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thyme-in-a-bubble · 1 year

Text

the murder at evergreen university

a/n: asdfghjkl I have been writing this since january...... wow. it's never taken me that long to write a story before... also I made a quick student bio about the majority of the people in this story, so if you wanna start off by looking at that, then here is the link ♡

summary: just a slutty murder mystery

warnings: reader x various CEvans characters (Ransom Drysdale, Curtis Everett, Ari Levinson, Steve Rogers, Frank Adler, Jake Jensen, Lloyd Hansen), DARK content, noncon, smut, violence, university AU, murder mystery, detective!Ari, family friend!Ari, mma!Curtis (I just couldn't resist), surely extremely inaccurate on all levels (the college stuff, the investigation, everything, but this is just for fun so it's okay. lol I got the frat name from fantasynamegenerators.com hehe), polyamory, kissing, alcohol consumption, crying, drugging, murder, somno, daddy kink, dirty talk, choking, penetrative sex, size kink, vomiting, flashback sequences are written in all cursive

word count: 11.100

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masterlist | join my taglist | evergreen university masterlist

Walking up the steps of the Kappa Zeta Nu building, you pulled your humming ear pods out of your ears and popped them in the jacket pocket where your phone rested. If it hadn’t been for the big Greek letters above and its proximity to the college, the fraternity house could almost fool someone into thinking it was just any other regular suburban home.

Giving the front door a rhythmic knock, it quickly swung open to reveal a scruffy-looking mathematics major, still groggy from sleep.

“Morning Frank,” you couldn’t help but notice the spark in his eye that your presence generated.

“Angel,” your nickname sounded so good on his sleepy lips, making you smile as he gave you a quick glance up and down, “how do you look like that this early in the morning?”

Walking past him, further into the house, you chuckled, “8:30 is not that early.”

“Um, on a Saturday it is.”

Thanks to the open floor plan, you quickly caught sight of Jake sitting by the kitchen island, scarfing down a bowl of cereal.

“Hey!” the blonde smiled, mouth still full of his breakfast, “I’m guessing by the gorgeous look on your face that you made it through last night?”

“Yep,” you exhaled, thinking back on the major cram session you had to power through in order to meet the paper’s deadline. The lengthy assignment for your cognitive psychology class had been so extensive that it probably hadn’t been that smart of you to keep procrastinating it the way that you had, but somehow you got it done, “turned it in just in time.”

“Atta girl,” the computer whiz reached over the counter to give you a high five, “I knew you could do it!”

“Speaking of yesterday,” yours and Jake’s fingers lingered a moment before parting ways, “how’s our boy doing? Did he make it through last night?”

Appearing behind you, still sweaty and panting from his morning run, Steve answered your question, evidently catching the tail end of the conversation just as he came in through the door, “Curtis is doing just fine,” he leaned against one of the counters, catching his breath, “better than fine actually, he won.”

“He did?” a bright smile bloomed on your face, “man, I wish I could have been there…” you were usually so strict about being there for important things, such as Curtis’ occasional MMA fights, but because of your procrastinated schoolwork, you hadn’t been able to tag along. “It’s all Lloyd’s fault, you know. He did the whole oh yeah, we can have a little study date, get that paper done, no sweat, and then distracted me, leaving me with all of the work to get through yesterday.”

“You wanna turn the faucets on down here, give his shower an icy turn as revenge?” Jake suggested, fiddling with his spoon playfully.

“Nah, I’ll just give him the cold shoulder for a bit,” you settled your forearms against the countertop, unintentionally giving the guys a better view down your top, “he hates it when I ignore him.”

“He sure does,” Jakes drawled, nearly dropping his utensil into the milky bowl as he unabashedly stared down your cleavage.

Biting your bottom lip a second, you returned to the matter at hand, “is he up yet?”

“Curtis?” Steve clarified, opening the fridge and plucking out a cold bottle of water.

“Yeah.”

“Nope,” Frank shook his head behind you, “he’s still sleeping.”

Only pushing yourself halfway up, you asked “can I go see him?” slightly taking the others by surprise.

“When have you even needed permission to go barge into his room?” Frank questioned.

“I don’t know…” you muttered, glancing down at the speckled pattern of the counter's surface, “maybe he’s got company or something…”

“Angel,” Steve leaned over the opposite side of the table, craning his neck so that he could catch your timid eyes, “he is not gonna go pick up some random girl just because you miss one of his fights.”

Bowing your head, you opted not to answer, instead just attempted to shake the doubt off you entirely.

In a bouncy rocking motion, you straitened back up and moved towards the stairs, two of the guys tagging along as they too needed to head upstairs.

“So,” you glanced over your shoulder at Frank and Steve, “how’s Ransom settling in?”

“The new guy?” Steve spoke, “fine, I think. I don’t know, I don’t speak trust fund kid, so how would I know.”

“I don’t think he’s that bad… Shouldn’t we at least try to include him in our little group? It just seems kinda mean not to since we’re so tight and you all live with him,” reaching the top of the stairs, you heard, from the bathroom directly in front of you, the trickling clues of Lloyd’s luxurious shower, and briefly glanced down at the far end of the hall where the new guy’s closed door was, his vast room mirroring Steve’s at the opposite side, though his was much more secluded from the rest, being closed in by the injection of both the broad staircase and the bathroom before the cluster of rooms came. “Like you said, you don’t know him yet, he might be super sweet and just takes a bit of time to warm up to people.”

“Maybe,” was all Frank cagily, not giving it any more thought.

Coming to a stop in front of Curtis’ door, you slowly creaked it open, revealing the sleeping display of a bruised buzzcut, still lightly snoring on his back.

“Jesus christ,” you breathed and leaned your shoulder against the doorframe, taking in the beaten form of your friend, “you sure he won?” you asked the men still lingering a second longer, peeking over your shoulder into the room.

“Yeah, you don’t wanna see the other guy,” Frank gave your behind a quick tap before ducking into his own room.

Turning your head to look at Steve, himself leisurely making his way down towards the room at the end of the hall, “you sure he’s fine?”

Stopping in his step, he offered you an earnest glance, “he’s fine, Y/n. Go wake him up.”

After shutting the door behind you, you peeled off your jacket and let it drop down onto the desk chair you passed on your way towards the small mattress. Kicking off your shoes, you climbed the twin bed, kneeling beside your resting friend.

“Wake up,” you sang, dipping your smile down low to rouse Curtis. Receiving a less than lively reaction, only getting a soft inhale of breath as an indication that he’d woken, you tried again, swinging one of your legs over his form to straddle his hips, “hey, tough guy,” you felt his palms slide up the curve of your ass and come to rest around your waist, “you alive?”

Just barely fluttering his bruised eyelids open, a bright smile bloomed on his lips, “hi angel,” he sighed contently at your presence, blinking up at your softly illuminated form as the gentle morning light streamed in through his open window, the family of birds living in the tree just outside aiding in the gentle ambience.

“A little birdy told me that you won last night,” you let your upper body sink down against his, resting your chin on top of your folded palms, right underneath his chin.

“I did,” you saw as the sting of his various injuries woke him up even further, “although I still would have preferred if my good luck charm had been there instead of doing boring homework.”

“Oh, please don’t make me feel any worse,” you hid your face in his chest, “I already feel like I have too much making up to do.”

“Oh yeah?” he picked your head up for you to see the sly smirk now adorning his face, “what did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know,” you spoke shyly, feeling your cheeks flush as the position the two of you had found yourself in dawned on you, “I just really wanted to have been there,” and you sat back up, wary of where you placed your hands for support on his beaten frame.

“Ah,” he waved a reassuring hand, “you’ll be at the next one.”

“Oh, I will,” you grinned promisingly, scooting down to the foot of the bed as you watched him sit up, the duvet falling off his body to relieve the rest of the colourful aftermath, “a simple assignment won’t be able to stop me,” your enthusiasm made him smile through the wince he let out as he got up off the mattress.

Tailing after Curtis as he moved out into the hall and made his way down towards the lavatory, you suggested as you followed him into the bathroom, “we should totally do something to celebrate your win! It’s the weekend, we should do something fun!”

Standing by one of the sinks, Lloyd, fresh out of the shower, didn’t take his eyes off his hair in the reflection as you sauntered in. As Curtis grabbed his toothbrush, he leaned down and whispered cheekily in your ear, “I know a way we can celebrate, just the two of us,” flashing you a glance that caused your breath to get caught in your throat.

Cutting off your flustered giggle, Lloyd spoke, “there’s supposed to be a party tonight down on the other side of campus. Me and a few of the others were talking about going.”

“Oh, the one Delta Phi is throwing? Nat’s going to that! Said something this morning about meeting the guy she’s been seeing there.”

“What-, guy?” Lloyd finally ripped his eyes away from the mirror, “what happened to that yoga chick?”

“I don’t know, I think she was moving a little bit too fast for Natasha’s speed,” you spoke of your commitment-phobe of a roommate. Saddling up beside the fighter now brushing his teeth, you said, “so, what do you say?” bumping your hip gently against his as you saw him look back at you in the mirror, “it could be fun.”

Pretending to ponder the proposal, Curtis answered, “if you put on a pretty little dress, then I might be convinced to go,” the foaming toothpaste lightly murmuring his flirting.

“…It’s always the innocent-looking ones you’ve gotta look out for,” Ransom spoke over the loud, bassy music to the moustachioed man next to him on the couch, “and this little charade you’ve all got going on must be a hell of a good time,” he elbowed him suggestively, though didn’t conjure the desired reaction from him, “oh, come on, you can tell me, dude. Just help a brother out with a few details.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Lloyd shrugged with a smirk and took a sip of his beer.

“What do you mean?”

Huffing out a soft sigh, he answered, “she’s an amazing girl, don’t get me wrong, but she just has a few rules.”

“What, like some bdsm kinda rules?” Ransom’s eyebrows wiggled excitedly.

“No, man,” he tried not to chuckle at the yearned-for images his inappropriate guess provoked, “back when we met her she-… her heart was fucking broken and there wasn’t a lot of stuff that she wanted to do anymore, that she felt comfortable with, but over time, I guess when she started getting over whomever that fucker was, she began to relax and let us in.”

“So, you’re really saying you haven’t hit that yet?” the prying man furrowed his brows, unmoved by the sob story.

“None of us have.”

“Then are those stories about you banging her last week just rumours?”

“No, no, well not exactly, we did have fun, trust me,” he chuckled, poking his cheek playfully with his tongue, “but I didn’t exactly bang her.”

“So, let me get this right, you’re all mad for her and she hasn’t given out? To any of you? What, is she still a virgin or something? Waiting for marriage?”

“I don’t think so,” Llyod thought for a moment, “but it kinda wouldn’t surprise me either if she was… I don’t know… it’s kinda complicated, but damn if she isn’t worth it.”

Letting out a low exhale, he shook his head, “I don’t know how you stand it, dude. If she was mine, she wouldn’t be able to walk. Hell, how do you even share someone like her?”

“Well, I don’t know if she’s mine per se, we all just have fun, you know? Why not share?”

“Hey,” your chipper voice interrupted their lewd convocation as you finally caught sight of them on the dark leather couch in the corner of the party, “there you are,” and immediately grabbed each of their hands in yours, “come on,” you leaned your weight back, ushering them to get up, “we’re doing shots in the kitchen!”

“Seriously, Barnes? Watch where you’re going!” Ransom exclaimed as the host of the party had rowdily bumped into the rich boy on his way through the narrow kitchen, causing the bright pink shot in his hand to spill all down the front of his white sweater, “this is cashmere, dude!” he yelled after Bucky’s quickly disappearing form, clearly not haven noticed the interaction himself over the deafening music and his drunken haze.

“Oh my god,” you gasped, noticing the huge stain now blooming on the man beside you, “are you okay?” the sharp alcohol still stung in your throat causing your words to come out ragged.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he stared down at himself, then over his shoulder in contemplation of whether or not he should run after the guy in pursuit of revenge, “this sweater however is not.”

As your eyes washed over the ivory knit, watching it soak up the colourful cocktail, you thought out loud as an idea struck you, “well, maybe…” and acted quickly, grabbing the man’s hand, “come with me,” you yanked him past the rest of your jovial friends and down the hallway towards the small bathroom.

Catching on to where your head was at, Ransom spoke after crossing the threshold, “Y/n, this is very sweet, but I don’t know if it will work.”

“Just shut up and take it off,” you held out your hand, too blind by your inebriated problem-solving instincts to consider any other outcome.

Gazing back at you a moment, he then chuckled and tugged the sweater over his head with one hand, your eyes widening as he placed the item in your waiting palm, it haven apparently been the only layer he had on.

“Thank you,” you breathed, dumbfounded for a second as you stared at his bare chest, briefly admiring his toned form before shaking it off and spinning around to turn on the sink. Holding the stained material against the slowly trickling cold water, you pressed and pinched the spot gently in an effort to not agitate the delicate fibres. “I swear, I’m always the worst at spilling stuff on myself, I’m like a child, plus the fact that I’m a knitter, so not to promise anything, but I’d say you’re in pretty good hands.”

He didn’t say anything, simply settled in beside you, leaning against the edge of the sink as he watched your face contort in adorable concentration.

“Oh, dammit…” you gave up after a few minutes of gentle scrubbing. Turning the faucet off, you held the sweater up and looked at the, although lighter, still very much visible pink stain, “well at least it’s a little bit better than before,” you tried, flashing the half-naked man an apologetic look, “maybe if I soak it a bit it’ll get better, but-”

“Hey,” Ransom placed his fingers atop yours still clutching the wool, “it’s fine,” he lowered your hands as he leaned in and closed the gap between you two, his alcoholic breath fanning across your flush cheeks as he uttered a quiet, “thank you,” before unexpectedly pressing a greedy kiss against your lips.

Feeling his grip tug the sweater out of your hands, you instinctively pressed your palms against his chest for support as the whole move had made your intoxicated body lose its balance. His lips were soft, but his kisses were hungry, determinedly letting it build far faster than you were ready for.

You let out a soft giggle of surprise as he suddenly scooped you up and planted you on the edge of the sink, nestling himself in between your parted thighs, your short dress haven ridden up from the movement.

“So, is this why they all call you angel?” he asked as his heated pecks fluttered down your neck, “because you swoop in and save the day?”

“I don’t know if I do that…” you breathed timidly, the reality of what he was doing just catching up to you now.

“Oh, but you do. You saved mine,” he smirked, “you’re my hero,” you felt the tickle of his fingers as they snuck further up under your dress, “however can I repay you?”

“I, um,” you giggled nervously, catching his wrists before they could get any further, pressing your lips against his in an effort to soften the blow as you thought of a gentle way to let him down, “I think that kiss by itself was a pretty good thank you,” you hopped down from the sink even though he made no effort in providing you room to do so.

Enclosing his arms around you as you giggly stumbled further towards the still-ajar door, he uttered, pressing the obvious tent in his pants up against your softness, “but why stop there? I can do a lot better than that if you just give me five more minutes,” but the door conveniently swung open a bit more just as two familiar figures passed it.

“Angel!” Jake, completely blind to the man still clawing at you to stay inside the bathroom, hooked an arm around your waist and yanked you along as he and Frank jovially strolled past, “there you are! It’s almost 11 o'clock, please don’t tell me that you’re bailing on Curtis and truly dooming him to lose to us.”

“I think Curtis would lose to you two in beer pong whether I am on his team or not,” you smiled, thankful of their timing, “you guys are the reigning champions after all.”

“Damn right,” Frank roared, excitedly lifting his fist, “J and F! F and J! Ain’t nothing this duo can’t accomplish.”

“Well, not everything,” you giggled, hooking your arms around their forms as they strolled on either side of you, their arms draped over you in return, “for instance, you’re both terrible cooks.”

“Shut up, angel,” Jake said playfully, “we’re unstoppable and you know it,” he stopped you in your tracks and trapped you against the wall, “say it,” he smirked down at you as Frank, not missing a beat, slipped in as well, enclosing you completely, “say that we’re unstoppable.”

Sucking in a sharp breath, you uttered, “you’re unstoppable,” the sudden proximity awakening memories that made your heart flutter.

“Good girl,” he purred purposely, and a shiver ran down your spine as you recalled just how hot they both sounded cumming for you, a while back, when they had managed to talk you into playing with them both.

“You guys are so mean,” you said light-heartedly.

“Yeah,” Frank scrunched his nose through his warm smile, “but you like it.”

Twirling you around the dancefloor, Lloyd had been the only one in the mood to satisfy your surge of energy when you came pouting, begging the boys to dance with you. Holding you close, his hands roamed as you rocked to the music, causing you to close your eyes and drift away.

“Hey,” a different hand suddenly tapped you on the shoulder and tore you out of your dream, “I need to talk to you a sec.”

Eyes fluttering open to look back at your redheaded roommate, you gave her a quick, “okay,” before raising yourself up onto your toes to speak into your dance partner’s ear, “hey, I’ll be right back!”

“Okay,” he shouted back over the loud music, “I’ll just go grab a drink, you want any?”

“Please,” you reluctantly let go of his hand and yelled after him as you followed your friend through the swarm of partying people, “a beer, thanks!”

Rounding the corner to settle into a comparatively quieter nook, you tugged your wild hair behind your ears as you looked back at Natasha, “what’s up?”

Biting her lip, she spoke, “you love me, right?”

“Well, obviously, I’m about to get down on one knee and everything,” you joked, “what is it?”

“Can I have the room tonight?” she asked with a small winch, knowing damn well how frequent this request was.

“Seriously?” your eyebrows shot up, “again?”

“Please?” she folded her hands dramatically in front of her and begged.

Letting out a soft sigh, you said slowly, “if you buy me that super good chocolate with the blue wrapper that they sell down on the corner, then-”

“Oh my god,” she cut you off and threw her arms around you, “thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“You’re the worst roommate ever, you know that?” you smiled, patting her back.

“And you are the best, a true saint! Me and my sex life pray at your altar.”

“Yeah, yeah,” you chuckled, playfully pushing her away, “go on then, get laid.”

Returning to find that Lloyd had settled in with the rest of the guys, taking up all of the clustered couches, you put on your best miserable expression as he handed you your beer, “guys,” you dramatically caught their attention, “I have some really devastating news to tell you…” faking the need to suck in a self-soothing breath before uttering, “tonight, on this very night, I am homeless!”

“Oh no!” they played along, giggling as you pressed the back of your hand up against your forehead.

“I know! Whatever am I to do? If only some big, strong, handsome boys would let me crash at their frat…”

Clutching onto Curtis’ broad shoulders as he gave you a piggyback ride back to the frat, you all laughed at Jake and Frank’s terrible, lewd rendition of the school’s fight song. If Lloyd had been here, if his stamina hadn’t forced him to stay out and enjoy the night a little longer, he would have probably not only joined in, but led the tune, waking up everyone in the dorms you passed.

“So,” Ransom smirked as you all tumbled in through the destinated front door, “who will have the pleasure of bunking with you tonight?”

“I, uh,” you giggled as Curtis sat you down, your shoes clutched in your hand, “I don’t know…”

“You can sleep in my room if you want,” Steve offered generously, “I’ll just sleep down here on the couch.”

“Really? Are you sure? Because I can just sleep down here on the couch, it’s fine.”

“No, no,” he waved a hand reassuringly, “you’ve had way more to drink tonight than I have, so you should really take the room closest to the bathroom, just in case.”

Smiling widely, you stumbled over and wrapped your arms around his bulky form, “thank you, Steve,” breathing in his scent as you smooshed your face into his t-shirt, “you’re the best.”

“You wanna borrow a shirt to sleep in?” Curtis asked, reaching out a quick arm to steady you as you lost your balance on your way towards the wide staircase.

“Oh, yeah,” you offered him a fuzzy smile, both the alcohol and the hour causing your eyelids to feel like they weighed a ton, “that would be great.”

Getting settled into the comparatively more private bedroom located next to the stairs, the bathroom too separating it from the rest of the doors clustered down the narrow hallway, you lazily changed into the t-shirt Curtis soon handed off to you, tugging it over your dress before sliding your party outfit off underneath the grey cotton, keeping yourself somewhat covered purely because you didn’t wanna end the conversation you and the rest of the boys were trying to wrap up.

“Alright, we should probably let the lady sleep,” Steve spoke, watching closely as every time you blinked, your eyes gradually stayed closed just a little longer, nearly falling asleep against Curtis’ broad shoulder.

“No, no,” you protested, inhaling sharply in an effort to wake up more, “I’m just resting my eyes…”

“Right,” Frank chuckled as they all got up from their comfy seat on the mattress, being too tired to fight it, Curtis gently helped you lay down, tugging the duvet over your curled-up form.

“Hey,” Ransom poked his head into the room as the rest began to filter out, “I thought you might like this,” you were surprised to see him have a small glass of water in his hand for you. Not simply placing it on the bedside table by your head, he kneeled down next to you and held it out, “here,” expecting for you to take it, “I swear, chugging a glass of water helps with the hangover,” sliding his free palm under your head to raise it up.

