#sketched it out real quick now it's time to nap
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
fuzzandfeathers ¡ 2 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
I'm so sleepy and I had a severe need to see a bit of these two being fluffy and cute
215 notes ¡ View notes
i-never-forgot ¡ 1 year ago
Text
…Do y’all think Dusknoir is naturally nocturnal?
Idk if it’s ever been mentioned in the Pokédex/series if ghost-types tend to be strictly nocturnal or are simply more active at night, but we’re going to hypothesize about the former real quick.
(Preemptively tagging @fujii-draws and @sincerely-sofie bc I’d love to hear y’all’s thoughts on this!😊)
Concepts to consider:
Dusknoir being eepy in the daytime, therefore he zones out or dozes off if he’s not actively doing anything. I bet he still floats like horses fall asleep standing up. His eye just shuts and maybe he sags a little in place but other than that he looks like he’s just chilling. If he’s not careful he’ll nod off mid-conversation or mid-task if it’s rhythmic and/or muscle memory (thinking knitting or whittling or smth like that, although I’m not sure if he’d do either of those things specifically) since he would likely find such chores soothing in their monotony and tedium after All That™️.
It’s easier for him to stay awake when he’s in direct sunlight, but if he goes underground or catches a nice patch of shade he’s out like a light if he slows down long enough and is alone or with someone he trusts if they’re not busy. I can easily see him taking naps under trees leaned up against their trunks like this. (May or may not have a sketch of this very idea too…🤫)
Overall just imagining this big old ghost just kind of acting lethargic and even a little lazy if he gets to the place where he allows himself to be; floating around like a balloon in a gentle wind, conducting chores or running errands around town or w/e. Obviously he’d be more alert while exploring, but when he’s in rest mode he’ll probably try to take it easy to conserve energy.
Now for the flip side: night comes around and suddenly he’s Awake™️. He visibly perks up and gets more energetic, his movements quicker and more precise and his eye bright and attentive. He gets Ghost Zoomies and I’m sure the others would think it’s strange at first. It might take them a while to get used to it.
Mayhaps his instinctive nature would come out to play and he might even be a bit mischievous. Maybe he likes to Shadow Sneak around and spook his friends—an innocent, (mostly) harmless little game he honestly cannot recall the last time he played. Maybe they eventually start playing tag with him to see who can catch him in his more agile state. (I think Grovyle might enjoy this most once they both get past the trauma of Dusknoir being incorporeal and thus immune to attack chasing Grovyle. He’s so quick on his feet that I think they’d be fairly even matched, and I can see them totally being competitive and keeping score. Celebi would even add more fun to the mix being able to fly.)
Overall he’s just in a better mood. He’s concealed in the darkness and explores without as much worry about running into someone unsavory.
(Perhaps this is why he was so powerful in the future—perpetual darkness acts as a poor imitation of the darkest, longest night, after all. Maybe he has to readjust in the healed timeline since he’s never had to deal with daylight for extended periods of time. Maybe he gets a little weaker but he considers it a fair trade for his new and gentler lease on life.)
34 notes ¡ View notes
raven-at-the-writing-desk ¡ 2 years ago
Text
Raven Crowley Broomquet Interview
Similar to last year, I wrote some quick dialogue for the interview questions and sketched a little something for Raven’s birthday card this year~ In the first year, I had commissioned an initial illustration, a Groovy, and wrote some voice lines.
It’s her Broomquet this time, and I decided to make the other birthday character her interviewer 😆 Ignore that this is coming to you one day late—
Happy Birthday!
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Raven: Hehehe 🎵 What a most merry time of year. It won’t be long now before my birthday interviewer appears before me. They’re picked at random, so it could be potentially anyone! Oh, I feel as though I may burst any second from the excitement!
Leona, off to the side with his arms folded: …
Raven: Yup! They’ll be here any minute now.
Leona, hand to temple: …
Raven: Aaaany… minute… now…!
Leona, starting to look mildly annoyed: … Oi. Get your head out of the clouds and stop ignoring what’s right in front of you.
Raven, wincing: … Please don’t tell me… Are you my interviewer, Leona-san?
Leona: Would you look at that. Took you long enough. What are the chances, hmm?
Raven: Pretty low, actually!! Of the hundreds and hundreds of students at Night Raven College… It had to be you who was picked? (What terrible misfortune!)
Leona: That’s not a very grateful way to speak to your interviewer and birthday twin. I thought you’d have more decorum than that, canary.
Leona: Shouldn’t you be proud of me for not skipping out on this momentous occasion? You always get on my case whenever I miss a lecture. Be consistent, will you?
Raven, embarrassed: Hnngh…! V-Very well, I concede—you do have a valid point. Perhaps I was a bit quick to be wary.
Raven: It would not do for me to spoil the mood on this festive day, nor waste our time. We have so precious little of it. Shall we begin the interview? The sooner we start, the sooner we end. Such is the sweet sorrow of parting…
Leona: Hmph, that’s more like it. I knew you had it in you. Let’s knock this out so I can get back to my birthday cat nap.
Tumblr media
Leona: Alright, first question. How good are you at flying?
Raven: I’m most excellent at it!
Leona: … You are?
Raven: Y-Yes! Is that really so hard to believe!
Leona: You’re lying through your teeth.
Raven: Ex-CUSE me?! Who are you to insult my flying abilities when you are a creature of the land?
Leona: Don’t kid yourself. Everyone has seen you fly once or twice in P.E. and they all say you do it worse than a blind bat. I’d say you’re about on the same level as the octopunk.
Raven: H-How rude! If you meant flying in the human sense, then you should have specified! I’m very well aware that my flight skills need some... practice.
Raven: But can you really blame me?! It’s extremely difficult to adjust to an entirely different body shape and mechanism for the procedure. A human lacks the same aerodynamicism and compactness that a bird does.
Raven: I assure you that I am more than capable of flying well! ... in my original form. 
Leona: Yeah? All I hear are excuses.
Leona: I’m just “a creature of the land” according to you--but this “creature of the land” can outfly you any day of the week.
Raven: Ngh...!! Must you remind me?! I-It’s obvious that the captain of the Magift Club would be skilled at flying. You must have worked diligently to be at your level of mastery. I lack that time and training.
Leona: Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. Who knows? One thing’s for sure, though: if all you do is sit around and whine about what you don’t have, then you’ll never get over it or change.
Raven: Oh? That’s ironic coming from you, Leona-san. You also...
Raven: ... No, never mind. I misspoke.
Leona: ...
Leona, groaning: When I was still a furball, I’d play chess with this old coot in the palace. He’s a lot like you, feathers and all. Always running his mouth at me, being a real pain in my tail. But you know what? That geezer could kick my ass in chess.
Leona: ‘Course, I didn’t take it lying down. I’d make a racket and demand rematches. I’d win some, I’d lose some, but no matter what, I’d get back up again every time.
Leona, with a smirk: Now? I can beat him with both arms tied behind my back.
Raven: Was there a moral in that story about not giving up? It felt like you were also just rubbing your victories in some poor old man’s face.
Leona, laughing dryly: Hah. Very good. Gold star for you.
Leona: My point still stands. You want to complain? How about you put forth some effort and do something about yourself before you talk about others? I know where my strengths lie. Do you?
Raven: ...!!
Raven, reluctantly: You’re... You’re right. If I want to improve my flying, then it is action, not words, that will see me through to that end! Starting tomorrow, I should try to squeeze in at least 30 minutes of flight practice after class.
Leona: That’s the spirit.
Raven: You’ll help me, right, Leona-san?
Leona: ... What?
Raven: I don’t have the proper form or formulas memorized yet. Since you’re the expert in this, it would be helpful to have you as my tutor.
Raven: Besides, weren’t you the one encouraging me a few minutes ago? It’s your job as a responsible upperclassman to aid the underclassmen in need of your assets.
Leona: I wasn’t volunteering to chase you around! Go find someone else to babysit you.
Tumblr media
Leona: Next is... What’s your favorite thing about having magic?
Raven: Heheheh, isn’t it obvious? Clearly, the best thing about having magic is...
Raven, striking a silly pose: THIS!!
Leona: ...
Leona: And just what am I looking at?
Raven, flailing her arms: Y-You know! THIS!!
Leona: ... Posing stupidly? That’s your favorite thing about having magic?
Raven: Gah, why do you always have to phrase it so simply?!
Leona: Isn’t that what it is? Stop kidding yourself by dressing it up with fancier words. You’re just posing weirdly to try and look cool while you use magic. End of story.
Raven: That’s not all!! It’s the range of movement that I most enjoy about using magic.
Raven: Humans have the same number of limbs as birds, yes--but humans also have more joints, which allows them to move in complex ways while spellcasting.
Raven: There’s no one set way to cast a fire spell. You could wave your arms in different, complex patterns to summon fire balls, fire columns, fire circles...
Raven: It’s fascinating when you think of it like that! You’d think that a bird would have more flexibility, but humans actually surpass them in that aspect.
Leona: Magic can manifest any number of ways, it just depends on how you visualize it and command it. Posing has little to do with the form magic takes.
Raven: W-Well, it still adds a nice dramatic flair and dynamicism!! Especially in combat situations!
Leona, sighing: Listen to yourself. You sound like some kid that hasn’t even cast their first spell yet, running around waving a stick for a magical pen and shouting nonsense, getting excited about looking cool.
Leona: Like Cheka.
Raven: Aw, that actually sounds really cute!!
Raven, suddenly frowning: ... Wait a minute, did you just compare me to a child?!
Leona, smirking: Aaah, he’s a real pain in the tail. He’ll only get wilder once his magic comes to him.
Raven: That’s part of the joys of childhood~ Discovering new things about the world and about yourself... It can be confusing, but it gets better with time and hands to help you along the way.
Raven: Cheka Kingscholar, the princeling of the Sunset Savanna... With that level of enthusiasm and energy, I’m sure he has potential as a mage.
Leona: You seem fine with hyperactive furballs. You should keep each other company, practice your dumb poses together and cheer each other on.
Raven: Why am I suddenly becoming your on-call babysitter?!
Leona: Look at the pot calling the kettle black. You’re the one that volunteered me as YOUR babysitter earlier. I’m only repaying the favor.
Tumblr media
Leona: Next is... What do you do in your free time?
Leona: Don’t say reading or writing either. Anyone could already guess that.
Raven: Alright, then I...
Leona: Or making your own inks.
Raven, grimacing: ... Always one step ahead, aren’t you?
Leona: I’m familiar enough with you and your hobbies to be aware. It’s hard to ignore them when you’ve got a little bird screeching in your ear and demanding toys. Asking for pen and paper, glassware and fresh ingredients.
Raven, flustered: Aside from those activities, I find that I enjoy the mundane. There is nothing quite as relaxing as finding a comfortable spot to sit and just... watching the world go by.
Leona: Seriously? You do nothing? You might as well catch up on some Zs instead of watching grass grow.
Raven: It’s not as though I’m doing nothing! I people watch. Lots of students and staff pass through in a day, each of them different and unique. I sometimes see them and wonder what their stories are, trying to piece together observations and make a little guessing game of it.
Raven: In the town, for example. There goes the baker with his tray like always. He has bread and rolls to sell. So early in the day, he must have risen bright and early to prepare them. A hard worker with, perhaps, a family to support back home. 
Raven: That girl is crying. Did she have a bad day? Heartbreak, or maybe a fight with a friend or family member. She’s scared to let others see her this way, so she hides where she thinks no one will see.
Raven: Those sorts of things. It gives me new material to work with, inspirations for my writing.
Leona: A bird that people watches instead of people who bird watch... You’ve picked up an unsavory habit from Rook and that Octopunk’s goon.
Leona, with sarcasm: I shudder to know what dark secrets you’re keeping stored away in that pretty little head of yours.
Raven: I-I did NOT learn this from anyone!! And it’s NOT unsavory!!
Leona: Saying that doesn’t make it any less creepy.
Raven: It’s nothing more than an exercise in imagination! That’s very important talent to hone as a mage.
Raven: It’s not just people I watch either. There are plenty of ideas to be gleaned from scenery, or just an item. Sometimes I find myself entranced by the things displayed in store windows.
Leona: If they catch your eye, why don’t you just buy them? Then you can stare at them all day from the comfort of your own room.
Leona, with a smirk: You know, instead of doing it out in public.
Raven, frowning: Truth be told, I have very little pocket money. Uncle is very stringent when it comes to matters of the purse... so even if I do find an item that catches my fancy, I’ll rarely ever have the money to purchase it.
Leona, scoffing: Poor you.
Raven: It’s okay! What I lack in material goods and money, I can make up for in creativity! I’ll take what I see and weave it into a story where the impossible is made possible.
Raven: Oh! Maybe I can write something from this interview.
Leona: Hah?
Raven, smiling: Because... I’ve been watching you this whole time, Leona-san! And you’ve been watching me as well. It could make for an interesting story, perhaps the same narrative told from two totally different perspectives.
Raven: The world can look so different from another person’s eyes and perspective. Don’t you think so?
Leona: Whatever you say.
Tumblr media
Leona: Next is... If you could fly anywhere, where would you go?
Raven: I write about many far away places in my stories, but I haven’t had a chance to visit many of them. The next best thing I can do is to research them well, then recreate them as settings to the best of my abilities. Ideally, I would like to visit some of them someday.
Raven: I would love to experience habitats that I’m unfamiliar with, just for the experience. The ocean floor, the sprawling savanna, frozen tundras, mountain villages, massive cities... Perhaps they would come with some unpleasant experiences, but I feel that those, too, would be valuable for expanding my horizons.
Leona, sarcastic: Keen on the savanna? If that’s the case, you’re welcome to the Sunset Savanna as a guest of the crown whenever your little heart pleases. I’m sure my exalted older brother would just love to entertain you.
Raven: Hold on just one moment! I... I never said that was my top choice!
Leona: Yeah, then what is?
Raven, looking slightly uncomfortable: ... There is one place I wish to visit. It’s the Castle of the Loveless King in the Shaftlands.
Leona: That dusty old site? Thought the lizard was the only one into roaming ruins. That place isn’t anything special.
Raven: But you know the tale, don’t you?
Leona: Of course I do. It’s taught in Magic History, second year.
Raven: Once upon a time, there was a king who loved no one but himself. On a dark and stormy night, an old woman appeared at his door, asking for shelter from the rain. The king rejected her twice, and before she asked the third time, the old woman offered a rose, claiming it as a symbol of everlasting love.
Raven: She pleaded with the king, warning him that it was not too late to change the course of his path. When he rejected her a third and final time, the old woman shed her robes and revealed herself to be a powerful fairy enchantress.
Raven: She cursed him with immortality, so that he would witness the world and all the love it encompassed pass him by. But instead the king relished in the curse, growing even more daring and cruel. Slowly, the people around him left, fearing for their own lives. And the king was left loveless and alone, withering away in his castle.
Raven: By the time he realized what he had loss, it was too late for him to get it back. So the story goes.
Raven, to herself: (... It’s not the complete story. Only I will ever know what truly happened to him.)
Raven: That castle where the Loveless King fell... it’s important to me. That was where I was first taken in by my “father”--and he was the one that directed me to Uncle. It’s really where my story started. It’s where I learned to write. I want to honor my heritage by visiting it again.
Raven: Admittedly, father was not... the ideal parent. But he tried his best to raise me with an understanding of the world before releasing me into it. I’ve always regretted that we were not able to fully reconcile before he...
Raven: ...
Raven: I want to learn more about where he came from, his history before having me. Starting at the castle is my first and only clue.
Raven: Father was the one that allowed me to live this life. I owe him a great debt, so I wish to honor his humble beginnings.
Leona, crossing his arms: Hmph. You’re really concerned with legacy, huh.
Raven: Legacy is important, after all. You must know, being a prince yourself. You have a lot of expectations on your shoulders.
Leona: Ugh, don’t remind me. The last thing I want in this world is to flatter my ancestors by repeating the exact same mistakes they made.
Leona: Times have changed. We need to change with it and adapt, or risk losing ourselves to the wilderness.
Raven: (Risk losing ourselves...)
Leona: In the Sunset Savanna, we say the great kings of old are embedded in the sky. They’re the stars themselves, watching over each and every one of us. The idea is that if we’re ever lost, we look up to them for guidance.
Leona: But what can the dead do for the present? We can look back on them, ask them for advice, but we can’t rely on the past to pave the way to the future.  That can only be done by people who are here and now. People like you and me, canary.
Raven: !!
Leona: Look back all you want, but don’t stay fixated on it. The future is littered with prizes--you’ll miss them if you’re not focused.
Raven: ... I understand.
Raven: Dead men tell no tales. That’s why their legacies live on in us. We must serve as the torchbearers that carry their stories with us to the future--not for their stories to be repeated, but for the next generation to understand where they came from, and to learn from it.
Raven: I will keep moving forward.
Raven, pensive: You as well, Leona-san. You... should also keep looking forward.
Leona: ... Hmph. Looks to me like you’re living up to your old man’s legacy just fine by doing your own thing.
Leona: Let’s get a move on.
Tumblr media
Leona: Next is... What’s one thing you hope to do this year?
Raven: I’d like to get better at communicating face-to-face.
Leona: Oh yeah? That’s a first. You always have your head shoved in a book one way or another. Thought you’d be comfortable sticking to that.
Raven: Yes, and that’s part of the problem...! I tend to prefer the company of books over people. The issue is that I tend to fumble in conversation... Maybe I’m too formal, or too stilted, or too uptight, or just too awkward... Or maybe I say something but it comes off the wrong way because my emotions aren’t fully coming through in how I say the words out loud.
Raven: It makes communication a challenge if I’m not writing down my thoughts--but it’s unrealistic to think that I’ll always have paper on me to write on. I have to get used to communicating clearly with just spoken word.
Raven: I wish I were as free-spirited as Kalim-senpai is. He wears his heart on his sleeve and is amicable with everyone.
Raven: Then there’s Silver-senpai, who is earnest and lives in harmony with the woodland critters.
Raven: Both he and Kalim-senpai are so kind, honest, and approachable. They have boons I can only dream of having myself.
Leona: You’re definitely different from those two, that’s for sure.
Raven: Urk!! I knew I was lacking in this area, but you needn’t affirm it so bluntly!!
Leona: Hah? Whaddya mean? I’m stating an objective, neutral fact. It’s not inherently a bad thing.
Raven: Eh?
Leona: They’ve got their own strengths. So what? You’ve got yours. Weaknesses too.
