#>> in.

[huntershowl-moving]

❝  are they making you uncomfortable?  i can do something about it.  ❞ from sukuna

@hinodae — jealous, fiercely protective & territorial prompts. | ACCEPTING

IT ALWAYS SURPRISES HER HOW adept he has become at reading her body language. it's no secret that persephone's face is near-constantly fixed in a glower, eyes dark and seething with some distant and simmering rage that no one else could ever hope to understand.

their body, too, they carry with perpetual hostility. of course, it's worse when they're by sukuna's side: an unnecessary guard dog as much as a prized thing, she is his first line of defense in this new and chaotic world he has carved out for himself. everyone is an enemy.

some more than others. it's barely a shift in her body language: tension in her shoulders not like she's ready to attack, but like she's ready to run. it's always the fuckers who have the audacity to lock eyes with her and not cower immediately — the men who sneer, who call her a whore behind her back and expect her not to hear it.

she hears it.

❝ ... ❞ despite being pinned under her glower for more than enough time, the idiot doesn't shrink away even when the friend he was talking to is smart enough to make haste out of the room. ( they'll hunt him down later. ) the way this one looks at her makes her skin crawl. but if persephone retaliated against every asshole who insulted her, she'd be too busy to catch a moment to breathe. she's never been much good at defending against them, not when most of the time she believes what they're saying.

it's only when sukuna takes notice that the man stiffens from head to toe. satisfaction and disgust warp together deep in her stomach until they become bile; it's impossible not to notice the gap in respect, but then, what else are they to expect from someone so insignificant? ❝ don't care. you heard him. ❞

[gravesung-moving]

" how terrible it is to love something that death can touch. "

❝ ... ❞ ORION'S BRUSH STILLS ON THE CANVAS. presses down a little too hard. it was halfway through an upward stroke completing a wisp of pale blue hair. he hasn't been able to stop working since oboro died; in each of their ways, he and his sibling deal with grief by letting overwork swallow them whole, and they have certainly been doing so lately.

he hasn't looked up at shouta once, because if he did everything would fall apart. ( not a problem he normally has with this particular boy. ) now, though, he actively casts his gaze away. ❝ yeah. ❞ there's a lump in his throat. he hates this. ❝ it fucking sucks. you said it better, though. ❞

water collects in the corners of obsidian sclerae, the white rings of light within darting to the window, to the empty desks under it. he blinks the water away. he can feel shouta's eyes on him; the tips of his ears go red, heat prickling the back of his neck under the scrutiny. ❝ i wish we were all immortal. like... vampires, or something. ❞

[lipsticktrail]

"Present? For meeeee?"

[howlrs]

無量__My  muse  nearly  confesses  but  quickly  backtracks.  “It’s  nothing.  Forget  I  said  anything.” //and then proceeds to climb out a nearby window

FIRST: IT'S SOMETHING IN HIS VOICE that gives her pause. satoru gojo and hesitation do not go together; it's not like him to backtrack before speaking. if it were, persephone would not have suffered hearing half of the things she's heard him say.

second: it's the fact that gojo, brash and prideful and devoid of shame as he is, is blushing. sure — unearthly pale as he is, he's bound to go red sometimes, but persephone's only ever seen it come from exertion. never ... this.

it doesn't take a genius to figure out the trajectory of his abandoned words.

it doesn't.

but —

❝ ... ❞ what comes from persephone's throat is not silence, per se. it's a strangled noise, not quite one thing or another, somewhere between shocked and confused and irritated and something else, something worse. before they can force out anything better than h—rk—uh—, they blink, and they're staring at the dandelion-puff back of his head as he clambers toward their dorm window like the world's largest, palest spider.

❝ gojo—wai— ❞

the last thing she sees is him. there and gone.

❝ wait, ❞ in a smaller, weaker voice. spoken to an empty window. ❝ i'm leaving tonight. ❞ it's probably best they didn't get to say goodbye. they aren't supposed to. asshole, leaving her wondering like that — likely, he's left her wondering for the rest of her short, stupid life.