“Thank you,” you smiled wearily as you slowly accepted it and raised it up towards your lips.

Noticing that you were only taking a small sip, his fingers found the bottom of the glass and pressed it up further, “all of it,” he tilted it for you to down it all, “or else it doesn’t work.”

Coughing lightly as you lowed the now empty glass, it left an odd taste in your mouth, though you just summed it up to be the handiwork of some of the strong beverages you had consumed during the night working its way up again.

“Thanks, Ransom,” you groggily patted his cheek, “you’re so sweet.”

His eyes flickering over your tired face, smooshed against the pillow, he smirked, “goodnight,” got back up and strolled out past Curtis still lingering in the doorway, arms crossed and watching over you like a guard dog.

“Night,” you quietly called out after him as you saw his frame disappear towards the furthest room down the hallway. Redirecting your attention back to your friend, you hummed, “go to bed, Curt. You gotta still be super sore from last night.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“Oh, so you’re just gonna stand there all night, fall asleep on your feet and act as my sleep paralysis demon for the night?” you joked with half-closed eyes.

A small laugh bubbled out of him as he finally moved, “sleep well, angel,” he uncrossed his arms and reached out for the doorknob to tug it closed.

“Goodnight, Curtis,” you snuggled further into the pillow as you felt sleep overtake you like a wave crashing the shore, adding absentmindedly under your breath, “love you.”

“Hmm…” you hazily blinked your heavy lids open, roused by the pinching pressure between your thighs. Looking up at the dimly lit figure, you mumbled fuzzily, “w-what?” unsure if this was real life or a dream as the whole bed spun beneath you and you felt like you were floating.

“Shh, go back to sleep, angel,” Ransom’s grunt pierced your ears as his palm pressed over the bottom half of your face, silencing any words you might speak, “It’s alright, daddy’s got you,” a shy cry vibrated against his hand as you felt him rock against you, finally noticing fully the unexpected sensation of his thick girth stretching you out, “just be a good girl and lay right there, let me have a little slice of heaven.”

Keeping your exhausted legs spread wide apart, his determined hips acting as a door stop, he moaned quietly, “fuck, it really did do the trick,” he looked down at your dazed form, awake enough to be present for him, but unknowingly sedated enough for you not to fight back, “almost a shame you won’t be able to remember any of this in the morning,” he slid his hand down to squeeze your throat, pinching your rapid pulse and making the world even more blurry, “look at you, fucking out like a perfect little doll. You wanna be doll, huh? My own personal little fucktoy?”

Fighting to keep your eyes open, your whole body rocked at his movements as he frantically picked up his pace, selfishly pounding into you, melting on top of you and pressing your sedated body further into the bed.

“You know, I barely needed to touch you a second before you soaked my fingers, you clearly want this as much as I do,” he tightened his grip on your throat, “you need this, you need me,” stifled moans flowed from his lips as he unmercifully pounded into you, scratching his own vile itch, “poor you, none of your boyfriends ever touch you properly. That’s just what you need, isn’t it?” he mocked as your fluttering cunt tried to squeeze him out, expelling him from your body, “you just need your tight little pussy to be stretched out? Just need some good dick? Don’t worry, angel,” you vaguely felt his tongue flicker against your slightly numbed skin, “as long as I am here to help, I’ll keep your pussy sore, keep it filled up,” you just managed to catch him growl before you lost the forlorn battle and your body dozed off again.

Waking up with a low groan, you quickly sprung up, feeling the contents of your stomach fighting their way out. With no time to entertain the surprising presents of Curtis already curled up at the foot of the mattress, you bolted out of bed and ran out the door, thankful for the close proximity to the bathroom as you soon found yourself kneeling in front of the toilet, regretting every sip you had indulged in as they burned your entire chest on their way out again.

Feeling as your loose hair suddenly got picked up and gently held back, you heard the warm rumble of Curtis’ voice as he said, “wow, okay, alright,” his large palm found your spine, soothingly caressing it as you hurled your guts out, “it’s alright, angel. Just get it all out.”

“Urgh,” you groaned, clutching the cold porcelain as you spat out the fowl tang, “I am never drinking again,” keeping your head over the bowl till you were sure you had gotten it all out. With a heavy sigh, you slumped back, colliding softly with the mass of your friend.

“You okay?” he asked, lightly running his hands over your goosebump-ridden form.

“I think so,” you blinked up into his steely eyes, the reddened look to them flying over your exhausted head, “at least I made it to the bathroom this time,” you tried to joke with a half-hearted smile.

Letting your body weakly droop down, sighing in relief as you felt the cold tile hug your form, you heard Curtis notice, “no, no, you can’t fall asleep out here,” feeling his fingers already slide beneath your body.

“But it’s so comfortable,” you let out a small winch as he scooped you up into his arms, your frame draping over his strong limbs, and a dull pain stung your core. “Hey, what date is it?” you suddenly asked, trying to make sense of the uncomfortable tingle.

“I-, uh, why?” he thought, carrying you back into Steve’s room, your eyes noticing the other doors down the dark hallway were all open wide, even though it was the middle of the night.

“No reason, I just think I might be getting my period or something…”

“Miss Y/l/n?” a voice called, though you were a million miles away, “Miss Y/l/n?”

“Huh?” you blinked, shaking your head slightly as you unsteadily glanced up at the figure, “sorry, yes,” you reluctantly let go of your friend’s hand and rose from the seat you had been waiting in.

“You’re gonna be fine,” Curtis gave your hand one last squeeze, “I’ll wait right here for when you’re done, okay?”

He and the other guys hadn’t let you out of their sight since the terrifying news had spread like wildfire yesterday morning and rocked the entire campus to its core.

“Okay,” you nodded weakly, not truly present as you followed the stranger inside.

Pulling out a chair at the cold table, you sat down and averted your gaze from the walls of the bare conference room provided by the school for the law enforcements to use for their investigation.

“The detective will be right in, you just sit tight,” the figure spoke before they closed the door behind them, leaving you alone in the makeshift interrogation room.

You didn’t know how long you were in there, maybe a minute, maybe ten, but soon you heard the door creak open once more and a voice, long forgotten, found your ears, “hello, I’m detective Levinson, I will be conducting this-”

“Ari?” you blinked up at your elder childhood friend in amazement, the nauseating feeling of grief momentarily washing away at his unexpected presence as he sat down opposite to you, “what are you doing here?” your eyes drifted over his informal suit, the jacket missing and the sleeves sloppily rolled up passed his burly forearms, “and when did you stop being a beat cop?”

“Uh,” he blinked, a solemn expression washing over his stern face, softening it significantly, “around a year ago,” he then sighed deeply and said, “I really hoped there had just been another Y/n Y/l/n here at this school…”

Effectively bringing you back down to earth, “oh, yeah… will this be a problem? Can you not do this if you already know me?”

“No, no, it’s not that. I just-,” his head tilted gently to the side, “this isn’t something I ever wanted you to go through.”

Sucking in a sharp breath, you nodded shyly, “yeah, well, I am.”

Looking over you a moment, taking in the small changes you had adapted in the years since you had last seen each other, he offered a genuine, “I’m sorry,” and attempted to catch your weary gaze.

“It’s not your fault,” you glanced down at your hands as your fingers once again began to dig nervously into your skin, leaving angry little half-crescent marks in its wake, “you’re not the one running around murdering students,” you awkwardly attempted to joke.

Exhaling lowly, he then opened the file in front of him and laid out a small tape recorder in the middle of the table, “are you ready to begin?”

“Yeah.”

Pressing on one of the side buttons on the recorder, Ari then announced methodically, “can you please state your name for the record?”

“Y/n Y/l/n.”

“And for the record, are you speaking to me voluntarily?”

“I am.”

Glancing over the open folder sprawled out in front of him, he asked, “what was your relationship with the victim?”

“Ransom, he-, um… he was a friend. I honestly didn’t really know him for too long, but he lived with some of my best friends, so it just seemed pretty natural for him to also become a part of our little group, if you’d call it that.”

“And you last saw Mr Drysdale when?”

“At the party Saturday night. I crashed at their flat after that, so it was probably early Sunday morning that I saw him last, when he was on his way to bed, I think.”

“Did anything happen to him that night? Anything unusual? His behaviour? Someone he interacted with? Anything you can think of that stands out?”

“Uhm,” you thought back, remembering the heated kiss you had shared in the bathroom, though looking back into Ari’s studying eyes, you couldn’t help but lie and say, “no, I don’t think so. It was just a party, you know,” the thought of telling your childhood crush that you drunkenly made out with a guy sent your stomach turning, crushing the truth before it could crawl out.

“Alright,” he nodded, “well, if you do remember anything, please reach out, we’re running the bulk of the investigation from here, so you know where I’ll be.”

“Still have your number,” you forced an awkward laugh.

“Right,” he sucked in a breath and averted his piercing gaze, “so, uhm, I don’t think I have anything else to ask you right now. Thank you for your cooperation with the investigation.”

“Of course,” you watched as his fingers wrap around the tape recorder, clicking the protruding button and making it stop, “it-, um,” you felt a shiver run down your spine as his eyes fell upon you once more, making the polite words seem that much harder to muster, “it really is good to see you again. Nice to see that you’re doing good,” then added jokingly, “that your mom still hasn’t talked you into cutting your hair,” a sincere smile tickled your lips at the mention of the warm woman living next door to your own parents.

Even though it was clearly forced, your words still conjured a genuine reaction from the guy who used to babysit you, “yeah, no, you know she’s never winning that battle,” he chuckled, shaking his head lightly, “it’s, uh, it’s great to see you as well. You-, um… yeah…” he dropped whatever compliment was on the tip of his tongue and averted his gaze, “I don’t wanna keep you any longer, you can go, you probably have classes to get to.”

“I actually don’t,” you informed him, though still slowly got up from your seat, “our professors have given us all some time off to-, uh, you know…”

“Yeah…” he nodded understandingly, his vision following your form as you made your way towards the door.

Pausing just before your fingertips grazed the doorknob, you looked back, timidly chewing on your bottom lip, “hey, Ari?”

“Yes?” he responded quickly, clearly still completely captivated.

Finding it difficult to even breathe properly in his presence, especially when those soulful eyes were locked upon yours, you found that your words crumbled before they even got to see the light of day, “I-, um…” then hastily scrambled your brain for a makeshift, “good luck.”

Breathing out a soft smile as he watched you nervously fiddle with the door handle, he said, “thanks, Y/n.”

It had been Monday morning that a garbage man had found Ransom’s body in a dumpster on the far side of campus. Even though they had tried to contain the news, it still spread like a wildfire, and come lunch that day, it was the only thing any student could talk about.

The frat quickly got sealed off as an active crime scene as it had been the last place witnesses had seen him alive, forcing the rest of the guys to temporarily bunk up with friends in their dorms. You felt a bit ashamed about the immense relief you felt at that small detail, the comfort of having each one of them fight over who got to stay with you being something you welcomed with open arms. In the end, it was both Curtis and Steve who stayed with you, Natasha giving you the room and staying with her newfound beau in the meantime, giving you the entire space for a while.

The guys had always been protective of you, but it almost seemed to have grown over the past few gloomy days. Not a second passed by where at least one of them wasn’t at your side, holding you as you cried, walking with you through the crowded campus or just keeping you company, making sure you weren’t alone. You just added it up to be their version of freaking out and buying into the whole conspiracy that it hadn’t been a drug deal gone wrong as so many had assumed of the recently deceased playboy with a penchant for illicit substances, but actually someone on campus, a stone-cold killer masking as just the person next to you in your lit class.

“Why don’t you go ask him?”

“Me?” your brows furrowed in Lloyd’s direction, “why me? If you wanna know so bad, why don’t you just go ask him yourself?”

Chiming in, Jake tilted his head, “well, you did say you know the guy.”

Exhaling lowly, you averted your gaze, your crossed arms tightening over your chest, “yeah, you could certainly say that…”

“So just go, bat your eyelashes at him for a bit and figure out how much he knows,” Lloyd tried to persuade you, though even his ever-present cocky charm couldn’t sway you this time.

Previously assuming that the whole conversation had just gone over Curtis’ head, as he had just quickly sat beside you and stared out the window, he suddenly perked up, “we just-…” he struggled to vocalise, “if it really is someone here on campus… just the thought you sitting in class with them or-, fuck, anything, it just-…” like a magnet, your fingers naturally found his own in a comforting squeeze, “angel, we just wanna keep you safe and the thought of someone like that running around terrorising the school-… just please go figure out if he has a suspect yet. See if he has got any leads.”

From the moment you had said goodbye to the familiar detective, shame about not telling him the whole truth had nearly eaten you alive. You had lied to not only a person you had known your whole life, but also a law enforcer. It was insufferable, like a snowball rolling down a hill and growing bigger and bigger with each accumulated snowflake.

“Fine,” you cracked, the shameful storm inside your body becoming too much to bear, “I’ll do it.”

“Knock, knock,” you said with a small smile as you pushed the ajar door open completely.

“Y/n,” Ari’s spine straightened in surprise, his eyes no longer glued to the computer screen before him, “what are you doing here?”

“Thought you might be hungry,” you held up your alibi for coming in the form of a takeout bag, “it’s from this little Indian place downtown,” you shut the door behind you before plopping the crinkly bag down on the table, the warm light from the desk lamp illuminating the brimming containers of curry stacked inside, “you like Indian, right?”

“I-, I do,” he said, still taken aback by the kind gesture, “thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Thought it was the least I could do as a thanks for what you’re doing,” you waved a hand in the direction of the cluttered corkboard on the wall.

“It’s just my job, you don’t need to thank me,” he said modestly, leaning back in his chair and lending you to spot the silver pen his fingers fiddled with.

Lowering your gaze to stare at your shoes, you exhaled, “right…”

“So, um,” he filled out the awkward silence, “was there anything else you needed?”

“Oh, sorry,” you mumbled, keeping your eyes averted, “you’re obviously super busy and here I am just barging in,” your vision finally flickered up to lock with his, already steadfast on you, “I just, uh…” your breaths became more jagged as his sky-like eyes captivated your own, “there was actually something else I wanted to talk to you about, something I wanted to tell you.”

“Alright…” he nodded, listening intently.

Blowing out a shaky breath, you revealed, “I lied, something did happen that night.”

“Okay,” his brows furrowed, though not as much as you had feared, “what was it?” your anxious brain haven already thought of a million different dramatic punishments he could penalise you with.

“I, uh…” you squeezed your eyes shut nervously, “I kissed him,” your pained voice rushed to force out, “at that party. It was in the bathroom and almost became something else, but, um yeah… we kissed… me and Ransom…” you peaked just one of your eyes open, your tense shoulders nearly pressing against your ears at this point, “I’m really sorry, I just felt like couldn’t tell you something like that, not you. I won’t be arrested for hiding this information, will I?”

“No, no,” Ari quickly rose from his seat, “Y/n, you’re okay,” he stepped closer to you as he attempted to calm your uncalled-for panic, “you won’t be arrested.”

“Oh,” you breathed, “good,” feeling your shoulders begin to drop back down again, “you know how my mind tends to freak out.”

“Yeah,” he nodded softly, “I do…” his words genuine as memories conjured the whisper of a smile to appear upon his lips, “thank you for telling me.”

Awkwardly, you flashed him a tight-lipped smile, grateful that uncomfortable moment had passed, you recalled the other reason for why you had come, “so…”

“So…” he echoed.

“Do you have any leads, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“That’s classified information, you know I can’t tell you that.”

“I know…” you averted your gaze and scrabbled your brain for what you could do or say to get him to tell you, “it’s just, I’m so scared all the time. The school was always a place that made me feel safe, till now…” although your intentions behind those words weren’t completely truthful, the statement wasn’t that far off, “it was just worth a try asking you.”

Holding your gaze, you could almost see his heartstrings get tugged as his brows quivered in compassion, “I-… I do have something. If you didn’t know, we just finished sweeping the victim’s living quarters, so if they haven’t already been notified, your friends should be able to move back in by tomorrow, but we also found something, not there, but in proximity to the dump site, there was a knife with traces of the victim’s blood on it. It’s in the lab right now as we speak, trying to decipher if there are any identifiable prints on it.”

“Oh my god…” you felt goosebumps sting at every inch of your skin.

“You haven’t heard any details about what state his body was found in, have you?”

“No…” both from avoiding the papers and keeping to your dorm, you might be the only student on campus not aware of how your late friend had died, “he was stabbed?”

“That was decisively what killed him, yeah, but he was brutally beaten before that.”

“Holy shit, that’s-…” you shuttered, your eyes just now noticing the nauseating photos pinned on the board beside you, “fuck… I don’t know how you do this all day, deal with these kinds of things.”

“It gets easier over time,” he shared, his worried eyes scanning your face a moment before apprehensively uttering, “this might be a really stupid question, but how are you holding up?”

“I-…” you toyed with the thought of lying to him yet again, but then opted to share the truth, “I am not doing so good, to be honest. I could probably count the number of hours I’ve slept in the last few days on one hand, or so I’ve been told. I don’t think it feels like I’ve slept at all, but apparently I have, just a little bit.”

Sucking in a pained breath, he murmured, “I’m sorry. I can help find someone you can talk to, if you want.”

“No, it’s alright,” his kind offer made it easier for you to look away from the horror plastered all over the office walls, “I mean, I’m not alone, that fact has become crystal clear throughout all of this.”

“Yeah, I kinda pieced that together,” he spoke in a much different manner than before, causing your brows to crinkle, “I conducted all the other interviews. It’s nice that you’ve made friends, making the most out of your college experience,” he said in a tone, almost reminiscent of jealousy.

Averting your eyes, memories you so desperately tried to keep at bay pried their way in and snuffed out the fuming flicker his resentment had ignited, “hey Ari?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you know?” you asked wearily.

“Know what?”

“Did you know all of those years, growing up together?” you lifted your vision once more as he offered you a questioning hum, “did you know that I was in love with you?”

Taken aback, it took a bit before he managed to answer, “no, I didn’t.”

“Why didn’t you ever call me? You just left.”

“I was getting married, Y/n. What was I supposed to do?”

“Not fuck the girl you used to babysit,” you shot back coldly, “what even was I to you?”

“I-… I don’t know,” his frustrated words came out breathy, “do you think I planned for any of that to have happened? To sleep with you of all people? I didn’t. But when I came home that summer and saw you again, saw who you had become, I don’t know, everything just changed, you changed. I fully thought that you’d to still be that same little annoying brat you used to be, but you really weren’t. I didn’t expect it to happen, I didn’t expect you to suddenly do something like that to me, have that kind of power over me!”

“So, you just decided to break my heart instead? I was mad for you, for as long as I could remember. That summer was the happiest I’d ever been and then you just up and left in the middle of the night without a word. Did you even think to imagine what it was like for me to run around that morning looking for you and instead finding an invitation for your wedding? I had to hear from your fucking parents that you had just come home to prepare things before the big day. You hadn’t even mentioned to me once that you were engaged, or even as much as just in a relationship. Was any of it even real to you or was I just your last bit of fun before you got tied down?”

“It was, Y/n,” he insisted sincerely, “it was the realest thing I’ve ever felt.”

“Then why did you go without as much as a goodbye? You know how much that broke me?”

“Yeah, well you seem to be doing just fine now,” he said pettily.

“Excuse me? You don’t get to say something like that to me. You were the one who broke my heart, you don’t get to judge how I glued it back together. Just go back home to your wife, why don’t you.”

Suddenly looking back at you in confusion, Ari then illuminated carefully, “Y/n, I’m not married.”

“What?” you blinked.

“I mean, I know you weren’t there that day, but I thought my mom at least had told you,” the gears turning inside of him were nearly visible to the naked eye, “I couldn’t go through with it.”

“What? Why?”

Biting his tongue as he held your eye, he then exhaled, “because I didn’t think I should get married if I was in love with someone else.”

Sucking in a stunned breath, you saw tears cloud your vision, “b-but… you never even called…”

“I know I didn’t,” he concurred heavily, his eyes unable to look away from your glossy ones. Feeling as if you might faint, you saw his woeful vision flicker down towards your lips, “I’m sorry, Y/n.”

But just as you saw him slowly inch his face closer and closer to yours, a sharp intake of air stung your lungs as you raised a hand up as a barricade, “I can’t…” too scared of history repeating itself, “we can’t…”

Sighing deeply, his eyes traced the tear that rolled down your cheek, “I know…”

You had just been helping the guys move back into the frat. That was all you had been doing. One moment you were all laughing, actually having a normal and pleasant moment for once, and the next, two officers were barging down the door and reading Lloyd his rights.

You’d nearly lost it completely and Curtis had to hold you back so that you didn’t go scratch one of the officer’s eyes out. The man in the cuffs however took it with style, only trying to break through your hazy to let you know that he would be fine and for the others to take care of you, after all, this wasn’t his first rodeo down to the station, although those times it had only been for petty crimes like bar room brawls and such.

