#I should draw them working together killing some ghouls.

[canadianlucifer]

I have this neat little thing where whenever I think about seiakimon I turn into this

[gwenllian-in-the-abbey]

A little preview of Our Fathers Clad in Red Ch. 2

While @aifsaath and I are hard at work getting chapter 2 ready to publish (it's a beast!), have a little sneak peak of what's in store for Aegon, Baela, and Little Aeg's return to King's Landing:

“Kill the boy, and they will have nothing left to fight for. The opposition will melt away to nothing,” Tyland Lannister said. He looked in Aegon's direction, his hood casting his scarred face and sightless eyes in shadow. “Your Grace, as long as the boy draws breath, he will remain a challenge to your claim. If you make him your heir, you invite your enemies to act against you and put a more tractable king in your place.” “Just so,” his mother said. “Kill the boy, and have Daemon's girl sent to the silent sisters. For the child, it can be a clean death. No need for excessive cruelty.” “Faithless woman,” Lord Corlys roared. He stood, and Aegon thought he looked like the Storm God of old with his braided silver hair, his weathered face, and his anger enough to sink fleets. “Oathbreaker.” Aegon bristled at the insult to his mother, but before he could say a word in her defense, the dowager queen was already snapping back at the Sea Snake, unintimidated as she leaned forward, hands braced upon the council table. “How many times has your cloak turned, Lord Corlys?” His mother asked. “How do I know you would not kill my son in his sleep should the boy be named his heir?” “I want peace,” Lord Corlys said. “I want the war to end. If your son showed even the tiniest bit of political acumen, or even nay, a desire for ruling, I would be overjoyed to finally have a sensible grown man sitting the throne. But so far all he has shown is a taste for revenge, and that will not heal this realm.” Lord Corlys spoke as if Aegon were a petulant child to be sent to bed without supper, and he wanted to scream out that he was no green boy, he was king and if he wanted revenge he would take it. No matter that the idea of exacting his revenge upon a child turned his stomach. No matter that the boy was the very image of his dead son. But more than revenge, Aegon wanted to smash something, to rise and walk out of the room, to run from the keep and never look back. Let the ghouls have it, he thought. He could fetch Jaehaera and they could flee this wretched, cursed place. But he could not even stand on his own two feet much less storm angrily from a council meeting. He drained his wine cup and signaled the cupbearer, even though he knew he'd had more than enough. How easy it had been to slip into that habit too, abandoning his cares to his cups. The Red Keep, it seemed, brought out his worst tendencies. After over a year spent in near solitude, with a singular focus on healing himself and Sunfyre, he’d forgotten how much court disgusted him. How willing these men were, to take two broken children and bind them together as husband and wife, to use them as they’d once used Aegon himself. And now they spoke of peace. Of the good of the realm. It made a familiar rage burn in his chest. “Perhaps those who want peace should have considered better where they placed their allegiances in the first place." Aegon's anger made him vicious, his words careless. “You say I have a taste for revenge, but unlike some I have not slaked my hunger with the blood of children, Lord Corlys. Not yet.”

Keep your eyes peeled for the full chapter, coming soon from myself and @aifsaath ! And if you haven't yet, check out the first chapter on AO3! Tags under the cut.

@theothermaidoftarth @emilykaldwen @uniqueobjectcollective @branwendaughterofllyr

[harleyquilt]

The Fire That Burns Us All (TouKen/KaneTou Fic) - Chapter 1

Summary: An Au in which, instead of being taken in by Touka and Yoshimura, Kaneki is instead adopted into the CCG. In a world where Touka and Kaneki share a divided life, Touka dedicates her life to vengeance. And to satiate her thirst for revenge, she first needs to find the Black Reaper.

Words: 1645~

Notes: Long time no write, ha ha, but I hope this potential series itches that scratch for those still in the TouKen/KaneTou fandom! I hope you enjoy!

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Five ghouls lay dead at the Black Reaper’s feet. From the look of their attire and masks, they were nothing more than civilian ghouls caught at the wrong place at the wrong time. Found picking at the remains of a fresh kill, the Black Reaper quickly decommissioned them one by one, his expression an unchanging look of perpetual boredom. Touka watched from afar, her lips twisted into a sneer. He was exactly what she expected, and even still, she found herself disgusted whilst watching the Black Reaper at work. 

Tapping her earpiece, Touka pursed her lips. “I found him.” She said and she heard her brother, Ayato, scoff in response. 

“I guess the intel Hinami found was reliable, then.” He muttered. Touka narrowed her eyes, watching the Black Reaper pull on his leather glove and reach into his pocket. “What now? Should we kill him together?” She could hear the smile in his voice. Sighing, she tutted, hearing the Dove call in his subordinates to clean up the mess he had created. 

“No.” She said, continuing before Ayato could begin his protest. “No, I’m not here to kill him. Not yet, anyway.” Leaning on her hand, her eyes continue to follow the dark figure as he starts to walk away from the slaughter. “I’ll need to watch him some more before making my move, try to find him at his most vulnerable. And then, once I get the information we need.” A smirk tugs at the end of her lips. “We’ll kill him together.”

Ayato mutters to himself for a moment. “Well…be careful, yeah? Don’t hesitate to call me if you need backup.”

“Oh please.” Touka smiles. “When have I ever needed help from you? I can handle myself; you just keep Eto and the others off my back. And tell Hinami thanks, I’ll be sure to treat her when I get back.”

Ending the call, Touka glances back down to the Black Reaper, who watches the road for his subordinates. He remains still, stoic, a shadow against the darkness of the alleyway. He looked surprisingly slender with his coat on, his face pale against his dark hair. He was no jock or thug, that was for sure, and yet, he managed to evoke fear to those that were unfortunate enough to know his name. Seeing him at work, Touka wasn’t surprised - he striked fast and hard, flexible, yet sturdy in his defence. He was certainly his master’s dog, Touka thought. Despite all this, though, she could see beyond the dark attire, fancy moves, and those big, round glasses, that he was still the young, vulnerable human she met all those years ago at Anteiku. And knowing that, she knew she would be able to confront him for the answers she was desperate to find. 

Hearing the rumble of thunder in the distance, Touka looks away for a brief moment and looking back, she almost catches the eyes of the Black Reaper, who was now scanning the rooftops as he leaned back against the nearby wall. Touka quickly ducked down into a crouch, her eyes wide. For a moment, everything is still, and she waits for the horrible potentiality of being found out by his hawk-like gaze. Through the sound of her heartbeat, she strains her hearing and waits, deciding it is best to stray as she was until the other Doves arrive to draw his attention away. 

Once they do, she listens as the Black Reaper gives his orders with his no-nonsense attitude and she hears him walk away and down the street. With a shaky sigh, she scrambles towards the opposite end of the rooftop and leaps across to the next building, glancing behind her as she goes. 

. . .

It was raining heavily by the time she arrived back at the cafe. It hadn’t been opened for long, but with the help of Nishiki and Yomo, she has been able to manage it well enough for the past few months. It served well as a base, she figured, a home away from the grimness that was Aogiri and their dilapidated ruins. Tatara was not exactly fond of the idea of her spending so little time with the group itself, though Ayato had managed to convince him that a night cafe was an ideal location to recruit more ghouls to their cause, as well as provide them a haven from the watchdogs of the CCG. If nothing else, its location would make it easier to spy out and gather information on the ongoings of the Doves. He eventually conceded, perhaps from a lack of general care, with the condition that the cafe would be given no aid if it ever found itself exposed to the Doves. It mattered little to Touka, as long as they kept their claws away from her home. 

Home was maybe not the word for it. It lacked the familiarity and comfort that she had felt with Anteiku, and with it only ever being open at night, it felt further isolated from human society than Anteiku ever did. It was Yoshimura’s vision to see a divided world reunited in relative harmony, though Touka has long disregarded that vision as nothing more than wishful thinking. Seeing Anteiku burnt to the ground, the deaths of her mentors - it only pushed her further away. She cut ties with her human life after that, knowing that the pain of abandoning the life she had tried so hard to create amongst humans mattered little in a world kept in the relatively comforting darkness that was ghoulkind. 

Yomo, even with his stoic silence and brooding demeanour, was somewhat disapproving of this stance of hers. Returning from her recent mission, she caught his watchful eye from behind the counter. To others, his expression was unchanging, but to Touka, he might as well have tutted and shook his head, as a parent would do when seeing their child’s failing grades. Her mouth twisting into a pout, she silently brushed past him, keeping her thoughts to herself. 

In the staffroom, which also doubled as a bedroom for Yomo, Ayato, and Nishiki at times, Hinami sat on the sofa, fidgeting with the edge of her shirt. She rose to her feet when Touka entered, along with a growing smile. Smiling back, Touka ruffled her head and sat down, pulling Hinami down beside her.

“Ayato-kun told me that you found him. The Black Reaper, I mean.” Hinami began, her eyes wide and vibrant with excitement. “So, what do you think? Was the information reliable?”

Touka nodded, her eyes darting away. “I thought he’d be working alongside him, though. I guess that isn’t the case at the minute, from what I saw.”

“Well,” Hinami shrugged. “I guess he’s in no need of training. Not at this point. From what I can tell, they usually work together for larger operations, but generally speaking, he is not considered a member of the 0 Squad. I suppose that’d be wasted potential, as an investigator, I mean.”

“I guess.” Touka leaned back, stretching her arms up. Tilting her head back, she let out a deep breath. “You did good, Hinami.” She turned her head towards her and offered Hinami a warm smile, who in turn grinned with bashful pride. “With this, I’m one step closer of getting rid of that murdering bastard.”

“I’m glad I can be helpful. It means a lot that I can help you, Onee-Chan.” Hinami shrunk into herself then, eyes wandering away. “But please be careful. If anything happens to you, then I–”

“If anything happens, it will be entirely her own fault.” Yomo cut in, carrying in a tray of hot coffee for the two girls. Touka leaned forward with a frown while Hinami hunched up her shoulders, her cheeks red. “She’d only be more reckless in what she chooses to do if it weren’t for your help.”

“Is this your way of lecturing me?” Touka scoffed as he placed down the tray. He straightened and crossed his arms, his jaw clenched. 

“I am lecturing you.” He rubbed his head and Touka reached for the mug, the fragrance a waning reminder of the past. “I understand how you feel, I really do. But if you walk straight into the fire you’re heading towards, no one will be able to help you. Not me, not Hinami or Ayato - no one. And…” He hesitated for a moment; his brows furrowed. “I don’t think this is what–”

Just then, they heard the chime of the door as a customer entered the cafe. Placing down the mug, Touka rose to her feet and moved past Yomo for her apron. He remained where he was while she headed for the door, Hinami lowering her head and clutching her hands in her lap. 

“Look, I appreciate the concern, I really do.” Touka said in a cool, low voice. “But I’m…I’m already in that fire, Yomo. It burns me each and every day. And I can’t stop. I can’t, because if I do, all that pain and torture would have been for nothing. I have to make them pay for doing this to us.”

Before she could hear any kind of response, she moved quickly out of the room, her chest tightening as the door shut behind her. She could still taste Yoshimura’s coffee on her lips, the memories of his gentle words, of Irimi’s guiding wisdom, or Koma’s goofy charm, coiling around her heart. 

Shaking her head, she heads into the main cafe area and is taken aback by the sight before her. She’s quick to collect herself and offer a welcoming smile, the dark figure of a man turning to greet her in turn. His smile, however, was hesitant and awkward, his eyes hollow and his overall presence a disconcerting contrast to the warmth of the cafe. There’s no mistaking it, Touka thought. He’s the Black Reaper.

[jungkxook]

—demon-etized. (m)

⟶ pairing: namjoon x reader

⟶ analytics: youtuber!namjoon / ghost-hunters au / smut

⟶ words: 6,260

⟶ rating: 18+

⟶ warnings: idiot ghost hunter bts, ghosts making namjoon horny ig?, slight exhibitionism, fondling, fingering, standing sex, unprotected sex, creampie

⟶ description: in this episode of unsolved, namjoon and the boys risk their lives by spending overnight in an abandoned and supposedly haunted asylum in the hopes of finding some ghouls — but the boys are pretty certain the real reason for the spooky moaning isn’t allowed to go on youtube. ***warning: very scary!!!***

⟶ pinned comment: this is part of the not clickbait series!

“Well, this has been fun. Let’s go home now.”

You were starting to think this was a very stupid idea ━ but stupid would be an understatement. The looming asylum standing before you with nothing but the darkened midnight sky in the foreground acts as a foreboding omen that you’ve seen one too many times in pretty much any horror movie. The creepy abandoned estate offering itself up as a seemingly perfect and totally innocent means of adventure for a group of friends only to end in murder or a demon possession should have been enough to scare you all away. Fortunately, you’re not the only somewhat sane person (and you say that very loosely because you did, after all, agree to come with the boys), because you’re both startled yet thoroughly relieved to hear the worried statement coming from a very tense-looking Jimin.

It really was a stupid idea. Spending overnight (which, really, just translates to a few hours and a clickbait-y title for the video) in a supposedly haunted and derelict asylum from the early 1900s offered all sorts of problems that weren’t just supernatural. Squatters, creepy cult members, and risking getting whatever sorts of diseases are riddling the walls of the ancient dwelling were starting to get to you. But it was Namjoon’s idea to come here for his next video upload especially when considering the fact that for the entire month of October he and his group of YouTuber friends host a fan favourite ghost-hunting series titled Unsolved ━ and, whatever Namjoon usually suggests, the boys usually tag along with, no matter how daring or how stupid it may be.

“We literally just got here,” Hoseok retorts as he hops out of one of the two cars you and your friends had shared on the way here. It was a three hour drive from the city with the estate being much larger than you expected it to be, four main buildings sprawling out amongst empty fields. At least the stories of its creepy atmosphere are all the same. Was it the cool autumn breeze sending chills down your spine or something else entirely? The moment you stepped foot out of the car and gazed upon the asylum, it was almost as if you could feel something watching you. But that was definitely just you imagining things. “Don’t be a pussy, Jimin. What’s the worst a ghost is gonna do to you? Rattle some chains? Ooooh, spooky.”

“Okay, first of all,” Jimin rounds on the older boy almost immediately, “vaginas are the strongest muscles in female anatomy, so I’m not being a pussy. Let’s get it right, okay? I’m being a little bitch, and I embrace it. Second of all, if a ghost does rattle some chains near me, I will definitely be booking it back to the car and leaving all of you stranded here.”

From beside you, Yoongi snorts amusedly. He’s the resident non-believer amongst your group of friends so you always wonder why he even bothers to come to these things. He says it’s to help filming, but you think he’s banking on maybe one day seeing a ghost even despite all that charade of hostility. Even now, he’s already filming for the vlog, getting shots of the building but also mostly just Jimin and Hoseok’s banter in the background. “If a ghost does anything tonight, I’ll be genuinely surprised.”

“Something is going to happen tonight. I can feel it,” Jungkook says confidently. He’d been huddled over the opened side door of one of the cars with Namjoon and Jin, sifting through their high-tech equipment that you’re certain they just bought off of Amazon or something. “This place is one of the most haunted places near us. Have you even heard the stories? Apparently there are two most popular ghost sightings. One is some girl━”

“Is she hot?” Taehyung asks.

“She’s dead,” Jungkook deadpans. “Also, pretty sure she was eleven when she died from tuberculosis. Anyway, she’s more of a benevolent ghost. They say you can hear her laughing sometimes. There’s a lot of activity in one of the kids’ rooms. And the other sighting is less friendly. They just call it a shadow man because it’s hard to see its face, but you can always see an outline of a person walking by in one of their treatment buildings. There’s even been physical attacks, with one person saying they got scratched by an invisible force.”

Jimin visibly winces. “Sounds very much like a demon than a ghost to me.”

“Sick!” Hoseok exclaims. You’re worried to find that the group’s morale (aside from yours and Jimin’s) isn’t any less vivacious than when Jungkook started his story. “This is gonna be awesome.”

But you can’t help but to roll your eyes, your feigned boredom really just a weak attempt at hiding your own fright. “Oh, shut up. That’s such bullshit.”

“Is it?” Jungkook quirks a brow, challenging you.  

“Well, whatever happens, we’re gonna catch it.” This confident statement comes from Namjoon. After he hands out the pieces of tech to the rest of his friends, he glances upward at the asylum with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “Come on. Let’s find us some ghosties.”

As the group begins to follow Namjoon towards the nearest building, Taehyung can be heard wolfishly quipping aloud, “Time to rock and roll, ghoul boys! And, er, girl.”

“Don’t call us that,” Yoongi grumbles.

It’s comforting to hear the rest of the group erupt into fits of entertained laughter, but any banter is quick to subside as you walk up to the building. You’re relieved when Jimin decides to hang back with you and doesn’t seem to protest when you start to cling to his arm as you’re all ushered through the main entrance of the building and into utter darkness only broken apart by the dim glow of your flashlights. If you weren’t already so frightened, maybe some of it would be comical, like the way the front doors creak open so very slowly in suspense.

Under Jimin’s breath, you can hear him mumbling in chagrin, “We should have gotten holy water.”

As your eyes adjust to the darkness within, you’re able to make out that the inside is just as horrifying as it was on the outside. Dust and debris hang heavy in the air and on the ground, and almost every inch of any surface within the building is covered in graffiti works of art. 

“Oh, fuck that,” Jin scoffs. “We only just stepped foot into here and this place is already giving me goosebumps.”

“Aw, sweet, bro! Check this out!” Hoseok says abruptly, startling almost all of you. He’s standing a bit further off down one hall, beckoning the rest of the group to follow. As you approach him, you can make out what sort of graffiti marking on the ground has suddenly grabbed his attention. “Who wants to lay on the pentagram with me?”

“No one,” You retort.

“I will!” Jungkook says at once, much to your dismay.

Yoongi lets out an audible strained sigh. “If any of you fucks get possessed and kill me, I’m never gonna forgive any of you. Just letting you know ahead of time.”

“Yeah, what are you gonna do?” Hoseok asks. “Come back and haunt us?”

“No, I’ll be dead. Ghosts aren’t real,” Yoongi says. “But I will still be very angry.”

“Noted.”

Before Jungkook or Hoseok can haggle Yoongi into filming them laying on the pentagram drawing and potentially offering their souls up to whatever demon lays waiting beneath it for their souls, the group is moving on. You explore the first bottom half of the building together in a tense silence before making your way up the dilapidated stairs to one of the treatment rooms that Jungkook makes certain to point out is where the infamous shadow figure is often seen. Taehyung decides to suggest, “Should we try the spirit box?”

You almost groan aloud. You fucking hate that thing, for obvious reasons. 

Whether or not you believe in it, the loud gurgling noise is always unsettling and you’re already on edge. Still, you sit back with Jimin as the rest of the boys nod in agreement and fiddle with the piece of tech until it’s been turned on. You’re immediately met with a cacophony of crackling radio static so deafening that your instinctual reaction is to cover your ears. You refrain miraculously, but you still cower in one corner with Jimin as the boys listen intently to the noise.

“Is anyone here?” Namjoon calls out to no one in particular. “If you are, can you give us a sign? Move a chair or say something or push Yoongi━”

“What the━?” Yoongi gawks. “Why me?”

“‘Cause you said you don’t believe in them.”

Yoongi clamps his mouth shut, and nods in a way that admits Namjoon has a point. At that moment, there’s a pique in the static, a jumble of inaudible words that almost sounds humanlike.

“What was that?” Hoseok asks. “Sounded like… It almost sounded like it said ‘leave.’”

“Leave?” Jimin squeaks. “Think we should take that as a sign, guys.”

“Nah, I definitely heard Steve, not leave,” Yoongi says.

Jungkook frowns. “Who the hell is Steve?”

“Maybe that’s his name,” Yoongi suggests nonchalantly. “Be nice.”

After a handful of minutes of even more strained silence, the boys are only able to discern certain words that you’re positive don’t have anything to do with the asylum or ghosts. At long last, they shut the machine off and the room is once more plunged into a formidable silence so dense that you almost miss the spirit box. But almost as soon as the piece of tech has been silenced, does Jimin cry out in pure anguish. “What the fuck was that?”

The boys instantly round on their startled friend who is now cowering behind you. The colour has all but drained from his face, eyes wide in a frenzied panic.

“What’s wrong?” Namjoon asks.

Jimin looks hysterical as he shoves a pointed finger in the direction of the wall opposite the room in the corridor. “I swear on my life I just saw something move out of the corner of my eye over there. Like a-a person o-or something. Looked like a shadow. I don’t know! I thought it was one of you guys━”

“Stop it, Jimin.” Your voice treads on apprehension as you look over at the alarmed boy. “You’re scaring me.”

“Yeah, ease up, Jimin,” Namjoon says, though he seems more entertained than anything. “I’d prefer if you didn’t throw my girlfriend headfirst towards a demon or ghost or whatever it is you saw.”

“Joon.” His name rolls off your tongue in a scolding moan as you rub wearily at your eyes. His words do little to help console you, and you’re certain it fairs even worse for poor Jimin.

“I’m sorry. I just━” Jimin pulls you tighter in front of him. “I swear I saw something. Holy shit.”

Jungkook’s the first one outside the room, his own camera in his hands as he goes to investigate. As the rest of the boys file outside in the corridor, you drag Jimin along with you, favouring not to be alone in any part of the building. You can hardly see anything, let alone a shadow. 

Jungkook turns back around at long last, a devious grin on his face as he finds Jimin’s wandering crazed stare. “Maybe it was the shadow man. Told you he exists.”

“I don’t care what it was. My heart almost fell out of my ass,” Jimin gasps. He clutches at his chest over his heart, for added emphasis. “Let’s get out of here.”

You aren’t quite sure if the boys believe him, but you do notice how quick they are to move on from the room and corridor. A palpable tension hangs heavy in the air that makes you realize perhaps the boys are starting to lose their cool under pressure. 

As you reconvene below on the main floor of the building, Namjoon pipes up. “Let’s split up. See if we can find anything on our own.”

“Okay, Scooby Doo,” Jin snorts. “You do know that this is how every horror movie begins, right? There’s power in numbers.”

“Yeah. Which is what we’ll all be saying when this video reaches trending on YouTube with a million views,” Namjoon says, matter-of-fact. “Which we can only do if we get some interesting content. So, let’s split up into pairs of two. We’ll meet back here in an hour.”

“We could just fake it,” Jimin suggests desperately. “Like every big YouTuber does. The magic of editing, guys.” But no one seems to be listening anymore as the group begins to splinter off. Yoongi and Jungkook decide to venture back upstairs in pursuit of the elusive and supposed shadow man, while Hoseok and Taehyung wander outside. Lost and dumbfounded, Jimin gawks around at his retreating friends, calling out in one last effort, “Anyone? …No? Okay, cool.”

He nearly lets out a yelp when Jin clasps a hand on the boy’s shoulder in a reassuring manner. “You’ll be okay, Jimin. C’mon, let’s go.”

Finally alone with Namjoon, he offers up his outstretched hand to you. You take it at once, gripping his palm a little tighter than necessary as he pulls you towards him. 

“You doing okay?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” You lie, even though you know he can see right through it. 

You’re content to find that he at least keeps your hand in his even as he tugs you along with him to explore the rest of the asylum. You decide to leave the building you’re both in and wander to another one where you stumble upon Hoseok and Taehyung on the main floor briefly. Then, making your way upstairs, you find nothing out of the ordinary but empty rooms that you suspect were once upon a time sleeping quarters for the patients. It’s less frightening than the other buildings, though still a little unnerving the longer you stay to explore. You climb the stairs until you’re on the third landing and inspect almost every room to find nothing. 

At some point, you let out a wavering sigh. Namjoon is busy waving around an EMF reader in a room. It’s empty aside from a dusty cot and a broken wardrobe, amongst a few other oddities covered in a thick layer of cobwebs and dirt. You could have sworn you’ve heard footsteps in almost every room you’ve entered that wasn’t either yours or Namjoons, and the strange sensation that you’re being followed hasn’t been able to shake from you. “Joon? Can we go back now? I’m starting to get a little spooked.”

Namjoon comes to a halt at once, turning around to face you. He gives your palm a comforting squeeze. “Hey, you’re okay. There’s nothing to be scared of. I don’t mean to sound like Yoongi but I highly doubt we have to worry about any ghosts.”

“Well, what do you think Jimin saw?”

“Who knows?” Namjoon shrugs. “It was probably just his imagination. Your mind plays tricks on you in the dark, doesn’t it? Here, let’s talk about something else to distract you.”

“Like?”

A moment of silence passes between the two of you as Namjoon considers another thought. You don’t even realize the smug smirk unfurling on his face until it’s too late. “Well… I had an idea earlier. Just a passing thought, really, but I bet it’d be fun anyway.”

“What was it?”

“We could probably have a quickie in one of these rooms and the boys would never know any different.”

You nearly choke at this, sputtering for air as you reach out to flick Namjoon’s shoulder. “You’re unbelievable.”

