Ok ok but Star crossed lovers + dance of romance with our dear Katsuki if you can and if not I understand bb!!💌💕
OH STAR CROSSED LOVERS. OH erika this has to be dancing with him at your wedding to someone else. oh, it has to be. you try so hard to make it work in your young adult life, but — dating a pro-hero is so hard !!! katsuki's still young and stubborn about opening himself up, even if he wants to !! even if he wants it to be you he comes home to, you he eats dinner with, you he is worthy of !! but his job is so demanding 🥺 and he can see it tearing you apart 🥺 and he doesn't know how to balance his work life and his love life and so you both. call it quits.
you tell him with tears in your eyes, nose runny and rubbed raw, "find me as soon as you can, okay? come find me when we can make it work, and i'll wait for you."
and he promises to, with a red face and his own bleary eyes.
and you don't wait.
he finds out before he's ready, before he can give you the love you deserve and it makes him fucking angry. some asshole sweeps you off your feet a few years later, and though katsuki isn't a social media person, the only reason he agrees to an agency instagram is so he can occasionally see your face. what you're doing. hear your laugh in your little reels. but then there's another face, another laugh, and he thinks he maybe hates you for it.
you run into each other by chance and he can't even stand to look at you, can't bear to look at the new way you wear your hair, the new way you dress, and know that you're going home to someone else. when you try to talk to him about it, he just — erupts. blames all his anger and heartbreak on you, is ugly and hideous and so green it makes him sick, and after that he thinks maybe you hate him too and that's for the best.
after a couple of months, it doesn't work out with your stupid, charming idiot, but katsuki's fucked it all up with you; he sends a hesitant, simple text and gets no response; his official instagram is blocked. and he's still not ready, but he can't let the moment slip through his fingers and he shows up at your door and it's — crazy. heated. intense and passionate. clothes are flung across your apartment and you mark him down to his bones and he's never had someone the way he's had you. the way he still can't. the morning comes early with a call from kirishima and he leaves before the sun rises.
you do this, for a while. this back and forth, push and pull thing that only ever ends one way: you, naked and asleep and left behind. it's not good. it's not healthy. you're both angry and hurt and it doesn't work, won't work, but — it's all either of you can get. and it doesn't stop until another charming idiot comes along and another screaming match is what you leave behind.
neither of you reach out. the years pass by and he stops trying to keep tabs on you, tries to move on himself. he dates and brings people home, but it's never the same. he starts to think that maybe, entering his thirties, that he can figure this out, that maybe he's put in enough time to balance his work life and his love life, to get you back. he makes plans, he tests his boundaries for vacation time and learns to allow someone to take his shift, if he needs the night off. he says no, he says i can't because i have plans. he figures it out.
your wedding invitations are pretty, delicate. you look nice in your photo; happy and taken care of. at first he thinks maybe you sent it to hurt him, but there's a small, handwritten note stuffed into the envelope that he's sure isn't going out with all the rest of the invites: i really hope that you can make it. i would love to see you.
katsuki takes the time off. katsuki gets his shift covered and he changes from his hero costume to something nice, even with a tie. there's a small hope he has going into it that he'll get to talk to you before the ceremony, that this will play out like the movies and you'll see him and change your mind and it will work out, finally.
but it doesn't.
"don't cry," he tells you during your dance, as you stare anywhere but him and blink your eyes, sniffing and frowning. "you'll fuck up all your makeup and i'll look like an asshole."
it makes you laugh, and it's the first time he's heard it in years. it doesn't stop the tears though, and you can't speak until you blink them away. "thanks for coming."
katsuki shrugs, hand tightening on the back of your dress as his throat threatens to close. "sorry it wasn't sooner."
the face you make is awful, one he's seen many times, at this point. one that hurts just as much as it did the first time, when you both walked away. "sorry i didn't wait longer."
and he is too, but he can't open his mouth to tell you it's alright, because if he does he's not sure what he'll really say. he's not sure if he's still angry. he's not sure that he won't ask you to leave with him, right now. he's not sure he's ready to give up.
but you are finally and — that's always been it, hasn't it ? it's always been katsuki that's walked away empty.