“But I mean, how did it even happen?” you thought out loud a while later, the miranda rights still ringing in your ears like a triggering song you just couldn’t get out of your head, “that’s what my mind keeps going back to,” you had finally calmed down after what felt like forever of the guys talking out of marching down to the station to do something, anything to get Lloyd out. Completely powerless, you sat curled up at the end of the couch as words flowed from your exhausted lips, “how could someone like him be killed? He was such a nice guy.”

Not being able to stand it any longer, Curtis pipped up from the armchair on the other side of the living room, “no, he really wasn’t,” your bolstering words about the deceased being too much for him to take without cracking, “he was a rich creep and everyone knew it,” frustratingly, he gesticulated, “with everything that he did to you, how can you just sit there and say that he was a nice person? The guy drugged you and violated you in your sleep for fuck sake!”

The room went dead quiet as soon as those words left his lips.

“…what are you talking about?” your voice no higher than a whisper as you watched your burly friend shrink in regret. “Curtis,” you repeated more sternly this time as he didn’t offer an explanation, “what do you mean? What did you do?” your voice broke as thoughts about if Lloyd’s arrest hadn’t been a misunderstanding after all entered your mind.

“You can’t tell her,” Frank shot a glare at the fighter, “we had a deal.”

“Yeah, well that was before Lloyd got fucking arrested!” Jake chimed in, panic shining clear through in his tone, “she’s a part of this, has been since the very beginning. She has a right to know.”

Finding your wide eyes in the crowd, Curtis asked you wearily, “you really wanna know what happened that night?” hugging your knees tighter to your chest, you gave him a small nod in confirmation, “fine, I’ll tell you.”

…

“Is she okay?” Curtis pushed the ajar door open further to ask, haven, on his way to the bathroom, caught sight of an out of breath Ransom tugging the covers back over your passed out form.

The head of the cashmere-clad man snapped up at the sign of company, the sudden alarm that began to bloom on his features was quickly drowned out by his usual arrogant air, “yeah, man,” he shot back defensively, rushing to get out of the room, “she’s fine,” sounding like it had been a completely crazy question to ask.

Furrowed brow staying put, Curtis uttered slowly, “alright, but I think I’m just gonna check myself, if you don’t mind.”

“I said she’s fine!” Ransom slammed the door shut behind him, prohibiting the man now only inches from him from entering, “just go back to your own room!”

Worry and suspicion only growing at the obvious fibs, Curtis demanded, “what were you doing in there? What did you do?”

“What are you talking about?” he scoffed back.

“What did you do to her?” Curtis took a looming step closer just as their raised voices began to stir some of the other slumbering residents.

“I didn’t do a thing,” he cockily dared a chuckle, “calm down.”

“I will not fucking calm down,” Curtis barked back before attempting to call to you through the closed door, “angel, you okay?”

Leaning against the wall beside his own room, Jake rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as he groaned, “guys, can you not yell in the middle of the night? Some of us are kinda trying to sleep here.”

Frank, as well haven appeared, seemed a little more alert at the sudden commotion in the hallway, “hey, what’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on,” their suspicious friend waved a hand, “Curtis is just being a little bitch and freaking out for no reason,” the ostentatious gesture granted the opposing man an opportunity to slip past and enter the room.

Nearly kicking the door down, Curtis rushed to your side, examining your unconscious form with worried eyes, “angel?” the dim lights streaming in from the hallway just barely letting him notice how wrinkled and haphazard the t-shirt he’d lent you just a few hours before was on you.

“Jesus, just let her sleep, dude.”

Ignoring Ransom’s words of warning, Curtis tried once more, “Y/n?” touching your skin lightly before giving you a gentle shake, “come on, wake up for me, baby,” his heart nearly beat out of his chest as he unsuccessfully tried to stir you, the shallow rise and fall of your abdomen not granting him as much comfort as it should have.

Nearing the end of the hall, Frank asked once more, “what’s going on?” side-eyeing Ransom warily, “is she okay?”

“Of course she’s okay,” the trust fund kid scoffed.

“The fuck she is,” Curtis’ head whipped back in the direction of Ransom’s silhouette in the doorway. Getting back up on his feet, his sharp intakes of air causing his shoulders to rise, he stormed back out and demanded, “what did you do? Why were you in here and why the fuck is she not waking up?”

“Did you not see how much she had to drink tonight?” Ransom defensively gestured to your passed-out form on the narrow bed, “I was just checking up on her,” and with a heavy sigh abandoned the argument entirely and descended the stairs.

Catching Curtis’ arm just in time to stop him from storming down after the man at the centre of the quarrel, Frank tried to catch the darting eyes of his friend as he asked firmly, “Curtis, what’s going on?”

“I saw him in there, hovering above her like a creep.”

Already worried eyes suddenly growing in alarm, “he was in there?” Frank quickly shared a panicked look with Jake, both now sharing the same inkling of what horrible thing had occurred, “alone with her?”

“Yes.”

“Wait,” Frank gasped, “did you say she’s not waking up? She is still breathing though, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, she’s just out cold. Why?”

“Oh my god…” Jake shuttered, his interrupted slumber now long forgotten.

“What? What is it? What aren’t you guys telling me?”

Exhaling lowly, Frank carefully began to explain, “Curtis, you know that my sister goes to Bayshore, right?”

“Um, sure, yeah?” unsure as to why that fact was significant.

“Well, she told me about this student who overdosed after being drugged and raped. The guy was apparently caught and everything but just came from a wealthy enough family to not only never be convicted, but also keep the news out of the papers. Curtis, that’s where Ransom transferred from.”

Seeing nothing but red, Curtis stormed down the stairs. On his determined path to the kitchen where the object for his bubbling rage now stood, leisurely sipping from a glass of water. Curtis narrowly caught sight of Lloyd as he finally stumbled through the entrance from his drawn-out merriment, uttering a hushed apology to the bulky frame of Steve on the couch for the way he had carelessly slammed the front door shut behind him.

Only rolling his eyes at the sight of Curtis, Ransom didn’t even lower his glass as the fuming figure neared, “dude, I already told you, I didn’t do a thing-” though the rest of his provoking words got squashed as Curtis’ fist suddenly collided with his jaw, swiftly grabbing onto his soft sweater before he could crumble like the shattered glass now scattered across the cool tile, “what the fuck!” water splashing onto both of their feet.

“What did you give her?” Curtis barked, his fingers digging into the intricate, stained knit so hard that they threatened to poke through to the other side.

“Give who what?” appalled glare piercing as he fought against the hold.

“Y/n!” he shook him heatedly, “what did you give her?”

“I didn’t give her shit, man,” Ransom just managed to spit out before white knuckles collided with his face once more.

“Did you touch her? Because I swear to fuck, if you laid even as much as one finger on her, I’m gonna-”

“Oh, I see,” he actually dared to chuckle, a bit of crimson already staining the pearly whites he flashed, “you’re jealous that you didn’t get with her tonight.”

Landing another raging blow, Curtis yanked him in close and growled, “you shut up and answer my question! Did you touch her?”

Scoffing through his laboured groans of agony, Ransom finally disclosed smugly, “of course, I did, man. She’s been all over me all night long, begging for me to give it to her good.”

The rest of the frat haven now clustered in the kitchen as well, staying in the periphery, Frank accused, “what did you give her? Was it the same as the girl you killed back at Bayshore?”

The deep-pocketed man’s eyes flickered over Curtis’ shoulder, bruises blooming and swelling up his vision, “excuse me?”

“The rape victim that overdosed at your old school?” the bridge of Frank’s nose twitched in fury, “it was you that killed her, wasn’t it?”

“I didn’t do anything of the sort, all I did was show those girls a good time, it’s not my fault some can’t keep up.”

“Is that what you think happened tonight?” Curtis hauled him against the fridge, gaining the man’s attention once more, “you call assaulting Y/n a good fucking time?”

Keeping his head held high, Ransom slurred, “what are you ashamed you’re not man enough to rough your girl up a bit and give her what she really likes?”

Huffing like a bull, he uttered, “she does not like it like that.”

“Oh yeah? Then tell me why I had her moaning the way I did, dripping down on ol’ Steve’s bed like a cheap whore. Kind of a shame that she won’t remember any of it in the morning, just hope I fucked her good enough that at least some part of her won’t forget…”

…

“Oh my god…” you shuttered, unable to look any of them in the eye, “oh my god,” your palm shot up to clasp over your lips to choke the shaky cry that forced its way out, “I thought-…” vision darting everywhere and nowhere at the same time, “I thought it had been a dream,” tears streamed down your ghostly face as the hazy nightmare suddenly came into focus, “oh my god! I-… I knew him,” you jaggedly tried to piece it all together as vile stung in the back of your throat, “he was-, he was my friend. I hadn’t known him that long, but he was my friend. I-… he wasn’t just some dangerous stranger in the back of an ally threatening to kill me, he was my friend.”

…

The incoherent screams of Curtis slowly subsisted as his rampant blows finally slowed down. Slowly backing up, chest heaving, horror took over his eyes as he saw how far he had been pushed, watching as blood bubbled out of Ransom’s mouth, guggling his words.

“Just you fucking wait till my family finds out,” he weakly continued his threats from his wrecked position on the tiled floor, “do you have any idea how much power money gives you? I can squash you all like little bugs, ruin any chance you might have of a pathetic future and keep angel all to myself.”

Unable to look away, Steve suddenly uttered as Curtis shakily retreated into the shadows, “…guys, we have to call an ambulance.”

Whipping his head around, Jake protested, “no, don’t!” ready to swat away any phone that might be raised, “he’s right. He has the upper hand no matter if we get him to a hospital or not.”

“So, what do we do? Look at him,” Steve woefully gestured to the beaten playboy crumbled on the floor, “he’s dying. We can’t just leave him here!”

“No…” Lloyd sighed, his demeanour seeming surprisingly calm and level-headed under the circumstance, “but we can use what little time we have left before the sun comes up to our advantage…”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Frank’s brows furrowed frightfully.

In a wide arc around Ransom’s broken form, Lloyd made his way over to one of the kitchen counters and pulled open a drawer, “he said it himself,” he exhaled lowly as he accepted his fate, “he is more than capable of making not only angel’s life hell, but also all of ours,” his tone cold, he riffled through the utensils, “from where I’m standing, there’s only one way for us to get out of this with minimal casualties,” and fished out a knife, the steel reflecting in the low light seeping in through the other room.

“You can’t be fucking serious,” Steve gasped, “we’re not murdering him!”

“So you’d rather try and explain his corpse just lying here in our kitchen? This way we get the upper hand, we speed up the process and use the remainder of the night to our advantage till the rest of campus wakes up, hide him somewhere else, somewhere he won’t be found,” Lloyd stressed, “we have to kill him, it’s the only way.”

“Shit dude…” Frank breathed, he and the rest realizing that he was right, “where would we even hide him?”

After only pondering it a second, Jake pipped up, “it’s trash day tomorrow,” tensely sharing glances with the rest, “if we get him to one of the big dumpsters on the other side of campus, drop him in there, no one will know! And even if they do eventually discover parts of him out on some dump, they won’t be able to get anything off of him anyways at that point.”

“I-…” Curtis’ shaky voice finally filled the room, guilt seeping through in his brassy timbre as he asked what no one else would, “…who’s gonna do it?”

Not letting the others even consider that weight, Lloyd swiftly declared, “I’ll do it.”

“What?” the trembling fighter’s eyes finally lifted.

“If they actually do somehow manage to nail us for this, it should be me that goes down for it,” he stated deliberately, “always knew I’d go to prison at some point just like my old man, this way it wouldn’t be for anything stupid.”

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tonythr · 1 month

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We need to talk about the Pale King's foresight ability

Ok, I waited a very long time to make this post. The story of the Pale King is my favorite aspect of the whole narrative of Hollow Knight, and there's so much mystery surrounding it that I can't not think about it on a daily basis. There are a bunch of questions left unanswered, and I believe that most (if not all) answers were left in the game specifically so that players could interpret them the way they think is best. So I wanna see what interpretations ARE there and maybe pick one (or two. or three. or all of them. or maybe really just one.) I dunno. Anyway, the point is, this is probably gonna be a long one. Big shoutout to anyone who makes it all the way to the end.

Now, enough with the rambling. To the point.

It all starts with the mushrooms.

The part that started all this train of thought was this particular line.

Unlike other areas of the game, Fungal Wastes don't have a boss that correlates with the area's native species. The shrooms don't have a higher being they worship. They don't have a civilization. They don't have a Dreamer. All they have is this big old mushroom elder that sleeps eternally with this one thought in their mind. All this to say that this line here is *probably* hella important.

The lore tablets of the Wastes also echo it.

So keep this in mind: when the Wyrm, reincarnated as the Pale King, started building and expanding his Kingdom (it's safe to assume that he started doing that AFTER he turned into his bug form) and got to the part where he had to make an alliance with The Mushrooms, they agreed to be a part of Hallownest ONLY because they knew that the Pale King had an ability to predict the future. Remember, they looked down on all the bugs that weren't part of their mycelium-sharedSelf-mindUnited thing. They were perfectly happy with their way of life. They didn't need the Pale King's gift of mind. The only reason they agreed to accept his will was because of his foresight ability. They assumed that, since he can see what's going to happen in the future, he will protect them (along with the rest of his Kingdom) from any possible danger. And that was a smart decision.

And yet, it didn't work out. And not just for them. For the whole Kingdom.

The main question is why.

From the way the mushrooms talk about the Wyrm, we can assume that his foresight ability didn't quite suck, which is to say that he really COULD see a big part of what's going to happen. So basically, we have two possibilities:

A. The PK's foresight didn't allow him to see *too* far into the future. It had its limitations. Maybe he could see what was going to happen in an age from now, but he couldn't predict *everything*.

B. The PK's foresight could reach as far as all eternity, meaning he knew the 'Eternal Kingdom' was doomed to fail from the moment he started building it.

In any case, Elder Mushroom's words suggest that, at one point, PK actually KNEW his Kingdom was going to fail.

And, since the most important part of his story is his battle with the Radiance (like, what else would the Mushroom be talking about?), I think it means that he potentially knew that the Hollow Knight was going to fail, but created and Sealed it anyway. So, the question is:

If the Pale King could see that his plan of creating an empty vessel to seal the Radiance would inevitably fail, why did he go through with it in the first place?

Here's the first, most simple answer.

He knew that the Infection was inevitable, so he decided to postpone it indefinitely. Hit the snooze button, but make it last forever.

Actually, that's not even an answer. This is just a straight-up fact.

Hallownest is literally frozen in time.

(Actually, I think it's so frozen that sometimes it makes rocks levitate)

The Hollow Knight's sacrifice was made SPECIFICALLY so the inevitable arrival of the Infection could be set back for all eternity. That's why the game has a big leitmotif of night and day.

That's why the Radiance's main goal is for the Dawn to Break. Because she's the Sun, and what she's fighting against is an eternal night.

But now we're entering the mystery zone. There are two questions about PK's foresight ability that have to be answered in order to understand what's actually happening.

Question 1. Does freezing time also freeze the foresight? If the Kingdom is left in a stasis without a changing future, can PK still see past that stasis? Could he see when it would end? If so, could he see what will happen after it ends?

Question 2. Is Time actually predictable? Is there just one timeline where everything that happens was doomed to happen in the first place, OR are there infinite possibilities and some room for the free will? If so, can the future be changed if one knows what actions will have what consequences? And if so, are there things that are actually inevitable, no matter the choices?

Whatever the answers to both of those questions are, I want to emphasize this:

Those lines spoken by the Radiance, along with the Elder Mushroom's words about a demise unavoidable, as well as some other things I'll mention later, make me think that the Infection and the Radiance's rise to power is an event that was truly inevitable.

Here, it doesn't matter if the free will is real or not. Remember: in the Pantheon of Hallownest, the Radiance ranks higher than the Pale King. She is a candidate for a God of Gods title, the highest of the Higher Beings. So maybe PK could shape the future with his knowledge of it. Maybe his foresight actually protected his Kingdom by preventing some bad things that he, as a Pale Being, had power over. But the power of the Radiance was stronger than that. She had the strength to assert her dominating will in every possible timeline, so that, even with his foresight, the Wyrm couldn't do anything to stop the Dawn from Breaking. After all, it's the power of Nature itself - the day always inevitably comes to replace the night.

So that's the entire reason the King decided to use the Void in his battle with the Radiance. The Forgotten Light had the ability to conquer Fate. But the Void, in his own words, had the ability to deny Time itself.

So, even if the Infection was inevitable, the power of Void could either prevent it, postpone it, or straight-up defeat it. I think that the reason for this is that the Void possesses a will that is stronger than any Higher Being. The Night and Day can follow each other, but the force that represents the End itself is beyond that.

So, now we're gonna ask the REAL question.

With the Void being able to deny Time, could the Pale King see the future the Void's actions will bring?

And for that, I have two facts that suggest that PK, in fact, couldn't at least foresee SOME of the Void's choices.

The first one is the fact that the game has multiple endings.

Look into those eyes and tell me that they're looking at something that could have been predicted and prevented by a dead monarch, albeit a godly one. The existence of multiple endings tells us that free will IS real, at least for The Knight/The Shade Lord.

Oh and speaking of dead monarchs, here's the next fact.

That man is fucking dead.

The Pale King's whole deal was to last eternally, right? To build a life that would ensure his endless reign. To achieve immortality.

So if he could see what was going to happen after he let the Void into the picture, why would he still try that despite it clearly leading to his demise?

The nature of PK's death is mysterious, to say the least. He didn't just die of old age. He tried to run away, bringing his whole Palace along with him to the Dream World. He tried to run away from something - probably from the consequences of his own actions. But even that escape didn't save him from being killed. And what killed him was most definitely the Void.

The throne room is dark.

In fact, it's so dark that the Kinght has to pull out the lumafly lantern. The only other room in the entire White Palace where that happens is the workshop, where PK worked on creating the Kingsmoulds and the Wingsmoulds. The space is filled with black smoke and black particles - the same ones that are seen in the Abyss and many areas that are located above it. When the Kinght strikes the Pale King's body with the Nail, it sounds the same as striking a training dummy outside of Oro's hut, which is made out of a lifeless husk. It's like the Pale King's body was literally hollowed out.

The form that was given to the Void by the Pale King to create the Kingsmoulds guarding the throne room is lost here, implying that it gained some other will that was beyond the Pale King's control.

And again, the only other place we see something like that is the Palace Grounds in the waking world.

...Which are located just above the Void Sea. Also, the same smoke and particles surround the place, and black tentacle-like vines reach inside the body of the Kingsmould containing the Palace.

No need to doubt. It was definitely the Void that killed the Pale King.

But what does it mean?

Well, here's some important info about the Void. It is a manifestation of this world's regrets.

If you look deep enough, it makes a lot of sense for the Void to symbolize literal regret. The Shade is a manifestation of the Knight's regrets about what went wrong on its journey. The Void Sea in the Abyss is probably the regrets of the Ancient Civilization's dead bugs. And the Void that surrounds the Palace Grounds and the Pale King's throne room is a manifestation of his own regrets. That's why he couldn't escape from the Void even in the Dream World. Because you can't escape your own guilt, your own darkness, your own regret. That's also the reason why the Knight has the right to sit on the throne after striking down the Pale King: it's because, at that point, the Kinght is set on a path that includes facing its own regrets, accepting them and uniting them under its will. Something the Pale King failed to do.

But the question remains: what exactly were those regrets that the Pale King was running from and that ultimately killed him? I mean, of course, it's the whole deal with the vessels that he regretted, but I think there's more to that. I want to lay down a list of theories about his foresight. Each of them can also explain which specific regret got him the most.

Each theory would also change the interpretation of this famous line:

...Which is important. Obviously, this line refers to the Vessels being sacrificed in order to create a Pure one, but, depending on the possible range of PK's future vision, it can have an additional, deeper meaning. You'll see what I mean.

But first, there's some other issue here that needs to be addressed, that makes this whole discussion twice as complicated. It's all about this one line:

So, here's another fucking question. Does harnessing the Void by creating the Vessels and the Moulds make those creations a part of what the Pale King could see with his foresight ability?

There's some kind of scale here that varies from 'There are multiple endings that depend on that one Vessel's choice, so that means the Void is outside of the PK's ability to predict the future' to 'The Vessels and the Moulds are the Void that is harnessed by the Pale King, so his future vision applies to them as well; it's just that the Knight gains the power to choose the ending only when it takes control over its own Void by gaining the Void Heart'. So, what if the Pale King could foresee that the Knight would be able to defeat the Radiance in the dream world? What if he couldn't see the Knight's arrival at all? What if he COULD see it, but his vision only applied to the events of the Hollow Knight ending, the only one that doesn't include the Void Heart? What if even the Embrace the Void ending was visible to the Pale King after all, as one of many possibilities he didn't pay too much attention to?

But the Knight is one thing. What about the Hollow Knight? Was its failure a part of the future PK could see? Or, since THK is a Vessel too, its choices were off limits as well? What about the Kingsmoulds? Was the fact that they would succumb to the Void that was going to kill PK available for him?

