#headers cinder

[irisintheafterglow]

blood moonlit, must be counterfeit

summary: a guy at a party has a really good dynamight costume, and you two get to talking about your favorite heroes. (pro!bakugo x you)

wc: 1.68k

cw/tags: swearing ofc cuz it's bakugo, mentions of drinking and alcohol, halloween party, first meeting, emotionally constipated katsuki and reader is kinda oblivious lol

note: NEW HALLOWEEN HEADER BABY also this idea had me by the throat so i needed to write it down before it consumed my entire psyche. i'm back to writing for bakugo again because iykyk and halloween fics are giving me a lot of motivation right now. hope you enjoy!

likes, reblogs, and replies are always appreciated <3

“I have to admit–your costume is pretty damn good.”

“Yeah? Just ‘pretty good?’”

“Mhmm. Almost looks like the real thing,” you remark, taking another sip of the dangerously sweet jungle juice in your cup. It's an unreadable mix of bad ideas and bold flirtation, perfect for a Halloween party of barely 21 adults. The blonde guy beside you on the worn leather couch tilts his head slightly like he's re-affirming what you just said in his mind. “I think the real Dynamight would be impressed.”

“Would he, now,” he huffs under his breath, mouth curling into an unreadable smirk. He exhales a quick breath of what you think is amusement through his nose, eyes flicking over your body for the umpteenth time since he sat down with you. It makes your face heat up and you casually avert your gaze downward, catching more details of his costume that you didn’t notice before. 

The gauntlets were obviously the star of the arrangement, covered in numerous scratches, burns, and dents that attested to their “battle” usage. The boots were impressive, too, and you wondered how long it took to place every individual orange eyelet over the front of each calf. The cinder block rectangles sitting on his broad shoulders truly looked like real stone, solid like the toned muscle holding them up. It was the domino mask that threw you off the most, though. The guy must have been wearing bright red contacts, or something, because to look so similar to the actual Pro should have been considered a crime. 

“Who’d you come to the party with?”

“Just some friends,” he replies, shrugging an infuriatingly sexy shoulder. His entire look was putting the real Dynamight to shame, in your opinion. He nods upward in the direction of a guy in an equally accurate Deku costume standing with a very convincing Shoto lookalike. “They dared me to wear this and I lost the bet.”

“Must have been some bet, if you’re moping over here like a toddler.” The shrewdness of your words escapes you until they’re already past your lips; thankfully, he just smirks again and leans his head back, resting an arm on the back of the sofa.

“I’ll ignore that you said that, 'cause you're clearly intoxicated” he mutters, shooting you a brutal side-eye. Thanks to the alcohol, though, you’re far from deterred. 

“How gracious,” you chuckle and his smirk gets a little more arrogant. “What was the bet?”

“Some dumb drinking contest. That asswipe in the green can put down more shots than he looks.” He scowls and you fight down the urge to giggle at his bitter expression. He was the only guy you’ve ever seen that could make a grumpy face look hot. The only guy besides Bakugo himself, of course. “I wouldn’t have worn this shit to a party to save my life.”

“What, Dynamight isn’t your favorite Pro?”

“I’m more of an All Might guy,” he replies nonchalantly. He appreciates the classic heroes. Good sign. “If I had to choose a different one, I’d probably say Jeanist.”

“Jeanist is pretty cool. My best friend had a cardboard cutout of Eraserhead in her closet growing up.” He barks out a laugh and it startles you, but a mysterious feeling in your stomach wants to make him do it again. “What do you think of the current gen of heroes?” He hums thoughtfully, running his tongue over his top lip and you swallow back your drool.

“Red Riot’s a good guy. Deku pisses me the fuck off, but he’s got a good head on his shoulders. Same thing with Pinky and that Half-and-Half asshat. Chargebolt…” His expression turns into a frown so deep you’re worried that Chargebolt killed his family or something heinous like that. 

“What about him?”

“He’s just dumb. If given the choice between his life and a grain of sand, I’d take the sand,” he deadpans and you choke unexpectedly, wincing as your drink travels up the wrong tube and into your nose. His eyes widened in concern, reaching out to pat your back but deciding against it at the last moment. His glove-covered hands hover around you like you’re radioactive matter, carefully watching as you regain your composure. “You good, nerd?” Uses the same vocabulary as the real guy, too. Kind of weird, but I guess we all have our idols. 

“Yeah, I’m good. I just didn’t expect you to badmouth him like you two were friends from high school or something,” you joke lightheartedly and the guy blinks at you twice before computing what you said. 

“It’s whatever. They’re super fuckin’ easy to read, in any case,” he states with an air of finality and you down the rest of your drink, the dim lighting starting to blur everything around you into a single greenish-orange blob. “What about you? What are your thoughts on the new gen?”

“I can’t make such bold judgments as you, but I do think Dynamight is pretty cool,” you admit, suddenly feeling a little bashful when having the same question turned on you. The truth was, you followed the lives of the heroes a bit too closely than the average person should. It fascinated you so much that you were majoring in Quirk-specific journalism, studying the social and economic consequences of being a Pro. “I think his public persona is an interesting case when compared to other heroes.”

“How so?”

“Well, I’d like to imagine that he’s not always the loud, arrogant, obnoxious piece of shit that the press shows,” you start and narrow your eyes in confusion when he flinches at your description. You continue anyway but choose your words a little more carefully. Probably isn’t good to upset the guy who might have fashioned functioning gauntlets, if the costume truly is accurate. “There’s a side to him that I think the public doesn’t know about and doesn’t care to know about, since it’s easier to understand him as a loudmouth with no sense of manners. I just wonder who that guy is under all the yelling and testosterone.” His silence is deafening and you worry that you somehow offended him, but his tone is so gentle that your assumption becomes an impossibility.

“Seems like you’ve given this guy a great deal of thought,” he says lowly, voice barely audible over the sound of the blaring house music. 

“Well, he is my favorite,” you add quietly, not expecting him to catch what you said. He does, though, and that mischievous smirk returns to his face. Somehow, you two had inched closer together over the course of your conversation, and you were now close enough to smell his cologne. It was something deep and smoky, with a surprise note of sweetness, like caramel. “I’ve been following his hero career since I was in high school.”

“I didn’t take you for a superfan, but I do appreciate your support,” he chuckles and your eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “You seriously haven’t figured it out?”

“Figured what out?”

“That I’m Dynamight, stupid. This is my actual costume and those are my actual friends. Hell, I'm paying for this whole shitty party,” he says incredulously, genuinely shocked that you didn’t come to that conclusion already. Your skepticism, however, rears its head and you burst out into rude laughter. 

Dynamight? Yeah, right. More like Dyna-maybe. 

“Excuse me?” He stares at you like you’d grown three heads and your heart drops into your stomach. You must have said your thoughts out loud. Fuck! “You’ve got some nerve, testing the patience of a Pro.” His words, under any other circumstances, would have cut down your pride like a knife. However, his eyes were conveying a different story, one of lust and want and holyshityouwantedhim. “Got anything to say, sweetheart? Or are you gonna just keep gaping like a fuckin’ goldfish?” You abruptly snap your jaw back into place, leaning your head into your hand and smiling in triumph when his gaze again uncontrollably rakes over your body.  

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“See what, gorgeous?”

“That a Pro kisses better than a normal person,” you murmur and his pupils blow to the size of pool balls. He wastes no time, gently but firmly grabbing your chin with two fingers and pulling your mouth onto his. His lips are ridiculously soft and you muster up the courage to bite him softly, heartbeat racing when he groans into your mouth. One arm drapes itself over the back of the couch, the other pulling you as close to him as humanly possible without practically sitting on him. Your hand combs through his hair and the other keeps him on you by the back of his neck.

Right when you run out of breath, he pulls away and swears colorfully at the phone buzzing in his pocket, answering it with one hand while his forearm is still pressed against your lower back. You absentmindedly trace his jawline with a finger while he curses out the person on the other line, eventually chucking the device over his shoulder like it was the last thing he was thinking about. “You need to go somewhere, sweetheart?” He lightly pinches your side at your mockery and you jump, flicking his forehead in defiance. 

“Nah, that was a job for Dynamight. Right now, I guess I’m still fuckin' Dyna-maybe,” he rasps and leans back in to kiss you again but you push his face away, giving him as sober of a look as possible. “What?”

“If you need to go kick ass, then go kick ass. I’m just some random makeout at a party,” you remind him, painfully aware of the sting if he was to leave you alone. His expression contorts into indignancy again but you still try to convince him to alleviate whatever situation he was called in for. “Your job is more important than a hookup.”

“I don’t do hookups, dumbass. I’m interested in you,” he states plainly and your face is set on fire. The Pro, who you just insulted to his face, was interested in you? “So, let’s get out of here, yeah? I can make you dinner that isn’t shitty pizza.” His mouth breaks into a devilish grin and you’re already grabbing onto his hand like your life depended on it. 

“If someone messes with us?”

“It’s a good thing I’m already in costume.” 

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[stripedstarsblueflags]

Put that guy in a situation 53, wings/supernatural features: Sargebon, Vampire!Logan x Phoenix!Alex

Edge Effect

Pairing: Sargebon

Word count: 10.2k

Rating: T (language, vaguely suggestive themes of an ambiguous nature)

GOT A LITTLE CARRIED AWAY OKAY?? on ao3 shortly

Logan always knows when Alex is about to shift.

Not that it’s subtle for everyone else. In the few days before, Alex is volatile, agitated, reactive to the point of being almost unapproachable. He snaps for no reason and speaks so fast he stutters almost every sentence. By the penultimate day, the change manifests in his eyes: they take on a reflective amber shine, the irises going from almost black to the deep orange of catching embers, full of sparking, red-hot energy.

Most people notice these symptoms when they begin– two or three days in advance, the amount of buildup the cycle needs before the phoenix ignites itself. Nobody sees that– Logan doesn’t know where Alex goes during the actual moment of the shift, just that he keeps himself well hidden until it’s over.

Logan might be the only one who knows it’s about to happen before Alex himself, though. He can smell it.

It’s noticeable almost a week in advance, the same way he can smell the heavy metallic grey in the air a week before a rainstorm.

Alex always smells a little like smoke– which makes sense. He’s a creature of fire and ashes first, blood and bones second; the glamours he uses to hide his wings and make them intangible enough to get in the car can’t change that. Most of the time, though, it’s a comforting sort of smoke– autumnal and fragrant, underlying hints of cinnamon or clove, warm and a little bit sharp in the way campfire smoke can be sharp. Logan felt a little addicted to it when he was first getting to know Alex– he’s acclimated now, but the gentle and fuzzy spell the scent had first seemed to put on him hasn’t abated. Sometimes he feels a little too close to Alex– like he’s waiting for himself to succumb to rising heat, to let himself get burned.

In a way, the shifts help with that– infatuation, attraction, whatever it is. They keep Alex from seeming too good to be true.

When the shift is approaching, even before the physical symptoms present, Alex’s scent is the first thing to be affected. It reminds Logan of a forest fire: something warm and playful at first, then the uneasy sensation of losing control, and finally everything soft and sweet burning up at once, charred and unfamiliar.

The smoke is the most pungent the day after, though, when he’s all but carrying the cinders with him. Maybe he really is– Logan’s rarely gotten more than a glimpse of his teammate’s wings, and never right after a shift. Maybe the ash clings to the feathers afterwards, dark and heavy, weighing him down.

Nobody talks to Logan about it; certainly not Alex himself. He doesn’t know if they talk to each other and just leave him out of the conversation, but it would make sense. As the first vampire in Formula 1, he isn’t exactly winning any popularity contests.

So far, Alex and Logan have gotten along just fine without their respective supernatural aspects playing a part. There hasn’t been any agreement or discussion on the matter; just a mutual longing to be able to exist as a person for once and not just an Entity. Logan would rather keep it that way; it feels nice to play at being normal, at being human– for as long as they can, anyway. An unspoken rule that keeps the escapism going for that much longer.

It’s not perfect, but he’ll take it. And he’ll take the quiet intimacy of knowing Alex a little more than he’s supposed to.