“Am I wrong?”

“No,” You admit sheepishly. He places his hands on your hips then, pulling you delicately towards him in a manner that makes it hard to focus now. “But I don’t know how I feel about ghosts watching us. Also, the couple that has sex in any horror movie usually ends up dying first.”

Namjoon shakes his head at you, albeit a little amused at your worrisome thoughts. “Nothing’s gonna hurt you. At least not while I’m here.”

“Coming from the man who tripped going up the stairs at your dorm the other day,” You point out tauntingly. The distant reminder and the sound of his abrupt laughter is enough to momentarily soothe your hammering heart. 

Namjoon gasps, feigning a look of mock hurt. “What’s that supposed to mean!”

“Means I love you very much but I don’t know how well you’d fair against ghosts or demons.”

“Ahh, I see how it is.” 

He sounds mildly offended and pokes his fingers at your sides but, in the ensuing scuffle to flee from his grasp, the both of you trip and fumble until you’re pressed up against the nearest wall, the sound of your snickers like music to his ears. He comes colliding against your front, hands digging into your hips. He leans forward to kiss your lips slowly, feeling you smile against him. A delightful chuckle bubbles at your mouth and he parts from you in the next moment wiggling his brows suggestively while a teasing smirk stretches at his face so wide, his dimples start to poke through.

“Wanna?” he asks. 

It’s a simple question, weighing heavy with dirty implications ━ and honestly? You’re kind of into it. Or maybe that’s just because he returns to kissing at your lips, only this time at the corners of your mouth, then the underside of your jaw. Tantalizing motions that seem to make your head spin violently. Your head lolls back against the wall behind you as he droops his head to your neck, lips meeting with the soft flesh of your throat to suck a delicate blossoming hickey there.

“Okay,” You rasp, “so maybe we can spare some time for this.”

“Ah, so now you’re interested.” His voice is huskier now, muffled by the way he busies himself by nipping at the same spot on your throat. He hears your breath hitch, feels the way you part your legs just slightly enough to have him sink further against you. He marvels at your decision in the morning to throw on a skirt and a pair of thick wool tights. At the time, you had said it was because the weather wasn’t too brisk outside just yet; now, he was thanking you silently for unknowingly picking just the right outfit for the occasion. 

“Namjoon…” Your voice is strained now, a mix between a plea and a whine and he grunts against your neck.

It takes Namjoon a moment to rack his brain, realizing that he finds it hard to even form a proper sentence anymore. “Don’t even need to feel my dick in you. Just wanna get you off, baby. Can I?”

You’re already practically drooling. “Think the boys will notice if we’re gone a little longer?” 

“Who cares?” Namjoon quips. “Jimin’ll probably think we got possessed and lost in the demon world or something.”

You giggle, though your voice splinters off into a soft moan as he continues to nip and suck at your neck. His hand falls to your thighs then, fingers brushing upward faintly until he meets the short hem of your skirt before disappearing beneath it. His hand comes to grasp at the delicate curve of your ass, his palm hot and firm against your soft flesh. 

He groans into your neck. “Been dying all night to touch you.”

“Then don’t stop.”

If the way his hardening cock now forms against your inner thigh any inclination, you don’t think he has plans on doing so. Instead, you watch as he lifts his free hand to your mouth, fingers tapping at your lips in a wordless motion. “Open up.”

You do as you’re told, lips parting just enough to wrap around his two fingers. He gazes at you with hooded eyes as you suck at his digits, tongue laving against the sturdy form in your mouth until his fingers are coated thick with your saliva. His other hand, still attached to the rump of your ass, moves like water over your skin to your thigh once more, nudging you aside just enough, pinching delicately at the skin there; he pulls his fingers from your mouth then, then lets the same hand venture under your skirt in a similar fashion. He wastes no time in pushing aside the material of your panties, pressing his digits at your core, watchful eyes staying fixated on yours if only to watch your every expression. His dampened fingers slide over your folds, spreading them open, running across them, admiring the way your stickiness already forms between your legs. 

“Joon…” You cling to him tighter, both to steady yourself against the sudden ministrations and to shield yourself more from view, though you’re certain there’s a slim chance the boys will come across you and Namjoon like this. You hope.

Namjoon’s fingers slip past your folds then, slow and steady as he feels the tight constricting walls of your cunt. You throb around him, thinking only of his cock, imagining the girth of it fitting snug deep within you. The similar stretch of your walls, the fluid motion of his length burrowing in and out of you, wrecking you into shambles. Now, Namjoon wriggles his fingers upward, scratching at a spot within you that has you writhing against him, the slick wetness of your arousal sufficiently coating his fingers. His thumb finds your clit then, running small circles against the small bundle of nerves.

“So wet,” Namjoon moans, resting his forehead against yours. He notes the way your teeth sink into your lower lip, and pulls his free hand out from under your skirt to tap his fingers against your chin. “Gonna moan for me, baby? Let the boys hear you? Maybe wake the dead?”

“You’re such a brat,” You simper through a shuddering breath, and if you weren’t so consumed by him then maybe you would have laughed at the joke he manages to squeeze in at the last moment. But he’s not wrong. What’s the point in keeping silent in an abandoned building that you’re positive only you and your friends are currently occupying? How much longer do you expect to keep quiet, when the way he’s making you feel begins to slowly burn at your insides? 

He curls his fingers deep in you, and your jaw unhinges in a silent gap. You wonder how long you can last, face burning with every passing second as he fingers you closer and closer to your high. Your hips jut outward to meet his hand with every motion, grinding against his knuckles in a desperate need to get off. You’re shameless about it too, fingers gripping his shirt tightly, brows scrunched together in hardened dedication. 

“Such a pretty little mess,” Namjoon hums. “Want you to cum on my hand, baby girl.”

“Fuck, Namjoon━” You whimper now, head lulling back as he twists his fingers further in you. 

But, as soon as you do so, the echoing sound of footsteps has your eyes darting to the darkened corridor. You make out the sound of oblivious chatter, and the familiar voices of Taehyung and Hoseok echoing from somewhere down below. They must be two floors down, though you can hear them screaming at nothing in particular, except for a string of profanities that meet your ears.

“Jesus, fuck!” That definitely sounds like Taehyung, voice shrill with worry. 

“Chill!” There’s Hoseok, but you think he was also screaming moments ago with Taehyung. “It’s just a spider.”

“I don’t care! Get it off of me!”

“Bunch of dumbasses,” Namjoon shakes his head rigidly, a fleeting grin forming on his face that is quick to fade as he curls his fingers upwards further into you. And, while your attention is somewhat fixated on the boys, you find yourself treading a fine line of not giving a fuck as Namjoon’s fingers stay buried deep within your cunt. Still, Namjoon can sense the slight urgency in your demeanor when your hands wind around his neck to tug at his hair, as if to gesture to the strangers that he already knows are nearby. 

“It’s okay,” he murmurs reassuringly, voice low enough for only you to hear. “You’re doing so good, love.”

He slows his fingers almost to a halt as you burrow your face in the crook of his neck. Your walls continue to clench around his fingers, and he adds a third finger to stretch you out just enough in a teasing leisure manner. He does it on purpose too, this much you know for certain, as he pinches playfully at your waist. It’s lewd, the idea of him fingering you out in public like this but the emboldened adrenaline coursing through your veins doesn’t want him to stop. By now, your high overwhelms everything else, causing you to writhe against Namjoon as he cradles you to him. You cum moments later, your orgasm overcoming you before you can sense it, trembling beneath his hands as he continues to finger you through it. Warm, wet arousal leaks from your core, coats his fingers all over as a punctuating whimper of his name tumbles from your lips.

“That’s it, baby,” he says gently. “Let everyone hear how dirty you are. Let it all out.”

Your thighs shake, squeezing shut around his hand, and all he can do is rub soothing circles into your hips with his free hand. He waits for your breath to steady, as the coil in your belly loosens, instead taking the time to admire you to your fullest, drunken hooded eyes glazed over in that perfect expression he loves.

“Want your cock in me now, Joon,” You whine breathlessly. The whining persistence in your voice excites Namjoon, only amplified tenfold by the way you begin nipping and sucking at his neck. 

“Now?” he asks.

“Now.”

Almost instantly, there’s a noticeable shift in his expression, a shit-eating smirk tugging at his mouth. You smother the rest of it before it can become too smug, folding your lips over his. Still, he hums through your eager kissing, “Yeah? Gonna let me fuck you like this, love? Take you raw against this wall, right here, right now?”

“Yes, please,” You mewl. Growing restless, you beg silently, “Namjoon.”

“Better make it quick then, hm?” 

You can only nod, still in a daze from the orgasm that still courses through your veins. Namjoon’s quick to oblige, pulling his hands from your heat and wiping your slick wetness off on his thigh. Clumsy hands between the both of you fumble to undo the button of his jeans, hastily undoing them just enough to free his straining cock from within. He wedges himself between your legs, hiking your skirt farther up your thighs, and he hurries to free his length from its confinements, wild locks spilling out onto his forehead and into your own line of sight. You push his hair up and away from his face, though your fingers grip suddenly at the roots of his locks when he grips your thigh and hoists it up to his hip, and then pushes himself into you at once, the tip of his warm cock easily coaxed by your already wet walls. He moans into your neck but muffles it halfheartedly by kissing along your throat.

“Easy there, boy,” You snicker, though your own words are a weak drunken slur, drowning out into a muffled whimper as he thrusts himself into you all the way. His hips meet yours roughly, grinding against you as your walls stretch around his throbbing cock.

“I’m needy,” he whines. “Just wanna feel you around me.”

He wastes no time in moving again, pulling his hips back only to thrust into you, adopting a steady fluid pace in such a way that has your head lolling back against the wall, and your mouth popping open in a silent moan as you shift beneath him. The wall of the building behind you is rough and jagged but you don’t feel it, not with the way he continues to thrust into you. His fingers dig into the flesh of your thigh, stretching you apart in such a way that has him pummeling his length into your core just right. 

“Fuck,” he grunts into your neck. Impatient hands move to yank your shirt up to your chest, pulling your bra down just enough for your breasts to pop out. He moves to leave a wet trail of kisses to your breasts, catching one of your nipples between his teeth and sucking harshly at it. The new sensation has your own walls clenching around him, and he almost comes undone then. Against your chest, you can hear him murmur breathlessly, “You feel so fucking good, baby.”

“Mmm,” You tug harshly at the roots of his hair. An unabashedly loud moan nearly tumbles from your lips before you can bite it back. Elsewhere, you can hear the sound of faint footsteps once more in the far distance, Taehyung and Hoseok much closer this time (quite possibly on the same floor as you, but the opposite end), but you don’t seem to care much anymore about the potentiality of being caught. “Fuck, Namjoon━”

“You like being fucked like this?” he rasps. “Out in public, for anyone to see?”

You feebly muster a nod, lips parting in a silent moan safe for the sound of your hot panting in his ear. Hurried yet deep shuddering strokes, he fucks into you again and again until your head is spinning. Every thrust sends a jolt up your spine and, still riddled by your first high, your body is quick to turn into shambles beneath him. Your hands flail outward to grasp onto every inch of his body, hands slithering beneath the material of his shirt, fingernails to dig crescent shapes into his torso, then snaking downward to grasp at his bum, pulling him in closer each time he rolls his hips into yours.

“Joon…” Your voice is an exhausted moan when it meets his ear. He almost doesn’t hear it, instead too caught up in the way your panting breaths mingle with the crude wetness of his cock delving past your folds each time. Somewhere, once more, in the distance even closer this time is the sound of footsteps once more. The thought of someone walking in one you like this━Namjoon wedged between your thighs, drilling his leaking cock into your wet cunt and tearing you to utter shambles━does something chaotically good to you. “Not gonna last.”

“Me neither,” he gasps. “Don’t care. Just wanna cum. Just wanna feel you cum around me.”

His thrusts begin to tread into sloppy territory, fervently itching to get both of you off. You reach your second high first, tumbling towards it with open arms. You can’t contain yourself, the tempting moan dancing upon the tip of your tongue, burning in your throat as your orgasm twists at your belly. “Fuck, baby, I’m gonna━” 

But your voice splinters off into a delicious sounding whimper. Wary of being caught by your wandering friends when you’re both so close to being undone (because, really, the idea of someone else hearing you whimper because of how good his cock is exhilarates him), Namjoon’s hand clamps over your lips and you welcome it graciously, favouring the idea of his fingers poking into your mouth so that you have something to distract your moaning. It still comes, broken and inaudible, smothered by Namjoon’s hand, as your tongue lavs around his digits. 

Now, you’re truly a sight to behold, making Namjoon’s length twitch amongst your walls. Exhausted, fucked out eyes gawk at him, too weak to carry on, instead jutting your hips forward to meet his with each thrust. 

“Shit,” he whines. “Fuckin’ hell, Y/N━”

He comes moments later, frantic slaps of his own hips having him spilling his seed sloppily into your already wet cunt. The abrupt sensation as your own walls clenching so impossibly tight around him, he feels as if he can’t move, though it’s not as if he immediately plans to. Instead, after a few more rocky thrusts into you to ride out both of your highs, he collapses against your chest and you smooth your fingers delicately through his hair. 

It’s a miracle when you both manage to finally pry themselves off of one another. As Namjoon hurries to tuck himself back into his jeans, you fidget with your bra and shirt, and then the hem of your skirt, tugging it as low as it can go. His cum is still warm and sticky between your legs, slowly beginning to run down your inner thighs. 

You catch him looking at some point and ask curiously, “What?”

“Nothing,” he says innocently. “Just wondering how you still manage to look so beautiful even after having my cum fucked in you.”

You roll your eyes as you reach out to ruffle his messy hair in an attempt to tame the damage you’ve caused. He smiles wide at the effort anyway. 

“Decent?” he asks.

“Good enough,” You say. “Now, let’s find the boys before anyone notices we were gone for too long.”

And this, he doesn’t disagree with.

Later, when you and Namjoon have regrouped with the rest of the boys back by the cars parked outside the asylum, everyone looks a little more on edge than when you left them. Except for maybe you and Namjoon. You wonder if the boys notice, judging by the way you and Namjoon keep giggling amongst yourselves.

“So,” Jungkook says, “did you guys find anything?”

“Nothing,” Jin admits. “Just freaked out Jimin a little bit more.”

The boy in question can be seen scowling to himself, arms folded over his chest. “All I gotta say is screw this place.”

Hoseok looks indifferent as he reviews a recording on the camera in his hands. When he speaks, his voice is a casual drawl. “Dunno. Thought we heard some suspiciously loud moaning from one part of that building that I’m almost positive Namjoon and Y/N were exploring.”

At this, Taehyung bursts out into wolfish laughter, only prompted further by your sudden horrified expression that you try to play off nonchalantly and fail miserably at doing. So they had heard you two after all? “Ha! They sure were exploring something.”

While the rest of the boys look either intrigued or rightfully confused, Namjoon shakes his head defiantly. “Nah, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Resisting the urge to hide behind your hands, you bite your tongue and try to sift through your brain for something else to discuss. Over the childish giggling sounding from Taehyung and Hoseok, you ask, “Well, did you guys find anything? Thought we heard you exploring the third floor.”

“Third floor?” Hoseok echoes, dumbfounded. “We didn’t get that far.”

“But I could have sworn I heard you guys.”

Hoseok’s brows knit together. He exchanges a look with Taehyung, then returns his stare to you. “You probably heard Tae screaming like a lunatic because a spider was on him. We were only in there long enough to try the spirit box out again, but that was on the second floor. Then the spider thing happened. Then, we left.”

Now, this is alarming. You gap at the boys as your mind tries to piece together the puzzles of this dilemma. Had you heard the boys, or perhaps something else entirely? Or maybe it was just your imagination. Namjoon did say your mind plays tricks on you ━ but the sound of footsteps had been so vivid. 

Even Namjoon looks stupefied, gawking at Hoseok. “Wait, you’re not joking, are you?”

“No,” Taehyung shakes his head. “We were filming the whole time. We can show you. Are you guys joking?”

“No,” You promise. “We were━ Erm━ We got distracted. We weren’t really paying much attention but━”

You’re fortunate when Yoongi decides to speak up, interrupting your embarrassed stammering. “So then what did you guys hear…?

A beat of silence passes amongst your group of friends. One-by-one, you each turn to look up at the haunting asylum still standing behind you, the night blurring its shape into one incomprehensible monstrosity. Okay, so maybe the ghost stories about this place are true. A shiver runs down your spine. 

Then━

“So does that mean the ghost is a Peeping Tom or━?” Jungkook asks. You wonder if you should be concerned by his serious tone.

The boys howl with laughter at the thought, though you’re still admittedly a little shaken up by the idea of a ghost watching you and Namjoon bone. Maybe you asked for it, what with deciding to have a quickie in a haunted asylum. 

“I don’t know, but can we please get out of here?” You press thinly. “Jimin was right. Screw this place.”

If the boys are as deeply unsettled by yours and Namjoon’s sudden revelation, you don’t know. You all manage to pack up your belongings and clamber in the cars in record timing, speeding away from the asylum unscathed. And if you really did just witness a ghost encounter, then you suppose it isn’t all that bad. 

At the very least, Namjoon’s video does make it to the trending page.

⟶ All rights reserved to © jungkxook. I do not allow reposting, translating, or any sort of modifying and reuploading of my work.

⟶ Feedback is always appreciated!

[copias-thrall]

Would it be alright to request some Papa IV x f!Reader? Like the reader is a very kind and sweet person and she has always supported Copia kind of thing? Maybe they’re having a whole day to themselves to celebrate?

Yes! Let’s get some more sweet Copia 😊 

They made fun of him and called him The Rat.

Terzo made him the butt of all his pranks.

Nihil undermined him at every turn.

Imperator pushed him to the point of breaking.

What you saw a man trying to do his best with his only flaw being an outsider within the Abbey walls, and in a place where actual hellbeasts were basically demon cats, were rats such an odd choice of pet?

You were fairly certain Copia knew the “Squeak if u like cheze” sign was taped to his back, but he just walked down the corridors anyway and let the Siblings and Ghouls chitter at him. You’d seen this man save one of the Abbey mice from a glue trap, and your heart just couldn’t let it continue.

So, you’d approached him and offered to remove the offending paper.

Copia, however, had just smiled at you.

“It is good of you to say, Sister. But let them have their fun, eh?”

He’d given you a slight bow and had gone on his merry way.

After that, however, Copia had warmed to you, often seeking you out so he could sit with you in the mess hall at mealtimes or chat theology with you on lazy Saturday afternoons.

When some of Terzo’s faction had started stuttering to make fun of Copia’s shyness with public speaking, you’d tried to shut them down. Not everyone was good in front of a crowd—especially when that crowd was hostile. All that did, however, was get them to double down and start calling you, "rat lover."

“Doesn’t it bother you, Cardinal?" you'd asked during one of your food dates. "It’s so…petty.”

But he’d just given you a fond look.

“It is of no consequence, dear Sister. Let them be thinking what they will.”

You’d learned all of his rats’ names and started smuggling them contraband from the kitchens.

Copia had you transferred from Imperator’s admin pool to work as his assistant.

“All this new paperwork!” He’s swept his arm across the stacks of his desk. “I thought I could be using a little help from a friend, yes?”

You’d inherently understood you weren’t there to file paperwork—you were there to tell him when to take a break, to replace his cold coffee, and to be a sounding board.

And you didn’t miss the way Copia’s mismatched eyes would look on you with adoration.

Well, you thought he was pretty neat, too.

When he’d been away on his first tour, you’d done your best to keep up with him. You had your other duties and your friends, but you tried to send him a supportive word before, during, and after each performance.

His missives back had grown fewer as the tour had dragged on, but each one had been effusive—if riddled with typos.

After the first tour, things had been different. Copia had come back from the road a glowing success…and in a tight suit that showed off his assets instead of his smothering cassock.

The tide turned, and while there were still his many detractors, gone were the days of “kick me” signs and farces.

You’d noticed a significant pay increase and an extra day off.

“But Cardinal! You need me here!” you’d protested.

He’d simply grabbed your hands and kissed each one.

“I do. And that is why you must be well-rested. Lots to get done. Now, shoo!”

And truth be told, the two of you had worked harder. Copia had spent less and less time in his study and more time attending meetings or at band practice or at weekend symposiums. You’d done your best on keeping his mountain of paperwork down to a molehill, but sometimes the two of you needed to work late into the night to meet seemingly arbitrary deadlines while you put your foot down and told the kitchen Ghoul that making some rigatoni past hours wasn’t going to kill them.

Of course, then you needed to put your foot down about Copia stopping long enough to eat the carbonara. Sometimes he’d growl at you, and you’d have to snap your fingers at him and tell him being hangry wasn’t a good excuse to be snippy with you; he was predictably contrite after he’d consumed a good portion, and you took his apologies as your due.

All of which is to say: you had Copia’s back from the get-go, and he knew you were always in his corner.

When he comes back from Mexico newly ascended, there are dozens of Siblings who want a piece of him. Some—like you—have been in his fan club since day 1; others jumped on the bandwagon during the final tour; while a few just see the razzle dazzle and want to shine too.

You’re in his study because you want to make sure everything is caught up before he comes back to work. You imagine that he’s going to spend a few days reaping the rewards of his promotion, and—while a part of you feels a little let down about not being a part of that particular party—you are genuinely invested in Copia succeeding.

So when the door bangs open, you’re startled to find Copia…er…Papa Emeritus the 4th striding into the room.

“Oh! Your Dark Excellency! I was just making sure—”

“How did I be knowing I would find you here, eh? Today is not a day to be working!”

“But you—”

He makes a shushing noise and reaches his hands out. They linger in the air between the both of you until he makes a “come here” motion with his fingers.

Tentatively, you curl your fingers into his gloved ones.

“We are taking the day off, yes?”

“W-we?”

Copia raises an eyebrow at you. “Sí. With who else should I be celebrating?”

You blush, pleased that he seems genuinely baffled.

The March air is living up to its reputation, so Copia leads you to one of the sunniest rooms in the Abbey. There, you find a picnic blanket set up with a picturesque spread of food, and Rain helping Mountain to position a bevy of potted plants around the area.

Copia clucks at them good-naturedly to leave. Rain gives you the thumbs up and Mountain just pats you on the head as they leave. (As Copia’s Girl Friday, you’ve had to backmanage his ghoulies as much as you’ve had to organize his report piles.)

When he gestures for you to sit, you arrange yourself comfortably in a big square of sun that’s streaming in from the windows. As you take in the meats, cheeses, sandwiches, and fruits that populate the corner of the blanket, Copia putters around with a bottle of Champagne and two glasses.

The whole thing is a little unexpected, but not unwelcome, and you watch him with fondness as he utters a Whoopsie when the cork goes flying at the ceiling and as he obsesses over making each glass level.

You two clink glasses with a Salute, both taking a modest sip.

“This is lovely, Cop—uh, Papa.” He’s all smiles. “But why me?”

His eyebrows draw together, and he tilts his head at you.

“Mia cara…who else would it be?”

You blush and shrug your shoulders, looking down at your platter. When he takes your hand in his warm, leathered one, you look up and get lost in his earnest, mismatched gaze.

“You are the most important person in my life.”

His thumb strokes over your knuckles.

“You are too sweet, mia cara. Helping an old man—”

“You’re not old—”

He tsks at you.

“Helping a person I am being. At my side even when you are in the knowing.” He taps his nose and winks. “Our little conspiracy of silence, yes?”

That Copia is not quite exactly the bumbling, nutty-professor he leads the rest of the Clergy to believe he is? Yeah, obviously.

He nods.

“And yet, you are by my side. Keeping my head on straight. Because you are wanting to.”

Because you saw the way he treated his rats, his Ghouls, and even Sister Imperator. He may have a dangerous ambition, but he’s not a dangerous man.

“I believe in you Papa.”

He gives you that fond look again.

“Well. I believe in you too, Sister.”

Copia lets your hand go and claps.

“Now! Let us enjoy this feast! Next up is a movie marathon where we enjoy our food comas, yes?”

You pop a grape into your mouth.

“Of course, Papa.” You give him a devilish smile. “How ‘bout you give the schedule so I can make sure we’re on track, hm?”

He blinks at you for a moment before giving you his little rat laugh.

“Ah, eh heh heh! There is my little taskmaster.”

“What would you do without me?”

He tosses a gape and just barely catches it in his mouth.

“I wouldn’t, cara. I wouldn’t.”

[midnightmoonkiss]

Painful Stings & Sweet Apologies

Yandere! Izuku Midoriya X Fem! Reader

Summary: Rage fueled by failure, Izuku finds comfort in a bar, only to come home to a broken promise and a furious darling. He didn’t mean for this to happen.