None of these questions have a clear answer. Probably. Or maybe they do. But there are multiple explanations for what was really going on. I'll try to present them as a list of theories. Each of them will give us a different interpretation of the Pale King's foresight ability's true nature.

PK didn't know what the Void would do but decided to try using it anyway.

PK only saw that the Void would help the Hollow Knight seal the Radiance, but his vision was limited (either because it was limited by its nature (option A, see above), or because the stasis created by the void limited his abilities (question 1, see above)), and so he didn't see that the Hollow Knight would break.

PK knew the Hollow Knight was going to fail but doomed his Kingdom anyway.

PK only saw the timeline where the Knight seals the Radiance without killing her. Every other ending besides The Hollow Knight was beyond PK's foresight.

PK knew that there were multiple possibilities once the Pandora's box was opened, but he saw that one of those possibilities was the Void successfully sealing the Radiance and/or killing her, so he decided to roll the dice. So he could see that Dream No More was possible, but he didn't consider Embrace the Void.

Each of these theories holds some interesting interpretations. Let's take a closer look.

I'll use a timeline to mark the possible range of PK's vision for each theory:

Just to clear things out: when I talk about what PK could or couldn't see, I mean what he could or couldn't see while using his powers at any point before his death. It IS possible that he saw some things when it was already too late to do something. That's what I was talking about when discussing possibilities A and B above (so maybe he saw that THK would break before he even made the Vessels, or maybe he figured it out only after it got sealed). Every theory accounts for that. It's complicated. You know what? Nevermind this whole disclaimer. I'll get to it.

Theory 1. The Void neutralizes the future vision

Basically, what this means is that once the Void got into the picture, the Pale King could no longer use his powers in any meaningful way. The Void, being a will that denies Time, created too many different possibilities for the King to account for, yet he decided to go through with the Hollow Knight plan just because he didn't see any other option.

The line 'No cost too great' in this case might refer not only to the Vessels being sacrificed, but to PK's foresight ability itself. The cost is his future vision, sacrificed to a state of uncertainty that might or might not bring salvation.

If this theory is true, the Pale King's story is a story about a monarch who, in his efforts to save his Kingdom from a wild force of radiant nature, accidentally unleashed something far beyond anyone's control and paid for it not only with his main ability, but with his life as well. Both the Vessels' and the Abyss' actions couldn't have been predicted, and that's why PK accidentally allowed for the Hollow Knight to break and for the forces of the Abyss to overpower him with his regrets about the countless children he murdered.

The risk he took is his main regret.

The flaw of this theory is that, if it's true, it means that:

a) The Elder Mushroom was completely wrong about PK being able to foresee the second coming of the Infection.

b) Harnessing the Void doesn't do shit besides changing its form. Even while being contained inside a semi-sentient Vessel, its actions don't bend to the Pale King's will or his foresight ability.

All in all, this theory basically means that both Pale King's powers and his judgment sucked, and the whole collapse of Hallownest happened because he was incompetent, reckless and stupid.

(That's why I don't like it)

TL;DR: The Void does what it pleases regardless of the Pale King's future vision, and he was stupid for trying to use it.

Theory 2. The Hollow Knight's failure was beyond the Pale King's future vision

This is probably a very controversial one, but it does have some interesting implications. The point is that PK didn't see that the Hollow Knight would fail, and so he went through with the plan thinking it was flawless.

In this case, the Hollow Knight counts as a 'harnessed' part of the Void, so its actions up until its breaking were completely predictable. The Pale King saw that the Infection would be sealed successfully, and that a stasis would be created. He got what he wanted, but at some point (could be any point) he realized that he didn't know if anything was going to happen next.

That could happen for one of the two reasons:

The stasis created by the Pale King literally meant that the time was frozen, which meant that nothing relevant wasn't going to happen unless this stasis would somehow break. But, while inside this state of stasis, the Pale King himself couldn't see anything beyond that state. What future vision is there if there's no actual future?

The future vision was clouded by the Pale King's inevitable death. It's possible that, while looking into the future, PK couldn't see the Hollow Knight breaking simply because his future vision doesn't allow him to see beyond the moment of his own death.

Anyway, what this theory suggests is that the main thing the Pale King didn't or couldn't predict was his own death. Or maybe at some later point he saw it was coming and tried to run away from it by hiding his Palace, but the Void got him anyway. It happened because the Void that destroyed the Kingsmoulds' bodies and killed the Pale King was a force beyond anyone's control an beyond PK's foresight.

A major proof of that is the situation with this guy:

Notice how they apologize directly to the Pale King, and how the Void slowly took over their mind. This guy was a royal retainer, which means the King probably ordered them to keep the lighthouse running himself.

The question is, why did he take such a half-assed measure to keep a whole Sea of raw dark power at bay? It looks so stupid! Just one lighthouse for a whole unchecked Void Sea? And just ONE lighthouse keeper who couldn't even resist the Call of the Void? Why such carelessness?

The answer is right here. That was because the Pale King simply DID NOT KNOW what the Void Sea was actually capable of, because its power (unlike the power of the Void trapped inside the King's children's bodies) was beyond his foresight. Without a clear answer from his future vision, he figured that this Void might or might not be an issue and decided that he had more important stuff to deal with instead of even hiring a whole team to watch one lighthouse.

So, while he managed to reach his goal creating a stasis that would keep his Kingdom lasting eternally, there was one thing he didn't account for, and that was the vengeful wrath of the dark force he dared to use as his plaything. The lighthouse was turned off, and the Void soon started to rise up through the rocks of the Ancient Basin towards the White Palace. The King tried to run, hiding himself and his Palace inside the Dream World, but the Void seeped in easily, killing the monarch. After all, the Kingsmould that was used as a gate to the Palace was also made out of Void.

If this theory is true, then the line 'No cost too great' could refer not only to the Vessels, but also to himself. If he didn't know that the Hollow Knight would break, then he probably thought that his Kingdom WOULD last forever, and that even his own death wouldn't change that. So he sacrificed his own life, gave in to his regrets about everything bad he had done, but managed to save one glimmer of pride, thinking that, even though he killed a bunch of children and abused the Void, he still managed to deliver eternal happiness to all his subjects.

But the thing about this theory is that now we also need to explain why the Radiance broke free despite everything the Pale King thought he did. Here, this theory divides into two additional theories (I'm really sorry for this long-ass post):

Theory 2.1: The Radiance is like 'Nah, I'd win'

Basically, PK's plan to achieve eternal life for his Kingdom at the cost of his own life was actually good. There was no flaw in it, and it should've worked perfectly. But we know that the Radiance might be a being that is higher than PK on the power scale. So, just like the Void, her actions might be beyond what PK's foresight ability could help him see. PK did everything right (not morally), but the Radiance broke through anyway because she's just... that much better.

Theory 2.2: The death of the King is what triggered the whole thing

Going back to the Void's actions messing with the future the Pale King could predict, I say it's possible that his own death, caused by the Void, is what made the stasis wear off.

Think of it this way. The Hollow Knight contained the Infection, but that merely eliminates the possibility of a HIGHER FORCE enacting some sort of change. Preventing EVERYTHING ELSE from breaking the stasis is the job for the Pale King himself. But, once the Void (another higher force) kills him, there's no one that could keep the stasis running, and it just... ends. That gives the Radiance (as a force of change, opposed to a state of frozen time) an opportunity to break free.

Or maybe it was the Sealed Vessel that was affected by the Pale King's death. After all, we probably know what its only thought (the one that ruined everything) was:

So, the Pale King dies, the Hollow Knight senses that a familiar presence is starting to slip away, which makes the Vessel panic (or something like that), and the Radiance makes her move, infecting its mind.

OR it could be both of those things! Maybe the Hollow Knight's attachment to its father AND the Radiance's insane higher power both played a role in filling up the power vacuum that was left after PK died.

Anyway yeah, that's it for this theory. The only thing left to discuss is the new interpretation it gives us for the line spoken by the Elder Mushroom:

'A demise unavoidable', in this case, refers to the demise of the Pale King himself. He didn't necessarily foresee that his death would lead to the destruction of Hallownest, but at some point he might've figured out that the Void was coming to get him but decided to stick with his plan anyway. But then it raises the question of when and how the Elder Mushroom learned about the Pale King's demise, and why they assumed that he could see it coming. That's the main issue with this whole theory: it just doesn't explain how the Mushroom's line fits into all of this.

TL;DR: The Void killing the Pale King is the only thing that he couldn't foresee in the long run, and even if he could do that at some point, the consequences of his death AND/OR the Radiance's actions were beyond his control.

Theory 3. Self-fulfilling prophecy

Ok, so now we're on the theory that I personally consider the closest to canon, or at least the implications of canon that we have. This is also the one theory that brings (some kind of) consistency to this whole question. This is because it explains the earlier question of how the future vision actually works.

See, there's no way the Pale King actually knew that the Hollow Knight would break from the very start, right?

Why would he doom his Kingdom when all of his actions were meant to prevent that? In fact, that's exactly the question that the Elder Mushroom is asking.

"Pale Wyrm... What good to foresee a demise unavoidable?"

Well, the answer here is actually kinda simple this time.

He saw it coming, and he tried to postpone it.

This is the simplest explanation possible, because we already have all the proof right here on the table.

The King sees that the Infection will come, and that it is inevitable (the inevitability is the key part).

He knows that, when the predicted moment comes, the Radiance will return and wreck his shit. No matter the timeline, no matter the choice. The flow of Time itself inevitably leads to the Infection happening.

The only option is to use a force that is able to deny time itself. The solution is to use the Void to metaphysically freeze the very flow of Time itself. The plan is not to try to change what is meant to happen, but to create a stasis that makes it so that it never comes to it. The timer never reaches zero. The eternal snooze button.

The stasis, however, dampens the foresight ability. If there's no flow of Time, the King can't see what's going to happen.

[A little digression: For the purpose of proving this theory, let's say that the foresight ability works better the closer the observer is to the moment that is being observed.

For example, while looking into the future from a point in time before a big war, the observer CAN see that the war will end on a certain date, but only when that date comes closer to them can they see HOW the war will end, and WHO will end it, and any other detail.]

The stasis wears off because of the Radiance's power (like in theory 2.1).

The King is finally able to see the exact nature of the Infection breaking free. He sees that the Hollow Knight itself, the Vessel he personally created to be the only key to the Kingdom's salvation, will be the reason everything goes to hell.

Wracked with guilt and regret, he escapes to the dream realm before the break happens so that he can at least save himself and his palace.

The Void makes a move that the King could or couldn't foresee, killing him. He thinks about the 'no cost too great' philosophy one last time before realizing that it is, in fact, utter bullshit. He dies with a feeling of everything he built crumbling to dust and his core belief being proven faulty.

The Infection breaks free, having harnessed the Hollow Knight, as inevitable as always. With the King being dead, there's no power to uphold the time stasis, which becomes the final push. The Vessel breaks.

Only then the Kingdom sees the arrival of a void being that has the potential to actually change things from their set course. The Knight, being a part of the Void that was beyond the Pale King's future vision range, enacts an end of its own choosing.

This ties to the game's themes of determinism, and flashes out the Kinght's strength to break free from the fate's chains, empowering the player and making the whole plot twist with the final battle against the Radiance even more epic.

The monarch who justified killing his own children by his desire to prevent the higher will from destroying his artificially made Kingdom has succumbed to a force beyond his control, becoming a part of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The chosen hair of its father's will becomes the reason why the inevitable finally happens. The only one who is free of obligations, desires and beliefs becomes the one to save the Kingdom once and for all, avenging the deaths of its kin. Beautiful.

And the Mushrooms who probably just didn't believe in the stasis from the start turned out to be right, smugly reminding us that it was always inevitable and PK couldn't do shit. There's no good in seeing a demise unavoidable, and it's foolish to make sacrifices to postpone it.

What the Pale King lacked was acceptance. The ability to embrace the true nature of things.

Something that is the main ability and the main character arc for the Knight, whose nature is to consume and to use its will to make even the darkest shadows become a part of it.

A little spoiler though: this theory has another variation that is even cooler. I'll leave it for the very end.

TL;DR: The King knew that the Infection was inevitable from the very start. He tried to postpone it. He failed, becoming a part of a self-fulfilling prophecy. When he figured it out, it was already too late, so he fled and was then killed by the Void.

Theory 4. The Masterplan

Ok, so, while the previous theory was probably the one closest to the canon implications, there are still a couple of possibilities that make this WHOLE thought process worth the time spent on it, because the mere CHANCE of this one theory being true makes the whole game feel even more nuanced. It's not even necessarily correct, but it's not about that. Team Cherry made the lore surrounding the Pale King's foresight ability vague enough for us to feel it's POSSIBLE that the whole plot was predicted by him. And that's how this narrative works: it allows the players to come up with different interpretations of itself, never proving or disproving any of the theories that it inevitably creates inside our heads.

So anyway yeah, what if the Pale King knew that another Vessel would usurp the Hollow Knight? What if THAT was his plan all along?

So, let's discuss a very important question.

How was the Hollow Knight chosen among other vessels? Why did that one child become the Pure Vessel while millions of others were left behind?

Well, judging by these lines and by the Birthplace cutscene, the trial to be chosen as the Hollow Knight was to climb up from the Abyss.

But why? How does scaling a huge pit prove a vessel hollow, and devoid of thought? Is it about the strength? Is it about not caring about other siblings who fall down? Is it about controlling one's inner Void in order to not succumb to the regret of the whole situation? Is it something like a sperm and an egg thing? A bug thing? Maybe it's all of those things. Maybe it's none of them. One thing we can assume, though, is this:

The Knight also passed this trial. It could have become the Hollow Knight. The reason it didn't was because the Pale King didn't see it and the Hollow Knight didn't care about it.

But in the end, it was the same reason why the Kinght became a more worthy candidate.

Think about it this way. If the Void is what is needed to seal the Light, and if the Void is created and channeled through regrets and past pain, what could be a better fuel for it than a father's abandonment and a sibling's indifference? Passing the life's trial but losing a chance to live anyway creates the strongest darkness, and that darkness is the reason the Knight becomes the best Vessel possible to do this task.

But it's not the only trial the Knight had to pass in order to qualify for this role.

(Notice the phrasing used in the Quirrel comic - 'ascend to that fabled land')

We don't know how it happened (Team Cherry teased us once about revealing it), but the Knight not only escaped the Abyss through some other path, but managed to leave Hallownest and then come back, purified by the mind-wiping winds. That's what Hornet says about it, too - she specifically states that the Knight's resilience was born of two voids: the one that's outside of the Kingdom and the one that's below it.

And we also know that many other Vessels attempted the same thing.

So basically, had any of them been more successful at the quest the Knight did succeed at, the Kingdom could have had a greater, if not near-infinite, amount of replacements for the Sealed Vessel. One Knight takes the Infection inside of itself, holds it in until the Infection inevitably starts to break free, but then another Knight arrives, answering its sibling's call for help, and the cycle continues. Convenient, huh?

Sounds like a thing some very perceptive godlike monarch could come up with as a plan to save his Kingdom.

It could ALSO explain why there are SO MANY Vessels in the Abyss. Maybe it's not about the White Lady being crazy horny. Maybe it was a part of the plan (which included the White Lady being crazy horny) all along. A way to measure up to eternity by creating an amount of heirs that no one would be able to count. Yes, it IS finite, but with THIS many spare Vessels it wouldn't really matter.

That said, there ARE some flaws in this theory. First, there's no live Vessels in the Abyss, so the ones that survived the Pale King's trial probably either died or left the Abyss already. And it's likely that there weren't too many of those who escaped, so maybe there weren't enough vessels after all. But then again, it only takes one to save the Kingdom for multiple ages, so who knows how that would work.

Second, as far as we know, the Knight was the only one who had the potential to actually seal the Radiance once and for all. Letting weaker vessels try to usurp the Hollow Knight would mean risking the Kingdom. But then again, that's what Hornet was there for. On the other hand, even she was surprised with how the Knight was able to defeat her, so either she didn't know about the Masterplan, or it was never real in the first place, and the Knight IS the one unique Vessel who has the strength to save Hallownest for good.

Honestly, I'm inclined to agree with the latter assumption solely because of the narrative weight of the Birthplace cutscene. I mean, there was no other vessel that was in the same position as the Knight. No one else had that same experience of passing the Abyss trial just in time to see the first Hollow Knight walk away with its father, who then shut the door in their face.

But anyway, this theory is still pretty valid. If it's correct, it would mean that:

a) The 'No cost too great' line spoken by PK at the moment of his death basically means 'Whatever bitches, I may be dead but Hallownest WILL last eternally because I had those Vessels ALL FIGURED OUT, and there's SHIT you can do about it now!'

b) All who doubted PK's plan are proven wrong, and the Mushrooms' smugness is worth nothing.

c) The Pale King's future vision is fucking OP.

...Whiiiich yeah, makes the Pale King look like the coolest mastermind in all fiction, but at the same time takes away the tragedy of his whole story and the uniqueness of our dear beloved Ghost Knight. Still fun to think about it tho.

TL;DR: The King knew that the Hollow Knight would break, so he had every other possible Vessel in mind as a replacement. The new Vessel would be the one who survived the Abyss, escaped, left Hallownest, and returned at the call of the previous Vessel. With millions of Vessels born, the cycle could have been repeated so many times that it wouldn't matter when the Abyss would run out of Vessels.

Theory 5. The Masterplan but cooler

Now THAT's what I personally consider a big stretch.

See, for THAT theory to be correct, the Pale King should have known the EXACT moves the Knight (and only the Knight) would take in order to defeat the Radiance one way or another. He should have accounted for things such as:

The Knight being left in the Abyss in the exact way that it was; broken mentally by the chance that was taken away from it.

His own death.

The Knight arriving to Hallownest, passing all the tests, getting the Dreamnail, breaking the Dreamers' Seals.

The Knight becoming the new Sealed Vessel in at least two of the possible timelines.

The White Lady gifting the Knight her part of Kingsoul.

The Knight successfully entering the White Palace, finding the King's corpse, and taking the second half of Kingsoul.

The Knight returning to the Birthplace, getting the Void Heart and uniting the Void.

The Knight entering the Hollow Knight's dream with Hornet's help and actually killing the Radiance by making the Void consume it.

I think there's exactly a 0.00001% chance of that being the case. But hey, it's possible!

Actually, I don't believe that. It just doesn't feel like that's what the canon implications are about. And then again, if that theory is correct, why couldn't the King predict the Embrace the Void ending? And I do believe that SHADE LORD wasn't on ANYONE'S bingo card at all (except for maybe that one goth bug who gives us the Shade Cloak). Or did the King just decide to risk it all by defeating one God of Gods by creating another, much stronger one? I really don't think so.

I think the Void's will, as well as the Knight's, has the nature to defy any type of fate or future vision. And once the Knight gains the power of the Void Heart, the future of Hallownest is entirely in its hands, and its choice is now inherently outside of anyone's foresight.

TL;DR: The King predicted everything. Could he predict the Shade Lord though?

Theory 6 (the secret one). The 'human' factor

Ok, so, up until now, I discussed the possibilities the Pale King had with his future vision, and how said possibilities could influence his actions and the history of Hallownest as a whole, with the Self-fulfilling prophecy theory (of which this one will be an extension of) being the most plausible one. There's just one thing though. None of those theories really accounted for the possibility that, at some point, Pale King could've just not used his powers, or, more realistically, used them but chose to do something despite the information he got.

But why? What could possibly make him do that? The literal God of Mind, not being rational? Sounds like something that Team Cherry wouldn't fail to include in the game as an emphasized plot point. A lore piece so important must've been given some significant place, perhaps even locked behind some insane platforming gauntlet...

I swear, this one moment drives me crazy.

The Pure Vessel. The Sealed sacrifice. The Empty God. The Hollow Knight was created to be the one and only savior of Hallownest, of everything the Pale King worked so hard on. It was created not as an heir to its father's throne, not as his child, but as a tool to win a war that had been going on for ages. And we all know that it failed because it gained a mind, a will to live, a desire to crave happiness.

And this moment at the end of Path of Pain tells us exactly how it happened. The Pale King, being a god whose main power is to give bugs the ability to think, shared exactly one moment of pure fatherly affection with his empty creation. And that's all that was needed to plant the seeds of a mind-conquering disaster.

And right now I want to focus on the Pale King himself here. If you watch the cutscene, you'll notice that he is the first to turn his head towards the Hollow Knight. He was the one who initiated this moment.

And one might ask: why? Didn't he know that that could lead to the Vessel having a thought that was terminal for the whole plan? Couldn't he PREDICT that him showing even an ounce of affection towards this hollowed-out child would ruin everything he built? His whole Kingdom, his whole dream, his whole civilization? WAS HE STUPID?