It isn’t possible to schedule the shifts, exactly, but there are certain measures that could be taken to push them back– suppressants, ice baths, fever reducers– just long enough to ensure Alex won’t burst into flames halfway through a race weekend. It’s tricky, but manageable, most of the time.

Fucking triple-headers, though…

The three weeks of Austin, Mexico and Vegas nearly culminated in disaster. Logan sensed the change in Alex by the end of the first week, and the symptoms manifested by the time they arrived at the following circuit. All the hyperactivity and short-fuse energy was so much worse with the knowledge that there wouldn’t be a break until after Vegas– Alex would have to hold back the fire by sheer force of will.

By qualifying, he was nearly unrecognizable.

Logan didn’t see him for two days after the race.

But the night before, he’d clocked William’s best ever result at Vegas, and a fastest lap to finish it off. Something about all that just simmering under the surface made him a demon behind the wheel. Heat waves radiated from his hidden wings. A permanent sheen of sweat glowed on his fevered skin. He looked like he was about to collapse, and then he got in the car…

He’d run in second for over nineteen laps before pitting, and finished the race in P4.

Not a podium, but from the cheers in the garage you would’ve thought the team won the whole damn championship. Logan was hiding in his driver’s room, trying to pretend the shame of another DNF (suspension failure that wasn’t even his fault this time) wasn’t slowly killing him inside when he’d heard the uproar.

He’d stumbled out of his room bewildered, panicked, half expecting to emerge into a riot, but it was just the ecstatic cheers of the team rushing out of the garage. A blue surge of adrenaline and pride would meet Alex in parc ferme after the cooldown lap, all beaming smiles and shaking fists, ready to celebrate the culmination of a drive that would surely go down in history.

Logan returned to the garage to wait, away from everybody else. Nobody asked him about it. Since bringing the car back, he’d become little more than an inanimate object, a nuisance in the sight line of the mechanics tasked with taking the tractor apart and seeing what the upteenth issue was– many of them glaring over their shoulder at him, no matter that he’d tried his best. He’d slunk away to his driver’s room after a while, watching the rest of the race on the TV and hoping the cameras wouldn’t pan to a blazing wreck.

Alex wasn’t blazing, but he sure looked like a wreck by the time he’d finished at the weigh station and snuck through the cameras to the garage. His hair was drenched and clinging to his forehead as if he’d poured an entire bottle over himself. The velcro around his ankles and wrists was undone, zipper half open, his hands shaking too badly to undo the race suit any further. His eyes were wild.

The noise, Logan thought.

He pushed himself off the wall he’d been leaning against and crossed the cluttered space carefully, resisting the urge to lift his hands as if he was approaching a cornered animal. On the way he grabbed a pair of headphones from the wrack on the wall. He kept his tone low and tentative, however, only loud enough to hear over the chaos without adding to the overall roar.

“Hey,” he’d said. Alex met his eyes in one snapping half turn that must’ve hurt his neck; Logan almost stepped away, mouth going draw. Alex’s eyes were bright red, like rings of lava. His teeth were clenched so hard Logan could see the quivering tension all down his neck. He didn’t smell like smoke, he smelled like an electrical fire– black wire and twisted metal, a corrupting ozone haze so powerful one breath nearly knocked him out. Logan had to take a second to compose himself, forcing down the nausea.

“You’re okay, look at me,” he soothed, holding out the headphones. “You’re alright, you did good.” He gestured over his shoulder in the vague direction of their driver’s rooms. “Ice bath?”

Alex snatched the headphones and jammed them over his head, fingers going white around the material until he got it situated. Then he closed his eyes for a bit, chest heaving, hands still clasped firmly around the headphones as if the silence might slip through his fingers. He didn’t unclench his teeth long enough to answer, but he did nod almost frantically. Anything to keep the fire from starting now.

“Okay,” Logan said, forcing his voice to stay calm. He hesitated, then reached out and gave Alex’s wrist a gentle tug. “Come on.”

Alex gasped at the contact like he’d been holding his breath until that moment, but he had followed where he was led.

Logan hasn’t seen Alex at all until he flew back to England.

They both have sim work scheduled the next week, and Logan’s almost afraid for the first day their HQ schedules overlap. He keeps thinking of Alex’s red-hot eyes, the burning heat of his skin in the few seconds of contact when he’d grabbed his wrist, the heat waves rippling from his back and warping the air around him in a nauseating mirage. The way Alex had reacted at Logan’s voice, his touch: as if nothing else could bring him back from the verge of complete immolation.

It probably didn’t mean anything–

It can’t mean anything.

But it was the first time he’d seen Alex so vulnerable, the first time either of them had been exposed to the downsides that came with the other’s species. It’s not like Alex has ever seen Logan when he’s missed one too many feedings, all dripping fangs and frenzied hunger until he got what he needed. Logan is very, very careful to keep it that way. He doesn’t make that mistake often, but Alex of all people doesn’t need to know how bad it can get– how much of a monster he becomes.

Maybe there’s an element of shame in it for Alex, as well, even though his shifts are considerably less stigmatized. Either way, they don’t talk about these things. The averted disaster in Vegas seems to have crossed a line into a space he wasn’t ready for.

But when he first sees Alex, tucked morosely into a corner of the ground floor lounge (only slightly more extravagant than any average workplace canteen) all his apprehension is replaced with concern.

The heat and intensity is gone from his aura, thankfully, but he seems absolutely miserable in a too-big grey sweatshirt and an expression of absolute detachment on his face. Slack-jawed and glassy-eyed, he looks like he’s just suffered some massive blow and hasn’t even begun to recover. His usual restless, self conscious energy is completely subdued, instead replaced by a rigor mortis-level stillness.

They wouldn’t normally sit together– if not for how overpowering the smoke is for Logan, then at least for a mutual paranoid awkwardness. For some reason conversation is always so much easier in the paddock, where the roaring sounds of V6s and machinery render their voices undetectable and meaningless, than in a sterile room with washed-out lighting and endless, incriminating quiet. Also, everything smells like energy and burning fuel on track, so it’s the more soothing traces in the campfire aura that is Alex that really stand out. Outdoors in general always feels more open, more relaxed than whatever can go on behind closed doors.

But on seeing Alex’s dejected state, and recalling his panic in the garage, Logan makes the decision to approach him. He slides into the next chair with a deliberately nonchalant, “‘Sup.”

Alex laughs a little, a hoarse exhale that’s barely more than a cough. “You sound so American when you say that.”

Logan scoffs. “Gee, I wonder why.”

“Sup,” Alex imitates, deliberately pitching his voice low. “Wassup, bro. Wassup with you?”

Logan rolls his eyes and tries not to laugh, but doesn’t try very hard. “I’m sorry I’ve offended your British sensitivities.”

“Logan, no– it’s sensibilities.”

“Sometimes you sound exactly like George, you know that, right?”

Alex laughs, a little more sincerely, then winces. He swallows and shifts in his seat, trying to cover it up, but Logan catches it nonetheless.

“Just wanted to check in,” he says to Alex, softening his voice. “Y’know, after the race. You were fighting pretty hard.”

He doesn’t specify any further– fighting to keep the place, fighting to the oppressive desert heat, fighting the cycle of his own body that demanded the sparks catch immediately.

Alex doesn’t ask him to elaborate. “Yeah. I mean, good result, but… a night to forget, for sure.”

“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

Alex smirks; Logan can tell he’s deliberately holding back laughter this time– not out of rudeness, more like a stilted sort of self-restraint.

“Shift went okay?” Logan asks.

The question shuts both of them up; Logan takes a minute to feel a surge of gratitude that his chalky vampire pallor won’t warm enough to blush, even as his face burns. He’s never asked that question before. The smooth, unbothered air he forced into his voice sounds blatantly artificial– maybe just to himself, because he can feel his own heart racing along with the overthinking, but it makes him cringe nonetheless.

Alex doesn’t look at him, a distracted haze settling over his eyes again. “I mean,” he starts, chewing his lips as he tries to find the right words. “As much as shifts can be, I guess. I’m used to it.”

Logan feels a pang of sympathy. He can’t relate exactly, of course, but he can picture the emotion vividly: the shame and exhaustion that comes with forcing yourself through an inhuman struggle just to get it over with. Coming back into your body with the remnants of the whole ordeal trapped under your skin, unwilling to let you go– pain, heightened sensitivity, ears ringing, heart racing. Feeling, even in the aftermath, like a creature– like a beast dominated by the needs and constructs of its baser form, void of complex thought, only an Entity wearing itself out through the same primitive ritual.

“Glad to get it over with, at least?” Logan prompts, hearing his own wavering hesitation. He asks because that’s how he feels after a feeding– sore and sick and laden with as much self-disgust as blood, but overwhelmingly relieved that the worst of it is behind him, at least for the time being.

“Yeah,” Alex admits after a pause. “That’s the only good part, I guess. The feeling like, I don’t know– like I got it out of my system.”

Logan nods thoughtfully, not really knowing how to respond. The relief he experiences has more to do with getting something into his system, so he definitely doesn’t want to try and bring that up now.

Instead, he tries to keep the focus on Alex. “That’s good to– I mean, good for me to hear. Like, that it didn’t go wrong. You seemed kind of freaked after the race.”

He doesn’t mean it as an insult, but Alex clearly takes it the wrong way. A look of warning flashes in his eyes, but just as quickly fizzles out like a match flame in a cold wind, and he casts his gaze down in strained hurt. It sends a jolt of panic through Logan, rapidly stepping in to overcorrect the perceived degradation: “No, no, not that that’s a bad thing– I mean, I’m the same when I’m hungry, you know, it’s so hard to keep it together– it was just. I don’t know. I was worried.”

Alex closes his eyes meekly. “I’m sorry.”

Logan shakes his head, which is stupid because Alex can’t see him, then gently contradicts. “Don’t be sorry, Alex. You couldn’t help it.”

Alex takes a deep breath, a brief spasm of tension gripping his shoulders for a minute like he wants to push back, then twists back into a slouch. “I didn’t mean to, uh– get like that. Like, let it show.” He clears his throat, abrupt and painful; when he continues his voice is hoarse but refortified. “Anyway.” A little too loudly. He grimaces and finds a softer pitch: “Like I said, I’m used to it. It’s a mess while it’s happening, but the fire can’t catch on anything that’s not me.” He drags his fingers distractedly through his hair, wrist jerking in a sudden spasm. His eyes look hollow and drained, bruiselike shadows eclipsing the sockets, and his jawline is sharp with tension. He still carries the acrid, stinging scent of smoke, but there’s something else underneath– spilled ink and wet paper, something bitterly fragile.

A cold, heavy silence seeps between them.

Finally, unable to stand the growing cavern of unspoken implication between them, Logan breaks.

“Does it hurt?” he asks quietly.

Alex’s eyes shoot up to his, a sudden spark of alertness flashing in his gaze. A flare of something bright and hot threads through the smoky haze for a second.

“Sorry, sorry,” Logan babbles quickly, putting his hands up in part placation, part surrender. “I don’t know if that’s, like, offensive or a stupid question or–“

“No, Logan, it’s okay.” Alex takes a deep breath and the tension leaves his scent, settling back into blackened charcoal. “I’m sorry, I was just surprised. I guess people think it’s offensive, or that I might–“ He swallows and casts his eyes down. “I don’t know. It’s just not something I’ve ever been asked before.”

“Really?” Logan finds that hard to believe; there’s nothing natural about the way Alex is holding himself. There’s tightness in every movement, a grimace on his face with every turn of his head. There’s no way nobody else has noticed. “No one?”

Alex shrugs, then winces. His next sentence is forced steadiness between gritted teeth. “Just hasn’t come up.”

Logan ducks his head, trying to meet Alex’s eyes. “But does it? Hurt, I mean.”

Alex exhales, shuddering, and then the mask drops. His shoulders droop. He lets his head fall forward. His eyes slide closed, and all the weariness washes over his face like murky water.

