious.
him being that worried about akane is so interesting to me, because like, why? Shouldnt he hate him for liking his so called “crush” (aoi). Since he’s planning on going back and saving aoi why cant he just get akane when he’s going back for aoi? Why go through the effort? Lets think of a few reasons why
Reason 1. Calling back to when he stopped them from kissing, he mightve realized if he’s alone with her there, they’d sit on the train and bam they’re dead, gone forever.
Reason 2. Maybe he at one point, had the idea of overall just leaving her there. Giving her the bell bracelet as a false sense of hope so he doesn’t seem like a bad person. And if akane’s sent there, he has to get him, and of course they’ll be together there so he’ll have to get aoi aswell. Why he might want to leave aoi? No clue but its an idea that came to mind so i put it down
Reason 3. Maybe he cant do it alone. He’s always been the “i fight alone” type, but when akane’s there he’s never fighting alone. So maybe he doubts his ability to save her by himself, and wants akane by his side throughout the whole thing
Reason 4. Maybe he just cares about him and/or maybe might like him a little more than he should
i wanna write one ab what happened with teru + akane JUST before the severance SO BAD THERES LITERALLY SM I HAVE TO SAY but i lost all motivation and there being too much is both good and bad 😭 (bad as in im too lazy to do it)
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junosmindpalace · 2 years
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hello! i saw your requests were open and you write for saiki k ! 😁 I was wondering if i can request general dating hcs for saiki?
my first saiki request! exciting! also ive been so active??? hopefully i can keep this up, ive been working to clear out my inbox so i can open it again!
i miss watching saiki k i need to rewatch for the thousandth time 
general kusuo saiki dating headcanons
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-for saiki, dating was never something of interest to him, especially considering the nature of his supernatural abilities
-even he’s uncertain how he managed to fall in love with you in his hectic everyday life, but he did, and to his surprise, you liked him back! So boom boom you two are dating!
-dating saiki isn’t a secret thing, but a private thing, you get what i mean? He doesn’t go out of his way to hide the fact you two are seeing each other but he definitely doesn’t initiate pda or outright tell people the two of you are dating just for the sake of telling
-saiki isnt completely reserved as most people may think though. I mean hes in a relationship for a reason. If he didnt want to take on the responsibilities of being a boyfriend then he wouldnt be in a relationship. Simple!
-pda is an absolute no no most of the time, but in private, he doesnt mind being more physical
-by physical i mean bothering the shit out of him
-maybe the two of you will be reading on his couch, opposite end of each other, and out of nowhere you just stretch your legs onto his lap
-he shoots you a glare and you stick your tongue out, and thats pretty much it. He doesnt push you off, just continues reading and letting you relax
-maybe you’ll both be watching tv in the dark late at night and you’ll lean into his side and again, he wont move. Hell, he might rest his arm on the cushion behind you!
-dating saiki means youre probably the more talkative one, but there are plenty of times where saiki just loves to rant to you about his annoyances
-”ah look, nuisances A and B.” “kusuo thats rude” “dont pretend to be all nice”
-he brings you everywhere with him. As he already almost constantly gets dragged into something he doesnt want to do by his friends, he’s dragging you along with him so you can suffer too (cough he can tolerate his friends a bit more)
-youre a bit of a translator for him, usually the one who excuses his rudeness sometimes and he’ll go “don’t speak for me”
-his friends are shocked when he finds out about you to say the least. But they adore you!!
-sooo super nice because of course. eventually as you all continue to get closer and they notice the subtle change in saikis demeanor when hes around you, the soft smiles and attentiveness, theyre genuinely so happy for the two of you
-you have to beg him for homework answers that he typically refuses to give you, saying you need to take responsibility for your work
-you do know about his powers; you have to if youre his partner
-and sometimes you cant help yourself by asking questions or asking him to show off sometimes
-but other than that youre respectful of his boundaries and leave him alone about it
-but maaaaybe sometimes he’ll be nice. like if you accidentally misplaced something of yours, he’ll use clairvoyance to find it and silently leave in somewhere you’ll find later
-cafe dates! Purposely makes sure to steer clear of places his classmates would visit to avoid attention
-surprise him with a sweet he likes (bonus points if its to cheer him up after his friends put him in a foul mood) and he’ll give you a brief kiss on your cheek <3
-his parents love you which he doesnt know if its a good or bad thing, because theyre constantly all over you, his dad teasing him all the time
-you’re always welcome in their house!
-something you wouldve never expected was saiki getting protective, but when it comes down to his brother, he cant help but be a little nervous, so he keeps you a lot closer when hes visiting or his family visits him and invites you to come along
-overall being in a relationship with saiki is surprisingly exciting, and though he isnt very vocal about it, its through his little actions that you can tell he appreciates having you in his life
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mynameisnotsoda · 27 days
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NOW INTRODUCING.... THE CRITTERS !!!
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Technically Corvid is still a part of an au, i really like everyone's designs so i guess its just like a weird little au that are also kinda ocs?? Idk. Im still tagging it as the animatronicfication au and using the other ccs names but im completely separating wilbur from Corvid.
The one that probably changed the most is simp LMAO i just went back to his old design that was inspired by Luna (@starrixle's transfem simpbur turned oc) and Spencer is such a fitting name in my mind i literally can not imagine him with a different name *bwomp*
Also I'm working on refs for the other characters associated with the respective critters! I wanna finish them all and dump them into one post and I'll link it here when I'm done.
ANYWAY INFODUMP TIME
Before we go into individual characters i want to say that this is absolutely Minecraft. Like. The world is built off of Minecraft lore yk !!!! The overworld will still be called the overworld but it's basically just earth, with more magic and humanoid species! Along with supernatural creatures and cryptids n stuff :D also with more advanced tech considering Corvid exists pFF
Spencer for the most part kinda was like he is in canon or whatever. She used to lean more towards incel ideology because she was REALLY insecure and uncomfortable with herself for the longest time. Despite that, Spencer and Adrianne (egirl) started dating when they were 17, his unhealthy obsession with her was only fueled by her unhealthy attachment to him. They needed each other and it wasn't good for either of them. Spencer had developed horrible separation anxiety which only made things worse. Over time Adrianne became suffocated by his constant neediness, overwhelming insecurity, short temper and lack of contribution to household chores. It pained her to leave, but things needed to change. It wasn't until the breakup that Spencer met Shepard, who was his first irl friend in a long time. They met when they were around 22/23, at first Spencer just used Shepard as a distraction from Adrianne, especially since he was surprised that they wanted to even be his friend in the first place. But after a while he genuinely started to enjoy their company, plus they offered him really good advice and helped him through a gender/sexuality crisis. Eventually they became partners! Maybe not romantically, as they're both aromantic, but life partners nonetheless.
OH and i did make Spencer white/Salvadoran. Her mom is the first generation from immigrant parents while her dad is British; And her dad's younger brother is Adam's dad! He's also an ex-christian, he left due to religious trauma and moved to America to escape his family hA
Spencer's also a no sabo kid LMAO (he knows some words/phrases but other than that he cant speak Spanish to save his life)
ALSO ALSO. Oh my god i could talk about Spence all day LMAO but i made him a werewolf !!!! Hes SOO jealous of Adam because she wanted the cat genes but instead got bitten and turned into a werewolf as a teenager. She's done a pretty good job at hiding it from her family so Shepard's the only one who knows.
I already dumped everything about Adam into that other post, so I don't really have much else to add. HOWEVER !! Him and Spence are cousins now :3 Adam doesn't get to meet Spencer in person until he moves to America with Charlie & co, but he does follow her socials with his secret accounts that his parents don't know about. The only reason they know they're cousins is because Spencer's dad told her so and she reached out! Much to the dismay of Adam's parents but they've secretly kept in touch online.
Keith's pretty much stayed the same apart from a slight design revamp. Although I've made him a little older since originally i made him look young. But then I decided hes a dad so i started drawing him older for the asks pFF he also has a hooked nose now! In case it's not obvious. Keith got married to Jean VERY young, they were maybe 17/18 in human years. It was an arranged marriage and their only goal was to have an heir to the throne. Well they did, they had two kids, the eldest being a boy named Lune and the youngest being a girl named Sunny, who's the would be heir. Until Jean took both the kids and left. It was completely unprompted and left everyone in the kingdom confused, especially Keith. Sure, they had a loveless marriage and maybe he was insufferable at times, but he wanted to make it work if not for the kids then for the kingdom! But its been almost a year since she left, he's lost hope in ever finding her. Keith desperately wants his kids back, not because Sunny is the rightful heir— though that is part of it—but he loves them both dearly. He misses them the most.
Wilfred has pretty much stayed the same as well! I did give him a grey tshirt and darker hair to further distance his design from wilbur though. Hes just as unhinged and immoral as he used to be !!!! Nothing has changed aside from appearance actually.
Tobi also pretty much stayed the same except for its now got an orange jumper and lighter brown hair pFF although i do now have a story for him! Tobi was found by Alejandro in a storage auction, he managed to sell a lot of pretty valuable things from there but Tobi stood out, obviously, so he kept it. Alejandro is a travel vlogger and lives in an RV with his friends: Tomas, Philip and Charles. His friends just call him Alex. Anyway, they go from town to town trying local food, visiting tourists traps and vlogging the journey! While doing that they also try to find out how to get Tobi's memories back and possibly turn him human again, if they even can. So far they haven't had much luck but maybe one day...
Corvid was created as the backup singer and lead guitarist of the first all animatronic band! Brought to you by Beloved Entertainment! The other members include lead singer Ranboo Beloved, keytarist Tommy Raccoon, and bassist James Tomcat. Located in Ranboo's Mega Pizzaplex, the only location in the world (so far). Corvid adopts a showman personality while on stage, hes charismatic and such a heartthrob, very popular with the ladies. Off stage he's very calm and soft spoken, he's rather shy but still manages to be a flirt and a tease. Lightly poking fun at his bandmates, coworkers and even guests at times. He's definitely a fan favorite for a reason!
This was so fun to write and i cant wait to share more !!!! Stay tuned !!!!!!
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heartfullofleeches · 11 months
Note
Reader taking eggnogg in a leash just because they are their little pet. Their pampered baby.
When you proposition the idea of buying them a leash, Elisha proposes a counter offer after deep consideration.
"Can I make it myself?...."
"Sure?" You couldn't see any harm in letting them do it- not with those puppy eyes.
Eggnog beams like a child on christmas, color flushed to their pale features as a smile splits their cheeks. Bolting for the stairwell at speeds supernatural for a figure of their size and stature, Eggnog knocks down several pictures frames in the hall, and articles of clothing from your closet as they ascend - a hairline fracture splitting the far wall of your living room ceiling as they trip somewhere along the narrow passage way to the attic. They regain their balance, mark the hole their horns left to repair later, and continue on their way.
Eggnog makes quick work of their homemade leash. Everything they needed was already close by, and most importantly you were waiting for them. A stuffed rabbit with an old shirt of yours sewn into the lining of its ears made up the base of their creation, some straps they had stored away stitched into its sided and adjusted according to their wide shoulders. They fashion the remanding strips into a leash which they attach onto the rabbit's left foot, finishing their masterpiece. The stitching was a tad sparse, but they trusted you and themselves enough to avoid causing the bunny harm. Eggnog takes a moment to sit back and kisses the plush's horns modeled after their own for their brave sacrifice - utilizing the opportunity to breath in the scent of you embedded in the fabric of your old tee.
Elisha returns to find you dozing off on the couch. They crotch beside you and wrap the leash around your wrists before gently shaking you awake, combing their hair over their shoulder as you stir. Once you're up and fully responsive; Eggnog turns so you can see the their backpack, reaching an arm behind them to give you a wave by use of the rabbit's paw. Their eyes grow big with question as they face you again.
"It's adorable, Eggs" You cup your hands beneath their chin, guiding their head into your lap as you raise one up to their horns. Eggnog stiffens as they normally did in the presence of comfort, but soon melts at the first stroke long the hollow bone. You hate to spoil the moment, but as they begin to purr you know the plans you made would have to be delayed if they fell asleep. You help them sit upright, wiping spit coated strands of hair from their cheek.
"Before you doze off let's go for a walk first. I'm sure you're tired from all the work you did, so once we get back we take a bath and head off to bed. How's that sound?"
The effect of your words is astounding. Eggnog is at the door before you get your shoes on. It's a good thing you let go of their leash first. They race out the door once you open it for them - redirecting right back to the house after making it halfway across yard to retrieve what they had forgotten. You help them get their sunhat on as Eggnog ties the leash around your wrist. They walk behind you this time, looking at you for lead into town.
At your heels is where they stay for the rest of your stroll. The anxiety of being outside quickly leaves them in favor of the joy being with you brings. They even have the courage to say hello to their fellow hybrids - if not to gloat for being the one you adore most. They are, aren't they? They haven't given you much choice given they lived in your attic, but you were as much theirs as they were yours. Eggnog bumps into you a few times as the realization hits them. It doesn't catch their guard until you stopped in front of two unfamiliar faces. The one holding the map is the first to speak while the other eyes Eggnog.
"Hi, we're just stopping in town looking for a lake nearby? Can either of you help us find it."
"Sure, I'll mark it on you map."
Eggnog picks at their lips as you walk over. No, no no- Who are these strangers, and why are they cutting in on your precious time together. Haven't they been through enough, don't they deserve this? Realistically it would've only taken you about a minute to help the tourist, but Eggnog needed you more - and now. They creep closer.
"home."
"Just a minute, Eggs."
Their chest presses against your back. "Now."
You look down as their arms slither around your waist, tying your hands together with their leash.
"Eggs?- Wha... EGGNOG!"
Shoving the duo aside, Eggnog flees the scene carrying you to their chest. You keep your screams to a minimum as despite their actions you know what it does to their ears. Eggnog darts into an alleyway and places you down to catch their breath. Before you can speak, their mop of messy hair distorts your vision as their lips snuff out your words. They force the leash into your hands as they rest their forehead against yours, noses brushed together.
"mine."
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manicpixiefelix · 2 months
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But, how would Felix and Vampire Reader meet? In a party? They were visiting his old friend Duncan? They had some business with Ser James that they needed to do?
Also; if little Felix saw them when he was a kid, I just know that he had a crush on them!
Okay so I've fucked around with supernatural creature lore a few different times with different fandoms, and I've mixed up yet another new version of vampires for this AU but it diverges pretty significantly from traditional vampire lore.
So in this version, Vampirism is essentially a genetic mutation that can also be passed on like an infection.
You can become a vampire by ingesting a vampire's blood. It has to be ingested; blood to blood contact (like if they bite you but they have a split lip or something) doesn't work, ingesting any other vampire bodily fluid also doesn't work (good news for people wanting to engage in foreplay with vampires and stay human). People turned this way will stay the age that they were turned until they are killed.
You can be born a vampire. Bitten vampires will have their DNA change to having two Vampire genes; vampirism is an inherently recessive gene. A vampire and a person without any vampire parents will have a human child with a dormant vampire gene. If two human people who both have the dormant vampire gene have a child, there is a 1/4 chance the baby will be a vampire. If a vampire and a human with a vampire gene have a child, there is a 3/4 chance the baby will be a vampire.
Born vampires are inherently more powerful than bitten vampires. The most powerful and rarest are those born of two full, born vampire parents.
While vampire venom is one of the many things that keeps humans coming back to them, some to the point of addiction, due to it's intoxicating qualities, especially when released in the blood stream (like when ur bitten on the neck), vampires themselves are inherently VERY allergic to any other vampire's venom. Whether it be on skin, ingested, or in the blood, it's immediately blisteringly painful (actual blisters do form if the venom comes in contact with the skin). Vampire blood and other fluids do not have this effect. Sad news for vampires looking to go down on other vampires, but as long as you don't kiss open mouthed you can still make a baby vampire that will be more powerful than either of you combined. Most vampires obviously don't bother.
All born vampires age at the same rate as humans, but stop aging at 25, once their brain is fully developed.
All this to say that I think the reader and Felix's meeting may even be a little more tragic than the original. They're still just a kid when they meet, but they're kept mostly isolated, especially from their parents, after their powers start properly developing. They're brought out pretty frequently at charity events to coerce patrons into adoring them and listening to them and spending more money when they ask. They're given lines and fake back stories and new personas to play; they're never allowed to tell anyone they're a vampire, especially since they're parents are still keeping up the illusion of being human. They're also not allowed to tell people about their parents still, because this would all look very bad for their parents, obviously.