But hear me out. What if what we're looking at here is not the Pale King messing up his entire career as a monarch, but him actually achieving the only thing that could satisfy him? Think about it. Who knows how much time he spent in his workshop trying to harness the Void. Millions of his children were left for dead, locked inside a horrible bottomless pit as bones and shadows. Three of the Kingdom's greatest bugs agreed to sacrifice their lives for the King's plan. All so he could achieve what he considered perfection. The impossible ideal. All the struggles of this Kingdom led to the creation of that one being. And when the Pale King knew he had succeeded, there was nothing left to strive for. Finally, he could allow himself to be satisfied. To forget about the greater good. To forget the never-ending battle. To live.

To love.

And maybe at that point he refused to use his future vision. Or maybe he knew that this would ruin everything. Maybe he always knew. For that moment, none of it mattered. The god of mind finally experienced something that had nothing to do with rationality. And once that happened, nothing else mattered anymore. No cost was too great for this one moment.

And so, nothing that happened after that mattered as well. The King's radiant enemy would soon take his Kingdom. His beloved Queen would go into exile. He himself would not be able to fight the regrets of his dark past and would soon cowardly flee from the waking realm, only to be killed on his throne by the very power he so foolishly used to achieve his goal. But at that point that goal didn't matter to him anymore. He was ready for the eternal Void, because he had already achieved the only thing worth achieving.

Too bad that meant he would doom millions (if not billions) of live creatures and make the only being he could actually love experience the cruelest torture unimaginable. Too bad that, when gods attempt to achieve a higher ideal, countless souls must suffer. Too bad that because of that one achievement everything Hallownest was had to end.

But everything ends at some point. That's one of the main themes of this game, and the idea that I believe is represented by the Void. The Knight arrives to reap the sins of its creator, witness secrets sealed, bring some hope to a ruined land, and enact the end of an era. Only a silent agent of change is there to witness the dark consequences of the Wyrm's quest for happiness.

Neat theory, right? Now guess which one is my favorite!

TL;DR: The Pale King realized that the act of loving his child is worth sacrificing everything he worked for, so, even knowing that sealing the No-More-Hollow Knight would doom Hallownest, he decided that his life has already peaked anyway and that there's no point in trying to do anything anymore. He knew that he was cooked though, so he fled and died only with the closest circle of family and friends to keep him company.

----

The post is over now. Big, bigger, yet bigger, the biggest thanks to anyone who genuinely made it through to the end. My grammar is probably flawed as fuck tho, because English is not my native language, so please cut me some slack in that regard. I hope what I was saying there was at least somewhat cohesive. I also hope that the more obscure bits of information I used (like cut dream dialogue) didn't throw anyone off the thought train. It's probably gonna be a big deal when I release this post, so I probably will be coming back to it. Any discussion, as well as disagreement, is always welcome! Please just let me know I didn't write all this for nothing lol. Thanks again!

TL;DR: Skill issue.

#hollow knight #hollow knight theory #hollow knight lore #pale king #hallownest #the radiance #the hollow knight #shade lord #fungal wastes #hk godseeker #path of pain #future vision #character analysis #long post #the pale king

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ckret2 · 8 months

Text

Chapter 35 of human Bill Cipher is still prisoner of the Mystery Shack and still handcuffed to Stan in spite of their mutual irritation: we return to them under attack by the tooth fairy and her dentist lackey.

In light of this terrible peril, Bill and Stan put aside their differences, politely agree to cooperate, and work together maturely to deal with the threat—

Haha I'm kidding, no they're screaming the most offensive things they can think of at each other.

####

Packed in a dark cluttered closet, trying not to breathe too much of the same air as Bill, under the sound of the dentist mauling his way through the bedroom door, Stan growled, "Okay, genius—do you actually have a plan for when we get downstairs?"

Bill had hooked his borrowed umbrella over his elbow to let him rummage through the closet's contents. Trying to keep his voice low, he said, "We can take the fairy ring down to the guest room and make a run for the exit in the floor room." His eyes lit up with delight. "Hey! Vintage congressman top hat!" He sniffed it. "It still smells like Quentin and peanut brittle." He put on the hat.

Eugh. Stan found himself glad he couldn't see in the dark. "Why the floor room? It's a lot faster to just cut through the living room to the gift shop."

Bill hesitated. "Sure. Fine—"

"What's the matter, Bill, you got a problem with the living room?"

"What?" Bill scoffed. "Of course not. I said fine. It's fine!" He found a large baggie full of teeth, popped it open and licked one to confirm they were real, and stuck the bag under his new hat.

"But it took you a second," Stan said. "If we head for the living room, you won't slow us down by trying to go the other way, will you?"

"Of course not," Bill repeated. It was a little less convincing than the last time. "I was just—trying to figure out if that was the fastest way—"

"Oh, really," Stan pressed. "You sure you aren't scared to go in there with me?"

Bill whipped around to stare at Stan in the dark.

"You think I haven't noticed how you bolt out of the living room any time I come in?" Stan asked. "Or how you flinch every time I raise my hand?"

Bill swallowed hard. "I don't know what you're talking about." He chuckled derisively. "I think you're fantasizing, Stan—"

"Do you really think I don't remember how you died."

Bill's voice caught in his throat. "You said..."

"Yeah, I wanted to see what kind of story you'd make up. You just can't stop talking down to me even when you know it's all lies," Stan said. "As if I'd ever forget seeing you on your knees, begging me for mercy, while I shattered your face like a cheap mirror—"

Bill shoved Stan against one wall, small hands wrapped ineffectively around his throat. "You don't know what you're talking about!"

"Admit it!" Stan shoved Bill against the opposite wall; Bill tripped and landed heavily on a cardboard box. "Admit that I killed you too! I played just as much a part in it as he did!"

"You did not kill me!" Bill stood on the box, even as it threatened to collapse under his weight, so he could scream in Stan's face, "You couldn't have killed me! I'M NOT CAPABLE OF BEING KILLED BY SOMEONE LIKE YOU!"

"THEN WHY ARE YOU AFRAID OF ME?!"

"I'M NOT AFRAID—"

An enormous drill bit pierced the wood between their faces. Bill and Stan screamed.

Just on the other side of the door, Pearl cried, "Careful! Don't hit the girl's teeth!"

Stan snarled, "You moron, look what you—!"

"You started it!" Bill pounded on the door. "Hey! Frankie! Is this worth it?!" He jumped back as the drill came through again, just in front of his sternum. It grazed Stan's bicep; he roared in pain. Bill shouted, "Was paying off your dental school loans worth this? Do you wanna be a murderer, kid?!"

"I can't stop now!" Dr. Illing was audibly sobbing. "You don't understand, I'm in too deep!" The drill pierced again, widening the hole he'd already started.

"If you think she's scary, you can't imagine what I've got—"

Stan clapped a hand on Bill's shoulder hard enough to make him jump; but he growled in Bill's ear, "Count of three."

Bill hesitated, squinting at Stan's future to see what he was planning; but nodded. "Fine." He didn't understand the purpose but he could copy the motion.

Stan put his hand on the doorknob. "One, two..." Bill squeezed his eyes shut. They slammed their shoulders against the door, Stan grunting in pain. Dr. Illing's drill caught in the wood, and they kept shoving it open, jamming the dentist between the door and the wall. Bill leaned against the wood with his full weight to keep Dr. Illing trapped, using his new umbrella to swat away the fairy buzzing in his face. Stan toppled an old fortune telling machine in front of the door to pin it in place.

Pearl barked, "You're useless, Frank!" She had drawn out a wand that looked like a metallic blue toothbrush and was aiming it at Bill's face. "I'll get those teeth myself if I have to!"

Wheezing through crushed lungs, Dr. Illing said, "But the treaty—"

"What treaty?!" From five feet away, she fired a bolt of mint white magic at Bill's horrified face.

Stan seized Bill's umbrella, opened it, and deflected the spell. It ricocheted off the umbrella and punched a flaming hole through the ceiling. From behind this temporary shield, Bill took out the teeth bag and flung a handful across the room.

Pearl gasped, abandoning Dr. Illing to dart after them. "Babies! I didn't hurt you, did I?!" Huh. More effective than Bill had expected.

"Go!" Stan ran for the door, grabbing Bill by the wrist to pull him along too. Bill snatched back his umbrella as Stan paused to shut the bedroom door behind them again. Even though Dr. Illing had shredded the wood around the latch, maybe he'd still struggle to figure out how to open it. "Living room?"

"I said fine!" Bill shut his umbrella and used it to point toward the fairy ring. "As long as you don't act immature about it!"

"I'm the one being immature?! You're the one who's scared of a room!" They stopped in the fairy ring, too close to each other for comfort; and then, with a disorienting whoosh, they were standing in an identical circle of mushrooms in the guest room. "Why does it even matter so much whether Ford or me killed you?" Stan yanked the door open. "Why is it so hard to admit that I threw the punch that took you out?!"

Bill clumsily kicked several sliced mushrooms aside, breaking the fairy ring, and nearly fell as he tried to keep up with Stan's pace. "Because you didn't kill me! You can't kill me because YOU AREN'T IMPORTANT!"

Stan spluttered in outrage, turning to stare at Bill. "Not important enough to kill you?! How does that even make sense! What, you think you're—too good for a guy like me to take down?!"

Bill's eyes widened the tiniest bit, as though he'd just realized something. A sickeningly gleeful grin stretched across his face. "It's true! I've looked into countless universes! No matter where you go or what you do, you just don't matter!" He wrenched his arm free of Stan's grip with such an effort that he nearly fell down; but he raised his gaze again to Stan's face. "If anything, you just make everything worse."

Stan's hands curled into fists. "You'd better watch your mouth—"

But when Bill planted the tip of his umbrella in the carpet and raised his cuffed hand to point at Stan, he stopped. Just a second ago Bill had been whiny and defensive; but now his inhuman gaze transfixed Stan to the spot. There was power in that mad self-assurance Stan had only ever seen before in criminal lords who commanded hundreds of gangsters. Bill bore himself like an ancient god preparing to pass judgment on a mortal, and Stan had no choice but to listen in dread to his revelation.

Bill said, "You know, I first tried to work with Stanford in a universe where you don't exist? And I couldn't get into his head! He wouldn't give me a chance!" He jabbed his finger toward Stan's chest like a knife. "Because YOU hadn't ruined his life and made him desperate enough to trust an alien! And YOU hadn't spent your whole crooked childhood training him to put up with a con artist's lies—so he'd be ready when he met me. Isn't that funny, Stanley?"

The air rushed from Stan's lungs. His voice was thin and trembling with rage. "You just— You're trying to get on my nerves." He'd never heard anything before that sounded so terribly true.

"So what if I am! It's still true!" Bill's laughter was like a shriek. "You were stillborn in that universe! Your brother had to grow up without a twin watching over him—so he actually learned how to make friends. And he was a big success at West Coast Tech. Your mother was devastated she'd lost you—but you know what's really funny?" He had the awful grin of a court jester about to deliver a punchline that would start a war. "I think your family loved that dead baby you more than they ever liked the disappointment you turned out to be—"

Stan socked Bill as hard as he could.

He expected Bill to flinch, to duck, to shield his head—something. Bill always flinched. Instead he locked up, facing Stan, wide-eyed and watching the incoming blow. The punch connected with his face with a sickening crunch. Bill toppled flat on his back. His top hat and umbrella tumbled across the floor. The chain jerked Stan down to kneel over Bill.

It was like a spell had broken. Stan stared down at Bill like an idiot. He felt like an idiot. The shock even snapped him out of his anger. He uncurled his fist, saw a smear of blood on one knuckle, tried to say something, and only managed to come up with, "Aw, jeez."

Bill was weak. He wasn't a demon anymore; he was a yappy chihuahua trying to sound bigger than he was because he was scared. Stan knew that. He was only kicking a washed-up loser of a con artist while he was down.

He'd been there before.

Bill had slapped his hand over his mouth and nose, fingers digging into the skin, eyes squeezed shut in pain.

Stan swallowed hard. "Hey, I didn't mean to do that much— I mean, you had it coming, but still... uh... you okay?" He awkwardly offered Bill a hand.

Bill reached up—and placed a bloody tooth, root and all, in Stan's palm.

Stan stared. "Wh."

"Tooth fairy bait." Bill gave Stan a wild, bloody smile. "Thanks for the help. It's been loose for days."

Tooth fairy— Stan automatically glanced toward the doorway to see whether their pursuers were catching up. And only then did he realize they were in the middle of the living room, standing in front of Stan's armchair. He'd been set up.

He stared at Bill.

Bill glared up at Stan. Voice rough, he said, "Who's scared of you?" He spat a wad of bloody spit at Stan's face. The attempt was so weak it landed on Bill's own shirt. A far cry from the whiny triangle who'd tried to bribe Stan into sparing his life.

They both looked up at the sound of wood cracking. Stan said, "All right, we've got bait." He seized Bill's bloody hand and, with a grunt, tried to heave him upright. "Can we set a trap?"

Bill unsteadily climbed to his feet. "I guess?" Either he hadn't thought past getting punched in the face, or the blow had knocked his plan out of his head.

Upstairs, Pearl snapped, "Now hurry, before we lose them!" Dr. Illing's footsteps thudded across the attic floorboards.

"Move," Stan hissed, and when Bill turned to glance cluelessly behind himself at the door, Stan rolled his eyes and shoved him.

Bill tripped over the steps up to the gift shop and stumbled backwards through the swinging door, with Stan following. When Bill had steadied himself, he stared in wide-eyed bafflement at the door he'd just passed through. "How did I..."

"Focus, Cipher!" Stan snapped his fingers in Bill's face. "Gimme some nerdy magic. What traps fairies?"

Bill dragged his gaze away from the door and shook his head woozily. "Uhh... carefully-worded contracts... salt lines, iron..."

"You couldn't have mentioned salt when we could've reached the kitchen?" Stan looked around the gift shop. Iron, iron...

"Wow, that's a great idea. Remind me why we were so bent on getting to the living room?"

"Watch it. You've got a few teeth left." Stan smacked Bill's arm, making him jump, and pointed. "Got it! The old diving helmet!"

Bill squinted his eyes unevenly. "Oh yeah—the one Fordsy got ripped off on. Hey—didja know diving helmets are supposed to be copper, but he got sold a spray-painted—"

"For two minutes, please stop talking about my brother. Will it work?"

Bill slowly traced a finger through the air as if he were trying to track the path of something only he could see. "Yeah, it could work."

"'Could'?"

The gaps at the top and bottom of the "Employees Only" door glowed bright blue. "Fresh blood," Pearl said, "they went this way!"

"Give me the tooth," Bill said. "And keep Frank out, we're dead if he gets in."

"In there!" Pearl cried, and Dr. Illing's drill revved again. The door to the living room was a swinging door without a latch; curse or no, if Dr. Illing hit it, it would fly right open.

Stan yelled, "Hold it! Do not drill that door! It's... it's load bearing! Yeah, if you start hacking holes in it the whole shack could come down on us!"

The drill powered down. Dr. Illing said dubiously, "That doesn't sound right, but I don't know enough about doors to dispute it."

Pearl swooped under the door—carrying an armload of the teeth Bill had thrown earlier—but she turned around when she realized Dr. Illing wasn't following. "What are you stopping for, you idiot! He's lying! Doors don't work like that—"

"Hey, sparkles!" Bill held his bloody tooth up next to his head. "You want this?!"

She gasped in horror, clapping her hands over her mouth and dropping the teeth. "You knocked it out! You monster, what if you chipped it?!" She drew her wand again and, with a tiny shrill roar, she dove for it.

Bill pulled it out of her way with the grace of a matador dodging a bull. She wheeled around faster than Bill could react, flung a spell at his back, and made another dive for the tooth. Stan jerked him out of the way. Bill laughed, "Is that all you've got? I've seen better flying out of dandelion seeds!"

She whirled around to face him again with a growl of frustration, fluffy bob cut puffed up in rage, wings buzzing like the propeller of a fighter plane. The third time she dove for the tooth, she snatched it out of Bill's fingers.

And immediately rammed head-first into the back of the solid iron diving helmet. It rang out like a broken bell. She croaked, "ow."

Stan slammed the front window of the helmet shut. "Ha!"

"Yes!" Bill pointed at the helmet. "You're stupid!"

Dr. Illing—who had dropped down to the ground to peer through the three-inch gap at the bottom of the door—cried, "No!" He pounded on the door in frustration. It swung a few inches open. He stared at it in bafflement. It swung back and hit him in the forehead.

"Well, well, well. It looks like we've got a proper hostage situation, don't we?" Bill rapped on top of the helmet with his umbrella's hooked handle. "Better stay away from the sides, Pearly. What would you say touching iron feels more like—being burned, or electrified? I've always wondered, but never had an opportunity to possess a fairy—"

Stan elbowed him. "Ix-nay on the ossess-pay."

"Right, right." Bill turned to Dr. Illing. "It'd be pretty easy for me to bounce your patron off the walls of this thing. So how's about you drop the power tools and back away from the door?"

Dr. Illing gave Bill the despairing look of a man who'd been struggling to carry an impossibly heavy weight for decades, only for one swift jab in the ribs to make him drop it. But he got to his feet, and after a moment, his yellow tool bag dropped heavily beside the door.

Stan opened the door, slung the bag over his shoulder before Bill got a chance to rifle through it, and pulled out the drill Dr. Illing had been menacing them with. Holding Dr. Illing at drill point, he nodded toward the gift shop exit. "Get walking. Outside."

"But..." Dr. Illing tried to look past Bill and Stan to the diving helmet.

Bill slung an arm around Dr. Illing's back, aggressively encouraging him to hasten toward the door. "Don't worry about her! We plan to resolve this peacefully, don't we, Fisher?"

"Oh yeah," Stan said. "Nothing to worry about."

"But we're negotiating with the boss, not the lackey. So..."

Stan opened the door. Bill planted a foot on Dr. Illing's butt and shoved. "Out you go!"

Dr. Illing went sprawling across the porch. Stan slammed the door on him as he got to his hands and knees. He looked over his shoulder to give them a look like a puppy who'd been kicked out in the rain.

"You're going to be in so much trouble when I get out of here," Pearl yelled. She grabbed the bars across the window in the diving helmet, then gasped and withdrew her hands as the iron burned her palms. "When the fairy queen hears about this—!"

"That you were breaking into a human dwelling to try to rip my teeth out of my mouth?" Bill asked. "Oh, I'd love to know what she'll think of that."

Stan rummaged in the nook where Wendy shoved spare napkins and plasticware whenever she brought fast food to work. He used a few napkins to wipe off the bloody scrape the drill had left on his shoulder in the closet, and held a handful out to Bill. "Here."

Bill took them. "What?"

"Your face is a mess. Thought you might wanna—you know." Stan attempted to pantomime shoving napkins in his mouth. As much as Stan thought Bill had deserved the sock, he'd feel like a heel if he didn't help clean him up after the fact.

"Oh. Right." Bill attempted to wipe off his chin, then stuffed a napkin up in the gap where his tooth used to be and pulled it out to see how much blood it picked up. It was a lot. He shrugged and turned to the tooth fairy, grinning. "So. I believe we were negotiating?"

"I'm not negotiating anything with you," Pearl huffed. "Look at what you did to this poor tooth!" She was hugging it protectively to her chest, her thin blue dress stained with blood from the root. "Maybe I haven't obeyed the spirit of my treaty, but I've obeyed the letter of it, and the fairy court will back me up on that—"

"Again, you did try to rip my teeth straight out of my mouth in the middle of the night," Bill said.

"I never! A dentist did! If he happened to feel like giving me the tooth after that, that's his business, isn't it. I could have been aiming my wand at anybody, you don't know."

"Sure, sure! You did nothing wrong. You slid neatly through those loopholes. Maybe your court will even agree with you." Bill leaned closer to the helmet, grinning through the window. "But don't you think—if I drive over to Multnomah County, walk backwards into your queen's court, and tell her what you've been doing—she won't want to close those loopholes? No more hench-dentists."

Pearl had gone very still. "'Walk b—'? How do you... What do you know about our court?"

Bill laughed wryly. "Kid, I've known your court since before it moved to America. I've spoken with the ancestors of the ancestors of your queen. The fae tell fairy tales about me, so if you know what's good for you—"

"Easy." Stan put a warning hand on Bill's shoulder. "Just because she's not human doesn't mean you can just..."

"I know, I know."

Pearl had been watching Bill skeptically as he spoke, clearly trying to weigh how much of his boasting was true—but seeing Stan try to silence him apparently persuaded her of his honesty. Her eyes widened in alarm. "Who—What's your name?"

Bill cast a sideways glance toward Stan, then shrugged ruefully. "Afraid I'm not allowed to tell. You know where we are—even people like you and me can't afford to disobey the collector's house rules. You can call me Goldie Locke. And if you don't want me to negotiate your release with your queen, then you'd better be willing to negotiate with us. Are we clear?"

Pearl nodded.