WARNINGS!: blood, violence, alcohol (Izuku under the influence)

Category: Angst, one-sided fluff

Word Count: 9k+

A/N: This is my first yandere fic! I’m nervous as hell, I have no idea if I got this right lol. Though I did spend months perfecting it to the best of my abilities! Hope you enjoy~

Just To Clarify:

You’re both adults

It’s Friday

It’s cold and rainy (naturally--)

Izuku’s bedroom has a walk in closet and a bathroom

the kitchen is off-limits

THIS IS A YANDERE FIC!

Izuku is an obsessive yandere~

Cold, burning liquid rushed down the male’s throat as he gulped at the drink within the short glass.

Whiskey, or more specifically - a Jack Daniels, the honey-brown alcohol that delivered a bitter slap to all those who drank its refreshing nectar. 

It wasn’t his usual drink, and certainly not one he’d ever guzzle like a parched beast.

Hell, who in their right mind would do that? Even with a single sip, it left your chest burning with its heat.

But desperate times call for desperate measures, right?

Or, more of, self-loathing times call for a quick, one-way ticket to Forget-Me Ville and Cringe Island.

The bar he sat at was lively, filled with drunken laughter and slurred speeches of men and women who have been out for far too long.

But it was Friday night, so who cared?

A rainy, cold, sucky, depressing Friday night, one of which his friends tried to make a bit better by taking the pissed off, green-haired hero out for drinks.

They certainly hadn’t expected Izuku, an innocent little guy who couldn’t handle his liquor for shit, to shoot down an entire glass of whiskey.

At first, he ordered a simple beer - a starter drink if you will.

It didn’t take but ten minutes for him to gulp that glass down, and he was onto his next drink - a sangria wine cooler. His typical drink. He always was more of a fruity guy, after all, preferring the sweet tang over the bitter bite.

But as the night raged on, and so did his inner turmoil, he kept ordering stronger and stronger drinks, until he got to the whiskey. You could say he lost his sense of reason a while ago.

He was still seething with rage, not as much as before but the mixture of anger and frustration swirled hotly with the alcohol pumping through his veins and sitting in his belly.

You could say it was keeping him warm in this lifeless atmosphere.

For the first time in what felt like forever, he didn’t think of you, his precious little darling. He could barely think straight, mind occupied with too many thoughts to be able to understand any of them. It was all a garbled mess, one he chose to ignore.

Was that a good or a bad thing? He’d find out later.

But for now?

He needed another drink.

In the beginning, this Friday seemed like it was going to be one of the best he’ll ever have.

For months this pro hero has been working alongside detectives with catching a murderous villain known by the name “Ghoul.”

They were sick and twisted, their motives unknown, their trail hard to tract.

He had only one encounter with them, but he was too late to catch them.

That’s the day he was brought in to help aid the case.

But, that day haunted him for weeks. He knew that if he had arrived at the bloody scene sooner, he could have captured that cannibalistic fuck, brought justice to those who had already died by their mangy hands.. and prevented the deaths that would ensue after.

He’d known horrible villains before, but this one was different. Their teeth were sharp, blood permanently stained their clothes, and they gave off a wolfish vibe. Yes, a hunter. One who tore flesh from human bones and munched on it until someone screamed in terror for help.

For months he helped gather intel, piece puzzle pieces together, aid with location predictions and stakeout missions, until finally - they found that bastard.

It was more of a hunch than anything really, that Ghoul would show up to that site.

Ghoul, while hard to track, left a pattern in their wake. They avoided certain areas, thrived where the poor were at their weakest. The murders always seemed to happen at the exact same time behind run-down fast-food restaurants.

It was unclear if the sicko liked a hearty human meal with their victims own stomachs filled with greasy, fattening food, or if it was just convenient to them, either way - the perp was too damn sloppy.

To regular ol’ police personnel, the murders would just always happen there, behind restaurants.

But after Deku’s team began tracking where each and every murder occurred, it was quite easy to tell they were drawing, funnily enough, a circle around the city’s map.

It was stupid, childish, and downright idiotic, but damn if that didn’t lead the team to find the cold-blooded killer.

Adrenaline and pure hatred for the villain fueled Deku’s onslaught of attacks, each seemingly more powerful and less calculated. His mind was muddled.

He was filled with rage, finally being able to see the shitty excuse of a human again, but it affected his movements. He was being hasty, careless, not his usual calculated self.

And that’s what brought him his demise.

His shoulder was harshly bitten, razor-sharp teeth tearing through the fabric of his suit and shredding up the skin on his shoulder. Their quirk pumped through his blood instantly, making him collapse onto his knees, paralyzed. He hissed in pain as the sickeningly warm liquid flowed down his arm, unable to stop himself from face planting onto the dirty gravel of the alleyway.

He had lost, and Ghoul got away.

He still remembers it, after all, it was only hours ago that it happened.

The sun had long since set, the crescent moon hung high in the sky as her stars shimmered around her. His wound was stitched up and healed by doctors, leaving only a bitter scar to remind him of his failure.

He failed not only himself but those who counted on him.

God, he sucked.

And so, he ordered another drink.

He wanted to forget. He didn’t want to feel the failure sting at his fragile heart anymore.

It was too much to take.

What type of hero let the villain get away, knowing full well that they would kill again?

They couldn’t track Ghoul’s trail anymore, for the circle had been completed - and they were left with nothing with the numbing feeling of brutal loss.

Hours blurred together as his mind went hazy. His speech slurred together, dull, green eyes unfocused and mouth blabbering out nonsense to his friends that he couldn’t even really hear. It just- came out. 

Soon enough, he was being dragged out of the bar by his annoyingly sober friends.

The night had gotten colder since they first entered the warm bar, rain pelted down like freezing bullets flying from a machine gun. A dirty old awning kept them dry as they stood still at the front of the bars entrance, the loud music bouncing off the walls inside echoed down the empty streets.

Heavy streams of salty rainwater poured off the edge of the awning, splattering down into a mud puddle that emptied into the sewer grate below.

Who doesnt love the musty stench of rain on asphalt?

Hell, the smell itself, combined with the strong yet savory scent of the Korean barbeque joint across the street was enough to make him nauseous. He had drank far too much, and his stomach was suffering the consequences. He should have eaten more before drinking. How foolish.

 “It’s pretty late, you should head home.” Reasoned his best friend, Todoroki, puffs of condensation leaving his mouth as the warm breath met cold air, pressing a freezing hand to the back of the freckled boy's sweaty neck to jolt his drowsy, drunken self into a more alert state. Nothing but time could sober you up, but damn if that hand didn’t help slap some energy into him.

“Yeaahh, ye-yeahhh.. I gooht you Todooroe.” God, he sounded like someone high on anesthesia after being awoken from a surgery - which he definitely would be able to compare this experience to. Being a hero meant at least a few surgeries a year. Comes with the job.

Plus, this wasn’t the first time he’s been drunk.

He sure as hell hated the aftermath, but some nights it felt as if the hot burn of alcohol was the only thing that could keep him sane.

This was just one of those nights - or perhaps it was multiple nights slammed into one from just how stupidly drunk he was. The world was blurred, and Izuku doubted he could even walk straight at this point.

The half and half hero waved down a stray taxi, street water splashing up onto the sidewalk as the yellow vehicle came to a screeching halt.

“Get home safe.” Todoroki sighed out his nose at seeing his friends out-of-it state, helping the giddy and jelly-like hero into the back seat.

Izuku pouted, grabby hands clinging onto his friend's shirt in protest.

With a half-hearted chuckle, Todoroki pried himself free from his grip, handing the cab driver more than enough yen to get the drunk boy home.

He gave the taxi driver an address, and soon the car was rolling off down the street, Izukus flushed face pressed against the cold, fogging glass and staring with eyes full of tears at his friend.

Though, it seemed as if he had forgotten a promise he made to someone very important to him. Someone who he devoted his entire life to.

Someone who he risked everything for.

You.

His princess who had been locked in a small, dark room all day, wrists tightly cuffed to loose chains on the wall. The only light provided was a rusty oil lamp Izuku had gotten at a yard sale one day. The flame was dull, and left the room covered in shadows.

The tile below was as cold as it had been since the morning when Izuku had forcefully chained you there for misbehaving the night before.

You had deserved this punishment for disobeying him.

That’s what he tried to convince, anyway.

He was only trying to keep you safe! He hated punishing you, hated the way you thrashed and screamed at him in protest - that only meant he had to be rougher with you. You had broken into the most dangerous room in the apartment, afterall.

The kitchen.

There were far too many harmful objects in there!

Knives that could slice your delicate skin to shreds, forks that could jab into your body, hot stoves that could leave you with a nasty burn, and canned food stored too high up on the shelf that could fall and hit your head.. It was for your protection that the kitchen was off-limits to you!

Plus, Izuku, your oh-so kind and sweet boyfriend, had no problem with cooking you meals to eat together. In fact, he loved it!

He felt accomplished whenever you'd hum in approval at his cooking, or even turned on if that slutty mouth of yours just so happened to moan around your utensil. 

Those were the nights dinner was forgotten.

But you had been foolish, entering the kitchen for a midnight snack whilst Izuku was out on patrol. Your sneaky little self thought you were clever, leaving no trace of your betrayal.

Until you were awoken hours later by a green glow, blood running cold as a pair of murderous neon eyes stared into yours.

It had to be one of the scariest sights to date.

His pupils were shrunk, green electricity buzzing around his large body. He hovered over your trembling body, a wrapper in between his two gloved fingers.

He was so close, your noses brushed together.

You swore he could see into your soul, as well as see the fear in your (E/C) eyes.

“What is this, (Y/N)?” He had asked innocently, hurt coating his words.

“I-” you wanted to make an excuse, protest, say it wasn’t yours, but every single letter died on your tongue as his face pressed closer, a sadistic smile overtaking his features.

“You didn’t.. You didn’t go into the kitchen, did you?”

His hot, minty breath blew all over your face as he spoke, and you shriveled back in fear as insanity crossed his expression in that way you were far too familiar with.

The giggles bubbled in his throat as he tried to fight logic with delusion, “It wasn’t you, right? Someone broke in, didn’t they? You wouldn’t break my trust, would you?”

His voice was cracking, fingers digging into the flesh of the bed beneath you as his eye began to twitch.

He stared down at you, curly green hair brushing against the sides of your face, waiting far too long for an answer he would never get. His bottom lip wobbled, feat tears welling up in his eyes and falling onto your pale cheeks as his body shook with anger and sadness.

He was already stressed about the following mornings mission, and to come home to his princess betraying his trust was not something he enjoyed.

And so, you were punished.

But he had promised you wouldnt be locked in there for long, he knew how you feared the dark. He had conditioned you to fear it, after all. It was his greatest accomplishment.

You were always so willing to cuddle into him when the lights were off.

A few hours turned into nearly an entire day, the only indication you had of this was past experiences, skin around your wrists rubbed raw from the metal cuffs, and the unusual sting of your ass and bare legs burning from the freezing tile beneath you.

That was the least of your worries, though.

Worst of all - the flame, which was holding you together and keeping you from crying out for help to those who might hear you in this soundproof room, which would no doubt get you a harsher punishment, was about to die out.

That flame, albeit small, was your only hope of surviving this.

Izuku was typically a very reliable person, it was strange for him to not keep his word to you. He devoted his being to you, worshipped the ground you regrettably walked upon, why would he break his own promise?

The thought of being trapped in the dark, the echo of your chains taunting your delirious mind had you close to tears. You didn’t want to be alone here anymore.

You watched in horror as the flame got smaller and smaller, tears now rolling down your cheeks as you pleaded under your breath for it to last longer.

The air vents around you provided enough oxygen for it to survive, but that damn oil..

Where was he?! 

Suddenly, the door to his apartment flew open, giggles seeping through the house and teasing your ears.

Then, there was no more light.

A screech tore from your throat, a desperate call of his name as you thrashed around, tears pouring from your eyes.

You felt as if you couldnt breathe as your head whipped around the space, desperate for more air and light as your lungs seemed to scream.

You couldnt feel the cold chill of the floor anymore, body numb as adrenaline pumped through your veins.

What was in the dark?

How big was this space again?

Rather, how small was it?

What was that noise?

Did something just touch you?

There was wind, there was wind, no. A cold chill?

Oh god what was that-

Loud, clumsy footsteps made their way closer and closer to the locked metal door. You sobbed as your heard the jingle of keys, metal scraping against metal as he fumbled with inserting them into the lock.

Until finally, you were basked in the honey-dew glow of the bedroom.

You fought to control your breathing as he dropped to his knees, taking far too long for your liking to get the cuffs off.

But at least now you know why he took so god damn long.

You could smell the putrid miasma of alcohol wafting off him the moment he stepped into the darkroom, tainted with the salty effluvium of rainwater as it dripped onto your skin from his damp, messy hair.

Rage bubbled inside you as he giggled once more at your tear-stained cheeks, “D-did yoou miss mee?” He slurred, a giddy smile on his face as the stale stench of what he had been drinking all night circled around your head like a rotten wreath.

Instead of answering, like you knew you should have, you turned your head towards the door, soaking in the light you were previously deprived of. Even if it was just a mere minute.

At your silence, his smile quickly turned into a frown. Big, forestry green eyes welled up with sadness, bottom lip trembling, “(Y-Y/N)?” He couldnt help but reach out, scarred fingers wishing to wipe away those stray tears from your face.

You missed him.

That’s why you were crying, surely.

He wanted to comfort you, say that he was there now and that you could both cuddle until twinkling dawn.

You weren’t alone anymore.

He was all you needed, and he was right beside you.

He’ll always be there for you, and you’ll always be there for him.

Because you love each other.

“D-Don’t cry-”

His cold hand was smacked away, and his usually sturdy body was shoved back so that you could scramble out of the freezing closet.

You needed space.

More room to breath.

To be on flooring that didnt feel like ice cutting into your flesh.

Hell, you were sure the skin that had the unholy misfortune of touching the floor were burned red at this point from how long you had to sit there.

Not to mention your poor wrists, you couldnt even bear the sight of them being so raw. You were pretty sure they would bleed if you even touched them. Your body was screaming in pain, stomach growing for food, mouth parched from not being given water so that you wouldnt make a mess on the floor.

You were weak, shaking, and afraid.

That bastard had the gall to say not to cry, to look concerned when he knew damn well how much you absolutely despised the dark.

At first it was a childish fear, but the moment he snatched you from your regular life, that fear became a reality. There were countless nights you’d be punished by being left alone in the dark.

He didnt want to hurt you, no, and he never has, but damn if he hasnt conditioned you to be afraid. 

Storms were the worst.

What was once a peaceful white noise turned into a terrifying nightmare once the moon rose in the sky.

There were times you were locked in that closet during violent storms, screaming and begging to be let out.

Sometimes you were, other times you werent as lucky.

Though it was only raining right now, each pitter-patter of the droplets against the window or balcony made hairs on your neck stand up. The sound was previously muted in the closet, but now it was hitting you like a freight train on a track that never seemed to end.

You heard him scramble to his feet as you wiped your tears away, the creak of the floorboards as he stumbled towards you.

A subtle bang made you jump, his foot no doubt hitting the chest at the end of your bed. Everso the clumsy one, even in an illuminated room.

Suddenly, he was right behind you, arms wrapping tightly around your middle as his head dropped to your shoulder, nuzzling his cheek against your neck.

Perhaps it would have been pleasant, comforting, even, if he wasnt soaked to the bone. The cold water from his dark grey, long-sleeved sweater was now seeping into your own thin clothes, freezing wet hair sending shivers down your spine and it presses against your heated, sensitive skin. Some drops even went down your back, ripping a gasp from you.

This wasnt comforting at all.

This was suffocating.

You squirmed in his grasp, desperate to get the hell away from him.

You were already pissed, and him wrapping around you and squeezing you tight like a snake to its prey was the cherry on top of your disastrous sundae.

With a grunt, you used the rest of what little strength you had left to rip yourself free from his ‘hug,’ nearly tripping on your own two feet as you rushed away from him.

He pouted at you as you shoved yourself into a corner of the room, finding comfort in being able to see all around you, no surprise attacks from behind, only what was in front of you.

Your breath was heavy as you glared at him, nostrils flaring and jaw clenching.

Truly, you had some nerve.

But it was hard to help it.

He broke a promise.

He never does that, and yet in your time of need- he wasn’t there for you.

For once.

He knew damn well you were locked up, scared shitless, expecting him to return home in a few short hours, yet here he is - looking absolutely clueless as to why you were suddenly so angry at him.

Tears streamed down his drunkenly flushed cheeks, hurt by how you shoved him away again.

All he wanted to do was snuggle you, his body exhausted yet numbed by the alcohol still burning in his tummy.

“Where..” you started, voice low, scratchy, and dripping with venom that reached deaf ears. “Where have you been!”

Just as he was about to open that mouth of his, no doubt about babble nearly incoherently - form logical excuses with evidence to back him up, say he lost track of time which you know damn well he never did, you shut him up.

You hated dealing with him when he was drunk, hell - you hated dealing with his obsessive ass most days.

But drunk? Drunk he got worse. He was clingy, more emotional, and worst of all? He didn’t have a filter.

He always managed to hide those more sinister desires under that sweet mask of his - until alcohol brought it out.

God, the smell of it made you sick to your stomach, but luckily you didn't have any food to throw up.

No thanks to him.

“What the fuck, Midoriya?!” You leered at him, noticing quickly the way his eyes darkened in that way they always did when you referred to him by his family name - the name he hated being called by you of all people.

“I’ve been trapped in that room all goddamn day! You said it’d be a few hours? What the hell happened to that! Look at the fucking time! Nine hours! Nine hours I’ve been stuck in my own personal hell! I can’t feel my fucking legs because of you!”

“I-” he attempted to start, the firm grip he had on his sanity quickly loosening with every shout you threw at him.

You cut him off, again, pent up rage now overtaking your sense of reason and fear, “What the hell happened?! You know what! I don’t even care! Not only did you,” You pointed a trembling finger at his stilled body, “break a promise! Something you swore you would never fucking do, you also had the nerve at laugh at me as I was trembling in fear!”

You looked like a mess, body shaking and bent over itself, one arm clutched around your waist as if to hold yourself together as that accusing finger stayed trained on him. Your hair was messy, frizzy, soaked with sweat and oily as hell from being denied a shower. Your clothes, thin and girly - much to your utter distaste, but to his satisfaction - now damp thanks to his carelessness.

All of this was because of him.

It always was.

Every single thing that went wrong in your life always seemed to be because of him nowadays.

You couldnt believe you let yourself fall for that misleading smile all those years ago, only to end up like this.

A mouse in a lions den.

But hell if that would stop you from squeaking your heart out till his razor-sharp claws ultimately caged you back in.

“Do you see my wrists?!” with a strangled sob, you held up both of your arms to show him the mess he already knew was his fault, “look at them! They hurt so fucking much because you left me in those disgusting handcuffs! This is all your fault!”

Your knees were wobbling so bad you swore your legs would give out at any second, but you’d be damned if you didnt hold your ground to this lunatic.

True, some days he was nice, normal, even. But days like these, or days much worse, you were reminded of just who he really was.

A monster was stretching it. He never intentionally tried to hurt you, your friends, or even your family.

No, he just stole you from your apartment in the dead of night, convinced the reason you were crying was because of the thunderstorm and not because some psycho snatched you from your window like some sort of 1970’s movie trope. That night he cradled your thrashing body to his hard chest with his strong arms, cooing at you and whispering sweet nothings into your ear as you begged to be let go. You were just scared of the storm~ He would keep you safe~ He is the number one hero, afterall~

That was all utter bullshit, straight from the beginning.

And even now he was still wrapped in the delusion that you loved him as much as he loved you.

A fated pair.

Please.

But you still held on to the pathetic hope that one day he’d snap out of it, return to the Izuku you knew from the beginning and not the person who now stood a few feet in front of you, staring with cold, emotionless eyes.

“I’m sorry.” he says impassively, face as blank as a new canvas - unreadable and dangerous in every way imaginable. It was hard not to feel as if he was just waiting to strike, already calculating his next moves like he always seemed to do. It was far easier to deal with an angry Izuku than one where you couldn’t read his already complex emotions, thoughts, anything. He was the definition of expressive, and it truly took a fuckin bullet to the back of his head for him to be like this.

So clearly, you hit a nerve.

Wonderful.

“Oh?” Despite knowing the implications of the situation you found yourself in, it was impossible not to laugh at such a pathetic fucking apology.

Knowing him, he probably was sorry, deep down inside. You knew he didn’t like seeing you hurt, especially if it was because of his doing, and yet- you pressed on. 

Pent up anger was a nasty thing to deal with, especially since it’s been brewing inside you for so long.

“Are you now? You don’t fucking seem sorry! If you were really sorry, you wouldnt have done it! But look where we are! You’re such a fucking-!”

“Shut up.” he growls out borderline maliciously, stumbling slightly as he turns to walk out the door. He was clearly fed up, his strong hands clenched into threatening fists, but so were you. Even if you were undeniably frightened to confront him, you wouldn't let that stop you from pushing yourself off the wall - your safe space - and wobbling after him.

“Look at you! You can’t even walk right! How drunk are you, huh? Washing away your feelings again, are you? What about my feelings! Huh?!”

You were pushing it.

You really were.

The entire house felt it, the air chillingly still as Izuku had to grind his teeth together so as to not lash out at you. 

He didn’t want to.

That was the last thing he wanted to do, but all that stress and self-hatred previously washed away was coming back up to the burning surface that cages his discretion.

Heavy breaths blew out his nostrils as he made his way to the living room, desperate for you to get the hint from his hunched over body that he wanted you to fuck off.

Yeah, he messed up, deep down he knew he did but currently his mind was far too clogged to even begin to comprehend it.

You were like an annoying mosquito, your words morphing into a persistent buzz.

He was ignoring you, and that made you livid.

He always ignored you when your problems were deemed irrelevant, or when he found you were being far too vexatious.

He always did this, always.

You were trapped in a cell with some asshole who didn't even want to listen to you.

Obviously, you had enough.

Typically you’d back off, go fume in another room or punch the wall till the skin around your knuckles tore open and dripped blood everywhere, making him snap out of whatever state he was in just to suffocate you in his toxic love.

Oh how life proved to be full of surprises.

A low growl of your own slithered passed your teeth, eyes practically burning red as if you prayed you had a quirk that could do something against him.

“You’re a selfish bastard! You fucking piss-poor excuse of a hero-!”

SLAP!

A shrill scream tore from your raw throat, the echo of skin burning against skin dizzying you as you were thrown back onto the floor.

Boiling hot tears streamed down your face as you sobbed out of pure fear, body shaking uncontrollably and you shuffled backward, desperate to get yourself as far away from him as you could currently manage.

It had all happened so fast, you didn't even have time to register it as it occurred.

One moment his hands were gripping the back of the couch with such strength you could see his knuckles turn a ghostly white, and the next, crackling, neon-green lightning surrounded his body, illuminating the dim apartment in a slimy glow. Before you even had a chance to register just what happened, he whipped his head around, his eyes, typically blown wide with sickening love and sparkling under delusional illusions, were narrowed and glowing in a way that sent shivers of immense regret down your spine. His arm whipped back with his hand, the very hand that delivered a painfully paralyzing slap.

He always spoke with his hands, and you just happened to be too close to him at that moment.

The reddended skin of your cheek burned, and you swore you could feel more than just tears streaming down it.

You were stuck shaking on the floor, imaginary bile rising in your throat, and all you could do was stare at him with wide, bloodshot and terrified eyes.

He had never laid a hand on you like that before, you didnt know what to think.

He always promised to do you no intentional harm, to never lay a finger on you with intentions of making you cry out in pain.

He had never acted so feral and out of line before.

It.. it scared you in a way you never felt before.

The gap between you grew, you really were just a mouse trembling in a lion's den.

“P-princess-” he shakily called out, voice weak and uneven, quirk diminishing into thin air like it never was there in the first place.

His own eyes were wide and filled with immense regret, tears already pouring down his flushed, freckled face.

He took one step forward, and you scrambled back, hand coming up to touch at your cheek, shock making you feel faint at the sight of blood coating your trembling fingertips.

You felt sick once again, empty stomach feeling as if it was collapsing in on itself to push even the tiniest bit of nonexistent food out.

You didnt know what to do.

Choking on your own sobs, you tried desperately to shuffle away from him, but he only came closer.

You cried out the moment he dove at you, your hands clasped together tightening against your chest as if to hold yourself together as this bear of a man wraps his arms cold, soaked arms protectively around you, his large shoulders violently shaking as he buried his snotty, tear stained face deep into your unruly tresses.

The stench of alcohol burned your nostrils, edging you on to try and push his heavy chest away. You tried, but you failed miserably, resulting in his arms pulling you even closer to his sweaty and damp body. It was disgusting.

“L-let go of me!” you wailed, your own tears stinging your eyes as your vision blurred and you could no longer tell just what you were staring blindly at, the dimness of the living-room paired with the suffocating embrace of your captor swallowing you whole.