“Yeah,” he breathes. “Yeah, it hurts like hell. The first few days after… like, before the regrowth starts– those are always the worst.”

Logan chews his lip. “How long will it hurt for?”

Alex lifts his head. His eyes hold a bewildered tenderness that wasn’t there before. “Why… why are you asking?”

It’s a fair question. Logan doesn’t have wings, there’s no way he could understand. Alex would be better off talking to George– the shapeshifter makes the transition from human to crow look effortless, but Logan knows George still struggles sometimes. He can smell it, after a particularly bad change– the sleek, birch bark scent of the crow that hangs around George’s human form hours afterwards. It hurts, too, though Logan doesn’t think George knows that he knows. Still, George might understand Alex better. Or Lando, or Max, or any of the other winged drivers.

But…. no one else had even asked?

Logan looks away, suddenly unsure. “I don’t like seeing you in pain.”

Alex laughs humorlessly. “Sucks to be paired with a phoenix, then.” He leans over to catch Logan’s eyes again as if he’s just remembered something. “Is the smoke still bothering you? I mean, I can’t smell it, but vampires…”

”It’s fine,” Logan lies, quickly cutting him off. The smoke around Alex is pungent, completely soaking the much preferable soft firewood and autumn leaves, but Logan’s learned to bear it more quickly than he thought he would.

He just doesn’t like hearing– that word. Vampire, fucking hell. Not even whispered, certainly not spoken aloud by anyone– especially not Alex. Alex is the only teammate he’s ever had who doesn’t treat him like a monster, like some unruly fevered beast hiding behind a facade of humanity. Alex doesn’t say the word aloud, but unlike pretty much everyone else around him, Logan doesn’t think he does it out of stigma or prejudice– more like he knows it bothers Logan, and won’t bang on doors that are closed for a reason. It’s one of the many things about Alex Logan finds himself being drawn to, despite the difference in species, despite the fact that a phoenix and a vampire pairing sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.

“Really, I don’t mind,” he assures Alex. “I just wish there was something I could do to help.”

Alex tilts his head and half-unfolds form his slouch like he wants to say something, then thinks better of it.

“Um… is there something I can do?” Logan tries to keep the eager inflection out of his voice. He doesn’t want to scare Alex away with his desire to be a good friend– he knows better than to be careless with showing affection, because there’s always people who will see him as a threat no matter what he does.

But when Alex looks back at him and their eyes meet, there’s no sign of fear or suspicion in his eyes at all. Only a little bit of pleading, and a whole lot of pain.

“I mean, if you would– well, um. Yeah,” Alex says shakily, words starting to trip over each other again like they do when he’s not focusing. “Yeah, there is, actually. Can you just come closer?”

Logan frowns and hesitates, but Alex looks too exhausted to be doing a bit. He braces his hands against the table and slides the rolling chair closer to Alex’s, close enough that their arms are pressed together.

Alex sighs deeply, eyes sliding closed again. He leans in, drifting closer to Logan, and for a second Logan worries he’s going to fall asleep.

“Woah, uh, hi,” he says, laughing awkwardly to conceal the sudden lightheadedness he feels from this much contact. “What about this is helping, exactly?”

Alex must regain some lucidity, because he starts to squirm as if he’s just realized he’s halfway into a compromising position with his teammate– but he doesn’t pull away. He shakes his head to himself. “Cold,” he mutters. “You’re always cold. Helps. Feels good…”

Logan knows he’s cold. He’s heard it before, he’s seen it before on all the vital scans, but it’s not something he consciously thinks about. He doesn’t touch anybody. They don’t touch him. It doesn’t come up.

Only now Alex is practically about to fall into his lap. “Helps… the burns?” he asks.

“Yeah. Burns on the wings… the feathers.” Alex is starting to drift away again, words going lower and softer around the edges. He’s putting less and less effort into looking like he’s not going to fall asleep on Logan’s shoulder. “Happens every cycle, fucking sick of it…”

Logan studies Alex’s sallow skin, the bags under his eyes, the fresh split in his chapped lips. The brightest person he knows has faded to a lusterless outline within seventy-two hours.

”I’m guessing you’re not sleeping,” Logan says, trying to keep his voice neutral. Some of the other Williams personnel in the lounge are starting to give them quizzical glances; he gives them flat, tight-lipped smiles in return, like: Nothing to see here, thanks for checking in.

Alex shakes his head and huffs out a laugh that’s partially a scoff. “No chance. I have to sit in front of the refrigerator with my wings spread for, like, an hour before I can even think about getting tired.”

Logan laughs too, not unkindly. “That’s a nighttime ritual I haven’t heard before.”

”Probably because nobody’s idea of a relaxing time is sitting on the kitchen floor with your shirt off, wondering how much you’re racking up on someone else’s power bill.”

Logan’s arm is cramping; he wriggles it free from between them and drapes it over the back of Alex’s chair. Alex makes a sound halfway between a sigh and a purr and lets his head drop on Logan’s shoulder.

”I didn’t know I was that cold,” Logan says, just to distract himself from the racy pulses in his chest— phantom echoes of what anxiety felt like when he still had a heartbeat. This close to Alex, the smoky smell is almost overpowering, but now he can detect hints of underlying firewood and cinnamon, of the Alex he knows.

“Phoenixes are more sensitive to temperature,” Alex mumbles. It surprises Logan a little bit, because this kind of openness— clear, detailed, articulated— never happens between them. The pain and exhaustion seem to have taken Alex’s walls down. “Especially after a shift, when everything’s…” His voice drops. “Raw.”

The floating, dissociative quality to Alex’s voice is starting to worry Logan. “Are you going to be okay by practice next week?” he frets.

Alex seems to come back to himself. His eyes slide open, sobered by a dejected self-awareness, and he sits up straight. “Sorry,” he says quietly, then clears his throat. “Ah, sorry, yeah. I’ll be fine. The regrowth phase starts tomorrow, I think, or maybe after— still won’t be at my best, because of the sleep, but by Saturday I’ll–”

“I can help,” Logan blurts out, without a second spared for thought or consideration or wondering what the hell he’s offering.

Alex furrows his brow. “What do you mean?”

‘I can help you sleep’? Who says that? Logan has never felt more awkward in his life. Every instinct is shouting at him to back out of it, to retreat, to pretend this strange and spontaneous intimacy between them never happened– but if he takes it back now, wouldn’t that be worse? What if Alex gets the wrong idea and starts to see Logan the way everyone else does– just another predator, waiting for a time to strike?

He has to explain, or at least attempt. “I mean we could just.” Logan waves his hand vaguely at the space between the two of them. “What we did just now. I could just… be near until you fall asleep, I guess.” He cringes with every word. Even to his own ears, he sounds like a creep: insinuating things, trying to invite himself into someone else’s embrace, a badly told lie with poorly concealed motivations.

Fuck it all, he just wants to help.

When Alex doesn’t answer immediately, Logan’s heart sinks. The closest thing he’s ever had to a real friendship– one that’s not defined by the fangs or the silver or the bottles at the back of the fridge– and he’s thrown it away because he doesn’t know how to talk like a normal person.

He’s halfway through standing up when Alex catches onto his wrist.

Logan flinches, but doesn’t pull away. He looks back at Alex, his dark and shining eyes, the awful angle of his shoulders, the smoke, the wavering glamour that barely hides the marred shapes of his wings…

“Yeah,” Alex says. His voice is unbearably broken, unbearably vulnerable. “Yeah, please. I’d like that.”

Logan breathes a sigh of relief, the tight fear in his chest melting away like ice in spring sunlight.

Logan can drive home straight from the factory, while Alex’s hotel for the week is a little farther away. So Logan takes Alex home.

He isn’t sure if he’s endlessly grateful or in agonizing despair that the car ride is less than twenty minutes.

In despair because he needs a lot more time to think of how he’s going to handle what comes next, what he offered. How much exactly does ‘I can help’ entail? What is Alex expecting from him? How can Logan make sure that he doesn’t surpass those expectations? It’d be tough to disappoint Alex, but it’s far better than overstepping a boundary he never understood in the first place. The pure confusion of everything is starting to be a source of regret.

But he’s still grateful for the shortness of the drive, because it ends up being the most awkward length of time he’s ever spent with someone in a captive space. He and Alex aren’t exactly attached at the hip the way other teammate pairings on the grid are– they’re not even particularly close, because closeness requires vulnerability and that’s a step neither of them have taken. But they can talk. They can talk for hours, rambling about anything and everything except what the social admin actually wants them to talk about. They can make inconsequential topics stretch over track walks, pit stop practice, data sessions– it helps with boredom, it helps with anxiety. Inconsequential connection during inconsequential times.

This singular car ride, in comparison, feels more than tense– it feels heavy, like Logan can feel the weight of everything they both aren’t saying aloud like gravity on a particularly banked turn.

He doesn’t remember if he’s ever been able to detect the changes in Alex’s scent this clearly before– every nuance, every fluctuation catching his attention like light flashing on glass. Maybe he’s only focusing now, because they’re about to… whatever it is he promised to do.

Can you just come closer?

He’s driving with the windows rolled down, even though it’s loud, because he didn’t want to be completely immersed in smoke for any length of time. But the farther he gets from the factory, the more Alex’s smell changes: warmer and softer, like the burnt and brittle edges of the shift are starting to crumble away. It feels like something’s being lifted, choking black clouds drifting away from gentle auburn air.

He has no idea what that means for a phoenix– for Alex. He’s not sure he wants to.

He definitely doesn’t want to know what it means that he’s paying this much attention.

It’s better, at least. The drive is incrementally more bearable.

Alex is looking out the window. Logan is not looking at Alex.

He manages to stomach the silence for less than a minute. Any longer trying to remember every single conversation starter he’s ever heard and he might actually forget how to talk.

He turns on the radio.

He isn’t paying any attention to the music, just noting that it’s loud enough to drown out the sound of Alex breathing next to him, when Alex speaks up: “You like this song.”

Logan almost looks over at Alex in the passenger seat, then thinks better of it. He spares a moment to listen; he can’t recognize the song by the first few bars. “Do I?”

��Yeah, just– just wait til the chorus.” Alex half-unfurls from where he’s curled up like a kitten against the door and gestures along with the music until it reaches the right verse:

“Won’t you help me sober up,” Alex sings. “Growing up, it made me numb…”

Logan smiles.

Alex cuts himself off. “I never said I was a good singer.”

“I’m not saying that either.”

”Hey!” Alex reaches out and swats him on the arm, but he’s laughing and uncoordinated. “They played it in the garage the other week, remember? Just like on shuffle. You told them to turn it up, so… yeah.”

Logan remembers that practice. He’s a little surprised that Alex remembers– he was half-gone by that point, twitchy and unfocused, gritting his teeth at sudden flashes of heat only he could feel.

It’s kind of sweet, that he remembered. That it stayed in his mind after, enough to bring it up again now.

Logan snaps himself out of it: “It’s okay, I guess.” Abrupt, noncommittal, closing a door. He has to be normal about this. He has to feel very normal or the next few hours are going to be a struggle.

Alex seems to get the point, curling back into himself for the remainder of the drive.

It’s still better with the music playing.

It’s dark outside by the time they get to Logan’s flat.

Logan turns to Alex the second they both cross the threshold, abruptly self-conscious about his living space. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, it’s perfectly normal. If anything, it’s almost too normal. Sparse and open, with nondescript furniture and nondescript flooring, off-white walls like blank TV screens framing everything in too much space– completely void of personality.

A little depressing, honestly, but he doesn’t have anyone to share it with– filling up the space with photographs, mementos, bits and pieces from childhood homes, splashes of color and memory… for nobody’s enjoyment but his own? The few occasions he’d tried to inlay any sense of his own identity into his living space had seemed both childish and self-destructive. He doesn’t want to miss home– who he used to be, who he thought he would be– any more than he already does.

He’s trying to think of a way to explain this to Alex when he inevitably gets judged for the barrenness of it all, but when Alex walks in, all he does is close his eyes.