"Wonderful." (Dr. Illing had circled the gift shop to the nearest window, where he was staring forlornly in at Bill, Stan, and the helmet containing Pearl. Bill waved cheerfully at him.) "I don't know about the Fisherman, here—but I, for one, would like to make sure this doesn't become a problem again. So how about this: if you promise to leave, never harass us again, never have your agents harass us, never via any means attempt to harm us or steal our worldly goods—teeth included—either directly or indirectly, and never return to this house, then we promise not to report your little dentist scheme to your queen. Does that sound fair to you?"

Pearl pouted; but she reluctantly nodded. "Yes, yes—that's fair. I agree."

"Hold on," Stan said. "Once she's outta here, how do we know she'll keep that promise? Shouldn't we get some kind of, I don't know, insurance?"

"She's a fairy," Bill said. "She can't lie even if she wants to. They're compelled to tell the truth. They can twist it, and they can try to get you with tricky wording, but they can't lie. Once they've made a promise, it's unbreakable."

Stan considered that. "Huh." He'd have to double-check that claim with Ford later, he'd know.

"Which is why I get along so well with them," Bill said cheerily, "since I never lie either."

Stan laughed loudly, smacking Bill's back. "Sure! And I'm the queen of England."

Bill mock bowed. "Oh my, your majesty. I had no idea." Stan laughed again.

"I agreed to your terms," Pearl snapped, "so set me free!"

"Hold on." Bill propped his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand, leaning close to the helmet again. "I seem to recall I only promised not to tattle to your queen. I didn't promise to let you go." He glanced at Stan. "Isn't that what you heard?"

Now what was he up to? But Stan nodded in agreement. "That's what I heard, all right."

Bill winked. "Like I said: tricky wording."

Pearl let out a swear that sounded like tinkling bells and stomped her foot. "That's ridiculous! If you've already sworn not to tell the queen about my methods, you no longer have any blackmail against me! You can negotiate with her for my release now, for all I care!"

"Your tricky wording backfired," Stan said.

Bill didn't look bothered. "All right. I'm sure you're happy to wait right here until we make the long drive into town, aren't you. You do know where we are, right?"

The fairy's face immediately darkened. "You... I don't see why not! There's nothing to fear in this house."

"Isn't there? Want us to go wake up the head of the house, ask him to babysit you until we get back?" Bill asked.

Huff. "He's gone."

"He's back," Bill said. "If you're lucky, maybe he'll stick you in the freezer for an hour, so it won't hurt when he pins your wings to a cork board." (Stan blinked at Bill in amazement. Head of the house—Soos? Soos?)

Pearl shuddered. "You're a liar."

"Am I?" Bill raised his cuffed wrist. "I've worked with the queens of your queens. I have powers you've never dreamed of. Do you think I'm chained to a doppelgänger for fun?"

Stan said, "To a wh...?" but at Bill's sharp look, he fell silent. All right. A lot of phrases that didn't make sense to him had just flown by. Clearly Bill was using some kind of fairy talk mumbo-jumbo to give her a wildly inaccurate impression of what was going on in this shack. Stan had manners, he wasn't about to interrupt a fellow professional in the middle of conning a mark.

Pearl worked her jaw angrily; but there was something nervous in her gaze now, glancing between Stan's face, the handcuffs, and the rest of the shack. "Maybe you're not as important as you think you are," she said unconvincingly.

"I've got magic teeth, girl."

"Fine!" Pearl stamped her foot. "Fine, I'll negotiate with you! What else do you want?"

Bill pointed at her chest. "I want to choose my payment for that tooth there."

She hugged the tooth protectively, but said, "Fine."

Bill looked at Stan. "You want anything?"

He considered that. "Better-fitting dentures would be nice? Can she do that? Is that something I can ask for?"

"Yeah, you can ask for that."

"Is that all?" Pearl snapped.

"Dentures for him, payment for me, unenchant our door and take out the carvings you left in it, and..." Bill glanced at Stan again, who shrugged. Bill said, "Yeah, I think that's it. Deal?"

"Deal!"

Bill gestured toward the helmet, and Stan flipped its front window open. Pearl stepped out, hovered up level with Stan's face, and gave him a murderous glare; but she drew out her toothbrush wand again and flicked it at him. "There. Happy?"

Stan adjusted his jaw thoughtfully. "Yeah. Oh, those're real nice. Hardly feels like they're there."

"They're better than you deserve," Pearl said haughtily; then turned to Bill. "And you? What payment do you want?"

Bill grinned wide, pointing at the new gap in his teeth. "Solid gold replacement! 24k."

"Pure gold's too malleable for dental work."

"I don't care, this body's a temp. Gimme the good stuff."

She gave him a sour look, but again waved her wand. The blood evaporated from Bill's teeth and gums and a new tooth materialized in the gap, the exact shape of the original but shining gold. Bill licked it experimentally. "Yeah, that'll do."

"Now get outta here," Stan said, "and take your creepy tooth temple with you."

"Hmph!" She turned her nose up at both of them; then zipped across the gift shop, ducking down to snatch up a couple of dropped teeth as she went. She dipped under the door into the living room and was gone.

"Well," Bill said. "We ended up better than we started. Free dental work, a bag of tools..."

"A bunch of property damage," Stan said. "We should've asked her to fix the kids' door."

"Ah." Bill winced. "Nooo, no, probably best we didn't push our luck. Fixing the other door's enough."

Stan shook his head, without much real rancor. "Can't admit you made a mistake, can you?"

"That would be a lie, wouldn't it? And like I said, I'd never lie." Bill smiled impishly. His new tooth gleamed in the dim light. "Let's clean up some of the teeth and mushrooms, huh?"

####

Sweeping up the gift shop was awkward with the handcuffs in the way, but they worked out a system: Stan handled the broom while Bill knelt and held the dustpan. Bill had retrieved his borrowed top hat and umbrella when they went for the broom, and now he kept his cuffed hand on the umbrella, which limited Stan's movement. He almost fussed about it, until he realized Bill's hand was shaking, and each time he stood he leaned on the umbrella like a wobbly cane. Stan tried not to notice how Bill sometimes winced when he had to turn his neck.

As they awkwardly swept up the gift shop, Bill said, "Lucky you got the dentist to stop drilling the door in time, huh."

"What?"

Bill nodded toward the living room. "The load bearing door? I didn't even realize it was that important." He laughed flatly. "We'd really be in trouble if he'd managed to knock it out, huh."

Stan stared at Bill. And then he burst out laughing.

"What?"

"You idiot, doors aren't load bearing!"

Bill stared up at Stan, face slowly going red. "Well, wh— How was I supposed to know that!" Over Stan's laughter, he demanded, "Then why did you tell him it was?!"

"Eh, if he'd so much as nudged the door, he could've gotten right through. Even with that curse you put on him," Stan said. "I had to say something to keep his drill away from it."

"Huh."

Stan could practically see the gears trying to turn in Bill's head as he attempted to understand that information. Maybe he should lay off the poor guy. It was really funny that a little curse made him too stupid to work a door; but he'd turned around and used that same curse to save their hides, Stan should probably give him a temporary pass just for that. He cleared his throat and tried to think of another topic. "Using that tooth as bait wasn't a bad idea."

"Yeah, it was pretty good."

"You could've just asked me to knock it out, though."

Bill glanced up at Stan. His face said, No I couldn't.

Stan understood.

During Stan's decade of travel—thrust into the world far too young, scared, alone, and homeless, with nothing but his wits and a mask of machismo—he had seen, again and again, the truth in one of his father's most frequent lessons: if you weren't tough, then you were nothing. Didn't matter what kind of money, possessions, or friends you had. If you weren't tough enough, you could lose them all in an instant.

And so often, toughness wasn't measured by how many punches it took to knock you down, but by whether the first one made you flinch.

The best thing you could do for yourself was win a fight. But if you didn't stand a chance (and Bill—short, noodle-armed, tiny-fisted, barely able to control his body, facing a man who'd been boxing for fifty years—didn't stand a chance), then the next best thing you could do was show that you could take it like a man. It might win you respect. If it didn't, then at the least it might let you keep some dignity. Bill was desperate for dignity.

Stan had the feeling that Bill had played this game before.

Who had Bill been before Weirdmageddon? Who had he been, that he could call Stan nothing but a con artist and a complete failure who'd have been better off never born—and in between suggest that Ford only trusted Bill because he reminded him of Stan?

####

They cleaned up as best they could, then dragged themselves back to bed.

Bill gave Stan a hopeful look. "Do I get to sleep in the guest room now?"

"No." Ford would murder Stan if he found out he'd let Bill sleep on his bed, and in his final moments Stan would probably think the murder was justified. And that was assuming Bill didn't murder Stan in his sleep.

"Aww, c'mon!" Bill said. "And here I thought we'd bonded a little!"

"Are you kidding? After you said I'm the reason you fooled my brother and my family would be happier if I was dead?!"

Bill laughed lightly. "You're too sensitive!"

As they repositioned their cushions and mattress on either side of the ajar door, Stan paused. "Was that stuff true? Or did you just say it to get a rise out of me."

"What, everything about Stanford being an only child? Naaah—I just thought it would be funny to make you mad."

In his heart, Stan knew Bill had been telling the truth.

Maybe not about there being a dimension where Stanford grew up alone, maybe Bill had made that up; but if so, he'd only made up a fiction that echoed the truth. Mr. Hotshot All-Seeing Eye was right: Stan had only made things worse for the people around him. The best thing he'd ever done with his life was put it on the line to destroy Bill. And apparently, even that hadn't been good enough.

Not for the first time over the past month, Stan wondered: if he'd never recovered his memories, would Bill have died with them? Was that the lifeline that had let Bill claw his way back? Would it have been better if neither of them had ever recovered? If they'd gone down into oblivion chained together?

Probably, on some cosmic level. Bill would be gone. Stan could've used his last few years learning to be a guy that brought more to the table than lying and punching. Everyone would be having a much better summer this year. But, on the other hand, Stan liked having his memories; and to be honest, Bill had been pretty worthless so far. Maybe it was okay that Stan had only done a C+ job at demon-killing. C+ was a passing grade; and he'd never been a straight A's kind of guy.

They'd just have to grudgingly tolerate being chained together.

Stan said, "So was it 'funny' getting your teeth knocked in, too?"

Bill considered that; then let out an involuntary giggle. "Yeah, actually." He settled down on his cushion bed. "But—no, really, I never saw a universe where you two weren't inseparable as kids. I'm sure it happened somewhere, the multiverse is infinite—but I didn't dig that hard. Wasn't one of my priorities. I only needed one Stanford to get my portal running, and the one here did just fine."

Stan still didn't think Bill was telling the whole truth; but then, Stan didn't think Bill had been telling the whole truth earlier, either. Bill wasn't actually telling Stan anything about what the multiverse was like—he was just telling Stan how he wanted Stan to feel.

And Bill could have said that everything he'd said earlier was true. But he didn't.

"You really are a pretty good liar, Cipher," Stan said. "It's too bad you're a lousy dirtbag bent on world domination, or you could've made a decent partner-in-crime."

"Yeah?" Bill settled down, holding his broken umbrella to his side and laying his free arm over his collapsed top hat, as if he was worried someone would steal them in his sleep. (Stan would have to get that umbrella in the morning. It had been fine for Bill to keep it while they were fighting for their lives, but he couldn't keep a blunt weapon covered in metal poky bits indefinitely.) "Well, my schedule's clear and I'm bored. Let me know if anything comes up."

"Don't count on it." Stan slid their chain under the door and pushed it shut.

Bill had wiggled out of explaining why he wouldn't admit that Stan had killed him; but Stan didn't think he needed to ask again. He kinda had an idea. He was at that age where he was starting to worry what his obituary would say, too. "Killed by his dimension-hopping long-time nemesis with 12 PhDs" probably sounded a lot better than "Killed by a crooked grifter in his underwear." The first one might let you keep some dignity.

####

Dipper and Mabel came home shortly after dawn. The light was already on in the kitchen; Mabel curiously ducked in to see why. "Grunkle Stan! Bill! What are you doing up so early?" She paused. "Is that my top hat?"

"Mine now."

Stan and Bill were sitting at the kitchen table, with two plates of eggs and bacon (Bill's eggs had chocolate sauce), and mugs of, respectively, coffee and Mabel juice spiked with ground-up caffeine pills. Stan had a bandage on one arm. They looked exhausted. Their wrists were still handcuffed.

"Oh, you know—" Stan yawned, "—just... full of vim and vigor today."

Dipper surveyed them, tried not to laugh when he saw the cuffs, and asked, "Did you guys even get any sleep?"

Stan grunted and looked at Bill to field that one.

Bill said, "By the looks of it, more than you two did." Dipper's and Mabel's hair were tangled messes, and their clothes were stained with dirt and grass. Dipper looked like he'd fallen on his side into a mud puddle. "How'd the monster hunt go?"

"Partial success!" Mabel said. "The thing that was stealing Pacifica's alpacas came back and we froze its leg! We followed it back to its forest lair and rescued the alpacas! Including Giorgio!"

"The anomaly got away, though," Dipper said, more to himself than anyone else. "But how? It was ten feet tall, it couldn't have hidden. Unless it was... abducted, maybe? In some invisible space ship...?"

Bill rolled his open eye. "Hey—how many of the alpacas were shorn by the time you got to them?"

Mabel gave him a surprised look. "Everyone but Giorgio. How'd you know?"

"We don't need to know," Dipper said quickly. "We can figure it out on our own. C'mon, Mabel." He headed upstairs. Mabel shrugged apologetically, and followed after him.

Stan watched them go, then asked Bill, "So what did take the rich kid's exotic sheep?"

"Freak in the woods who really likes wool suits."

"Huh." Stan sipped his coffee. "It's not dangerous to the kids, is it?"

"Not as long as they don't try to film him." Bill picked up a strip of bacon, tiredly tried to stick it in his eye, sighed, and redirected it to the correct hole.

From upstairs, Mabel shouted, "What happened to our door?"

Stan winced. "Don't worry about it, sweetie! I'll fix it later."

Bill said, "We didn't clean upstairs, did we."

Stan tried to remember what all had been left behind. Bedsheet hanging out the window, teeth on the floor... "It's—it's fine. Those kids love mysteries."

"Ha. Yeah, the boy would probably just get mad if we told him what happened before he figured it out himself."

There was the faint sound of the vending machine opening. A moment later, Ford walked in with an empty mug of coffee. "You're up early," he said. "Did you sleep well?"

Bill gave Ford a sleepy smirk. "Aw, I didn't know you cared."

Ford shot Bill a glower, did a double take at the top hat, then shook his head and looked away. "I wasn't asking you. I hope you got a crick in your neck that lasts the rest of your life." (Bill laughed.)

Stan shrugged off the question. "Oh yeah, no problem. Got comfortable and didn't move all night."

"We barely even noticed the cuffs," Bill said, stifling a yawn. "Slept like babies."

Ford raised a skeptical brow. Still, he nodded and went to get coffee for himself. Stan had a broken umbrella hanging from the back of his chair; Ford assumed it was yet another confiscated weapon and picked it up to move somewhere Bill couldn't access it. "Well, I'm relieved that at least nothing weird happened last night."

"Yeah, nothing weird at all," Stan said.

"Most normal night of my life," Bill said.

There was a knock on the door. At this hour of the morning? Ford said, "I'll get that."

He answered the door.

On the porch was a haggard, slumped, very sad looking man in a white lab coat. Nearly on the verge of tears, he asked, "Can I please have my ability to open doors back? I—I had to sleep outside last night. So many bugs."

Ford stared at him. "Only the person who cast the spell can lift it. Just a moment."

He ducked into the kitchen, glared at Bill, and said, "'Slept like babies,' did you?"

Neither Bill's nor Stan's innocent smile was convincing.

Ford focused on Bill's mouth. "And where'd you get that tooth?"

"Ah." Bill looked at Stan.

Stan cleared his throat. "So the good news is, we've got a great story for your journal."

####

(And that concludes the tooth fairy arc! If you enjoyed it, I'd love hearing from y'all! I'm really proud of how this whole plot came out. Next week we start on the absolute stupidest plot arc you've ever seen.)

#bill cipher #human bill cipher #grunkle stan #(character tags for the fic itself; obviously they're not in the art lol)#gravity falls #gravity falls fic #gravity falls fanart #fanart #my art #my writing #bill goldilocks cipher

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yurislotusgarden · 8 months

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Hii!! I have a request if thats okay!! :) i love your works btw! Keep up the good work and dont forget to drink, eat and sleep well!<3

So i was thinking of Chuuya, Dazai, Nikolai, and any others if you wanna add with a reader with a ability who can talk, see and hear ghosts! I think its very cool and it barely has any recognition.. Its like toritsuka (from saiki k!) but the reader is less pervy.. and if its okay; can the reader be female? Its okay if its not!! I dont mind!!

So the reader has this ghost ability thing and they used to get bullied and shamed for it because people caught her talking to nothing but she was talking to ghosts, so she became insecure of their ability and sees it more like a curse. So technically a socially akward reader?

If you arent taking requests then you can ignore this!!

Also can i be 💞 anon?

ʚїɞ Separate! Dazai Osamu, Nakahara Chuuya, Nikolai Gogol x Gn!Reader

ʚїɞ Keep in mind English is not my first language, so you may find mistakes!

ʚїɞ word count: 3208

ʚїɞ Tw’s: None! Just pure fluff, pet names used, reader’s gender is not specified in any way bcs of how I wrote this

ʚїɞ We're gonna ignore how long it has been since I posted, dear 💞 anon I'm so sorry bcs of how long this has been in my inbox ;-;, I decided to wait with writing this until I watched some of saiki k so I could understand the ability at least a little, Nikolai's part is damn short bcs I didn't really have any ideas for him </3, Only Dazai's part was proofread, I'm gonna edit this post later on to correct mistakes on Chuuya's and Nikolai's parts since the person who grammar checks my works is on a short break rn

ཐིཋྀ He loves it

ཐིཋྀ This idiot didn't even realize that you have an ability at first because you didn't show any kind of signs😭

ཐིཋྀ He thought you didn’t have one like Ranpo but was told by Kunikida that you do, however, what it is was gonna remain a mystery until you decided to tell him yourself

ཐིཋྀ He found out on a mission where you guys had to chase down a guy with the ability to create a smokescreen

ཐིཋྀ Was about to say that it's over for the day because the guy was gone before you two could realize it (He had a plan to get the man anyway but didn’t feel like it) but then saw you talking to… air???

ཐིཋྀ Like you were just standing there while looking up and seemingly talking to someone

ཐིཋྀ You ignored his ass when he asked wtf you were doing

ཐིཋྀ The brunet was confused until you finally turned to look at him and said that you know where the guy went

ཐིཋྀ You had to briefly explain your ability when you walked to where the guy ran off to

ཐིཋྀ He does anything to make you more open about your ability because he adores it <3

ཐིཋྀ He wishes you showed your ability off more AND HE VOICES IT OUT

ཐིཋྀ Odasaku is his guardian ghost so you told him without thinking about it since most of the time a person doesn't know the ghost protecting them

ཐིཋྀ He actually teared up when he realized you were serious and that Odasaku was watching over him :(

ཐིཋྀ He told you about Oda after that

ཐིཋྀ He randomly asks you if you see a ghost nearby when you two are outside (does it inside buildings too)

ཐིཋྀ He does it a lot

ཐིཋྀ Please hit him

ཐིཋྀ Dazai said that he wanted to kill your past bullies and you didn't believe him -he was serious-

ཐིཋྀ And no, he didn't find dirt on those people, not at all

ཐིཋྀ And he totally didn't use it later, not at all :)

ཐིཋྀ He once asked if you ever used it to cheat in school (let’s say you had a normal enough life like Tanizaki’s or something) and when you said yes he nearly yelled out “That’s my girl!” with a grin Kunikida scolded him for being loud, and for not doing his paperwork

ཐིཋྀ Sometimes he hears you talk without looking over and assumes you’re talking to him before realizing that no, it’s actually to a ghost that’s in the room

ཐིཋྀ Once Kunikida and he had a mission but the brunet was not getting up from the couch, so you walked up and after a few seconds you told him that there was a ghost, butt naked, right by his face

ཐིཋྀ He did not look up to see if you were lying or telling the truth, he just jumped up from that couch without a second thought before he was gone out the door. He only realized that you lied once they were back and you were laughing at him with Ranpo

///////////////////////////

Seiji thought he had everything planned out. He really was sure that there was no way to find him after he ran away from the two detectives. After all, who would search for a running thief in the damn sewers when there were so many better places that could’ve been used to hide in the area?

The plan was in fact a good one, in fact. Kuwahara made it look like he was going towards the warehouses nearby to camp out, while in reality, he came down to the sewers using the ladders, as there was one of the many entrances underground right behind a warehouse.

He was so sure that he wouldn’t be found, that he wasn’t seen, so pray tell, why was he standing face to face with the exact two people he was meant to avoid. The atmosphere wasn’t nice, it was cold, and the smell was even worse, Seiji was trying heavily not to let it show on his face since the two people that were after him seemed to be completely unaffected by the environment they were in. What he couldn’t hide instead, was distress. He did not plan on getting caught any time soon, and yet it looks like he’s 8 seconds away from being behind bars.