[howlrs]

they're serving all might limited jello cups. aizawa kept him after class to lecture him, so you know what? he's just going to cut in front of seph at lunch to make sure he gets one. [ from katsuki! c:

AND ALL IT TAKES IS one kick of the leg, a hooked ankle around the knee, and by impossible sciences seph has flipped their positions so that bakugou is behind her. it's a completely kneejerk reaction. ❝ hey. asshole. if it weren't your birthday, i'd fuckin' pummel you. ❞ despite her irritation, she tosses the jello cup toward him as soon as the poor first-year hands it to her, then stalks off without another word. see? she can be nice.

unprompted // @damnedflames

[howlrs]

無下限__²⁾ a sticky note on a pillow - a poorly drawn picture of a catalytic converter.

IDIOT. ODDS ARE, BY THE LAW OF GOJO, he would become an excellent artist at superhuman speed if he tried. not that it seems like he wants to try, but whatever. it's cute, in its own way. how did he even get into her room?

god only knows. seph's been gone for a week on a job she couldn't tell anyone about — some lame excuse about seeing her parents back in the states — so who knows what kind of hijinks the crew got up to while she was away? nice to know that someone was thinking about her.

it shouldn't be nice. it should be alarming. don't get attached, seph, you'll regret it in the end. but when has she ever listened to the voice of reason?

the note is pinned onto a corkboard on the inside of the door with other miscellaneous memorabilia — photo booth pictures from being dragged out to shibuya, postcards orion painted by hand, squares of cardstock with seph's pressed flowers pasted on. she snaps a photo of it on her cell phone, texts it to gojo along with the message "is this your emotionally constipated way of saying you miss me? lol"

domestic prompts // @mukagenborn

[howlrs]

²⁵⁾ a shared bath && ³⁶⁾ lit candles // from sukuna! LOOK. idk how ic it is for the bath bit but both of them washing up and patching wounds or whatever in the tub together + sukuna lighting candles or smth in the hideout instead of turning on lamps for whatever reason. there's a VIBE HERE

THE HOT BATHWATER comes at the cost of a scathingly cold shower beforehand, the two of them scrubbing away the grime and the blood — persephone gritting her teeth against the lancing pain the cold brings to the marred flesh of her torso. fuck. it's being hosed down in prison all over again. there are merits and drawbacks to this particular hideout. merits: a bathtub, full kitchen, closest one to where they were after stumbling out of the warzone they left behind. drawbacks: very limited hot water, no rigged lighting in any room except the kitchen. no lamps, either. not like she'd give a damn in most circumstances. her hideouts are a place for doing the bare minimum and getting the fuck out again.

sharing a bath was just... economical. extreme cold is impractical for dealing with injuries. both of them bear deeper wounds across their backs: persephone from bodyshielding him on pure instinct, tanking more than one gunshot to buy sukuna precious seconds; sukuna from a knife he couldn't deflect. neither of them should be conscious, let alone functional, but. well. the only thing worse than one fucker who won't stay down is two.

while persephone fills the tub by the faint multicolor light of the city outside of an opaque (and bulletproof) frosted-glass window, sukuna digs out an old box of candles from god-knows-what drawer and sets to lighting them. both are used to working in darkness. still, why not take what they can get? and it makes a shocking difference: by the time he sheds the towel and steps in with them, the bathroom is bathed in a soft orange glow.

persephone casts a glance around the room with the echo of a hint of a smile, still sitting on the edge of the tub. ❝ get some rose petals in here and it's just like a dingy love motel. ❞ a moment later she sinks in across from him — and the second the the ends of her impossibly long hair submerge in the water, the change is immediate. pitch-blackness spreads through the tub like fast-moving ink; the steam darkens into wisps of odorless smoke, blanketing the surface around them.

seph blinks. pauses. oh, right. it's been a second since she's actually taken a bath. ❝ ... don't — worry. it's illusory. doesn't stain or anything. ❞

domestic prompts // @quillheel

[howlrs]

⁶⁸⁾ dog leads hung by the door ( from silco? based on what we’ve plotted a bit? )

SHE PAUSES AS THEY PASS, dark eyes lingering on a new addition to the outside of persephone's workshop door in the unseen's topmost chamber: a red dog lead nailed into the wood. scrawled in sharpie on the door's surface beside it:

FOR FLETCH'S DOG

if she cared enough, it would be an embarrassing thing for a new business partner to witness on a tour of the tower — ha, ironic, maybe that's where fletch's alias came from — that the unseen's top ranks call home. miraculously, she doesn't care what silco sees, nor does she care what he or anyone else thinks of her. let them talk. silently, she wonders how long this taunt has been there. persephone spends more time in her boss's topside estate than this fucked-up grimy office building, so itcould have been weeks. ( but she misses the undercity grit. it suits her better. )