Felix and Reader meet at the charity auction on the boat. They're both ten. For the first time in their life, the reader is desperately trying not to put out any kind of aura or charm or enthral anyone on the boat, even knowing their parents and "handlers" won't be too pleased about it.
Felix is the first person, they fully believe, to approach them of his own free will in what feels to them like forever. It takes a lot of concentration to keep their aura in check, so they know they come off quite strange, but they've never been allowed to be strange or off-putting before, and even so, Felix doesn't seem to mind.
Its also why they're so weird that first summer at Saltburn; they're working very hard to make the Cattons like them without using their aura and they're very new to that.
Duncan, who is Much Much older than even Saltburn estate itself, is the first to recognise why the reader is struggling, and ends up taking them under his wing. They do actually start off only drinking animal blood that the Cattons have delivered for him, and he's the one who gets them to eventually open up to the family about being a vampire.
The reader, however, isn't always perfect with controlling their aura, and is very worried about whether or not they've earned the affection they get. Except both big early moments/developments in their relationship with Felix (him asking them to bite him, and him telling them he loves them in a kind of childish, summer love way) happen (albeit over two years) when the reader has been making a very focused effort not to charm him with their powers, so they're SHOCKED. Flabbergasted even, that he could genuinely like them that much without any supernatural influence.
I love them possibly too much. God this was a ramble, sorry 😅😅
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sailoryooons · 10 months
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Break | ksj (m)
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☾ Pairing: Witch!Seokjin x cursed!reader
☾ Summary: Seokjin has been at your side for the last few years. He’s your closest friend, and the one person you don’t think you can live without. But what happens when you discover that he might be the source of the curse he’s been trying to help you escape from?
☾ Word Count: 18,990
☾ Genre: Supernatural, smut, angst
☾ Rating: 18+ Minors are strictly prohibited from engaging and reading this content. It contains explicit content and any minors discovered reading or engaging with this work will be blocked immediately. 
☾ Warnings: Death and implied accidental murder of a sibling, childhood trauma, creepy vibes, heavy angst, a lot of internal monologue featuring angst, physical and verbal abuse from members of the town toward reader, sometimes confusing mentions of magic systems, explicit language, explicit sexual content including vaginal fingering, nipple play, oral (m. receiving), rough fucking from behind, dom/sub dynamics if you rEALLY squint, subspace/blacking out post sex, unhappy and ambiguous ending!!!!!!
☾ Published: May 22, 2023
☾ A/N: Hi hello this is one of the most random things I’ve ever written. I made a last minute choice to nosedive into this fic at the last second, which was certainly a choice. While it’s not my favorite work because of how hard I struggle to write it, I have a feel people are going to like it regardless and I shouldn’t be so hard on myself about it. Once again, Hali writes way too much for a small project and doesn’t even dip into the lore the way she wanted to! Thank you to @here2bbtstrash who was the amazing beta on this and fixed easily over 200 errors that I made while rush typing this. I handed this over unedited and unread from myself and they put this through the wash to have it in tiptop shape! 
❀ A/N 2: M created their own Little Hut rhyme and I have opted to feature it here for reader’s enjoyment:
Little hut, little hut
Killer dick game
Little hut, little hut
All men is the same
Little hut, little hut,
Murdered your twin
Little hut, little hut
Time to fuck Jin 
❀ Disclaimer: All members of BTS are faces and name claims for this story. This is entirely a work of fiction and by no means is meant to be a projection, judgment or representation of real-life people. Any scenarios or representations of the people and places mentioned in works are not representative of real-life scenarios.
Masterlist | Ask | A Spring Offering Collab
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Seokjin is good at holding grudges. Even as a child, his mother always said he had a tough time letting things go. He never knew how right she would be. His mother’s words are all he can think about as he storms through the dark of the forest, shadows whispering about him as he looks for the lone hut in the very dark of the woods. 
Little hut, little hut
Hidden in the wood
Little hut, little hut
Up to no good
If his parents could see him now, he knows they would be broken. Tear-streaked and shaking, a lost boy alone in the woods and drowning in anger so hot that the ground scorches beneath his feet. Looking for a salve. Looking for vengeance. 
Little hut, little hut
Alone in the gloom
Little hut, little hut
Silent as a tomb
Blood witches are dangerous. Seokjin knows this, everyone knows this. A blood witch is the reason why his parents are dead and he is storming through the darkness in the throes of madness. But Seokjin is only thirteen and full of pain and desperation, vowing to never let something happen like this again. If he has to use a devil to defeat a devil, he will. 
Little hut, little hut
Across the dark stream
Little hut, little hut
Wait for the scream
A dark stream wends its way through the trees. Seokjin gets a running start and jumps across the whispering waters. When he lands on the other side, he waits. It took a lot of searching to find someone to tell him how to find the witch in the woods. No one comes here, especially not in the dead of night on Beltane. 
They say only evil comes from the little hut in the woods. Seokjin knows now that it isn’t true. Evil comes from anywhere and everywhere, even from the people that one least expects. Evil killed his parents. Evil is why he is alone, crying on the edge of the stream, waiting for the sound of a banshee's call. 
He hears it then. A one-note wail, thin and high-pitched. His blood goes cold and the fight in him nearly goes out at the sound. His heart begins to pound so loud that it’s all he can hear, the thundering beat of panic and terror as he realizes what he’s about to do. 
“Little hut, little hut,” a voice that he cannot see calls to him. There is no hut that Seokjin can see. Only omnipresent darkness, cloying the air in front of him. A tingle skitters over his arms and he becomes acutely aware of another presence there with him in the dark. “I call to thee. Little hut, little hut, come to me.” 
Seokjin blinks rapidly a few times and sees the outline of a hut in front of him. It has a blurry shape like it’s really the idea of a house. It’s so shadowed and opaque that he’s not entirely sure if it’s really there. He walks toward it anyway, one foot in front of the other, looking at the hut. 
If a home could be a phantom, he thinks this is what the hut is. There is a vibrational pull here, a dull buzz in his veins as he gets closer and closer to where the blood witch lives. His stomach turns and his instincts beg him to leave. There is evil in this place. He knows it. Can feel its oily presence like a poisonous slick in his veins. 
A door - or rather what he imagines is a door shape - stands open in the hut. Inside is eternal darkness like Seokjin has never seen before. The buzzing in his veins has become stronger, an itch he can’t scratch. A ringing in his ears. 
Sometimes to beat evil, you must use evil. So Seokjin steps into the house despite all the reasons he should turn around and run. Because he is alone, he is in pain, and he needs some sort of penance. Justice. 
So he asks the blood witch for a favor. 
Little hut, little hut
Hear my strife
Little hut, little hut
Ruin this life 
-
When the rock hits you right at the top of your spine, you know it isn’t an accident. All the same, you spin on your heel and look at the edge of the lake where the kids are skipping stones. They squeal and look away from you, huddled together as they giggle and look over their shoulders with frantic and excited faces. 
You clench your fists and keep going. What can you do to a group of kids? Tossing them into the lake while you’re an adult seems unfair, though it certainly crosses your mind. It isn’t necessarily their fault that they were taught to have such hate in their hearts at a young age, after all. 
So, you keep going, grinding your teeth as you march up the slope toward the main pathway that cuts through the park, gravel crunching beneath your feet as you quicken your strides to put distance between you and the cackling children. You’re not positive they won’t throw another rock at you, and you think that it might send you over the edge.
Early preparation for the Beltane festival is in full swing all over the park. There are trucks unloading carts and piecing together stalls, vendors and contractors with clipboards walking through spray painted grass with city officials, and a giant maypole waiting to be constructed. 
Living in a town of witchy folk can be fun, you suppose. The only downside is that most of the witches in your town despise you and think you’re an abhorrent blight to the earth. If killing and sacrifices hadn’t been outdated and frowned upon, you’re sure they would have stuck you to an altar as a child the first time you showed signs of being a leech. 
Leech. 
It’s an unkind thing to call witches who siphon magic. It isn’t something you can control - it isn’t even something you were born with. Most witches who siphon magic are born that way. A sort of magical defect in the way they interact naturally with the world. 
Most think of siphoners as a plague to the witch community. Thieves and monsters who can only feed on magic to make magic, a perversion of the natural balance of things. The way you look at it, witches who siphoned aren’t really any different from the natural order of the world. All living things need an energy source: food for animals, sun for plants, bacteria for amoebas. It isn’t different, really. 
Perhaps you would not be so kind to leeches, though, had you not began your existence as a siphoner at thirteen years old. 
It isn’t a night that you enjoy remembering, but it is certainly a night you can’t seem to forget. One moment you could command your magic like most other witches. Most, because you were a blood witch with raw talent and a powerful relationship with the earth’s energy. 
Blood witches were as revered as they were feared, witches who needed no spells. Who could use the magic within them instead of their connection with the earth to conjure. To blood witches, all other witches were leeches, really. You didn’t tell that to your coven, though you thought about the irony often. 
Your blood magic had vanished, though. It happened while you lay asleep in your bed, pressed up against your twin sister. Twins were a special thing in covens, a rarity in the magical order of the world that was seen as a good omen. There was a connection you shared with her deeper than the connection to your own magic, a bond that rooted the two of you together. That made you seek one another out for comfort. 
It had been storming that night and you had sought out the warmth of her bed and the vanilla sugar of her hair to soothe your nerves. You didn’t like storms and thunder very much, but she was wide awake in her bed, watching out the window as purple lighting cracked across the sky and thunder shook the house. 
You’d slipped into her bed without a word and she stood guardian over you, hand tucked in yours as she watched the sky light up. You remember her laying down next to you after the storm passed. The warmth of her breath on your cheek as she fell asleep. The hum between the two of you, soul recognizing soul.
She’d been dead by morning, magic siphoned and drained dry in the middle of the night. 
The memory of it is metallic in your mouth. You head toward your apartment, hands tucked into the pockets of your jeans, head down. Beltane always makes you think of your sister. Makes you think of the morning you woke up on your thirteenth Beltane to find her cold and dead, magical signature gone. Severed. Torn away from you. 
Losing your ability to generate magic was only second to losing your sister. You still feel adrift fifteen years later. Moving through the world with a piece of you missing. Two pieces of you, if you count the fact that you can feel the magic around you but not reach for it. You never reach for it, though you suspect that no one believes you.
Except maybe Seokjin. But even he doesn’t know the story of how you became what you are. All he knows is that you can’t create your own magic, and yet he’s never shamed you for it. Never turned his back on you, or berated you or bullied you. 
That sort of kindness is a rarity in your world.
Your small northeastern town is easy to navigate. There’s not much that happens that doesn’t immediately become the knowledge of all citizens, and there’s not really a way to get lost unless you’re a tourist coming to visit the country's spookiest and most magical town. The locals are pretty firm believers in magic, but the out of towners don’t really believe. They just want camp and kitsch. 
It’s busy season, the streets filled with people buying decorations to celebrate Beltane, restaurants full of tourists trying out local fare between going shop to shop. The festivals always draw a big crowd to your corner of the world, making it easier for you to blend in with all the rest of them. It almost makes you feel normal when someone doesn’t recognize you and immediately scowl. Sometimes you can even get away with eating at places that wouldn’t normally serve you, the workers too busy to really look at your face and see you. 
A few people have taken pity on you outside of Seokjin. Namjoon and Jimin would never turn you away, always welcoming you with open arms, a warm cup of tea and free books for as long as you like at their bookstore. You’re not technically allowed in the metaphysical store on Fourth, but as long as Yoongi is working, you can walk through the rows and rows of crystals, grimoires, spices and charms. Seokjin is where you’re really home, though, his bakery a place of safety and fresh-smelling sugar cookies. 
It’s where you go now, sticking to the shop windows and away from the tourists flowing all over Main Street like ants. There’s a line stretched out the door when you get to Magical Moon Bakery, and Jungkook looks helpless behind the counter as he nods while taking an order, wide-eyed and terrified. 
Seokjin is at the delivery counter, flour staining his cheek and brow as he nods politely and hands a box of cupcakes over to his customer. As though he can sense you, he lifts his head and swivels, eyes scanning until they land on you, immediately shining. Your stomach leaps the way it often does around him, especially when he breaks out into a beautiful smile and jerks his thumb at an apron.
You roll your eyes. You’re not technically an employee at the bakery, but you help often enough that you tease Seokjin sometimes that he should start paying you. You never mean it, of course. Your reward is his unearned and unlikely friendship, and the fact that his friends have taken you in even when other covens have turned their backs on you. 
Perhaps if he’d grown up here he’d hate you. It’s a thought you have often, even when you’re pulling the loop of a lavender apron over your head and tying it around your waist. You can’t imagine Seokjin ever hating you for no reason, but sometimes you wonder if he had the influence of the other kids of your town if it would be different. 
“Can you take over the order counter?” he asks, the blush on his face the only sign that he’s getting a little frazzled. You nod and he winks at you, leaning over to press a quick, chaste kiss on your cheek. “Worldwide best friend.”
“Mhmm,” is the only response you manage to string together, flustered by his proximity. 
It’s no secret that Seokjin is one of the best looking men in town. Even among witches, who are unnaturally beautiful to begin with, he stands out. Dark, silky hair swept back off of his forehead, dark eyes with a spark of caramel right around the pupil, lips full and lush like Aphrodite, and a face molded from the finest clay, glazed and perfected. 
Loving him isn’t hard. He’s as kind as he is beautiful, and Seokjin is silly. Able to make you laugh and draw you out of the melancholy that is permanently affixed on your person. It’s been that way since you met in your early twenties right after he moved to town, and you’re grateful for it. 
Even if loving him is pointless. He can never be yours - would never want to be yours in that way, anyway. 
So you settle for less. Settling for crumbs is what you’re good at. What people think you deserve, being the little leech that you are. 
No one you’re serving at the bakery knows you’re a leech, though. All they know is that they are eager to try the best baked goods in town, wondering at the menu as each item has a list of things it’s good for. Rose scones to make someone fall in love, marshmallow fluff cupcakes to soften the blow of bad news, gumdrop cakes to summon rain. 
Everything on the menu has a charm to it, both literally and figuratively. Seokjin is wildly creative in his carefully crafted menu, and he imbues magic in everything he makes from the eggs to the whipped frosting. 
Being here is nice. Jungkook grins when he sees you behind the counter, happy for the help. He still gets overwhelmed behind the till, and he’s more than happy to step back and chew his lip nervously when he processes a discount wrong. You’re up next to him before he can ask for help, typing on the screen while gently walking him through it again.
Jungkook is a good kid, an elemental witch who is prone to cause rainstorms when he gets stressed. For now, he is a bottle of sunshine, thanking you shyly and letting you know that he saved you a bag of butterscotch cookies in the back. 
“I put in a little extra sunshine,” he promises. By that, you know that he means magic. To give you. You open your mouth to scold him but he shakes his head furiously, long, wavy locks shaking. “I wanted to do it. Please don’t yell at me.”
That gets you. It’s hard to be mad at him, especially when anger is likely to set him off into a rainstorm. Jungkook’s round eyes are pleading and he pouts, a tactic you know he has learned from his boyfriend to use as a weapon. You think about sending Taehyung some choice text messages but instead, thank Jungkook for the cookies and continue to help him.
This is what keeps you going most days. The unfettered kindness that Seokjin and his friends show you. None of them are locals to town, but they had formed their own coven a little at a time, a circle under the broad umbrella of the town's overall witch population.
Covens are difficult. You’re both in and not in Seokjin’s coven, an unofficial member by friendship. But you don’t practice anymore - won’t let yourself - so you’re on the outside looking in most weekends and during spiritual times of the year. 
But by witch standard, you are a part of the covenstead of the town, the larger collective of witches who are loyal and responsible for one another, all answering to the high priestess. Who has begrudgingly let you stay as a member of the covenstead for the sheer fact that you’re her niece and nothing more. 
When the rush of customers and crinkling to-go bags slows, you lean against the counter and reach a hand out just as the door to the back swings open. Seokjin has a glass bottle of soda ready for you, and he blinks  in surprise when he sees your hand ready for it. You’re a little surprised as well. Though you have no magic on your own, you still sometimes predict things before they happen. Or at least, your instincts do.
“It’s freaky when the two of you do that,” Jungkook comments, eyes bouncing between you and Seokjin as the older hands you the bottle. “You’re always so in-tune.”