“How- How did you guys find me?!”

///////////////////////////

This was not what Dazai meant when he said that he would show you how useful your ability can be (you refused more against it being useful than anything else he said about it, so that’s what he settled for), but it kind of worked so he wasn’t complaining.

“How- How did you guys find me?!”

Kuwahara Seiji, a 25-year-old thief that uses his ability to make himself invisible for all of his plans, making it hard for the police to identify him.

“It was kind of easy, actually!~”

“You’re talking as if you had any part in finding him.”

Dazai really didn’t. Once the criminal ran away after throwing a smoke bomb on the ground, (The brunet has to give it to him, It was annoying as hell and many people would give up on going after him once the smoke settled down) the two of you had no idea which direction he went off to, as there was a few possible exits from the warehouse you first caught him in.

His solution? Asking you to question a ghost nearby if they saw the man. You were really skeptical about that, he could tell. What he also noticed was how confused you were about his question. You didn’t understand why he would want that, at least at first. It was soon after that you realized he meant.

You can see invisible things, ghosts can see other invisible individuals as well, rendering Kuwahara’s ability useless when it comes to you chasing him down.

He realized that little advantage of yours some time back while lazing around on his favorite agency couch.

Your ghost acquaintances can be quite the helpers when it comes to investigating stuff. He heard from Kenji, that not too long ago, you had solved a case that was meant to take around a week, in a day, simply because it just so happened that a ghost was on the crime scene when it happened. You had an easy time getting clues and proving the words of the ghost to the police with their help.

He knows that a few times like those won’t stop you from being so negative about your ability, he’s aware of the impact your bullies had on you mentally even if you try to not show it, but all of those instances give you a step forward to seeing what Dazai and the others do.

“Oh c’mon ‘donna! I was the one who gave you the idea of asking someone!”

“We would be able to track him down anyway. Asking someone just made it faster.”

Catching him in the end was not hard at all. Kuwahara tried to sneak away using his ability once again, but you could still see him without him realizing it. You could see where he was walking off to, making it possible for Dazai to nullify the guy's ability and catch him before leading him to the police vehicle near the warehouse you guys were under.

“See? I told you your ability is really useful and fun!”

“Where do you see the fun in my predicament?” He could tell you were just done with him for the day, besides being confused.

“I mean, you’re almost never alone, right? You always have someone to talk to!~” He knows it’s annoying to see ghosts all the time without the option to just… not be able to do that.

A sigh came from you before answering, “Exactly, complete silence for me is a rare blessing.” in an exhausted tone.

“I would love to never be in complete silence.” He wished that you could have some sort of an on-and-off switch.

“Samu… That’s because your voices would be quiet-” “I do NOT have voices, bella!”

“Sure, continue being in Egypt.”

“What-”

ཐིཋྀ Thinks it's very cool actually

ཐིཋྀ Imma put you down as a florist in this one, or just some small/calm kind of job

ཐིཋྀ When he first met you, he didn’t think about whether you have an ability or not since it wasn’t his business in the slightest

ཐིཋྀ Let’s say that you’re a florist and the ginger came in to buy flowers for Kouyou for example. It just so happened that one of the ghosts hanging around in your workplace was feeling silly, and had been pranking the customers the whole day, Chuuya being no exception

ཐིཋྀ When you were at the back getting the bouquet he ordered the day before, his hat was randomly taken off of his head and was floating in the air

ཐིཋྀ Bro was so confused because he knew his ability was off at the moment

ཐིཋྀ Every time he got the hat back onto his head it just floated back up😭

ཐིཋྀ The menace of a ghost stopped only once you got back out of the backroom and scolded them

ཐིཋྀ Chuuya was confused because ‘Who the fuck were you talking to???’

ཐིཋྀ He asked that exact question and even though you were visibly hesitant and nervous, you still explained your ability since he already saw it anyway

ཐིཋྀ You did not get the reaction you expected, which was being made fun of as that was what you were used to, but he instead complimented it <3

ཐིཋྀ Make sure you don’t let a name slip when it comes to your past bullies because you will see them on the news, missing :)

ཐིཋྀ On one of your first dates/early stages of dating, he gave you Marigolds which you lightly laughed at, causing him confusion before you explained their meaning to him

ཐིཋྀ Yeah, he settled for mostly giving you Cyclamens, Blackthorns, and Bluebells alongside your favorite flowers after that, just for fun

ཐིཋྀ Going with the florist thing or just generally, he would help you around with his ability if there’s something heavier to move around

ཐིཋྀ He would voice out how often he actually wants to see you, albeit embarrassed, but he will show it in lil gestures a lot more <3

ཐིཋྀ I can just imagine him putting his hat on your head and sliding it down over your eyes before giving you a peck on the lips as a goodbye if he was at your workplace and he had to suddenly go

ཐིཋྀ He would try to slowly get you to not be so insecure about your ability

ཐིཋྀ I feel like one of The Flags would be his guardian ghost which could actually make this man cry at the thought :(

ཐིཋྀ Alright but if you met a past bully of yours, or someone newer, that would try to shit on you for your ability, just tell him, and he will beat them up happily <3

ཐིཋྀ Or just go and have a nice talk with them about their behavior if you don’t want him to beat them up, I can promise that they will never again be rude to you if they value their lives (Or you will see them on the news or hear about them being in the hospital if they don’t ^-^)

///////////////////////////

“Are you sure that you don’t have work right now?”

“Yes, so shut your pretty mouth up and show what else you need to be moved.”

Renovation. A simple small renovation of your small shop was all that you planned. Moving some of the furniture, and changing the place of a few products for easier finding. You had thought that it would take a few days to take care of it since you planned on doing a few things every day so as to not close up the shop for a whole day unnecessarily (and you didn’t feel like doing everything in one day).

The problem was, he was supposedly not meant to know about that. Chuuya found your graphic open on your laptop and saw the renovation plans before realizing that you didn’t speak a word about that. At first, he was confused. Why didn’t you tell him? He could certainly make it faster by helping you.

Yet soon after that, he realized why. You didn’t want him to know because you knew that he would help and, therefore not do his work, something you were always worried about when he stopped by your shop. Well, he was never one not to help you, especially when there’s such an occasion. he wants a thank you kiss besides being a gentleman, your honor

“Is it really that hard to focus on your job instead of helping me move the furniture?” You sighed, pointing to a bookcase and then pointing to a place where a table stood before. “You’re gonna get in trouble.”

“I’m not, besides- HEY!” Looking up, his hat could be seen slowly floating away. He ignored you stifling a laugh as he chased after the hat. Chuuya would ignore it and just continue on with moving your stuff around, but the last time he did that, the hat was later found in a pot, making him have to wash it as it had a lot of soil on it. (A lot of his subordinates wondered why he didn’t have his hat on the next day, he didn't explain it to anyone)

“Can you tell them to stop?!” He could only guess how funny the situation looked to you. To anyone else, it just looked like the ginger was chasing after a floating hat, but you could see the menace that was taking the object away, so it ended up being funnier to you, if you nearly laughing was anything to go by.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, dear.”

“You’re so mean!”

You hummed softly before answering, “I would prefer to be called entertained.”

“It has nothing to do with what I said, doll.” Was said by Chuuya just as he finally got hold of his hat. Even if the ghost was still holding onto it, at least the hat wasn’t continuously floating away toward the flower-bare pots with just soil in them again.

“Let them have some fun in a while, Chuu, they don’t do it too often.”

“Yeah, and it just so happens that they decide to have their little fun almost every time that I come here.”

“They love you.”

“I wish they didn’t.”

“It’s better than if they disliked you.”

“Why?”

“There’s a customer that they don’t like for being rude to me,” The ginger frowned at that information but you continued on, “And they are rude back to him every time he comes by my shop.”

“What do they do?”

“Y’know, pull on his clothes and hair, steal his things, and make them completely dirty on purpose, make him think he heard or saw something and that kind of stuff. Pretty sure they stole some of his money from the guy’s wallet.”

Chuuya was quiet for a moment before speaking up. “I think I prefer my hat being occasionally stolen…”

“Exactly!” You shouldn’t smile like that after what you said, but he’s not gonna comment on that one.

“...So the bookcase is the next to be moved, isn't it?

ཐིཋྀ He fr felt betrayed that he didn't know immediately

ཐིཋྀ Like he could know you for 5 minutes and be offended that your ability wasn’t one of the first things you said about yourself

ཐིཋྀ He finds it so fascinating that you can contact the dead so easily

ཐིཋྀ Don’t tell him who his guardian ghost is, no matter how much he asks

ཐིཋྀ Just hit him every time he asks, I promise it works to keep him from asking for the next 3 hours <3

ཐིཋྀ You can bet that he talks to Fyodor and Sigma about your ability (He asked you to tell Sigma that there’s multiple ghosts watching him all the time, he believed. Sigma did not sleep for the next 5 days at all because of that thought)

ཐིཋྀ You said it to him again because at some point there was a ghost actually following him, but Sigma didn’t want to believe it

ཐིཋྀ He’s gonna ask a million times for you to join him in pranks if you won’t agree the first time

ཐིཋྀ Just imagine telling someone a ghost-related thing that they can’t prove is not true

ཐིཋྀ You caused someone to be in hospital after they didn’t sleep for way too long

ཐིཋྀ You told Fyodor that there’s a ghost hanging around him all the time, but didn’t say whether it’s the guardian one or some random one, you just left the rat to ponder on which one you mean (Nikolai died when he found out)💀

///////////////////////////

“WAIT! What do you mean there’s some ghost stalking me?!” Nikolai could tell that Sigma didn't expect to be told something like that today, but again, who would?

“I didn’t say stalking, I said following you around as they seem to be interested in you.” Why did you smile so innocently at that? He doesn’t know but he does encourage you since it gets more reactions from the bi-colored-haired man.

“It doesn’t make it better?!”

“I think it does! Some ghosty is interested in our little Sigma!” He had to add something to the fire, what kind of a person would he be if he didn’t?

“Don’t call me that, Nikolai!”

“But whyyyy?” It was Thursday, the day that the white-haired clown dubbed ‘the best day to prank Sigma!’, even though he says it every week. He also deemed himself lucky as you finally agreed to help him prank the younger man again after rejecting him multiple times.

“Because I’m not little! And I won’t believe you guys again.”

“I don’t agree,” You spoke up, “Even the ghost agrees that you’re small!”

“See Sigma? We even have your beloved ghost on our side!”

“That’s no ‘my’ ghost, and I don’t believe that they said it. [Name] could be lying for all I know!”

“But do you have any way of proving that it’s a lie?” Nikolai couldn’t wait until he took the bait.

“...”

“Exactly!” You grinned before speaking up again a moment later, “They actually have a cute nickname for you that I’m thinking of using now…”

“Should I be scared?” Nikolai regrets not getting you into the pranks earlier, after all, the younger one had no way to prove you wrong. Sigma looks genuinely frightened that it may be real this time.

“No… It’s really a cute nickname that the ghost calls you by because they didn’t know your name when they first started following you around.”

“Stalking.”

“No.”

“I wanna know it! Tell us, dove!” Was it a nickname he could use himself? Or were you lying about it being a cute one and instead it’s weird? He doesn’t know which option he would like more. If he was being honest, Nikolai was feeling like you were telling the truth and not lying again like the last time.

“Cotton.”

“Cotton? Where did that come from?”

“That’s adorable! Let’s call him that!”

“I think that’s a perfect idea, Niko!”

“No!”

Nikolai can already tell that he’s gonna have a lot of fun with that nickname in his vocabulary now.

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨ Taglist ୧⋆ ˚｡⋆

@sukiischaotic

Marigolds - Often called “flowers of the dead”, are symbols of positive emotions, like joy and excitement. They also represent energy, good luck, warmth, creativity, prosperity, passion purity, divinity, and the connection between life and death. These flowers' fragrance is said to attract souls to the altar.

Cyclamen - symbolizes the eternal cycle of life, which makes it the perfect flower that means 'forever'. In Japan, cyclamen holds a special place as the holy flower of love, causing it to be a popular choice for Valentine's Day

Blackthorn - Fate, protection, hope against adversity, good fortune, strength, overcoming adversity, purification, and protection

Bluebell - Loyalty, constancy, humility, gratitude and everlasting love

Keep in mind that flower meanings may somewhat be different depending on what site you look at, so excuse me if anything in the meanings is wrong! (hopefully not)

#bsd x reader #bsd x gender neutral reader #bsd x you #bsd x y/n #x reader #dazai x reader #dazai osamu x reader #chuuya x reader #nikolai x reader #bsd dazai #dazai osamu #bungo stray dogs #chuuya bsd #chuuya nakahara #bsd chuuya #nikolai gogol #bsd

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oneatlatime · 1 year

Text

The Blind Bandit

I had honestly forgotten that the Gaang were trying to find an earthbending teacher, so the 'previously on' segment was actually useful instead of spoilery.

Nobody's face is having a good time.

Look at this sweetheart. You go ahead and treat yourself honey. You've single-handedly escorted a pair of earth-shatteringly overpowered tweens around the world for months; the least you deserve is a shopping trip.

"You kids like earthbending?" Has the same energy as "wanna buy a sun dial?" from that animated Hercules movie.

This guy is one of those strip mall karate types.

I take back everything I ever said about Zuko's season 1 haircut. This guy has a dust bunny poop on his head.

Momo's bag now.

My absolute favourite girl power: incredible violence!

The acoustics at this earth rumble place must be great. I don't see any microphones.

"That's what I paid for." Sokka is a simple creature at heart. Likes food and violence.

Something very strange about this guy's face. I think his mouth moves but his eyes don't.

So apparently earthbending gets you mad air.

Oh! I get it. This is a WWE parody. Somebody on the writing team did their homework too. Don't ask me how I know, but this is a very accurate parody.

Sokka thinks listening to big muscles is a very good idea actually.

And here's the heel. Complete with russian accent. And oddly homoerotic anthem. And cowardice when challenged! Yep, total heel.

I LOLed at the zamboni badgermoles and hockey organ.

She's like two feet tall!

I'm. in love.

I could watch little girls beat up grown men all day.

Earthbending sonar?

Omigod it predicts. She can see moves before they happen.

Well it's a good thing Bumi said to look for someone who Waited and Listened rather than Watched.

"I don't really want to fight you. I want to talk to you." Says the guy who just volunteered, in front of a full stadium, to FIGHT her. Time and place, Aang.

Get back on the ground you flighty airbender. She sees with that ground. No fair.

This is about the face I made when Aang pulled that move. Does this boy think at all? I love him, but what part of stealing her well-earned title is supposed to convince her to talk to him?

You messed up.

I love sartorially inclined Sokka. It's a tiny an innocuous little trait, but it rounds out his character so well.

I get to watch two different girls terrorise idiots this episode. I am blessed.

So I'm guessing the two idiots at the earthbending academy are doing that excercise where kung fu people stick their hands in sand (I've seen videos of it) but it really looked like they were in the 'beat back the dough' phase of making bread.

In this universe of plot-convenient clothing blindness, how do Dumb and Dumber recognise Aang as the one who beat the Blind Bandit?

I think the voice actor for the dumb kid with actual hair did a bunch of voices in season 1. The soldier who gives Aang Bato's map comes to mind.

Have I said recently how much I love Sokka and Katara?

These wrestling guys keep switching between first and third person. Too many rocks to the head.

This could be a board for a murder mystery board game. Or a map for a DND dungeon.

It's her hair. I thought the Blind Bandit had a cap type thing with a little brim for her costume, but it's just a pile of her hair? Like a beehive?

A lesson in character writing: if you want to make someone look super dumb, have them earnestly believe in the credentials and authenticity of a guy you have previously set up as a borderline con artist. Lookin at you, Blind Bandit's dad.

"Basic forms and breathing exercises only." That line is just so funny. And they're all so stupid. She snapped like half a dozen spines last night and this guy is preaching breathing exercises.

Wow! I hate her dad!

I hate him more!

Sokka going ham on some rice rather than listen to the idiots. Good priorities.

This passive aggressive fight between the girl and Aang at the dinner table is so fun.

Looking for somewhere to store your meal after you've face planted into it? Try the top of your head!

I need to get a hold of some of those magic napkins. Wiped up a whole multicourse meal in like 5 seconds.

That is indeed the appropriate reaction to this pint sized badass. Glad Aang is learning. (Also this episode needs more Appa. The last couple have been sadly bereft.)

Called it. Earthdending sonar. Or is it more like echolocation? No! Whiskers!

How does this pint sized badass - who if I am understanding correctly, is not known to exist outside the walls of her house - have more emotional intelligence than the entirety of the Gaang put together?

So much for the guards in the garden. They'd actually be useful now.

Sokka. Priorities. Although given how many times Aang has escaped custody/kidnapping he's probably ok to take a minute to fangirl over an autograph.

These idiot parents don't know their daughter at all. That chafes.

"I'm not smiling." I LOLed at that too. Perfect delivery.

Hippo man having a snack before he gets down to business. No wonder he's missing teeth.

All this blind and tiny and helpless and fragile talk is really making me hope someone smacks the crap out of the dad. What an awful thing to say, nevermind saying it where your daughter can hear.

SMACKDOWN INCOMING

This is gonna be good.

If this girl does join the Gaang the writers are going to have to nerf her in every major conflict. She's too powerful. I bet she could take on the firelord now.

And that's why you don't announce sneak attacks.

So remember how Sokka was absolutely losing his shit over the Boulder? That's me right now.

She waits. All these idiots are losing because they're getting impatient and attacking first. Which means that, to her senses, they're telegraphing their moves. That is so cool. And so is this visual.

Here's your chance Dad. Are you going to mess it up?

"I love fighting. I love being an Earthbender. And I'm really really good at it." me:

I don't have words for how much I LOVE when little girls STAND UP for THEMSELVES and THEIR INTERESTS. This would have had me HOLLERING if I'd seen it as a kid. It was a message I needed to hear too.

Wow I want to kill her parents.

OH FUCK OFF

COME ON

You made my girl cry.

Get wrecked belt stealer. I LOLed at this too.

Sokka just beaned a blind girl on the head. Not a good look. I laughed though.

Fun fact: everyone in this picture is a piece of shit.

I haven't been this steamed since Zuko's dad burned half his face off.

Final Thoughts

IT WAS SO GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, this episode feels like it's movie quality. This show is usually excellent, but this feels like a cut above. I feel like I could sense the love the writers, animators, voice actors, everyone had for this episode. They had a good time making it and were enthusiastic about it. And there were lots of tiny background details in this episode too. I'm sure I missed quite a few. Oh No! I'll have to rewatch it!

New team member! That hasn't happened since Momo. Actually, no wonder the episode was so good. Introducing the first new team member in at least a season's worth of episodes is a delicate operation. I bet they were workshopping this episode since early in the first season.

And Toph! (thank you credits for how to spell that - I was really hoping it wasn't Toff). Be still my heart I love Toph. She may well take Sokka's spot as my favourite character. Strength of character, self-assurance, emotional intelligence, badassery, mastery of violence, what's not to love!!!

How did she get so emotionally intelligent and articulate if her parents have kept her caged her whole life? I don't know but I'm not complaining!

How did her parents get away with caging her for her whole life? I do know (money) and I am complaining. Very much so. And yet Toph can still find it within herself to have an honest conversation with them, including apologising for leaving said cage. I never would have had the maturity to do that in a similar situation. I would have gone the Katara explosive rage route.

A little girl who stands up for herself. Against HER PARENTS. I just. Do you know how amazing that is? Especially in a kids' show? I was ROBBED by not being able to see this show when I was Toph's age.

Does bending work like a muscle, in that you build up stamina? Because if so, then Toph is the strongest human earthbender in the world by default. If she's using it in place of seeing, then she's using it 100% of the time that she's awake, all day every day. By the time she was like 5 years old she'd probably used her bending more than the average earthbender does in their whole lifetime.

My one complaint is Toph's voice. Nothing wrong with it; this is a me thing. It fits her perfectly, but my ears do not play well with nasal voices, which hers is. I had to rewind quite a few times and resorted to subtitles by the end. Hopefully I'll get used to it like I did Zuko's.

Sokka! My soon to be demoted beloved! He shone in this episode. I love that he has fashion sense and is not afraid to show it. I'm thinking, what with how hung up he was on masculinity at the start of the show, that the water tribes have a different conception of masculinity: one that classes fashionability as a masculine or gender neutral trait. Even back in season one it didn't take much to get Sokka into the Kyoshi warrior uniform, and he's shockingly good at applying face paint symmetrically. Which I still cannot do with winged eyeliner.

Katara! Not headed for a career in diplomacy but so satisfying to watch. I would love to have a Katara in my pocket that I could unleash on people. And her and Sokka bouncing off each other this episode was great. Every one was at peak performance this episode, except Aang. Not at his brightest this episode.

Checking for typos before I post this and I realise I'd already forgotten that Toph is blind! Just like in the Northern Air Temple, this is how you do disability right: as just a part of who they are, rather than an entire personality. This show is so good.