Leona: Let’s say Kalim was meeting an important dignitary. Sure, he’d chat them up real good, but he also has no filter. If he messes up, that’s it. He’s offended the potential business partner, and no trade deal goes through.
Leona: But you’re cautious. You know when to hold your tongue. You wouldn’t have made that same slip-up.
Leona: Stick you at a party though? That’s where Kalim would thrive and you’d merge with the wallpaper.
Leona: It’s not the skill that matters, but the setting and how the skill is used.
Raven: That’s true... That’s also part of what’s so complicated about speaking with others face-to-face. There are variables you cannot control, another person whose responses you must account for. Things constantly changing.
Raven: When I write, I can manipulate each and every aspect of the conversation. I have as much time as I need to think of a response. 
Raven: I just hope it will come to me with practice. I’ve been pushing myself to go out of my comfort zone lately, staying behind class to exchange a few words with my first-year peers. Even this conversation that we’re having now is considered part of my training regimen!
Leona: Good for you.
Raven: Come to think of it, you’re quite well-articulated yourself, Leona-san. Er, when you want to be. It must come with the royal tutoring.
Leona, slightly amused: You don’t say. Am I riveting enough of a conversation partner for you?
Raven, warily: Well... You’re certainly not Prince Charming, but you’re a prince with your own ‘unique’ charm. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?
Tumblr media
Leona: Next is... What is your best subject?
Raven: That would be Ancient Curses.*
[*NOTE: In the official localization, this subject is called “Ancient Magic”.]
Leona: No kidding. It looks like birds of a feather flock together after all.
Raven: Eh, you too?!
Leona: Yeah. ‘s not all bad. It’s a test of your wits, not just busy work to waste time.
Raven, smiling: I know, it’s so interesting!! Deciphering ancient languages, unlocking spells wanted to be kept secret... It’s like solving a puzzle or a riddle, so it’s really satisfying when you finally find the answer. It feels like you earned the right to see it!
Leona: Huh. You’re pretty gung-ho about this.
Raven: I have a personal fascination with it as a writer.
Raven: I mainly write stories in the common tongue, but there are many languages spoken in Twisted Wonderland, each with its own unique grammatical and social rules.
Raven: And in Ancient Curses, we often look at languages no longer spoken. That is to say, dead or extinct languages. Words forgotten by the natural passage of time, or purposefully buried by its original authors.
Raven: If we unearth those words, we can learn more about what once was, and all the things we have yet to understand. There is much knowledge and wisdom from the past that we’ve yet to find.
Raven: Ancient Curses is the bridge between now and then.
Leona: Guess so. 
Leona: You talk about it like you’re looking for something. Did a forbidden dark magic spell catch your eye?
Raven: An answer. I’m looking for an answer.
Raven: (... for this curse of mine.)
Leona: Aren’t we all.
Raven: What are you hoping to get out of your Ancient Curses studies?
Leona: Me? Nothing much. It helps keep me momentarily amused. I’m not looking for the secret to life or the cure to disease or whatever.
Leona: Unlike you, I don’t have any lofty ambitions.
Raven: What a shame. With your abilities, you just may be able to uncover whatever you like.
Raven: In fact, I would say I detected a hint of sarcasm just now, when you said you don’t have any lofty ambitions. It’s not good to tell little white lies, Leona-san.
Leona, with a laugh: Hah! Thanks for the vote of confidence, canary. You put your faith in the strangest of places.
Raven: I don’t think it’s so strange. The flowers in Heartslabyul’s gardens do stranger things than believe in lions. ‘You can really do it if you put your mind to it’... That saying is true for everyone!
Leona: Now that’s some topysy-turvy logic if I’ve ever heard of it.
Leona: As for your ‘answer’... if you manage to find it, be so generous as to share those secrets with the rest of us, won’t you?
Raven: Hehe. Of course I will. That’s a promise!
Tumblr media
Leona: We’re done here.
Raven: And not a moment too soon!
Leona, sarcastic: Yeah, yeah, I get it. You’re just so eager to be free of my clutches. I won’t take a second more of your precious time.
Leona, with a smirk: Here. Your bouquet. It’s the first and only time I’ll hand you flowers, so enjoy it while you can.
Raven, flatly: Thank you.
Raven: ... Oh my. What a lovely bouquet. Dark blue and burgundy flowers with speckles of small white and gold flowers... It looks like the night sky. They would make for a lovely color of enchanted ink.
Raven: I don’t recognize a lot of these, but blue roses aren’t natural, are they?
Raven: (It’s like me. Something that doesn’t belong, placed there artificially... but it’s still a part of the bouquet, still a part of the story.)
Raven: If I recall correctly, blue roses mean “mystery”, “the unattainable”, and... “a dream come true’.
Leona: Ever the romanticist. Are you going to stand there stalling for time, or are you actually going to fly the Birthday Road? I’m going to see your flying again one way or another. You might as well get it over with now with some grace intact.
Raven: I-I will! I was just admiring the composition of the bouquet before I left! (Oh, WHY did he have to point that out?!)
Raven, getting on the broom and clearing her throat: W-Well then, if you’ll excuse me! I must be off!
Leona: Finally off to see the world? Bring me back a souvenir and a good story while you’re at it, canary.
Raven: I make no such promises, Leona-san!
78 notes ¡ View notes
ryuichirou ¡ 11 months ago
Text
Replies
Some replies!
Anonymous asked:
I didn't realize it was possible to filter without tags. Thank you!
No problem, Anon! I’m glad we could help. Have a nice day!
Anonymous asked:
Hnnng…booba…
(this is about this art)
Hehe yeah…
I was looking at my first sketches of fem!Azul recently, and wow I draw her boobs bigger and bigger every single time. She wasn’t supposed to be this big… but alas.
Anonymous asked:
I feel like 2 bottoms and 1 top is more fun if the top has an extra dick situation going on, like 2 tops 1 bottom is great because humans come with AT LEAST two holes perfect for taking dick, and sometimes more 😌✨ so basically Ortho is the master dom of them all, but like, we already knew this ♥️
First of all, YES, this is usually our reasoning as well for preferring 2 tops 1 bottom, it’s just easier to navigate the holes and all lol But also you made such a good point??  Ortho absolutely would be able to have multiple of those, as many as he needs in fact! And also have a lot of different kinds of stimulation… wow, that’s OP. Ortho, your niichan created an unstoppable master dom…
Anonymous asked:
I just saw the Jellyfish post and the image of Silver bowing and pleading for others to golden shower him, so good
Lillia would love this, he trained his son so well, and he will of course give his cute son his pee as a treat
(this is about this post)
You imagined it!! I’m so happy, Anon. But also, sorry for that… (but also, you are welcome)
Poor Silver doesn’t even realise how it looks, oof… Lilia would almost pass away out of the sheer excitement and pride he felt at that moment.
Anonymous asked:
Kalim and idia would be a funny ship because idia could not handle how happy and positive Kalim is during the entire time they do it including aftercare
Awww, don’t be silly, Idia, what else should he do while doing it, cry?
Facts, Anon. Absolute facts. Kalim always behaves like this is the best moment of his life and it’s all about how awesome it is for him to be with Idia and to do what they are doing right now!!! How does one even react to that?..
But also I’m not sure if Kalim knows how to do aftercare... He is very used to just falling asleep afterwards and then suddenly waking up after a nap to continue the cuddles. Idia would suffer either way because he would try to carefully run away while Kalim is asleep… instantly waking him up and prompting him to start cuddling him with the widest smile possible!
Anonymous asked:
Hey Ryu! Hope you're having a nice day.
Real quick, what would Ortho do if he was replacing?
(I was doing some stupid shit on c.ai and it just popped into my head.)
What if Idia had a lover (you can use Azul or Lilia for this cuz we ship it. Or any other top that fits this scenario) and they died so Idia, just like he did with Ortho, tried to bring them back to life? Bc of this he became so possessive in an unhealthy way over them, shutting away the world like he did before, but that includes Ortho.
Hi Anon! I hope you’re having a nice day too :)
Ohh, interesting; honestly, it kind of sounds like an anxiety that Ortho could have. Similarly to how he usually treats Idia being in a relationship with someone: he is very happy, excited and supportive, but also very jealous because he actually really doesn’t want to share Idia with anyone.
In a way, I think he could make peace with Idia being with someone by thinking that what they have with Idia is special and totally different from what Idia and his boyfriend have. So if Idia’s boyfriend suddenly passes away, and Idia grief pushes him to shut away the world and focus on recreating that person, Ortho would feel horrible on many levels: both because of Idia pushing him away and because of Idia doing for that person something that was supposed to be special and their thing. And even though Ortho would recognise that Idia is hurting, and it’s probably selfish of him to be so against it, he might even try to act supportive, like “isn’t it cool, there will be the second one like me”, but he would probably hate that thing. I don’t know, I feel like it would end badly lol
Anonymous asked:
do you have any thoughts/ideas about a shroudswap au, in which ortho lived and it was idia who died? how do you think a human ortho like that would turn out?
Oof, I wonder if he would be better or much worse than Idia… I feel like Idia tortures himself for the most part (mentally), but with Ortho, even though he would still torture himself because of guilt, could also be more of a danger to others. At least because he is less secluded and more sociable in general.
Hmmm.
Ortho was younger than Idia when the incident happened + he isn’t as insanely skilled as him, so I don’t think he would be able to build a robot and write an AI as fast as Idia (even for Idia it took a couple of years), but he would still try to do it. I think it would be his work-in-progress at the age of 16; he would just have a bunch of junk on his floor + an android torso with a silicon face that doesn’t move, because it’s not done yet. Ortho would still talk to it a lot.
I think Ortho would combat his grief and guilt by thinking that it’s up to him to honour Idia’s legacy, and he’ll talk about it a lot: about how he tries his best to be a good technomagician and a mechanic, and he would indeed be the best at his dorm, but not quite as good as Idia would’ve been in Ortho’s head.
Ortho would almost look like a normal guy, somewhat similar to Ace in the way he acts at times, but there would always be something uncanny about him because he is never 100% genuine and his heart is clearly closed from others. He would be the type to say “what? I’m friends with everyone” but have zero people whom he actually trusts. He prefers to talk to his half-built robot-brother more anyways.
Now, what I mean when I say that he is more likely to be dangerous is that while Idia is in terrible shape and his coping mechanisms aren’t the best, Ortho would bottle up his emotions more, as if he can’t allow himself to grieve properly because it is his fault. It would become very clear that he is still not over it once something triggers him and he becomes super resentful towards everyone and everything that isn’t Idia, or rather an idea of Idia in his head that gets more vague with every single day because he gets older, and he hates himself for “losing” him that way too. I think Ortho could express this frustration by being destructive because he would be in a very bad mental space…
Wow that turned dark lol
Anonymous asked:
I mean, that can be incorporated too!
My idea is that Azul is surrounded by a faceless mob and he is forced to sign contract after contract. None of them are for his benefit, though, they are basically trading away any and all of his skills and talents while the crowd laughs at him. After a few times, the contracts start ripping away body parts that correspond to his talents (I.e. singing would be his vocal cords, swimming would be his tentacles/legs, etc.) until there’s barely anything left of him. Whatever is left is then served up as delicious takoyaki.
I swear I do like Azul.
(this is about Azul’s danganronpa-style execution)
Wow, that sounds perfect, Anon. destroyed by the very thing that empowered him in the first place and reduced to what the most helpless form there is available to him: an actual snack.
I would love to see it.
Anonymous asked:
Did you watch the lyric video for No Me Diga or this one: https://youtu.be/UrFH772ytzM?si=yjd1dMNYhAPp6Ybf because the linked version makes the song worse with the visuals 😂😂😂😂😂
Yep, I watched this one lol
16 notes ¡ View notes
fioaezzu ¡ 1 year ago
Text
blog number 1: fiu's / fio's blog
table of contents:
-intro text and warm welcome
-what happened at me today?
-what did I learned from this day?
-outro
hi lovelies, are you interested to read?
intro:
hello lovelies, glad you're here to read my blog today. *smiles* please take a coffee and starts to sip, because I'll be sharing some of interesting happened today in my life!
I'm willing to read all of the comments lovelies, don't hesitate to share your day with me! have a good day.
-
what happened today?
I'm here outside, done reading a book. wonder what book I am reading? It's "I had the same dream again" it's a really nice book! you should try to read it too.
March, Second, 2024 at Frankfurt, Germany.
4:30 AM: it was a lovely day to start a good morning. I cooked one egg and prepare a hot fresh rice to eat. when I finished eating I put gears on and droves my bike. (motorcycle) I went to a cafe named SueĂąo. I ordered 1 latte for myself then after that I went to ride again. it was early in the morning so I started to reach 3 digits speed on my motorcycle Yamaha R1. It feels amazing riding while listening to a playlist called "Study Lo-Fi 2024" at the app "Spotify". I have met a really mascular men riding a Ducati today. he waved at me and I waved back. I didn't had a chance to ask his name because I suddenly accelerate because I was too shy and blushing that time! yeah, that's so true. I think that's why I am still single at the age of 23.
7:00 AM: I goes back at home real tired, so I took a quick nap and washes my dirty clothes. after that I watched a TV show, which really entertains me.
12:57 AM: I'm going to continue it!
after I watch some TV shows I drew kĂśnig! oh, I love kĂśnig. then after clearing my mind on sketching kĂśnig, I proceed to go out and get some fresh air.
8:00 PM: I was a bit sad realizing my life was so boring that I only live alone so I went riding again.
10:00 PM: I went home real tired... my body almost shaking as hell...
12:00 AM: I'm eating some tacos for my dinner! (oh please don't do what am I doing right now, it's unhealthy!)
what I learned today? (sharing some thoughts also)
- actually my life was a bit normal anyways but can we just tell it's peaceful? no distractions, no boys, no marriage... but I really need one... (I don't wanna die virgin! \⁠(⁠≧⁠ロ⁠≦⁠\⁠) !)
- I am really suck also at... that thing called "love" that I never had EVER ON MY EXISTENCE! now, I am so confused how it feels like being hug, cries on someone's shoulder, being sang by someone, being able to share and open up with someone, just you know! it's so good! (until you guys broke up lol)
- okay so what you learned and I learned this day is bro don't be single it's worst. just kidding, I meant, it's way more peaceful being single like... you have no responsibility on your children, (cause you haven't f*cked yet) you can do whatever you want without limitation, (because your husband wouldn't stop you from whatcha want to do) and lastly! bro you're living alone! you prove yourself you can stand without anyone's help! omg be proud!
outro:
goodbye lovelies, I hope you enjoy that... I really hope... okay so, stay safe! ride safe! see you tomorrow!
- if you got some questions put it down at the comments!
thank you for reading, appreciate you! \(°v°)/
0 notes
shonkgobonk ¡ 2 years ago
Text
It's raining hard where I am and it's just "head empty, just thoughts on how the Sinclair boys would comfort you during like a heavy rainstorm with thunder and lighting and all that if it's what you're afraid of" its mostly fluff of the boys and them comforting you
This is also my first time doing writing on the boys, and I'm not much of a writer, so don't expect the best, but I am trying:D sorry if it's short!
Also sorry if it's ooc, I'm just a sucker for soft Sinclair boys
Tumblr media
Lester
- is used to the rain and all the sounds that come with it, he's outdoors a lot, he's gotten used to it by now
- if the two of you are outside, he would take you to the truck to wait out the storm, he knows better than to drive in rain when it's pouring outside
- if you're in his cabin, you're either sitting on a couch or in bed
- expect him holding your hand or keeping an arm around you to help you feel safe
- definitely tells you that it rains all the time in Louisiana, that the two of you are going to be fine
- FOREHEAD KISSES TO COMFORT YOU
- doing the thumb rubbing your hand while holding it thing just out of habit
- he let's you bury your face into him when there's a particularly big clap of thunder
Vincent
- rain doesn't effect him that much since he's not usually outside that often, the most it does is add another sound to his workshop, the wax bubbling, the fire crackling, the music he plays, and now rain and the occasional sound of thunder
- wouldn't entirely understand why you're so scared of it, but would still try to comfort you.
- you're either going to be hugging him from behind or he's going to have you sit on his lap if you want to stay close with him while he works
- would let you play with his hair if that what helps calm you down
- attempted cheek kisses, but you just feel his wax mask attempt give you a gentle kiss on the cheek as a way to show that he's here for you
- if you ask, he would probably give you paper and a pen or pencil to start sketching with if that also helps calm you down.
- if he's just sketching or doing something that only requires one hand, he wouldn't mind holding yours until you feel better
Bo
- where do I start with him...
- I feel like he would tease you about being afraid of the thunder, but is also a bit afraid of it, but mostly the bigger ones-
- he would tease you about it, hear a loud thunder clap, along with a bright and quick flash of lighting, jump a bit, and then cuss
- "Oh come on darlin' it's jus' some rai- FUCK-"
- don't bring it up, he's going to deny being afraid of it
- asks if you want to hold his hand to make you feel better
- also someone to give forehead kisses to try and comfort you
-he would also keep an arm around you, whether it be around your shoulder or around your waist
- I feel like he's someone who likes to take a nap usually every day, so this will become that nap
- it's going to become you laying on his chest with one arm around you, him just trying to keep you as close to him as possible
- he's a real heavy sleeper so good luck if you wake up before him, you're stuck like that until he either moves or wakes up
Tagging some peeps who I think would enjoy this!
@soupbabe
@bluecoolr
@capybar00
@cyanide-latte
@vincent-sinclair-deserved-better
@slaasherslut
@goldrose-star
@rottent33th
@the-pinstriped-hood
@all-of-these-vampires
151 notes ¡ View notes
after-witch ¡ 4 years ago
Text
Sketch Memory [Yandere Overhaul x Reader]
Title: Sketch Memory [Yandere Overhaul x Reader]
Synopsis: Chisaki lets you indulge in your little hobbies. But he’s starting to suspect that you’re taking advantage of his “generosity.” 
For request: @hello-lucky-luka​ said: Remember that one ask about overhaul’s angel having a boyfriend? Can I request a scenario where she misses her boyfriend a lot that she draws pictures of him to the point where overhaul got his attention and get jealous?
Word count: 2700ish
Tumblr media
You’re not lying, you reason. You’re not, technically speaking, hiding anything. Overhaul never asks to see your sketchbook. And he never said you couldn’t draw someone you know. So the fact that you have been drawing your boyfriend every day since your captor gifted you the hefty, nicely bound thick sketchbook is something you force yourself not to worry about. 