“She’s a witch,” Seokjin snorts, leaning against the glass case of mostly empty dishes as he takes a swig of his own. “Divination and all that is sort of what we do.” 
“Yeah, but it only happens with you.”
You don’t meet Seokjin’s eyes as you swig from the bottle, the carbonation fizzing on your tongue. “I can’t help it that I inspire magical abilities,” is Seokjin’s answer. Always deflecting. You're grateful for the way he rolls with the punches, easily accepting the way others talk about you two as an item so you don’t have to. “Plus, even witch-adjacents have the ability of foresight.” 
What he doesn’t say is that even in your dishonored position as a siphoner, you can get sensations and feelings. While you can sense magic and you’re still in tune with the world around you, Jungkook is right: you only have this sense of knowing with Seokjin, like there is a tiny string of fate connecting the two of you.
When it’s time to close down the shop, you help the two of them out. Seokjin goes to the back to begin batching things anew: fondant, bread, frosting - anything that he can let sit overnight or prep while the lights are out and he’s gone home. You focus on cleaning with Jungkook, letting him put on a pop playlist while he sings along, siren voice lulling you into a steady rhythm. 
Part of you wants to ask what they’re doing for Beltane. Celebrating the holidays use to be your favorite, threading flowers through your hair, blessing your hearth and home, weaving new spells of prosperity and happiness alongside your sister. Now you don’t participate in any of the rituals with the others. 
Most of the time, you celebrate alone in your room. Mark the points of the elements and the compass on your bedroom floor alone. Sit in front of a single candle, watching the flame flicker as you draw your circle of salt, murmuring blessings. It isn’t a powerful place of practice and you have no alter to command, but it's something. It’s yours. 
Instead of asking, you follow Seokjin and Jungkook out of the door on the promise of dinner. It is the one thing that does feel like a ritual you’re allowed to participate in, holding chapel at Seokjin’s dining room table and elbowing with Jimin and Taheyung to reach for the food piled high. 
Evening sky stretches overhead as you walk between Seokjin and Jungkook. You cast your eyes upward, watching the gray clouds float by. Seokjin throws an arm around you, pulling you in close and squeezing you to his side. He smells like vanilla and sweet orange from making his tangerina vanilla cakes for Yoongi. You breathe in his scent, letting it wash through you like a balm. 
His arm presses a little too hard on the bruise where the rock from earlier nailed you, and you hiss, reaching behind your head automatically to adjust his hold on you. 
“What?” he asks, lifting his arm and slowing his gait. Seokjin’s face is picture-perfect concern, mouth tilted downward, a crease in his brows. Before you can explain, his hands are pulling at the collar of your shirt. “You’ve got a welt here, what the hell is that?”
You smack at his hands and step away from him, pulling his warm fingers from your shirt. “It’s nothing.”
“Whenever you say ‘it’s nothing’ it's always something. Why do you have a lump on the top of your spine?”
Dancing away from him, you grab Jungkook who grunts, mouth full of corn chips as you shove him between you and Seokjin. More unhappy noises come from the youngest as Seokjin grabs for you but you squeak and use Jungkook’s broad body to block him again. 
“Yah!” Seokjin yells, reaching both arms around either side of Jungkook to grab you. He manages to get one of your arms, pulling you toward him - and by default, Jungkook - and keeps a firm grip while you swat and fight back. 
“Nooo!” Jungkook howls between the two of you, adding to the chaos as he shoves both of you away from him. “Stop using me as a battering ram! I’m going to drop my chips! Guys!” 
“Tell me why you have a wound!”
“It isn’t a wound!”
“It’s a type of wound!”
“Ugh let my arm go, hulk!”
“Stop hissing at me like a rat!”
Jungkook drops his bag of chips and lets out a long, forlorn wail. “My chiiiiiiiiips!” 
After a struggle, you manage to shake Seokjin off of you, taking a few steps back as you huff angrily, fists at your side. Seokjin sidesteps Jungkook who is pouting and looking at the ground, wavy bangs falling in his eyes as he stares at the spilled corn chips. Seokjin makes it worse by stepping on them, earning a shriek from Jungkook that goes ignored.
“Did someone hurt you?”
A rumble rolls through the sky from up above. You cast your gaze upward, looking at the clouds that are a little more swollen than they were a few minutes ago. You can sense the static in the air, a promise of lightning if you don’t diffuse Seokjin’s anger quickly. 
Similar to Jungkook, Seokjin is sensitive to the elements. Where Jungkook has an affinity for the sky and the rain, Seokjin has a lot more skill with fire. Still, Seokjin is a powerful witch and his rage on more than one occasion has disturbed the sky and the lake in the middle of town. 
It’s partly the reason he works so hard on never getting angry. 
“It’s nothing, Jin,” you answer softly, eyes pleading. You desperately want him to drop it. Part of you is honored that he cares, but the other half of you can’t bear the way he looks at you. “Please drop it.”
“Someone hurt you. Again.”
Thunder echoes across the sky. Jungkook looks upward. “That isn’t me, even though I am mad about my chips.”
“Jin, it isn’t a big deal. Please.” You glance upward, thunder rolling again. “You’re going to make it rain.”
“I’ll make it do more than that when I find out who did it.”
“They were just kids, Jin. You can’t-”
He swears loudly and there’s a flash of lightning above your head. It makes you think of that night with your sister, laying in bed to let the storm pass. You clap your hands over your ears and squeeze your eyes shut, automatically crouching to make yourself small. 
Behind your shut eyes, you try not to let the memories come. Try not to imagine the vanilla scent of her hair, warm hands on your skin turned cold the next morning. You block out the screams, the way your mother shoved you away and your father yelled and yelled and yelled.
Above, the thunder stops. The rain doesn’t fall, and the air pressure returns to normal. Shivering, you crack an eye open to look at Seokjin, terrified at what you might find. His anger is so rare but flips on a dime, catching you off guard any time it happens. 
Jungkook is murmuring in Seokjin’s ear now, voice hushed and urgent. Seokjin’s eyes become unfocused as he nods, Jungkook’s hands grasping the older’s biceps firmly. When Seokjn’s eyes find yours over Jungkook’s shoulder, they’re fathomless. Endless pools of black and something else that you can’t decipher as he murmurs something back to Jungkook, who steps away.
Licking his lips, Seokjin offers you a hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m sorry.” 
You swallow thickly. Reach out a tentative hand. “It’s okay.”
“You know I would never hurt you?”
Of course you know that. You aren’t afraid of Seokjin or the power he holds. You aren’t afraid of what he can do. You are afraid of the memories that nip at your heels like a pack of jackals, waiting for you to grow weak and fall before they attack. You are afraid of the way that it makes you feel when he cares about you. 
“I know that,” you murmur, letting him pull you to your feet. “It’s just the thunder, that's all.”
His smile is soft. “I know, I’m sorry.” He squeezes your hand. It’s a perfect fit, your palm in his. His skin buzzes with magic and you’re careful not to take any, always keeping your guard up so that you can never siphon again. “Let’s go home, yeah?”
-
Home isn’t the small apartment on the west side of town that you keep by yourself. Home is Seokjin’s two-story house in the suburbs made of brick and mortar. It’s the crowded dining room with eight chairs pulled close to the wooden table and a chandelier full of burner candles and incense. It’s Seokjion’s cat familiar running yowling down the corridor as Yoongi’s maine coon chases it, hissing. 
Home is seven witches who don’t care that you can’t generate your own magic, all of them laughing and pushing empty plates toward the middle of the table where Namjoon collects them with a snap of his fingers, the cutlery lifting and stacking neatly with the soft click of ceramic. 
Bloated and overly satiated, you lean back in your chair, sighing heavily. Yoongi is next to you, quiet and staring off into space the way that he often does. Next to him, Jimin and Namjoon have their heads bowed together whispering, a blush flushing across Namjoon’s wine-glazed expression and tops of his ears. 
Namjoon and Jimin strike something in you. A longing that tugs at your heart strings, drawing your gaze to the man sitting on the other side of you. Seokjin is leaning back in his chair, arm stretched over the back of your seat as he yawns mid-conversation with Hoseok. 
Seokjin is barely touching you, but just the warmth of his arm is enough to make you dizzy. It’s barely there, just against the top of your back. You lean into him a little, resting your head on top of his arm. He maneuvers his hand to scratch the top of your head lightly. It feels so nice that your eyes flutter shut, letting him play with your hair as the noise in the room drifts to a dull buzz. 
In another life, you think that this touch could be something more. Sometimes, you let yourself wonder if it is. Let yourself pretend that maybe Seokjin’s lingering gaze and lingering hand is more than the platonic affection he has for you. 
It’s a silly dream. 
When the dishes are washed and the others have said their goodbyes, it’s just you and Seokjin leaning against the counter in the kitchen. He has a glass of wine, sipping it thoughtfully as you put the cork back in the wine bottle. When you meet his gaze, you see something there. Hesitance. Anxiety. 
Seokjin chews on his lips and swishes the wine in his glass. The red arches elegantly along the sides of the glass, slowly dripping back down to pool in his cup. You remember once at a winery you could measure the legs or something when swishing wine in a glass to learn some small factoid about the wine, but it’s far from your memory now.
“What’s wrong?” you ask, taking a sip of your own. It’s a strong mulled wine with notes of cherry, you think. “You look nervous.”
“I wanted to talk to you about something.” 
Your heart beats hard once. Then twice. Speeds up. Instead of answering right away, you take a sip of your wine, mind running through all of the things you think he might say. Maybe this is it, he’s going to tell you that you can’t come around as much. That though you’re his best friend, you have to stay away from his coven. 
Instead, Seokjin says, “You know I’ve looked into your situation.” You wince when he says it but he pushes forward, leaning off the counter as he grows eager. “You said you weren’t always a siphon, that you could control your own magic as a child. I’ve been researching similar cases, and there is a lot of evidence that supports that it might be a magical block.”
“Jin.”
“Look, I’m happy with the way you are. There’s nothing wrong with you. But I know that you aren’t happy with it.” His jaw flexes. “And I care about your happiness. I just… Yoongi and I have been reading up on rituals to release magical blocks, and with Beltane in a few days, we thought…”
Warmth bubbles in your chest. You know how much this means to him, trying to help you. To free you from the burden that you carry with you wherever you go. This is not the first time he has brought up trying to figure out your ailment. Your situation. And though you’re glad he cares about you enough to try, there is something humiliating about it. 
“You don’t have to decide tonight,” Seokjin murmurs. You look up at him and his gaze is soft. Vulnerable. “But if you want us to try, we discussed it. And our circle is strong enough to try it on Beltane.”
Licking your lips, you nod once. “I’ll think about it. Thanks for thinking of me.”
“I’m always thinking of you.” You give him a look and he smiles, a little sad. “What? I am.” 
“Stop trying to be charming. I’ll only say yes if I want to.”
“I have no doubt about that. However, it is impossible for me to stop my charm. It is a natural gift.”
You roll your eyes. “Along with your insufferable humor.”
“There is nothing insufferable about me. Especially with Yoongi around.” 
You don’t push the argument. Seokjin grins again before opening a drawer in his kitchen, pulling out a small, cloth bag. There’s a green ribbon tying the top of it shut, and you smell the herbs inside of it immediately: cedar, bay leaves, mugwort. 
Seokjin holds the bag out to you and you frown, taking it. It’s weighted with crystals. You squeeze the bag a little, feeling the crunch of crystal fragments and herbs. There is a vibration that travels from your fingers up your arms and you feel a sense of solid warmth.
“A protection bag,” you deadpan. “Really?”
“Hmm?”
“I don’t need this.”
“The welt on your neck says otherwise.”
“Please stop!” Your voice is loud in the empty kitchen. He pulls up short, leaning against the counter and watching you with wide eyes, lips parted slightly. You sigh deeply and close your eyes for a moment, calming yourself before you open them and say, “I don’t mean to yell, it’s just - it’s hard when I feel like all of you coddle me. It’s humiliating.” 
“It wasn’t my intention. I’d never want to make you feel that way.”
“I know.”
You do know. The intentions are good, but you can’t help the raw, venomous edge of frustration. It makes you feel less than, this constant need to help you. To do things for you. 
“I don’t want to be a problem that everyone feels like they need to solve. There’s more to me than being the covenstead’s leech.”
“You know that isn’t how we think of you.”
You give a frustrated noise. “Then please. Let me ask for help when I need it.” 
Seokjin is quick to catch the protection bag when you toss it back to him. He nods silently, eyes fixated on the floor. It feels like a hot stone has been dropped in your stomach, burning and weighing you down. How quickly a good dinner has turned sour, how the light air between the two of you has gone cold. 
“Thank you for dinner. And for looking into a way out of this,” you gesture wildly to yourself. He nods, but there’s no mirth in his face. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Yeah of course. Let me know about… you know.” 
“Yeah. Yeah.”
That night, you have trouble sleeping, just like that night when you were thirteen years old. 
-
The back door to Shadow Metaphysical opens, creaking as Yoongi sticks his head out. His long hair is styled behind his ears and he’s in a soft-looking black sweater and jeans. He smiles when he sees you, gentle and kind as he opens the door a little wider, beckoning with his head to enter. 
Slipping through the back door, you enter a dark office. It’s only lit by candles spread over various shelves and desks, and a few hovering candles near the ceiling. It’s warm and cozy, and you spot Yoongi’s familiar napping on the chair pulled up to the desk where a computer shows some sort of accounting system. 
Yoongi leads you to the front of the store. It’s closed for the evening and he has receipts and cash laid out on the counter as he balances his drawer for the day. The shop has tall ceilings and is lined with rows and rows of dark shelving. The lighting here is not powered by candles or magic, but rather golden cafe lighting strung on the ceiling.
Shadow Metaphysical is one of your favorite places. It smells different each time you go in, the magic and the herbs and the spells inside of its four walls shifting with the energy of its employees and customers at all times. Today, it smells like night rain and crackling lightning. 
Wordlessly, Yoongi gestures at the shelving, signaling to do whatever you need. He busies himself with going back to counting bills, head down and trusting you not to steal anything. Not that he would care, as he’s always emphasized he has no problem not taking your money.
Still, you always pay him, especially since he lets you in after hours where no one can yell at you for being inside. The covenstead has barred magical stores from siphoners, convinced that they would cross the threshold and drain the shops of magic. 
It isn’t true, though you can feel the ebb and flow of open magic sources around you. You’re not here for magical purposes, specifically. There are things you can buy yourself and keep in your apartment to ground you to the earth, and there are still rituals and practices that you keep up with, even as your connection is severed.
As you pass rows and rows of books on rituals, you think about Seokjin’s offer to help you figure out your block. It wouldn’t be the first time you tried and failed to figure out what happened. With magic, the point of origin is always the key to any spell. The how and the where of your condition are important elements to figuring out the solution, but no one really knows the how and the where. 
Your friends don’t have full clarity on that night. You’ve never told them in explicit detail of how you woke up, full of your sister’s magic. The town calls you a kin killer and a leech, so you’re sure they know enough to know the source of your hesitation is violent and personal. 
Still, you slow as you pass a grimoire. The runes on it shine gold when you pause, winking at you, begging you to touch it. You feel the whisper of the spells of dozens of witches inside of it, their phantom fingers brushing down your arms. Your spine. You shiver and look away from the book, pressing on to the herbs section.
It would be nice not to feel the lure of power. Not to feel the itch and the cunning voices of magic begging you to use them use them use them use them-
“Stop,” you growl out loud. You don’t know who you’re talking to - yourself, the magic in the store, the universe. Taking a deep breath, you gather your wits and complete your shopping, moving with a robotic pace around the store to get what you need.
At the register, Yoongi gives you a wary look as you set things down on the counter. He takes his time scanning them, glancing at you occasionally. You can sense he wants to ask a question, dark eyes lingering a few times. That’s the thing about Yoongi, though. He’ll never ask, he’ll just wait until you give up.
Which you do, sighing and saying, “Ask.”
His lips twitch as he bags a few jars of thorns. “How often do the books in here talk to you?” You level a stare at him and he rolls his eyes. “I can hear you. And every time you’re in here, it’s like they all turn to look at you. Is it often?”
“Yeah,” you admit. “Since it happened, there’s always been a pull or like magical objects to taunt me.” You chew your lip and rub your sweaty palms on your jeans. “It’s worse around the sabbat holidays.”
“Stronger magic.”
“Yeah.”