Logan stares at him blankly, mouth halfway open on a forgotten sentence. Alex looks like he’s in a trance. His breath evens out, face tipped up. The stiff line of his shoulders dips into an easy slouch, tension finally softening. It’s a mirror image of his reaction this afternoon, when being close to Logan brought him the first sort of relief he’d had after endless nights of pain. Shock and satisfaction, vivid and open in every part of his expression.

It feels a little intimate to watch, honestly. Logan clears his throat– it takes him two tries to make a sound loud enough to startle Alex out of his stupor. “You good, mate?”

Alex flinches, lips pursed around a startled gasp. “Sorry, uh, yeah. I’m good.” He comes back to himself, a deep blush rising to his cheeks, and mumbles, “It’s just so… quiet here. Still.”

”Still what?”

”No, still, like– like cold water. Water when there’s no waves. The surface.”

”Still water,” Logan says flatly, frowning at Alex. If there’s supposed to be a metaphor here, Alex isn’t articulating it very well.

Alex ducks his head and fidgets with the zipper on his jacket. “It’s sort of like when I was with you earlier. I mean next to you.” He’s talking too fast for Logan to process each sentence by itself, his voice hurried and unsteady. He rolls up the cuffs of both sleeves, fussing with invisible differences in the lengths to get them even. He won’t hold eye contact for longer than a second. “Everything else can seem so loud, sometimes, and so close–“ He gestures around his face with his free hand, vague and claw-like. “Like, it feels like everything I’m touching is too much and I can’t even focus because I feel like I don’t have my own space– that’s not a phoenix thing, though, more like a…”

Logan is a bit taken aback by the sudden vulnerability, seemingly from out of nowhere. He feels like he should offer some words of comfort– sympathize with whatever Alex is trying to express– but Alex can’t even complete his thought, so he ends up waiting silently like a statue.

Alex looks back at him finally, eyes pleading and tired, like he’s expecting Logan to finish his sentence and spare them both the suffering of this awkward silence. He might as well have pinned Logan in place.

He can’t take it anymore. Feeling almost half-asleep, heavy too deep in the discomforts of his own body, he turns to the side and gestures down the hallway (stupidly, Alex doesn’t know where the thermostat is). “Cold enough?” he asks.

His voice sounds empty and dead in the space between them.

Alex flinches, then nods, then busies himself with taking off his shoes. A fraction of the anxiety eases out of his voice when he’s looking down, bracing one hand against a wall and lining up each shoe under the counter. “It’s not so much that the air needs to be cold,” he explains, voice finally evening out. “I mean, it helps, but when I’ve got the glamours up it feels– it feels less, I suppose. Like it doesn’t make as much of a difference.”

“Closer contact?” Logan asks, pushing a chair in at a different angle just to have something to do with his hands. He tries to run his fingers through his hair and flinches away from himself– there’s no temperature anywhere in his body. Bloodless fingers, bloodless face, sifting through strands as dry and brittle as wheat stalks. Tactile reminders over every inch of him that he’s not alive, that his voice and his breath and the light in his eyes can only be a barren facsimile of what he takes from the clueless donations of other people. He never notices it– the uncanny reality of his own undeath– unless he’s actually thinking about it. Or unless he’s recently been touching someone alive–

“Or is it like, weight?” he asks, because he needs to keep talking or he’s going to sink into the whirlwind of his own runaway thoughts.

“Both, I guess.” Alex gives up messing with his sleeves and takes off his jacket. His shirt rides up on one side before he gets both the sleeves off, revealing a sliver of his waist, trousers sitting low on his hips…

This brief glance does not affect Logan in any way.

He realizes he’s staring a second too late as Alex pauses with both hands twisted in the hem of his shirt. “Uh. I should probably take off the glamours for this, right? And the shirt?”

“It’s up to you,” Logan replies, then watches Alex’s face fall and realizes his carefully composed apathy is being taken as frustration. “Actually,” he adds hastily. “If you say they’re less– I mean they can feel, less, like the wings can feel less, than maybe you should– I don’t know, if you–“

He isn’t able to get out anything coherent, but Alex nods like he understands and shakes out his wrists. He pulls off his shirt with painstaking slowness, clutching it to his chest, arms folded in like the exposure if physically hurting him. Around his back and shoulders, the light falls in unnatural slips and slivers, faceting the air in the deceptive haze of the glamour. It takes the luster from his skin, sullen shadows making him look thinner than he is. His shadow on the wall behind him is uneven and ragged around the edges.

Logan doesn’t realize he’s staring until Alex looks away hurriedly, shoulders raised like he’s expecting a blow. “I need a little bit of space,” he says quietly.

Logan watches the lamplight shadows shift over Alex’s face, the cast-down dullness in his eyes, and recognizes the shame.

Unhuman, unnatural, unwanted. Entity. The eyes of someone who does not understand the reality of your form and all its constraints, who does not experience it and never will, eyes laying it bare with scrutiny and awe however accidental…

Finally, the tension falls in on itself, and he feels something soft and aching fit subtly in its place. He doesn’t want Alex to be in pain. He doesn’t want him to be ashamed.

He walks toward Alex and extends a hand.

Alex looks around, not having realized he’s backed himself into a corner, then back at Logan.

Logan’s worried he’s going to have to say something– to coax Alex out like a frightened animal– but Alex takes his hand like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

He doesn’t flinch, either, not like he did in the garage. Not like almost everyone else does when they touch a vampire.

Alex’s hand in his own is his hot– not enough to hurt, but hotter than a human’s. Or maybe it just seems that way because no one wants to touch Logan for more than a second, and Alex is still holding on.

The quiet between them feels different now. Heavier but not as sharp, not as tumultuous. Eye contact is still intense, but in the way that makes him want to hold it, not look away in fear. He remembers the fire in Alex’s eyes in Vegas, flickering and restrained, writhing beneath the surface of everything human that remained of Alex. He hadn’t wanted to look away then, either, even though it had scared him.

Logan is used to being the one others fear. The one others make eye contact with and find a lifeless, bottomless hunger that he doesn’t even realize he’s revealing until somebody’s eyes skitter away from his, prey-animal expression flashing out at him, panic and fear like bared teeth.

He’s in the exact opposite situation with Alex now. He doesn’t want to look away from the heat, from the riveting and tantalizing life simmering just under the surface of Alex, for even a second. Something about the intense focus with which Alex gazes back (he can’t remember if he’s seen Alex this focused at all, anywhere) tells him that Alex is just as entranced.

It’s scary. It’s irresistible.

He leads Alex into the center of the room, farthest from the walls. “This enough?” he asks. He doesn’t mean to speak as gently as he does. His voice comes out like the last lines of a song, tender and fading.

“Yeah,” Alex nods. He swallows and looks down– eye contact evaporating like turning off a gas stove, all the murmuring heat gone in an instant. Logan blinks a couple times, slightly dazed. “Ready?” he asks.

“I just need to concentrate,” Alex says, almost to himself. He doesn’t let go of Logan’s hand.

Logan shifts his weight. “Do you want me to–”

“No.”

Something about Alex changes, and now he has that look in his eyes again– not the redline intensity of a few seconds ago, but the far-off flicker that means he’s not all the way here, lost in smoke and sensation.

He doesn’t let go of Logan’s hand, though. His grip is sure, steady, hot.

Alex takes a deep breath and closes his eyes– Logan tries not to feel like he’s losing something.

It’s quieter than Logan might have expected, when Alex finally shakes himself free of the concealing spells and allows his wings to materialize. No flashing lights, no sparks, no fanfare. The air simply twists in on itself, a ripple of vertigo that blurs the scene behind Alex, and then his wings are there.

Logan can’t quite make out what he’s looking at, at first. Folded tightly over Alex’s shoulders, the shapes of the wings are indiscernible, lost in a ragged mass of shadow.

Then he spreads them.

It’s a slow, teeth-gritting process as Alex fights through pain and stiffness. His wings are huge, jet black in the places they’re not mottled red and copper with burn tissue and barely-emerging regrowth. The longest feathers quiver as they separate, and a light dusting of ash falls to the carpet.

It smells like something is burning, and like something has been burnt. The crackling lead up to immolation and the exhausted, hazy comedown, without the fire in the middle. It might soak into the walls. (Do Entity smells behave like that?) It should be an appalling prospect. Should be.

He can hardly be bothered, though, watching the feathers as they shift and settle over the flexing muscles of the wing. The plumage– the unburnt portions of it, anyway– isn’t even all that remarkable. No runes etched into the feathers, no lava-like hologram of heat moving through the shafts. Nothing superfluous or illustrative at all.

But he’s never seen this part of Alex before, and the list of viewers he’s joining was never that long to begin with. It’s vulnerability, raw and stinging and confusing, and it doesn’t settle right in his stomach. He draws his gaze away from the wings; if he stares too long he starts to feel like maybe he owes some sort of vulnerability in return. Which is not a thought that is wise or even safe to pursue.

Logan hasn’t been watching Alex; when he turns back, his breath hitches in his throat. Alex’s face is contorted with effort and pain, teeth bared, brow furrowed. He’s making a noise in the back of his throat not unlike a wounded animal.

”Woah–“ Logan starts.

He doesn’t get a chance to say anything more before Alex reaches out and grabs Logan’s other hand, squeezing both tightly. Logan’s so startled he nearly jumps out of his skin, but the contact seems to ground Alex, let him regain his focus.

Logan squeezes back, even though Alex’s heat and strength is hurting him. He wonders absurdly whether he’ll release his grip only to find patches of burns on his palms, red and blistering to match the wounds on Alex’s wings. The prospect makes his chest feel light and airy, but not with fear– something brighter, charged and high-strung.

Alex finally breathes out and extends his wings to their full span, stretching far enough that his shoulders lift and his back arches. He inhales shakily and lets go of Logan’s hands to scrub his hands over his face; the tingling numbness he leaves behind is like an electric current, deep and thrumming and unpleasant.

”Thank you,” Alex says, dropping his hands to reveal a sheepish expression and wide, apologetic eyes. “It’s weird to spread them out at first, sometimes. Like a really, really long practice session, maybe, just jammed up in one space for so long… not an easy stretch, at first. Sorry if I crushed your fingers.”

”They’re fine,” Logan says automatically without checking, then looks down just to be sure.

Redness blooms across his palms and around the backs of his hands, sunset-warm, almost radiant– almost alive. A small gasp of amazement is drawn from him, sudden and unexpected, and for a second he wants to laugh.

Alex looks up at him, startled. “Oh my god.” He reaches for Logan’s hands tentatively, then jerks back as if he’s the one who’s been burned. He stumbles backward, stammering, “Oh god, Logan, fuck, I’m so sorry, I can– what can I–“

“No, Alex, it’s fine,” Logan assures him. He makes himself look up from his hands (warm warm warm) to give Alex a gentle smile. “I’m not burned, that’s just what happens with heat, sometimes. Or pressure. It sort of… wakes the blood up, I guess.” He cringes at his own inelegant phrasing.

Alex steps back towards him, his wings rustling as they shift with his movement. He gestures uncertainly with his own hands, so Logan raises his palms and splays his fingers for Alex to see. The red is already fading.

”I don’t have a heartbeat,” Logan says to the small space between their hands. It hurts like a confession, like a secret that’s never been told. His voice sounds exactly how he feels: small, worn down, the not-quite shadows under an overcast sky. “I don’t have to breathe, either– I just do it as a habit, or a… compulsion, I guess. But that’s why it reacts that way sometimes– when there’s something warm outside, cause, you know… there’s no warmth in me.”

He means to laugh as he says it, to glaze the broken-glass edges of the truth with something as slick and syrupy as reflective humor, but he doesn’t manage it. He doesn’t have the breath by the end of the sentence, habitual or not.

Alex nods somberly. He drops his hands, inches below Logan’s, as the last of the almost-burns dissolves back into blue and gray.

Logan tucks his hands into fists and then tucks his fists in his pockets, ashamed. His cheeks don’t burn because he’s not blushing. He’s not alive enough to blush. “I’m not warm,” he finishes. He doesn’t mean to. His voice is dripping between the fractures.