You couldnt take it.

You could barely breathe at this point.

“p-p-ple .. plea-s-se..!” your cries intertwined with his own desperate ones as he babbled nearly incoherently on about how sorry he was, how he never meant to do something so horrible.

“I’m not a monster!” he howled out, desperate words seeping with ululation.

He was desperately trying to convince himself of that.

He wasn’t talking to you at all.

He was talking to himself.

He wasn’t a monster.

He wasn’t a monster.

He’s not like him.

He’s not like that piece of filth.

No, he’s so much better.

He’s a good man.

No, no, he’s not a monster.

He’s your hero.

He could never purposely harm you.

No.

It was an accident.

An accident.

You’d understand.

He knew you would!

You always understood him.

You were like two peas in a pod!

You forgave him, surely.

Yes.

Yes!

You did the moment he hugged you, the moment he started comforting you.

He was a good man.

How could you not forgive him?

He loved you so, so, so much.

You knew that-

You knew he would never do such a thing.

His breathing was even, eyes wide and straining as he stared at the floor, a crooked smile on his face as he repeated the words over and over again in his twisted mind.

He never met to hurt you.

No.

He didnt.

“Plea-” you tried once more, biting your wobbling lip as he squeezed you even tighter.

“No, no, no, no, no, no..” he heaved out, hand coming up to gently pet your oily hair as if to calm you. His head shook back and forth in your hair, “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m so sorry, honey.”

There was nothing you could do.

You were stuck alone in a mouse trap, the cold, metallic bar snapped down on top of your frail neck.

There was no escape.

There never was.

His form of ‘love’ far too strong for you to even attempt to.

And so, you gave up. 

Just like you always did.

There was no point in resisting him.

Sticky blood trickles down your raw cheek, dripping down onto the chilled bare skin of his neck, still cold from the damp clothes he wore, instantly catching his wondering attention.

“You.. you’re bleeding?” he whispered guiltily, already feeling a new wave of salty tears building up in the corner of his eyes.

His large left hand trailed up the skin of your neck, idly collecting the thin trail of red liquid onto his fingertips and smearing a path up to your jawline, stopping the moment your shivering form flinched.

He frowned at the red mark taking up half your beautifully innocent face, a small cut resting in the middle of it where no doubt the ring he foolishly wore as an accessory swiped.

Guilt made his stomach churn, the familiar burn of acid rising in his throat.

A deep inhale, and he swallowed it down, arm still wrapped around you, languidly rubbing your back as he stared with nothing short of pity at your wrecked state.

Your lips wobbled, holding in a reply as you force yourself to look into the vast abyss of darkness that was the hallway of your apartment instead of his orbs gleaming with concern.

Concern.

Concern for something he caused.

At least he had a heart, but you were still scared shitless and wanted nothing more than to run away. You were still fighting to regulate your breathing.

His thumb suddenly pressed against the slap mark, ripping a yelp from your throat as your head flung back to avoid any more contact. It was then that you noticed a pounding headache echoing inside your skull, yet another reason to aid in the water running down your face. Pain consumed your body, and you wanted nothing more than to escape this shell you were trapped in.

Openly chewing on his lip, both of his arms went back around you, cradling your delicate form to his chest.

Without a word, he stood up, practically forcing you to have to wrap your bare legs around his waist to keep yourself steady, something you were trained to do by him. He loved it when your legs were around his waist whenever he picked you up.

It became a regrettable second nature.

Heavy foot steps brought you back to your bedroom, and then into the bathroom connected to it.

Your fears crept up your spine at the pitch black room you were forced into, remembering how you were in a similar position just a few minutes ago.

When would this cycle end?

Ah. 

It wouldnt, would it?

You were set delicately down atop the cold marble counter as if you were a fragile piece of glass, which, in many ways, you were. The tears had at least stopped, but your body continuously shook like a chihuahua, your breathing still hard to control as fumbled around mindlessly with your fingers to serve as a distraction.

He flipped the light on, momentarily blinding your sensitive gaze with its bright light.

Sniffing, you wiped at your nose, watching as he walked about the bathroom, grabbing a wash cloth just to run it under cool water. The rain was still heavily pouring just outside the wall mixed with the loud splatters of the stream against the white sink. It would have been calming had cold water not splashed up onto your bare thighs, making goosebumps prickle along your skin. Your thighs were nearly numb at this point.

After ringing most of the water out, he held it up to your cheek, staring at you.

Taking the cue, you hesitantly took the cool, wet cloth from his grasp and gingerly pressed it to the swelling skin on your face. You hiss out in pain, dry sobs wracking your body at the stinging pain and the fact that he was still far too close for you to currently handle.

The pain on your cheek paired with the numbing cold was a good distraction.

You chewed on your lip as you squeezed your eyes shut, freehand gripping tightly at the hem of your shirt as you listen to him fumble around in the cabinet hanging over to the left.

You jumped the moment you felt his larger fingers ghost over the ones holding the cloth to your cheek, cautious (E/C) eyes opening ever so slightly as you looked over at him.

You couldnt help but feel idiotic as you suddenly felt flustered at the intense gaze he was giving you, eyes now gleaming viridescent in the white light of the bathroom almost staring right into your soul.

It was like he was reading you, pulling words off your own frail pages just so he could recite them to you.

He did this often.

Keeping silent, staring for long periods of times as he tried out scenarios in his head of the words he was going to say.

It gave you chills, but yet, it made you feel like you were the center of his drifting attention.

The sun his planets revolve tirelessly around, repeating the same cycles like a record forever skipping on repeat.

In these moments, though, he became an enigma.

Not exactly something your fragile state of mind entirely needed right now.

You shivered when his palm came to cup your soft jawline, thumb absentmindedly tracing over your parted lips.

His mouth opened, ready to say something, but he stayed quiet.

Mouth shutting, he leaned forward, tentatively bringing you into another hug.

“I’m sorry.” he repeated, the words nearly as quiet as your stilled breath, but you had nothing to say to it. And he knew it.

He was used to you staying silent.

He would prefer it most of the time.

So he could sink into his fantasies, the deluded fantasies that you loved him wholeheartedly, that you chose to stay silent as to not hurt his feelings, and always forgave him no matter what.

That you would forever and always be his.

He wouldnt give you the choice not to be.

He wouldnt let you leave when you’re his favorite person in the whole wide world.

The only one he needed.

And he was the only one you needed.

Yes.

Of course.

You didn’t need anyone else but him.

And he didn’t need anyone else but you.

So what if a few more people died because of his mistake, he would capture Ghoul eventually. Regardless, he would always come home to you.

Always.

And that’s all he needed.

He chucked against your neck, having buried it in the crook as his mind slipped through his shaky fingertips.

The Big Bad Wolf and his Little Red Riding Hood.

God how he loved the comparison.

Perhaps he was addicted.

Addicted to you.

Even now, as he inhaled your sugary sweet, natural scent stained with the metallic smell of dried blood.

Pulling back, he gazed into your hesitant eyes, delicately resting his forehead against yours.

His hair, now dry and no longer dripping with salty rain, tickled your skin, making you involuntarily take in a deep breath.

Closing his eyes once more, he soaks in the moment of your warm body in his frigid embrace, nothing else mattered to him.

Just you.

Only you.

“L-let me see your cheek,” he asks softly, words not as wobbly as before,  afraid that if he spoke too loudly in such a thin atmosphere, everything would shatter abruptly like glass.

Your body moved on instinct as if you were used to doing as he asked immediately no matter what, pulling the cool cloth away from your burning cheek.

Resisting the urge to sniffle and flinch away, you allow him to rewet the cloth, holding still as he dabs lightly at the small wound.

“I know it hurts,” he breathes out, “shh, shh, it’s okay.” it was always so strange how his voice still managed to calm your nerves even after all you’ve been through.

Deep down, you knew he was still that loving and energetic boy you met back at that coffee shop.

If only you knew how sinister and twisted he could really be.

Perhaps.. perhaps you wouldn’t be in such a situation now.

But there was never any point in pondering the what-ifs.

All you could do was fight your mind from seeking normalities in such a relationship as this, if you could even call it that.

You wouldn’t succumb to his desires like you always did.

You wouldnt lose yourself.

No.

You couldn’t let that happen.

Or was it too late already?

You hissed when you felt the stinging seer of rubbing alcohol dotted onto your cut, cleaning the wound.

“It’s okay.” he repeats, cooing to you with a reassuring smile that should have made you feel sick all over again.

You let him apply antibiotic ointment and a small cheek bandage, his hands shaky yet careful. You could say he has experience in applying bandages.

It was uncomfortable as it sat on your raw skin, but it’s not like you were going to go and rip it off. That would feel like ripping off a wax strip on a sunburn.

Humming, he gingerly wipes away the dried blood on your neck with the same washcloth, not minding how blood-stained the innocently white fabric became. 

Next came your still aching wrists. There wasn’t much he could do for your legs, but at least he had roll-on bandages on standby.

Turning the cold tap on, he lets you run them under cool water before gently dabbing the stray droplets away, careful not to press too hard.

He really needed to invest in softer handcuffs, it’s just- those were the only ones he had, and he didn’t use them often. Besides, it never got this bad before. But that wasn’t a good excuse.

He’d have to order some online tomorrow..

Applying more ointment around the area, the kind that offers instant relief, he wraps your smaller wrists up as best he could, cringing himself whenever you’d flinch.

He’d make it up to you.. Pancakes in the morning, perhaps?

Izuku then begins to sluggishly put away everything he brought out of the cabinet, tossing what needed to be tossed into the trashcan.

He was slow, almost as if he was trying to keep his balance, which he no doubt was. 

Standing in front of you once again, he wrapped his arms around you, whispering “up” in your ear.

It was something he would always say when he wanted you to wrap your arms and legs around him so he could carry you like a baby.

But who were you to refuse?

It wasn’t as if he couldnt pick you up without your limbs wrapped around him, it was more for your comfort rather than his convenience.

So, tentatively, you wrapped your still shaking arms around his neck, doing the same with your legs around his bent waist.

“Good girl.” he praised as he began walking back into the bedroom, stopping just at your side of the bed to place you down at the edge.

Numbly, you let him remove your rain-soaked clothes from all the hugging, sitting on the bed in just your panties as you watched him toss the clothes in the hamper by the door

It wasn’t the first time he insisted on treating you like a child who needed help changing, but at least you didn’t have to walk.

It was hard to remember if it was a good or a bad thing that you didn’t care about being nude in front of him anymore, not even bothering to hide your chest as he came back over with a fresh set of clothes - the strawberry patterned pajamas he always seemed to adore you wearing.

You always looked so innocent in them. The shirt is far too large for your frame, the sleeves hanging off your hands and the large v-neck exposing your collar bones and parts of your shoulders. The bottoms were the regular run of the mill pajama pants, soft as cotton and comfy as hell.

The top truly was the part of the look that tied it all together.

He couldn’t help but smile as your arms immediately raised as he pulled the shirt out of the pile, making quick work of slipping it over your cute head and helping your arms into the sleeves.

He liked to take care of you.

You needed him to, after all.

You were his innocent, helpless little darling, after all.

Pulling your pants up, he guided your body down into a resting position, dragging the thick, grey, and black patterned comforter over your stilled body.

Such a good girl.

He tucks loose strands of messy (H/C) hair that fell across your face behind your ear, being mindful of the wound.

He stares at it for a moment, his expression holding that of worry and regret.

Pushing off the bed, he stumbles his way to the kitchen in the dark, having turned off the light as he went, the layout of the apartment burned to memory so he could easily avoid furniture.

In the kitchen, he opened the freezer and grabbed an ice pack, one he would commonly use on his own sore muscles and bruises. It hurt his heart knowing he was the reason you had to use it for the first time.

After wrapping it in some paper towels, he trudges his way back into the dark bedroom, eyes wracking over your balled up form, covers bunched over you like a shell.

“Put this on your cheek..” he whispered, placing the pack just in front of your face.

He would love to be the one to hold it to your cheek, but his mind was still hazy, and his words were still slurred. Events could sure as hell sober you up a bit, but damn did that nausea always come back crashing in through the brittle window full force when you’d least expect it.

Rummaging through the drawers once more, he picked up some of his own fresh clothes and made his way into the bathroom again.

All he wants is to sleep, but he also didnt want you to smell dried sweat and rain on his being throughout the night.

He knew you missed him, him and his warmth, you always did, right? No question about it. You must be longing for him even now. 

Wanting him to hold and comfort you just like always.

Numbed adrenaline pumped in his veins as he stepped into the shower, letting the warm water wash away his filth and regrets.

God, it felt so good to be able to somewhere warm for once.

The entire night he’s felt nothing but cold.

Not even the fire in his belly or the breath stolen from his lungs could’ve warmed him up.

He was mad at himself. Mad that he lost control and hurt the one thing that mattered the most to him.

Mad that he let himself get disgustingly drunk.

Mad that he walked in the rain like a dumbass just to soak your clothes and make you feel as cold as him.

But at the moment, too many thoughts were flying in his mind for him to properly think, no, he couldnt really even say he was thinking at all.

He was just letting the water splatter on the back of his neck, forehead resting on the cold shower tiles and he watched as water swirled down the drain like a whirlpool. His hair stuck to his cheeks like glue, but he couldn’t find himself caring.

Absentmindedly, his fingers brush across the fresh scar on his broad shoulder.

He swore the longer he stood there, watching the clear flow of water, the looser his grip on himself became.

He couldnt really say he felt anything at all anymore.

When did he lose himself?

Was he ever even really found?

Ah.

With you.

You were the missing piece in his complicated and skull biting puzzle, the one who made him whole and lit up his dull life. You were the reason he felt things anymore, you were the reason he still managed to get up and save people with a clear conscious.

You always had such a positive impact on his life, and he knew he had just as good a one on yours.

A wobbly smile tore his flushed face in two, you both really did need eachother.

He was so happy to have you in his life.

Knowing you’d never leave him.

Turning the boiling hot water off, he stepped out, the plushness of the bath-mat embracing his wet feet as water continued to pour down his nude body.

It felt, it felt so hot suddenly.

His breath came out in exaggerated pants, hands sweeping his hair from his face as the burn of bile rose in his throat.

Lunging for the toilet, he emptied his stomach into the glistening white bowl.

Gasping for air, Izuku whipped his mouth on the back of his hand, still trying to catch his breath as he fumbled to flush.

God, he needed to sit down.

Shakily turning the bathroom faucet on, he washed his hand, making quick work of brushing his teeth before lazily drying himself off.

Ignoring the other clothes he brought in, the toned hero simply pulled on a pair of black boxers before walking out of the bathroom.

Green eyes immediately looked at your form, just to see the soft rise and fall of your chest as you soundly slept, the ice pack sitting comfortably on your cheek.

You looked so adorable.

You always did.

Smiling once more, he walked over to the bed, pulling back the sheets just to slide his larger, warm body in and next to your own.

He sighs blissfully the moment he tugs you into his embrace, relishing in the feeling of your soft body against him.

Removing the icepack from your cheek, not wanting you to awake to a cheek burning from the cold, he places it on the nightstand before snuggling closer to you.

You always fit so perfectly in his big arms.

You were meant to be by his side.

And you loved it, didn’t you?

Eventually, he fell asleep, soft snores echoing around the quiet room filled with the downpour of rain still pouring down outside the large glass windows,

But you were still wide awake.

It was hard to remember the last time you got a good night’s rest, especially when the room was spine-chillingly dark..

Hard to remember what life was like before you even met your own personal nightmare.

You were used to the exhaustion, the dark circles kissing at the skin under your eyes becoming normal the day you were brought here.

Oh, how foolish you were.

You should have locked your window that fateful night.

But heroes are quite stealthy, aren’t they?

Was this even reality at this point? Or all just a figment of your imagination, protecting you from the true horrors before your very eyes.

Either answer wasnt one you wanted.

But you never had a choice.

Tears slipping from your eyes like they always seemed to do, you stared longingly off into the distance, the warmth pressed against your back pulling you further into your own bubbling madness.

All it took was a signal thought for this to all become normal.

For the pain to wash away with your tears.

‘Maybe this is ok.’

[universal-kitty]

   Anyways, time to post abt my two new crushes that I lowkey promised I would last night...

   (Yes, I don’t watch the anime/read the manga. DAMN RIGHT that isn’t gonna stop me from doing all of this. ✌ )

Human amongst ghouls. You woulda thunk that'd get them killed in a snap...but it helps that Uta has a bias for this one. 

(Thinking they met some time after he left leadership position in Clowns, head cooling off a bit. He sets up mask shop, a human happens to stumble in...and even though he should be shooing them out before any other ghouls show up, he pauses at realizing they haven't even noticed him; actually, they're admiring his masks on display. He calls out, surprises them, and over the course of that night.....they become friends.) 

Legit would rip anyone to shreds if they tried to hurt "his" human. Yes, "his." Not even romantically (yet); he just knows ghouls would def try to take advantage and eat them, so he plays extra hard guard duty when Akira's around as well as other ghouls. 

Getting Clowns to settle was the hardest part.....but people eventually left him alone. He still did his job, right? Guess having a human "pet" wouldn't be the worst thing.... 

They bond over art. Akira throws out a bunch of ideas, draws their own mask concepts, and Uta loves it. He quickly grows to love having them around, too. 

....So basically, Akira moves in and Uta has found his one (1) exception to the human race. The one person who inspires him.....aside from one more person.

Renji actually almost picks a fight Uta, originally worried Akira was there against their will or something. Uta is delighted for a fight, but also is forced to clarify that- no- this human is here willingly. All their stuff is here, too. What more do you want? 

Renji is quick to worry, so he ends up hovering around Uta's shop more to guard Akira. It gives Uta more room to work, but also more time to antagonize Renji....who attempts to ignore his annoying ass. 

Ends up also bonding to Akira in short order. They're someone he wants to protect- with their shy, gentle nature (and open need for approval)- and spending time looking over them has meant getting to know them more... Shit. 

He and Uta joke they're secretly a ghoul somehow, who can eat and enjoy human food; their power is controlling other ghouls to protect them. (It's the one thing they get to constantly agree on, silly as it is.) 

Uta and Akira would end up dating first, imo. They spend more time together, and Akira had feelings for him first...but then eventually has to work out how they feel about Renji, too. 

....Turns out Uta's fine with it, on the understanding he wants to kill and eat Renji. Akira agrees. Renji is informed...and gives it a cautious shot. (He's unsure how this all works, plus is used to having things he loves ripped away from him; it takes an adjustment period for him to settle and get comfy.)

(Obvs Uta never gets his wish, despite often mentioning it.) 

(Tbh, there's tension there that no one is acknowledging except Akira...and neither man will listen!!! Still, they're confident they can get the two doofuses to admit to something with time... Being in a V-style triad certainly won't last for long with Uta and Renji's tension; they're sure of it.)

[killjoysfromyesterday]

day eight of @badthingshappenbingo !

major trigger warning for this prompt⚠️ read at own risk

prompt: s/h

word count: 654

⚠️please use caution of your own triggers before reading prompts on the board.

—————

“you’re gonna get all of us killed one day! do you want that?”

kobra’s digging pits into his arms with his nails, the sharp parts catching on his sunworn skin and making the little divots well up with blood.

did poison mean it when he said that? kobra didn’t know. and that didn’t matter, because there's strands of bleach-blond hair between his knuckles and he doesn't even remember pulling on his hair, but his scalp is stinging so he must've. he can't breathe.

it was just a little mistake. he’d fired a shot in jet’s direction without warning him, and forgot that it was jet’s blindside. jet hadn’t been able to see the shot coming, and it nearly went straight into his chest.

jet wasn’t angry, but poison was fuming, face about as red as their hair. they’d yelled at kobra all day since they all got back to the diner.

why can't he get it right? he's such an idiot. a failure. how has he survived so long in the desert? he doesn't deserve to be out here. the kids out here are brave, they came from the city on their own.

poison risked their life to drag him out of the city. he just holds them back. the team would be better without him, even poison knows that, those pitiful looks when kobra gets frustrated over a vend-a-hack. he can't do anything right.

maybe his mom was right. nobody wanted him. why would they? he puts his own crew in danger with shitty, reckless actions.

he was never a good son. there was a reason his parents abandoned him on the steps of that orphanage. he didn't deserve poison protecting him.

kobra's vision is blurring with tears and there's blood dripping onto the concrete floor of the garage, and there's just another mess he's made. why can't he stop doing things wrong?

his legs aren't working but he tries his best to stand, bracing himself against the wall. he needs to stop bleeding onto the floor.

the bandages are in the cabinet in the garage, because he often nicks his finger or scrapes something working on his bike. they're stark white and he unrolls a few inches of the fabric, wrapping it around his arms. they just bleed straight through, but at least it's not going on the floor anymore. he should pour some alcohol on his arms or something, ward off the infection, but he honestly doesn't trust himself around that stuff right now.

so instead he just braces himself against the wall, trembling with goosebumps as he tiptoes back to his bedroom.

the other doors are cracked slightly open; he can see poison and ghoul, snoring and tangled together, both deep sleepers. the girl's room is empty, and a surge of panic rises in him, until he sees her curled up on jet's stomach, rising and falling with the even draw of jet's breathing.

they didn't need him. ghoul and poison had each other. jet had mads. the girl had the brothers and jet. he didn't fit into the equation anywhere. why did he think he mattered? just because poison dragged him out to the desert when he was little?

you shouldn't have, kobra thinks, wondering if he could telepathically reach poison. i just slow everyone down. fuck’s sake, i nearly killed my own teammate.

kobra sinks down onto his mattress, defeated. he knows he won't be able to sleep, it's useless. just like him, he thinks with a sad chuckle.

but he doesn’t want to bother anybody by waking them up because sleep’s a rare thing and they all look so peaceful, so he tries to shut his eyes and ward off the thoughts that are insistent on letting him know he’s better off dead.

it doesn’t work, but hey, tomorrow’s a new day, right? let’s hope he doesn’t fuck things up this time, he thinks.

————-

[tanoraqui]

Grave dirt baby... 🥺✨

me, procrastinating my actual fic? no... GRAVE DIRT BABY A-YUAN

HEY TUMBLR FUCKED UP ALL MY BULLET POINTS ON THIS THE SECOND I HIT POST BUT IT’S 4AM SO I’M LEAVING IT UP ANYWAY. STUPID GODDAMN WEBSITE.

Wei Wuxian has been in the Burial Mounds for like 2.5 months out of what he doesn’t yet know will be about 3. He’s not even sure he’s going to survive yet. But he has managed to manifest an evil sword - the evil sword - out of the aether/ambient resentful energy/an attunement set with an unwise touch in the belly of an evil turtle

and he does know that he’s not going to survive if he doesn’t get the power of the Burial Mounds under some sort of control

so he cuts his arm and with blood running down the blade, draws something adjacent to the first demon-summoning flag but as an array in the dirt. He stands in the middle and - keep in mind that he more or less hasn’t slept in 2.5 months - plunges the sword into the center, still coated in his blood, and draws in all the resentful energy of the Burial Mounds

was it supposed to go into the sword? Into himself? Into just the single 4ft diameter array area, a column of bound death? who knows, not Wei Wuxian! it’s pure gut instinct

u know what else works on gut instinct, thought? Fairy tales.

And in a fairy tale, why, clay of the earth plus iron enough for a blade plus still-warm blood to show the way...

There’s an implosion and Wei Wuxian is standing - somehow still standing - in a small crater where the array used to be, and his evil sword is plunged into the belly of a baby

He yanks it out in horrified reflex, and realizes a moment later that the baby seems unfazed by this. If there was even a wound, it closes before his eyes, and the glimpse he had showed something more bloody clay than flesh beneath the skin

the iron sword crumbles as he pulls it away, as though rusted a thousand years. the baby turns its head from the iron shavings that falls on it, but then reaches up for Wei Wuxian with a cheerfully demanding cry

he picks it up, of course. (he’d think he was hallucinating if he wasn’t absolutely and utterly aware that he’s not)

it is, as far as he can tell, with physical and spiritual resentful inspection, an absolutely normal baby

oh, except when he looks really closely. Then he can sense the neutron star–dense knot of resentful energy where a golden core might (but will definitely not have room to) form. Also, it can command the dead, and when he holds it, so can he. He’s not sure if it’s a proximity-based power share or if he’s passing his desires through the baby, but even Wei Wuxian, at about 3 months with no food save the rage of the dead and no rest save the promise of final release, has to stop investigating at some point. He has things to do!

specifically, he has Wens to kill

so instead of the iconic shot of the dark flautist in the moonlight, we get the dark, uh...man singing a very spooky lullaby to his baby in the moonlight. It is still deeply creepy. It’s a making-it-up-as-he-goes tune based on a Yunmengi lullaby that he certainly learned from neither of his foster parents, and the lyrics are along the lines of, “let them remember what they did, sweet little potato, let them remember why they’re dying”

yeah he’s been calling this child “Little Potato” for 2 weeks 

why

is that not how you name a child

sometimes when he’s more annoyed at it, he calls it “Little Radish”, or even less appetizing root vegetables

by the time he walks in, the baby is asleep in his arms and he’s not singing anymore, just letting the dead do his will. This is what Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji see. The subsequent conversation, Wen Chao and Wen Zhuliu at their feet, goes like this:

LWJ: Wei Ying. You have a baby.