“Did Jin explain what ritual we talked about?” You shake your head. He pushes over a paper bag filled with all your things and you hand over your card. As he swipes it, Yoongi explains. “Two smaller rituals wrapped into one. Namjoon found a really old binding ritual that was used to form a bridge between multiple rituals.”
“So like when you chain spells together,” you offer. “Impressive. I guess that would be used for improving upon old rituals?”
“Yeah, exactly that. Seokjin had been doing some research on magical blocks and shit, and found one that locates a point of origin of the block whether it’s internal or external.” 
“External?” He nods. “Like a curse?”
“Yes. Any reason anyone would want to curse a thirteen-year-old?” 
Yoongi phrases it like a joke and chuckles. But you don’t laugh, stilling as you think about his question. Your immediate answer is no, at thirteen there was certainly nothing you could have done to be cursed. But you think about your parents, thinking about the fear revolving around their gifts for blood magic, think about the way they were always regarded with equal parts fear and reverence as coven leaders.
Curses aren’t common. It would take a coven of extremely skilled witches to curse someone, but it could take a single very skilled blood witch to toss one. Hexes aren’t long-term and are far more manageable, but you think about the way your power vanished, the way you bled your sister dry. 
The misery you’ve faced since, the loss of your parents shortly after, the hatred from the covenstead. 
“Holy shit, you don’t think you’re cursed, do you?” Yoongi’s question brings you out of your daze. All of the amusement has been wiped clean from his expression, eyes deadly serious. “Who would curse a child?”
“People were really afraid of my parents,” you admit. “My mom used to lead the covenstead here, you know?” That surprises him and you nod, chewing on the inside of your cheek. “Yeah, before my aunt. She isn’t a blood witch. My mom was and led the covenstead until um - my sister died.”
“I never knew that. No one talks about it.”
There is a question there. Yoongi won’t say it outright, but you sense the curiosity nonetheless. You feel your throat constrict a little as you murmur, “She stepped aside when my sister died. It was more political than anything, but no one talks about it out of respect for my aunt.”
“But still, to curse a child?”
“There was…” You think back to the time when you were thirteen. Those days are painted so painfully when you think about them that it is hard to remember anything else. “My parents were involved in the Trials that were going on at that time. Hunting Dissenters.”
Yoongi’s face darkens. “I see.”
“They had a lot of enemies. So maybe… I don’t know.”
For a few moments, Yoongi doesn’t say anything. He busies himself with packing away the rest of the till and waving his hand, dousing all the lights in the store with ease. There’s a little pang as he does it, such simple magic that costs him nothing. That you have no access to.
“Well,” Yoongi sighs, a little awkwardly. “Think about it. If - and it’s unlikely - that someone cursed you, you’ll know if we go through with the ritual.” He pauses and levels you with a look. “It is dangerous though. So consider the risk before you agree, hmm?”
You nod and thank him. He leads you out of the store and gives you an awkward smile goodbye. Never affectionate, but always polite and warm nonetheless. 
Sunset-purple skies stretch above you. It smells like fresh rain and earth outside. Town is quieter now that the evening crowd has finished dinner and gone home or back to their accommodations for the evening. You pass places with patio seating and small diners tucked between stores, wary eyes of the workers following you as you walk down the sidewalk. 
No one says good evening. Some don’t look at you at all. 
Curse. 
The word weighs heavy on you. You’d never considered that your condition could be from a curse before, but now that you think about it, you can’t stop the thoughts racing through your mind. 
The Trials had been a scary time for witches, Dissenters leaving covensteads to start their own, dark and forbidden spellwork becoming more and more popular among covens. Your parents - especially your mother and her sister - had been a huge part of cleansing the covenstead from witches who practice dark magic.
Especially the few blood witches. 
You had been a blood witch, though. Like your sister, like your mother. People had always been wary of them, which is why your mother worked so hard to get rid of the Dissenters when she was the head priestess. 
They give us a bad name, she would say darkly when you and your sister asked why she was getting rid of witches like you. Like her. In times like this, we have to work extra hard to prove we aren’t evil. 
And then you bled your sister dry. Drained her magic until she couldn’t fight you back and you woke up to that feeling of her cold hands on your overwhelmed skin. Your mother had never really looked at you the same after that, stepping down as the high priestess immediately. 
You suspect she protected you in the only way she could. Disallowing you to use magic of any sort, placing hard restrictions on how you could live, outlawing you from spaces where you had grown up. It was better than death. 
At least, you used to think so. 
Yoongi’s words weigh heavy on you as you sit in your apartment alone. You don’t bother to put the TV on, knowing that you won’t be able to pay attention to anything. Magic always comes at a price, and two rituals wrapped into one is going to take a toll. 
And yet, you think about getting to the bottom of this sickness, this curse. This inability to do anything but steal magic, to leech off of others. You think about how your magic used to feel, the way you could command fire with a snap of your fingers or make stars fall from your bedroom ceiling. 
An ache settles in your chest as you lay back on the couch and close your eyes, throat tight and eyes burning. You have been without magic for so long. Part of you thinks what's a little longer? But deep down, you crave it. The spark, the life, the touch of magic. 
You want to be able to enter stores without the itch underneath your skin, an addiction you can’t cure nor divulge in. You want to be able to be a part of a community again, to do rituals with Yoongi and Jungkook and Seokjin. You want to be able to help him in his bakery, imbuing his scones and cupcakes with love and a little spark of something extra. 
Tears flow hot on your face. You know what you want, and you know that it’s going to cost you to get it. You know that to do this, you’ll have to be open and honest, because there are only two possible options for your magic block: you are cursed or you have a mental block. 
It’s hard to know if being cursed as a result of your parents’ policing is worse than potentially having an internal block, an innate refusal to do magic because of what you did. 
That night sits at the back of your mind like a stone, sinking sinking sinking. Pulling you under as you think about it in explicit detail. Maybe you simply killed your twin. A horrible accident, but perhaps it was just you. Your magic. Your fault. 
And your magic had fled because of it, a self-inflicted punishment. 
Before you’re aware of what you’re doing, you have the phone in your hand, sniffing and wiping your tears with the back of your hand. Your face feels swollen and sticky with tears and overwarm and it’s hard to get a breath as you press the phone to your ear, listening to the ringing.
Seokjin picks up on the fourth ring, his voice cheery. “What, did Yoongi forget to let you in the store?”
“No.”
“I’m coming now,” Seokjin says, completely forgoing humor when he hears you sniff, hears the waver in your voice. “Are you home?”
“Yeah.”
“Did anyone hurt you?”
“No,” you hiccup. “I’m just really sad and I don’t want to be alone.”
“I’ll be there in ten. Do you want to stay on the phone?” You shake your head and let out a little sob. Something about knowing he’s coming over to be with you cracks your resolve a little more. You realize he can’t see you when he prompts, “Hey, you there?”
“Sorry, no. Drive safely, please.”
“For you? Anything.”
Despite your tears, your mouth wobbles into a weak smile at that. It makes your heart squeeze just a little, underneath all the hurt. 
It doesn’t take him long to let himself in the apartment. You can sense him before he even gets to the stairs leading up to your unit, his crackling energy like a beacon to you. When he opens the door with the key you gave him, he fills the space with static, magic snapping and tinged with worry. 
Magic always belies how Seokjin feels. Like now, as he rushes across the apartment, he is lightning, all energy and anxiety popping and snapping as he sits on the couch next to you, pulling you into his chest. 
Seokjin is warm and smells like vanilla and sweet orange from the bakery. It’s soothing. You close your eyes and clutch the hem of his shirt, resolve cracking the rest of the way as he becomes your anchor as you drift out to sea, holding you so that you can be lost in the overwhelming feeling of loss without getting too far. 
He doesn’t tell you not to cry. He doesn’t ask what’s wrong. Seokjin leans back on the couch, pulling you into his lap, holding your knees so that he can hold you. One hand rubs your back and he rests his chin on the top of your head, leading you to use the crook of his neck as a place to hide - and turn into a waterfall for your tears. 
This is what you love about Seokjin though. He doesn’t pry. He just lets you use him, lets you cry it out and he waits. 
When the tears begin to dry and you find it easier to breathe again, you shift away from Seokjin and wipe your face. He smiles down at you, eyes glittering and expression so fond that you find yourself staring blankly into his face.
“I’m sorry,” you sniff. “And thank you for coming.”
“Anything for you.” You hate the way it makes your heart flip when he says that. You start to pull away from him to sit on the couch properly but his arms constrict you, keeping you to him. You frown but he asks, “I want to know what happened, if you’re ready to talk about it.”
Seokjin is so close his breath fans your face. You look up at him. Silky, long lashes that you could individually count with your proximity, beautiful tan and smooth skin with a glow all witches have, strong brows that you always thought made Seokjin’s face the perfect balance of boyish and beautiful. 
Your heart starts to speed up and your mouth dries out with the way he looks at you, intense and searching. Suddenly you’re afraid if he looks too hard, he’ll see down to your core. 
“I- yeah. I need some water,” you croak, pulling away. He lets you go this time, unaware that what you really need is space between the two of you, a barrier so he can’t see. So he won’t know. “Turns out sobbing makes you thirsty.” 
Before you can get all the way to the kitchen, there’s a soft clink accompanied by a full glass of water on your counter. You glare at Seokjin over your shoulder and he winces and shrugs in apology. 
As you gulp down mouthfuls of cool water, you wonder how to word exactly what you’re upset about. How you’re tired of existing in the world without your magic but you’re also unsure if you want to know the truth about why your magic left you. 
Seokjin is iffy on the details about the night your sister died. He’s never asked you explicitly for the story before, but if you want to go through with finding out the root cause of your block, you know you’ll be exposed. To him. To all of them. To his coven.
The desire to be one of them is so strong that it makes your knees weak as you walk toward the couch. You sit abruptly on the couch arm, staring into the distance as you drink the rest of the water. You want to join them so much, to celebrate the sabbat holidays, to feel the rush of a closed circle of magic and yet…
Would they accept you if they knew you killed your sister? You’re not so sure. 
You look at Seokjin. He waits patiently, watching you with soft eyes. Moonlight seeps in through the blinds behind him, wreathing him in silver light. He looks like a god, then. Of shadows, of night, of mystery. This best friend of yours who you love so much and who has loved you indiscriminately when he didn’t have to. 
“I talked to Yoongi about maybe doing the ritual,” you start slowly. Seokjin nods, encouraging you. “And I think I came to the conclusion that I want to do it. I’m tired of feeling everyone’s magic pull at me, like a vice that I have to ignore every day. And I’m tired of wanting to do things I used to, to feel the world around me. But most of all, I just want to be a part of something. A part of a coven, a family.”
Understanding paints Seokjin’s face. He reaches a hand out and takes yours, giving you a firm squeeze. “You know even with no magic, you’re our family, right?”
“It’s different.” He starts to protest but you shake your head. “I want to be in a coven and to feel the power of a circle. I want to celebrate and do rituals with you, I want to be a part of something magical. I can’t do that like this, not without the fear of draining everyone.”
He nods. “Of course. We’ll have you either way, you know? We’d still welcome you like this.”
“But I’d never be able to close your circle.” Seokjin nods. He knows the truth of this. “But this ritual requires truth, and there’s some things about me that I’ve never talked to you about. Things about the night I… I could no longer do magic. I want you to be informed, to know what we might find if we do this.”
“Only if you want to tell me.”
“A coven and a working circle requires trust and honesty. I can never be one of you if you don’t know me completely.” 
He nods. “That is true.” 
“I’m going to tell you about the night that my sister died.” He squeezes your hand and nods, but says nothing else. “My sister and I were twins, both blood witches. Unusual enough for our parents and the covenstead to be incredibly proud of us, but not unusual enough for people to be afraid, you know?”
“Twins… That’s incredibly powerful.”
“Yeah,” you agree, throat tight. “We were really fond of the connection too, you know? It was nice to always have someone to rely on who was my perfect balance. We were never-” You take a breath. “Neither was more powerful than the other. There was never any jealousy or overpowering the other. We were always evenly matched.” 
“Whenever it would storm,” you continue. “I would go lay in her room. I hated storms but she loved them. I did this countless times up until we were thirteen. I don’t know… Jin, I don’t know what was different that night. I think back to it every single day, what did I do differently, was there an object I touched, a spell I used? And I come up with nothing. But on Beltane when we were thirteen, it was storming. We’d already finished the festival and our parents were out doing their duties and I went and I fell asleep in her room and… and I woke up…”
For a moment, you can’t get the words out. They get trapped in your throat and you stare, unseeing. You imagine the lightning against the window. The warmth of your sister's hands. The tree tap tap tapping against the window with the strength of the wind.
“I drained her in the middle of the night,” you whisper. It’s out now and you can’t stop, can’t look at Seokjin’s face to see his reaction. “I went to sleep as normal and when I woke up, she was freezing and lifeless and I felt more powerful than I ever had before. Like I was this magical battery charged up and sparking.” 
For a moment, you pause and look at Seokjin. You expect to see horror or disgust or a variety of negative emotions, but he’s still watching you. Fond. Waiting. No judgment. When he sees you staring, he gives you a tiny smile and a squeeze of your hand. 
“I’m still listening.” 
“Aren’t you…” You trail off and shake your head. “I killed my sister. Are you not horrified?”
He frowns then. “You didn’t kill your sister.”
“Yes I did.”
“You weren’t born a siphoner, how could you possibly predict that would ever happen? You didn’t get in that bed with her and then leech her magic, no matter how much it must feel that way. It wasn’t your fault, though I know hearing me say that doesn’t make it feel any less true in here.” He reaches forward and taps your heart lightly. “There is nothing I can say to ease the pain and guilt of that, but what you’re describing to me isn’t the tale of a murderer. It’s the story of someone who had a freak accident, which is more common among the magical community than one might think.”
“I don’t know what happened,” you admit, a tear escaping your eye. Before you can wipe it though, Seokjin’s thumb is there, swiping across your face and collecting it. You watch with wide eyes as he cups your face, looking at you with so much something that your head spins. “But in the morning, I was alive and she was dead. And my parents and everyone else hated me for it. That’s why they treat me the way they do. That’s why my mother stepped down as high priestess, why my parents were driven to grief. Why I’m alone.”
“You’re not alone. Not anymore.” 
“How can anyone accept me like this?”
“Because it isn’t what defines you. We are not made up of only the things we do and the things that happen to us, and I promise you, this is something that happened to you.” 
“But why? Why me?”
“I don’t know,” Seokjin admits. “But we’re going to find out, okay? 
“What if the others don’t want me?” 
“They would never,” he’s quick to say. He’s still holding your face, wiping tears from your eyes. “And if they did, I don’t care. I’d do the ritual myself, just to prove to you that this burden you carry isn’t your fault.” 
You crack a grin, despite the dark topic. “Yeah? You’d try and do a circle for you?”
“I would walk through fire for you.”
You pull your face out of his hands and shove him a bit. “Fire is your favorite element, Jin. That’s not impressive.”
His laughter fills the room and he tugs at your hands. You grapple with him as he tries to pull you down, your ache forgotten as you laugh and squeal. “Yah! Let me try and be poetic! It was the first thing that I could think of.”
“You’re a witch, you’re practically impervious.” 
Seokjin overpowers you and pulls you down against his chest. Suddenly you’re very close again, your palms pressed against his chest, the thrum of his heartbeat vibrating through your fingers. You make a surprised sound as he looks up at you, gaze a little darker. A little hazy. 
Gently, Seokjin reaches up and brushes his fingers across your chin. It’s featherlight and more intimate than you expect, making you blink in surprise. You’re frozen, limbs stuck and heart racing as you watch the corner of his mouth twitch upward. Suddenly the moment feels different - this feels different. 
“Not impervious to you though.”
When he says it, you don’t answer at first. You think you imagine him saying it. That suddenly this has blurred into a fantasy of yours. Perhaps you’re actually asleep, soothing your pain with dreams of Seokjin. Of being like this with him, pressed closed and intimate with his gaze burning. 
“What?” you whisper back, unable to string together a better response.
He doesn’t seem offended though, huffing a laugh. “Fire might not get to me,” he says. “You certainly did, though.”
“I don’t…”
“We’re practicing honesty because you’re right. If we’re going to lift this block on you and let you join our circle, there can’t be secrets between us. There’s so much to tell you, but I need you to know before we do this how I feel.”
“How you feel?”