The air in front of him shifts– Alex folding his wings behind him. His hair flutters in his eyes briefly, and he looks up.

Alex’s eyes are on Logan’s wrists, tense and pale above where he’s hidden his hands; now he looks up. “I like that about you,” he says.

They end up with Alex sitting cross-legged in the middle of the carpet, extended wings drooping to either side, baring the charred feathers to the air. Logan’s able to get a closer look this time, crouching beside Alex and peering over the wings.

“They’re like… tangled,” he says, staring at the blackened imprints left behind on the wings where the burnt stalks crosshatch over each other. Overlapping feathers meet in uneven, skewed chevrons, the unkempt feathers similar to how Alex’s hair looks right after a race when it’s gone wild under the helmet. Faint patches of orange and gold fluff are caught among the snarls of dead feathers– the first signs of the new plumage that’ll grow in soon, glossy and vivacious. Now the warm colors look like bits of sunset caught in barbed wire.

“That happens,” Alex mumbles, voice strained, tossing his head over his shoulder long enough to nod at Logan before curling back in on himself. “The burned feathers usually fall out on their own, it’s just harder when…” He shuts himself up quickly, tipping his head forward so that his hair hangs in his eyes.

“Harder when what?” Logan presses.

When Alex speaks, it’s low and forceful, an admission of guilt in a room of accusers. “When I have to hold it back,” he says. “Hold it– in, I guess. Hold the fire back.” He furrows his brow after he says it, lips curling around the words like they have an unpleasant aftertaste.

Logan thinks about holding his own hunger back– putting one foot in front of the other, one sentence in front of the other, second after second until he’’s a jittery mess of fake smiles when all he wants to do is… well, get it over with. Get what he needs. Beneath the desperation and the panic and the cavernous, all-consuming hunger, the shame sits in the bottom of his stomach like an anchor. The shame of being owned by instinct, and so obviously failing to pretend like he’s not.

Hold it– in, I guess. Yeah. He doesn’t need to ask Alex to elaborate.

Instead he settles to his knees, close enough to reach out. He tries to focus on the different kinds of hot he can smell– smoke, ash, fire, sparks. When and where each is focused. It’s gone from being suffocating to being just another element of the space around him, like the color of the light or the not-quite-silence of the humming traffic outside. He wants to focus on something outside of his own body because he feels awkward and disjointed, overthinking how normal people are supposed to nonchalantly move until nothing about him feels normal, let alone nonchalant. He ends up sitting behind Alex with his legs crossed, shins just barely pressing against Alex’s lower back. His hands feel stupid and empty by his sides, so close to the rich, gently flowing heat and yet not quite close enough. Even though being close was what he’d offered in the first place… Fuck, I’m terrible at this, he curses himself.

Alex doesn’t say anything as Logan shifts around, just interlaces his fingers in his lap. Now that the focus has shifted back to him, the pain seems to be coming back as well, no longer held at bay with distraction.

Logan draws in a deep breath (because he can, because he wants to) and finally raises one hand, letting it hover over the base of a wing where it juts over Alex’s shoulder blade. He wants to press down– card his fingers through the ash, spread his own gentle cold like rainwater over a barren desert– but he doesn’t. He’s apprehensive. The two of them are shifting in and out of vulnerability like a strobe light, shadowy interludes of privacy between flashes of sudden truths. He doesn’t know where the lines are anymore– the ones he has yet to cross. “Does it still hurt?” he asks. “I mean, I know it hurts, but– is it getting worse?”

Alex shakes his head quickly. “No, no, I’m sorry. Keep– keep it like that.” He rolls his shoulders, his left wing shifting up to meet Logan’s open palm. Logan almost pulls back, startled, but Alex just sighs, eyes sliding closed again. “It’s okay,” he breathes. His words sound like he’s giving Logan permission– his tone sounds like he’s begging.

Logan slides his hand between the feathers, reaching enough so Alex doesn’t have to keep the wing flexed anymore. He can feel the heat so vividly now (melting amber, lighter fluid, the blue-red spark of a match erupting to life)– more than when Alex had held his hands. From the wings themselves emanates a heat that’s simmering and searching, an entirely different energy from the rest of his body’s warmth. It’s a bit like laying a hand on an engine cover after a race– the even surface doing nothing to shield the urgent restlessness of the power underneath. It’s bright and pulsing and alive the way fire can be alive, and Logan feels it flow from his fingertips to his wrist like a heartbeat– like blood.

He doesn’t envy Alex for it, the way he used to envy the rest of the world. The scars and burn tissue twisting over the surface of the wings, shiny in the way flesh shouldn’t be, are impossible to envy. In the back of his head, Logan feels a frustrated kind of bewilderment; he doesn’t understand how Alex’s own body can’t against itself, what ill-thought design leads to this much pain in its own natural cycle, mercilessly recurring. The full regrowth and the rejuvenating, revitalizing end of the cycle will come soon, but is it worth all of this?

He doesn’t envy Alex, but he does feel a certain emptiness, hollow and void in his chest in a way he hasn’t been vulnerable to since he was just Turned– since the bloodlust first manifested.

He envies the heat itself. The life itself.

Without any real awareness or forethought, he reaches to the other wing, settles both hands deep in the feathers. THere are burns, ridged and flushed, under his fingertips.

Alex stops breathing entirely. Logan watches his eyes fly open, glassy and wild all at once, and he takes his hands back.

“No–” Alex tries to say. It comes out as a high-pitched whine in the back of his throat, whimpering and pathetic, and his shoulders shake at his own twisting, wanton voice. But he still thrusts both wings back, chasing Logan, chasing his touch.

“Breathe, then,” Logan commands. His voice is firm because he’s trying to remember to breathe himself, vampire lungs be damned, forcing his body to stay calm so Alex will stay calm, but it ends up low and firm in the back of his throat, deeper than his speaking voice, steadier. Like he really means it. Like he’s telling Alex what to do for the sake of watching him obey.

Well…

He has what Alex wants, doesn’t he? He’s literally holding it over him– an unspoken ultimatum in the palms of his hands, tantalizingly raised, tantalizingly empty.

Alex swallows, his throat hitching.

“Breathe,” Logan says again. “Or we stop.”

Alex lets out a shuddering breath, closing his eyes again. His next inhale is shaky but measured; Logan knows he must be counting in his head.

He lays his palms over Alex’s wings as Alex lets the tension leave them like uncurling a fist. The intact primaries brush the floor on either side as the wings fall half-open.

There’s still heat in Logan’s palms, in his wrists, in the listless veins of his arms that have forgotten how to hold a pulse. It hurts a little, but it’s also not unpleasant.

Alex takes another deep breath.

Logan dips his head over his shoulder. His jaw grazes the side of Alex’s neck when he speaks. “There you go.”

Alex keens. His fists are clenched, nails digging into his palms; Logan reaches over and swats the back of his hand. “None of that.”

Alex shivers, a rolling motion that has his wings opening further and then releasing, half of an upstroke. A fresh wave of heat warms Logan’s face, zings through the hand still combing through feathers.

Alex unclenches his fists, though.

Logan holds onto his wrists for a second, reassuring, then gets back to work.

Time passes like a dream, intangible and unmeasurable. The evening steps aside and night paints the room in flat blocks of shadow, hints of purple and blue laying claim to the lines and angles that make up the flat until the color goes entirely, and the darkness descends like a heavy quilt.

They’re still touching. Hands to feathers, shins to back– so much empty space left, but Logan doesn’t think he’s ever been closer.

“Can you take off your shirt.”

It isn’t a question. Alex’s voice is low, hazy and rough in the back of his throat, but his tone is unmistakably sure. The pretense of a question is immaterial; it’s a demand.

Logan was entranced in the repetitive task of dusting away the ash between the right secondaries, but now both his hands still. His fingertips are deep between the fibers now, firm and familiar on Alex’s wings, because he’s been here before. There’s a small, shifting flicker of possessiveness stirring in his chest that doesn’t have any place here–

Does it?

It’s dark. They’re not speaking, they haven’t spoken in hours, but they’re still touching. Touching anywhere as the light fades and the minutes shift over until it feels like everywhere. Logan’s hands are warm, deft like flowing water, like circulation. The contact could be in his fingertips or between his knuckles or his palms or his wrists or up his arms entirely. He can’t tell. They’re too close like this, every other sensation winking out one by one in the coming of the night until all he can feel is Alex.

Alex under his hands, Alex in his grasp. Alex who keens and shakes when he presses the hell of his palm against the toughness and tension over the bridge of his wings, because to Alex he’s still cold. I like that about you.

Logan stares at the hand he can’t see, just the vague presumption of the space they would take up if he really wanted to let his eyes adjust. He won’t bother. He still hesitates.

He’s not nervous. They’re close, they’re so close and they’ve been close. They’re breathing the same air. He can taste the warmth between his lips when he inhales, and if he closes his eyes he can pretend that Alex’s warmth is something he’s always had: a warmth and vitality that flows through him with every breath, that doesn’t have to be taken with sharp hunger and sharper teeth.

Like circulation…

He can live like this, with Alex. He can exist in a space of warmth and shadow and smoke and hold liquid heat in his hands and the dead channels of his body can open and course with a gentle light that maybe he didn’t deserve to lose and–

“Logan,” Alex murmurs.

Logan leans back long enough to strip off his shirt. For a minute, the sudden air hitting his back feels cold– a startled elation fills him like a flash of light, so brilliant and powerful for a second he thinks he’s going to pass out. He’s cold. He’s cold because he could feel warmth– because his body was warm– because he can be alive like this, wrapping around Alex, wrapped up in Alex, endlessly warm and rhythmic and close–

Maybe he’s a little drunk on it. Maybe more than a little.

But Alex isn’t any better.

He uncrosses his legs and opens them instead, creating a space for Alex to lean back into– hips nestled together, back to chest, skin to skin.

And–

God.

It’s–

“Fuck,” Alex gasps.

It’s been a few hours and a small eternity, and Logan doesn’t flinch, doesn’t double-check. Alex isn’t in pain. He doesn’t have to see his face to know that– the feeling in his voice, the wet raggedness to his breathing, the way his wings jerk open on instinct to their full span before curling back easily into Logan’s waiting hands…. He knows.

Alex’s feathers are soft against his chest. He can’t feel the burned stalks, the damaged tissue, the cinders, the pain– he’s watched so much of it unravel between his careful hands. He just feels soft and heat.

Heat that pulses for his still, cold heart. Alive in the way fire is alive. Not his, but not taken, either.

This close, Alex doesn’t smell like anything burning. Or anything that’s been burned.

He smells like auburn and lavender, like the colors of an autumn sunset, like the cinnamon swirls on a woodland breeze. Pure and gentle and sweet, unsharpened by the memory of flames. Maybe who he could have been, in another body. Another life.

Alex lifts his head, letting it drop back against the dip of Logan’s shoulder. Eyes closed, lips still parted, staggered breaths beginning to even.

“Feel so good,” he sighs, voice drifting.

Logan nods absently. He’s losing himself in this, in the colors and the smells and every part of his body that’s wrapped around Alex. More than just feathers and bone, more than the heat… he feels alive. So, so alive.

He was trying not to make any noise about it earlier, to not let his unnecessary breathing hold the tone of his relief, but… he might not be doing a good job anymore. He can’t tell. There’s only Alex.

Alex sounds like he’s forgotten Logan is there. His voice is laden with pleasure, almost obscene.

It doesn’t really matter the full extent of what they are or aren’t doing; he’s right. It is good. It feels more than good, it feels right.

“Yeah,” Logan murmurs. “Me too.”

Alex’s head starts to loll on Logan’s shoulder; Logan leans back a little and guides Alex further into him, one hand straying from the wings to cradle his head briefly. Alex swallows. Logan can feel the muscles of his throat flex beneath his palm. “I got you,” he says.

”I know.”

[corporatecoinings]

(Snowy) forest + wolf (or canine) themed ID pack

Crafted by Alaska's paws 🐺🐾 Header mask | /fleaseditstuff Divider | Made by Alaska (me) (I prefer it that only I use the divider.)