❝ fucking childish, ❞ she mutters under her breath, surging past the door and down the hallway toward fletch's office. here, on the top floor, only their own suite and the quarters of their top twelve agents reside. persephone's and the vacant one that used to house a traitor are the two closest, so it isn't much farther before they're opening the door and following him inside. there is something to her movements when she does this that might almost strike an onlooker as chivalrous, knightlike. even despite the sharp-edged way she slinks around.

the octagonal meeting room is brighter than silco's, much less moody despite the dark wood-paneled walls and floor. a sunlight-mimicking "skylight" set into the ceiling casts a warm, dawnlike glow on an impressive array of flowering plants hanging from the ceiling, climbing the walls. against a large curtained window at the center-back of the room, a round dining table ringed by cushioned chairs. beside it sits a fully-stocked cart for fixing up tea and liquor alike.

to someone unused to the brightness of a sunlit room, it may hurt the eyes on first entry. this is purposeful on fletch's part.

persephone pulls out a chair for silco on one side of the table, electing to haul herself up onto the windowsill rather than sit like a normal person. busies herself with lighting a cigarette. ❝ it'll be a second before the tower gets back from council work in piltover. this is where you'll take meetings with him. inner circle's offices are on this floor too — most of us stick around off-duty, so if you need one of our specialties, you can utilize them. ❞

them. not us. persephone herself, it's implied, is off-limits. ❝ doctor, engineer, muscle — don't engage with him, he's fucking insane. spy, fence, chemist, accountant. ...forger. ❞ a pause on that last one, something unreadable flickering across her face. she doesn't like mentioning her brother to new unseen allies if she can help it. but it'll come up soon enough anyway. whatever. orion can handle himself. they haven't even spoken for the last three years.

brief introspection done with, persephone's eyes finally, wholly turn to silco. black and arrowhead-sharp. it is the stare of a predator in the grass, a wolf sizing up a snake. ❝ you've got big plans for the undercity. what makes you so confident you'll succeed? ❞

domestic prompts // @goodmeeting

[howlrs]

³⁸⁾ a blanket draped over a sleeping form

HE'S OVERWORKED. THAT MUCH IS OBVIOUS from the way midoriya seems to have knocked the fuck out at his dorm desk — a heavy, body-shutdown sleep, as evidenced by him not jolting awake when persephone shifts her stiff body into a stretch.

they've been studying together for hours. he wasn't her first choice nor even close; she's certain he'd say the same for her, given the way they fix each other with glares in the hallways and always pick each other first when it comes to fighting. but ... a begrudging respect has formed between them, regardless. no one else was available tonight to act as a body-double to keep them accountable. when considering their options, they had a feeling midoriya would enjoy the opportunity to snip at them with some sort of authority.

persephone prefers the floor, most times, so her class materials are sprawled out in front of her crossed legs — decent progress for a cram session, she'd say — whereas izuku, this being his dorm, has everything set up on his desk. they've been back and forth occasionally with questions or sharp-edged banter, but for the most part, it's been ... quiet. it's been nice.

long stretches of silence have always provided a sense of peace to her. the compound where she and her cohort were raised was rowdy, always clamoring with noise from the other young killers and their handlers; seph had to seek out peace and quiet by staking her claim on a room and kicking anyone's ass who got too close. now, it's — weird, not to have to fight for it. but it's nice. especially with company.

but the night has gone on long enough. she can feel her eyes start to droop from the lull of midoriya's slow breathing. after her study materials are packed back up and she's stretched out her long, gangly limbs, she eyes the boy passed out at his desk, the goosebumps rippling down his arms from the slight chill of nighttime hours.