Sometimes you find yourself sketching just a bit of him--his hands holding onto his favorite coffee mug, the profile of his face, looking up, staring at a movie marquee on a date night.
Sometimes you draw his face in all its glory--smiling, frowning, annoyed. When you have lots of energy, lots of drive (which is not often, you feel so tired now, all the time; the lack of movement and weariness of captivity is getting to you) you draw an entire scene. Your favorite is the one you’re doing now, though to be fair, every new drawing is your favorite because it’s new. This one, you admit, is exceptionally special. You’ve drawn him sitting in the park, with a book in his lap.
The park, like everything else, is from memory. You wavered on where to put the tree behind the bench, because you can’t quite remember if it’s off-center or not, and whether or not it had a knot in the trunk towards the bottom or the middle. But it’s realistic, and that’s enough for now.
It’s your boyfriend that gives you the most pride in this piece. You’ve outdone yourself, you really have. He looks… alive. Weighty. Real. Real enough that you wish you’d done this in color and not just with your sketch pencils. Real enough that you close your eyes and imagine you’re in the park, that he’s sitting there with his book, engrossed in a story, so engrossed that he doesn’t see you coming. You stop in your tracks and admire his face, preserve the way he looks so focused, so far-away, to memory. You admire the way the breeze gently blows his hair, and a hand absentmindedly pushes his bangs (he needs a trim, or a style) away from his face before he flips a page.
Finally you can stand it no longer, and though you hate to break his concentration, you glide up to the bench and sit next to him. He jumps, but once he sees its you his body tension melts away and he slides closer until your thighs touch. “Good book?” You ask. He nods, then looks ahead. He looks concerned. Or focused. You’re not sure. “Are you okay?” He gives you a look of surprise, of worry, then a smile. “Of course. I just…” His hand fiddles in his pocket. There’s something there, something bulky and square. “Wanted to ask you something…” Your heart is hammering because you know what’s in his pocket and his hand is moving and he’s about to ask you and you’re smiling--
“Who did you draw?”
You’re not in the park--you’re not in the park--and your boyfriend is not here, and Overhaul is looming above you and he’s looking right at your sketchbook.
You slam the book closed and you know in the instant that you do that it was the wrong move. Defensive. Obvious. Shit, shit, shit shit.
You stare ahead and will yourself not to shake.
“I asked you a question, angel.”
“I…”
You don’t know where it comes from, but the courage to lie comes from somewhere, and you deliberately, slowly reopen your book to the exact page.
“Sorry,” you say, finally, looking up at him. You laugh, breathy and light. His face is impassive, as always. “You scared me. I was really focused, trying to, you know, think of what’s missing.” You pick up a pencil and fiddle with it, make a line here and there, useless things really, to make it look like you want to keep going.
“Mm.”
Your heart is beating so hard that it almost hurts.
“You didn’t answer my question. Who did you draw?” To anyone else, his tone might seem casual, neutral. Bored, even. But you know there’s something simmering underneath, the low threat of perceived bad behavior, the low threat of him sitting you down for “a talk,” or the distant promise returning to a particular small room and confinement. 
You force yourself to smile, nervously. No point in hiding the anxiety that he knows is there, after all. “Oh! It’s,” and in a split second the idea comes to you, genius--”just a character from that book I was reading the other day.” You set your book down and casually--you hope it looks casual--reach up to the shelves installed along the walls behind your desk to pluck the book out. “The one about the guy who came home from war and no one remembered him, so he starts a new life in a new town.”
You set the book back in place and glance up at Chisaki, who stares down at you. You’re about to blurt out something, anything, to fill the silence when he nods. It’s a tension-cutting nod, a nod that tells you you’re okay, you haven’t fucked up, he believes you and you can stop feeling like you’re going to throw up now.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying the book.”
He’s fine. You’re fine. It’s fine. For now, you think, for now. You want him to leave before he starts asking more questions.
“Kai?”
“Yes?” His eyes crinkle ever-so-slightly. A smile, you think, behind the mask. Maybe.
You smile in what you hope is a sheepish, not nervous, expression. “Could I take a nap today? I’m feeling kind of tired.”
He doesn’t answer right away, which makes your fingers curl on the hard back of your sketchbook. Does he know?
He reaches out with a gloved hand and there’s a split second of fear--you’re done for--before he simply brushes your cheek. One of his rare, yet increasingly common, touches.
“Of course you can. I’ll set a timer so you don’t sleep too long.”
He turns and leaves your room through he unassuming door that connects to his office and you mumble a quiet thank you as it shuts. He’ll know if you don’t nap--you swear he has cameras in the room, though he denied it when you asked--so you tuck your sketchbook into the drawer of the desk and decide to hop into bed. A nap might help you feel less anxious, anyway. Your captor doesn’t let you nap long enough to dream, so you’ll be spared a nightmare.
**
You wake, almost jerking up, to the sudden, loud beeping of Overhaul’s watch--which is strange, because he usually sits in his office while you nap and wakes you up in a condescendingly gentle manner.
You open your eyes and Chisaki is standing silently next to your bed.
“Um?” You rub your eyes, the gentle rest of the nap falling off you abruptly as you take in the unusual circumstances.
You sit up and oh.
He’d holding your sketchbook.
He’s flipping through your sketchbook.
And he’s really, really pissed off. The air suddenly feels heavy and there’s nothing of the cold staleness that usually permeates your mundane interactions with your captor, the awkwardness replaced instead with the gravity of your situation. For the first time in a long time, you remember who has you captive. You remember what he can do. He could hurt you. He might hurt you. Did you anger him enough to break down whatever barriers that have kept him from hurting you so far?
He flips another page and another and lets out a sarcastic hum of approval. You feel your heart beat faster at every sound.
“Is that his hand? Remarkable shading, but…”
He rips the page out and crumples it, tossing it into the large trashcan before flipping the page. “Ah,” he says, voice low and cruel. “Another one of his face.” He rips that one out with particular gusto but it doesn’t crumple--it explodes, pieces of paper flying into the air. Some of them land on you, in your hair, and you furiously bat at them and your heart hurts and you know you’re tearing up and you don’t care.
“Stop,” you say, weak. A whimper. “Stop it.” Fat tears roll down your cheeks and it’s hard to see.
“Don’t argue with me.” His tone is quick and curt, and you know there will be no mercy, no coddling. No soft hushes and shushes. Only coldness. “You’re already in enough trouble.”
At the word ‘trouble,’ you wrap your arms around your chest. Trouble, trouble, trouble. The word carries memories and connotations. Isolation. Anxiety. Boredom. Helplessness. All things you experience on a daily basis, amplified, rolling together in a thick ball that rests at the bottom of your stomach. You can’t go back in your punishment room.
“Look at me,” he says--and you do. You want to get out of trouble. If that’s possible.
Chisaki doesn’t glare at you, not precisely, but his eyes are stern and unforgiving. You wonder if he’s frowning behind the mask, but maybe it’s better not to know. Once he’s satisfied that you’re paying attention, he continues.
“You are going to get out of bed.  You are going to stand next to me. And then you’re going to rip out every drawing you’ve done of this… trash. And you will throw them away.”
You can feel the bitter, acrid taste of your lunch threatening to rise up to your throat.
“Please.” You’re whispering. You don’t have the strength to talk. “Please don’t make me do that.”
Somehow, you know--you know that if you rip up these pages, you’ll start to forget what your boyfriend looks like. The earliest drawings have the strongest features, the ones you flip to when you’re not sure about something. If those are gone, if every study you’ve done from memory is gone, you’ll forget. Just like you’ve forgotten the combination to your locker at work and the street your favorite bakery was on. You’ll forget, without the pages, without the reminders.
You know this. And Chisaki knows this, too. He always knows what you’re thinking, somehow, someway. If you could get a few steps ahead of him for once, keep yourself guarded, maybe he wouldn’t be able to effect you so much. 
“If you don’t want to destroy drawings of this garbage, I can always pay him a visit.” Your entire body goes rigid and you want to cry out and beg him--no no no--but nothing leaves your throat, thick and tight and trapped. Chisaki’s eyes practically glint as he continues. “It might be more satisfying to destroy the real thing, now that I think about it.”
Something in your throat loosens and you stand up, nearly tripping over your own feet.  You grab the book and he lets you, lets you hold it out in front of you like a burden. “I’ll do it,” you murmur, your body trembling. “I’ll do it, just… just don’t hurt him. Please. Please?” You look up and there’s no softness in his eyes, no agreeable smile that you sometimes see when he’s agreeing to give you a treat (because that is your life now, your captor agreeing to let you watch a movie is a special treat to be celebrated)--just passive coldness.
“Do what I told you, and we’ll see.”
It’s a start.
But now you have to do it.
Your drawings. Your work. Your memory of him. All pages and pencil and smudges and tears. Your entire body is trembling--you feel like the ground is moving, swaying beneath your feet. Your hands shake as you flip open to the nearest page.
An early sketch. One where your boyfriend’s face was so clear in your mind that if you had the skills to make photo realistic work, you might have been able to do it. You try to capture it to your memory but the second your hand moves, rips just a little, it seems to fly away. You pull harder and quickly wrinkle the paper in your hands before tossing it towards the trash bin.
You pause too long, apparently, because Chisaki speaks up.
“Keep going. I won’t tell you again.”
And you do. You tear out page after page, your tears flowing freely. You begin to feel numb, after a while, even as you rip out drawings that took you hours--drawings you poured your soul into, whatever is left of your soul after months and months of captivity.
One more to go.
Your hand gingerly touches the sketch that you’d been so proud of earlier. The last page. The last visual memory left--the only one not ripped apart or crumpled or shredded and nestled in your hair.
 You want to lose yourself in it again. You want to close your eyes and pretend you’re at the park and he’s about to propose and your life will be nothing but sweetness and planning for the future. But the air is too thick and Overhaul is staring and he can’t read your thoughts, but he’ll figure it out anyway.
So you rip the page out of the book and tear it in half, jagged and uneven, before throwing it into the garbage.
Your hand recoils from the ghost-like memory of the paper on your fingers and you press them against your chest, above your heart.
Your boyfriend has probably moved on by now. Maybe he’s months deep into a rebound relationship, finding himself brushing away tears at new firsts with another woman, a woman who can’t replace you but who will heal the wound you left in his heart. Who will heal your wounds?
Chisaki is staring at you, you realize, and you drop your hands. You don’t want him to think you’re fondly reminiscing. He could always change his mind about leaving your boyfriend--your ex? What do you call him? What does he call you, you wonder?--alone.
“We’re going to have a long talk about this later,” he says, voice leaving no room for argument. He pauses, and your chest feels tight. Will he tell you that you’re being sent to the quiet room? The thought of being there for days, alone, unable to do anything, barely able to move in the tight surroundings makes you shake and you dig your nails into your arm.
“You can stay in your room. You listened well.”
You swallow, throat tight, and nod. You almost want to smile. You don’t have to go back there, if you listen. You know how to listen, when it comes down to it.
Chisaki glances down at the trash bin and picks it up with his gloved hands, dragging it towards the door.
“One more thing,” he says, glancing back at you.
“Go wash your hands. They’re filthy.”
724 notes ¡ View notes
well-its-not-human-anymore ¡ 4 years ago
Note
Hi! Could I get HC from the guys? 👀 How they would always react to catching the reader seeing them "badly", in addition to the fact that he usually avoids them, but with his brothers it is incredible and they feel bad because they think they do not like him.  But she actually likes them and she looks at them like that because she "studies" them to draw them and she is too clumsy and shy to talk to them, that's why she ends up avoiding them. Until finally he catches her drawing them with lots of hearts or maybe they'll find her notebook with lots of portraits of them.
It's kind of funny because when I study people to draw them, they think that I look at them with hatred xd maybe I should increase my glasses prescription
God, glasses are such a pain in the ass but I have to wear them. If I don't anyone within my near vicinity doesn't have a face. But why they gotta get dirty so easily???? Makes me wanna explode or something
TMNT Headcanons
The boys w/ a quiet reader who is fine with his brothers but acts cold around him and stares a lot
Tumblr media
Michaelangelo
mikey couldn't describe his disappointment upon realizing that you didn't want to be friends with him
well, you never actually said that to him
but he was pretty sure it was the case
you'd never made an effort to be friends with him
stared at him an awful lot though, but there was always something off about your gaze when you looked at him
like you were sizing him up, scrutinizing him, like he was an opponent
it kinda worried him
to add to that, you didn't even attempt to look embarrassed when he caught you staring
you'd just stare harder
on your end it was quite the opposite
you always found the brothers fascinating and you LOVED studying their anatomy, you'd confessed this to Donnie early on and he happily indulged in your questions
and you loved how easily you got along with the boys
well, except for Mikey
but it wasn't for a lack of trying
whenever the orange sporting turtle came around your normally flamboyant personality crept back into its little corner and hid
any words of excitement that had previously been with you died in your throat
for the longest time you didn't understand it
and you hated not understanding things, so you turned to your only outlet
that's how you ended up with an entire sketchbook full of the youngest brother in vastly different styles and poses
you had a separate book for the others, none of them as detailed as this
and when you stared to analyze you'd fallen into a habit of not looking away when caught
by your logic, if you stared back hard enough he'd look away first or just assume you'd zoned out
he didn't
and on one hectic day you'd left your sketchbook open on the kitchen table in your rush to get to work
you hadn't even noticed the slip up until Leo texted you to let you know during your shift
instant panic
in truth, Mikey was the one who discovered the book upon waking up from his nap and he'd spent the next three hours analyzing every drawing
when you finally dropped in after work to grab your book the turtle was waiting for you with it in hand
he'd asked you if you hated him
you told him no and accepted your sketchbook from him
he was relieved and screaming excitedly, just in his head
"Do you maybe wanna hang out sometime?"
You sighed in relief and nodded
"If you're cool with it- you don't think I'm weird do you?"
"I mean- you are talking to a turtle..."
you lightly shoved his chest and smiled, although it faded within a second
"Oh hush, 10 o'clock tomorrow? I'll bring snacks."
he was so stunned he could only shoot you finger guns in approval
Tumblr media
Donatello
Donnie genuinely couldn't understand your unease around him
he'd followed all the proper expectations of holding a conversation
he was polite and engaging
so why wouldn't you talk to him?
this boy has read so many social blogs to try and figure out what he was doing wrong and he just couldn't put his finger on it
you were fine with the rest of his brothers, you'd stay up for hours laughing and gaming with them
you'd even sat still long enough to listen to Leo explain some old Japanese myth that he'd read about in a book
but with him it was always a quick, cordial greetings and farewells with bland small talk in between
Donnie had picked up pretty quickly that you weren't interested in any sort of interaction with him
and he convinced himself that that was okay
but that didn't explain the staring
he'd caught you in the act several times, eyes narrowed and locked on him
especially when you were alone with him in a room or just in the lair
the poor turtle just couldn't put his finger on it
then he caught you drawing, he noticed early on that you always carried a small sketchbook on your person but he didn't think much of it
and it wasn't so much that he caught you drawing, in fact, he wouldn't have noticed if you hadn't snapped at him while he was trying to do a sudoku puzzle
"Damn it Donnie! Stop moving! If I fuck this arm up one more time I'm gonna decompose!"
he'd quickly moved back into the position he was in prior
"sorry?"
but you'd gone silent again, occasionally glancing up from your work and running your eyes along his frame before looking down again
nearly twenty minutes later Donnie had finished the puzzle and it seemed as though you had finished your drawing
"Uh- can I ask what are you-"
"I'm drawing you but you kept moving your arm and making me mess up. You always do that when I draw you so every damn picture I have of you stays a sketch because you always come out looking like a fucking octopus."
He just stared
"Sorry, I uh- I didn't mean to explode on you like that. I'm just- I'm really bad at talking to you okay? It's so easy with everyone else but you've just gotta be so damn smart all the time and I worry that you'll think I'm boring so I just... don't talk to you?"
Donnie is stunned™
You refuse to show him the drawing until you can complete the line art and color it
But at least he knows that you don't hate him
Tumblr media
Leonardo
To be completely honest Leo didn't mind that you were distant from him
You created an aura of calm when you were around and you always managed to distract his brothers while you were present
And he enjoyed the alone time
But after a few months that calm acceptance turned into jealousy
Not that he would ever admit it
He would just push it off and ignore it, that usually seemed to work
So why wasn't it?
And your obvious staring problem didn't help at all
Leo didn't spend much time considering his appearance but something about your gaze made him self conscious
And he hated that with a passion
Why was it that you could hold entire debates with his siblings? Even his dad for gods sake. You'd have hour long conversations on almost everything but whenever he tried to say hello you'd make up some lame ass excuse and scamper away
He just wanted an explanation
It appeared that the answer resided in your sketchbook
You'd left it open on the couch when Raph had called you away to spar with him
Leo very delicately flipped through the pages, careful not to disturb some of the polaroid pictures of his brothers
He was admittedly surprised to find pictures of himself among the pages
One of him in a handstand, another of him meditating, there was even one of him mid sneeze that you'd recreated with pencil and paper
The image of his eyes was the most startling, but the book held no polaroid of his eyes
You drew them from memory
And he was shocked when you returned to the room and didn't immediately panic
But that might have been because he didn't try to withhold your book from you
"It took me three months to color them, your eyes. I could never get the shade of blue just right."
"I'm gonna be honest with you y/n, I really thought you didn't like me."
You had the nerve to roll your eyes and follow it with a laugh
"I don't. I mean- I do but no, you just remind me a lot of myself and I haven't exactly figured out why yet. I thought that maybe if I drew you it'd be easier to figure you out..."
"Well did it help?"
You grinned
"I'm talking to you, aren't I?"
Tumblr media
Raphael
If there was one thing Raph hated it was not understanding something that was right in front of him
which is ironic, as a much younger version of himself probably couldn't care less
and a part of him wishes he didn't care about it so much
he wishes that your blatant avoidance of him didn't upset him
but shit, it got under his skin better than any needle ever could
was it too much to ask for you to just tell him what he said or did wrong?
was he asking too much of you?
but on the same scale you'd never shown obvious dislike towards him, you were never rude and you sure as hell didn't talk shit about him to his brothers
you got along great with them
in fact it was getting more difficult to remember a time before you became a part of his family
he'd become so used to your presence that it no longer put him off when he found you hanging around the lair
but in another sense he was certain that you hadn't spoken more than three sentences to him in your time knowing him or his family
so what was the reason
several months in he finally caught onto the staring, your narrow, glassy gaze locked onto his body and refusing to look away
he stared right back at you
this annoyed you for several reasons
because within five seconds your very peaceful drawing session had turned into a staring contest and your eyes were getting VERY dry
then you exhaled in a half-sigh and looked back down at your paper
"Huh, I guess your head is more of an oblong shape..."
he took offense to this
"What tha' hell is that supposed t'mean?"
now your eyes held more of an amused silent judgement, you begrudgingly held up your sketchbook
"I'm drawing you, you fucking walnut."