Names

Alaska ✦ Alder ✦ Alpha ✦ Alpine ✦ Arctic ✦ Ash ✦ Aspen ✦ Aura ✦ Aurora ✦ Avalanche ✦ Birch ✦ Blizzard ✦ Boreal/Borealis ✦ Boris ✦ Brutus ✦ Canine ✦ Cedar ✦ Cinder ✦ Colorado ✦ Comet ✦ Crecent ✦ Crystal ✦ Dakota ✦ Dawn ✦ Diamond ✦ Douglas ✦ Dusk/Dusky ✦ Ebony ✦ Eclipse ✦ Elm ✦ Everest ✦ Evergreen ✦ Fang ✦ Fawn ✦ Fenrir ✦ Fern ✦ Forest/Forrest ✦ Frost ✦ Frostine ✦ Glacier ✦ Gray ✦ Grove/Grover ✦ Howl ✦ Icecap ✦ Icicle ✦ Ivory/Ivy ✦ January ✦ Juniper ✦ Lixue ✦ Lumi ✦ Luna ✦ Maine ✦ Mist/Misty ✦ Miyuki ✦ Montana ✦ Moon ✦ Neve ✦ North ✦ Permafrost ✦ Pine ✦ Polar ✦ Polaris ✦ Redwood ✦ River ✦ Rocky ✦ Sable ✦ Siberia ✦ Silas ✦ Silver ✦ Sirius ✦ Smoke/Smokey ✦ Snowcap ✦ Snowfall ✦ Snowflake ✦ Snowstorm ✦ Spirit ✦ Spruce ✦ Storm ✦ Summit ✦ Sylvester ✦ Taiga ✦ Tempest ✦ Timber ✦ Tundra ✦ Twilight ✦ Valor ✦ Vega ✦ Vixen ✦ Wilder ✦ Winter ✦ Yukina ✦ Zeus

Pronouns

arctic/arctics ✦ arf/arfs ✦ bark/barks ✦ birch/birchs ✦ bite/bites ✦ bloom/blooms ✦ branch/branchs ✦ breeze/breezes ✦ breezy/breezys ✦ canine/canines ✦ chew/chews ✦ chill/chills ✦ chilly/chillys ✦ claw/claws ✦ cold/colds ✦ creek/creeks ✦ dark/darks ✦ fang/fangs ✦ fauna/faunas ✦ fern/ferns ✦ fir/firs ✦ flora/floras ✦ fluff/fluffs ✦ fluffy/fluffys ✦ forest/forests ✦ fur/furs ✦ growl/growls ✦ grr/grrs ✦ holly/hollys ✦ howl/howls ✦ leaf/leafs ✦ luna/lunas ✦ lunar/lunars ✦ moon/moons ✦ night/nights ✦ nocturn/nocturns ✦ nocturnal/nocturnals ✦ nox/noxs ✦ paw/paws ✦ pine/pines ✦ river/rivers ✦ ruff/ruffs ✦ sap/saps ✦ sapling/saplings ✦ shadow/shadows ✦ snow/snows ✦ snowflake/snowflakes ✦ spruce/spruces ✦ thorn/thorns ✦ timber/timbers ✦ tree/trees ✦ tundra/tundras ✦ wind/winds ✦ winter/winters ✦ wolf/wolfs ✦ wood/woods ✦ 🐺/🐺s ✦ 🐾/🐾s ✦ 🌲/🌲s ✦ 🌳/🌳s ✦ 🌿/🌿s ✦ 🍁/🍁s ✦ 🍂/🍂s ✦ 🍃/🍃s ✦ 🍄/🍄s ✦ 🪨/🪨s ✦ 🪵/🪵s ✦ 🌑/🌑s ✦ 🌒/🌒s ✦ 🌓/🌓s ✦ 🌔/🌔s ✦ 🌕/🌕s ✦ 🌖/🌖s ✦ 🌗/🌗s ✦ 🌘/🌘s ✦ 🌙/🌙s ✦ ⭐/⭐s ✦ ☁️/☁️s ✦ 🌨️/🌨️s ✦ ❄️/❄️s

Genders

Alonesnowaesic ✦ Auroralupincryin ✦ Fogforestic ✦ Forestgender ✦ Forestwolfgender ✦ Forestwolfsprintic ✦ Howlgender ✦ Neigean ✦ Nightforfulmoonic ✦ Northwolfic ✦ Noxlibic ✦ Redwoodgender ✦ Sillywolfic ✦ Snowfallgender ✦ Snowmoonlic ✦ Snowynightgender ✦ Starforestaesic ✦ Tundrawolfgender ✦ Wolfbitic ✦ Wolfforestic ✦ Wolfgender ✦ Wolfmoonbodiement ✦ Wolfmoonic ✦ Wolforigender ✦ Wolfpawic ✦ Wolfplushigender ✦ Wolfstarmoonic ✦ Wolfthing

Feel free to use this ID pack however you want. For hoarding labels, for figuring out your identity, for system members, so on and so forth.

[Nemesis protects this blog! we are pro-endo, anti-radqueer, anti-transid, and anti-proship, but our labels are for everybody; unless we specify a specific reason as to why what we have coined is exclusive in the post. please dont come here with ill intention, we are not afraid to block!]

[gossamerufansubs]

Two pages from HEROINE magazine Volume 2 (2004). This edition focused on independent heroine tokusatsu production companies such as Eiyu Club, Center Island, and more.

English translation below the cut:

Page 1

[Header] Eiyu Club

[TN: The kanji seem to mean “movie” and “amusement” together but 映遊 in itself is not a word beyond the name of this club, so I will use the spelling they use themselves in their works, “Eiyu”, here]

[Left of photo where Suzuka is being choked by a masked villain] The heroines from the club that has produced many masked heroines have gathered together! Let’s support these cute and cool heroines.

[In the blue box titled ‘data’] 

Cyber Lady Suzuka

Suzuka Power-Up Plan by Dr. Mori (1998)

Suzuka's younger sister, Haruka, has been captured by Zelda. Suzuka, along with her ex-boyfriend and pilot Yoshiyama Ryo, Haruka’s boyfriend Amemiya Akira, and the creator Dr. Todoroki, set out to rescue her. However, the enemy uses Haruka as a hostage and sends out three monster minions. Suzuka struggles and takes heavy damage as it happens to be the time for her regular maintenance. Dr. Todoroki decides to completely enhance and modify Suzuka. Can Suzuka defeat the three monsters and rescue Haruka safely?

Cyber Lady Suzuka 2 – Dr. Todoroki Speaks of Suzuka’s Secrets… (2000)

Zelda's officer, Kiri, attempts to control the girls with a “hallucinogenic hypnotic drug.” And the next target is Haruka… Haruka is in danger!! Dr. Todoroki reveals the secret of Suzuka’s birth, and what are the outrageous weapons that will be installed in Suzuka?

[In large blue box in bottom right corner]

About Eiyu Club

The Club's Devotion to Masked Heroines

In special effects works, there are heroines who support the hero and sometimes sacrifice themselves to help him. There was a group that wanted to make works centered around such earnest “heroines.” This is how Eiyu Club was formed. A few volunteers pooled their money to produce and sell works, using the profits to update equipment and fund the next production. This pattern has remained unchanged since the early days.

After shooting two films featuring "Cyber ​​Lady Suzuka," the Seria Project was launched with the next title character, and during that time, the relatively inexpensive film "Lila" was shot using mass-produced masks, which also served as a test for updated equipment. “Seria” had its character design outsourced, and the mask modeling was entrusted to one of Japan’s top sculptors, leading to the creation of a beautiful masked heroine. The work also marked the first time professional actresses were hired, and with the use of CG and special effects, it became a major leap for the club.

The next large project was the planning of “Auscensia Memoria,” which inherited the setting and background of “Seria,” featuring two characters and even further improved designs. During this time, the action team from Seria worked with the original character “Wind” created by team If for another production. “Auscensia Memoria” became the club’s first DVD work, and to aim for even higher-quality productions, future works would focus on “internal competition” to further enrich the content.

Works such as “Ciao,” “Kou,” and “Mother-Daughter Robot” were created following this approach, and attention will continue to focus on the “earnest” activities of charming masked heroines.

[Caption of three overlapping photos below blue ‘data’ box] Suzuka is cornered with no escape. What will happen next? A desperate, life-or-death pinch! It was a gripping fight scene that kept me on the edge of my seat. Since masked heroines don’t show facial expressions, conveying their emotions depends entirely on the skill of the voice actor. However, Suzuka is an android, so she doesn’t panic or make a fuss.

[Next to the photo of Suzuka lightly jogging] Suzuka stands out with her eye-catching costume color and distinctive mask.

[Next to a photo of Suzuka holding up a cinder block like a serving tray] I don't know why she's holding a block, but that miniskirt is captivating. Go, Suzuka!

[Next to a photo of Suzuka getting punched] Suzuka gets punched hard by the enemy. Even the way she takes a hit is done with passion. Hang in there, Suzuka!

[The block of text below the large full-body shot of Suzuka] Cyber Lady Suzuka is controlled by Suzuka’s former lover, Yoshiyama Ryo. Suzuka is now controlled as a “battle doll” by a remote control during combat. Emotions could negatively affect her performance, so her “fear” from her human past is no longer present. During battle, Suzuka has no speech function. It’s probably Suzuka’s wish that she remains an android, as her memory is transferred into the mechanical body, and she is revived in the form of a cyborg. Suzuka was killed by the evil organization “Zelda.”

Page 2

[Text in upper left of page] Lila (Red Lilac) - Dream of Shudder

[TN: I’ve seen this written as Lila and Lilac in various materials, making a strict translation difficult. So I will stick with “Red Lilac” as the name of the movie, but Lila as the name of the character in the movie.]

This is the form that Akane takes when she combines with a doll through "Musou Genshin," a power created by her father to fight against the dream invader "Baribas”.

[In red “data” box] Lilac (Red) Version “Dream of Shudder” (2001) - On one lunch break, Akane meets an unfamiliar man. After Akane sees a suspicious light from the man, she is plagued by nightmares that night. The man's true identity is the dream invader "Baribas." He plans to destroy the "Musou Genshin" created by Akane's father and enters Akane's dreams. Akane is attacked by the man in her dream. At that moment, the doll she had been holding suddenly begins to sync with her. Then, Akane transforms into "Lila" through "Musou Genshin" embedded in the doll and challenges Baribas.

[To the bottom left of an image of Red Lila crossing her arms over her chest] The thighs peeking from the hot pants are cute.

[Below the full-body image of Red Lilac] The pattern of a full-face mask with hair growing from it is the same as in the Mighty Lady series, but Mighty uses a bodysuit while this one is costume-based, showing the difference. Of course, there is no giant transformation.

[Small text next to Red Lilac’s left boot] Intense Heroine Feature

[Large header text] Blue Lilac - Pure Heart

[Text to the left of header text] A caring and cheerful heroine!

[Below circle-framed images] Lila Lapis Lazuli (Blue)

Originally a normal 1/1 figure [TN: a figure scaled to be human sized], she was given life by "the sanctuary of life" and begins to take care of her owner, Daisuke. She’s absolutely the "pushy wife" type. Surprised Daisuke is then visited by his childhood friend and idol talent Honoka, causing a commotion. A rivalry for Daisuke begins between Honoka and Lilac. 

[sandsorghum]

XOXO

wc: 1.3k

tags: Higuruma Hiromi x Reader | Fluff | Suggestive scenes

a/n: just a bunch of sickeningly sweet drabbles tbh cause i been thinkin about all the kinds of kisses higUwUma deserves in a day and that i wanna give him. these started as stream of consciousness babbles then i went off the deep end (fittingly, whenever he's concerned). Also TW for gratuitous use of semi-colons.