WWX: Oh, uh...

PLAY DUMB!

WWX: What baby?

NOT THAT DUMB!

WWX: Oh, this baby! Haha yeah. I...found it.

JC: What the fuck

WWX: Yeah, weird, right? Right near the, uh...

LWJ: They said you were in the Burial Mounds

WWX: Yyyyup. Yes that is. I found this baby by the side of the road after I walked out of the Burial Mounds.

JC, briefly too morbidly fascinated to think about either the demonic cultivation they just watched or the fact that he wants to hug his brother like he’s never wanted to hug another being in his life: What did you name it?

WWX: ....

JC, desire to hug intensifying together with exasperation: oh my god

Sometime in the next couple days - after sleeping a bit, maybe - it occurs to Wei Wuxian that his raw instincts were right and things will go very badly for little A-Yuan (his siblings insisted he name it) if anyone finds out that he’s a not-yet-walking, not-yet-talking little neuron star of resentful energy. So he takes the iron shavings that are all that remain of the Stygian Turtle Sword and forges them into a Tiger-shaped Seal. He also carves a bamboo flute, like he’d been thinking about before the whole...baby thing. He loudly proclaims both to be dark and terrible weapons

(it really is helpful. The sword was...kind of A-Yuan’s other parent, after all, in addition to their third partner, the Burial Mounds. Chenqing gives him finer control of whatever stray resentful energy he chooses to pick up, and the Stygian Seal lets him channel A-Yuan’s power at need, even when not touching him. Which is good - a battlefield is no place for a baby)

even if that baby thinks ghosts and ghouls exist to pick him up and rock him or toss him around (babies like to be tossed)

Wei Wuxian puts so many goddamn spirit-repelling charms on that child, and lets it be marked down to the paranoia of a survivor

using whatever resentful energy he picks up is generally more effective, actually. Less strong, but it quickly becomes clear that the way this works does, in fact, involve Wei Wuxian communicating his desires through A-Yuan, or at least A-Yuan has to put up with the loan of power. There’s nothing quite like abruptly losing control of a field of corpses because the baby got abruptly uncooperative with anything that wasn’t barfing

the baby does eat, for the record. As far as Wei Wuxian can tell, he doesn’t actually need to, but once WWX fed him once, when they first left the Mounds, he wanted it all the time

he still takes A-Yuan with him when he can. That is the paranoia of a survivor. A-Yuan is...

“A battlefield is no place for a baby, A-Xian,” Jiang Yanli says gently, as he sets out from Carp Tower after another stolen visit, another failed attempt to convince Jin Guangshan off his ass. “And you are...so busy. LanlingJin takes in orphans, you know...”

“A-Yuan...he’s my blood,” Wei Wuxian says quietly. He’s never been good at lying to his shijie

Whatwherewhenhowwho, he’d see on her face if he was looking at it. But he isn’t. It’s not shame, though, she can see (it really never is, with Wei Wuxian). Fear of disappointing her, slight resignation...but mostly acceptance. Determination. Something almost like contentment.

(When Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangj first took him back to whatever resembled a base camp - somewhere in Qinghe, probably, or maybe Lanling - he had to let a trained healer look at A-Yuan, physical and spiritual examination, and he held his breath and calculated how many people he’d have to kill to get out of here, how fast he’d have to move to not hurt his brother or any particular friends; thought, oh, he’s mine, in a way he hadn’t before - as a child, a son, not just a very strange weapon - 

“He’s quite healthy,” said the doctor, mildly surprised, bouncing A-Yuan on one knee. A-Yuan gurgled happily. “About three months old?”

the longer Wei Wuxian took to answer, the more disapproving her stare got. But that did make sense)

Then all else can be dealt with later. “You should still leave him here,” Jiang Yanli says firmly. “You need to look after yourself and A-Cheng out there. I can look after A-Yuan.”

It takes a bit under two years to win back the lost and burnt territories, scour the Wens out of every crevice, corner Wen Ruohan in his precious Nightless City and bring it tumbling down. Nobody will know the timing but A-Yuan sleeps through the final battle, smiling at dreams that would make a grown man weep in horror. Somewhere, his father is playing a lullaby

About a week later, Jiang Cheng stalks into Wei Wuxian’s bedroom, which he shares with A-Yuan. One of the first rooms rebuilt in the new Lotus Pier. A-Yuan is there, too, playing with blocks while Wei Wuxian idly drafts talismans

“A-jie said the kid is yours,” he says, crossed arms. “Like, yours-yours. When the fuck did you do that?”

(Wei Wuxian has thought about this, by now; gone over the pros and cons of every possibility, the politics and potentials and maybe even the giddy possibility of telling something like the truth)

(the guiding principle is: he has no interest in drawing on the “Stygian Tiger Seal” ever again. The Sunshot Campaign is over. His loved ones are safe, and he sees no reason why they shouldn’t all live long, happy, normal lives)

(also/though, he will burn Jin Sect, Carp Tower, and all of Lanling to the ground before the new Chief Cultivator should touch his son)

“In Caiyi,” he lies. “Right before I got kicked out. I, uh, snuck out a lot more often than you noticed.”

His brother squints at him suspiciously. But Wei Wuxian can also watch him do the math in his head and reluctantly admit that it works.

“So are you claiming him or what?” he challenges. “’Wei Yuan’? You have a courtesy name - wait, no, you are not naming that kid again. You’re going to make his courtesy name be Carrothead or something.” 

“Should I let you pick it, oh wise and noble shidi - no, shushu?!” Wei Wuxian teases, as A-Yuan gets tired of his blocks and starts climbing up him like a jungle gym

Jiang Cheng sighs like the north wind - gusting long and hard, with just the faintest chill to suggest that the skies will be weeping, soon

But...

Despite some evidence to the contrary, Wei Wuxian is generally fully aware of when he’s about to cross a line that cannot be backtracked over. So he meets Wen Qing in the city, and before going to Lanling, he nips into Lotus Pier and picks up A-Yuan

He might leave A-Yuan with Wen Qing in the city when he goes to Glamour Hall, but Qiongqi Pass happens with a toddler watching silently from Wei Wuxian’s hip. Does Wei Wuxian tell him to look away, bury his face in baba’s shirt, or does he not bother, knowing the sort of song that makes up A-Yuan’s sweet dreams?

The Wens become the second through 51st or so people who learn what A-Yuan is. Wei Wuxian briefly considers trying to hide it, but, honestly, there are dead things everywhere on the Burial Mounds, and despite his genuine efforts, he cannot convince A-Yuan that a fierce corpse is anything but the ideal patty-cake companion. (They’ll play with him for hours! It’s a two-nearly-three-year-old’s dream!)

(he doesn’t want to convince him, not really. The last thing he wants to do ever is give A-Yuan anything to be scared of)

nor could he possibly wish that A-Yuan not be...obviously hale and hearty, running rosy-cheeked and strong around these hills of death that slowly seep the energy from any humans, animals, or even sturdy root crops

“So, uh, this is actually my demon baby,” said Wei Wuxian as they all settled in

“this day has been so weird already, this might as well goddamn happen”, said the Wens collectively

“You created a living child out of dead earth, so I’m going to take that as a yes that you can bring my brother back,” said Wen Qing specifically

“...fuck. I mean, yes. I mean - fuck,” said Wei Wuxian. “I- of course I will.”

(it doesn’t work like that, though)

The 52nd person to find out what A-Yuan is is Lan Wangji. Wei Wuxian very much does not tell him. They have a pleasant toy-shopping trip and lunch in town, and then the alarm talisman goes off and Wei Wuxian grabs A-Yuan and Lan Wangji tugs them both onto Bichen and when they arrive, Wen Ning is roaring. Lan Wangji knows what’s important; he takes A-Yuan so Wei Wuxian’s hands are free and he doesn’t have to worry about his son

except Wen Ning, black-eyed with rage, throws Wei Wuxian into a tree hard enough to crack a rib, and even as Lan Wangji raises Bichen, A-Yuan shouts,

“Uncle Ning, stop!”

and Wen Ning stops

(as a rule, Wei Wuxian can’t take over with himself and Chenqing anything A-Yuan is controlling, unless A-Yuan lets him, and vice versa. To eliminate variables, Wei Wuxian had made sure that any reins on Wen Ning were his (Wei Wuxian’s) alone. But in that moment, before Wen Ning came fully back to himself, his reins were swinging free - and they were back within the bounds of the Burial Mounds, where A-Yuan was always strong)

and Lan Wangji puts several pieces together at once and prays to every single god in heaven and every ancestor he’s disappointing right now that this was a miracle of love and a very cute child piercing through a fierce corpse’s mindless rampage. That he simply...hallucinated the burst of resentful energy he just felt from the child in his arms

but he’s absolutely, utterly aware that he didn’t

Wei Wuxian explains, stilted and awkward at the bottom of the hill. Challenging and terrified. Holding on to A-Yuan. 

Lan Wangji promises to keep the secret. 

Wei Wuxian takes Hanguang-jun’s word

Remember, oh, remember, that Wei Wuxian walks A-Yuan back up the hill until A-Yuan gets tired and Wei Wuxian picks him up, on their one-and-a-half–man plank bridge through the dark. Remember remember remember that before he can finish speaking that line, there is light - the clearing is lit with lanterns and secret-keepers 2 through 51, and I suppose 53 now that Wen Ning is awake, are waiting with dinner and warmth and welcome. Reader, remember this.

But then...

Aunt Qing and Uncle Ning had gone, and then, with a terrible expression on his face, so had A-Yuan’s baba. Now his baba’s anger and sadness is so strong that the weight of it makes A-Yuan cry from hundreds of miles away, and he curls into Granny’s arms and sends his baba everything he can. Will everything be okay, then? Will everyone come home; will they be able to smile again?

(oh, A-Yuan...)

(No.)

A-Yuan - Wei Yuan, Little Potato (when he’s good for baba or bad for Aunt Qing) or Little Radish (inverse); one day to be Lan Yuan, Lan Sizhui - was born in the good old fairy tale way of earth and iron and blood. It’s a hard thing for any child to lose even a single parent - in one day, in one minute, A-Yuan loses two of three, as the father of his blood burns away in hand the last shreds of Stygian iron, and promptly loses control of his own resentful energy

(the Tiger Seal does nothing like explode, in this world. It was never more than a prop - but a vital one. the benefit of proving it destroyed would be worth the loss of a parent, if only a second didn’t follow on its heels)

A-Yuan has been a dead thing (or close enough) come to life all his life, and both dead and living have been his friends and family. But he’s never felt the transition the other way: from life to death

It’s no wonder, really, that he can’t remember it afterward. No wonder that even on the land that was the last part of him, he was feverish and barely conscious when Lan Wangji stumbled, bleeding, off of Bichen, and took in his arms. No wonder that he remembered very little at all, including the dead. 

But he would be okay. Under physical and spiritual inspection, he’s a perfectly normal boy. He may not be able to form a golden core (there's something in the way), but there are...workarounds. He’ll grow up in one of the most heavily spiritually warded enclaves in the world, safe and loved as he relearns (mostly in secret) what he can do

(For the sake of this story, and A-Yuan’s survival as something close to canon, let’s say there are some truly dark things in the forbidden section of the Lan Library, that could only be used for nefarious purposes - though, I suppose we already knew that. Let’s say there are talismans that will disguise the very nature of qi, so resentful energy may appear spiritual. Let’s say, Lan Xichen becomes the 53rd to know the truth, because his brother needs help - and it’s Wei Wuxian’s child, okay? It’s just Wei Wuxian’s child, quiet and unsure rather than laughing as he always was. If you were in the inner circle of leaders of the Sunshot Campaign, you have absolutely met this child, probably held him and bounced him on one knee)

(What keeps Lan Xichen up at night isn’t the concealing amulet he helped his brother make, which Lan Yuan wears at all times around his neck. It’s the silence he keeps every time he meets Jiang Wanyin’s eyes over a diplomatic table. If anyone had the right to know Wei Yuan survived... But Sandu Sengshou killed Wei Wuxian, everyone knows that, and now he hunts demonic cultivators - what might his pride drive him to do to his nephew, if he ever learned the truth? (Selfishly, Lan Xichen know that if Lan Wangji lost A-Yuan, even just to living at Lotus Pier, Lan Xichen might lose his brother. That fear ebbs with time passing, but the the longer he hasn’t spoken, the worse it would be to do so...))

They don’t restrict Lan Yuan to the Cloud Recesses, no more than any other novice. For memory of their mother, neither of them could bear that. Jiang Cheng does eventually see him at a conference, and stops dead. Years have passed, but that is an entire goddamn nephew, right there. But - how? No, it can’t be. That’s...everyone knows Lan Wangji hated Wei Wuxian. It’s just...and someone would have told him. The Lans value propriety above all, after all.

Anything that can be done with spiritual cultivation can be done with demonic cultivation, save heal. Lan Sizhui makes up for it with an encyclopedic knowledge of undead and monsters, and a prodigal talent for Inquiry

On their first night hunt, the young juniors face ghosts. Unfortunately, this is when Lan Jingyi learns that he’s terrified of ghosts. He’s hiding behind Lan Sizhui and panic is contagious, and the senior accompanying them is in a different room of the abandoned house, and Lan Sizhui forgets that he’s holding a sword and just shouts, “Stop! Go away!” 

the ghost, of course, obeys

Lan Jingyi peeks out form behind him. “Did- did you do that?”

“I don’t know,” Lan Sizhui admits (except that he’s absolutely sure he did)

There’s another flicker of movement, just the wind blowing ashes but Jingyi whips around with wild eyes. “Can you do it again?”

[friendship. my point is, he’s a demon baby but he has family and friends who love and accept him.]

And one day, some absolute fucking morons are going to bring him back home, where he can never be anything but strong, and threaten his friends and family? And the threat is an army of his old playmates, commanded by an attempt at recreating some combination of Chenqing and the Tiger Seal? He couldn’t manage it in Yi City, but now A-Yuan, Wei Yuan, Lan Sizhui stands on earth that has never stopped being part of him, or maybe he’s never stopped being part of it. If he closed his eyes he could feel every foot on it, living and restless dead. And they’re threatening his baba - who he remembers, as the earth remembers its old partner, even though the blood is changed - and his father Hanguang-jun, and his extended family and friends?

No.

[whimsicaldragonette]

Audiobook ARC Review: Gilded by Marissa Meyer

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Publishing November 2, 2021

Synopsis:

Marissa Meyer, #1 New York Times-bestselling author, returns to the fairytale world with this haunting retelling of Rumpelstiltskin. Long ago cursed by the god of lies, a poor miller's daughter has developed a talent for spinning stories that are fantastical and spellbinding and entirely untrue. Or so everyone believes. When one of Serilda's outlandish tales draws the attention of the sinister Erlking and his undead hunters, she finds herself swept away into a grim world where ghouls and phantoms prowl the earth and hollow-eyed ravens track her every move. The king orders Serilda to complete the impossible task of spinning straw into gold, or be killed for telling falsehoods. In her desperation, Serilda unwittingly summons a mysterious boy to her aid. He agrees to help her… for a price. Love isn't meant to be part of the bargain. Soon Serilda realizes that there is more than one secret hidden in the castle walls, including an ancient curse that must be broken if she hopes to end the tyranny of the king and his wild hunt forever.

My Review:

★★

I... don't quite know how to review this. It started out fabulously. I was SO hooked for the first, oh, 25-35% but then... I just lost interest. I was interested enough to keep listening, but when I put it down it was really hard to make myself pick it up again because I just stopped caring about any of the characters. The main problem I think is that the story is too long and it really drags from maybe 35-70% and only gets somewhat interesting again toward the end. But... all the "twists" at the end are far too predictable and really I could see the whole thing coming much earlier. I was hoping there would be some surprise twists but.... nope. I'm also vaguely interested in the sequel just to know how it ends but more dreading it because the first should never have been spun out as long as it was and unless they introduce a whole lot of new information there isn't nearly enough story left for a second book of this length. Really it should have been trimmed down and made into a standalone. I loved the first part, with Serilda telling stories to the children, but I was never sold on the love story. It was like, "we've spent three nights together where I tell stories and he spins straw into gold and now we're madly in love and can't keep our hands off one another even though we're both severely touch starved and really don't know each other at all." Like, they've hardly even talked to one another. And unfortunately the second half of the book focused rather heavily on the love story. Gild also has about as much personality as a potato, which is glaringly obvious when comparing him to Serilda, who has buckets of personality. I don't even need much obvious romance in a book to ship it -- a hint here and there is plenty -- but you've got to give me more to work with than a snatched few hours once a month, hardly any talking, and some frantic making out. A grand love story that is not. The best moments were with the children and I really wish there had been more time spent with them. *Thanks to NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for providing an audio arc for review.

[transsexualhamlet]

tg anime vs manga *sighs*

i have the power of hyperfixation and anime on my side! AAAAAAAA

Ok now that we’ve gotten the sins of re post out of the way we need to discuss this. And I just feel that this needs to be covered because I can’t ever get away from constant discourse on this, mostly fueled by manga readers who feel entitled to always think they’re superior for reading the manga, that the manga is the only real canon, that it’s more complex or better, I’m so fucking tired of it. I am also a manga reader, and I tend to get like that sometimes too with many series (for example no. 6 and the promised neverland.) I get it. It can be really annoying to see something butchered on screen to what the original is, changed or represented differently or given a different message or simplified. But just. Some people like the anime and it’s not a goddamn holy war for y’all to fight. It only makes anime fans not want to read the thing even more yknow cause manga readers are pretentious assholes, and I am aware of this as one of them.

(again ok i’d like to mention i know this fandom is basically dead but a certain p*nterest is always like 4 years behind on fandoms so i keep fucking running into Discourse that’s like, still current, whenever i want old random ass content) (and youtube, why do i look at youtube comments, because I personally enjoy being offended? yeah probably)

And that brings me to the point of this anime vs manga. 

This is a lot harder to compare than a lot of other series, because there are just... so many more differences not just in the style and vibe but the story itself.

Disclaimer, I’ve never watched the anime for :re and i don’t intend to, because I honestly have no earthly clue how tf you can get from the highly diverged tokyo ghoul root A to re and make it make sense, and I don’t really want A ruined for me. So you can call me biased towards the manga in the case of re, i guess (which makes my eventual conclusion even more strong I’d say) Honestly I just see them as two completely different stories, the manga’s version connecting with re and A just like... ending there. So how we’re drawing the lines is basically tokyo ghoul A versus the manga and :re. God, I know this isn’t a fair fight because I already hate re so much, but I feel like the manga’s story is much more intertwined with :re than the anime’s is, so that’s what we’re going with.

oh god also another disclaimer this opinion is coming from the biggest fucking kanehide whore, you can disregard anything i say if you ship The Straights and/or do not care for my boi hide

To be honest, if I can take my own conclusions and liberties to the story, I like both versions, each have their pros and cons and kind of a conflicting message. They can’t really coexist. Usually I’d consume all versions and then create one consistent canon in my head for what I accept as the true events (for example my main owari no seraph, first season of the anime is canon but after that we only follow the manga since those can come together and make sense.) but it’s very hard to do that in tokyo ghoul, since I must confess... I really like root A. Like of course, it’s a lot different from the manga, but tbh I think it’s super valid. (unlike most Fans TM like this Fan TM who i’m sending this post to just to spite their singular Youtube Comment Section Discourse, yes I did write this post for you and many others like you) But the ideas that make up root A conflict a lot with the ones of the manga, so I just have to accept that they’re separate things and treat them as such.

Now to break it down so people can understand where I’m coming from I guess? God this is already so long here’s a read more

The Case for The Manga (including :re manga)

More Lore + Plot Shit: One of the main reasons that manga readers are pretentious little bitches is a valid reason, namely that, as is the case with most manga, there’s simply more to it than people can fit into an anime. (Although people need to understand that’s because,,, it’s simply a different medium, so it will have different pluses and minuses, such as for example a soundtrack, color, moving pictures,,, you know, all that. Anime onlys don’t say that the anime is better by stating these things that a manga won’t have... because they’re fucking obvious. So manga readers should stop acting like an anime is inherently sub-par for being less in depth, but we digress.) I can understand that reading the manga is kind of important for wanting to understand the lore (though there are like so many other reasons ppl might want to watch it other than to get the lore) and without the explanation of how all this came to be and how it works, everything tends to be really mysterious, confusing, and seemingly random. It’s really nice to know what’s all going on, of course, and stuff like the washuus, rize’s backstory, the explanation for like, kaneki in general, all that- if you’re looking for like, plot shit, manga is definitely your go to. But like, sometimes, you like, don’t actually care about those things.

Haise: Of course one of the most important things about well, including re is that I fucking love Haise. Like he is my favorite Kaneki. He’s just so wonderful, look at him in he glasses and he floofy hair and he striped pants and he energy boxers and he s p i c e and he MOM. And I really like how they took Kaneki’s character and developed it more with Haise, you can see his turnaround from innocent--> Emo--> Trying To Be Innocent Again But Failing and I think that’s really sweet tbh. I rejected that at first because I didn’t understand it but once I actually read re I thought it made a lot of sense and was a logical thing to do with his character. (though, uh, moving forward, after his hair changes again i disagree with it, haise 1.0 is a good take and i love him and i want the best for him) I could go on I’ve already written a post of what I think is wrong with :re so if you want to hear my take on kaneki’s 37 pokemon evolutions that’s in there

Good New Characters: And of course there are my favorite bitches such as quinx squad, oh my god, there was a terminal lack of dumbass squad vibes in the original and ishida fucking gave it to us, I love them, I love them with all my heart and I think that if I wasn’t attached to them I’d probably just cancel all of :re but like this is just my personal problem. God I love them. Ishida always pulls through with characters I’m now too attached to.

Vore Lmao:Ok like hear me out. I just get a laugh out of it every time the manga has to remind me of this little fucking fact. Like ok I just. Cannot get over it. It’s so serious about it too and like I realize it’s a serious deal but o h  m y  g o d

Ok and now that we’ve got that little rant over I do want to say that it is like actually really important past the “lmao that’s pretty gay” bit, like??? In some ways it’s more fitting than the anime because well, ishida’s point always seems to be “what would mentally and physically hurt kaneki the most right now” and does it because that’s who this bitch is. But it just?? Kind of makes a bit more sense for the storyline if we’re being picky here, it’s so,,, painfully on point? Like the entire reason he gave in to Being A Ghoul and all was so he could save his friends and shit (i actually do not remember if this was a thing in the manga but like? when he was being tortured and he like imagined hide being really mad at him and getting killed by jason and shit?) LIKE AND THEN HE GOES AND HAS TO BASICALLY BE THE PERPETRATOR OF THAT HIMSELF, FUCK, it’s a lose/lose situation of “don’t do the bad thing and watch your friends suffer” or “do the bad thing and watch your friends suffer but like, later” ishida please

The meaning of Hide being alive: Ok this is just me crying over chapter 75 still but like. Instead of in the anime, where hide’s point seems to be that instead of letting kaneki sacrifice anything more he’d be the one to give his life up and such, and save kaneki, in the anime tbh he just really wanted to be with kaneki right then?? and like ouch but understanding that in the manga he wasn’t just planning on dying and leaving kaneki to deal with it afterward he wanted to go on and continue to try to help the guy no matter the shit he had to go through, no matter if the dude just like forgot that he existed for two years and all- LIKE UH CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW HIDE DOESN’T EVEN EXPECT ANY APOLOGY? like kaneki’s like “OH MY GOD I’M SUCH A TERRIBLE PERSON” and hide’s like lmao nah it’s cool i’m thriving- that his big motto was “live” rather than “peace out motherfuckers it’s been fun”. Cause. Fucking. Ishida. Can’t kill off characters well but like at least he made keeping this one alive justified. 

The D e t a i l s: Ok well I feel like this is something everyone knows but the anime is missing a lot of really,,, crunchy details that the manga throws in there, like, well, kaneki’s fucking,,, bones thing, and other assorted details, g o d like those are missable if you want to never understand half the memes but also like,,, sometimes you just gotta read that shit. It also like, makes more sense when you do but sometimes it’s just stupid things that aren’t important but are fucking hilarious.