"Oh..."
now you rolled you eyes and tossed the book to him, he nearly dropped it and fumbled with the pages
your annoyance was quickly growing
"Careful with that."
He flipped through the pages at a snails pace, assumingly because he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing
you had some real talent
when he looked back up at you he was wearing that crooked smile
"and here I was thinkin' that my eyes were just green."
Hope I was able to get this down pretty well! I really enjoyed writing this one! Thanks for the patience!
-Mars 🌠
360 notes ¡ View notes
kiddolm ¡ 4 years ago
Text
Priority Herbert West X Reader
Summary: After so much neglect from a certain sciency boyfriend, can you do it anymore?
Warnings: AFAB, slight cursing, slight hint of NSFW
Word Count: 2,099
✧○ꊞ○ꊞ○ꊞ○ꊞ○ꊞ○ꊞ○ꊞ○ꊞ○ꊞ○✧
He's down in the basement. Again. Like always. Somehow he's managed to spend more time in that dungeon than usual, and it's killing you.
Astonishingly, you managed to get close enough to make the twink your boyfriend in the first place. Back then, he wasn't this closed off. He actually tried to put in an effort into the relationship. But now, here you were, missing the brief kisses he'd give you on the cheek while he momentarily came upstairs. When he'd take small breaks to come to eat, and you would have conversations about something other than his reagent. When he'd finally come upstairs to take the shortest nap ever but would latch on to you like he'd lose you if he let go. Where did all of that go?
You shuffle down the stairs into his makeshift laboratory, fumbling with the hem of your sweater. Was it normal to be nervous to ask your boyfriend a simple question? Probably not, but here you are shaking like you just got off a rollercoaster, merely to ask him if he wanted to go out to eat with you and Dan.
"H-hey, Herbie,"
"-don't call me that."
"Alrighty," you whisper under your breath. Here we go. "Do you want to go out to eat with Dan and me? It might be good to get a little break, and a breath of fresh air might be good for you."
"It's outlandish how you still come down here to ask me these futile questions. I thought you would've learned by now that I don't have time for such useless activities," Herbert mutters.
You deflate, not knowing whether to keep pushing or to let it go.
"Ok," you sigh; he's right. You have learned, and you're tired of it. You're through with the emotional abuse he's been giving. Day after day, you somehow got the motivation to keep going back down, and every single time you got rejected. You're moving out until he figures out what he wants.
Charging back up the stairs, you rush into your shared bedroom and throw a jet-black suitcase on the bed. While you shove God knows what into your bag, you take a look around your room. Before you had moved in, it had been dull, with one or two human anatomy posters hanging up on the wall and a mini-fridge for his reagent. Now it has a bit more life thanks to you. Or now, I guess you should say had.
Dan comes into the room behind you with a puzzled look on his face. He looks around the room and at the clothes and decor that's thrown into your suitcase.
"Uhm, (Y/N), we're just going out to eat."
"I'm moving out. At least for a little bit. Just until Herbert figures out if he wants me in his life or not," you huff, throwing clothes recklessly into your bag.
"Woah, Woah, Woah," Dan objected, pushing past you to stop you from packing. "What happened down there?"
You let out a sigh of defeat and slump down on the edge of your bed, putting your head into your hands.
"I've tried Dan. I have, but Herbert doesn't care about me anymore. He- He's lost feelings or something! We haven't had a real conversation in a week, and- and I can't keep putting in any effort if he's not putting in any in return."
Dan sits down next to you and puts an arm around your shoulder in the hope to slightly relax you. He's always had a unique talent for that when you'd either get freaked out from work or another one of Herbert's experiments.
"I'm sorry you feel like that (Y/N). Really. He's an idiot for not appreciating you. Hell! If Meg weren't in my life, I'd probably be after you. Not- not in a weird way," he says, stuttering through the last part, making you laugh.
"It's not on you, Dan, and thank you. I'm still leaving for a while," you say, looking down at the floor. "I think I just need to be away from here for a while, ya' know?"
"Yeah, I get it. Listen, I'll help you pack and- wait. Where are you staying?"
"I was planning on just staying at a motel for a while."
"(Y/N), come on. You won't be able to live like that!"
"It's just until I figure things out with Herbert. Besides, I can't keep living like this either."
"Alright, that's fair. What all are you taking," Dan asks, standing up and begins to fold the clothes you sloppily threw in your suitcase.
。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°
Herbert wanders up the stairs and into his -or better yet, your- bedroom. Except it doesn't look like it belongs to you anymore. Quite a few of your things are missing, and your keys and purse are gone. It's almost like you never had even lived there in the first place.
He sleepily stumbles into the kitchen, looking for you. His eyes dart around the room to find your bright smile that would usually light up the room. He spots Dan instead.
"Where's (Y/N)," he groans, pouring himself a glass of coffee like it wasn't already 8 P.M.
"Why do you care?" Dan scoffs. An obvious annoyance is radiating off of him.
Dan's sudden outburst catches Herbert off guard. What's that supposed to mean? Suddenly Herbert isn't so tired anymore, and it's not just because of the coffee he seemed to inhale.
"None of her stuff is in the room. She didn't tell me she was going anywhere besides out to eat with you," Herbert says, furrowing his brows together to try and recall if you said anything else earlier.
"She moved out," dan responds bluntly with irritation sketched into his face.
"What do you mean?"
"For someone always boasting about being smarter than everyone else, you sure are acting like a dumbass right now." Dan couldn't lie; it was nice having the upper hand with Herbert. But this time didn't seem so fun. The paranoia that was evident on Herbert's features was concerning.
"Where is she?"
"She told me no to tell you."
"When?"
"She left about three hours ago. Herbert, will you-"
"Why?"
That's Herbert's last question. It's filled with an emotion Dan can't put his finger on. Herbert doesn't show much emotion, so when he does, it's alarming. More alarming than his inhuman lack of emotion.
''I'm gonna let you figure that one out," Dan replies dryly, continuing his homework and trying his best to not give in to Herbert's pleas.
As much as Herbert hated to admit that he needed anything other than science, he came to a quick conclusion in his head that he needs you. One of the classic 'You don't realize what you have until it's gone' situations.
"Dan," Herbert pleaded, dragging out the 'A' in his name, "I need to know where she is."
"What are you going to say to her? You don't even know why she's upset," Dan exclaims.
"You could tell me why."
"And why should I do that?"
"Because we're friends, Dan! Do you want to lose (Y/N)?"
"I won't lose her. I treat her like she's important to me."
"Is- is that why she's upset," he pauses, contemplating Dan's words for a moment. "Does she not think she's important to me?"
"Think about it. When was the last time you actually took a break from your work and just spent time alone? When was the last time you've given (Y/N) your attention?"
"My work is one of my top priorities! She knows that, Dan. She knew it when we first got into a relationship. That can't be it!"
"Can't it? She knows that your work is a priority, but she wants you to treat her like she's at least one of your priorities. Good God, man."
For the first time in his life, Herbert was at a complete loss for words. The silence was almost foreign.
"Where is she, Dan?"
。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°
You've been staying at this dingy Motel 8 for the past week, and while it wasn't the greatest thing ever, it was better than having to put up with being constantly rejected by your boyfriend. It's time to go back and face your problems, though.
While running away was nice for a little while, the constant state of wondering whether Herbert still wanted you or not was trying.
Sure his work is a priority, but so are you. If he can't see that, then it's his loss. Well, that's what you want to say. Honestly, you don't want to lose him. He can be cold at times, but when he's not, you feel on cloud 9. It's cliche to say you've never loved anyone like you love Herbert, but it's true. When he gives you his attention, you swear you're the only person alive. He's very passionate when it comes to love. Even if things did have to end, he always holds a special place in your heart. Every memory of him will be constant in your mind, even the bad ones. You just hoped he still loves you all the same.
Pulling up to the house gives you a tense feeling, and you haven't even gotten out of your car. You feel the drama before it even has the chance to happen.
With shaky hands, you knock at the door. The worst outcomes fill your head, one being that Herbert gave up on what you both had and ends things without another word.
All of those thoughts evaporate when the door is flung open, and you get the wind knocked out of you by Herbert, who comes out and practically tackles you. His arms wrap around your lower waist, and his head nuzzles into the side of your hair, taking in your scent.
You stand still, unable to comprehend that your once very emotionless boyfriend is showing endearment. It feels so unfamiliar.
"I'm sorry," he whispers into the side of your neck, in between the small kisses he's been peppering all over you.
You're stunned. What happened to your Herbert? Who is this?!
He takes a step back and looks at you; his eyes are glazed over with a pleading haze. "Don't leave."
He looks pitiful.
Part of you wonders what changed. Did Dan talk to him? Did he come to this realization by himself? Whatever happened that changed his mind, did it even matter?
"You have to promise me, Herbert, that you'll start to treat me better. I can't keep being the only one putting any effort in," you whisper. Your voice starts to shake, and you know if you speak any louder, it'll break.
He can only nod his head as he pulls you back into the comfort of his arms. You lift your head and place a passionate kiss on his lips as he grabs your waist tight enough to leave bruises. Without breaking the kiss, he drags you back into the house, towards his room. The sounds that the both of you make are ungodly.
Who knows if Dan just saw the mess of two people stumbling around his house.
Things get heated as clothes start to disappear from both of your bodies. His hands wander over every inch of skin that he missed while you were gone. He zones in, leaving marks on your neck to reclaim you as his. As things escalate, he slowly but surely makes you understand that you're the most significant thing in his life; his sole purpose of the night is to pleasure you.
In the morning, you're stuck together, unable to tell where you start, and Herbert ends. You wake up first admiring him. It was nice just being able to stare at him for the first time in ages. You trace imaginary circles over his chest and breathe in his scent. It feels like home.
As soon Herbert wakes up, he pecks you on the nose and moves some hair out of your face muttering a few 'I love yous' as he gets up and gets dressed to start back on his work.
You're aware this kind of affection isn't something you should be getting used to, but you can't help it. When Herbert treats you like that, you wish it'd last forever. Secretly, he does too.
Later, when Dan asks what had happened between the two of you, Herbert denies everything, too worried about his pride. Once he was down in the basement, though, you fill Dan in on everything assuring him it's all back to normal. And it really is. Your Herbert is back.
✧○ꊞ○ꊞ○ꊞ○ꊞ○ꊞ○ꊞ○ꊞ○ꊞ○ꊞ○✧
Thanks for reading! Constructive criticism is always welcome.
150 notes ¡ View notes
secret-engima ¡ 4 years ago
Note
I’m interested in hearing more about that AU you told me about before- the RWBY/HTTYD fusion(?) where Oscar is basically Hiccup and Ozpin is the dadliest Nightfury ever :)
OH YES THAT WAS A FUN IDEA.
Okay so like- RWBY/HTTYD fusion kinda thing where instead of vikings there’s Remnant characters. And possibly Remnant’s world. Anyway dragons are a thing, dragons are something people all have strong mixed opinions on because most dragons are furious monsters that try to destroy human settlements at any turn, but there are stories and legends of a time centuries ago when dragons were peaceful and tamable and kind.
Oscar has no real opinion on the legends. He’s mostly scared of dragons after an attack of a huge flock of Terrible Terrors when he was a small child left his hands and neck all scarred up. Even so, he doesn't ... really hate them? They’re wild animals. They’re just angry ones. He and his Aunt are pretty good at keeping their farm unnoticed when a flock passes overhead and as long as it stays that way, he’s fine. Any stray dragon that comes by and starts making noises to set the barn on fire or steal livestock, his Aunt deals with it. She’s a good shot.
Then one day, his hideout is broken into.
Now, his hideout isn’t really a “hideout” it’s just the old barn that the farm doesn’t use anymore. it’s too far away from the house, right on the edge of their property. But nobody has a reason to go there, so as long as he’s careful, Oscar gets to use it as his own little clubhouse. He stores books in there, and notebooks to sketch in, and all the junk he likes to tinker with because he likes building things on the side. His aunt says that maybe someday he can get a scholarship to a proper school for engineering and stuff.
He’s always careful not to store food in there, so that the wild animals of any kind have no reason to try to get in, and he locks it when he leaves.
So he is understandably VERY surprised when he comes in and finds a DRAGON on the floor of his hideout, having apparently broken in through the old window on the upper floor. The dragon stirs when Oscar gasps in fear, moves faster than Oscar can think and suddenly Oscar is pinned by a dark paw as the dragon looms over him with bloody, sharp teeth and furious gold eyes.
So this is how he dies then.
He squeezes his eyes shut with a whimper, waiting for the half-remembered agony of being mauled by a dragon to start (it had hurt so bad as a child and this dragon was so much bigger than a Terrible Terror-).
Hot breath on his face and then instead of pain, a low noise that was too soft to be a growl. Oscar whimpers again because please, please don’t try to eat him alive or something, but instead of pain the paw just leaves his chest and when Oscar dares to open his eyes and sit up, the dragon has limped away to curl up in a corner of the hideout again.
....Dragons aren’t supposed to let humans live.
......They probably aren’t supposed to look so exhausted and in pain and bloody either.
Oscar knows he should run. Go get his Aunt so she can come put the dragon down before it changes its mind and hurts him but-. The dragon looks at him, and gold eyes aren’t furious anymore. Just resigned. Scared. The dragon looks like it’s been on the losing side of a very bad fight with something that wasn’t human. There are gashes where scales have been clawed away, and when its tail slides slowly to curl around its paws, Oscar can see its missing a tail fin.
...Was this dragon attacked by other dragons?
Curiosity and pity make Oscar hold his silence as he backs slowly out of the barn and shuts the door behind him. He ... maybe it will go away in a few hours. Once it’s caught its breath.
He peaks in that evening and finds it hasn’t. It’s curled up tightly in the same corner, and he’s pretty sure the dragon is shivering.
He should REALLY tell his Aunt about this.
He brings it a small bucket of fish from the farm’s massive pond the next morning instead.
The dragon looks at him in open surprise and takes the fish as politely as a well trained dog. When it stands up again Oscar flinches, but all it does is sniff at him and then start licking his hair and Oscar yelps from shock more than fear. It’s like a switch has been flipped and even though the dragon is still exhausted and injured, it gently wrestles him down to give him ... a bath? A dragon bath. The dragon is purring while it does so. Oscar takes it as a form of thank you and has to work hard to snag a shower before Auntie Em can see him covered in dragon drool.
It takes a few more tentative visits to realize that 1. the dragon can’t leave because he can’t fly anymore, 2. he’s not actually black like Oscar thought, but a really deep, rich green in the sunlight when the dragon sneaks out to the old back field for a sun nap, and 3. Oscar is pretty sure he’s been adopted by the dragon. It (he, the dragon is a he), keeps cooing at him and trying to follow him and giving him tongue baths and offering him regurgitated bits of fish, which Oscar frantically turns down each time.
He names the dragon Ozpin, after one of the few dragon stories he knows where the dragon isn’t a horrible monster, and the first time he uses it, Ozpin reacts like it’s always been his name.
Oscar realizes halfway through designing a new tail fin for Ozpin that 1. this design is going to need a rider and 2. he’s had a dragon for about three months now and still hasn’t told his aunt. That ... will probably come back to bite later. But by now he’s more afraid of her reaction over the delay than her reaction over the dragon. So he keeps putting it off.
He kinda sorta really wants to ride Ozpin before his aunt can shut the idea down.
Ozpin expected to die that night he fled. Hundreds of seasons he’d managed to keep ahead of Salem, his mad former mate, freeing dragons from her control in twos and threes and hiding them away where she would not find them again, and she had finally caught him. He had been betrayed. Willingly. Leo’s eyes had been clear as day as he stood by Salem’s side, not glazed with her hate and control, and that hurt almost as much as the claws of her horde of dragons (always a horde, never leaving the risk that she will have to fight him alone, because she knows that in an equal fight, he would win, just like he almost had last time) tearing apart his scales, driving him from the air before he managed to fight some of them off and escape.
He’s not sure when he lost his tail fin. But that is a death sentence to a dragon like him. A dragon who cannot fly is a dead dragon, either by starvation, by Salem, or by the humans who have long forgotten what it was like to be friends and companions to dragon kind.
Ozpin wakes up in a human structure and can’t remember how he got in, but he hears movement and pained instinct drives him up to attack (what if it’s Salem, what if it’s one of her scouts, a poor dragon that Ozpin is too weak to free from her control and will have to kill to save himself like the coward he is-).
A child.
A human child.
Oh. Oh dear.
He really is going to die.
Ozpin removes his paw, hoping he didn’t break any fragile bones (human hatchlings were so *delicate*, he remembered that even after so long) and slinks to a far corner. He could run again, but he’s too tired and too heartsick. Let the boy call his parents.
At least the humans would probably make his death quick.
Except the boy does not call his parents, he leaves and pokes his head in hours later as if to check if Ozpin is still there. He leaves again and the next morning arrives with a bucket of fish to feed him. It is strange and kind and strange because it is kind and when he sniffs at the boy in curiosity, looking for a reason, the child doesn’t run, just flinches nervously. He smells of only one guardian and no other hatchlings. He smells nervous and a bit frightened and ... lonely.
Ozpin finds himself gently pulling the child close and bathing him before he can think better of it, and it is foolish, to risk claiming another human hatchling, he hasn’t shared his Life with a Rider in a long long time (not since Salem killed the last one before his eyes back when he was young and foolish and still thought he could call her back from the edge of madness), but he is so grateful and lonely and this child is all but aching with the need for love. Why else would he risk bringing Ozpin food when all the stories men tell nowadays are of how dragons are bloodthirsty monsters?
The boy keeps coming back, bringing just enough fish to take the edge of Ozpin’s hunger, and even though his days are numbered, Ozpin stays and croons and tries to impart love on the child who is so lonely he would befriend a monster. He lets the boy tentatively climb on him and touch his scales, even lets him inspect Ozpin’s injured, ruined tail. He can’t help it. He always loved hatchlings, human or dragon, and it’s been so *long*-.