✨️ trope game ! ✨️
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well i GOTTA ask ""you haven't changed." "...do you mean that in a good way or bad way?""
exes to lovers dialogue
"You haven't changed."
Aurel did not meet Wyll's gaze. They sat within a breadth of each other; Wyll's hands were warm as he bandaged the burns on Aurel’s chest.
He had borne burn scars on his back, once. It seemed only fitting that now he would bear the reverse; a symbolic branding of the change he had undergone.
'I could only obtain one Scroll of True Polymorph. Karlach required it more urgently than I.'
"That's not what I meant," Wyll hissed.
Aurel almost missed the intimacy of when they had both carried tadpoles in their minds; the effortless psychic link that had cropped up between them, even back when Aurel was so desperately trying to hide himself from Wyll. He could have re-established the connection now; his own psychic powers were strong enough, and he did so dearly wish he could just know what Wyll was thinking instead of trying to interpret the cadence of his voice and the way he breathed.
But it would be an invasion of privacy, and it would mean facing the full force of Wyll's grief.
Aurel grieved himself enough.
'Then say what you mean.'
"You broke into Mephistopheles' library, Aurel!"
'Yes,' Aurel replied plainly, still not facing Wyll. 'We have spent months chasing inconclusive leads among Zariel's forces. Conversely, we knew with certainty that Mephistopheles' realm held tomes and scrolls of every arcane spell in existence. And with Hope’s House holding a portal to Cania, it was more efficient to steal a scroll from him than to chase flimsy rumors to every end of Avernus.'
"Don't do that," the small part of Aurel's heart that was still a man twinged at how Wyll’s voice broke. "Don't try and speak to me like you're just a mind flayer."
'I am just a mind flayer.'
Aurel felt bile rise in his throat. He snapped his head to the side to turn his cold, violet gaze onto Wyll. HIs old lover paused in his work, his dark devil-eye staring back unflinchingly.
There was a time he could have read Wyll’s face with ease. He would have known what the clench of his jaw meant, or if the way his fingers trembled were from anger or grief.
Or perhaps he had been fooling himself, lost in the throws of new love, and he didn’t know Wyll at all.
'You and Karlach have been putting on a pantomime. Whether for my sake or to ease your own grief, I do not know, but what I do know is that Mizora was right; Aurel died that day in the Astral Prism. His soul has left for the Fugue Plane, and I am only an echo of his memories. I am an abomination to illithid-kind, and a cruel reminder to you.'
Wyll’s jaw flexed, his lips pursed into a thin trembling line — grief then. Of course. The man he loved was dead.
Once, Aurel would have pulled him close to chase those tears away. He would have cupped his face in his hands, kissed his cheeks, held him as he wept...
His mouth was no longer made for tenderness, but for cracking through skulls and gorging on the grey matter within. His hands were warped into cold, slimy claws that inspired more disgust than warmth. His closeness would only bring Wyll more discomfort.
That seemed to be all he brought Wyll nowadays.
'Well, you need no longer continue this farce,' Aurel went on. 'With the Scroll of True Polymorph, Karlach can inhabit a new body free of the Infernal Engine. The two of you may return to the Material Plane.'
"You're not coming with us?" Wyll's voice broke, his remaining eye large and wet and grief-stricken.
'I will not force you to endure my presence any longer,' Aurel turned away. And he cursed his ceremorphosis — not for transforming him into a monster, but for making him this incomplete thing that still wavered when faced with Wyll’s forlorn gaze.
'There is ample food for me here, and I will take pleasure in knowing I am thinning Zariel's forces as I feed.'
"Alone?"
He hated how quiet Wyll's voice was. Why didn't he hate him? Why were they both clinging to a ship they both knew was sinking?