“Yes. As the leader of our circle, it’s my duty to be honest with you and to give you an out. I don’t want you to cast our first circle and suddenly be able to see - feel - how I feel and then there’s no way out.”
“I don’t understand.” 
“I’d walk through fire for you - hey, stop laughing at me! Because you are an amazing person. But I would also do it because I have fallen head over heels for you. Chaotically so. Painfully so.” 
This is a dream. It has to be, because there is no way that Seokjin is lying under you, face so close to yours, hands gripping your forearms, and staring at you like that, gaze dreamy, smile on his face. 
“It’s not a dream,” he laughs, making you realize you’ve said it out loud. “Or perhaps it is a dream and I am once again imagining that I am the hero to your tale, a knight saving you because he likes you and you will let me because you like me. But that would be a silly dream, because you have always been the bravest person I know and you have always refused to be saved.” 
“You like me?”
“I do. And it’s okay if you don’t like me back. But I wanted you to know before you step into a circle with us. The others know - can see it light up inside of me every time we cast. But I didn’t want to surprise you with that. Not with this, not when it’s about you. It would have been cruel.”
Seokjin could never be cruel. The word cruel doesn’t even exist in the same plane of existence as this man. This witch who has never done anything but ask if you need help. Who simply enjoys baking things for the community and its visitors, filling every good with magic. A little extra something to make their lives more manageable, more fruitful. 
This man, who would have you even as you are in his coven of witches. Even if a circle couldn’t be drawn and salted correctly. Even if they have no use for you. This friend, who has heard what you’ve done - or didn’t do - and looks at you all the same. Doesn’t see a monster or someone terrible, doesn’t see someone capable of murder. 
The very thought of Seokjin loving you even as you are is enough to send a shiver through you. 
“You know why I thought I was dreaming, right?” you ask him. Seokjin shakes his head, watching your every move. “Because I have dreamed of you saying that often. It was always a comfort to me when I was sad or my longing to have you was intense. I just thought I never could. Wasn’t worthy of it, wasn’t-”
Seokjin moves faster than you can finish your sentence. He surges forward, hands skimming up your arms roughly to cup your face and pull you down to him. He presses his lips firmly to yours and anything you were going to say vanishes, thoughts a wisp of smoke. 
Sparks fly quite literally. Seokjin’s magic crackles and you resist to pull it in and consume it, too distracted by the soft feel of his lips. It’s just an innocent press of mouths at first, making your head spin as you realize you’re kissing Seokjin. 
Then, he pulls away to look at you, face aglow. You’re a little breathless and reeling when you open your eyes to see his grin. 
“You’re worthy of so much more,” he whispers. 
There’s no time to respond as he pulls your lips to his again, this time kissing you properly. He tastes sweet, like one of his meringue treats. The slide of his plush mouth against yours makes you dizzy. He sucks your bottom lip between his teeth, nipping slightly and you become ravenous. 
Your tongue brushes against his teeth and he makes a throaty sound, opening up to let you deepen the kiss, tongue sweeping against his. He’s a slow kisser, dragging his tongue against yours and letting you fall fall fall into him. 
Seokjin’s hands slide from your face down your shoulders and past them, stopping only at your hips where he squeezes. Your stomach flips at the contact and you twitch a little bit, grinding down into him as his kisses go from languid to a little needier. 
“Fuck,” he gasps, head tilting back. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” you ask, mouth going to his jaw. You press wet kisses there, messy lips followed by your tongue, leaving a spit-slick trail. His skin makes your tongue tingle, magic vibrating. 
He slips his hands under the hem of your shirt and digs his blunt nails into your hips. “You know what?”
Grinning, you bring your mouth up to his. Slowly, you lower your hips so you’re pressed flush to his, rolling them again, this time painfully slow. Your breath catches in your throat at the slow-drag friction, the feeling of him shivering underneath you.
“That?” you ask, breathless against his mouth. 
“Enough,” he hisses.
The world spins. Seokjin grabs you and in a single, swift movement sits up and stands, carrying you with him. You squeal, hands shooting to grasp at his shoulders as he walks toward your room. He kicks his shin on the coffee table as he stumbles with you, balance off with the added weight.
He curses loudly and you can’t help but laugh, clapping a hand over your mouth when his sharp gaze snaps to yours. His eyes are dark dark, hungry and fathomless now as he raises a brow. “Yeah, you’re laughing?”
“Sorry.”
“No you’re not.”
“No, I’m not,” you admit.
“You’re gonna be.”
A wild thrill shoots through you as he carries you to the bedroom. You forget how strong he is, muscles flexing as he shifts you again, careful not to drop you. It makes you feel giddy, but you squeak in a moment of terror when he drops you unceremoniously on your bed, the brief moment of freefall startling.
You land with a huff and he grins down at you as he stands up against the edge of the bed, knees squeezing your legs together as he reaches behind his neck to yank at his t-shirt. You watch, slack-jawed as he pulls the material up and over his head in a way that is somehow hot, as benign as it is. 
Seokjin is all gold and tan planes, body perfect in the low light of your room as he tosses his shirt. You take a second to admire his broad chest, dark nipples pebbling in the cool room. Dark hair trails from his belly button and vanishes in the waist of his jeans.
Seeking warmth, you reach for him. He leans forward, pressing his palms into the mattress to hover over you, knees placed on either side of your thighs. His muscles jump when you brush your hands up the softness of his stomach toward the harder muscle of his pecs. 
It feels like the sun is trapped underneath his skin, burning its way out of him as your fingers explore. You’ve never touched him like this, slow and reverant and full of unbridled desire. He watches you, drinking in the way you take him in. The way you take your time. 
“You’re beautiful,” you murmur, looking up at him. His ears turn red and he rolls his eyes. You grin, dragging your hand up to rest over his chest where his heart thuds wildly beneath your palm. “I mean here, idiot. Yeah you’re hot too, but you’re beautiful in here.” 
Unreadable emotion flits across his face. Something like joy and pain - the pain of wanting to hear that for so long, waiting for the admission. You understand the same pain of desire filled so unexpectedly that it hurts. 
Seokjin kisses you again and this time with intent. He shifts and slides a knee between your legs, pressing up to the apex of your thighs. You groan and lift your hands, sliding them through his hair. The strands are silky soft and long. You twist your fingers at the nape of his neck, pulling him to you as the kiss turns messy.
Whatever this is between you is more magic than you’ve felt in years. You feel breathless as he kisses across your jaw and toward your neck, sucking harshly on the soft skin underneath your ear. You whine and he chuckles, hot breath hitting your ear.
“Why don’t you do that thing you love so much, hmm?” he asks, nipping your ear lobe. “Are you shy now? Don’t wanna grind on me?”
You do want to, but you hesitate. He encourages you, taking a hand and skimming down your waist to your ass, sliding under and squeezing your cheek as he lifts your hips in a motion to grind against him. The friction is good but not nearly enough and you let out a pitiful sound. 
“Come on,” he urges. “Do it right, then.”
Fuck. Fuck. 
You grind your cunt on his leg properly, planting your feet on the edge of the bed for leverage as Seokjin’s mouth ravages your neck. You’re lost in him, letting your mind go a little empty as you seek friction, needing to relieve the pressure throbbing in your cunt.
Arousal gathers in your stomach and you feel yourself slow-drip into your panties, so turned on by the sudden confidence Seokjin has when kissing you, when telling you to move. This is a side of him you’ve never explored and you dive in head first.
One hand leaving his hair, you grab his hand that’s on your ass as he continues to nip your collarbones, tongue laving over the sting of his bite. He lets you lead him by the wrist, and you guide his hand between your legs where you press his fingers to your zipper. 
“Please,” you rasp. “I need more.”
He sinks his teeth into the top of your right breast, tongue tasting your skin. “Is that so?”
“Please. You said you’d walk through fire for me.”
His laugh is loud and he buries his face in your neck. You can’t help but laugh too, pausing your greedy hands in exchange for mirth. “Yeah,” he agrees with a chaste kiss to your throat. “I did say that, huh?”
“Yes, so gimme.” 
“Yah. Of course I am.”
Years of friendship have erased any ability to feel awkward with Seokjin but for a moment, you’re afraid it’ll be weird, touching one another like this. Seokjin has no such qualms, unbuttoning your pants and yanking them down your legs with ease.
When he comes back up to lean over you, he doesn’t slot a knee between your legs. Instead, his fingers press firmly to your clothed cunt, a curse falling from his mouth as he feels how damp you are. You’re hot all over and yet you feel hotter still as he circles his fingers gently over your clit. 
“Fuck,” you sigh, lids fluttering closed. “Feels good.”
“You’re fucking drenched, all from a little kissing huh?”
“And grinding,” you add.
“Yeah, like a hungry little vixen, huh?” You nod, biting your bottom lip as you get lost in his lazy ministrations and pressure on your clit. It’s relieved some of the ache, but not nearly enough. “I can see on your face you already want more.” 
This time, Seokjin doesn’t make you ask for it. He hooks a finger in your underwear and pulls them to the side. Immediately you feel cold air against you, but he’s quick to slide his fingers up and down your wet folds, slicking them up to trail back up and circle slowly around your clit.
“Damn you’re fucking wet,” he curses. He leans up a little, eyes fucked out. “Take the rest off for me, baby.”
Baby. It shivers through you and you comply, though a little haphazardly. It’s hard to remove your shirt and bra with the way his fingers are slowly pressing your clit, making you thrash and gasp. 
As soon as you lay back down, no shirt and no bra, Seokjin is leaning forward, tongue darting out to flick against a stiffened nipple. You let out a loud moan and he hums in response, attacking his mouth to you and sucking. Fuck it feels good. You arch off the bed and his fingers leave your swollen clit to slide down your sticky mess to circle your entrance.
Gently, he sinks in a single finger. Your eyes roll back a little, pussy fluttering as he strokes your front wall. You’re tingling all over, buzzing with pleasure as he slowly fucks you with his finger, mouth busy plucking at your nipple with his teeth. 
You’re lost in it, melted into the bed as Seokjin plays you like a well-tuned instrument. The heel of his palm presses against your clit, providing just enough pressure as he fingers you to send the room spinning on its axis. 
He tongue-kisses across your chest, mouth ravenous against your heaving gasps as he finds your other nipple. The tip of his tongue circles, making you keen and squirm underneath him. He watches you with dark eyes, teasing the aching bud before nipping you lightly. 
“Sensitive,” he mumbles, dragging spit-slicked lips against your breast. “Can you take another finger?”
You nod eagerly, hungry to be filled. Your orgasm is starting to build slowly, worked up by the way he mouths at you, by the way Seokjin’s fingers reach so deep, pressing against your g-spot as he sinks another into your heat. 
“Shit,” you pant. “That feels so fucking good, Jin.”
“Mhmm.” He brings his mouth up to yours and your tongues tangle, teeth clinking together as he fucks you harder, the wet smack of your pussy against his palm loud. “Tight fucking pussy,” he pants, pressing hard against your front wall. Your heels dig into the bed as you try to keep up with the pleasure blooming in your stomach. “Gonna need to fuck you open a little if you’re gonna take me.”
If you’re gonna take me.
The promise of more has you rolling your hips up to meet his hand. He lets you fuck yourself on his fingers, dropping his gaze to look between your bodies. Your thighs and his stomach are slick with your juice, leaking around his fingers uncontrollably. 
When Seokjin introduces another finger, you hiss. The stretch is hard and it burns. He doesn’t keep thrusting right away, letting your cunt stretch around his three digits. But he’s pressed up against your soft spot, making you see stars as he puts unrelenting pressure on your nerves. 
It feels like insanity, the way he does this to you. The way Seokjin buries his face in your neck, your chests pressed together to provide friction against your teeth-marked nipples as he starts to build up a pace again, thrusting. 
“I’m gonna come,” you whisper, hands grabbing frantically at his sweaty shoulder blades. Your thighs are shaking and it’s hard to get a breath in. Your voice quakes as you gasp. “Fuck, Jin I’m - ah ah ah.”
“So come,” he says, as if it’s that simple. He puts weight behind the hand fucking you, quickens the pace. Presses so fucking hard you think you might blackout. “If you’re gonna come, then do it.” 
And you do. Just like that, nails digging into his shoulders, eyes squeezed shut and teeth clenched, you come around his fingers. He fucks you through it, breath hot in your ear. Your knees squeeze around his hips until you’re spent, collapsing against the mattress, boneless. 
Seokjin retracts his fingers. The sudden feeling of being empty makes you huff in protest and he laughs, lifting his face from your neck. You pout up at him and he kisses you again before leaning upward, straddling your legs. 
Your eyes zero in on his hands as they undo the top of his belt. His hand is covered in a wet sheen, cum-slicked and sticky. He doesn’t care, popping up the belt and pulling down the zipper of his pants. You grow eager, leaning up as he pulls the waist down, revealing the dark briefs that do nothing to hide how hard he is. 
With no warning, you reach for his clothed cock, squeezing firmly. He hisses and drops his hands, jeans only pulled halfway down his thighs. Seokjin tips his head back and moans at the ceiling as you lean forward and mouth at the damp spot on his briefs, tasting salt. 
“Fuck,” he swears and you grin, pressing and holding the flat of your tongue to the cloth to wet it. “You’re a little slut, huh?”
You hum in agreement. Fingers dancing up his thighs, you pause at the elastic band, looking up at him through your lashes. “Can I?”
Seokjin tucks his bottom lip between his teeth, eyes half-lidded. He nods, watching and dazed as you peel the elastic down his hips slowly. You lean forward as you do, pressing a soft kiss to his hip bone. He twitches and sighs in response.
You look at his cock as it bobs against his stomach, brown tip smearing precum against his navel. You lick your lips and drag your hand up, fingers gripping his velvety shaft. He’s thick and heavy in your hand as you grasp him firmly, stroking upward. 
“Oh fuck,” he whispers, hips twitching. You grin up at him, swiping a thumb over the crown of his cock to spread the wetness down his shaft. He hums, entranced. “More.”
You don’t have to ask what he means. You lean upwards, pulling the tip of his cock toward your mouth. You slide just the tip into your mouth, suckling generously and running your tongue along the slit. His hand slips to the side of your neck, resting there but not doing anything. It’s a comforting weight as you take him in your mouth properly. 
Seokjin is art above you. Chest flushed, mouth open, eyes closed. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think he was on his knees at worship. It is a sort of worship, the way you sink down on his cock, lips stretched wide, drool dripping down the side of your mouth and running down your jaw and neck. Is it not the spirit of loving him moving through you? Is this not heaven, looking up at him and seeing someone that has chosen you over and over again?
No pagan ritual in your life as a witch has felt like this. You swallow around him, eyes watering as you choke on his length, pulling back a little to catch your breath. Your hand squeezes him at the base, slick with your spit and his precum. Your mouth is wet and swollen as you lick the underside of his shaft, never looking away from his face.
“Fuck that mouth,” he sighs, eyes opening and looking down at you. He squeezes the side of your neck a little, fingers right against your throat. “Come on,” he murmurs. “I can’t hold out if you keep going. How do you like it?”
Instead of answering him, you pull off of him with a sloppy, wet noise. You make a show of running your tongue along your lips before turning around and crawling up the bed, wiggling your ass a little. Seokjin groans as he sheds his jeans and briefs the rest of the way. 
The bed sinks when he crawls behind you. You go down on your elbows, ass up high. He smacks each cheek firmly with both hands, making you yelp as he grips the stinging flesh, squeezing. “You have a good ass.”
“You have a nice dick.”
He laughs loudly at that. Seokjin’s hand skims down to your thighs, grabbing them and pushing them open. You sink a little lower on the bed, face pressed to the sheets and letting your eyes shut. The hair on his thighs sends a shiver up your spine as his legs brush against yours, hands roaming and squeezing your hips, your butt, your thighs.
“You’re fucking perfect,” he mutters. His hands come back over the globes of your ass and sink toward your wet cunt. You moan as his thumbs peel you open, pressing around your clenching hole. “Shit.” 
The bed bounces as he moves again and then your eyes are snapping open, fingers twisting in your sheets when you feel the flat of his tongue swipe up your pussy. He hums in delight and you’re reeling, trying to catch your breath as he licks at you.
“Just wanted a taste,” he says, more to himself than you. He sucks your clit into his mouth, flicking his tongue over it a few times and you nearly crumble right there at the unexpected stimulation. He slow-licks up to your hole, tracing it once before retracting his mouth. “I have all the time in the world for you to come in my mouth. Right now I just wanna feel you.”