The boy takes to sketching and building ... something. Ozpin isn’t entirely certain what. He almost jumps out of his scales when Oscar (that was the boy’s name he learned at last) calls him Ozpin, calls him by name, and then learns that there still are a handful of stories of the Old Days. Dismissed as myth now. It’s amusing to be named after himself.
Ozpin frets quietly over the child sometimes, because while he can smell a guardian on him, he has never seen this guardian, even from afar. He knows this barn is on the edge of Oscar’s little territory, but even so, what guardian lets her hatchling wander off so frequently and never thinks to check on him? Sometimes Oscar falls *asleep* in here, curled up against Ozpin’s side and tucked under a wing, and only wakes up when Ozpin nudges him up because he can hear the far off bell that he thinks means it’s time for his hatchling to go home and eat.
He wishes Speaking Stones still existed. That he’d managed to save more of them, or that he was able to fly and get one. The only way to exchange true words without a Speaking Stone would be a Rider bond and- and he can’t do that to Oscar. It wouldn’t be fair.
He doesn’t deserve to be dragged into a war for freedom of mind that Ozpin and dragon kind has been losing for seasons upon seasons.
Except the child doesn’t seem to think so, doesn’t even know what he flirts with when he tentatively drags in a rudimentary replacement tail fin and saddle as well as a harness to connect them.
Ozpin tries to reject it. As much as he wants (needs) to fly, it’s too dangerous. The boy pouts and sets the harness and gear aside, muttering to himself that he’ll just leave it in the barn for a while until “Ozpin gets used to the smell”.
Ozpin snorts. Because he is not a dog that can be tricked into forgetting something exists thank you.
Oscar sticks his tongue out at him. Adorable, feisty, silly little hatchling.
65 notes ¡ View notes
elizabeth-mitchells ¡ 4 years ago
Link
Sam Fraser Has a Good Day
Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Fear Street Trilogy (TV) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Samantha "Sam" Fraser/Deena Johnson Characters: Samantha "Sam" Fraser (Fear Street), Deena Johnson Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Not Canon Compliant, Everyone Is Alive, Nightmares, Breakfast, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Napping, Dancing, Late Night Conversations, Making Out, Kissing, Fluff without Plot, Domestic Fluff, Romantic Fluff, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Fluff, literally what the title says Words: 2401
In the span of a couple of days, Sam Fraser was: in a car crash, chased by several undead killers, used as bait, almost overdosed, drowned, possessed, tied up in the trunk of a car, hit in the head several times... and somehow she survived.
She deserves a good day. She deserves to: stay in her girlfriend's house and steal her sweaters, sleep until noon, have a good breakfast, eat jello in peace, get clean bandages, play video games, eat ice cream, take a nap, dance to her favorite songs, go on a late-night drive for cheeseburgers, and cuddle and kiss her girlfriend the entire day.
Sam wakes up startled, as usual. She is gasping for air and sitting up hastily. Was she having a nightmare? Is she stepping into a nightmare now? Because she can tell she’s wearing one of Deena’s t-shirts. But what if her mom sees her? Is she going to catch her? Should she start running from something, or keep herself from running toward something? 
“Sam?”
That soft voice is the one that breaks the spell.
“Deena,” Sam sighs. 
“Hey, it’s okay, you’re okay,” Deena whispers, tentatively wrapping her arms around her girlfriend. Instantly, she feels Sam relax in her embrace.
“Sorry,” Sam mumbles, tucking her face on the crook of Deena’s neck. “Just a nightmare.”
“I got you,” Deena says softly. She places a kiss on Sam’s forehead and carefully guides them to lay down again. “It’s early. Why don’t you go back to sleep?” Deena asks, realizing right after that Sam fell asleep before answering at all.
--
A couple of hours later, Sam wakes up again. This time there are no nightmares, no screams of terror caught in her throat, no reaching out blindly for air or a weapon. She wakes up slowly, clutching the heavy blanket that covers her body, yawning without restrain, and eventually opening her eyes slowly. The first thing she does is look for her girlfriend, and she finds her sitting at the foot of the bed, sketching on a notebook with an endearing frown of concentration on her face.
“Good morning,” Sam says through a new yawn.
“Well,” Deena smirks fondly at her, “it is closer to noon now, but good morning to you too, baby.”
“What? Noon?” Sam frowns and attempts to rub the sleep off her eyes. “Since when do I sleep longer than you?” Sam asks, and puts on a pout on her lips for her next question, “And why are you so far away?”
Deena chuckles affectionately at her and puts away her pencil and notebook. She crawls back to her girlfriend and playfully flops down beside her. “Hey,” Deena greets her with her signature raspy tone. She receives a dreamy “hi” and a soft peck on the lips in response. Afterward, she explains, “To answer your question, I just thought you deserved a day to sleep in.” When Sam gives her a look of pleased surprise, Deena adds, “In fact, I think you’ve earned a full day, just for you, to rest and enjoy.”
“Deena, you don’t have to do that,” Sam attempts to protest, right before her girlfriend interrupts her with a kiss that turns into two, and three, and four, and soon enough they simply lose count.
--
Deena’s plans encounter an obstacle as soon as they manage to leave the comfort of her room to go make breakfast. Sam was fresh out of the shower, wearing one of Deena’s t-shirts this time. Deena barely gets to open the fridge before Sam tries to intervene with a soft-spoken, “Let me.” It’s safe to say that Deena puts up quite a fight, though.
“I just wanted to take care of you for one day, okay?” She insists. “You fucking deserve it.”
“That’s sweet,” Sam replies, feeling absolutely endeared. She leans in and places a kiss on Deena’s forehead, and Deena tries and fails to keep up her frown. “Listen, I appreciate it, and I love you for it, okay?” Sam says, giving Deena’s lips a small kiss. “But consider this. One, you already took care of me at my worst. Two, a perfect day, for me, means that you get to enjoy it too, and I get to take care of you too, got it? And three… do you really want to burn my breakfast on my special day?”
Sam attempted to quickly kiss Deena’s cheek and run away, but the brunette was quick enough to reach out and take her in her arms, ticking her in revenge for the not-unfounded critique of her culinary skills.
--
After their meal, the two girls make their way to the living room’s couch, where they are free to cuddle and exchange lazy kisses for as long as they could possibly want. Eventually, though, Deena finds the strength to pull away long enough to have an actual conversation.
“So, while you were sleeping, Kate and Simon stopped by,” Deena says. “Everyone feels kind of bad about you, you know, getting possessed and shit.” Deena pauses with a grimace, not proud of her choice of words, but Sam quickly kisses her cheek to urge her to go on. Deena begrudgingly stands up from the couch, to look for a certain bag, and explains, “Josh, oh so generously, gave us the gift of privacy and he is staying the fuck away from home for the day. He’s sleeping at Simon’s house. Also, he says you can play his video games, if you want. And… Kate and Simon brought all this.”
Deena drops a bag from the Grab N’ Bag on the couch and Sam eagerly looks through its contents. She gasps, “Finally!” And pulls out one of many packets of jello. 
Deena’s love-sick laugh spills right out of her lips. “You’re adorable,” Deena says before kissing the top of Sam’s head and climbing back to the couch beside her. “There’s also popcorn, chips, ice cream is in the fridge, a couple of your favorite movies that I think were yours in the first place and they’re just returning, and a happy birthday card because they don’t exactly make cards for the shit we’ve lived,” Deena explains, content to watch her girlfriend smile and nod happily while enjoying her jello. Then she clears her throat and not so contentedly adds, “We also have a bunch of uh, fresh bandages and stuff.”
The two girls exchange a look and understand exactly what this means.
--
“This is not what I had in mind when I planned to give you a perfect day,” Deena says. She is sitting on the bathroom counter without a shirt on while Sam gives the final touches to the fresh bandage on Deena’s stomach. At the beginning, her hands were shaking with guilt, and fear, but she quickly got them under control and lovingly worked on the healing wound that a different version of herself caused.
“I told you,” Sam insists without looking away from her work. “I also want to take care of you, you know?” She is standing there without her shirt on, with an equally fresh bandage on her back.
When Sam iss done, Deena gently grabs her hands and moves them up to her lips to kiss them sweetly. “Thank you,” she whispers.
Sam turns breathless at the gesture. She feels butterflies in her stomach and decides to tell Deena how much she’s enjoying her day. Speechless as she is though, Sam only thinks to lean forward and connect their lips, determined to kiss her girlfriend until they lose track of time.
--
Some time later, Sam finds herself comfortably seated on her girlfriend’s lap, wearing her sweater again, and biting her lip in great concentration as she tries to succeed at one of Josh’s video games.
“You nerd, I can’t believe you’re into this,” Deena chuckles fondly behind her.
“Hush, I almost got it,” Sam mumbled.
As much as Deena wants Sam to win whatever game that is, she thinks it would be a crime to hold herself back in a position as convenient as this one. So she moves Sam’s blonde hair out of the way and starts placing feather-light kisses on her neck. At first, Sam tries to ignore her. Then, she squirms just a little. After a very effective bite from Deena, a small whimper escapes from Sam’s lips.
“Tell me,” Deena starts saying with a seductive whisper. “Do the other cheerleaders know you’re secretly a dork?”
That finally gets Sam to stop the game and turn around with a gasp. “Deena!” she protests, although she’s laughing. And she crashes her lips together. She would hate to let Deena win so easily, but she feels much more like a winner in this situation.
--
Sometime in the afternoon, Sam wakes up on the couch with her head on Deena’s chest. She’s so perfectly comfortable and warm and safe, that she starts to feel suspicious. She didn’t even have a bad dream at all. She starts to fearfully consider this might be nothing but a dream about to turn into a nightmare, but then she moves her head up to look at her girlfriend and her worries vanish all at once. Deena is still asleep, she’s frowning a little and her lips are slightly parted as she adorably mumbles in her sleep. The feeling of love and adoration in Sam’s chest is so strong and so real that she doesn’t have any doubt this has to be her reality. 
After all the pain, the fear, and the danger of it all, this is real, and they earned it. It’s not even just about those days of extreme violence when they ended the curse, it’s even bigger than that. It’s a moment of well-earned peace and happiness that’s been more than three hundred years in the making. They have been fighting for this moment their entire lives, and they were so close to losing hope forever, but they made it. Deena was right, they fucking deserve it.
So, Sam makes a couple of decisions. First, she decides it’s best if they go one day without watching a horror movie. As much as she loves them, they have had enough horror for a while. And two, she decides that continuing her nap is the perfect way to honor Deena’s wish of giving her a perfect day. She gets comfortable again on top of her girlfriend and drifts back to sleep.
--
Not too long later, Sam and Deena are in the middle of a tube of ice cream and halfway through watching Grease. Well, Deena is watching the movie. Sam is a little more focused on the extremely amusing sight of Deena trying to avoid smiling at the movie.
“Oh my God, you love it,” Sam keeps giggling whenever Deena slips up and grins at the movie on the television screen.
“No, I fucking don’t,” Deena rolls her eyes, makes no move to quit the movie, and adds through gritted teeth, “I just acknowledge that it’s a classic.”
Her words only make Sam smile even brighter as she continues to take spoonfuls of ice cream and marvel at the sight of her girlfriend.
--
A perfect day, of course, wouldn’t be complete without listening to the mixtape Deena made for Sam, and dancing in the middle of her bedroom without a care in the world.
Sam is the one that starts dancing, swinging her arms around, not very gracefully. And Deena shakes her head at her with extreme fondness. “You are a weirdo, Sam Fraser,” she says, making her girlfriend laugh, completely unaffected by the comment.
“Dance with me,” Sam replies with a carefree grin on her face. She steps forward and pulls on Deena’s arms until she convinces her to dance with her.
As usual, Deena tries to put up a fight that she loses as soon as she stares into precious blue eyes. There’s not a thing she wouldn’t do for Sam. They already had to do the most extreme things for each other. How could she refuse her girlfriend a dance?
It’s a perfect evening to a perfect day. The two of them dance to their favorite songs, laugh wholeheartedly, kiss without holding back, jump and spin and fall in each other's arms again and again, as if falling in love all over with every new song.
--
As comfortable as it would be to stay home for the last few hours of the day, the perfect dinner to complete the day means getting cheeseburgers. Not even Deena complains about the idea. After all, she always loved driving around town with Sam in the passenger seat, humming along to the songs on her mixtape, her blonde hair glowing under the streetlights they passed, completely comfortable silence between them, without a destination in mind. 
They park the car at a familiar spot. They eat their cheeseburgers, playfully feed fries to each other, and have a perfectly good time. Conversation flows easily between them, reminiscing of old memories or sharing dreams of a bright future that starts to feel more possible than ever before.
When Sam starts yawning, Deena is quick to point out, “You’re sleepy.”
“Am not,” Sam scoffs in that very particular way that tells Deena her girlfriend is blatantly lying.
“Don’t fall asleep on me, Fraser. How rude,” Deena teases her.
Sam giggles happily in response. She can’t deny she’s looking forward to returning home to Deena’s bed, but she genuinely loves to put up a fight against her girlfriend, no matter how often she ends up losing. 
“I’m very awake,” Sam insists, a knowing look on her face because she can easily predict Deena’s answer.
“Prove it,” Deena says.
Even before she’s done saying the words, Sam is leaning in to kiss her. They kiss, again and again, until Sam whispers against Deena’s lips, “Take me home.”
--
It’s well past midnight when Sam and Deena finally agree that even perfect days must come to an end. They lie in Deena’s bed, facing each other, legs tangled together, often exchanging kisses or sweet words that only exist in that vulnerable space between them.
“Thank you,” Sam whispers. She pushes a stray brown curl behind Deena’s ear, then her hand rests for a moment there on Deena’s cheek, her thumb lovingly caressing her skin.
“I told you,” Deena replies in an equally hushed tone even though they have the entire house for themselves. “You deserve it,” she adds, then she turns her head just enough to place a small kiss to the inside of Sam’s wrist, making the blonde smile timidly.
“I’m not talking about today,” Sam says. She considers explaining that she means she’s saying thank you for absolutely every moment they spent together since they met, but…
“I know,” Deena says. Her smile widens and she adds, “Just so you know, I also enjoyed today, a lot. So thank you too.”
Sam replies with a sweet kiss to Deena’s lips. Then the two of them cuddle closer and slowly, peacefully, happily drift off to a good and restful night of sleep.
27 notes ¡ View notes
fawnnbinary ¡ 3 years ago
Note
Top 100 Jonny facts
he's Vietnamese
he's 110% gay
he collects stickers but only brand/logo stickers
he thinks pink lemonade is way way different than regular and refuses to drink lemonade if that shit ain't pink
would rather be too cold than too hot
deceptively strong, he's got twink strength
has a Taste in men, and that taste is loud and rambunctious
had a crush on Ace when they were younger, is very embarrassed about it now
had a crush on Theo when they were younger, is not at all embarrassed about it now
played gunk with the boys once and broke his arm, wasn't allowed to hang out with Tony for two weeks
he's 6'6"
bffs with Tony's gf Dove, they aren't involved given their gender/sexuality incompatibility but they still refer to each other as their gf/bf respectively as a joke
owns and wears skirts and makeup but usually dresses,,, akin to an eboy
doesn't understand smartphones but he IS pretty good with a computer, just only with a small selection of sites and applications
he's the only one of his siblings who actually wants to stay put and run the family business
he's got one older brother (Andrew) and twin younger siblings (Christian and Amanda)
he's an artist - primarily an illustrator and painter
his parents want him to at least TRY to do something else with his life, but he refuses to unless Tony gets to - it's not right to him that he should go to college when he DOEN'T want to when Tony can't and he DOES want to
has to wear socks in the house
depressed, stressed, but certainly well dressed
VERY afraid of horror movies, please hold him
makes soaps sometimes
monsterfucker.... both conceptually and because of Tony's status as werewolf
likes to watch long video essay youtube videos
also likes to watch youtube videos of people reviewing military rations and such
has never seen a star war movie
can't swim, doesn't intend to learn
fairly stoic most of the time, just not super emotive
likes to lay on the floor in the sun like a cat
wishes he could go on the bachelor bc he thinks it would be fun
very.... popular with the men ;)
sleeps better if Tony is in bed with him
prefers to sleep on the couch if he's sleeping alone
owns A LOT of candles
social battery drains real quick, needs to go wrap himself around Tony or Dove and take a nap to recharge it
enjoys white noise recordings like, in the middle of the day, they're relaxing
it's about the Mets, go Mets, yeah baby, let's go Mets
doesn't actually follow baseball but he does enjoy it - he's a fan of the Mets Like I'm a fan of The Bengals - we gotta be bc we got hometown pride kjhdkfjgh
owns and occasionally licks a salt lamp
his favorite thing to draw is his friends in his home - if they got guests and Jonny needs a minute, he's in the corner, sketching Lenan as he talks, or Dove as she has a drink of wine
his sketchbooks are full of Tony though - pages and pages of Tony sleeping or talking or eating or just... living
often thinks about going blonde - will not be going through the effort
one of my ocs who just... cannot grow a mustache
gets tiktok sounds stuck in his head bc of Tony and Dove and then has to force himself not to make reference to them at work
doesn't understand personal space sometimes, he just stands too close
has a great poker face unless you know him well and can pick up on very small gestures that he will do every single time he has something good/he's bluffing
was a ballet dancer from the ages of 5 to 8 and thought it was very fun to do shows, but very boring to do stretches and technique
occasionally takes selfies on his flip phone.....
allergic to avocado
hates photoshop, refuses to use it for digital art, if you suggest he do he will tell you to go fuck yourself
that's only 50 but I am running out and will simply have to continue tomorrow so I can think more up uwu
5 notes ¡ View notes
owletstarlet ¡ 4 years ago
Text
water, sunlight (tender mercy)
“You’re full,” the spirit insists, eyes round and steady. “This will help.”
(also known as, owlet’s ill-advised spin on hanahaki. CW for Natsume’s Terrible Childhood, as well as a bit of a CW for symptoms of Vague Anime Illness during this our extended plague year.)
Ao3 link in the notes.
***
Four days.
He was twelve years old.
Twelve years old, and about to look after his aunt and uncle’s house during their long weekend trip north. He didn’t mind, had looked forward to it, honestly; he’d be on school break himself, and the quiet of the empty house had sounded more than appealing.
His cousin, two years older, had been tasked with leaving the spare key where Takashi could find it, under the potted yuzu tree on the porch.
Except she never did.
He tried and failed to find an unlatched window to shimmy through. He’d had enough change on him for a payphone, but the name and number of the hotel had been scrawled down on a pad left in the kitchen.