... whatever. he won't see her do it. and — despite her rough exterior, seph knows how hard it can be to sleep when you're too cold. and the test is tomorrow. so. normal reasons for her to pull the blanket from his nearby bed and tuck it over his body before she ghosts out of the room, heat prickling at her ears all the while.

domestic prompts // @vsagis — ua reform verse

[howlrs]

a giant, incredibly cursed dog of some sorts places a large bone at their feet and waits expectantly, tails wagging

❝ THAT'S A — ❞ HUMAN FEMUR? YES it is. and, really, she shouldn't be surprised, should she. ❝ ... whatever. ❞ who gives a shit, right? it isn't as if there's much anyone could do about a huge-ass nightmare creature playing fetch in the backstreets of their town. take it from hellhound herself — they'd be too scared.

she hefts it into her hand like a baton or a bat, tests its weight in the sensors down her prosthetic arm. looks out over the fields to their left, at the outskirts of the city. nothing but brown-patched grass and ramshackle sheds out there, 'til you get to the woods. it's probably fine.

her stance widens. an arm rears back, aims, and launches the thigh-bone out into the fields like a javelin.

unprompted // @valcfar

[howlrs]

gets scolded. looks at seph like this :( slowly walks away. looks back at them. slowly walks some more. looks back :(

❝ hey — that look's not gonna work on me. if you don't wanna be told off, then don't disobey a fuckin' order. i'm not taking you with me again if you can't keep your goddamn impulses in check. clear? ❞

unprompted // @dcgfight

[howlrs]

❛ the world doesn’t hate us. but it doesn’t love us either. ❜ //from ava!

lost prompt. // @sinshosted

❝ THE WORLD CAN GO FUCK ITSELF. ❞ SAGE WISDOM as always from persephone, who picks at a bag of honey-roasted almonds like an antiquer's bored companion. after a second, their gaze flicks over to watch ava doing whatever it is she's doing. ❝ it's rotten from the inside out. you don't owe them shit. they don't owe you shit either, except maybe some peace and fucking quiet. ❞ it's no hard sell to say that ava's been through just about enough. more than, really. but what can you do? grit your teeth and push through it. and in her case, set some shit on fire.

[howlrs]

tsumiki’s body might ache, but she knows it’ll all pay off in the end. she sits next to persephone, digging into her bag to pull out two bento boxes before she hands one to them. “i remembered what you really liked last time and made sure you got extra.” she smiles, even as sweat makes hair stick to her forehead. “maybe tomorrow we can try that move again and maybe i won’t almost break my leg again.”

❝ ... ❞ THEY'RE LONG PAST resisting fushiguro's attempts to give back for the training they're putting her through. they tried telling her that they don't need it — don't want it — don't deserve it, but every protest fell on deaf ears.

stubborn girl. maybe that's why they like her.

a metallic hand pops open the bento to find an extra row of tamagoyaki nestled carefully alongside the rest of its components. fushiguro's bentos are artful in a way persephone's never were, a crafty hand and a discerning eye ( and probably quite a bit of practice. ) it's a strange thing, the way one can eventually learn to tell apart the many types of scowls her face cycles through. this one's mild, ears reddened at the tips, softness threatening at the edges of her gaze. pretty clear indicator that she likes it. not that tsumiki will ever get a sorry or a thank you from her under most circumstances.

at her proposal, dark eyes cut over to her bruise-mottled face — bruises caused by the brutal steel knuckles of their hands, the quick-striking heel of their palms. the scan of their gaze is hard to ignore; it pierces armor, pierces through to the bone like a cold wind. ❝ your reaction time is still terrible. fix that first or you'll break your leg before you get the chance to practice. ❞

unprompted // @hinodae ( tsumiki fushiguro )

[howlrs]

☠ (from toji)

manhandling the seph. // @harerazor ( toji fushiguro ) ☠ - slam my muse into a wall

HIT IT FAST AND HARD, before it can react. always a good rule of thumb when you're dealing with a hellhound. you want to get in close enough that guns are out of the question, close enough that you're not really in melee range anymore, kill the momentum to minimize the force of their blows — few can pull that off when the beast in question is faster than most people, though.

good thing toji fushiguro is not most people.

it happens in the span of a single blink. her scapulae hit first. reinforced with steel, they absorb the shock even as the air is knocked from her lungs. the force ripples. something cracks in her chest — collarbone, maybe a few ribs along with it. the plaster behind her splinters, too, frames their pinned body like a fucked up spiderweb. like a halo.

body on autopilot. body more weapon than organism. by the time her eyes adjust, one arm's already dug a serrated hunting knife deep into fushiguro's abdomen and twisted. dark and wild, her eyes fix on his and do not waver. but she does not move to escape the forearm barring her in by the collar. ( he's so close they can feel his breath on their cheeks. ) they push into the hold, press closer. the breaking of bones has not mattered to hellhound in a very long time; pain does little for her but spur her on, piss her off harder, turn a feral thing more deranged than deranged.

she does not attempt one of the myriad hold-breaks she has learned over the years, does not move to break a kneecap or slip away or fight, really, though they both know how well she could. instead, with an animal growl, her head pitches forward and her wolf's-teeth sink into the tendons at the base of his neck.

there is an intimacy to this, in a way, though it is an intimacy they would never admit to. the depth to which you learn about someone by fighting them again and again and again. the way you settle into each other's skin. she doesn't like it. she can't stop it.