The Flavor: In general I’d say the greatest difference between the anime and the manga is the general flavor of the thing, the vibe in the manga is a lot, to be frank, darker and grosser and bloodier than the anime, which is a lot more focused on being pretty and Tragic than “HOLY SHIT WTF” but like. That’s valid. With that comes it being a lot more, real, and although the art may not be as polished as the anime’s, sometimes that’s exactly what you need, and the really gritty sketchy shit that’s in the manga sometimes is exactly what it’s supposed to be for the manga. (in the anime, i’d say that the colored and polished style fits it better, so we’re good there.) It’s a lot more real, in the manga, when the anime hesitates to “go there” a lot (and well, sometimes that’s welcome, but sometimes it’s like y o u  g u y s  c o m e  o n  r e a l l y maybe i DID want to see that did you ever think of that)

So like, to sum it up i’d just like to say it’s more detailed, sharper and darker and is simply So Much. There is just More Content

The Case for Root A

ON THE OTHER HAND, (buckle up fuckers)

Depth of Emotion (that Ishida was too much of a pissbaby for): God like you know what I mean if you read the last post, we spent a whole episode on these gay fucks in root A, with backstory and dreams and drawn out suspense and emotion and GUYS LOOK AT THEM NO REALLY OH MY GOD YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND HOW IMPORTANT THIS IS whereas hide’s limelight in the manga is a whole... two pages, oh whoopee, and that’s mostly due to the fact of ishida putting himself in a spot of “oh fuck goddamn if i drew that in i’d get flagged for gay porn” but that’s his own fault, so he downplays the whole scene and really keeps it in the dark, whereas in this anime it’s understandably a lot less,,, like that, but how it plays out here is simply... really nice and makes you cry and shit, whereas in the manga I’d go “oh god oh damn oh fuck” *laughs my ass off because i really can’t take this seriously*. You get just... more here.

To elaborate on this, in the anime, as a gay fucking bastard, I can get practically an endless amount of content from episode twelve, and endlessly stew over all Those Things about it, every hard hitting line, the expressions, the music making it even sadder, the ways the VAs say the words, the cinematic beauty of the blood dripping on the floor and like how it’s supposed to make you think it’s kaneki’s, GOD I COULD FUCKING GO ON, but if we want to get that in the manga... 

we get three incredibly basic lines, a blackout, and then a “QUICK LET’S MOVE ON TO SOMETHING ELSE BEFORE ANYONE NOTICES THE IMPLICATIONS OF THAT HAHA”

So if we want to have more, we need to write it. (sadly) None of it is ever played out canonically so like,,, all we can do is infer and make shit up. It’s like, I am a writer so like that’s my whole job but I really would rather have more content, and have the content that’s there get to be emotional instead of *blank face* “this is plot that is happening, sadly” but like maybe it’s just bc i’m gay

Really Fucking Beautiful (aesthetically as well as story-wise): This kind of just goes hand in hand with the depth of emotion bit, and I think it can’t really compared to the manga here because I’m gay so I see pretty colors and cry so the anime is understandably appealing for me, but I’m also talking emotionally, yeah. There’s a lot of plotlines and implications of the story that are really well played out, I always love to watch the original because it does a very good job handling a lot of the harder topics and stuff that makes the whole thing worthwhile- like the whole point you’re supposed to see that the ghouls and humans are both just as monstrous when you break it down, that there are good and bad people on both sides, everyone just wants to live and feel good in their own life and perspective, everyone has reasons that justify their behaviour in their mind, sometimes you just can’t win no matter what, all that... they’re all really important messages and make the whole story, and they were handled much more delicately and with more expertise in the anime. 

It’s hard to pin down, but I feel like the manga was just based more on Fight Scenes Characters OoH Fake Science and kind of just gave kaneki infinite power ups after Trying Harder no offense, obviously those things were there and they were still very good in the manga it’s just sometimes they were cheapened a lot by ishida really not keeping track of what he’s trying to say with his story and sacrificing it a lot for “BUT WHAT IF KANEKI’S HAIR AND IDEALS CHANGED AGAIN” instead of making it a whole cohesive work. (and yes, I am VERY aware of your “well aCtuAlLy the hair represents his sanity” thing i know i know and i’m about to rip it to fucking shreds so)

Understandable Character Development And Staying True To It: Which brings me to this point, character development. This was another thing that was just... handled with more expertise in the anime, whoever was in charge of it. Mostly this has to do with Kaneki, since like, no offense but he’s the only one who ever gets much character development other than like, juuzou (asmr you only get character development if your hair color changes) oh and i guess there’s tsukiyama but he’s someone who shouldn’t have gotten character development. Touka gets character development only before re for some reason, and like tbh that’s kind of it. I do think Juuzou’s character development was valid, because well... it made sense? I complained about it before because I was like “well he just turns into spicy L” but i’ve since changed my opinion, he’s best boy. But Kaneki? They went way overboard with him in the manga, and generally? Calm tf down ishida.

Breaking it down, one of the main things that most of the tried and true manga stans seem to hate about the anime the most is Kaneki going over to Aogiri in root A. Since they’re much more acclimated to the manga, they don’t understand why he would do that (quoting a particular ‘probably made sense in the manga!’ yes i know that whole thing was poking fun at the show and i felt it lmao) and they just pin it to “ahaha he has now become Edgy for the fans ehehe time to make fun of him” and TO BE FAIR YOU’D BE COMPLETELY RIGHT. I love to make fun of Kaneki when he does his edgy bitch thing because that’s what he is. A basic edgy bitch who is just,,, such a main character. But like. He does actually have his reasons despite popular opinion and to be honest I think they’re a bit more valid than in the manga, where he’s just like “well I’ve been tortured, that was not pleasant and i kinda did a bad thing, let’s go back to anteiku but i’m just gonna Try Harder To Fight this time”. I can understand that, but like, it seems like in the manga every Character Development of kaneki is some form of “i will now be stronger” except for the singular “I will now be a different person” which, well, we’ll get to that. 

In the anime though, even if it seems like more of a basic edgy bitch move, it’s like?? It makes perfect sense to me, and to be honest more than the manga does? Obviously he doesn’t wanna be best bros with Aogiri, he realizes they’re all bad people who have done really terrible things, but the fact is he now sees himself as the same thing, he now understands their motives because in his mind he is also now Bad TM. His whole character development of being tortured was that peace wasn’t an option no matter how much he wanted it, he couldn’t live being a pacifist and the world was forcing him to give the “i am the only one that understands! we need to stop fighting!” bullshit up because there was no way to achieve it. He realized if he kept himself the way he was more people he loved would be hurt like they already had because he couldn’t, so he doesn’t just Decide To Become Stronger, he gives up his humanity. And that includes basically letting himself defend his own actions and try to do “the right thing”. 

Him then joining aogiri makes sense because well. They’re the people who are the strongest, who have the power, who are the same as he sees himself. He still wants to protect the people he loves, he just also realizes he can’t do it by working with them since he now understands that their more peaceful ways will by definition get them fucking killed. His understanding is flawed, of course. He’s not really right. But this is his understanding and from that it makes perfect sense for him to join up with aogiri and try to still do as much as possible from that standpoint, realizing that most likely the people he’s trying to protect will hate him for it. I think that makes sense to me, what do you not understand about it? (I also understand that may make some people mad because he’d Doing Bad Things but I point to you he’s so soft, remember when he was really nice to naki when he was literally the one who killed the guy naki was crying about? remember when he was doing a raid and he saw that guy hiding and he never mentioned it? remember like the seventy times he Cried TM, yeah he’s problematic obviously but if you want problematic I’ll point you to a certain fucking black reaper. Shironeki has nothing on that asshole.)

I think what Kaneki did in the manga was fine, but in general the anime (again) had more depth of understanding and emotion versus a steady Try Harder Get Stronger shonen deal, which, well, fair, but like, nah. Continuing why I think the anime dealt it better is the ending of A, which was a lot more well rounded then *kaneki gets stabbed and then there’s a lot of random plot shit going on in the background*. Here Kaneki then got to round out the end of his character development by realizing slowly through the second half of this season, him becoming a kakuja and then basically deciding like, not to

((kakuja kaneki was dealt with again different in the anime and manga because he basically stopped trying to use it in the anime bc he realized it was a bad fucking idea but this goes along with the ‘his character development of “i’m gonna do bad things for good reasons” --> “actually no wait that was a bad idea” was actually done in root A instead of being dragged out into :re and it’s appropriate for its own medium and the messages it’s trying to get across so manga loyalists hate it’ but we digress))

So in root A we got to see him actually develop and realize himself through the second half of the season starting with cochlea, his interactions with Amon, and ultimately through Hide, that he’d been doing the wrong thing by becoming more monstrous/fighting harder because what he did was ended up forgetting the most important thing, *smiles in gay* HIDE.(well, his humanity. yeah. i cite the terrible opening for root A with the fun ‘the hands taking off kaneki’s mask are hide’s’ bit.) He then remembered again why he wanted so bad to stop the war between humans and ghouls, he wanted to be able to live in peace and not have to be a monster- something that was not dealt with in the manga (though for understandable reasons of We Need To Fuck With Him In Re More, they then didn’t deliver on creating something like that later so I take this.)

That’s most of the difference between the original manga and anime, but I’d also like to discuss (briefly, I’ve already yelled about them) the ridiculous amount of hurdles ishida went through to fuck with kaneki in the manga, Of course there is the fact that well, the slower transition of his character does make some more sense for the manga because if you take :re into consideration, his eight billion character changes are more tolerable when they haven’t like, already happened before in the manga (just the anime). It makes more sense there for Haise to be tormented by past kaneki telling him He’s Too Weak because in the manga he hasn’t already had that development prior to “dying”, and he lost his memories still believing he had to be strong even if he did bad things, whereas in the anime it doesn’t track because at the end like i just said he kind of gives up his ghoulhood on purpose because he realizes that joining aogiri and fighting and shit was really wrong because, hide. So I can see why those character decisions were not made in the original when planning for :re, but... the fact remains that those previous decisions do not make up for how absolutely weak :re’s game ended up being with kaneki. 

So tldr this entire section, All the manga’s defense of how they handled Kaneki’s development is basically void because all those choices were buildup for development in :re which ishida then COMPLETELY fell down on. So the alternative is better.

And now comes my yelling about how exactly Ishida fucked it up: hair colors and kaneki’s 80 kanekis. If black is supposed to represent sane and white is supposed to represent insane or, whatever, i dunno, who tf thought black reaper kaneki was sane? Who tf would think kaneki in the end isn’t? I haven’t looked into this really, and I’d really love it if someone explained it to me the way ishida was going for bc I do not understand it. Like that tracks with Juuzou, and with Kaneki up to Haise Original, but they don’t really make a cohesive sense seeing as after Haise’s hair color changed again that whole deal kind of goes to shit. Not to mention... I just... they completely failed to make those character changes actually part of the story, I’m mostly complaining about black reaper haise, none of him makes any sense. What’s his deal? He wants to protect who he loves? Tracks with the ghouls but fun fact he abandoned his kids? He actually cared for them? What then, he wants to be the strongest as possible? Sure but then?? Why?? I don’t understand his motives at all.

We also didn’t get to see him get his memories back either, which I was actually very much looking forward to, it just,,, like all of a sudden he’s talking with eto about yoshimura and i’m like bruh when tf did that happen? It’s bad, and although chapter 74-76 is super valid, and his change back into white hair kaneki makes sense, I also have the complaint about how haise basically disappeared just like he was worried he would. I think that was bad and I’ve said that already, it doesn’t make sense, he just literally throws those entire two years away to go back to the way he was before he was with the CCG and just forgets everything he’s wanted for the last few years? Fiction logic test fucking failed, and you’ve also broken my heart. Love Haise. You got rid of him. I love kaneki too but like. Why don’t they just. Like. Merge. He is one whole complex person, not one and an imposter, god. 

This is a big negative for re and the manga, so automatically a positive for root A where I simply Do Not Have To Deal With That Bullshit and the character development actually makes sense. I can understand the decisions in the original manga could have set up for good development in :re, but they completely failed to deliver.

root a didn’t fast forward to re at the end god damn let us process this shit first before you try to connect it to something else: The thing with this point is that it’s really difficult to separate the original manga from the continuing story in :re because the thing intertwines so much and immediately moves us forward with a ton of plot points for the next part of the story before we’re done with this climax and the end of this story. Sometimes that’s ok and I can see doing that from an author’s perspective because you want people to continue reading your story instead of taking that as the end but it’s really annoying on a reader’s end, because I’m picky and I want to be able to just be able to enjoy my original canon without it like, metaphorically touching :re on a plate. It’s something that I don’t even do with my own longer stories, like for example I have like a trilogy of >100k fics that like, well i’m technically not done with them but like. 

People really like the first one because it’s more focused on a more popular ship and basic elements people like about the thing, and then by the second book it moves on to talk more about the plot and lore and brings in more secondary characters. And so I knew that a lot of the readers of the first one wouldn’t want to have to deal with a lot of the “oh well stuff is happening elsewhere that will effect stuff later!!!” random plot shit that none of my readers actually cared about. So I kept it to wrapping up the points of the first book and then leaving the introduction of new characters and plot for the people who actually wanted to read it. Ishida didn’t do that, and of course it’s within his right to like?? Want to promote the next series but I’d have enjoyed it more if we ended it at kaneki’s “death” and wrapping up the deals with the rest of the characters instead of quickly shoving in the beginning of seventy more plotlines before the book ends. Like honey I simply do not have the reading comprehension for that. In the anime we get something that... makes sense.

In the anime, however, it’s quite the opposite, for example the reveals like Eto=owl=takatsuki sen were pushed before that and they saved episode twelve for, well, the end bit. Like what was actually the ending. There were detriments to this I had to say (LIKE GUYS I GET IT HE’S CARRYING HIDE HE’S CARRYING HIM I GET IT YOU’VE BEEN DOING IT FOR HALF THE EPISODE NOW OK I UNDERSTAND CAN WE MOVE ON) But like, I prefer the concept of a simple idea with as much emotion squeezed out of it as possible to a ton of confusing and contradicting ideas that are touched on for a second before moving on. So the *cries for half an hour* ending was much more appealing to me, and I can keep that separate in my head from any of the ideas that :re creates, letting me pretend it doesnt exist and imagine that’s the end and there’s nothing else to worry about. If we want to move forward and hear more, then we can, but it isn’t necessary like it is with the manga.

No Bad Takes that are hard to pry apart from good plot and characters:This is basically the downsides of the new characters, which is well, if I had to make a whole ~keep reading~ post about how problematic everything in re was that does have to count as a downside. I love the new characters, but they also come intertwined with a thousand really bad takes on like, everything, and of course I can ignore it and just act as though they were written in like, to be perfectly honest, a non transphobic way, it’s a real downside when the original anime was pretty pain-free in the way of their takes on their characters. They fucked everyone up in re and I will not elaborate, we’ve talked about this, it’s just the anime, and which i mean season 1 and root A, don’t really have any bad takes I need to try to get rid of, it’s surprisingly something I have little complaint about at all and I ALWAYS have complaints.

Hide!!!!: Obviously, you can tell that a lot of my opinions are going to be hide based because he’s the only thing I ever think about. But we have to take into account just how... hide???? This goes a lot into the depth of emotion bit but it also offers the other side of the argument for Hide’s part in the :re manga, which well. Was mostly chapter 75 if we’re going to be perfectly honest here. He doesn’t get any other limelight. Even in the chapter where Kaneki meets him again he gets a whole what, three pages? In the manga, he has an extremely valid deal about basically, living, keeping going no matter what, and that is a fitting part for the manga, considering the rest of the points there ride more on Keep Fighting instead of Think About Your Emotions And Morals, but honestly chapter 75 was really valid. So why do I still think the anime’s version where he like (ok I don’t know about the re anime we’ve discussed this, i don’t even know how they choose to explain that) he like, dies in kaneki’s arms is better overall? Again, I would have totally accepted that deal if it was made a part of the story because it made me cry, it was super valid, and if they’d continued in that way I would have agreed with it completely over that. But the fact is again that they failed to deliver, and Hide got largely ignored, suffered so much with so little outcome. There was so much buildup and it was incredibly valid, but when the time came for them to meet again and basically show... why it was important that Hide lived in the end? 

They didn’t. They straight up didn’t. Kaneki’s like “oh sorry bro... glad you’re alive and all...” *goes off and fights* and like? Honestly? @everlastingspiral is right, if that’s all they’re gonna do with him what’s the point of keeping him alive? I love every single panel of him and I wouldn’t have read re if he didn’t, but hide gets absolutely NO payoff. For letting kaneki literally vore his entire mouth off, leaving him disfigured and unable to talk, then kind of disappearing for two years and doing seemingly nothing but trying to help kaneki even though he’d forgotten the guy existed, risks his life like a thousand fucking times, eventually gets back to him and the dude’s running a fucking anti-human organization, helps him like Not Be A Volitile Pile Of Flesh Anymore and then what should have been a very important moment of them meeting again gets completely overshadowed by touka and random plot shit and more fights and they barely interact, they don’t even hug or anything, they barely talk, and at the end hide is still there but to be honest he’s gotten absolutely no thanks for all he did and ishida acts at the end as though he’s done very well with hide and gives him a tiny bit at the end throwing in a tragic backstory for fun (which hot take he really didn’t fucking need on top of it all) and... there’s no real hint that Kaneki is better off with Hide there, even though there should be. In 75, in his dream, kaneki is sobbing and crying and all like i’m so lonely without you but when they actually meet each other again? “yo” “hey” “uh sorry about,,, the thing,,, you know” “nah man it’s ok” “let me talk about myself for a bit” “yes you always do do you want to hear what I’ve been up to” “not really” “that’s fine i’m only here to support you”

...So you can understand why I’ve gone a bit sour on that. If that’s all you’re going to give him? Hot take? Let him die. Hide deserves better. (and i will deliver that in writing, but for the purposes of canon.)

In the anime, however (not counting re again... although he still gets the short end of the stick just in the original manga too compared to the anime) he’s properly dealt with! he gets his proper limelight and he gets acknowledged for what he’s done thusfar in the story, which is already so much. Kaneki then realizes that, but it’s already too late (or it isn’t, and they like negotiate with the ccg and then they get to live happily ever after) either way he gets appreciated and he gets hurt, but it’s properly acknowledged. And after all that, after saving kaneki and getting him to the cafe and doing it all while bleeding the fuck out, he gets to spend that time with kaneki and die in kaneki’s arms. And frankly? That’s all I think he’s ever needed. It’s really poetic and pretty and brings kaneki’s character around full circle, and even if it’s overly sappy, cliche, drawn out... he gets the attention he’s due and he gets a fucking break. He wanted to show Kaneki he wanted to do something for him and save him instead of the other way around, but then HE GOT ACKNOWLEDGED FOR THAT, instead of just well, tirelessly working towards it forever and having to be content to be a background character with practically no value to Kaneki anymore.

Keeps The Same Vibe: The big thing about this is that with the manga and with re, shit just goes all over the place, and I feel like I’ve amply showed that already through this essay or whatever this is. Again about the consistency and the professionalism, It’s a concise story that makes more sense than the manga while also being simply neater and more deep, making sure all the points, themes and messages work together and make sense to create a cohesive deal even if it’s not as long. (the manga is like ishida had a TON of good ideas for an essay but then fleshed out the thing ten minutes before deadline and managed to completely lose what his original thesis was even if the thing was 10 pages long.) Basically. yeah. That kind of sums it up, my last point concerns the ending.

Not Cheap Ending: If you want to hear my take about how absolutely terrible re’s ending was, check out my The Many Sins Of Tokyo Ghoul :Re post, and we’ve discussed how the original’s manga ending was bad and well not really an ending, it just leaves you unfulfilled and takes you into “well I guess I have to start a whole nother sequel series ig...” but root A like? Actually ends it? If a reader didn’t know that there was any content after that, they could pretty much infer that hide’s death or almost death whatever you inferred out of that ending (again we’re ignoring re) allowed Kaneki to finish his character development and realize they needed to stop the war, which basically tracks with what’s going on in everyone else’s perspective- eto’s problem with the world because of what happened with everything, is basically like, all of aogiri, juuzou and shinohara, amon and akira and kaneki and they can realize all they have to do is just sit down and fucking stop it because none of them want to be fighting, hide is the catalyst for that because the CCG can see how Kaneki cares for him? And it’s so open ended that you could just like literally believe that and there’d be no way for that canon to tell you otherwise, or you could go onto re and whatever if you wanted to. I think that’s the best thing. 

In conclusion, both have valid points, and in general I’d say that the manga goes better with :re and the anime is better as a stand alone but if I had to choose overall, this particular anime is better (taking into account only seasons 1 and 2), for mostly the reasons of favoring a simpler story taken with much more care and depth versus a more complex story with many, MANY imperfect elements, and I am aware I will get shot on sight for this opinion. So sue me.

[simsadventures]

Rut Bunny

Summary: You are in relationship with Dean, your Alpha for over three years and are completely smitten by him, thinking he is the same way with you, but then you hear him talking.

Warnings: angst, smidge of fluff, light swearing, a/b/o dynamics, Alpha Dean, true mates

Pairing: Alpha Dean x Omega Reader

Word Count: 3765

A/N: I was feeling like writing angst and didn’t want to ruin chapter of After All just because of it. So here is some angsty Dean one-shot. Hope you’ll like it, let me know what you thought xx

Masterlist

You were sitting in the bunker, thinking about what to cook when the boys come home. You hated that you had to stay behind this time, typically going out on the hunt with them, but with your hurt ribs and wrist, there was no way you could face some ghouls. So you were patiently waiting, trying not to get mad by being shut in one place for too long.

The other thing driving you mad was being away from your Alpha for so long. It has been almost two weeks, and you could feel the longing for him in every bone of your body. Although there wasn’t a claiming mark on your neck, yet, you were sure that it would be there sooner or later. You realised you were true mates not long after you met, but because Dean was such a playboy, you wanted to be sure he wanted you for you and hid your scent with some suppressants. He always said that he didn’t believe in true mates and so you thought this way might be easier.

And it’s been three years of proper relationship, with some ups and downs, but otherwise, you were a strong couple, and you couldn’t wait to be properly mates. The boys texted you that they’d be back in about 3 hours, and so you had enough time to go to the mall, buy some groceries and make some sweet home-made dinner for them.

You decided upon hamburgers, with meat for Dean and soy-bean burger for Sam. You knew he’d appreciate the effort. You were strolling down the store, getting everything you needed, thinking about the sweet welcome you’d prepare for them, and especially for your Alpha. Well, technically not your Alpha yet, but… he was yours, and you were his. It was a given thing.

You were getting closer to the bunker and saw Baby parked outside. Your smile widened because they obviously couldn’t wait to get home, and you hoped that Dean couldn’t wait to have you in his arms.

You quickly parked the car, grabbed the groceries, and sneaked inside, trying to surprise both of them. You were almost in the kitchen when you heard Sam asking Dean about you. You stopped dead in your tracks and listened, praying to God that they couldn’t smell you or hear you.

“What are you asking, Sam?” Dean sounded tired and annoyed.

“I’m asking, when are you going to claim her, man? You’ve been together long enough, and I think you both deserve some clarity and stability in your lives.”

Your heart started to beat faster. You wanted to know as much, no, scratch that, much more than Sam, what were Dean’s thoughts on this. You heard a dry laugh, and your breath hitched in your throat.

“Claim? Nah, man, that’s not for me. I mean, she is a sweet girl and all that, but, I don’t think the connection’s there. She is good for getting me off if you know what I’m saying, but I don’t know if I wanted her to be the mother of my pups. But I think she knows what it’s all about, that’s why she never asks about claiming. I know I said that the true mates are bullshit, but maybe they aren’t? And maybe I want to feel that kind of connection, you know? I mean, I miss Y/N when we’re on the hunt, but that’s probably more my dick talking than anything else.”

Your mind went blank.

Everything you hoped for, prayed for, was suddenly snatched away from you and you honestly didn’t know what to do. He pretty much called you a rut bunny, the worst thing there is, and admitted that his feelings are barely there. You bit the inside of your cheek to prevent yourself from screaming, crying, or both took a deep breath and grabbed the nearest door to slam them loudly enough for both Sam and Dean to hear.

“I’m back,” you hollered as cheerfully as you could and tried to paint the fakest smile on your face, at least for the time being. You came around the corner and found them both sitting at the table.

“I thought you wouldn’t be home for another few hours?” You asked and turned around, trying to make yourself busy by putting out the food, facing away from them. If you just stood there, you were quite sure you’d kill Dean with your bare hands, or start crying hysterically.

“Yeah, the traffic wasn’t so bad, and we couldn’t wait to be here,” Dean said and got up to hug you from behind. But however fake you tried to make your smile, you couldn’t let him touch you. You took a quick step away and smiled apologetically. “You should go shower and unpack, and I try to have the food ready when you’re both done.”

You created distance between you and Dean by opening the fridge and putting some food in. He stood there, silently staring at you, not really understanding what’s gotten over you. You always ran up to him and welcomed him with the sweetest kisses. And he kind of hoped to get that after almost two weeks away. But you just stood there, unpacking.