He contemplated the police station, next. But by now, so late in the day, his guardians would have reached their destination hours away. He’d head off the potential fallout from troubling them; they weren’t the warmest of people but Takashi was provided for, didn’t mind his school, and he hadn’t managed to step out of line just yet.
Four days couldn’t be so long, surely.
But then he’d misjudged some things. Namely, how much food that pocketful of change could get him at the hundred-yen shop, how cold it could still get at night even in early March, and how no 24-hour convenience store or café would let him in for long to warm up if he couldn’t pay for anything.
And it hadn’t been that bad, all things considered—the park he’d stayed overnight in was near enough to people’s homes that the larger youkai steered clear, and then on that last night when a chilly rain had driven him indoors the lady from the convenience store gave him a bento she’d been prepared to toss out, even heated it up for him.
And when his aunt and uncle returned to him dozing off on the porch, all it took was a quick lie about having locked himself out that morning and they were none the wiser to the whole ordeal. He even got to keep the food money, having tucked it away into his pillowcase the night before they’d left.
And yes, it’d been uncomfortable, and inconvenient. But definitely not worth waking up in a frigid sweat over, four years later.
It’s not just the once, either.
He’s otherwise had a nice week; there’d been a school trip to the botanical garden for everyone in their year. Touko had sent Takashi along with cranberry muffins for everyone to share on the train, and Nishimura hadn’t stopped rapturously singing their praises for the rest of the day. They’d made a sort of competition out comparing their mandatory sketches of the different plants to see whose bush clover was the very worst, and bickered a bit over what the prize ought to be while Sasada, their de-facto judge, just rolled her eyes at them and told them they ought to at least try. Takashi had dozed off for most of the train ride back, a dreamless nap, while Kitamoto and Taki took it upon themselves to steer him by the shoulders back from the train station to the bus stop. Takashi had let himself be led, in a pleasant twilit daze, all the way back to the Fujiwaras’ front door.
He woke up crying out, that night, heart hurling itself against a chest that felt brittle and thin.  
***
Three days later finds Takashi crouched in the moss of a little forest clearing, riding out the wave of dizziness as a name swirls through the air above him. Its owner gives him a smile as it sinks through their skin—no flickers of Reiko this time, no associated memory for Takashi to absorb in turn. And there isn’t always, that’s not unusual, but what is unusual is the way they lean forward towards him once the process is complete, to place a cool finger right between his eyes. Once Takashi stops seeing double, he thinks hazily that the youkai looks rather like an heirloom doll—glossy straight hair, round apple-cheeks, blush-pink kimono—but their mouth is pinched, as if in passing concern.
“You’re full,” they tell him.
Takashi just blinks at them.
“Care to elaborate?” Beside him, Sensei’s eyes narrow. “Or don’t. We were just leaving.”
“You’re full,” the spirit insists, eyes round and steady. “This will help.”
They slide their fingers downwards across his face, his neck, to rest at the hollow of his throat. Takashi feels the pop, the sudden chill sinking through his flesh.
Sensei forces his way between them, then, poking at Takashi’s skin with his paw. “What was that?” he demands.
“A nudge,” the ayakashi says, simply. Seconds later, they’ve vanished.
***
Takashi doesn’t notice straightaway. He’s bleary-eyed and yawning through his Civics assignment after dinner, but he’d returned a name just hours before, so it doesn’t exactly raise an alarm bell. Neither does the tickle in the back of his throat, not when the weather’s chilly and half the school is sneezy and runny-nosed at the moment. He drinks the honeyed tea Touko brings him and has all but forgotten about it as he climbs into his futon that night.
He’s twelve years old. He wishes he’d taken a coat, before they’d left.
Touko offers, in the morning, to keep him home from school; he’d been coughing last night, loud enough that the sound carried down the hall. But Takashi can’t remember it, the only apparent trace of it in the persistent tickle that has him clearing his throat every now and then, so he accepts a mask and a thermos of tea and her pat to his cheek, then leaves as usual.
He’s not feeling truly dreadful until lunch the following day; throat prickling, chest too tight, stomach roiling too much to handle more than a few bites of rice. Nishimura walks him home, looping their arms together and resolutely waving off Takashi’s worry that he’ll just get him sick, too. They stop twice, Takashi left winded and red-faced from the deeper, heavier coughs that had begun just hours before.
Touko makes him tea again that night, when he feels bolstered enough to make his way back down to the kitchen for okayu that hurts to swallow. But the thick cup slips from his fingers seconds after she presses is into his hand. It cracks into three neat pieces when it hits the floor, its contents splattering his socks and the toes of Touko’s slippers.
He’s barely opened his mouth to apologize—
Cracked porcelain. Scalded fingers going red. Heartbeat in his throat.
He was seven years old.
“I—”
Whatever he was about to say is snatched away by a low, deep cough, colliding with the sudden urge to be sick.
He manages to keep his dinner down, just barely, after some not-so-deep breaths through his nose over the toilet he’d bolted to. But he’s leaning over anyways, moments later, hacking and spitting and something just beneath his sternum rips itself free.
He peers into the water, at the white scraggly thing, half curled in on itself, that he’s somehow just choked up.
He blinks, flushes it down. Heads straight up to bed, dazed, wondering with a sudden icy pinprick of fear just what he’d been about to say to Touko.
He wakes again that night, throat searing, the sight of blistered fingers and tea-darkened wood floors burned into the backs of his eyelids.
Sensei’s eyes narrow. “A chrysanthemum?” He prods at the damp crumpled thing lying on Takashi’s pillowcase, this one’s petals shot through with burgundy.
Takashi stares at it, knees drawn up beneath his chin, chest aching like something’s been torn loose from him.
***
Two nights later and he’s curled on his side, cheek pressed against the cool whorls of wood where Sensei had deposited him on the doorstep of the Yatsuhara Temple. Hauling himself upright to reach the doorbell is beyond him. He gets a shaky fist up to knock, somehow, unsure who will answer the door. Tanuma had said something about his dad and a business trip, maybe, but the details are like water through a sieve in his mind.
Nothing happens. He’s at the bottom of a lake, pushed down and down and when the sound of a doorbell drifts through his ears a nebulous moment later, it’s beyond him to wonder just how on earth Sensei managed to do that.
He senses the light of the opened door through shuttered eyes. A sharp intake of breath, a dull thunk of knees dropping to the floor beside him that he feels more than hears.
“Natsume?” Tanuma’s voice has gone low with fright, one tentative hand on his shoulder and another, seconds later, lighting on his forehead. It makes his skin prickle, and he feels his face screw up.
“Wh—is he hurt?”
“He asked to come here,” Sensei says, obliquely.
Takashi finds a thready sliver of his voice then, opens one eye to Tanuma’s face washed bloodless by the porch light, gaping at him. “Sorry,” he starts, but the word ends jagged on a cough.
And another, and another, and then he’s spitting mouthful after cloying mouthful of bruised petals into his own shaking fingers.  
Before he’s opened his streaming eyes he feels cool hands uncover his mouth, a thumb swiping across his chin.
“What…what is this?”
***
Takashi has no real awareness of how he got inside, or even what room he’s in; just that they’re on the floor, that Tanuma’s got him gathered up in his arms.
He tries to lay him out flat, but an odd, reedy sound shakes loose from Takashi’s throat and he feeels his own fingers scrabbling at Tanuma’s sleeve. Tanuma stops halfway to the floor, a panicked question in his eyes, holding Takashi in place awkwardly half-cradled against his chest.
“Hurts,” Takashi manages, breathlessly, by way of explanation. He can’t elaborate. He watches frantic, imploring eyes flick to Sensei instead.
“He’s cursed.” Takashi can’t see him but there’s an edge to his voice. “Some busybody got it into their head that they were doing him a favor. Now he’s choking up flowers every minute or so, as if that’s at all useful. He’s got a soggy little garden in there now.” Takashi feels a paw prodding his ribs. “You could see them, couldn’t you? Out on the doorstep.”
Tanuma nods, slowly, and Takashi watches a dozen questions flit through his eyes. But he must see that Takashi can’t spare the breath for the answers, so instead he says, “How do we stop it?”
Sensei sighs. “Seems like it’ll resolve itself, sooner or later. The brat’s just selective about his audience for it. And your house was closer than the Taki girl’s, so here we are.”
“‘M sorry,” Takashi repeats, through a wheeze. “B-but Touko-san and Shigeru-san, they can’t…” It’s true, and it’s urgent, but the words escape his grasp like slippery minnows so all he can do is look up, dazed and panting as though he’d sprinted here.
“…maybe you shouldn’t be talking right now.” And with that, Takashi feels himself being gently turned and positioned so his back is against Tanuma’s chest.
“That’s the trouble, isn’t it,” Sensei mutters, even as Takashi’s pressing both hands over his mouth again while his chest, or his stomach, or some elusive in-between place, has begun to turn itself inside out again.
His fingers come away cupping a tattered flower, yellow now with splotches of red that stain his skin where the petals touch, and Tanuma sucks in a breath.
“What’s happening to you?”
He finds out, soon enough.
***
A water bottle with a cracked lid. His homeroom teacher, her kind face taut as she asked him to open his bento. He’d figured if he tucked himself in the corner and let it sit on the edge of the desk, nobody would ask. He was dizzy, his limbs felt like they might evaporate into the stuffy air. He wondered if she’d let him put his head down until the period ended.
He was thirteen years old.
Sensei rolled in an empty wastebasket, at some point. Takashi’s got his arms locked around it, head lolling halfway inside it. Tanuma hadn’t interrupted, hasn’t said a word other than the whispered assurances beside his ear every time something rips inside him, leaving him hacking and teary-eyed and trying not to whimper. The words, when they come, are drawn out like some unspooling thread, from the dustiest corners of his mind that he never looks at too closely.
Knees pulled up to his chest in the dark, perched on a musty stack of futons. Clutching at his stinging cheek, ears pricked for heavy, meandering footsteps.
He was eight years old.
Tanuma started tracing slow circles into his shoulder, at some point, while he spits bits of himself into the wastebasket.
“If you can stand, I can—my bed…”
“Doubtful,” Sensei says. He’s pressed lengthwise against Takashi’s thigh.
Scraped arms wrapped tight around a branch that feels weak, precarious in the breeze. The creature gazing up at him, amused, blackened blood on its lips. Thunder rolling in, far off still but the air already thick and charged.
He was ten years old.
It takes a bit of time to come back to himself, to slip back into his body from the spaces between. It’s not over, he knows, but Tanuma’s pressing a glass of water into his hands now, helping lift it to his lips when it’s clear his fingers have all but gone wooden.
The long look Tanuma gives him once he’s set the glass aside makes Takashi feel pinned down like an insect to a corkboard. It’s an odd crooked angle to look up at him from; the side of Takashi’s head is braced against his collarbone. But Tanuma’s jaw is locked, and his eyes are red and wet, seem like they have been for awhile but Takashi doesn’t have the presence of mind to recall when that had started.  
He’s carding back Takashi’s damp fringe while Takashi wishes he could just squirm away, fingers endlessly careful even as his voice turns steely.
“It isn’t right.”
Takashi pushes the “sorry” out on a wheeze; it feels like an exercise in futility when there’s that itching promise behind his ribs of more to come, that stopping it would be like trying to swim straight up a waterfall.
Tanuma shakes his head, fingers coming to rest on Takashi’s cheek, where there must be dried-up spittle and bits of plant matter and blood coating the skin.
“It’s not—“ he starts to say, then lets out an unsteady breath. “It’s not what you’re telling me. I mean. That’s not right, either. And you shouldn’t ever believe it was. But you…” he trails off again, like he’s trying to parse out the proper words, and Takashi’s suspended, hovering right on the edge of something vast and formless and ready to snap him right up.
“These things…” he waves his hand vaguely at the wastebasket. “You never would’ve told me any of this, if that spirit hadn’t forced you, would you.” It’s not a question, but it’s not an indictment. Takashi says nothing.
“You shouldn’t have had to,” he continues, softly. “Ever, if you didn’t want to. It should have been your call.”
The sound that escapes Takashi’s mouth then is a bitten-off, ugly thing. He’s not sure when his eyes closed, but he feels the careful pads of thumbs swiping away the at the hollows beneath them.
“I meant that, but I didn’t mean to make you cry.” A pause, and Tanuma’s pinched face finally swims back into view above him. “You should try to finish the water, okay?”
He does, but there’s the sensation of tacks pressed into his throat when he swallows.
A sound of shuffling, then Sensei’s poking his knee. He’s dragged in a cushion that Takashi thinks came from the sitting room. “Just put him down here, if he can take it,” he huffs. “It looks like you’ve been trying to cradle a cooked noodle for the past hour.”
He ends up on his side with his cheek squashed against the cushion, a scent of stale incense clinging to the fabric, Sensei firmly sandwiched between his stomach and his arm.
Tanuma sits cross-legged in front of him, one hand resting on Takashi’s upper arm. His eyes are still puffy but he looks thoughtful, now.
“You know that Jizo altar in the garden?” he asks.
Takashi blinks, manages a nod.
“So, um. Yesterday I was out there sweeping and pulling the weeds around it, and I went around the back side and there was a swallow’s nest… I mean, I think that’s what it was, it looked like it was more mud than sticks and it was wedged up where the wall meets the roof.”
“Too early in the year for swallows, isn’t it.” Sensei’s voice is muffled by Takashi’s forearm.
“I thought so too. I haven’t seen any out there yet, but Dad said I could use his camera to try to get some photos anyways. He’ll put them in the monthly newsletter. And I’d like to get up there to see if there are any eggs inside, but…”
“It’d make a decent snack, if there were,” Sensei drawls. Takashi can’t muster much force, but he manages to flick Sensei in the ear hard enough to elicit an indignant squawk.
“I’m a little afraid that the swallows are gonna come  back while I’m there and give me a hard time about it,” Kaname says, a rueful quirk to his lips.
“D-do swallows even…” Takashi has to stop halfway through to muster the breath, to gulp hard past prickling that’s morphed into burning. “Would they attack people?”
Sensei’s head pops up then, chin resting on Takashi’s arm. “Hah. If they do, I hope you record it.”
Tanuma’s hand migrates to the top of Sensei’s head. “Well you could just come see for yourself,” he says, fingers seeking out the spots around the bases of the ears Sensei likes best. “I was going to ask Natsume if he wanted to help get the photo. Once you’re feeling up to it,” he adds, to Takashi. Takashi manages a bare nod.
“Oh, and,” he goes on, with a considering glance towards the darkened window, “I’d thought it’d probably be a good idea to put a box on the ground underneath, with some newspaper inside? In case it falls.”
Takashi can feel another cough mounting behind his sternum, the wrongness clamoring to wrench itself free; knows he’s about to be swallowed up by another place and time. His lips twitch anyway.
“Kind of you.” The breath behind the words is rattling oddly, and judging by the tightness around Tanuma’s eyes, he doesn’t miss it.
“Well, I mean,” Tanuma says, after a beat of silence, with a thin smile of his own. “It’s probably pretty bad luck to let a bunch of of baby birds die right beside a Jizo, or bad form at least, but. Thanks. You can help with that too, if you want.”
Before Takashi can answer, the words have fallen straight out of his head and bled through the floor. And he’s tipping backwards, down, down until he’s nine years old again.
A bus stop in the rain, a rapidly darkening sky. His aunt was an hour and a half late, now. He’d just walk, if he knew the way.
Hungry yellow eyes, glinting out from between the bush and a vending machine.
***
Tanuma’s not there when Takashi wakes. He doesn’t remember falling asleep. But the sheets on Tanuma’s bed smell like his uniform, tatami and detergent and incense. The curtain’s closed, but he can see the light peeking through the edges.
He doesn’t try to sit up. His chest feels scraped hollow and his brain skitters away from the thought of the mouthfuls of blood that had come up with the flowers. Sensei’s nowhere to be seen.
He’s staring at the ceiling lamp, drifting, when Tanuma appears in the doorway with a tray in hand. He opts not to flick the light on, setting the tray down to lean over the bed and draw the curtain halfway back. Takashi doesn’t need to ask if he got any sleep at all,  not when he looks for all the world like he got punched in both eyes. But his smile had been real and relieved when he’d seen that Takashi was awake.
“I brought tea,” he says, perching on the edge of the bed. “But you’ll probably want water first, right?”
He does—he ends up chugging down two-thirds of the offered bottle like he’s dying, one of Tanuma’s hands behind his head and the other steadying his elbow, until Tanuma gently pries it from his fingers to keep him from being sick.
“Where’s Sensei?” he asks moment later, in a sandpaper voice, while Tanuma helps prop him up on the headboard.
“He said something about going back to the Fujiwaras’, pretending to be you long enough to come down for breakfast and tell them you were headed here for the day.”
Takashi grimaces, and the look Tanuma gives him is sympathetic and only slightly amused. “It’s better than making them worry, right? I’m glad it’s not a school day, anyways.”
They’re silent for a moment, after that, while Tanuma pours him the tea. Takashi smells lemon and honey. He stares down at the cup warming his chilled fingers, watches the steam curling towards his face. It’s good, but he feels torn open, still, like the whole of him is an exposed nerve.
“I—”
“If you’re trying to apologize, please don’t,” Tanuma says, abruptly, meeting his eyes. “You already did. A lot.”
“Oh.” He takes a sip of tea, not sure what else to do.
“Sorry. Just. You didn’t need to, is all. None of that was my business, if you didn’t want it to be. I told you that.” Takashi watches his jaw clench and unclench. “It just…made me. Really angry, at some people I’ve never met.”
“You don’t need to be,” Takashi murmurs, more to the blankets on his lap than to Tanuma. “It’s, um. It was long enough ago that who knows how much of it I was even remembering right.” He shrugs, and the movement makes his ribs ache. “And the Fujiwaras are kind, anyways. I’m lucky.”
Maybe it’s the wrong thing to say, because Tanuma’s face does something odd. Then his cup is taken out of his hands, and there are arms wrapped around his back, and a face buried in his hair. He’s shaking. Maybe they both are. Takashi goes still for all of two seconds before his arms are coming up too, of their own accord, and he’s clinging right back like his life depends on it. Like he could sink right through Tanuma’s skin, if he could just hold on tight enough. He’d be alright with that, he thinks. He’s lucky in more ways than one.
Beside them, the tea grows cold, dappled light falling across their knees.