'I cannot be what you want,' Aurel said stiffly. 'I have told you; I am an echo of who Aurel was. I am a living reminder of your dead love. You need not suffer me any longer.'
"I don't suffer you."
'I see how you look at me, Wyll!' Aurel snapped his head around to look at Wyll once more, tentacles flaring. 'You do not see me; you see a dead man you once loved. You saw how Mayrina dragged along the rotting corpse of her husband; I will not be your Connor!'
Wyll flinched, as did Aurel — surprised by the force of his own psychic lashing. Every time he spoke he tried to keep a tether on his telepathy, tried to keep himself from probing too far and sharing too much but in that moment...
"That's really what you think you are," Wyll breathed, his eyes wide. "A shambling zombie trailing after me?"
Aurel's tentacles twitched, and he turned so he could no longer look at Wyll's large, sad eyes.
'Mizora was right,' he said again. He could almost hear her shrill laughter, echoing on the winds of Avernus. 'I am a worm wriggling around in a dead man's brain. I recall his life, his feelings, as if they were my own...and when left to my own devices, I still trick myself into thinking I am him.'
Aurel was quiet for a moment. The balcony doors were open, the rust-red sky of Avernus plain to see. The faint smell of sulfur wafted in, but in Raphael's old boudoir the smell of incense still overpowered Avernus's acrid stench.
They had killed Haarlep here. The incubus had leered at him, tongue tracing their fangs as they looked to make Aurel their next meal, and Wyll had held on to his hand so tightly, as if he was afraid one lecherous look from the incubus would pull him away from his side.
Haarlep hadn't taken him, but only a few days later...the Netherbrain, the Emperor, Orpheus...
'I thought about it.'
Aurel glanced back at Wyll, cheeks wet from silent tears but eyes soft with confusion. "Thought about what?"
'When Orpheus said what needed to be done,' Aurel turned to look back at Avernus. He couldn't look at Wyll, not when admitting this. 'I thought of asking him to do it instead.'
Wyll went quiet. Aurel did not know whether it was grief, or disappointment, or shame that caused his silence, but he persisted all the same.
'The rightful Prince of the Githyanki; their best hope of liberation and ending Vlaakith's tyranny. I thought of asking him to become illithid instead. Worse, I thought it would have been better to let the Emperor feed on him, to let them kill him and take his power, because that would have meant it wouldn't have to be me.'
The carefully maintained dam of his telepathy cracked again. Just a little as his grief, as his anger bubbled over. But it seemed to be enough; Wyll's lips parted, his eyes widened as the torrent of Aurel's emotions seeped through.
'I thought to damn the Githyanki people — Lae'zel's people. I was weak, and I was terrified, and all I could think about was how I wanted to go to that dinner with Karlach and Fytz. I wanted to see Gale’s tower in Waterdeep. Hells, I even wanted to help Astarion find a new home for him and the other spawn.'
Aurel's entire body had gone rigid. He shook, his claws digging into the sheets of the bed while his tentacles trembled as he stared intently at the wall.
'I wanted my father to recognize me when I went home,' he could not sob, not anymore, but the flood of thoughts and feelings felt nearer to hysteria than he'd been in a long, long time. 'I wanted us to have more than just that one night under the Wilden Oak. I wanted to go to sleep at night by your side and then kiss you awake each morning. And I wondered to myself, 'Could I?' Could I sacrifice the freedom of an entire people just so I could wake up each morning with you in my arms?'
His whole body trembled as those emotions ceremorphosis should have snuffed out spilled over into the air. A small, broken gasp escaped Wyll as he felt it, as all the rage and grief and shame that Aurel had been so desperately trying to hide all these months spilled over into the light.
'I was almost so weak. Weak and stupid and selfish. And I have spent these past months trying to convince myself that it was worth it. That becoming this was worth sacrificing our future.'
He didn't think he was capable of this anymore. This rage, this overwhelming grief, this pain.
The baubles on the nightstand were rattling, even the bed seemed to be shaking as his telekinesis bubbled within him.