[howlrs]

無量__☠ + ♭!

manhandling the seph. // @mukagenborn

☠ - slam my muse into a wall ♭ - grip my muse’s jaw to make them look yours in the eye

WAS IT SMART to goad the strongest sorcerer into a no-techniques hand-to-hand playfight? maybe not. did she ever claim to be smart? yes, but sometimes you can turn off the intelligence for a bit of good, challenging fun. there's still a wicked laugh on her tongue when he finally pins her. it dies with her breath, but the grin remains, even as gojo grips her by the jaw and holds her head in place at direct eye-contact level.

the first thing persephone notices isn't the fact that the force of being shoved back has knocked the air from her lungs. that would make too much sense. and around satoru gojo, she's coming to realize, nothing ever makes sense. least of all her own behavior. no — strangely, stupidly, the first thing she notices is how warm his hands are. how he smells, this close. the way he looks, face flushed from the exertion, glasses slightly-askew. his wide eyes, the way they bore into her, bring to mind the cat that caught the canary. his pupils black holes swallowing the sun. yes, there's the otherworldliness too, the way looking into them feels like flying and falling all at once, blah blah blah — the crystalline vertigo of those eyes persephone has already tripped out over (one too many times, probably.) orientation complete.

this is a different beast. this, the way their heart picks up and heat begins to creep into their cheeks from the sheer proximity and the way he's looking at them and the hand on their face and — just gojo, really — is utterly, horribly human.

she should fight back. his strength far outweighs hers, he could keep her in place if she tried using force, but this is nothing she couldn't get out of if she actually tried. what the hell is that look for? did he notice something in their fighting style? did they slip up? did the skills they work so hard to suppress come through when they weren't paying attention? or is it something else?

❝ ... ❞ lips parted, breath in to speak. she doesn't realize she's looking at his mouth until she's looking back into his eyes. the pressure of his fingers on her jaw take up at least sixty percent of her sensory brainspace. who knew she'd be into that, huh? ❝ —you got me. ❞

[howlrs]

⁂ // dio

manhandling the seph. // @spungolden

⁂ - grab my muse by the front of their shirt, possibly shoving them back

IT ISN'T THE FIRST TIME THEY'VE lost control with her. dio has assured them time and time again that she can handle it, that she can take care of herself, and she has proven time and time again that yes, yes. she can. even when they are like this. half-transformed, eyes empty and wild, cursed energy sloughing off them like radiation, so thick it wilts the grass beneath their feet. snapping teeth at dio's throat, held back by the raw strength of her hand at their collar. snarling. snarling.

all it takes is time. persephone hellhound can only shove against this proverbial wall for so long before the adrenaline wears off, and the red-blind rage ebbs, tidelike, out of their cursed circuit-board of a nervous system.

all it takes is time, and persephone stills. there's a large, mottled bruise in the center of her chest where she thrashed against dio's iron-grip; otherwise it seems she didn't need to harm or restrain them this time. the terrible elongated limbs shorten, quills of black fur retract back into the lie-shell that is her human form. but the rage, the rage does not seem to follow.

as soon as dio's arm loosens, persephone's lunging forward again — not to attack, this time, but to grab her by the waist and yank her close and kiss her until blood fills both of their mouths. until they can't breathe, until the mess in their head unravels. calms, the way a storm calms, leaving clearer air in its wake.

it's too much, being like this. they weren't meant to live like a human being after death warped them into a monster. but then, dio wasn't suppposed to live so gently as the harbinger, either, was she? maybe neither of them were cut out for this. maybe it will always be hard. maybe. right now, as persephone finally, reluctantly allows their lips to part, she doesn't give a damn. her head drops onto dio's shoulder, nuzzles in like the damn dog she is. ❝ ... i love you. sorry. ❞