***
53 notes ¡ View notes
behind-the-scenes-of-dl ¡ 4 years ago
Text
Hello! This is a blog inspired by @changeling-rin and their story Dimensional Links, and I decided to make these Behind the Scenes posts. Not canon at all, mostly just indulgent. For now I'll just post what they are like!
BTS: Realm: He's an adult I swear. Bakes cookies. "Dusk the kitchen's on fire again!" Is bad at cooking but baking is easy. "Ooooh, what does this button do!" I lied he's 13
BTS:DL Shadow: Has to wear make up. Hates the make up. "This is too itchy and my face feels heavy". Angsty teenager. Helps Steam with singing. "I've only had Red, Blue, Green, Vio, Wind, Steam and Realm for only a day but if anything were to happen to them I'll kill everyone in this room and then go outside and kill the rest of the world"
BTS:DL Steam: Mr. Sings a lot, but he sings really nicely. Can easily do opera. Very shy about everything, hides in his room when they aren't on stage or rehearsing. Only comes out whem Shadow asks him to and he stays close to him at all time. Very touchy, hand grabbing, hugging, cuddles
BTS:DL Sketch is basically 'You yawned? Everyone stop, it's nap time. What? The scene isn't done? I don't care, nap time! We can't work while tired now move, nap time for you too'
BTS:DL Wind is a baby that looks like a teen. Actually 9 years old. Has literally everone protecting his every move. Hates the attention but secretly loves it
BTS:DL Mask is more quiet. Insomnia. Drinks black coffee. Actually 14 years old. Can and will kick you a-
BTS:DL Ocarina is more hyper. Loves small animals, curious about everything. Says 'Thank goodness' way to often with all the accidents Mask gets into
BTS:DL Oni is less formal. A dad nonetheless. The only one who understands Lore's perfectionism. Helps around backstage when he's not in a scene
BTS:DL Speck is a tinsey winsey bit more inpatient. Can deal with anyone and won't hesitate to throw hands if you hurt his family. Won't admit it but looks up to Gen
BTS:DL Lore is more mature and a prefectionist. Loves rehearsing before the camera rolls to get his lines correctly. Can and will throw a fit when he gets it wrong saying "It must be perfect!"
BTS:DL Dusk is a mom. He has a soft heart and cares deeply for everyone. Cooks everyday. Does puppy dog eyes when you scream at him or judge him
BTS: DL Gen is the original Hawkeye. He has a quick attention span and is there whenever you need him. He can often be seen watching everything from the hanging lights, cause he’s slightly paranoid about them falling and someone getting hurt. Will not hesitate to give you a lollipop. Ever. Even if you “don’t deserve it”.
BTS: DL The Four: Not a real person lol, just a lot of editing and bloopers
RGBV: Quadruplets! They play 2 roles each, the Four and themselves and there are so many bloopers. Red is the baby, Blue is Second oldest, Vio is oldest and Green is the third one. They are not the same height, so they have to use heels/boxes and edit everything. The reason for the bloopers is they can't speak at the same time before laughing, so for 15 minutes you just have 4 children giggling on the floor. They are all happy cheery and non-violent people. Dusk taught Red the Puppy dog eyes™
24 notes ¡ View notes
artsyxloner ¡ 4 years ago
Text
Tumblr media
Not Just a Monster
Warning: blood, Voices
8: Caught
I sat on the toilet covering my nose with toilet paper as it bled heavily more than the last time. It just started right after Lecturing Suk-Hyun.
Maybe I shouldn't have been so harsh even though I said most of those things in my head. Which they were true so I have nothing to be sorry for.
And nothing could justify his behavior it was plain out rube and Selfish. After a few minutes, I waited for it to stop bleeding. Thank God, I didn't see the monster again I couldn't deal with the Hallucinations at the moment.
I had more important things to deal with like not getting caught. I soon I was about to come out of the restroom until I heard someone come in. Peaking through the crack of the metal door I saw Ji-Soo going over to the sink and washed her face.
She had touched her Makeshift bat that had Bob wire was wrapped around it. Like she was remembering something. " it's Disgusting to see you act nice." Eun-yoo came in leaning on the door.
" do you think a Freaking chocolate bar is going to suddenly cheer her up?" Ji-Su scoffed lightly as water dripped down her face. " I think you're giving yourself too much credit."
" so you are the crazy bitch around?" Ji-Su changed the subject. " watch your back crazy bitch!" She swung up the bat making Eun-yoo jump back.
She walked out the door, I sat back down thinking what just happened so they did not like each other? If they didn't it was known of my business anyway.
Waiting a few more minutes for Eun-yoo to leave I checked seeing it was clear I came out of the stall.
Turing on the Sink Fossett cleaning my face and neck. Making sure I didn't miss a spot. I got ready to Go out when I saw Eun-yoo in front of the door.
She smiled and walked up to me, " so you're the next one?" She circled me I followed her movement not able to say anything. Would she tell?
Mustering up the Courage I nodded, " yes, I've been infected for a while even before I came here." I told Truthfully, Crossing my arms. " hum, must be nice not having to be locked up like Hyun-Su and Suk-Hyun."
I knew where she was going with this.
" But I don't blame you." She went to the mirror to check her reflection. I didn't expect her to say that at all.
From the way she talked to Ji-Soo, " my brother is just going to use you if he finds out." I looked at her Weirdly he doesn't or didn't seem to be like that?
" how do you mean?" I asked Deciphering what she means by use? " you know making you guys do Dangerous stuff for other people." She shrugged.
I shook my head, " that's the only reason Hyun-Su got to stay." She Confirmed, I thought he cared about him?  No, it can't be true then again I don't know these people well.
" are you going to Tell?" I asked as she made her way out of the restroom. She stopped her back facing me. " No, where's the fun in that? I get to see you slowly change into a monster plus it kinda cool."
She then walked away placing the headphones on her head again. I didn't know if I could trust her, everything she told me was it true they were just going to use us? Hyun-Su more in Particular since they know about him.
I should have known it there were people that in this world. But sometimes you had to get used to it to Survive. One thing was for sure I hope she kept her mouth shut.
Leaving the restroom I felt tired, from the lack of sleep I perceived and stress. I went over to the day-care- center to go take a quick nap. Laying on the small couch. Closing my eyes I soon fell asleep letting out a yawn.
....
" you know you want to!" My reflection spoke to me. Grinning evilly. I backed away not believing what I was seeing.
" what are you?" I breathed out scared. I covered my nose trying not to get blood everywhere. " I'm you but much worse." It giggled.
" This was you're own doing Soo-Nico, 'tsk tsk' I'm not the enemy here." That is when I started to feel funny like I was losing my grasp on my mind it began to fade.
Then hearing inhuman sounds I began to dash towards people for no reason.
....
I woke up to me hitting the ground, landing on my elbow. I cursed sitting upright rubbing my sore arm. Feeling something wet I wiped my cheek it was a tear.
I couldn't get that moment, day, out of my head. The day I attacked them, My family. Sniffling I crossed my feet taking out a photo of them from the field Journal I had taped in.
Me, my mother, father, and my brother, feeling more tears run down my cheeks I couldn't stop them. I missed their smile and laughs, the way Jin-woo would tease me about being a bookworm.
Bringing my knees up to my chest I clenched the photo Close to me. Hugging it as if they were here." it's not my fault." I wept quietly, trying to convince myself to not have such a burden on my shoulders.
I say this because I can't handle the guilt if I say it out loud so if I don't it's not real. Wiping my now wet cheeks my eyes probably looked red and puffy.
I reopened my filed Journal putting my family photo back in, deciding to take my mind off things I began to Sketch the new monsters I had seen starting with the one I first saw here the one that kept saying I can't see.
Drawling out its body, I soon put Details-down into it and some side pics of like when its fingers sprouted out like roots. I also wrote down its weaknesses and Strengths.
Then it was on to the huge monster I saw, I called it protein monster. It had a very creepy face when it smiled as its mouth was bloodstained. I quickly finished it up, but then one person came to mine.
Hyun-Su my pencil was close to the paper wanting to draw him. I felt my heart beating fast, if I did drawl him would it be wrong? Or just plain out weird without him knowing?
It wasn't because he was well a monster just like me or that's what they like to call us even though we are still human but I just wanted to draw him as himself.
Deciding to do it anyway I began with his eyes, they were big and round like they held innocence probably not but that's what I see. Next, I went to his nose, mouth, face shape, ears then lastly hair.
It was messy and fluffy but it seems like it wasn't always like that like he just had let it go. Shrugging it off I close my book and put it back in my bag.
Taking it with me because I didn't trust anyone yet I come out of the day-car-room and a man passed by me. He was smoking a Cigarette. One thing I noticed he had a burn scar on his face.
I haven't seen him yet before? Maybe I have but didn't acknowledge him. He was walking behind a guy with a deadly glare in his eyes. Deciding not to get into it I left I did trust the guy with the beat-up face he gave me the creeps.
14 notes ¡ View notes
divineluce ¡ 4 years ago
Text
Nothing Left to Lose || Nadia & Luce
Timing: Late March 22nd, 2020
Location: The Vural House
Tagging: @humanmoodring & @divineluce
Description:  Luce opens up to Nadia.
TW: Sibling death mentions
Letting out a long sigh, Luce stared down at her latest sketch, her fingertips blackened with charcoal dust. It was shit. She knew it was shit. Her heart wasn’t in it, she was drawing like she was going through the motions. Because she was. Grabbing the nub of charcoal she’d been using, Luce scribbled over the forest scene she’d been drawing and began to aimlessly draw. A circle, an oval, and then more lines appeared without her even thinking of it. Before she realized just what she was drawing, the image materialized before her-- Luce sucked in a harsh breath as she stared down at a ruined, melting eye staring up at her from a burning skull. Lydia. Always Lydia. She pressed her palm against the paper, willing the fire to come. She wanted to let the anger wash over her in the comforting way it always had, she wanted to watch the flames rise from her fingertips and spread across the paper. But nothing came. Not even a smoldering ember rose. And the ruined eye stared back at her.
The charm around her wrist buzzed and Luce flinched, heart practically jumping out of her skin. Her hand instinctively closed around one of the paper cutting knives on her desk, before her eyes darted to her phone. Shit, already? She’d lost track of time. Setting the knife back down, Luce flipped the paper over on her desk before heading to the front door, waving her hand over the charmed bracelet that Bea had given her long ago. Taki was sleeping in the middle of the hallway and she stepped over the large Ovenik before opening the door. That was when she realized that she’d opened it before Nadia even had a chance to knock. “Uh. Hey. I heard you coming up the driveway.” She lied. There were just some things that people didn’t need to know, and the protection spells around the house were one of those. 
It was weird getting around without a cast on, but it made driving a stick shift way easier, so Nadia couldn’t complain. Her side still hurt like a bitch, and she hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep, but she no longer looked like one of the walking dead. Slowly but surely, she was healing. At least physically. She’d been running late on her way to Luce’s and had forgotten that she was, well, solid. Walking into the doorframe had hurt her pride more than her face, really, and she was just grateful that no one had actually witnessed her mistake except for one very judgemental cat. She headed to Luce’s before she could fuck up and run into anything again. The jump out of her truck reminded her why she didn’t jump much anymore, and she was covering up a wince as she walked to the door. One that was immediately hidden by the slight look of surprise as Luce opened the door. It was so nice to feel emotions again, to not feel alone, even if they were of the more negative variety. “Hey,” Nadia said. Luce felt like residual anger and surprise, and something extra. She was lying. What a strange thing to lie about. Nadia wasn’t one to ask, to pry, as she tried to force her focus inward. She knew Luce was there, could feel another person’s feelings so that her own weren’t cavernously bouncing about in her skull. That was enough. “You said you wanted to… talk, right?”
Luce took the other woman in, eyes flitting from her cast free arm to the bags under her eyes, the slightly drawn lines of her face. Nadia looked like she’d been through hell. Because she had been, Luce reminded herself. Nadia had been shoved from her body for… so fucking long, and she had no idea how much something like that would fuck up a person. The fact Nadia was even standing-- Luce did her best to quell the fresh pangs of guilt that hit her. Nope. No, she was here to explain herself and the baggage she’d carried with her the nights they’d spent together before everything had gone to shit and that bitch Cordelia had taken control. She wasn’t here to add more to Nadia’s plate. She owed Nadia an explanation. Just like she’d owed Remmy one. But, she hadn’t been able to explain things to them, had she? Not in any real kind of way. Not in the way that mattered. Realizing that she was still staring at Nadia, Luce’s default lazy grin slipped across her face. But, it didn’t come as easy as it once had. “Yeah, come on in. Watch out for the cat.” She said, opening the door and stepping over Taki. “He’s napping and if you step on his tail,” Luce gestured with her hand and made a “poof” sound, “He’ll light you up. He melted a lot of my sneakers when I was younger.” Luce headed into the kitchen-- it had been Bea’s space, before she’d left for New York. Their home was divided like that, into designated areas that belonged to each of them. Nell with her greenhouse, Bea with the kitchen, and her with… well, she had her shed. But she’d deferred the outdoors to Nell. And Bea wasn’t here to use it so, kitchen it was. “Want something to drink?”
Nadia knew that Luce was holding something back, that something was weighing on her. Something was always weighing on the other woman, really. She’d figured that out pretty quick. But Nadia was a coward about things like this, always afraid to talk about things that couldn’t be easily controlled, so she always went along with what Luce said as opposed to what she felt. It was easier that way. If they didn’t talk about it, there was less of a chance that Nadia would have to hear something that she didn’t want to, like ‘This isn’t working’ or ‘We shouldn’t hang out’ or ‘You’re impossibly clinging and your concern isn’t needed.’ Can’t be clinging if you do your damnedest to not show that you were attached, Nadia had taught herself that years ago. She had trouble with it, sometimes-- most times-- but it was still a lesson she knew. She returned Luce’s smile as well as she could before looking at the large cat sleeping near the doorway. “Fucking Christ,” she muttered. The cat made Rhiannon, who was pretty fucking big, look like a damn kitten. “Right, shit, okay.” She moved around the cat carefully; she didn’t have a better pair of boots right now. She followed Luce into the kitchen, looking around a bit at the house that three witch sisters had made their home. She looked back at Luce, curious but trying not to let it show. The other woman had asked her out there to talk, but she was stalling. Nadia wasn’t going to stop her. “Sure, I wouldn’t mind a glass of water.”
Grabbing a pair of glasses from the cupboard, Luce filled them up before sliding one across the clean white countertop to Nadia. She wanted to break out a glass of whiskey, honestly, but that… probably wasn’t the right tone to set with things. Nope. No, she just had to… get this shit off her chest. Because Nadia deserved answers, even if she hadn’t questioned why Luce carried so much emotional baggage. “So, uh,” She leaned against the kitchen island, hands wrapped around the glass. She stared at the water, imagining it bubble and froth under her fingers. But, it remained just as cool as ever. Fuck. “I know you’ve been through a lot of shit. And I just wanted to be straight with you about some stuff.” Be straight. What a fucking phrase. A hint of a grin played on Luce’s lips at her word choice, but she forced herself to focus. “So. Like you know, I didn’t realize you were empath when we first started hooking up. And I definitely brought a lot of fucked up emotional baggage into things because,” Luce rubbed the back of her neck, the velvet of her choker pressing against the palm of her skin, “I was going through a lot of shit. And I figured you deserved answers.”
Taking a deep breath, Luce steadied herself. Rip the bandaid, come clean. Explain. In a flat voice, she said, “Someone murdered my sister. And that fucked me up a lot. And I did a lot of really fucked up things to try and feel better about it. I used you. I used someone else I... really cared about.” She said, regret and guilt fresh in her mind at the way she’d treated Remmy. Swallowing, Luce nodded, “I just wanted to say I was sorry. For making you deal with my baggage. I didn’t realize you could feel how much I was hurting and it wasn’t-- I shouldn’t have done that.”
Nadia took a drink of water, waiting for Luce to start. But, when Luce mentioned not knowing that Nadia was an empath, she frowned. “Hey, of course you didn’t-- I didn’t tell you that I was an empath, right? How could you have known? It’s not like I carry around a sign that says ‘Control your emotions around me, please.’” She fidgeted a bit with the cup in her hand before running a hand through her hair, shaking her head. “I’m the one who should-- I should apologize, you know? Because I should’ve told you, and it’s not fair that I just know this shit. I try to turn it off. It’s not fair that I can pry into things.” She didn’t expect Luce to dive right into her sister getting fucking murdered. Nadia was flashed back to the overwhelming grief that she remembered Luce giving off, the incredible pain that the other woman had been in. “What?” she asked, eyes wide. “Your sister-- But they’re both-- How is that--” She blinked harshly. Again, grief. Grief and regret and guilt so thick that she didn’t just feel it but tasted it, too. Was she feeling herself or Luce? Did it matter? Nadia closed her eyes for a second and shook her head. “You don’t have to apologize. You don’t. You didn’t know, and you can’t just stop feeling things. That’s not how it works. You don’t have to apologize for that.”
“Still. Even if you weren’t an empath, just… using people like that, it wasn’t okay.” Luce said, thinking back to the nights she’d spent with Remmy, knowing full well how much they cared for her only for her to ignore it. And when she’d finally realized how much they mattered to her, she’d lost them. “You don’t need to apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong.” She said, shaking her head. Nadia had agreed to something casual-- just sex, just something physical. But Luce had been the one to bring her own fucked up feelings into things, not knowing that she wasn’t the only one stuck carrying the weight of them. “Even if you can turn it off, it still wasn’t right of me to do that.”
Luce had anticipated questions, but they hit harder than she’d expected. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d told someone what had happened, what she’d lost. What all three of them had lost, not just with Bea’s death but in the price that came with bringing her back. Lifting her hands to her neck, Luce unclasped her choker. The raised scar that ran along the left side of her neck stood out harsh and jagged under the warm glow of the kitchen lights. “We brought her back. But it cost… a lot.” It’d cost lives. She’d killed. And she’d kept on killing, fuelled by that rage and hate and belief that if she killed people before they could hurt her, then she could be safe. But it hadn’t kept Nell safe, not for very long. It had created an irreparable divide between her and Remmy. And fuck, she didn’t want to lose Nadia too. Which was a… wild thought.  “I just wanted to explain. Because you deserve an explanation for what you’d felt. And to let you know that I’m not exactly the person I was before you… were forced out.” She said, the words feeling inadequate compared to just how much the other woman had suffered. 