“Yes, please.”
Your breath gets stuck when you feel the head of Seokjin’s cock catch your entrance. He’s thick, and even though you’re dripping down your thighs and stretched from his fingers, the pressure of him sinking into your heat slowly sends you moaning like a wanton whore, unable to stop the sounds escaping your mouth.
Seokjin is precise, hands holding your hips firmly until he’s fully seated in your cunt, your walls fluttering around him. You feel so full, his cock reaching deep enough to feel in your gut. When he pulls all the way out, you think something is wrong, but he fucks back into you hard.
“Oh shit,” you gasp, feeling the full weight of him spear you. “Holy shit.”
He doesn’t say anything but he grunts, setting a slow but deep pace. His hips snap into you with force, your knees spreading a little bit wider. He leans into it more, moving his hands to press into the small of your back. The full force of his weight pushing your hips into the bed as he slams into you makes you dizzy. 
An orgasm starts to build deep in your stomach. You claw at the bed, breaths coming out in a hiss. Seokjin grabs one of your hands, pulling it backward to pin it against your lower back before doing the same to the other. You’re completely pinned under him, pushed so far into the mattress you think you might fade and vanish into foam and sheets. 
Nothing here matters but the way he fucks into you, unrelenting, heavy, precise. He says your name and it rolls off his tongue sweeter than any pastry he’s ever made. Your orgasm creeps up on you, shaking and thunderous. It feels stronger than before, a pressure that makes you start to shiver, feet kicking under him.
For a moment, he slows, pulling off you a little. “Okay?”
“Keep going,” you beg him, voice high-pitched and strange to your ears. “Please don’t stop, I’ll tell you if I can’t take it.”
That’s all he needs. He redoubles and this time, changes his direction, hits that spot inside of you head on with his cock and you think you’re going to pass out. You become lifeless under him, unable to do anything but take it. The wave of your orgasm builds and builds and builds until finally, it breaches. 
You come for a second time, no noise coming out of you. It’s all white vision and squeezed thighs and ringing ears. You think you feel something like a bolt of lightning, a snap of power so strong as you clench around Seokjin that you taste static in the air. 
It’s hard to know how long it lasts. One moment you’re shaking and the next, you’re drifting, feeling weightless and exhausted. The weight of Seokjin’s touch keeps you tethered and from straying too far, but you’re somewhere in between nonetheless. 
Slowly, reality drips back to you. You think you may have dozed a little, your eyes dry as you blink them open. Seokjin is lying next to you, arm wrapped around you and eyes closed. He’s not breathing deep enough to be asleep, confirming it when his eyes open, sensing your gaze.
A smile lights up his face and you smile tiredly at him. Your cunt aches and your legs and arms are sore from being pinned, and you’re still a little shaky. Thoughts of your orgasm make you twitch, post-sex tremors that you can’t escape.
“Hi,” you rasp. “Did I fall asleep?”
“I think you blacked out.”
“I- what?” 
“I sort of…” he frowns. “There was like this electrical snap when I came. You clenched me so fucking hard I just… let go. I think we sort of had a magical orgasm.”
“A magical orgasm.”
He grins. “Just say thank you for the witch orgasm.”
“Ugh.” You smack his chest and he laughs hoarsely. 
It did feel like that though. Like a crackle of energy, like being struck by a storm of electricity and heat. You feel tired and heavy-limbed, but you feel sticky and sweaty too. “I need a shower.”
“Mhmm. I was waiting for you to come to.” He starts to sit up. “Come on, I’ll shower you. Then we need to sleep. We have to prepare you for your big day.”
“My big day?”
Seokjin grins as he reaches a hand for you. There’s a spark again when you touch and you hesitate, feeling the well of his magic there. It hums in him, a thunderhead of power and fire. He sees your expressions and softens. “You can’t hurt me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Baby, I just fucked the everloving shit out of you and you know what you didn’t do?” Your brows pull together and he smiles. “You didn’t pull an ounce of my magic from me. I think you’re a lot better at control than you think you are.”
Licking your lips, you nod and let him pull you from bed. You are good at control. You had to be after your sister. It’s something you’ve practiced nonstop, the unconscious control of your desire for magic. Even when you sleep, you wake up often, fearful of losing your grip on yourself while you slumber.
It hasn’t happened yet. And as Seokjin leads you to the shower, you think… maybe it never will. Especially if the ritual goes right. Especially if you can get your magic back. 
Perhaps for the first time since you were thirteen, you feel a sliver of hope. When you look at Seokjin and you feel your heart stutter, you know that even without your magic, you’ve found something.
-
“Oh for the love of the land,” Yoongi groans when you appear in the basement of Seokjin’s home. “Look at the two of you.”
Everyone swivels to look at you and Seokjin, who are hand-in-hand. You freeze, pulling up short to take in the candle-lit room and the six other men who are all looking at you with equal parts happiness and a little bit of amusement.
You shift from foot to foot and chew your lip. Suddenly you want to turn tail and run back up the stairs and away from the watchful eyes of your friends - of Seokjin’s coven members. But Seokjin holds your hand tight, tugging you down the rest of the stairs into the gloom of the room.
Perhaps gloom isn’t the right word. The room is much too warm and smells of sage and thyme, a good feeling if not a little overwhelming. Outside this house, there is an entire festival going on at the park. The covenstead witches were furious when Seokjin let them know that he and his six would not be participating this year, as they had private matters to attend to.
It’s common for covens to use the holiday for something specific. Perhaps to bless a witch in need, or to strengthen a spell, or to defeat some evil. You remember that night that your parents left you alone for Beltane duties to fight and remove Dissenters, and how that turned out for you.
Magic hums all around you. It’s in the sigils on the ceiling of Seokjin’s sanctum and it’s in the ley lines that you can feel now more than ever as the veil between worlds thins. Each member of the coven has magic humming in their veins, a sort of signature taste and feel to it. You sense Yoongi’s deep shadows and Namjoons vibrant green, taste Jimin’s clean water and feel Hoseok’s pure air. Taehyung and Seokjin are the flickering flame that fills the room with light and heat, and Jungkook’s crackling storm greets you in the corner.
It’s hard to imagine where you fit in with them. But they don’t have a blood witch, who is all of these things wrapped into one. You know that they support you. The eight of you have gone over the ritual what feels like a hundred times at this point, perfecting it and making sure you know it inside and out.
The two rituals are wildly different. One to seek and find the source of your pain, led by Yoongi and Hoseok. Yoongi’s shadows and connection to the other side will help seek answers and provide clarity on whatever signs and hints come through the vision you’re supposed to have, and Hoseok’s strength with air will help keep you protected and clear of any negative energy.
Then, a small spell to build a bridge between the two rituals that Namjoon will handle with Jimin. Namjoon has it down to a science and has previously used it to link spells, and his affinity for earth will ground the entire circle. Jimin’s skill with water is to help guide you from ritual to ritual with ease and clarity. 
It’s the second half of the ritual that’s the most demanding, which is why it’s Taehyung and Jungkook conducting the destructive half, breaking whatever stands between you and your magic. Two warriors meant to sever your block or the target of your curse, whichever it may be.
And it’s possible that you’re cursed. You have briefly spoken about what that means. About what to do. It will most likely mean something damaging and life-threatening for whoever did curse you, if you forcefully try to shatter it instead of finding the cause. 
But there’s also potential for you to be harmed if the two of them try to break it and it’s too strong. It’s a risk that you have to assess in the moment, which is terrifying. You want to do it anyway, and you’re happy to find that they support you. That they’re there for you.
Coven members already, really. 
All seven of them are dressed to perform a ritual. Dark robes, anointed element symbols in dark ash on their brows. Yoongi has a small circlet around his head, making you pause and tilt your head as you glance at Seokjin. He sees your confusion and smiles. “Yoongi is our high priest tonight,” he murmurs. “He will start and end the circle so I can be here with you.”
Yoongi is blushing and looking up at the ceiling when you turn back to him. For him to step up and hold the circle as the beginning and end is a huge risk on him. He’ll be providing the most magic and taking on the most risk second only to you, all so that Seokjin can move freer and have more control.
“Yoongi is a very powerful witch, as you know,” Seokjin murmurs, steering you to the center of the room. “He holds circles for a lot of our rituals when we feel he’s better suited.” 
“Which is often,” Yoongi mutters at the ceiling where he keeps his gaze. 
“Yah, shut up, hag. Everyone get in their places.”
Seokjin puts you in the very center of the room. There is a pentagram chalked in powder, but there is no glow to it, no light to signal that it’s being used. He squeezes your shoulders and you look at him, wide eyed and afraid. His smile is warm and a little nervous, but he leans in and kisses you once.
“Trust us,” he says. “This will be hard on you. But we’ve got you.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t break the circle,” he reminds you. “If you have to break, do it when Namjoon is at the middle part and before we start the second ritual. He will open the circle a little, but it’ll be just for a moment before the second is started and locked.”
“Right. Ten second escape if I need to.”
“You only have that window if we need to stop. Once we start the second, there is no stopping until the full ritual is complete.”
“Got it.”
“Good luck,” Seokjin whispers and kisses you on the brow. “I’ll be right here.”
With a deep breath, he steps to the side and grasps your hand. The two of you stand alone in the middle, you and your anchor. Silence settles over the room. You haven’t been in the middle of a circle since you were a little girl receiving her first welcome into the coven. You had done that with your sister by your side and your mother at the head of the circle.
Now, you’re with Seokjin, with Yoongi at the head of the circle. Yoongi doesn’t really make eye contact with you, but you sense his calming aura even from where he stands at the first point of the circle. He rolls his shoulders and closes his eyes, lifting his palms upward. “I stand at north, the beginning and end, start this circle, spirit ascend.”
You feel the ripple of magic in the room. Fire crackles at Yoongi’s feet, making you flinch. You watch as the red flames lick toward Hoseok, who is quick and light as he murmurs, “I stand northeast, to cleanse and protect, continue the circle, spirit to the next.”
You watch the flame as it sparks to life, moving clockwise around the room. Every time a member joins the circle, you feel the power thrum through the room, the pentagram beneath your feet beginning to glow. The flame comes all the way back around to Yoongi and he closes it, eyes opening and looking right at you.
Yoongi looks different than before, eyes shadowed and full of stars. “Begin,” he commands, voice like a thousand whispers. 
A little spike of fear goes through you as Hoseok begins to chant. You recognize the Latin immediately but your unpracticed ears lose trace of the meaning. It’s picked up slowly in the room and you feel your palms slick with sweat as the light of the pentagram pulses beneath your feet, the flames flickering around the feet of the coven members.
Yoongi’s voice picks up the chant like you’ve never heard him before. It’s uncanny and you lean into Seokjin, who squeezes your hand and looks down at you.
“It’s okay,” he whispers. “This happens when he leads a circle. Veil is thin.”
Nodding your head, you turn to the front again, feeling the itch to pull power from the circle, to draw their magic into you. There’s so much of it filling the room, an open tap of water spilling into the sink. You dig your teeth into your bottom lip, worried that you won’t be able to resist, worried that you’re going to pull from the magic and-
A wave of dizziness hits you. You gasp and bend over, hand circling your middle as though you’ve just been punched. Seokjin’s hands are on your back but you can’t hear him, a high-pitched ringing drowning out the sound of his voice. For a second, you’re lost in the sensation of having the air sucked from your lungs and the whine in your ears getting higher and higher.
Just when you think that your ear drums will burst, the ringing stops. There is a hushed whisper filling your ears and you still can’t catch your breath. The room spins a little and when you look up expecting to see Yoongi, all you see is dark trees and a blurry shadowy… building. Something. 
The whispers creep up on you. There are so many of them, hundreds - no, thousands - of voices brushing against you, dragging their fingers along your skin, touching you, hissing, singing, screaming. It’s like nothing you’ve ever experienced and their words are jumbled, sliding over one another.
Terror begins to claw at you. You try to remain calm, remembering that these are not the voices of spirits or something evil. Hoseok is commanding this ritual, an element of purity and guidance. He won’t let anything bad happen to you.
With faith in your future coven member, you try to focus on the voices. Try to decode them. Namjoon warned you that the messaging might be confusing. That you might not follow or understand what it’s saying. Symbols, images, key words. You need to reach for anything that seems like something, that can point to the origin of your block and follow it. 
Yoongi’s presence presses at the back of your mind. It startles you at first, to feel who you know is innately Yoongi. You follow the press of whatever he’s doing and you catch a few words that fly by you: little hut little hut. Little hut little hut. Little hut little hut. 
Unsure what it means, you cling to that. Little hut. It means something… you remember something about it. Yoongi’s presence fades away, satisfied that you’ve picked up on whatever it is he sees or senses. 
Flipping through memories, you try to remember why a hut might mean anything to you. There were no huts by your town… nothing that you can remember no one you know of. 
Little hut, little hut.
One memory sticks with you. Your sister playing in the background, hopscotching to a little tune that Mila down the street whispered to her about a witch in the woods. 
Little hut, little hut
Hidden in the wood
Little hut, little hut
Up to no good
Yes, you think. A rhyme about a witch who lived in the woods. More thing than witch, really. A shadowy being that took the shape of a hut, a creature of magic and curses that could be found in the darkest part of the woods when the veil is thin. 
Little hut, little hut
Alone in the gloom
Little hut, little hut
Silent as a tomb
You see it now. The blurry shape of a house that’s not really a house. The witch in the wood was a blood witch once, it was said. A witch who had long since dissented and practiced arcane magic, following a path that led her here. That led her to this. A thing of the woods. 
It occurs to you the weight of the appearance of her. This hut in the woods. Yoongi’s flippant remark about you being cursed is suddenly real.
Dread drops down in your stomach like a weight. You can’t hear anything beyond the rhyme, the chant to find the witch of the woods. You’re cursed, you realize. All the fear that your condition was self-inflicted, that it was your fault, that this was something you did. 
This is something that happened to you, Seokjin had said.
And he was right. Someone cursed you - did this to you. A child. 
Out there in the world, there is someone responsible for the death of your sister. Someone who took your magic, who turned you into a leech. The reason for your family's pain, the reason for them throwing you away. For your father and mother being driven mad, for the town turning against you.
You think about the rock that hit you just days ago. Thrown by a child taught to hate you. Taught that it was okay to hurt you because it was you. The town siphoner. A witch who couldn’t make her own magic, a parasite. 
Anger wells up inside of you and you latch onto the rhyme swirling around your head, clawing through it. This is the thread you must follow to find your curse giver. This is the clue.
Little hut, little hut
Across the dark stream
Little hut, little hut
Wait for the scream
Dully, you are aware that Seokjin is next to you. You see him from the corner of your eye but it’s not Seokjin at all. Well - not as you now know him. This Seokjin is younger - a teenager by the looks of it. He’s not doing anything except staring out into the darkness. He fades in and out like a bad TV picture, glitching and blurring. But you know it’s him. 
His face is different though. Twisted in grief and pain, a frozen picture of angst. You imagine this is what you looked like when your sister died, a tableau of hurt and hate. 
Little hut, little hut
I call to thee
Little hut, little hut
Come to me
The Seokjin in front of you fades away. You reach out for him but your hands cut through empty air and darkness. He’s not really there and you have a hard time grasping the meaning of this. The voice sounds almost like Seokjin but not quite. Not as mature. 
Young Seokjin doesn’t show up again. You can feel the real Seokjin somewhere in the mess of the vision and the darkness, but you can’t hear him. Can’t see him. There is only the omnipresent darkness of the hut and the whispers of voices. 
Little hut, little hut
Hear my strife
Little hut, little hut
Ruin this life 
There’s a flash of lightning. A storm in the darkness, splashes of purple and blue electricity. You cover your eyes as you hear thunder, low and soft somewhere. Across from you, your sister appears. She’s a fraternal twin who looks nothing like you except in the eyes. Your eyes look right back at you.
She’s the same age she was when she died. When you took her magic away. When you were cursed. She looks the same age as the apparition of Seokjin, and you try to understand. To make the connection from what you're seeing as the lightning lances again like it did that fateful night.
The rhyme keeps circling in a hurricane of whispers. 
As the ritual comes to a close, the vision begins to fade. You’re no better off than where you started and in a panic, you reach for the vision of your sister. You just want to hold her one last time, to feel the warmth of her skin.