Dean was torn. He never would’ve admitted it to Sam, hell, he tried to hide it from himself, but he had some deep, deep feelings for you. He just couldn’t bring himself to claim you, knowing that it would draw an even bigger target on your back than you already had. You’d officially be Dean Winchester’s Omega, and creatures both from under and from above would come hunting you down to hurt him. So he tried to subdue those feelings, telling himself that you were just another girl, while he was pretty sure that it’d kill him if you got hurt or worse.

He sighed, not knowing what happened to you during those two weeks that he was gone, but he hoped you could talk things out in your shared room before you went to bed.

When they were both finally out of sight, you let the tears fall down your cheeks. You wanted to hate him, to yell at him, but the only thing you could feel was loss and utter sadness. You were so heartbroken you didn’t even know how you manage to still stand, let alone cook. You had a plan in your mind, a simple one, but you were sure it would work. You had to leave. You couldn’t be in one place with a man who doesn’t give two damns about you. No matter how much you loved that man. While the burgers were frying, you ran to your room, and quickly packed all your belongings, trying not to make too much fuss so that no-one would be suspicious.

You packed the essentials, leaving behind old things you didn’t wear any more. You looked at the photo on your nightstand: it was you and Dean in front of Baby, after one of the successful hunts. Dean was hugging your shoulders, looking down at you with so much adoration (or at least you thought it was adoration at that time, now, you thought it was probably lust for your body) and your heart ached.

You couldn’t bring yourself to break it or take it away, it would remind you too much of the times that were no longer there, and that maybe only existed in your mind. You gently placed it on the nightstand but facing down, so the photo couldn’t be seen. You threw your bag under the bed so that it wouldn’t be too suspicious and walked back to your pan.

Sam came in first and studied you as you served them their dinner. “Are you alright, Y/N? You seem a bit odd.” Sam pointed out and waited for your answer.

“I’m fine, Sam, just a little tired.”

“It doesn’t seem to be just tiredness, Y/N.”

“Well, things aren’t always what they seem, Sam, and we just gotta accept that and move on.” You said, bitterness clear in your voice, and it only made Sam’s brows arch up higher. He didn’t comment on it and just continued to watch you. Something was bugging you, and he didn’t know how to help you. Or if you even wanted to be helped.

Dean came in moments later, sitting down at his usual place and a plate with a burger appeared in front of him. As you were pulling your hand from under the plate, he grabbed it and looked you deep in the eyes.

“Everything’s alright, sweetheart?” He said, furrowing his brows because as soon as he touched you, you visibly flinched. “Peachy, Dean.” You mumbled and tried to distance yourself from his presence, but he didn’t let you. “Why won’t you let me touch you, Y/N?” He said, looking into your eyes, and you felt as if he could see right into your soul as well.

You patted his shoulder to show him you weren’t afraid to touch him, even though you knew very well that that wasn’t what he had in mind. “I’m not feeling too well, I’m gonna go and rest for a little if you don’t mind.”

Before either of them could say anything, you all but ran out of the kitchen. There was one more thing to do before you leave. Writing a letter for each of the brothers. As hurt as you were, you couldn’t just leave without saying goodbye.

You sat down by the table in your room and scribbled down some thoughts, while tears streamed down your face. When you felt like everything you needed to say was said, you sealed the papers and put them in your drawer.

You then laid down and cried your heart out, clutching one of Dean’s flannels in your hands, breathing in his scent probably for the last time.

While you were behind closed doors, the boys ate in silence, knowing that something was up just couldn’t figure out what.

“You don’t think she heard what we were talking about, right?” Dean almost whispered. That would be the only thing that would explain your behaviour, and he was praying to whoever was listening for it not being the reason.

“It’s one of the possibilities. But you seemed pretty sure of what you were saying, so her sadness, or whatever it is shouldn’t bother you. If you care only about her pussy, then her emotions are the least of your problem.”

Great, not only did he hate himself for saying that, but even his brother seemed to be pretty hateful towards him right now. Dean couldn’t bring himself to say anything, and so the rest of the meal was spent silently.

“I gotta go check on Baby and see if we pulled all of our stuff out.”

“You’re seriously more bothered by the fucking car right now than by the fact that the girl in your bed, and, for fuck’s sake, in your heart, is probably crying her eyes out?”

Dean knew that he should run to you, but there was one thing to do before that. He just shook his head at Sam and went to the garage.

When you could hear him coming back, you closed your eyes and evened out your breathing so that he thought you were fast asleep. His heart skipped a beat when he saw you. He knew you like the back of his hand and knew very well that you weren’t sleeping. The tears that didn’t even have time to dry on your cheeks were just one of the markers of his words.

But he played the game with you. He laid beside you, covering you both under one big blanket, and scooted closer to you, so that he could snuggle into your side. He missed your scent, no matter how hard he told himself to stop being pathetic. The strong Alpha side of him, the one that would growl in the least preferable situations, who puffed out his chest at any Alpha within the mile-radius, now wanted to whine and purr until you forgave him whatever he did. But he stopped himself and made you believe that he was falling asleep like that. Not that Dean wasn’t tired, but if you really heard what he said about you, then he was sure as hell you’d try to run away from him. And he wouldn’t let you do that.

So when he felt you getting up, it took all the power in the world to stop himself from pulling you back to bed. He waited for your next move. He could hear the silent sniffles and sobs, leaving your mouth, and his own closed eyes were starting to water. There was now no doubt in his mind that you actually did hear him, and that he hurt you by lying to his brother, and to ultimately, to himself as well.

He could feel you pressing a soft kiss to his forehead and placing something on the bed next to him. He then heard you shuffling with some things under the bed, and then the only sound in the room was suddenly his own breathing. He could still faintly make out the noises coming down the hall, and then he finally heard you closing the door.

He quickly sat up and looked at what it was that you left behind. His jaw tensed, and he hated himself some more. It was a letter and the necklace he gave you after being together for 6 months. He told you that it was a substitute for his mark, that it would tell people not to even look at your neck until you two decided that it was time.

He made his way quickly through the envelope, trying to get to what you wanted to write. At the same time, he knew he had very little time before you realised why you couldn’t drive away in your car. He unplugged the oil tube from the motor, so that it wouldn’t start, and knew that even in your current state of mind, you’d figure it out in few minutes. He knew you’d want to drive away, and so when he told Sam he needed to check baby, he was actually “fixing” your car.

The letter wasn’t even that long, but the message was clear.

Dear Dean,

I wouldn’t be able to face you, and so I decided to say goodbye this way. I always thought you were just scared, afraid that something might happen to me, and that was why you never claimed me. But, today I came in a little earlier, and heard all you had to say to Sam. And we both know you just don’t lie to Sam.

I love you, and I hope you’ll find someone to love because you deserve to feel all the beautiful things I feel when I look at you. I know it won’t change anything, but I thought I’d tell you, that I’m indeed your true mate, but I wanted to let you decide without the “mythical bullshit” and have been taking suppressants all this time. Maybe it was wrong of me, but I wanted you to like me for me because I sure as hell love you for you. The grumpy faces you make when something’s not clean, the adorable way you scrunch your nose or the way your hair look when you get out of the shower.

I wish you a long and happy life, and I hope you’ll find yourself a good Omega, someone who will love you with all she has. You deserve that much.

Here is the necklace you gave me, and now I understand you wouldn’t want to claim your rut bunny, so you rather gave me a piece of jewellery to shut me up. Never mind, I still loved it, but it’s not mine to keep, just like you.

I love you, even if it doesn’t mean anything to you, and you’ll forget me the minute you wake up without me there.

Yours

Y/N Y/L/N

Dean wasn’t aware he was crying while reading the letter, but the wetness on his cheeks was obvious. He jumped out of bed and ran towards the garage, where he could still hear you muttering, only occasionally interrupted with a loud sob.

When he opened the door, you looked like you saw a ghost, and for a second, Dean thought you’d faint in front of him. But you pulled yourself together, just like you always did.

“What are you doing up, Dean?”

Your eyes were red and puffy, and your voice raspy from all the crying and sobbing. Dean just wanted to hold you in his arms, but not before he cleaned up the mess he made.

“I know you better than you know yourself, sweetheart. Please, let me explain everything to you, Y/N.”

You wanted to run. Be far, far away from him and just break down already. You sobbed again, unable to control yourself. “What is there to explain? You said everything pretty clearly. I got the message, Dean. I’m just good as a mattress, and nothing else.”

Dean shook his head and took two long steps to stand right in front of you, and despite your protests, pulled you into his chest. You struggled a little, but he was your home. No matter what he said, he was your safe place.

“I’m an idiot, ok? I didn’t want to admit what I feel for you, because I’m just too scared that you’ll get hurt because of me. And I can’t have that. I might have not known that you are my true mate, but I could feel the pull. Every time I knotted you, there was this growing need to claim you, to show everyone what a beautiful Omega I have. But I persisted because I truly thought that you were safer that way. I fucking love you, sweetheart, and I hate myself for putting you through this.”

He was now cradling your face in his hands, caressing your cheeks and wiping all the tears away. You didn’t know what to believe anymore. Was he telling this to you just because the comfort of having you around would be gone with you, or because he genuinely meant what he said?

He could see all the doubts in your eyes, and his heart broke even more. He never meant to hurt you, and now he needed to show you just how much you meant to him.

He bowed, so his face was only inches away, his breath hot on your lips. You didn’t want to close your eyes in case this was a dream, and he would be gone the second you opened them back up. “You’re my Omega, and I’ll prove it,” he whispered and kissed you. At first, he was hesitant knowing that he can’t scare you away. But when he felt your body melting into his, he put all the emotions, all the things he wanted to say and didn’t know how into that kiss. If he could, he would breathe for you, and you could feel that all.

When he pulled away, he was looking at you, intently. “I lied to Sammy, sweetheart, but I won’t lie to you. I’m scared as hell that someone will snatch you away from me. It would kill me because I might now show it all the time, but I love you. And when we came today, and Sammy was asking me all those questions, I just wanted him to shut up. I have a real problem facing my emotions and dealing with them, so imagine my heart and head trying to make out something of all the things I feel for you.

I wake up every day, wanting to see your face. Your eyes are like my sun, they are indeed all I need, especially when you’re smiling. They are shining with so much positivity and love that I can never believe you genuinely want to be mine. And when you touch me, these little sparks erupt all over my body, and I just want you to hold me forever. I’m lost without you, and I’m scared someone will find out and use it against us. But if you let me, I’ll show you I mean every word, and I’ll face my fears. Just please, Y/N, give me a chance to make this right.”

Before he started talking, you were sure whatever he said wouldn’t change your mind. That you’d go whatever it was that was on his mind. But after this speech, probably longest Dean’s ever given you, and the most laced with emotions, you couldn’t move.

“How am I to know that you’re not doing this to have the ultimate access to a pussy?”

A little smile appeared on his face, his green eyes shining a little brighter. “Because however good that pussy is, I want you for you. You are my best friend, and no matter what happens throughout my day, you’re the person I wanna tell it all about. Because I love falling asleep next to you, as you always snuggle closest to me, letting me know that you trust me, that I can protect you. And I cherish your trust, and though I know that I damaged it now, I’ll regain it, if you let me. I’ll be your Alpha, and the best Alpha you could ever imagine.”

“I just want you to be you, Dean. Nothing else. You’ve always been my safe place, and I trust you with my life, but today…”

“I know baby, I screwed up epically, my fears tying my hands again. But please, let’s go back in, and I promise you I’ll never be such ass again. I’ll be an ass, but not such an epic one. And btw, you didn’t see the faces Sam was giving me. He saw right through me, he knows how much you mean to me and that you’re no fucking rut bunny.”

You knew that there was no chance for you to leave now. Dean was a stubborn ass, but he was your ass.

“There will be some conditions, though, if I come back.” You said, a slight smirk creeping to your face.

“Anything, even if I had to sleep outside for a month, I’ll do anything as long as you’ll stay home with me.”

“You’re lucky I love you.” You mumbled and marched towards the door.

Dean was watching you going back where you belong, and he smiled happily. “Yeah, I’m the luckiest guy alive!”

Forever Tag:

@p8tn0lish​ @sasbb23​ @eileenalone​

Supernatural Taglist

@voltage-my2dlove​

If you’d like to be tagged comment/message/send an ask. If you like the story, please reblog :) any comments are appreciated, even the critical ones. Always a space to get better, so let me know what you guys think.

[braincoins]

for DA Shallura

I’ve been doing a series of posts about basic Dragon Age canon for my DA fic series, Dragon Age: Schism. HOWEVER, my Dragon Age AU for Shallura has slightly different background (it takes place before DA:O, and thus before any of DA:S) and I include headcanons and whatnot for DA:S in those info posts. 

So I thought I’d make One post with all the info that @tybalt-tisk​ or anyone else could need to make sense of what’s going on in that fic specifically. Some of this will be copy-pasted from what I’ve already done for DA:S because c’mon why write it twice? But everything here should give the necessary bgd for that fic. If you want/need to ask me other questions, feel free!

With credit, as always, to @yslanam​ who started this by first suggesting a DA AU for Shallura. And if you make it to the end, there’s pretty Mitz art! (Or you could skip to it, I know, but... be good, hm?)

Our story takes place in the country of Ferelden on the continent Thedas. Ferelden is basically Fantasy England (though not an island and not shaped that way), and is about the same size and climate (though it’s south of the equator, not north of it).

Shiro was born Takashi Shirogane in a small village where everyone knew everyone else and he liked it there. Loved it there, really. He signed on to be in his bann’s (the noble who ruled the land and its village) army, as did another young man from his town (whose name Shiro rarely speaks now). They served honorably and well and fell in love. 

And then they were called to battle. Shiro survived: plus a scar and some new white hair, but minus his right arm, which was too badly injured and had to be amputated. Shiro’s lover didn’t make it, though. Shiro was discharged with pay and a small bonus, but that money would run out eventually. He’s not sure what to do with himself, and he overhears people talking about what a shame it is, such a young man now destined to just wither away because, well, he’s basically worthless now. Can’t work a farm, can’t fight in wars. It hits him hard. He wants to prove himself worthy of... of something, anything, just to prove them wrong.

That’s what brings him to the Grey Wardens. 

Allura is a city elf. Elves are second-class citizens - at best - amongst humans, and the city elves live in ghettos called “alienages.” Her father was the Elder of the Highever (a city in Ferelden) Alienage: the man in charge, basically. That didn’t mean Allura behaved though; even as a child, she would rant about how elves were people just like humans and they deserved better treatment. This didn’t win her a lot of friends; most city elves learn quick that yelling about the truth just draws a whole lot of unwelcome - and often armed - attention.

But then it was discovered that Allura had magic, and she was taken off to the Tower of the Circle of Magi to be trained... and supervised. If there’s anything worse than being an elf in Ferelden, it’s being a mage. Mages, if they aren’t careful, can basically be possessed by demons and then they kill a bunch of people and it’s a bad scene. Therefore most people fear mages, and the Chantry - the main religious organization on the continent and damn near the only one in Ferelden - has created Templars to watch over the mages of the Circle. 

The Templars are also known as “mage-hunters” because that’s one of their main duties: running down mages who try to flee their gilded cage. They also kill any mage suspected of being demon-possessed. And they’re posted all throughout the Tower, watching... always watching...

Allura liked learning magic but hated that this is how it’s done. She’s just been moved from one cage to another, and she wasn’t silent about that either. Things came to a head after she became an official mage; she saw a Templar about to force himself on a fellow mage, who was terrified of the man. She got angry and killed the man, straight out. She should have been killed, made Tranquil (basically magical lobotomy) or sent to Aeonar, the mage prison, but Duncan, the Warden-Commander, was there visiting and recruited her away, instead. 

That’s what brings her to the Grey Wardens.

And that’s where she meets Shiro.

So, really now, what is a Grey Warden? Well, that depends on who you ask. To most people outside the order, the Grey Wardens are a glorious order of noble heroes! And why is that? Well, they’re immune to the darkspawn taint (which usually kills people) and so they can safely slay darkspawn! They’re also the only ones who can stop Blights!! …though this last bit of information is often forgotten, given that Blights happen once every few centuries.

If you ask me, the Grey Wardens are the biggest dick move in Thedas, which is actually part of why I love them. Here’s all the downsides to joining this “glorious order”:

First of all, the Right of Conscription. Ferelden has it; not sure if other nations in Thedas do? Anyway, it means that Grey Wardens can recruit anyone at any time. In practice, they have to be careful how they wield this tool (especially in Ferelden), but the RoC has been used to save people from hangings or other deadly fates… on the condition that they become a Warden Recruit. So… didn’t want to be Warden Recruit? TOO BAD, YOU ARE NOW. And no, you don’t get a say in the RoC. (Allura was RoC’d, to keep the commander of the Templars from killing her.)

Second of all, there’s the Joining. It turns out that, in order to become a Grey Warden, you have to drink darkspawn blood. And a bunch of other stuff in there, but really now, DRINKING DARKSPAWN BLOOD. You might recognize this as a stupidly dangerous thing to do, given that darkspawn blood KILLS THINGS. But your options are drink it or die, because the Grey Wardens present at the Joining will kill you if you try to back out after learning about this. If you drink from the Joining chalice, you also might die, but your name will be remembered as a Grey Warden at least? Even though you’re dead. And hey, if you live, you… become “immune” to the darkspawn taint, which is to say you’re already fucking tainted so it’s not like it can get worse. Want to know why the Grey Wardens don’t tell people they’re gonna make them drink darkspawn blood? Well, if they did that, people wouldn’t want to join, and we need Grey Wardens.

Supposing you survive the Joining, there’s the shortened lifespan (10-30 years depending on your sources) and the nightmares (that maybe you can learn to tune out). Again, they don’t tell you this until afterwards. Why? Because then people might not want to become Grey Wardens… yadda yadda. (Shiro might not speak Adam’s name anymore but he sure does yell it some nights, jolting out of a night terror and back to reality.)

Oh, and forget about having kids! It’s very difficult if not impossible to have children as a Grey Warden! (Not like they let mages have kids in the Circle. And Shiro’d been in love with a man, so he was okay with not having biological children anyway.)

At some point, even if you were able to tune the nightmares out, they’ll come back and there’ll be nothing you can do about it. That’s the first sign of The Calling. Because it turns out that the Joining is really just turning you into a ghoul, except very, very slowly. You’re getting close to Ghoul-dom now. Most Grey Wardens choose to die in battle against the darkspawn rather than waiting to be turned. It’s tradition.

And if there’s a Blight going on? Oh, well, it turns out that the only way to kill an Archdemon is to sacrifice a Grey Warden. Why didn’t they tell you? DO YOU EVEN HAVE TO ASK NOW?!

The motto of the Grey Wardens is “In war, victory. In peace, vigilance. In death, sacrifice.”

So what I’m saying is that Grey Wardens are SUPER TRAGIC BADASSES. They also wind up pretty cut off from their former lives, so the Wardens become their family. So, basically, SUPER TRAGIC BADASS FOUND FAMILY. 

Shiro and Allura get close because it turns out they work well together as a fighting pair: he as a warrior, she as a mage. Even with only one arm, Shiro can at least protect Allura as she takes shit out. They’re quickly a unit, just the two of them, always sent out together. It’s no wonder it starts to blossom into love.

But Allura sees that Shiro wants to do more than just protect and shield bash, so she starts trying to figure out how to make him a prosthetic: one worthy of a Grey Warden. One... worthy of him. 

There are different schools of magic: Creation is the healing branch, and it seems natural to try to work with that some, but in the end, Allura has to also dip into a forbidden school: Blood Magic. Blood Magic has the reputation of being evil because you’re using people’s blood - people’s life forces - to power your spells. After growing up in the Tower, she’s understandably nervous about using it.

But she talks about it with Shiro, and although he might otherwise be scared of Blood Magic, she tells him she doesn’t need a lot of it, it won’t kill him, and... well, it’s her. He trusts her. And she works hard to be worthy of that trust, she goes over this spell she’s created several times. It should work to attach the arm - made of silverite, a very powerful and durable metal - to him so he can use it.

She just forgot about the darkspawn taint coursing through him. His blood is not normal. And there are some... side effects from messing with it.

I do recommend reading this post (it’s kinda 1/2 meta, 1/2 fic) but if you don’t want to, the short version is that Shiro has trouble controlling his arm at first and so he pushes Allura away because he’s afraid of hurting her. She takes that as a well-deserved rebuke because she did this to him. 

Eventually they scream it all out at each other: he loves her, he was afraid for her, she feels guilty and is so afraid he’ll leave her, etc. They settle down and start working together on figuring out how Shiro can better control this thing. At the beginning of this fic, he’s gotten the hang of it now.

I’ll put up pictures of their uniforms when I can, and other than that, you should be good to go! I know this was long, sorry. Here, have some pretty @mitzoco​ art:

[evolutionsvoid]

As a natural historian who has gained quite a few rings from the field, I have had the time and experience to pick up patterns and phenomenons that show up in my line of work. While I usually refer to the specimens and environments that I study, the more peculiar occurrences can often show up in places you never think to look. When I visit new places for research, I make it a habit to talk with the locals and get an idea of the land and culture that surrounds me. Usually I focus my thoughts on the species I have selected for observation, but over time I have found that the people I talk to wind up telling me a lot about the creature and themselves at the same time. The questioning and conversation shows what people think of the species, or how they view the entire natural world itself! Ask enough folk around the world, and you start to pick up on some patterns. One of the more obvious phenomenon to note is the desire to label anything big, scary and angry a "dragon." Those familiar with my work should already know quite well how I feel about that behavior. It is a case where people allow first impressions to condemn an entire species, refusing to look any further before calling it a monster. This line of thinking is quite similar to another pattern I have noticed, and that is ugly gross creatures are given no value, while cute pretty ones can often be given too much. To many, the icky stinging insect or the foul corpulent lizard has no purpose to the world, and thus its removal is acceptable. They dare not believe that these creatures have an important role, as those that are hideous cannot have any beauty! A concept spoken by tongues ignorant of the durian! It is often these same folk who then also believe that the adorable and beautiful ones are sacred and paramount to the whole ecosystem! I find it to be a rather messed up system! I know that I myself have called things pretty or ugly, but never would I allow such thoughts to dictate the value of a species existence! One must realize that the dung beetle and the butterfly are one in the same! They are crucial to the environments they dwell in, and seeking to eliminate one of them will often destroy all of them. I apologize for going off on a tangent, but I do so because this line of thinking is what plagues certain species and brings much misery to innocent lives. It creates folk who praise the fragrant blossoms of a tree while chopping away at its gnarled roots. I just wish others could understand that every species plays an important role to the world they live in, regardless of their odor or looks. Judging them only by their appearances is quite shallow and keeps you from seeing their true potential. The reason I have delved into this subject for so long is because I wished to talk about the Colompo, a species that is often scorned for it looks. Folk call them pests and plague bringers, treating them as if they were disease-ridden rats. To them, Colompos are useless stinky garbage eaters, and to that I cry foul! Do they eat garbage? Yes! Are they stinky? Absolutely, but they are far from useless and I will explain why! To start, let us examine what a Colompo is. At first, it may be a bit hard to understand what group it belongs to. It has the comb of a bird, the scales of a reptile and the fur of a mammal, so which is it? The answer is: Mammal! Scaly skin and bird-like structures are nothing new to the mammal class, so these features are quite normal for the Colompo. They have fur on their bodies, teats for feeding their young and bodies that can generate their own warmth. They scurry about on two bird-like legs, while their forearms have developed into fan-like structures that run down their backs. Though they give the impression of wings, the Colompo cannot fly or even glide. That doesn't stop these critters from flapping them wildly at times, usually when they get excited or are trying to scare off predators. They have a long prehensile tail that aids in balance and manipulation, it also comes in handy when they are hiding in the trees or other high up places! These tails end in an arrow-like point, but these structures are not hard nor sharp. Certain folk claim the Colompo use them as spears to impale prey, but these are floppy and are unable to pierce flesh. On their heads, they possess a rooster-like comb of a purplish color, though the structure is a bit more flamboyant on the males. They have large pointed ears and big round eyes, both of which are used to monitor their surroundings. A powerful nose helps them sniff out scent trails that will lead them to food, which brings us to an important part of the Colompo and the stigmas that surround them: their diet. It is funny how the diet of a creature creates so many assumptions in the mind of the public. If it eats plants, it must be peaceful (try saying that to the Khalkotauroi)! If it eats meat, it is evil and mean (I got some bad news about whales)! If it happens to eat dead things, then many call them gross and unsettling, usually leading to people chasing them off or hunting them down. The Colompo is a creature that lands in the latter category, as they are scavengers. In truth, they are considered omnivores, as they do munch on worms, grubs, fruit and any tasty morsels they find, but a huge part of their diet comes from rotting meat. Like mammalian vultures, they seek out carcasses and hurry to the scene, eager to chow on any leftovers they can get. Their teeth are good for gripping and pulling off pieces of tough meat, while their back molars do well against small bones and hardy chunks. Their toes are quite dexterous, which can help them grab hard-to-reach goodies or anchor them down as they yank on a stubborn strip of flesh. When they find a carcass, they will try to gorge as much as they can, storing food in special pouches in their neck. They are quick to feed because they know many others are competing for the same corpse, and often larger scavengers will aim to claim the whole carcass for themselves. At the size of a dog, they can try to push back against bullies at the dining table, but most Colompo will back down and scurry away. However, they do not run far off, as they prefer to use sneakiness over violence when it comes to getting food. While the new owner of the carcass focuses on their meal, the Colompos will quietly creep back to the scene. Colompos tend to travel in groups, and even if they were solo, a large enough corpse to bring in a feeding frenzy will draw in quite a few of these critters. When pushed away from their food, Colompos will band together to get a few more mouthfuls of food. When this happens, a few of them will rush in to harass the owner. This often involves nipping at tails, squawking loudly, spitting, spraying and being an absolute nuisance. Irritated, the larger beast will move to chase them off, leaving the carcass unattended for a few crucial moments. The other Colompos will rush in and grab what they can, scattering once the angry owner comes charging back. They will do this quite a few times, gaining a bit more food each time. Eventually they will relent, and the morsels they gathered will be shared amongst the group. 