Nadia sighed. “No, it’s not, but the fact that you’re acknowledging that makes it better than half the shit that some people pull.” And it wasn’t like Luce was the only person to ever use others. Fuck, Nadia did it all the time when she was younger, when she needed to get out of her own head and just not feel something. There’s nothing better at helping you push your own feelings to the side than using somewhere else’s. Even if it left you feeling like shit the next morning. Nadia knew about that all too well. “I still should have told you when I found out. It wasn’t fair, not letting you know what you were getting into with someone that kind of knows what you’re feeling.” Nadia knew that Luce was in on the supernatural shit. She should have told her. But then, Luce probably wouldn’t have wanted to be around her, and, damn, she really didn’t like the sound of that. Especially since she couldn’t really turn it off, as much as she tried.
The scar on Luce’s neck made Nadia ache, like secondhand pain to go with secondhand feelings. She reached out and then dropped her hand to the side, jaw clenched. “Fuck,” she whispered. “You-- that could have killed you. You could have almost died.” She felt heavy, heavy and panicked. What the hell would she have done if Luce died? Would she even have known? She was out of her depths here, wasn’t she? In this world full of magic and ghosts and near death experiences lurking around every fucking corner. What the hell could she do? She didn’t know anything? “I’m-- Fuck. I’m glad she’s back. I’m really glad she’s back. You deserve to have your sister, but you could have-- God. You could have died.” She rubbed her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t deserve an explanation just because I could feel your emotions. Anyone with eyes could tell that you weren’t doing okay. If you tell me anything, it should be because you want to.” She looked at Luce, finally. “I’m not the same person, either.” She wasn’t the same person after the first time she’d been possessed, and then she’d been ripped out of her body, and now she was put back together, but was she really? She’d never be the same. None of them were ever the same.
Luce wasn’t sure if admitting to her fuck ups out of guilt made her better than anyone-- if she was any kind of good person, she wouldn’t have used Nadia and Remmy like that. If she was a good person, she wouldn’t have fucked with their feelings; literally, in Nadia’s case. Shrugging, she shook her head. “Nah. You’re entitled to keep your secrets. I know what it’s like, sort of.” She said, gesturing to herself. “Witch, remember?” Luce said, a slight hint of a sarcastic smile playing at the edge of her lips.
But, it vanished when she saw the expression on Nadia’s face, watched her fingers lift for a moment. Luce swallowed, eyes focusing on the marble of the countertop. The fractal scars that ran across her chest, marking where the lightning had flowed through her veins, they ached at the memory of that night. She pressed a hand against her collar bone, more to remind herself that her heart was still beating than anything else. “It’s alright.” It wasn’t alright. “I’m okay.” She wasn’t okay. As Nadia continued to speak, Luce blinked, surprised and startled by the other woman’s shaky tone. “I could have, but I didn’t. We did what we needed to do and I don’t regret that.” She said. And if there was some part of her that wondered if maybe she should have died, if the pain and death she’d brought into the world would have been stopped, she did her best to push those thoughts aside. She didn’t want Nadia to feel those. She didn’t even want to feel those. “I do. Want to tell you these things. Not just because you deserve answers, but,” Luce paused and shook her head, letting out a sigh as she did so. “I don’t know. I just wanted to tell you. I’ve fucked up a lot by not talking about things.” At the other woman’s admission, Luce glanced over at Nadia and saw she was looking back at her, their eyes meeting for a moment. “And that’s alright. I can't imagine someone going through that and just… popping out as the same person they used to be.”
“Exactly, you’re entitled to your secrets, too,” Nadia said. She gave Luce a slight smile. “It’s not a competition, and you can’t blame yourself for whatever I felt coming off of you. You’re allowed to feel things, even bad things, around me.” She didn’t quite know how to do this, talk about this. It was out of her comfort zone. Anything to do with her own feelings was out of Nadia’s comfort zone, and this whole situation wasn’t helping that. Luce had almost died. She’d almost died, and Nadia had almost died-- had technically been dead-- and everything was fucked, wasn’t it? Luce had almost died. That was kind of a big hang up for Nadia, at the moment. She swallowed tightly as Luce said she was okay, and Nadia wanted to contradict her, but she just wasn’t good at that, not here, not like this. “I’m glad you did what you had to, and I’m glad you saved your sister, and I’m, like, really, really glad you didn’t die.” And maybe if she wished that it could’ve gone any other way, if she wished that Luce hadn’t been hurt in the process, then the fact that she was just relieved that Luce was alive could maybe make up for it. “I want you to know that you can tell me things,” Nadia said quietly. And I want to tell you things, too, but I’m so fucking bad at it unless I just blurt it out and have to deal with the consequences. “You can tell me things.” She raised an eyebrow at the other woman. “And you lost your sister, almost died, and resurrected someone. I can’t imagine someone going through all of that and still being the same. It’s okay not to be.”
At Nadia’s words, Luce glanced down at the choker on the counter, the dark black fabric standing in stark contrast with the white countertop. Maybe she was allowed to feel like shit around Nadia, but that didn’t mean she should subject the other woman to her own baggage like that. Listening to the way Nadia’s voice quieted, the concern in her tone, Luce couldn’t help but reach out and gently squeeze the other woman’s hand with her own. Talking sucked, she’d never been good at it. But, if she could… reassure Nadia that she was still here, still standing, she wanted to do that. Rubbing her thumb against the back of the woman’s hand, Luce’s lips pressed together in a thin line as she weighed all the things she wanted to say. I’ve hurt people. I’ve killed them. I liked it. Until I didn’t, only because I lost someone I cared about because of the pain I’ve caused. She didn’t want to put that on Nadia, but… this was like Remmy all over again, wasn’t it? She hadn’t wanted to tell them anything going on in her mind, she’d hidden behind the flimsy excuse that they didn’t deserve more baggage in their life. But Remmy had wanted to know. And Nadia did too. “I’ve done some pretty fucked up things. I’ve hurt a lot of people. Done… worse than hurt them too. And I’m trying to be better than that,” She said, “But a part of me doesn’t regret what I did and I’m trying… to figure out what that means.” Luce eased her grasp on Nadia’s hand, enough that the woman could slip away if she wanted to. She could leave, if she wanted to.
Nadia couldn’t stop herself from squeezing Luce’s hand back. It was almost stupid how comforting holding someone’s hand could be, especially when it was warm. They just stood there, just for a moment, and the silence was deafening. Nadia could hear Luce. Not really; it wasn’t like she was speaking loudly, and it was quiet, whispered in the back of her head and dripping emotion like a faucet that someone forgot to shut off all the way. She got those, sometimes, words that weren’t hers and weren’t really words at all but spoken connections to the things she felt around her. She didn’t like to think about it; if it was what she thought, then it was another level of prying she didn’t want to consider. So she drowned it out. Truthfully, her thoughts were so loud these days that it wasn’t hard. And it was a lot easier when Luce spoke out loud again. Fucked up things. Fucked up things like killing people, maybe. Nadia took a deep breath and nodded her head a bit. 
Where did Nadia draw the line, these days, when it came to fucked up things? Before, she’d been pretty pacifistic. There was always another answer besides murder, hadn’t she told someone that? Death was something that should be avoided. But then she’d settled in here, and she’d been totally unsettled from her life, and now she-- she was responsible for someone’s permanent removal from, well, everything. Cordelia was a shit person, but did she deserve that? Yes. Nadia wanted it. She had to deal with that every night. She removed her hand from Luce’s and moved it to the other woman’s neck instead, her hand lightly ghosting over the scar tissue. “Why did you do it?” she asked. “These fucked up things? Did you have a reason, or was it-- was it just to do it. Because I think there’s a difference.”
The sensation of Nadia’s skin against her own, her hand squeezing softly, it reminded Luce of the last time they’d spoken. But, the touches then had been cautious, tender gestures hidden behind a guise of helping Nadia with her wound. This? Now? It was… different. Real. And that was fucking scary. When the other woman pulled away, Luce swallowed, a lump forming in the back of her throat. She didn’t want to know. She’d chosen to-- but then, Nadia’s fingers were reaching out to skim across the skin of her neck. She could barely feel the sensation, but Luce let her do it all the same. No one had touched the scar that wrapped around her neck, no one. At Nadia’s question, Luce paused. “The first time was because… he stole my sister from me. He destroyed my family and we-- I had the chance to bring her back. And all it would cost me was the man who’d taken her. The second time was-- revenge. Bea wanted it, Nell wanted it, I wanted it too. We were all just so… angry.” Luce cleared her throat, shaking her head free of the memories of that night, when the Hunter had become the hunted. “The next time, I was scared. Scared of losing my sisters after I’d done so much to bring them back. I wanted to protect them.”
Luce paused, bridging her hands together and resting her chin on her hands. “And the last time. I don’t-- I want to say I was protecting people. I want to say that I was doing something right. Because she was a horrible person. She’d kept people trapped in a basement, she was using people, had been using people for so… so long. But I didn’t know that until after. I just knew she was dangerous and when someone,” Some kid, “convinced me that she was too dangerous to live. And I let myself believe them. I let them use me.” Luce bowed her head, forehead pressed against her hands now. “I don’t know if there’s a difference to those things.” It doesn’t change what I’ve done.
Nadia felt Luce’s turbulent emotions give way as she brushed her fingers over the scar before she moved her hand to rest against the other woman’s shoulder. She felt stable, grounded. She nodded her head. “I can understand the first time. That was-- It was a trade, his life for hers, right? And that kind of makes it worth it, if you can get something good from doing something like that.” She closed her eyes tightly. “And revenge, I-- I get revenge. Maybe not like that, but I get revenge.” Satisfaction over watching Cordelia fade, so potent that it drowned out any pain that she’d felt. It was pretty fucking powerful stuff because, Christ, Nadia had been in so much pain. “Fear, too.” As the conversation went on, it was getting harder for her to tell where her emotions stopped and Luce’s started, and she had to work on that, had to figure out whose anger was whose and whose satisfaction and whose guilt and whose pain, like untangling a ball of yarn that had been knotted over time. She needed to socialize more. This probably wouldn’t be so goddamn intense if she learned to control it better. 
Opening her eyes to see that Luce had her head in her hands, Nadia gently tugged on the other woman’s chin. “Hey,” she said, her voice just as gentle. “She was a horrible person.” She knew that Luce believed this, could feel it. “And maybe that’s not an excuse for her to die, but I believe you when you say that she was a horrible person. And, like, the fucking guilt is kind of eating at you,” she said. “It’s not like you killed her and then decided not to think about it ever again. You don’t seem to be taking joy in it.” Nadia came to grinning. She stood in the middle of a convenient store looking down, something like pleasure and joy working it’s way through her system. There was a young man behind a cash register. He was dead. Nadia didn’t even have time to scream before she lost control again. She swallowed. This wasn’t about her. “I think there’s a difference.”
Feeling the way Nadia’s fingertips trailed from her neck one last time to press against her shoulder, it took everything in Luce not to lean into the touch. She didn’t want to put more of this on Nadia than she needed to, she didn’t want to test how much more the other woman could bear. And she wanted to be able to handle the rejection, the disgust and the fear that would come. But… it didn’t. Not in the way that Luce had thought. Nadia… understood? Maybe not on every level, but she could understand to a degree why Luce had done these things, why she’d killed. That was far more than Luce had expected. 
Letting Nadia tilt her head up, Luce looked back up at her for a moment before averting her eyes. Luce wanted to protest, but then she heard the next words. The guilt was… fucking destroying her. She’d been-- for lack of a better word-- haunted by what she’d done that day. She still remembered the way that Lydia had begged for her life, she could still feel the spear in her hand as it pierced through flesh and bone. She still saw the blue flames consume the woman’s flesh when she closed her eyes. “Maybe not now. But I did, at one point.” She said, memories of tormenting Montgomery, making him writhe and burn on the ground. “And I’m not… I don’t want to be like that. Which is why I figured-- that I should tell you. Because this shit, my… issues, they’re fucked up.” I’m fucked up, was what she wanted to say, but that felt real fucking dramatic. “I’m... trying to figure out where the line in the sand is again. It’s just hard when you’ve crossed it so many times.” 
“Now’s kind of what matters, Luce,” Nadia said, letting her eyes fall closed with the other woman’s. She didn’t move her hand, not wanting to pull away unless Luce pushed her. It felt grounding to just touch someone. She rarely felt this present, anymore. Sometimes, Rhiannon would jump on her chest and scare the hell out of her because she’s just been laying there, feeling like she was about to fall through the bed. This was real, this was tangible. “Now is what we live in. Before sucks. And, yeah, okay, you enjoyed it. You don’t still enjoy it. We would both still know if you enjoyed it.” For all of Nadia’s talk about living in the now, in the present, she… wasn’t very good at taking her own advice. But, then again, Nadia had never really taken her own advice. She knew a fucking ton about other people, but when it came to her own shit, she’d never quite figured out how to work through her own problems. But that wouldn’t stop her from trying to help Luce, everything else be damned. 
With a nod, Nadia said, “I’m glad you told me. I’m-- you can tell me whatever, okay? Seriously, anything. I’m not going anywhere.” I couldn’t stand to lose you. I’d like to be around you in any way that I can. Thinking about you aches but in a good way. “I, uh, yeah. Yeah, I totally get fucked up shit. Maybe not in the same way, but I fucking get it.” She sighed. “Nothing’s simple, not really. I used to think that everything was super black and white, but, fuck, that was years ago, actual years ago.” Back when she was frustrated by everything and felt like every lie she was ever told, every lie that she knew was a lie, was a slight against her. Back when she thought that justice was real and ghosts weren’t, when fairytales were just fascinating stories and the only thing that could hurt her was cruel actions and crueller words. “Then you find where you want to put your line, what you will or won’t do, and, if you cross it, figure out why before the guilt kills you.”
When Nadia’s hand remained where it was, Luce reached up and pressed her hand against the others, threading their fingers gently together. She wanted her to stay. She didn’t deserve it, didn’t think Nadia should have to deal with her shit. But that mentality-- among all the other mistakes she’d made-- was part of what had cost her Remmy. And she didn’t want to lose Nadia too. “Yeah. Now’s what matters.” Luce echoed. The past was… going to stay with her. The knowledge of just how far she would go, of how terrible she could be? That knowledge was a burden that she would carry for the rest of her life. And maybe she could atone for it. Maybe she could be more than the sum of her parts. She hoped that she could. 
Luce lowered their intertwined hands to the counter, squeezing lightly as the woman spoke. “Thanks. And that goes for you too. Shit. I’ve been… I know I said I wanted to talk, but I didn’t… You’ve been through so much too. You can talk to me about it. I’ll be here.” She said with a nod. She’d be here, as long as Nadia wanted her. She still couldn’t help but wonder if she could have helped Nadia escape sooner if she hadn’t been such a fucking coward. And a part of her knew she’d never shake that thought. But, she wanted to be there for Nadia now. While she could. While they were both here. “Yeah. It’d be nice if things were like that.” She sighed, looking down at the black trails of ink under her skin, all neat lines and crisp edges. All of her art was black and white, clear cut and straight forward, while the world around her operated in shades of grey. “Mhm.” She nodded before glancing back up at Nadia. “I…” I’m sorry. I wish I could have saved you. I don’t want to lose you again. I’ve never known how to tell people the things I’ve said to you and that’s scary. I’m so fucking scared of you and for you and of what that means. Her eyes flicked to the clock and she let out a soft curse in Turkish. Time had gotten away from her. It’d been doing that, lately. “It’s, it’s kinda late to be driving. Did you-- you can stay, if you want.” Please still want to. Please still want me.
It would never stop being comforting, Nadia thought, the warmth of Luce’s hand in hers. And maybe it was just that she was fucking touch starved, that she was desperate for any sort of contact. But she didn’t really think that was the case. She liked Luce, way more than she should, way more than felt safe, sometimes, seeing as where they’d started, the boundaries put in place. Because Nadia was an idiot with things like this. She’d allowed this… whatever it was to keep going, and she’d genuinely started caring about Luce, and now she couldn’t stop. It was one of those big fears, up there losing herself again. She was scared of coming off as clingy, had been called that one too many times before, didn’t want to go through that again. But she couldn’t really help it as she rubbed her thumb against Luce’s hands. She craved warmth like a cat seeking out a patch of sunlight. She knew this. It was damning.
“I know,” Nadia said, giving Luce a sad smile. “I swear, as soon as I figure out what the hell to even talk about, I’ll tell you, if you want, okay?” Because where the hell to even begin about all of this, right? Hey, so, I’m not really sleeping, which is saying something because I didn’t sleep much before, but I’m so goddamn tired, and I still feel like she’s there, hanging out in the back of my head even though I watched them destroy her, and I don’t know what to do, and I don’t know what I did, and my guilt’s killing me, too, you just can’t feel it like I feel yours. That was a lot to unpack. That was a lot to say. Nadia didn’t know how to get those words. “God, I’d love for something to be simple,” she murmured, more to herself than to Luce. She was startled a bit by Luce bringing up the time, looking out the window and seeing that it was late. Which, yeah, she could drive back. She was a big girl. So she said, “I want, yeah, actually. I’d, uh, really like that.”
The way Nadia looked at her, the way her hand pressed against her own-- Luce swallowed, trying to keep her emotions in check. But, that expression on her face… hurt. Nadia had been through so much. She’d been through so much in the last year alone, not to mention everything in her past. She’d been possessed, exorcised, possessed, exorcised-- that kind of trauma, it couldn’t be easy to deal with. It was a burden that Luce couldn’t fathom. In the same way she could never understand what Remmy had lost, what Bea had lost; there were so many things that she couldn’t understand. But she wanted to try. She wanted to try and-- help. For once in her life, she wanted to do something good for someone other than herself. She wanted to be someone the people around her deserved. A good sister. A good person. A good… whatever she was to Nadia. “I’ll always listen.” She said with a nod before tugging Nadia’s hand. “Yeah, yeah. Sounds good. C’mon.” She said and tugged gently at Nadia’s hand, leading her back to her room. 
After they’d settled down in bed, Luce pushed back a lock of Nadia’s hair from her face, eyes cautious even as she stared at the other woman. Words, unspoken, remained in the back of her mind. I’m glad you’re here. I wish I could have done more. I wanted to be there for you, I want to be here for you now. I want to be someone you can rely on. Someone worthy of… anything. Of you. Of this. Those were all the things she wanted to say. Instead, Luce offered a crooked smile. Ignoring the way her heart seemed to stutter-step in her chest, she leaned forward and pressed a quick kiss against Nadia’s temple. “Night.”
10 notes ¡ View notes