But she isn’t real and she fades as Hoseok’s chanting falls to a murmur and then to a whisper, the air returning to normal. You can breathe again, and as you look up from where you’re bent over, you see Seokjin kneeling on the ground in front of you, holding you by the shoulders. His face is swimming with fear and concern, gaze searching.
Seokjin looks so much like his younger self. He’s matured into his face and is a handsome man, but he was a cute teenager. His face now is full of love and concern, but you think about his face in your vision. Twisted in pain and years. 
Little hut, little hut
Hear my strife
Little hut, little hut
Ruin this life 
You straighten up suddenly, knocking him over on his ass as you do so. It feels like you’ve been slapped as you stare at him, a sudden buzz in your ears as you stare and stare and stare. The ritual comes to an end and Namjoon opens the circle - a foot in the door, more like - and begins to start his spell for Taehyung and Jungkook to weave the new ritual into the circle. 
Without thinking about it, you dash for the edge of the circle. Seokjin yells but you’re fast, surging between Namjoon and Jimin where the door exists. Namjoon’s head snaps to look at you, eyes wide and mouth open.
“Close it and close the circle,” you pant. 
“I-”
“Close the fucking circle!”
Seven pairs of eyes look at you then. They hesitate for a moment, the flames around them wavering. You can feel the power licking at their heels and something like rage shudders through you. You don’t know where to channel it yet and you begin to pace as Namjoon recloses the circle and turns to Yoongi. 
Slowly, Yoongi begins to finish the ritual. They work backward from Yoongi to Jungkook to Taehyung to Jimin. You don’t look at them, wringing your hands as you pace back and forth, heart reaching a wild beat. 
Images fly by. The hut, the whispers, Seokjin’s face, the thunderstorm, your sister. 
The narrative isn’t straightforward. You don’t quite understand the rhyme, or its function, but the second half sounds bad, sounds perhaps like a plea. A bargain. A need for a curse. You recall the thunderstorm on the night of Beltane, the way your sister watched with wide eyes while you sought her out. You think of Seokjin’s affinity for fire and storms, the way he can command thunder just by being upset. You think of his face, so full of pain and hate. 
Finally, they finish the circle. Seokjin rushes to you, hands outstretched and a question on his mouth but you jerk away from him. 
“Did you curse someone?” you demand, making him pull up short. He opens and closes his mouth. The silence in the room is deafening. You can hear your own heartbeat, pulse throbbing in your ears. “Seokjin, did you curse someone?”
“I… what does that have to do with-”
“Little hut, little hut. Hear my strife. Little hut, little hut. Ruin this life.” 
Three things happen then. The first is Seokjin’s confusion as he shakes his head, lost as to why you’re repeating a rhyme back to him. Then a flicker of memory followed by the drain of color on his face. He straightens up, blanched and shaking his head back and forth as he takes a step away from you.
“No,” he says and takes another step back. “That’s not right, I didn’t curse you.”
“What did you do?” 
“I didn’t curse you,” he says again. He seems lost in it though, like he’s saying it to himself. Yoongi takes a step toward Seokjin and he holds out a hand, warding Yoongi off. “I cursed the witches responsible for killing my parents. I didn’t curse you.” 
“You cursed someone?” Taehyung hisses from across the circle. “And you never thought to mention it in preparation for this?”
“Shut up, Taehyung,” Seokjin snaps. “I didn’t curse her. I did go into the woods that night to find the hut witch and I cursed the people responsible for killing my parents. I didn’t even know you then.” 
“Did you give a name? What did you say?” 
“I didn’t know their names!” He answers, frantic and looking at you pleadingly. “I didn’t - no. I remember it, I shared my blood with her, to show the memory. I saw their faces, but I didn’t know their names. We were -” his voice cracks and he clutches his hands against his chest, tears in his eyes. “I was so afraid when they came. We’d been going from town to town, trying to get away. My parents wanted to go back home, overseas. We just had to get there and then these witches, they came and blew down the door and they killed them.”
“So you cursed them based on a memory?”
“Yes,” he insists. “Baby, I didn’t curse you. How could I? How would I?”
Little hut, little hut
Hear my strife
Little hut, little hut
Ruin this life 
“Seokjin.” You say his full name, voice ringing and calmer than you feel. Your stomach is in knots and you feel your mouth water, hinting at the nausea working its way up your throat. “Did you ask the blood witch in the hut to ruin the lives of the witches who killed your parents?”
“Yes.”
“Were your parents Dissenters killed on the night of Beltane?”
A long stretch of silence takes up the space between you. You stare at Seokjin and he becomes a stranger. Become another person on the street that looks at you with hate. Another face in the dozens of the town who don’t care if you exist. 
When Seokjin says nothing, it says everything. The final piece of information slots its way in and you feel like you’re going to crack open like an egg and spill out. Gooey and yolk-yellow. 
“That was why there was a storm,” you whisper. “Because you were angry and upset, wherever it was that you were. And you cursed my family. Not my parents. Our entire family. That’s why I lost my magic and siphoned my sister to death. That’s why my parents were driven to madness and their eventual end. It’s why everyone hates me. You cursed me with ruin.”
“I…” Seokjin shakes his head but can’t make the words come out. 
There is no way out now. You get everything picture perfect for the first time. It’s the perfect curse, really. Driving your family to ruin in different ways. Pushing you, the final member of the family, to the person you would eventually fall in love with, to the person that cursed you.
You can’t break it. Not knowing that it’s most likely at the cost of Seokjin’s life. Giving his blood to the witch was a terrible thing. She used it to cast the curse and likely to bind it to him. Which means if you want your magic, you must kill Seokjin. 
Instead of standing there to consider the possibility, you turn and run. He tries to run after you but someone stops him. He has his coven to comfort him for what he’s done and you have nothing and no one. Just how you started. 
Your runaway is messy. Tripping over thresholds, slipping down stairs. Night stretches over the world and the air is thrumming with energy. You think it would be so easy to tap into, to take and take and take the magic around you that echoes from the Beltane festivals. Would anyone even notice if you took a little?
Still, you don’t. Hot tears blind you as you stumble into the woods behind Seokjin’s house. It’s not the best shortcut when you’re distraught and overcome with tears, but you think you can get to your apartment building by memory alone. 
Around you, the world grows darker and quieter. Eventually, all you can hear is your ragged breathing and sniffling as the tears freefall. Something prickles on your skin and you slow your tangled escape to look around you.
The woods are unfamiliar. At least, they seem darker and hazier, like you’re somewhere that looks like the woods behind Seokjin’s house but isn't quite right. You’re more careful as you move forward, one foot in front of the other. 
A breeze cools the back of your neck. It makes you shiver, feeling more like a finger running down your spine than the actual wind. A whisper of noise wisps by you and you stop, frowning. Trying to grasp the words as they float by, indiscernible. 
You start walking again, following the sound of a voice that is always just a little too far ahead. A little too soft spoken for you to make out the words. When you do manage to catch up, you hear a soft little rhyme. 
Little hut, little hut
Hidden in the wood
Little hut, little hut
Up to no good
Little hut, little hut
Alone in the gloom
Little hut, little hut
Silent as a tomb
Little hut, little hut
Across the dark stream
Little hut, little hut
Wait for the scream
Something like a high-pitched wail rings out behind you. Your limbs lock and goosebumps explode over your arms and legs as you slowly crane your neck to look in the direction that you came. There’s no clear path, just tangled trees and darkness. 
A soft buzz tingles along your skin. You sense the magic, static that you can’t hear but you can feel and taste on your tongue. Slowly, you turn back to face the direction you’re walking. There is a tiny little stream in front of you, trickling and black.
Carefully, you step over it. Your hands quake. Sweat gathers on the nape of your neck and your upper lip, your mouth trembling as you see the vague shape of a hut. Or perhaps it's just the idea of a hut, with a hole for a door that looks endless. Void. Dark. 
You think about your sister. See her face swimming in front of you, so full of life. Then it drains of color as you bleed her dry and steal everything from her. Every drop, turning her from a beautiful girl full of the sun and the sky into a husk. 
You clench your fists. 
Vengeance can’t bring her back. Vengeance can’t make them love you. But it can take away this fucking hurt inside of you, the pain that you have carried for so long that it feels like a wound that will never close. So you decide to take a page out of Seokjin’s book.
“Little hut, little hut,” you whisper, voice shaking. “Feel my ache. Little hut, little hut, make him break.” 
290 notes · View notes
artiststarme · 1 year
Text
Oblivious Eddie
This is kind of the opposite of @ladykailitha's current story. It turned out a lot longer than I anticipated lol. Featuring the screaming match that you guys voted on! I hope you guys like it and please share your thoughts in the comments!
~*~*~*~
Steve was at his wit’s end. Things were now back to normal in the summer after the supernatural happenings of the Upside Down in the spring. The older teens had graduated from high school (Eddie included), the younger kids were off at camp or work or rehab respectively, and Steve was working his usual shift at Family Video. 
He was alone today since Keith was out of town on vacation and Robin was touring the campus at Indiana State. He was bored out of his mind. The entire day, he’d had a mere four customers with plenty of time to rewind the returned tapes, organize the shelves in a way Robin would hate, and take a variety of magazine quizzes. He now knew that his spirit animal was a golden retriever, Tom Cruise would date him for his personality, and that his zodiac sign would find fortune in the next month. 
However, if something interesting didn’t happen in the next ten minutes, he was going to do something drastic like pull his hair out or something. As the minutes ticked on, he started getting worried. Steve prided himself on being a man of his word and he made a decision which meant he had to stick to it. But did it count if it was a thought to himself? Would he have to pull his hair out by the clump to prove a point to his own brain? Maybe he-
His spiral was cut off by the jingle of the door’s bell. Steve let out a sigh of relief, “Welcome to Family Video, is there anythi- Eddie! Hey man, what’s up?”
Eddie had gotten a part-time job at Thatcher Tire and was trying to bring in some money from work of the legal variety. He said it was time to make money like an honest man and develop the good habits of the working class. Steve thinks that Hopper threatened him about the drug dealing and Eddie had no choice but to abide by his rules because he was the one who cleared his name in the media and with the cops. Either way, Eddie should be at work but instead he was walking straight towards Steve with a swish to his hips. 
“Heya Big Boy, guess what.”
“What?” Steve asked in curiosity. He didn’t know what would make Eddie so happy but his face was nearly splitting with the force of his beaming grin. 
“I got a call from a concert venue in Indy and they want Corroded Coffin to perform! They said that my notoriety from Spring Break could work as publicity and bring in more people. They want us to play this weekend!” Eddie was practically jumping up and down in excitement. 
Steve hopped the counter in order to envelop Eddie in a hug, “congratulations man! What did the kids say? Are they excited for you too?”
Eddie pulled back slightly, just enough to place his hand on Steve’s shoulder and look him in the eye whilst pulling a strand of hair from its position stuck in his mouth. “The kids? I don’t know, I came directly here to tell you.”
The comment in Eddie’s earnest tone caused butterflies to flutter in Steve’s stomach. He wanted to tell him first? That’s so sweet. Then he shook his head, it wasn’t sweet. It was just a dude telling his bro some exciting news. That’s all. 
“They’re going to be thrilled, Eds! You’re going to do great, I wish I could see it.” 
“That’s kinda why I’m here. Would you, Steve Harrington, do me the honor of watching me perform the most metal concert ever in a dingy venue in Indy this weekend? I’ll be honest with you, I’m a little nervous and having you there would make me really happy.” Eddie looked at him with the biggest puppy dog eyes he could muster, trying to persuade Steve to go. And honestly, he didn’t even have to. As soon as he had told Steve about the gig, his mind started thinking over blackmail he could use to get Keith to cover his shift. 
But, as he looked into Eddie’s pleading eyes and pouty lips, all he could think about was how much he wanted to kiss him. Which… what the fuck?! Steve wasn’t gay, he liked boobies! He still liked boobies! But now he thinks he liked the picture of Tom Cruise in the magazine from earlier and maybe Matthew Broderick on the movie poster over there and definitely Eddie, fuck. Steve needed to have a mental breakdown, STAT. 
“Fine, yes, I would be honored to go with you. Now, get out of here and tell the kids. They’re going to be thrilled,” Steve said as quickly and nonchalantly as he could muster in the face of his fast-approaching sexuality crisis. 
“Yay! Thanks Stevie, I swear you’re going to love it. I’ll see you tomorrow for movies and beer at mine, right?” Eddie asked over his shoulder while walking to the door. 
Steve felt like he was being strangled as he watched Eddie’s ass walking away, “yep, I’ll be there. See you later, Alligator!”
The second Eddie’s van drove out of the lot, Steve was rushing to lock the door and turn the closed sign. He needed to have a breakdown in peace. He slid down the wall of the disgusting Family Video bathroom and let the pent up sobs explode out of him. He knew he was freaking out over nothing but he couldn’t help it. It felt like in the few minutes it took for Steve to realize he liked guys, his entire world had changed. He was an outsider now, a queer, a freak. Deep down, he knew there was nothing wrong with being gay. Love is love. But why him?
Honestly, this wasn’t the worst thing he’d gone through. Yeah, he couldn’t be open with his love for another dude without being targeted which sucked. But he fought literal monsters with a bat and came out of it relatively unscathed. So this obviously wasn’t the end of the world. 
Steve tried to think of what Robin would say in this moment but couldn’t come up with anything. He felt a rush of irrational anger at her because of it. Why did she choose to tour a college campus now? She was already planning on leaving him behind and now she missed his crisis when she was supposed to be there with him? Ridiculous, some platonic soulmate she was. 
After another several minutes of freaking out, he started to calm down. This wasn’t an awful thing despite his initial thoughts. He knew Eddie was gay after one two many beers and a miniature freak out on Eddie’s part. And he knew his friends should be okay with it. And Eddie was amazing, they went through the same things, and they’ve bonded over their matching bat scars. Looking back, maybe that’s why Steve hasn’t been able to get a girlfriend in months… because he like-likes Eddie!
A plan started to form in Steve’s mind. He was going to woo Eddie and show him what it would be like to have the full ‘Steve Harrington Dating Experience’. He’d flirt, take him on dates, the whole shebang. And when Eddie inevitably fell for him, they could be boyfriends. With the plan in mind and the crisis averted, Steve left the bathroom, opened the door to the shop, and continued plotting for the rest of his shift. 
This would be a piece of cake. 
~*~*~*~
This was much harder than Steve had originally anticipated. He did not consider how utterly unobservant Eddie was or how oblivious Eddie would be to his affections. Steve had been flirting with this fucking guy for a month now and he was no closer to making him his boyfriend. 
He’d started smooth the night after his breakdown when he and Eddie watched movies and smoked weed in his trailer. Steve had given Eddie a compliment on his outfit, brought beers, and rested his arm on his shoulder during one of the scarier movies. What did Eddie do? Nothing! Steve thought he might’ve seen the barest hint of a blush when he wrapped his arm around him but it was gone before he could check to make sure. So he vowed to spend more quality time with him to be more obvious. 
The next time was at Eddie’s concert. Steve drove Eddie’s van with Eddie and the rest of the van the entire way to Indy. During the drive. They kept up conversation about metal music, summer plans, and the kids. At one point of the drive, Steve straight up grabbed Eddie’s hand and intertwined their fingers. Eddie didn’t even break his train of thought and continued speaking, rubbing his thumb along Steve’s knuckles. Steve couldn’t even focus on listening as if Eddie’s thumb rubbing circles didn’t make Steve want to stick his fingers in his mouth. Physical touch was also not affecting his guy. 
He tried words of affirmation next and those didn’t work either. His flirts initially started small. He would compliment Eddie’s clothes, his hair, or the things he liked. Then they escalated to comment on his character, his personality, and ‘how adorable he was’. Yesterday, Steve literally told him that his ass looked great in his black jeans but would look better out of them. That statement made Eddie’s jaw drop and he let out a loud guffaw before continuing his conversation like Steve hadn’t just implied that he wanted to see his bare ass. Son of a bitch. 
He was trying out acts of service when Eddie called him out. Steve had been doing the dishes at the Munson trailer while he waited for Eddie’s shift to end when he came in. And he came in hot. He slammed the door behind him and waved his hands around in flailing outrage. 
“Harrington, what the actual fuck! What are you even doing? You’re so fucking confusing!” He screamed as he saw Steve scrubbing at a stain on a white cutting board. 
Steve whipped around to look at him and narrowed his eyes. He was the confusing one? He’d been flirting with this dumbass nearly every day for a month and getting nowhere. “I’m confusing? That’s rich coming from you.”