While big carcasses are a favorite of the Colompo, they will go after any piece of rotten meat they can find. No matter how small the morsel, their nose will find it and they won't let it escape their hungry mouths. With this, they tend to be found anywhere that has spoiled food or rotting meat. Combine it with the fact that Colompos can be found in quite a few environments, and you have a rather widespread critter. From forests and swamps to city dumps and graveyards, the Colompo will be there. It is here where the trouble between the public and the Colompos begins. Since they are opportunistic omnivores and gleeful scavengers, they tend to get into places where they aren't wanted. Trashcans, junkyards, butcher shops and cemeteries can be feeding grounds for the Colompo as well as a headache for residents. Their dining can be a bit messy and their eagerness to go after fresher food can lead to comical and frustrating scenarios. From distracting customers to steal from a produce stand, to clambering on top one another to reach a cooling pie, Colompos will try anything to snag a meal. Unfortunately, this also means munching upon the recently deceased, as unattended graveyards can be buffets for them. Knowing that they will feed on a human corpse has cemented them as vile ghouls and evil creatures in the minds of many. To see the carcass of a former friend or family member be greedily devoured by hungry Colompos is a revolting thought, so many are quick to eradicate them if they start snooping around. I imagine they get the same reputation as vultures, as omens of death and bringers of disease, which is quite unfair! Since the Colompos will feed upon corpses, they have been associated with death and plagues. To see a roaming band of these critters means that disease and blight is sure to follow. Many are quick to point out that towns ravaged by sickness are often infested with Colompos, who surely brought this misery down upon the village folk. When the cattle drop dead in the field, who is there first? The Colompo. When the corpse wagons drop off diseased bodies at the pits, who happily greets them? The Colompo. So often do they show up around pandemics and death that people believe it is they who bring the plagues. Since this is seen as truth, Colompos are actively hunted and killed when they are spotted around cities and towns. Traps and poisons are often set out, and many farmers are quick to send the dogs after them when the Colompos start showing up. Those who attack them, though, are sure to be careful, as these plague bringers are surely not to be messed with. Their fangs drip with a necrotic venom that will rot your arm right off your body within seconds! Their spit harbors more then twenty plagues, and a single bite will cause your flesh to turn purple and swell until it bursts like a pus-filled balloon! They possess sacs that are filled with a foul acid that they spray at the faces of attackers, melting the flesh down to the bone! They will attack with the coordination and ferocity of a demonic legion, springing from the shadows with toxic jaws and tearing apart foes within sec- WHAT A LOAD OF RUBBISH! Just a heap of gall-infested junk that is nothing but the yapping of fools and the embellishment of attention seekers! How I wish I could tear up every page and scroll that spouts this wilting garbage! Colompos aren't venomous! They don't attack in groups! They don't spray acid, though they do spray a foul smelling substance at foes. You see, they have glands along their sides and near their rear that secretes a liquid that reeks like a rotten fish that was glazed and left out in the sun for a few weeks. When threatened they at first stand up tall, fan out their back flaps and puff up their chests. They hiss and growl, but do not lunge or seek to bite. If the attacker still charges forth, they turn tail and blast a stink trail behind them as they flee. Believe me, this stuff reeks and it doesn't come off easy! Get coated with it and be prepared to be banned from every town for the next three weeks! Some say tomato juice helps get the stench off, while others suggest really strong soap. My personal solution was to visit Marsh Dryad settlements and stay in their company. Their odor overpowered the one emanating from me, and I received quite a few compliments for my personal stench! Anyways, where was I? Oh yes, THEY DON'T SPRAY ACID! Absolutely preposterous, I say! Don't people ever do research before they write things down?!   No matter how many people claim it is the truth or how many scrolls present it to be so, Colompos are not bringers of pestilence! There have been many studies on Colompos over the years, and none have found that they carry these diseases in their bodies. The only reason they constantly show up during these plagues is because they are scavengers, you fools! They eat carcasses, so obviously they would go to where the bodies are piled the highest! The death and decay that comes from a sick village will lure them in, as they view it as a promising spot for food. Not only do they not cause plagues, but so far we have found that they are good for slowing them! Colompo stomach acid is quite powerful, and it is capable of destroying any disease that lingers in the meat they consume. By devouring virulent corpses, they can actually keep others from being infected! If the sickness is spread by parasites like fleas, Colompos can eat those as well! These creatures are important for cleaning up carcasses and removing sickness from the environment. The droppings they leave behind are free of these diseases and wind up nourishing a whole other group of creatures and plants! They do all this, and we thank them with hate and disgust?! How rude! Do you spit upon your garbage collector? Do you thumb your nose at the fellow who cleans latrines? Hopefully you say "no," because if you say "yes" than I really don't know what to do with you. I find it to be a darn shame that Colompos are forever associated with disease and death, as the species has so much more going on with them. I want to move away from the subject of plagues and instead talk about some of the other wonderful things about Colompos! The big one is that they are utter goofballs! They love to socialize with others of their kind, and it involves all sorts of running and playing. They scurry about and flap their fins wildly like crazed chickens! They make all sorts of stupid noises, and the way they stare with tongues hanging and drool dripping is quite hilarious! I honestly find them to be something out of a children's book, how comical they can be and how goofy their antics are. They are also good mothers! Colompos can have litters from about six to ten, and the mothers care for them until they are grown. They carry their young upon their backs, using their fins to protect them and shelter them from the elements. It is a good thing they can have so many babies, as it helps keep their populations strong despite the efforts of horrible people! I have also found that there are some that keep Colompos as pets! The owners are usually Marsh Dryads or similar hybrids, as strong odors is no bother to them, though I have seen others keep them around. A few Ghilani have been seen keeping Colompos, and I have heard that a human or two has done the same. Though I don't know if I could withstand the smell every day, I certainly applaud those that show such affection for these misunderstood creatures! Hopefully more folk get educated about the real facts about these creatures, and we can begin to show our appreciation for all they do!                   Chlora Myron Dryad Natural Historian ------------------------------------------------ This is a piece I finished recently that was dragon-based, so I decided to post it for Smaugust because it seemed fitting. This critter was made with the help of Lediblock2 , who had brought up the weird mammal/reptile rat lizard things that were supposed to be dragons in medieval paintings. Honestly they look more like the kind of beast that would raid a trashcan instead of a castle, and that was the concept they brought up. It was a fun idea to play with, and it resulted in this wonderfully gross little furball. They stink and eat garbage, but they are actual pretty nice creatures once you get to know them!

[believerindaydreams]

yay I wrote an ending! Again!

It is moar endery than last time tho and pleasingly spooky

Arcade

He's legitimately unclear at this point what's real and what isn't.

Christine for instance has abandoned the use of her sniper rifle altogether, relying on a power glove to take on the hordes of feral ghouls that populate the Dunwich Building. She's a trained Brotherhood assassin whose capabilities he's not privy to- how can he guess if her punches and war cries are her own, or impelled by something past the grave?

And the swish of a heavy coat behind him, the cock of a heavy-duty handgun, the sounds aren't there if he stops to listen properly. They're in the fraught moments, when his attention is too bent on surviving a fight to contemplate distractions.

And Boone. Arcade's almost certain his lover isn't here at all; he wouldn't be here empty-handed, with nothing to defend himself. The shoulder of his survival armor is sodden with dark liquid, his breath doesn't mist in the unwholesome chill.

Nothing can persuade him to use the blood-sight down here. It's not hard to see glowing ones, even in the dark.

Christine leads them down through offices and hallucinations, broken dreams and broken steel overlapping. Her instinct's smooth, unerring; not a wasted movement or wrong turn.

Somewhere along the way he gives way to temptation, takes a folded overcoat from his doctor's bag. The pestilent chill needs something sturdy to ward it off.

Christine watches with amusement, her bared teeth white in the dark; and forces shapeless scribal robes over her stealth suit. The hood reminds him of an illustration he'd seen in a burnt book once, an executioner holding the axe.

The dripping from Boone's wound is audible now, in still moments. He doesn't complain.

They're getting closer- the works of humanity have given way to those of nature, caverns lit by ethereal blue fire and populated by the dead. He and Christine cut their passage forward, each step bought with an unholy life, a guttural cry; and his clean holorifle becomes useless without scientific microfusion to support it. He takes out his ripper instead, slashing limbs that don't bleed and bodies without reason, and fights to preserve the ghost he can't even be sure accompanies them.

There is no silent peace to mark the end of their quest, or none he can hear at least; just a dead end, and Christine's voice as they circle, protecting each other's backs. "This is it. Cover me, I'll use the book."

He is certain the word should have been destroy, not use; but the difference is academic in every sense, with the continued influx of ghouls pressing them. There's too many of them. He can see the fallen remaking themselves, disembodied hands scuttling back to tattered limbs, heads rolling slowly back to torsos. They'll never survive this onslaught.

"I have it," Christine says. "It requires two."

She's read ahead and he hasn't; but the intent of the ritual knife she holds is anything but ambiguous. Arcade fends off a glowing one's attack by lopping it in half, wonders how he can buy breathing space from her.

"Christine. Christine, you don't want to do this."

"Yes, I do." She moves in for the kill, and all that saves him is the ridiculous inadequacy of her small knife, compared to all the weapons

His ripper catches it in mechanical teeth, only to shatter into a mess of gears and flying debris. She binds him to the obelisk, with a heavy twine woven from punga vines.

"Please don't...don't. Veronica's gone, this isn't going to bring her back."

"You want me to be rational," Christine says, a tear mixing with the sweat and blood running down her face. "You want me to give up a one in a million chance to bring my lover back, because you live and breath. Arcade. I'd kill my way through a hundred as good and pure as you, for the faintest chance of seeing her one last time."

She swings in the blade for the kill, one sure slash towards his throat; and Veronica Santangelo blocks it. Pushes the knife back on its owner.

"Not again...I can't have a Follower die for me again..."

Christine lets go of the knife, holds Veronica in a sobbing, ecstatic embrace; and then there is finally silence, a moment of pure peace before Veronica draws the knife down, through the back into the heart.

The knife rings out, as it clatters to the floor; the book falls with an obscene rustle of pages. The rest is ash and dust.

Arcade frees himself with a fragment of his ripper, grabs the ritual objects in a vague hope they'll fend anything away, give him power. The mass of ghouls running towards him don't seem impressed.

What does impress them is the unmistakable sound of a 10mm bullet piercing a rotten skull.

Arcade gives up. Calls in the blood-sight the way Boone had warned him never to do, alone and unmoored; and can see the mass of undead approaching this spot, a horde, a flood. The wanderer poised against them.

And somewhere, very far up, a warm human life with a beating heart. A beacon back to everything sane.

"For the Enclave," Autumn says quietly, reloading his pistol.

Arcade meets his gaze, one last time; and throws him the overcoat before running for dear life.

*****

Boone is sleeping outside the entrance when Arcade makes it out, peaceful and untroubled. There's no wound on him.

Arcade shakes his head, liberally avails himself of the medicines and chems Boone's thoughtfully hauled along. What's left should still see them back to Point Lookout, if they're careful.

"You waited for me," he says, when Boone wakes up.

"Sure." The sniper lifts a lid off a pot, sniffs it. "Made that stew you liked."

"Beer and mole rat meat, wasn't it?"

"Something like that."

They eat under a dark sky pockmarked with stars, and the food is warming and the book looks like a book. He thinks he can go back and forget all this, if not forgive it.

"Christine died down there?" Boone asks, around a mouthful of potato.

"Yeah. She...she didn't want to live, without Veronica."

Boone does something that can really only be described as cuddling up to him, flank to flank and an arm against his back. "Glad you disagreed."

"...I think you may have saved my life down there."

There is, he thinks, something very restful about being able to say that and just being offered more soup in response.

"Radio's been buzzing," Boone says after a while. "Seems somebody blew up the Citadel. Funny thing is, nobody's claiming credit."

"Not even the Enclave?"

"Judah came on to say...denouncing in the strongest possible terms, something like that. Three Dog is saying the Brotherhood should sue for peace, whatever suing means."

"I'm not sure that will end well. An Enclave-Brotherhood alliance could be a terrible thing."

"You gonna go back to Raven Rock and do something about it?"

It doesn't take him so long as a breath to make up his mind. "No. You know what? I want to take this book back to the people who were worshipping it, and give them some tips about not letting it be stolen next time. Then I want to weed my herb garden. Then I want to organize the Boardwalk library, and lie in the sun with you and Manny and Carla and Daisy, and just...be. Finish my stimpak research. Stop taking every ill of the wasteland on my shoulders, because there'll never be an end to it."

"Sounds like a good plan. Home."

"Home."

They fall asleep together, for once; and no denizen of the wasteland comes to harm them.

[siribear]

an alarm blares too loud, too early in the morning. deacon reaches forward, hand closing around the source as he fumbles for the switch to turn it off. he manages to find the button, eventually, but not before the noise wakes his sleeping companion.

whisper grumbles, the noise vibrating against his chest. and, hey, he’s been in this situation before - too many bodies in the catacombs, not enough beds. first come, first serve. those unlucky enough to tuck in late end up sharing a mattress with a fellow agent. but then whisper sighs and presses closer against him and he thinks, despite the cold basement and life-threatening rad levels above them, this isn’t so bad.

better than waking up because glory’s kicked him in the shins for the tenth time, for sure.

he draws his arm back. no response. maybe she’s gone back to sleep. five is too early to wake up, anyway, even underground in the glowing sea. deacon figures he’s safe to drift back to sleep, until: ‘we have to get moving eventually.’

psh. doesn’t even sound like she’s got her eyes open, yet. he presses his forehead against her shoulder blades, rebelliously. ‘you first.’

she sighs, but it’s too soon to think he’s won. ‘about last night...’

‘hmm?’

‘that was all true, wasn’t it?’ he hums an affirmative between her shoulders. ‘does the ache ever go away?’

his stomach drops. killing the claws didn’t help. neither did killing kellogg, for her. yet here she is, piecing their commonwealth back together, even as she’s mourning. deacon rolls onto his back to stare up at the black ceiling. whisper slowly sits up next to him. the light from her pipboy illuminates the wires and aging ceiling tiles above him.

‘it will for you.’

‘what’s that supposed to mean?’

it’s his turn to sigh. feels like he’s reopening all the wounds he managed to duct tape closed. ‘you deserve to be happy. the pain will settle until it’s manageable.’

‘and you think you still have to atone for something, so you can’t be happy.’ the pipboy casts a shadow across her brow, furrowed. ‘for what you did to those people when you were younger? you’ve paid for it. with all your work in the railroad, you’re continuing to pay for it. but you’re never going to break even because the world doesn’t work like that.’

he told her he wasn’t the hugging type, but he fails spectacularly when it comes to her. deacon reaches for her hand, and she meets him halfway. more than halfway - she actually pulls him into a hug, and he melts into it. tucks his head into the crook of her neck. ‘am i the only one you’ve told about this?’ she asks as he clings to her like a lifeline.

‘you’re the only one that knows the whole truth of it.’ the truth about him. who he really is. what he did.

he feels her sigh more than hears it. ‘thank you,’ she says. ‘for trusting me with this. i - ‘ her shoulders tense, but when he looks up at her face, it’s not from any sense of awkwardness. whisper’s gaze isn’t even.. here.

he pulls away, slowly. reluctantly. ‘hey - ‘

‘sorry.’ she’s back, smiling, if weakly.

his stomach twists at the sight. if this were some trashy, pre-war romance novel, he’d kiss the look off her face - make her smile for real. maybe some ravishing in between. that’s - that’s absolutely a friendly thing to think, right? it has been a while since he had one.

... right.

instead, he takes a deep breath, ready to reassure her, somehow. but she interrupts him, probably sensing the placating bullshit about to come out of his mouth.

‘now that you’re up,’ she tilts her head, eyes softer now, ‘we should get moving.’

he suppresses a shudder at a nail lightly tracing the back of his neck. ‘using my vulnerable state to make me wake up, huh? here i thought you were better than that.’

she chuckles. ‘maybe i’m not who you think i am.’ it’s his turn to tense, but she lets it go with another sigh. ‘i’m kidding. but i am hungry, so let’s eat and get out of here.’

deacon hopes his quick bark of laughter isn’t as high pitched as it sounds in his head. ‘right. can’t get eaten by deathclaws on an empty stomach.’

whisper winks and digs out their breakfast rations, and as she hands him his own portion, he realizes: as much as she’s done for all of them, they hardly know her at all.

-

a working elevator saves them from the basement, taking them all the way back up to the roof. whisper removes the fusion core at the top. the lights in the building slowly dim and shut off in turn, and the loud, centuries old generator eventually goes silent.

deacon leads the way south, to a settlement established in the crater left behind by the first bomb. ‘you’re kidding me,’ she says when he tells her about it. the children of atom. a cult worshiping the bombs that brought about the end.

‘didn’t have them where you’re from?’

‘small town,’ she explains. ‘heard some rumors from caravans, but you never think stuff like that is real, you know?’ it hardly makes sense. to find comfort in something like that...

but it’s a place to check for their scientist. civilization, however crazy. people to hide him. it’s why she keeps her voice even as a woman stops her near the center of the crater and calls the place a holy ground.

‘how is this a holy ground?’

dark blue eyes look to the sky as the woman extends a hand. ‘atom reached out and touched this world,’ she brings her hand down, ‘and brought his glow to us. here, was the start. his first act in the commonwealth.’ whisper’s geiger counter clicks slowly, counting away, and yet the woman in front of her looks unmarred by the radiation. the woman’s ragged clothing blows in the wind, but she’s still - not a ghoul.

whisper cuts right to the point, unnerved. ‘i’m looking for a man named virgil.’

the woman’s voice is clear. ‘we know him. what do you want with him?’

‘i just need information. that’s all. i don’t want to hurt him.’

‘in truth, virgil has caused some... concern.’ she looks to her fellow followers. ‘some believe his presence is an affront to atom.’

whisper frowns. ‘is it because he’s from the institute?’

the woman’s eyes widen. ‘the institute? no. that isn’t it. but, thankfully, he only travels up here to trade, on occasion. otherwise, we have little contact with him.’

‘so, he isn’t here, then.’ whisper checked. they’re at the edge of her satellite map, now. if they go further, there’ll be no way to track where they are.

‘he lives in a cave, southwest of here. beware, if you do not know who you are hunting. i suspect he isn’t fond of visitors.’

southwest. off the map. she looks to deacon, who shrugs. ‘we’ve come this far. besides, if we get lost, we just look for the lovely green glow. of atom,’ he adds.

‘thank you, ma’am,’ whisper tells the woman, a little stiffly. it feels strange to talk to someone so reverent about the thing that changed her entire life - changed the entire world. but she’s been unconditionally helpful.

it’s refreshing.

and then it’s whisper’s turn to lead, pipboy map held in front of her to ensure they’re heading southwest. only a few minutes after they climb over the edge of the crater, her map goes blank. a message flashes on the screen: NO DATA. even the radio tab is empty.

‘officially in the middle of nowhere.’ and she thought that roadtrip she and nate took before shaun was born was bad. too bad she forgot to bring her paper map, this time.

‘edge of nowhere,’ deacon corrects. ‘we still have to find that cave.’

-

trying to keep to a straight line is difficult when the terrain is jagged and mountainous. anything to keep their way back as simple as possible - go through obstacles, not around. which means over the river and through the woods, to virgil’s cave they go.

whisper lived in the city. even her long treks across the commonwealth, following broken roads and dirt trails, couldn’t have prepared her for this. by the time they reach the cave, it feels like she’s carrying the power armor instead of the other way around. deacon drops to his stomach for an angle, much less quiet and gracefully than he should, considering there’s a sleeping deathclaw just outside the entrance.

‘think it’s his pet? can the institute tame deathclaws?’

whisper slowly lowers herself to one knee. ‘definitely need to change our game plan, if so. maybe tom can come up with something to tame one of those scorpions.’

‘i was thinking supermutant behemoths. like swan. take that, institute. ready?’

‘when you are.’

between their height advantage and firepower, the deathclaw is easily dispatched. the heated barrel of her minigun glows red against the wash of yellow-green in the glowing sea. no one comes charging out immediately, come to see what the noise was, but there’s no way virgil didn’t hear the commotion, if he’s still here.

the thought makes her skip a step, power armor drawing a rut in the ground. he has to still be here. whisper doesn’t know what she’ll do if he isn’t.

‘alright there, partner?’

‘of course.’ she has to be.

deacon carefully removes a string of tin cans hanging from a hook in the ceiling. a scrap turret rattles next to her, barrel pointed near her ribs as she keeps between it and deacon. a soft light casts a shadow of a second string of cans against the opposite wall. a light at the end of the tunnel. whisper draws deliverer but holds it loose at her side.

‘i’m right behind you,’ she hears before she steps into the room.

half-put together machinery and experiments are scattered across the floor. cans of food, open and empty, are stacked on a far table. next to it, an active terminal on top of a blown out stove. a stack of tires blocks her view of a lower section, but it’s from there that she hears rustling, heavy footsteps round the single stone pillar in the middle of the room, and she has to look up at the source.

a supermutant. wearing glasses, a scarf, and the tatters of once-white jumper. instinctively, whisper takes a step back. ‘i’m not going back with you alive,’ it says simply, enunciated through its low growl of a voice.

‘whisper, the super mutant just talked. and i mean, it said more than grr, die!’

‘i can see that, deacon, thank you,’ she says, picking her jaw up off the floor. she clears her throat. ‘go back - ? i just want to ask some questions.’

‘questions,’ it repeats.

‘uh, yes. please. are you - are you virgil?’

the supermutant takes a step forward. ‘you would know. you’re the one hunting me. i’m just surprised they didn’t send kellogg.’

‘kellogg’s dead. i killed him.’

he huffs. ‘impressive, if true. kellogg’s been the institute’s attack dog for a long time. are you his replacement?’

‘i’m - ‘ she sighs. this has to be virgil. the reticence to answer any questions - makes sense if he suspects she’s here to kill him. or bring him back, as he says. ‘my name is alice. i need to get into the institute, and it seems you’re my only hope in that regard. i came here for your help.’

‘why?’

‘the institute has my son. i want him back. it’s that simple.’

he takes another step closer, and this time whisper holds her ground. leaning forward, he looks her dead in the eye, as if she isn’t wearing a helmet at all. finally, he leans back with a sigh of his own. ‘brian virgil. i’m.. sorry, about your son. i know the institute used to take people from the commonwealth.’

‘still at it. the old take and replace,’ deacon adds.

‘i see.’ virgil’s silent a moment, considering. ‘i can help you, but i want something in return.’

whisper jumps at it, doesn’t care where she lands. ‘name it.’

‘i was working on a serum. a cure for my,’ he gestures vaguely at himself, ‘condition. i wasn’t able to bring it with me when i escaped. you go into the institute and bring me that serum. that’ll be payment for helping you.’

‘serum. there’s a cure for the super mutant... condition?’ she asks.

‘for this strand of the FEV, yes. the institute was... responsible for the super mutant presence in the commonwealth. but the lab was shut down a long time ago.’

‘jesus,’ deacon hisses.

‘okay.’ too many things at once. ‘okay. i’ll get it, easy enough, right? now how do i get there?’

he holds up a hand. ‘first thing’s first. do you know how synths get in and out of the institute?’

‘teleportation. i saw it in kellogg’s memories. long story,’ she clarifies.

‘all right. yes, teleportation. it’s referred to as the molecular relay.’ virgil explains further, the science of it. taking people apart, atom by atom, and piecing them back together somewhere else. it sounds dangerous. unrealistic. but virgil insists it’s the only way into the institute. and in order to connect directly to that relay?

they’re going to have to kill a courser.