Happy Holidays everyone, I hope these keep you warm~ Header art by gojoslefttoe

3PM

Public affection is something of a novelty for Higuruma; an indulgence you're all too happy to acquaint him with. So happy you initially question if it's untoward, or even unwelcome - but the evidence is on your side. Seeing the surprise glimmer in his eyes as you drop a peck on his cheek mid-conversation (or more commonly, mid-debate), crinkling into dubiousness that you had been paying attention to any of his arguments, until that is, you summarise his ten minute spiel in a few seconds and deliver your own counterpoints even more succinctly and swiftly, his gaze gleaming keenly with a challenge and affection and just a smidge of fixation as those dark irises drift towards your lips, already curving with a rhetorical retort that multi-tasking really ought to be his forte; what's he getting distracted by now? Who knows, Higuruma hums, tilting your chin towards him - all train of thought tapering off the rails, eloquence screeching to a halt, careening right into your grin brimming with mischief and amused anticipation. His thumb grazes the contours of your cupid's bow, rests on the edge of the upturned corners of your conceit. Higuruma holds your gaze, and sees no reason why desire and discretion should be estranged. And so when he kisses you back, it is without hesitation, without haste. Nor is it chaste.

6AM

Then there are the drowsy kisses that aren't so much kisses as dregs of exhaustion drawled across each other's lips, dawn thin as gruel greying into blue, night receded just enough to cast the half-moons under his eyes to resemble craters, sunken sockets shadowed indigo those comet irises you love burned out by too many sleepless nights, sparks all but guttering with the twitching beneath his lids. Eyes still sealed tight as a casket yet your bodies turn towards each beneath the kilns of the quilts seeking out that more comforting familiar heat; those first brushes of skin, tender cinders tending kindling, those first embers of wakefulness lazily fanning with a flutter of lashes and warm puffs of air against each other's lips unpleasantly dry as coal-dust, licking distastefully into higuruma's mouth but you like the way his tongue weights yours and how he is trying to savour your taste through his grogginess, flavoured by his own exhalations. Steady as the drip of sap he presses his greeting into you his tongue sliding thick and slow and heavenly into you, heavy as lumber teetering between wakefulness and slumber, lighter with every caress of your whine; tongues threading dread and desire, the whole day's slog ahead makes him inclined to mourn the mornings, but having his rest disrupted sooner is worth it just to have a few extra minutes with you, to lavish you in the languor of the moment and the lethargic movement of his mouth upon you

2AM

so different from the dexterity and urgency of last evening's serpentine scuffle, desires coiling and knotting silken heat in your belly, lungs, mouth, between your thighs and sighs, tongues tangling so tight around each other that for once there's not even the space for him to cram in a smirk edgewise past your teeth, any burgeoning smugness at your brazen desperation splinters into whimpers, his voice fraying into a raspy groan as you lick a stripe up his throat next, he's tugging at the damn fabric how the hell does it feel like his necktie has narrowed further even with you clawing at his collar, nipping needle-points along his jaw and pinpricks of burgundy down his jugular silver-gilded sparks of pleasure jabbing up his spine as higuruma shreds every stitch of clothing off you, eager to unravel you as much as you're unraveling him, impatient to have you come undone on his tongue over and over, as many times as you can take...

@houseofsolisoccasum

[symphonic-scream]

Okay. Formal post for

Persona 5 D&D au

So this post has three parts, and the part headers are gonna be colour coded so if you wanna skip to a certain part, it's easier!

Overall Plot is Blue, Campaign Plot is Red, and everyone's Characters are Orange

Let's get litty in this bitch

Overall Plot

So, this au has a plot. Surprise!

Everyone but Morgana is university age, and they don't all know each other before the game. The idea to start the game comes from Morgana, 16, bonding over a mutual love of D&D podcasts with his tutor, Haru, 24

So the plan is to get a bunch of people together to play! Morgana asks his older brother Akira, 22, to invite some of his friends. Their two roommates, Ann, 22, and Ryuji, 22, agree to play too. Akira brings everyone else

Yusuke, 23, he met by simply noticing him sketching strangers in the university quad every day. Makoto, 24, is his own tutor and a PhD student. Sumire, 20, and Akira are in the same social work class. And Futaba, 19, is the legendary Library Hobbit. Akira once gave her an energy drink and they became besties

So the "plot" is the gang all coming together as they play, and slowly becoming friends outside the campaign. And because I'm me, it includes a Haru and Makoto romance plot.

Which, is Haru flirting and failing, so she tries to get Makoto to notice by romancing her character in game. There's more details but. Y'all can ask about that

Anyways the important part is, Morgana is the DM, and only he and Haru are really familiar with D&D.

Campaign Plot

Their game starts with the end of the world. The cataclysm, a dark figure laughing over them as the world burns around them. Each of them has a "sign", like Makoto's character is missing an arm, Sumire's character is marred with burn scars, etc

They get sent back in time by a few months. Their goal is to change the future, with their starting guiding ideas are to keep those "signs" from happening to their characters

Originally, Goro isn't in the campaign. His character is the big bad, but the gang somehow ruin that. Morgana comes up with another big bad and panic asks a different tutor to play that character and. That's Goro

Anyways. Here's the big part

Everyone's Characters

Not too much detail for everyone, just names races and classes, y'all can ask me for more details or can suggest some

Anyways.

Akira - Eladrin Rogue named Joker (he/they)

Ryuji - Half-Orc Barbarian named Nux (he/him/

Ann - Human Sorcerer named Constance LeBeau (she/her)

Yusuke - Drow Warlock named Faeryl (she/her)

Makoto - Tiefling Monk named Just (he/they/she)

Futaba - Tabaxi Artificer named Ford F-150 (he/him)

Haru - Half-Elf Paladin named Ulyssa Noir (she/her)

Sumire - Halfling Ranger named Cinder Earthdancer (she/her)

Goro - Aasimar Blood Hunter named Judas (he/him)

-

The pronouns listed are for the characters, at the moment the Thieves all use, the ones in the game. That's the best way to put it

Anyways. I have so many thoughts about this au ASK ME ABOUT IT SUGGEST THUNFS TALK TO ME ABOUT IT

[chekhovdraws]

Hello! Back in 2020 you drew a gorgeous art piece of Rose and Cinders from Once Upon a Time in Space by the Mechanisms. I am now obsessed with them, and wondering if it would be all right if I used that art as my blog header for my ouatis blog (with credit to you in my bio, of course). I know not all artists are comfortable having their work used that way so I wanted to make sure I had your go-ahead if I did. Either way, thank you so much for drawing it-- it's one of my favorite pieces of ouatis art of all time-- and I hope you have a nice day!

Oh, sure, go for it! :D I'm happy you liked it!

You mean this one, right?

[the-final-high-noon-rings]

introduction!! 🎻🕰️

hi!! hello!! i'm kae, formerly located at @send-me-a-kae-via-subspace / @kae-the-minish-bandit! i decided to make a mechanisms-focused sideblog, so as to better organize my blogs.

she/they/it/any neos that sound cool thumbs up

if you want to go to the other fandom blogs i've recently made for organisation,

@ravagerrush for minecraft/mcyt

@minish-and-mischief for zelda and linked universe

@too-close-i-cannot-breathe as my magnus archives blog

@aromantic-tom-bombadil for lord of the rings, as well as star wars for some reason

my more personal blogs include:

@anxious-violist for music, both my own as well as covers, reblogs from artists i like, etc

@kaethesilliest for misc reblogs/silly bits about my life!

credits for banners/blinkies:

the nastya one i made :3 you can use it too if you'd like

chaoscouncilcreaturecorner - gear header

blinkies cafe - many of the custom mechs ones !!

organization tags:

for my content !!

#drawn in the light of the tube sun - my art

#verbatim reciting a recording - my fics

#radio turned just write of an evening - textpost

#from the voicebox of another - me singing/speaking

for sorting reblogs !!

#transmission - reblogs

#the stowaways given mortal form - any cosplays

#tales untold - other fics

#artefacts - for photos/ other official band content

#putting the band in a band of immortal pirates - anything to do with the actual music

ouatis tags !!

#brutal and cruel as befitted their despotic foe - ouatis tag

#the genetic base for that unholy horde - og rose tag

#wires through her veins and her tendons - briar rose tag

#the aforementioned unholy horde who i adore - red rose tag

#and as she searched she sang - cinders tag

#mirror mirror let me take this woman's identity - snow/general white tag

#guy who had conquered and stole the wealth of a thousand suns - king cole tag

#12 y/o war criminal - the hood tag

#1003 - tag for miralines/garecc's ouatis 'verse

#dogstar

#red river - tag for my own ouatis au!!!

#the vault - udad tag

#the one who dies at dawn - ulysses

#the blind old motherfucker - oediphs

#the one who turns a big wheel - heracles

#the one who has a dynasty to rebuild - ariadne

#the one with the lyre - orpheys

high noon over camelot tags::

#driving his rotten world into the sun - hnoc

#the fastest draw - gwen !!!!!!!!!!!

#the sharpest aim - lancelot

#the once and future king - arthur

#the one who grew into a sharp young man who chose his name as mordred - mordred! (shocking. i know)

the bifrost incident tags:

#the really fucked up train - bifrost tag

#woman who has at least 5 dissociative disorders - loki

#inspector second class - lyfrassir edda

the mechanisms crew tags!!

#the crew of the starship aurora - what it says on the tin

#microphone eater - jonny dville, humble FIRST MATE

#clockwork murder machine - the toy soldier!!

#icarus kinnie - raphaella!

#neither a baron nor a doctor HOW did you get in here - marius

#ship's archivist - ivy

#the drugbot - brian

#arsonist extrordanaire - ashes oreilly

#shipfucker. princess. engineer. what can't she do - nastya!

#tim comma gunpowder - gptim!!

#flesh moon ship - my beautiful baby girl the aurora

#their esteemed creator - doc carmilla!!!!!!!!!!

#the cello ninja - scuzz :3

these will be updated when i have more tags. also. to look for something i personally have created look through the tags ie #the mechanisms or #cinders ouatis

[dayeongi]

📊

also ps luv the header 🥰🥰 needed to see tht

Teheheheh I've been thinking of redrawing the header!! 💖💖💖 Now I have an actual drawing tablet!

FANFIC ASK GAME 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO

📊 Current number of WIPs

Setting sun AU! there's Ultraviolet in progress, and then there's an offshoot oneshot, and then the NH story in that universe!

Then there's Fighting Dreamers (IT IS NOT DEAD IT IS ASLEEP LIKE THE RUSSIAN PRESIDENT IN THE MOVIE "SALT")

There's another shikatema one I'm thinking of scene-planning with the blessing of @cinder-rose, and the rom com one I want to think of brainstorming and planning too later!

So in total, about 4 or 5 maybe!, 4 long-fics (i better get to it!

[swapauanon]

Okay so, I've been looking over the storyboards for the cut Ruby vs Adam fight, and noticed a few little details I just think are neat.

Firstly, let me note that it might not have EVER intended to be part of the show, given that it's under the header "Concept Fight: Ruby vs Adam" and is listed separately from the Chapter 10 storyboards, meaning it might NOT have been intended to be part of the episode (especially given that the storyboarded scenes don't exactly lead into it). However, if it WAS intended to be part of the show, then some of the following points can be inferred:

Ruby loses not because Adam's a better fighter, but because she tries to counter Moonslice with her Silver Eyes. Both the Silver Eyes and Moonslice have been thematically linked to the moon.

She presumably only attempted to use the Silver Eyes on Adam because they worked on Cinder in Volumes 3 and 5, and she doesn't know that Cinder is part Grimm until Volume 7. So this might just have been intended to show that the Silver Eyes ONLY work on Grimm, and not just on anyone who's evil enough.

After Ruby's attempted use of the Silver Eyes, Adam removes his Grimm mask (but the storyboards don't show his face). In Volume 8, Ruby SUCCESSFULLY uses her Silver Eyes on the Hound, and a one-eyed Faunus' face is revealed after the Grimm "mask" is destroyed. (T.R. is even missing the same eye as Adam.)

If this parallel was deliberate, and Adam was designed to foreshadow T.R., then that means the Hound would've been planned as far back as Volume 1 (possibly back when the Grimm liquid would've mutated existing lifeforms instead of spawning mindless demons, which gives a horrifying new context to the White Fang wearing Grimm masks).