Eddie blinked in shock before his lips pulled back in a snarl. “First of all, nothing about me is rich. Second of all, yes it’s you that’s confusing! You’ve been fucking flirting with me for weeks and no you’re doing my uncle’s dishes! That’s confusing.”
“Why is it confusing? I’m doing the dishes because you weren’t home yet and I needed something to do. I’m flirting with you because I like you. What’s confusing?” Steve was legitimately confused at this line of questioning and he really didn’t understand why Eddie was yelling. 
“You like me? Newsflash- you’re straight. You’re the straightest person that I have ever met. I don’t know why you keep flirting with me or what angle you’re trying to play here but I’m not interested in being your experiment, Harrington.” Eddie yelled at him, his finger pointing at Steve accusingly before moving to hug himself in self-comfort.   
Steve saw his discomfort but elected to act defensively and yell back at him. “I’m not straight, I never said I was and you never asked! I like both and it’s really shitty of you to try and tell me who I like when you have no idea what’s going on!”
Eddie opened his mouth to talk but Steve plowed on, “your whole schtick is nonconformity and sticking it to the fucking man but you draw the line at me liking guys and girls? Maybe I don’t like you as much as I thought I did. You’re obviously just as rude and judgmental as everyone else. And you’re welcome for the dishes, fucker.”
Eddie grabbed his arms as he went to move past. “Harrington, Steve, Stevie. I’m sorry, please just listen to me. Steve!”
Steve jerked his head to the side to glare at him. “What?”
“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you or not be appreciative of you washing our fucking dishes. I just, I didn’t know you liked both and I was losing my mind the past few weeks because I couldn’t figure out if you were flirting with me or if it was just you being a good friend or if you were playing a prank or something. I’m sorry and I do appreciate you,” Eddie was biting his lips nervously and his hand was still wrapped around Steve’s upper arm. He looked earnest and like he genuinely regretted his actions. 
Steve sighed, “I’m sorry too, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable-”
“I’m not uncomfortable! I was just really confused and I didn’t know what was happening. But uh, I like you too.”
Steve’s eyes met Eddie’s. “You do?”
“Hell yeah, man. You were my gay awakening in middle school. That’s why I’ve been so frustrated this past month. I didn’t know if I was imagining it or if I actually had a shot,” Eddie chuckled. 
Steve stepped closer to him and put his hand on the back of Eddie’s neck. “You definitely have a shot.”
And then, Steve pulled Eddie’s face closer to his own and their lips smashed in a kiss. Eddie groaned as their teeth gnashed in the bruising kiss. When they finally pulled apart, they pressed their foreheads together and breathed in the same air. Steve whispered, “you were my gay awakening too.”
Eddie’s answering cackles were so loud, Max came over to tell them to shut the hell up. She got a free front-row seat to their liplock and let out a scream so high-pitched that the window glass quivered before running back to her trailer. On the bright side, they wouldn’t have to come out to the kids.
@doubleb11 @nburkhardt @zerokrox-blog @newtstabber @i-less-than-three-you @carlyv @straight4joekeery @trippypancakes @pyrohonk
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so here's the thing: I totally get being annoyed by it, but at this point I think it's clear that Imogen's constant questioning of the gods and defense of the Vanguard is at least partially the result of actual supernatural interference with her thoughts. like... there's something that's been rubbing me the wrong way about some complaints about Imogen, which is that they seem to be based on the expectation that Imogen should be thinking rationally and that her behavior is entirely the result of her being an idiot or a jerk, when there's mounting evidence that she has a fucking god-eating alien in her head influencing her behavior.
Matt mentioned multiple times that Ruidusborn individuals were feeling a compulsion to travel towards the nexus point where the Malleus Key was being built, and I'm pretty sure it was pointed out at least twice that Imogen herself was feeling that compulsion. that alone is proof that Predathos is having some effect on her mind. then, look at what Imogen's been exposed to recently: there's the vision of utopia her mother showed her. and tonight, most clearly of all, Matt described Imogen as feeling a sense of rightness, destiny, belonging during that final moment before the party got split, and then a deep, strong urge to give in to the call she was feeling during her dream.
it's easy as an outside observer to say "well obviously this is all bad news and these feelings are a trap and Imogen should ignore them" but that's not going to be so obvious from inside her own head. and I think perhaps some people aren't cuing into that because it's not as apparent when there is not an explicit game mechanic involved.
like, most people see Chetney fail a wisdom save and go, "okay, it's not his fault if he attacks people, it's the beast taking over." they see FCG build up too many stress points and say "okay, it's not his fault, it's something in his programming." but because Imogen (usually) isn't rolling an explicit save and Laura's just being given narrative cues by Matt's descriptions, some people interpret her actions like she's just a dumbass falling for an obvious con.
and I don't mean to say that I think she's being, like, Dominate Person'd or anything as all-consuming as that. I just think that her thoughts are being influenced by an outside force. what she's being told by rational friends like Orym and Ashton is in direct contradiction to what her senses are telling her. every time she gets a little too close to Ruidus through a dream or vision, it feels good. it feels right. of course she's going to have trouble thinking clearly! of course she's going to wonder if the bad guys are right! this thing has a siren song luring Ruidusborn right into its embrace!
so, like. you don't have to like Imogen's behavior. you can find it annoying. I'm certainly getting a little bored by the same discussion being rehashed multiple times without any progress or answers. but please, if you're going to complain about Imogen, at least take a moment to consider that this isn't just her being stupid, it's her succumbing to a powerful being trying to lure her in.
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1schadenfreude1 · 1 month
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Rewriting Cain Boyfriend to Death 2 Love how the BTD fandom just collectively agreed to adopt EP's characters as our own I am absolutely tormented by the fact that Cain had so much potential but just. does not have the best writing ugh he's too similar to Rire and it kills me SO I am rewriting the fallen angel, lots of headcanons below the cut
Cain's number one motivation for why he does what he does is BOREDOM He's been torturing people in hell for centuries and it's become BORING. He wants something new, something interesting. He wants to see live humans and savor their emotions. Cain misses being human He'd never admit it out loud of course, but he does miss having real human emotions and enjoying human pleasures. Of course he can't be on earth too long while angels are hunting him, but maybe, spending time with humans will help him regain some of that human feeling?
Cain is chaotic evil incarnate LISTEN everyone in btd2 is a silly dork and Cain should be one too. He should have the most unpredictable and immature chaotic energy. Do you trust this face??? You shouldn't
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I think he just. does shit without thinking. Like he's been away from real humans for so long that he's sort of forgotten how fragile they can be.
"Oh c'mon little toy you can handle a little boiling water, right? Hello? Human? Fuck. Guess I need a new one." Yeah he's incredibly overpowered but that doesn't mean he knows how to USE that power lmao. He doesn't know how to interact with people anymore. he wants to be human again, but all he really knows how to do is…torture people. he's so dumb.
Straight up contradicting canon here but-- Cain feels bad for killing Abel Asking about Abel makes Cain get SUPER uncomfortable and shut down. He doesn't wanna talk about it. He definitely doesn't feel remorse about it. Nope. No remorse here. Abel is DEAD and GONE and good riddance and he DEFINITELY doesn't have lingering issues about it. Fuck you. Rips you apart with chains.
He loves bullying Damien though They have each other's phone numbers for god's sake. Cain sends Damien gore porn of the people he's killed. Those two try to kill each other on a weekly basis. It's normal for them. Yes that is Damien's severed arm on the living room wall. It brings Cain joy. Don't worry about it. Totally normal thing to say to your sibling
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Cain and Rire are rivals I think this is basically canon (based on Darqx's gorgeous art and animatics) but I wanna delve into it a bit! They're both incredibly powerful supernatural monsters, but their main difference comes down to this: Rire is lawful evil Cain is chaotic evil Cain kills people for purely selfish reasons: he wants to see human reactions and feel their emotions again. He thinks that causing pain will help him feel human. Rire kills people because its his job to collect souls. He loves his job and has a lot of fun with it, but in the end its still his job.
Cain is much, much older but Rire is way more mature
Cain is more powerful, but can't do much when he's stuck in Tartarus Rire is less powerful but has much more freedom of movement
Cain likes to play the long game, seducing victims with romance before going sadistic on them Rire is a busy demon; he likes to have fun but needs that soul sooner rather than later
Cain plans long elaborate dates because he's bored and reads too many romance novels Rire's plans are short and brutal, he does what he wants and that's it
Cain loves humans and wants to savor their reactions and emotions Rire hates humans and treats them like disposable toys
Cain is more interested in pain than sex, he won't rape a victim unless he really likes them Rire likes sex lmao. its a power rush for him and it feels good I hope my ramblings make sense lol
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kenjiyabuki · 3 months
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stuff that made me go 👀 from ep1
Well, gore-y horror from between 70s-90s w queer subtext is one of my most favorite genres ever, so obviously this show is right up my alley. Just the idea of Thai folk horror and 90s slasher fusion w a bunch of tense gay situationships sprinkled on top sounds like a dream to me <3
so OFC I enjoyed the first episode, the gore, haunting past, creepy mask and dick biting and all & now i'm ready to theorize
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here are some little details that got my attention and some thoughts that were thunk by me:::::
After Por's (Us) classic setting-the-up-story horror tale gets called out as teasing from White (Fuaiz), Por and Top (Jet) turn the accusation back to his boyfriend Tee (JJay), calling him the best at tricking the younger ones/newcomers to the group.
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Based on the trailers, it's safe to assume that in the past, it was Non (Barcode) who was the gullible young one and he was bullied (among other things that will happen to him) even after group decided to utilize him for the short film. Compared to loudmouths Por and Top, Tee seems more on the quiet and stoic side (albeit w anger issues) so this is definitely a clue. Trailers made me think Por was the main terrorizer of Non but maybe Tee played a bigger role.
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If Non is the whatever the hell that is dwelling the forest, then why did he cop a feel from Tee while him and White were busy being the couple who chooses the worst time and place to get nasty in a horror? Is it a payback for the tricking the young ones Tee was so good at?
If this isn't a translation mistake, Jin (Copper) calls the movie "his" even though the credits says otherwise.
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Firstly, I want to thank my trusty Yandex Image Translator for making this revelation possible:
While Jin says that he made the film for a contest he was in, it's Por who is credited as the Writer/Director/DoP. In fact, Jin's name is only under the cast list, along w Tee, Top and Fluke (Bump).
And maybe even MORE IMPORTANTLY, although we clearly saw him in the movie, taking off the mask just before Por shuts of the laptop & later Top admits he wrote the story, Non's name is nowhere to be seen in the credits. Not only he "disappeared", they also made it seem like he wasn't there in the first place. Uhmm, that's a cunty move to do to an old "friend"...
That really suspicious and ambiguous conversation between Tee and Por.
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They might be talking about Non BUT Tee specifically says he doesn't want HIM, which i'm assuming to be White, to get involved and find out more. Por's face drops at first but then he brushes it off w saying it wouldn't matter even if he did because its not relevant anymore.
There are also other new guys who are oblivious to their past but it's White who is worrying Tee. Along w Por's reaction and him constantly teasing their relationship, I think this might be a sign that Tee and Por might have some kind of history??? I am hoping that as messy gay entangled relationships on top of the supernatural horrors would be even more fun!!!!!!!!!
Phi and White's lil sexual tension moment.
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Here's the thing: this wasn't even a set up for Jin or Tee to get jealous or anyone to get thoughts because they weren't there to see it. It just happened so quickly and then Phi turned back his attention to Jin to get scolded (as he should) BUT i was stuck on it because what was the reason????????????? Why did White seemed lost in thought over it?
Jin might be jealous of Tan (Mio) for some fucking reason?
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Jin gives Phi half a blowjob, BITES HIS DICK (best moment of the ep), chews him out (verbally) and then suggests Tan in his place. Well, Tan and Phi do seem close and Tan knows about their failed FWB. Still, it's interesting that Jin singled out Tan and thinks they had a similar thing, even though Phi assures him that isn't the case.
Honestly, the possibility of tangled relationships is getting to me AHHHH I didnt get that vibe from the trailer at all but I will be glad to see it. Insert the *I'm excited because I love mess* gif I cant be bothered to search rn.
Top being the token salacious fool archetype of this slasher.
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Following up on the theme of horror gays being in entangled situationships: A high Top making passes at his friends might not lead anywhere as it just might be him fulfilling his role as the facetious, big mouth guy. But i will just put it aside just in case..... 👀👀
Bonus strays thoughts::
According to character profiles, all the boys are the same age, except Tan and White who are 2 years younger
Por says to Tan "you two got in [their friend group] in 12th grade". I am assuming other person is Phi as White got into the group as the boyfriend. I want to see how they got to be friends tho.
Smoker Tan has asthma and he needs an inhaler which definitely won't be a big problem in the future, right?
It's interesting how Phi wants to be a director and we fittingly saw him being a leader, being levelheaded and "directing" the critical situations, assigning roles to the group etc
Top claims Non is haunting them because they completed his film without him. Babygirl, I dont know if intellectual property theft is enough to turn into an evil ghost, I know you guys did more than that.
Random but I kinda want Fluke to be the Final Girl, surviving until the end w just a puke bag and 2 years of medicine knowledge.......
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It’s my boy Ryan!!!
As we know our boy is bisexual
He’s also autistic but that’s another thing.
He probably realised he liked boys as well as girls when he was like 12 or 13. He developed a small crush on this boy at school who wore denim and leather type jackets and he thought he was so cool. He never revealed anything though because he was too shy and didn’t get along with others.
He didn’t come out until he and his sister were living with their grandparents because while living with their mum he didn’t feel safe enough to reveal that side of him. He was still a little nervous when coming out to his grandparents but he knew that they loved him no matter what.
The first person outside of his family that he came out to was Chris who reassured Ryan that he supported him and he was always here to talk. That and Chris’s support about his school and home life is why Ryan trusts him so much.
He has a few pride pins that he sticks on his jackets or bags. He also has a few pride stickers that Sarah bought him that he likes to stick on his phone case or laptop case.
I think his bi awakening was Sam Winchester in Supernatural (he enjoys supernatural and paranormal things plus Jared Padalecki was one of my big crushes as a kid so I’m including him because I love him)
He like everybody else definitely had a tiny attraction to Nick when he first met him. I just think Nick is the type who attracts a lot of people whether it’s for a long time or just a short crush. Ryan takes one look at him and is like damn he’s good looking.
His attraction to Nick doesn’t last long though because he eventually starts developing feelings for Dylan. He doesn’t like to admit it but he definitely loves those puns and jokes.
One time Jacob after finding out asked Ryan what his type is and then jokingly asked him if he was. Ryan can’t help being blunt and just said no in the most dead pan voice. Nick, Dylan and Kaitlyn who heard all laughed so hard they cried. Ryan was so confused.
All of the campers are supportive of him and Dylan’s sexualities (all the counsellors are queer tbh)
I think he had a non serious relationship with a guy before coming to camp that year due to him saying “Not exactly” to Dylan when he asks if he has a girlfriend but he’d not been feeling the relationship so broke up with him before going to camp but felt conflicted about it but he realised while at camp that he prefers Dylan’s company and has a stronger connection to Dylan.
Sarah definitely is that little sister that isn’t afraid to tease him. She probably says he’s ‘bi himself’ when he’s single and he just rolls his eyes but smiles because it’s just a little fun because she supports him and is only joking.
I think while he is attracted to both he leans more towards men.
He listens to some Queer artists.
I 100% believe that he watched Heartstopper because Dylan asked him to and he actually got really emotional over Nick’s story. He also hates Ben and Harry with a passion and is a Tori stan because he relates to her a bit.
He sometimes struggles with expressing his emotions and being open about his relationships due to his past experiences and trauma from when he was a kid so the first time he really opens up to Dylan and let’s him in is a big moment for him.
The first moment he refers to Dylan as his boyfriend to someone else he feels really content with it. Dylan is absolutely ecstatic but tries to not to get too excited because he doesn’t want to overwhelm him.
If they got married I think they’d either use both last names and hyphenate or he’d take Dylan’s. I think this because I think he’d have complicated feelings over his last name due to his relationship with his mum but also likes his last name because of its connections to his grandparents and sister. He’d be conflicted about it but Dylan would support any decision.
Him and Dylan go on double dates with Nick and Abi or Max and Laura sometimes.
They end up having a daughter when they’re older.
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