He hadn't felt this raw and uncontrolled since he was an adolescent.
He forced himself out of the bed and he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to blot out the everything as if that would stop this. Stop him.
He couldn’t.
It wasn’t just him shaking now; he could hear the bed rattling against the wall, the water in the bath splashing. Something fell onto the floor and shattered. He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t.
And then there was a clawed hand on his arm. Tentative; just a brush against his cold skin, but enough to share its warmth.
Aurel shuddered, and with that his telekinesis calmed. The rattling stopped, the House of Hope stood still once more, and Aurel stood there with Wyll hovering inches away.
Aurel stepped away from him. Out, further, onto the balcony. He turned to stare blankly out at the barren landscape of Avernus, at the red mountains on the horizon and the smoke rising in the distance.
I will never see the mountains of my home again.
I will never see my father again.
'It is bad enough that I must spend the rest of my days feeling sorry for myself, but I cannot, will not bring you down with me, Wyll. I will not have you standing by my side out of duty and staring at me while you mourn the man you love. That is no life, not for either of us. So leave; go with Karlach back to Baldur's Gate, grieve me, move on, and let me die here knowing I took as many of Zariel's soldiers with me as I could.'
A shuddering exhale escaped Wyll. He was right there, right behind Aurel. He could feel his breath on his neck, could feel the prickling of his warmth on his back.
"Is that what you want?" Wyll asked, his voice ragged and raw.
Aurel closed his eyes.
'What I want does not matter.'
"It does."
'I cannot have it,' Aurel snapped. 'Don't you see, Wyll? I want you to look at me without shame. I want to be able to walk with you in the sunlight. I want to see my father again, with you by my side. I want...I want to be me again.'
A shaky, rattling exhale escaped through Aurel's teeth as he looked up.
'But I am not. Even polymorphing back into my original body could not change that. I am...I am not him. But I don't know who I am when I'm not him. And I do not think I can ever know.'
This was why mind flayers forgot who they were. This was why partialism was such a taboo to them. No mind flayer would be able to survive this agony.
Aurel almost felt sorry for the Emperor. Deluding himself into believing he was still Balduran, that he was better as a mind flayer, had to be the only way he could survive such a thing.
Ansur really would have done him a mercy if he'd killed him.
A pair of warm arms wrapped around Aurel's middle. He tensed, his breath hitched as Wyll rested his forehead against Aurel's back and squeezed with his arms.
"Why did you go to Mephistopheles' library alone," Wyll murmured.
Aurel trembled.
'Because it was dangerous,' he said. 'Because if I failed, then you and Karlach would still be safe.'
Wyll's breath hitched as he squeezed Aurel.
"That's what I meant," he sighed. "Oh Aurel, I’m not leaving you here.”
‘You must.’
“No.”
Aurel tried to pull away, but Wyll only loosened his grip enough to spin Aurel around - to force them eye to eye while Wyll grabbed his shoulders. His claws dug into Aurel’s skin, and his eye blazed.
“You haven’t changed,” he insisted. “You’re still the same as you were before. I should have known from the moment you agreed to jump with Karlach into Avernus without a thought; you’re still the same man who bargained with Mizora for my soul, who risked a sinking prison for my father…who became a mind flayer to save the world.”
Wyll was crying again. The tears were running freely down his cheeks, spilling onto his tunic. Aurel stared at the dark spots dumbly as his head spun.
“And then you went and stole from Mephistopheles, and you could have just helped yourself but you didn’t. You thought…you thought I didn’t love you as you were and you still thought to save Karlach first.”
Wyll’s claws dug in further as he stared up at Aurel, and he gave his shoulders a firm shake.
“I’m not leaving you to sacrifice yourself to Zariel’s forces,” he said. “You’re the same. You’re the same.”
Aurel wished again to reach out his telepathy, to feel the edges of Wyll’s mind so he might know.
But instead he just nodded his head, and he relished the relieved sob that escaped Wyll.
He wanted to believe this.
Even if it was a lie.
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