Adam is wearing his Grimm mask instead of the blindfold he actually wore in Volume 6, so the storyboard is at least older than his character short.

Regardless of whether this was ever intended to be part of the series, the duel between Blake and Adam seems to take some cues from the storyboard, so it might have still had some influence on the show.

Regardless, I just think that its neat to see behind the scenes information like this, even if the duel ultimately couldn't fit into the show.

[rygoespop]

Thomas and Friends: Legends of Sodor (Story 21): The Easter Parade (Easter Special)

Narrator: The Easter Parade

Scene opens with Neil puffing down the line with 4 trucks full of crates and Bear oiling down the line with 3 Green Express Coaches

Narrator: Easter has came to the Island of Sodor, as there was going to be a Big Parade in Vicarstown

Scene transitions to Tidmouth Sheds, where 11 Members of the Steam Team (Thomas, Edward, Henry, Gordon, James, Percy, Emily, Molly, Rosie, Stanley, and Rebecca) are present in there Berths, Sir Topham Hatt came

Narrator: One day at Tidmouth Sheds, Sir Topham Hatt has an important announcement

STH: This year’s Easter Parade will be held at Vicarstown! So I need all of you to work together! Percy, you’ll help Toby with collecting the Brass Band

Percy blew his whistle and puffs off to help Toby

STH: Gordon and Rebecca, I need you two to collect the passengers from Knapford to Vicarstown

Gordon and Rebecca blew their whistles and puff off

STH: Molly, James, and Edward, I need you three to collect the Eggs

Molly, James, and Edward all blew their whistles and puff off to collect the eggs

STH: Henry and Stanley, I need you two to collect the bunting

Henry and Stanley blew their whistles and puff off to collect the bunting

STH: And finally, Thomas, Emily, and Rosie, I need you three to collect a Parade Float

Thomas: Right away sir!

Thomas, Emily, and Rosie all puff off to Brendam Docks to collect the Parade Float

Narrator: Soon, the three engines puff off to Brendam Docks

Scene transitions to Thomas, Rosie, and Emily all at Brendam Docks with a Flatbed as Cranky was unloading a Parade Float from a ship

Narrator: Soon, the three engines arrive at Brendam Docks, Cranky was unloading a Parade Float

Cranky: Well, this float is heavy! *he carefully loads the Float on the flatbed*

Emily: Well, three engines are better than one *buffers up in front of the flatbed*

Thomas: Besides, it’s a triple header *buffers up in front of Emily*

Rosie buffers up in front of Thomas

Rosie: We’ll get there in no time!

The 3 engines puff together, heaving and pulling the flatbed

Narrator: Soon, the three engines puff together, pulling the Parade Float

Scene transitions to the 3 engines puffing up on Gordon’s Hill, the Parade Float was heavy

Narrator: Soon, Emily, Thomas, and Rosie all puff up on Gordon’s Hill, the Parade Float was heavy

Emily: Nearly there

Thomas: We got this

Rosie: Almost to the top!

As soon as the 3 engines made it to the top

Thomas: We made it!

Narrator: Then there was trouble

The Parade Float pushes the 3 engines down

Thomas/Emily/Rosie: Whoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

The 3 engines race down the hill like a speeding rocket

Thomas: Cinders and Ashes!!!!

The 3 engines put on their brakes

Narrator: The three engines apply their brakes, but they couldn’t stop

Scene shows the Brakevan with the brakes applied

Narrator: Neither was the Brakevan strong enough!

The 3 engines race past Oliver, who was pulling Old Slow Coach and Toad

Oliver: *looked surprised* What was that?!

The 3 engines braked hard and hard until they regain control

Rosie: We did it! We slowed down

Thomas: Phew!

Emily: Let’s get this float to Vicarstown!

The 3 engines blew their whistles and puff again to Vicarstown

Narrator: Soon, they were on their way to Vicarstown

Scene transitions to the 3 Engines arriving at Vicarstown at last, the rest of the Steam Team (Edward, Henry, Gordon, James, Percy, Toby, Molly, Stanley, and Rebecca) were all present

Narrator: At last, Thomas, Emily, and Rosie finally arrive at Vicarstown

Sir Topham Hatt was on the platform

STH: Thomas, Emily, and Rosie! There you are!

Thomas looked worried

Thomas: We’re sorry sir, we didn’t slow down

STH: Your just in time! The float is now here!

Rosie: Wait what?!

Emily: Your not crossed at us?

STH: Absolutely not! You got the float here just in time!

The 3 engines smiled

Narrator: The three engines were delighted

Scene transitions to the Parade now underway, as all 12 Members of the Steam Team, and Flying Scotsman who showed up, watch the Parade go by, Trevor was pulling the float

Narrator: Soon, the Parade was underway, there were performers and the float was magnificent!

Thomas: This is by far, the greatest parade ever

Scene fades to black and then reveals a Colorful Easter Banner

HAPPY EASTER

Story End

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

I love the chapter header for 43! Very on theme !. Part one had me on my toes! 😩 Also her dress and heels are so pretty! 🤍

I love Cinders. She's a cutie and you know Loki is secretly loving it. Eyeing her up good.

[aubins]

𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐝 + 𝐚𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐲𝐮𝐫𝐢 𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐜 𝐨𝐟 𝐟𝐞𝟏𝟔. — ashen wolves student affiliated with the officers academy, as written & beloved by darcy　( they/he, 18↑, gmt+8 )

　　　 　𝐧𝐚𝐯𝐢　　❥　　¹ dossier ,　² stats ,　³ writer ,　⁴ plotting

i write yuri with he/they pronouns and ask that you do the same. i personally use the latter more often, but the muse himself does not care and my thread partners and their muses can use whichever interchangeably.

taken pre-timeskip as per toa rules, though written with his few3h appearance to reflect the passage of time in the group. i consider cindered shadows non-canon in the sense that its events have not happened, but everything leading up to it has: yuri was expelled from the officers academy for murder and works under lady rhea to spy on aelfric.

with the exception of the canon ashen wolves who i assume to have gone up to their b-supports with yuri by default, i consider all their in-game supports to have not happened unless previously discussed. 　❥　any would-be applicants of a canon wolf need not adhere to the b-support if they do not wish to! it's just my default in the absence of them.

unless your muse canonically knows or has been told in some manner by yuri, please do not assume that they would know he is from abyss/ashen wolves. it's something he does not make obvious and actively goes out of his way to hide. 　❥　if you think your muse could reasonably infer it, that's fine, but i still prefer to have it run by me first, thank you.

my formatting sometimes changes with my moods tbh haha but generally i format all my posts with small text and bolded + colored dialogue. if you need me to refrain or adapt my formatting in any other way for any reason, please let me know! i do my best to check rules and mun pages but it might slip by me.

inbox is always open for anything, even if unprompted, no need to ask! i always consider any romantic ask memes i reblog to be aus but otherwise leave the canonicity of anything else to the sender.

if you need to reach me for whatever reason, feel free to ping me in the server! tumblr ims are also fine but i'll get back to you slower. and if it's the first time we're speaking, please ask before you dm me on discord. i'll never actually say no, but i have awful anxiety and appreciate the heads up, thanks!

　　　　　　　　　 　　𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐬　　❥　　header & pinned

[talentforlying]

28.     felt at total peace with themselves and everything around them. 

28.     felt at total peace with themselves and everything around them. 

he's forty, and he's cross-faded, and zatanna is off her face on the kitchen counter, levitating mange the talking rabbit three feet off the floor. he thinks he pissed on the phantom stranger's shoes in the alley a few minutes ago, and it's a whole lot funnier than it probably should be. header and rick the vic disappeared off to the toilet longer ago than he wants to think about, and the six-foot-six giant who put the whole shindig together is slugging back tennent's super like he's a fish and it's water.

it's his birthday, and for the first time in a long fucking time, he thinks he's gonna be okay.

almost unreal now, with this much liquor warming his belly and a high that reduces his eyes to burning cinders, to think that the day started out badly — kit unexpectedly visiting family, chas on a shift he can't shake. that sinking, lonely feeling that he's getting old, because he's lived twice as long as he ever thought he would and ten years more than his mum ever did, and he doesn't know what to bloody do with himself when he's not doing magic. feeling guilty about it in a way he never has before kit; before a normal, domestic life abruptly became a real option for him.

it's a zero-sum game any way he chooses to go about it: he's forty, and he's still fucking around with forces beyond his comprehension, still trying to play a young man's game. he's forty, and he hasn't worked a regular layman's job in his entire sodding life, but if they're going to pay the rent, he'll have to strike up and stick with it, SOON. he's forty, and he sees his sister every other weekend, sees his best friend twice that, and goes to bed every night with the love of his life beside him, and none of it feels even halfway as real as the shite he sees in his nightmares.

so, one more bad birthday. why not. what's there to celebrate, anyway?

except. except THEY all seem to think it's worth celebrating, don't they? his friends. the fact that he's still got enough of them left to throw him a surprise party is enough to stone crows the world over, but that they still think of him well enough to put in the effort in the first place is . . . sort of fucking mind-boggling. they like him enough to remember his birthday in the first place, enough to pop in from hell and scotland and america and . . . wherever it is the immortal lord of the dance fucks around these days. enough to stick around and keep him company until the wee hours of the morning, if they're good for their word. ( and he knows they are. ) enough to invite the sodding swamp thing, and the fact that the big hedge even showed was more of a kick in the teeth than the fucking phantom stranger.

obviously the free booze doesn't hurt as incentive. or nigel's supercharged wacky backy, either. but any one of them could've gotten that elsewhere, if they'd felt the urge, and they chose to get it with him. he's forty, and he's got more friends than he would've ever thought possible.

jesus fuck, the nerve of them, making him sniffle at his own bloody birthday party.

he loves them all, each silly blighter.

the lord of the dance crushes another crate as easy as snapping a toothpick and laughs at some inane shite nigel is spouting on about. ellie's gone and rescued mange from the inevitable crash to the floor, holding him gingerly by the ears, but the furry git doesn't seem to mind; still effing and feffing about pulling magicians out of hats, as per usual. zatanna is utterly lost in the world of the monumentally stoned, reading the ingredients on a packet of instant oatmeal backwards like it's the most important magical text in the world. header and rick are STILL conspicuously missing, and god, he wishes he could hear what brendan finn would have to say about that one: something filthy about rick being at his best when he's on his knees, just ask god.

' mere hours into a fourth decade and you've already lost the ability to hold your liquor. jesus wept, john. '

ellie's apparently left mange to his own devices to come and join him on the sofa, sinking into the cushions at his elbow and propping her arm up on his shoulder to lazily skim her fingers along the collar of his shirt. she doesn't look halfway blotto for all she's been drinking, eyes still sharp and clear as she studies the room and its motley inhabitants with dry disinterest; she smells like cinnamon, sulfur, and asphodel, and if he didn't know better, he'd say she almost seems relaxed. ' what are you smiling so big about, anyway? you know you'll have a hell of a hangover to look forward to when all this is done. '

is he smiling? he hadn't realized. but sure enough, he lifts a hand to his face and feels the grin there, broad as a barn; feels the way it hurts his cheeks like it's been there for a long bloody while now, and it doesn't feel like it's going to go away soon, either.

fuck him. HE'S FORTY.

it's the best thing he's been in ages.

@fightwing / MOMENT IN TIME PROMPTS

[whisperingvales]

Art for game stuff game stuff for art!

Sprites chibis pen sketch pages digital art galore small animations icons headers page dolls interpreting your dragon as a horse making you a scry whatever you want

Message me on FR for inquiries

V flexible

Looking for:

Sandsurges scrolls

Gene scrolls (u can ask if im interested in any particular gene) (piebald and cinder always)

Aether scrolls

Abberation scrolls

Hella obelisk scrolls

Latte / spruce / white

Ill probs post pictures of series and im willing to accept offers if u have a babe like that

[leitorespacks]

The Lunar Chronicles headers

© malecbane