In sum, Toph:

#atla #avatar: the last airbender #the blind bandit #avatar the last airbender

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xxaraaq · 3 months

Text

wc | 0,9k

cw | Unprotected sex, weed consumption

Eddie Munson x Sinclair! reader

A/N | I was watching stranger things and I thought about this. I hope you enjoy!

You promised yourself that you wouldn’t go back. That you would never talk to him again, and go about your life as if you’d never met him. You knew he would only cause trouble, and you even told him this, saying that he was only a nuisance steering you off track from the plans you have for yourself.

But you’re a liar, and now you’re in his bed, gripping at his tattered sheets as he fucks you from behind.

This wasn’t even supposed to happen. You were at a party with Steve and Robin, nursing a cup of some random mystery punch when he had approached you.

“What do you want, Eddie?” You say, looking uninterestedly at him. “Long time so see, Sinclair. Whatcha been up to?” He asks, smirk on his face as he takes your drink from you, taking a sip before setting it on the counter. You groan as he attempts – and fails – to make good conversation. “We literally see each other in school every single day. And if you wanna know what I’m doing so badly, why don’t you ask my brother? Isn’t he in that stupid club you run?” You glare at him, growing more annoyed by the second.

He puts his hand on his chest, acting offended as he scoffs. “That was a low blow, Sinclair. And I’ll have you know,” He steps closer, bending down slightly to whisper into your ear. “Your brother has been nowhere to be found in these past couple weeks, with him being on the basketball team and all.” You can feel him smirking as his arm comes around your waist. You should push him away, curse him out for talking to you after you’ve told him so many times to leave you alone. But you don’t. Instead, you let him pull you flush against his chest as he kisses on your neck, whispering how you should come home with him to relax and unwind for the remainder of the night. You ignore the fact that relax and unwind basically mean the same thing and let him feel you up in the middle of the crowded kitchen, moaning quietly as his calloused hands work his way under your shirt.

You should’ve known that you wouldn’t be able to stay away from him. Everything about him intoxicates you, from his scent of cigarettes and whatever cheap cologne he managed to snag from his uncle's dresser to his obnoxious laugh that comes out at the most inconvenient times, you could never get enough, and it pisses you off.

The drive to his place was quick, only around five minutes, before your feet hit the gravel that makes up his driveway. As soon as you step through the door his hands find you, slipping your clothes off before you even get to his room. His kisses are passionate, messy even, as he shuts the door, laying you on the bed.

You should've known that this was inevitable – face pressed into the pillow, back pushed into a perfect arch as his pelvis meets your ass with each thrust. It’s pitiful the way he can so easily reduce you into nothing more but a sobbing mess every time, hiccuping and moaning as he grips your waist tight, pounding mercilessly into your wet cunt.

“S’ too much, Eddie!” You cry out, hand reaching out in an attempt to slow him down. He chuckles, swatting it out his way, fucking into you even faster as he takes a drag from a joint. The air is thick, almost suffocating. Between the smell of sex and marijuana, you think you might pass out.

“What’s wrong, baby? Can’t take it anymore?” He coos, lazy smile on his face as his thrusts grow sloppy. He could die a happy man if the last thing he could see was this, you fucked out of your mind while higher then the clouds. It was perfect, this was perfect, you’re perfect.

He wasn’t even concerned when you said you wanted to stop seeing him. He could see that you were scared of what he would do to you if you didn’t keep your distance; how he would slowly start to tear away at your reputation if you didn’t avoid him like the plague. In all honesty it’s funny, seeing how quick you were to squirm when he passed you in the halls, how you would avoid eye contact as though your life depended on it. And now here you are, pawing at the sheets with your eyes rolling back from the pleasure he’s giving you.

“M’ gonna cum Eddie! M’ cumming!” You mewl, body tensing as your orgasm washes over you. He groans as your pussy clenches around him. He follows close behind you, cumming in you with a deep groan, taking his place beside you as you both collapse. He stubs the remainder of the joint in the ashtray, breathing heavily as he looks over to you. “I thought you said I wasn’t ‘ambitious’ enough to even be in your presence anymore, what happened sweetheart?” He jokes, putting up air quotes sarcastically.

Without hesitation, you grab the pillow from under you and throw it at arm with all the strength you can muster. “You’re such an asshole, you know that?” You say, unamused look settling on your face.

Maybe it’s okay if he corrupts you, if only for a night.

-Nene

#stranger things #stranger things x reader #eddie x reader #eddie munson x reader #eddie x sinclair reader #eddie munson x sinclair reader

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frenchkisstheabyss · 1 year

Text

| ❤️ | The Headless Horseman | ❤️ |

| Pairing | boyfriend!woozi x fem!reader w/ a cameo by fanboy hoshi

| Summary | Your secret identity as a street racer is exposed when your boyfriend's best friend, a superfan of yours, unknowingly drags him to one of your races.

| Genre | fluff w/ an eyedrop of angst

| Word Count | 2.4k

| Warnings | drinking, kissing, general adult situations

| A/N | @rainisawriter put in a request for this specific storyline and theme ages ago so love you forever for waiting 10 years for me to get my life together and finish it. I know you wanted something fun so I went for it. Hope you like it!

“Come in. Sit. Sit. Sit” Hoshi insists, gesturing toward the couch he’s had Woozi trapped on for the past five minutes. Grabbing your beer from the coffee table, you flop down on the couch beside Woozi, throwing your legs across his lap. “What’s his deal?” you tilt your head to whisper into your boyfriend’s ear. Woozi wraps an arm around you, bringing you into one of his infamously cozy hugs. “It’s the street racing thing again. Something about a headless houseman.” “Horseman!” Hoshi corrects, pacing the floor in front of you.

This is as excited as you’ve ever seen him and, as amusing as it is, he’ll set fire to your carpet if he keeps pacing like this. “Alright, alright. Take a breath and tell us about this Headless Hou..." "Horse, baby” Woozi whispers, resting his head on your shoulder. “Horseman.” Hoshi stops in his tracks, waiting for one of you to poke fun at him. When neither of you does, he sits down on the edge of the coffee table, leaning in a bit like an older brother about to torture his siblings with a scary story.

“Okay, so, she’s…” “She?” Woozi interrupts, “I thought it was a man.” “Yes, she!” Hoshi continues, “She was the best street racer in the underground. They called her the Headless Horseman because she always wore a helmet to hide her identity. No one and I mean no one has ever been able to figure out who she is.” For a fleeting moment, the playful expression on your face turns to one of panic. It’s a blink and you miss it kind of panic. The guys blinked. They missed it. But your sweaty palms and racing heart didn’t.

“So...what? You plan on solving the mystery?” The question comes out sharper than you intended. “You’ve always been good at things like that” you add, attempting to soften the impact. “Oh,” he smiles, surprised but flattered, “Thank you but no. I’ve tried though. She was my favorite for a long time. Still is. I’ve never seen anyone drive like that before. It got to the point where most guys hated racing her because she was unbeatable.”

“What happened?” Woozi asks, more invested in the tale than he anticipated.

“Hmm?”

“You keep saying ‘was’ like something happened.”

Hoshi’s eyes widen, “Yeah, well, uh, she disappeared.”

“Disappeared like died?”

“Disappeared like into thin air. Some people thought she died. Others thought she just quit but there’s been talk...” “Of?” you ask, fiddling with the rose quartz ring dangling from the silver chain around your neck. It was a gift from Woozi for your birthday that you never take off for anything. You reach for it whenever you need comfort and it's never failed you even once. “A comeback at tonight's race. That something happened to bring her back and now the Headless Horseman will ride again.”

The way that he tells it, this really is starting to feel like a horror story. Especially for you. The only one here with something to hide. “I was thinking of going to check the race out and I thought...” “No” you and Woozi groan in unison. “No?” “No” Woozi repeats, “I’m not going with you to an illegal street race to chase an urban legend. What if it gets raided? My baby’s too pretty for jail.” You can’t help but blush, kissing him on the cheek, “No, you’re too pretty for jail.” Woozi starts to blush too and the overload of cuteness makes Hoshi want to vomit.

“You guys never wanna do anything fun” he pouts, “It’s one race.” Getting up from the couch, you stretch your limbs, letting out a yawn. “The threat of jail time aside, I’m exhausted so I’m heading to bed. Why don’t you boys go find something safe to do?” You glance back and forth between the two of them, making it clear that your question had, in fact, been an order. “Yes, ma’am” Hoshi mumbles, forcing a smile when you pinch his cheeks.

You lean in to give Woozi a goodnight kiss and his arms are around you again, nearly dragging you back down onto the couch. He’d come crawl into bed with you if he could but he’d feel bad leaving his best friend hanging and you’d never ask him to do that. “Goodnight, my love” you sing, skipping off to the bedroom. “Goodnight!” Woozi shouts down the hall, his eyes lingering where you once were. Hoshi takes your spot on the couch, batting his eyelashes at Woozi, “Goodnight, my love.”

A part of you, every part of you if you're being honest with yourself, feels bad for keeping this from your boyfriend. He’s your best friend. Your partner in crime. You share everything. Everything but this. There was once a time when racing was the only way that you could feel alive. When you weren’t behind the wheel, burning down the winding roads the local cops were too corrupt to monitor, life felt empty. If the only thrill you could get had to come from risking your life you were willing to do it but falling for Woozi changed all of that.

With him, you felt genuine love for the first time. He made colors brighter, melodies sweeter, and food more flavorful. You finally had something that made you love your life without putting it on the line so you quit and never looked back. At least not until an old friend came asking you for a favor. Keeping your identity a secret was no small feat. Your success relied heavily upon the few women you'd grown close to on the scene.

One in particular, a fellow racer, was as sweet as could be but had a gambling streak that got her into trouble more often than not. Her most recent run-in was with a new racer. One just as good as you were. Some might say better. She put her car up against his and lost it. A man with an ego impossible to satisfy, he would’ve happily raced her again just to see her suffer. There was no way she’d beat him though, she knew that, but you could. You could’ve turned her down. Maybe you should’ve but it's too late for second thoughts now.

Your opponent’s heavily modified muscle car screeches to a halt beside yours at the starting line. He winks at you, blowing a kiss, “I’ve heard a lot about you sweet thing. You’ve got quite the reputation. Too bad I’m gonna have to ruin it.” The roar of the crowd, hundreds of people gathered around for the return of a legend, drowns out whatever he says next. “Hey!” your friend shouts, tapping the hood of your car. When you turn to her she jiggles your seatbelt, and checks that your helmet’s secure, “Kick his ass.”

The flag girl dips between the cars, taking her position just beyond the starting line. You grasp the ring around your neck for good luck before taking one last look at the smug face of your opponent. Kick his ass? Not a problem.

Pushing his way to the back of the crowd, Woozi holds his phone to his head and listens as it rings once, twice, three times. Hoshi sneaks up on him, snatching the phone away. “What are you doing?” Hoshi asks, ending the call and holding the phone up out of Woozi’s reach. He’s tempted to try to grab it but, with this height difference, it’d be a waste of energy. “I told her we were going to Mingyu’s place. I have to let her know there was a change of plans.” “Oh my god, you’re so whipped.” “At least I’m not single” Woozi snaps, “Now give me my phone!”

The tearing of rubber against pavement sends clouds of smoke into the night sky, drawing the immediate attention of everyone around them. “Look, she won’t care that you came with me. She’s not like that but she’ll kill you if you wake her up. So just relax and have fun” Hoshi begs, “I’ll tell her it was all my fault. I promise.” As much as Woozi hates to admit it, Hoshi’s made several valid points, the most important of all that you’d rip his head off if he woke you up. “Fine. Whatever.”

“Yes!” Hoshi yells, dragging him back to the front of the crowd just in time to see the cars disappear down the road. At first, Woozi struggles to get comfortable. Hanging out at the edge of an abandoned highway after midnight wasn’t on his 2023 bucket list for fun things to do. As time goes on though, he finds himself having fun, knocking back drinks, and meeting some of Hoshi’s other friends. The adrenaline that pumps through the drivers during lap after lap bleeds into the audience, into him, and he understands now why Hoshi gets so pumped to come to these things.

As the end of the final lap approaches one car closes in on the other. It’s so close, we’re talking splitting hairs close, and then it’s not at all. The Headless Horseman picks up an unreal amount of speed, flying past the other car and ripping through the finish line. A celebration erupts amongst the masses who bet in favor of the Horseman while the few who didn’t prepare for financial ruin. It doesn’t matter to you either way. You’re so high off the thrill of being behind the wheel again that everything around you exists only as a blur of color.

As you make your way out of the car, smiling faces come to congratulate you. Shaking your hand. Hugging you. Patting you on the back. You rush them along, desperate to find yourself an isolated corner where you can get this helmet off before you suffocate. “Horseman!” Hoshi cheers, cutting in front of you before you have time to escape. It can’t be. You must be hallucinating. It really is too hot under this helmet. “So nice to meet you. You were amazing! This is my friend---” he rambles, pulling Woozi over by the collar, “It’s his first time.”

In the old days, the mafia used to put cement blocks on dead bodies before they threw them in the ocean to make sure they didn’t resurface before they became fish food. The sight of your boyfriend standing in front of you makes you want to run but the invisible cement bricks hardened around your ankles won’t let you. You’re fish food. “Hi” Woozi waves, his cheeks rosy from one too many drinks, “You did really well out there.” “I, uh, thanks,” you say in a high-pitched voice, attempting to conceal your own.

Like magic, the weight lifts from your ankles and you start to make a run for it only you aren’t moving. Something else is holding you back, a hand around your wrist. Woozi’s hand. “Where’d you get that?” he asks, eyeing the ring dangling from your neck. You pull away again. It’s no use. He won’t let up. Hoshi takes a closer look at you, the gears turning until it clicks, “No way. I can't believe it. This is just like in those spy movies. Are you a spy? Wait, don't tell me! No, tell me!”

Ignoring his best friend's enthusiasm, Woozi digs his phone out of Hoshi’s pocket and dials your number. There’s nothing you can do besides stand by as the ringtone you personalized for him sounds in your jacket pocket. The tightness in your chest is unbearable. This is how you die. You pop your helmet off, tossing it to the ground. Woozi pours his drink out beside it, his brain too scrambled to add another sip of vodka into the mix, “I’m too drunk for this.”

Waking up the next morning you find the bed empty and your house quiet enough to hear a pin drop. You’d come home separately last night. You in your car and Woozi in Hoshi’s. Actually, when you stop to think about it, you aren’t sure Woozi came home at all. From the looks of things, he hasn’t. His keys aren’t on the nightstand and his shoes aren’t by the front door. The usual scent of him cooking Saturday morning breakfast doesn’t fill the apartment and…

“Aah!” you scream, tripping and falling onto something soft. Well, someone. The body of your severely hungover boyfriend is stretched out on the kitchen floor, keys in hand and shoes still on his feet. Carefully rolling off of him, you make no attempt at getting up from the floor. You just lay there, staring at the ceiling, feeling as vulnerable as you ever have. “Where am I?” he mumbles, wiping the drool from his cheek. He lifts his head up, squinting to look around the kitchen before lying back down.

“You okay? You need anything?” you ask, knowing how tough hangovers are on him. “From you or the Horseman?” “Really? Is that how we’re handling this?” “Last I checked I wasn’t the one living a double life.” You can’t even argue with him. He’s right. If you found out he’d hidden something from you, no matter how small, you’d be irritated too. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Sitting up, you bury your face in your hands, letting a symphony of frustration spill out. “It’s a part of me I wanted to bury. I only dug it up to help a friend” you admit, “I was afraid if you knew it might change how you see me.”

Woozi sits up, releasing a few pained groans of his own, “Change how I see you? Nothing could ever change how I see you. I need you to trust me enough to believe that.” “I do. I just…I get in my own head sometimes and I don’t know. I’m so sorry.” Woozi kisses you, the lingering sweetness of some late-night snack he must’ve eaten coating your lips. “It’s okay. Apology accepted…under one condition.” You perk up, prepared to do whatever it takes to make things right, “Whatever you want. Just say the word.”

Leaning back against the refrigerator, he makes space for you to sit between his legs, “Tell me everything from the start.” “Everything?” you ask, sliding over to him, “Well, it all started when…” You lay your head on his chest, gearing up to spill every detail of your origin story, only to be met with the sound of light snoring. You contemplate waking him up but decide he’s in need of some rest and, with Hoshi no doubt on his way to make you tell this same story all over again, you let yourself drift off with him, figuring you do too if you plan to survive that.

#woozi x reader #woozi x you #woozi fluff #woozi angst #seventeen x reader #seventeen x you #seventeen fluff #svt x reader #svt x you #svt fluff

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jjwantsme · 2 years

Text

I Wanna Be Saved!

j.m

pairing: jj maybank x kook!reader

summary: in which he finally saves his favorite hoe. (part II to ‘Captain Save A Hoe’)

warnings: nsfw, lowercase intended, cussing, kiara still lowk being mean😭, slutshaming, promiscuous!reader, mentions of smut, kinda short

authors note: i love this little theory sm 🥲🥲🥲 thank yall for reading

masterlist

JJ looked zoned-out while John B went on about some stupid theory, a theory that he frankly didn’t care about. how could he care when hours earlier, his girl walked out on him?

okay, alright, she technically wasn’t his girl. but, in his mind, he was certainly her boy.

“JJ, are you even listening?” kiara looked at him with a face of annoyance.

“yeah, you were like, just straight up ignoring everything we said,” pope said in his monotone voice, only aggravating the boy in question even further

“everything is fucked, bro!” the blondie huffed, standing up off the couch as he shocked the other three teenagers. “y’all are confusing and annoying the shit out of me with this dumbass mystery thing, as if we’re in a fucking tv show! this is real life, okay?! we’re not gonna find fucking gold. listen, my favorite fucktoy walked out on me, okay, how the fuck am i supposed to pay attention?! also, i haven’t gotten high in, like, 25 hours and i’m getting withdrawals.”

the room stayed silent for a solid 6 seconds once JJ finished his stressed rant, the other teenagers looked at each other with their eyebrows raised. what the fuck was he talking about?

“uh, okay, let’s disregard the gold thing for a few minutes- what do you mean by ‘fucktoy’?” pope interrupted the silence, kiara nodding slowly in agreement to his statement.

JJ sighed and sat back on his spot on the couch, resting his forehead in his hands, “y/n, bro-“

“you fucked her?!” kiara exclaimed, her eyebrows furrowing in a mix of anger and confusion. “i literally told you that she was a bitch!”

“yo, don’t talk about her that way,” he lifted his head off his hands, “she’s actually cool, alright? i really, really like her.”

“so, then…what’s the problem?” john b shrugged slightly with raised eyebrows.

“that is the problem, dude! she’s pissed ‘cause we agreed on no actual feelings involved, but of course, i fucking folded.”

“such a bitch,” kiara mumbled, making JJ roll his eyes.

“i’m confused,” pope narrowed his eyes.

the boy groaned, “jesus, pope, how slow are you? she made me bust a couple times and now i’m ready for marriage!”

“woah-“

“look, J, you’ll get over her. there’s hundreds of hot girls on this island, you’ll be fine. now, can we please stay focused on becoming rich?” kiara spoke louder this time, cutting off pope’s shocked reaction to JJ’s explanation.

“whatever,” JJ mumbled as john b took the opportunity to plan out the next step to finding the mind-boggling gold.

they just didn’t get it.

maybe she is a hoe, JJ thought. maybe he was just another check off of the promiscuous girl’s list of dicks to suck. but, if she is a hoe, she certainly is his favorite.

y/n groaned as she woke up in another man’s bed.

after leaving JJ, she was desperate to find someone as good as him- but, she had been failing miserably.

they never made her feel as good as he did, and probably never will. JJ was different.

sex with these men was just boring. sure, they weren’t bad, but none of them were the best. it was just plain old sex. but, with JJ, it was like her pussy was made for him.

she couldn’t keep entertaining all these other boys anymore. she needed a man, she needed her man.

so, she swallowed her pride and typed up a text. ‘missing the taste of you’, she sent to him.

she was shocked when her phone dinged shortly after. ‘yeah? i’m missing the feeling of you’, he replied back to her.

yeah. that settles it. her pussy was made for him.

the teens continued their back and forth vulgar texts for the rest of the week. photographs of his dick being sent to her, voice memos of her cumming around a sex toy being sent to him.

‘i wanna see you again’, y/n said one day, and JJ would be idiotic to decline.

they agreed on a place and time. 2:00 AM in y/n’s bedroom. they clarified that there wouldn’t be much talking involved, they just wanted to feel each other’s bodies again.

he wanted to feel her juices pour onto his tongue as he pleasured her. she wanted to feel his cock stretching her out, she wanted to feel the mix of pleasure and pain.

so, there JJ was, exactly at 2:00 AM, in his favorite girl’s room.

there lips molded together in a heated makeout, his hands going down to grip her ass as they slowly moved towards the bed.

“wait, stop, wait,” JJ gasped out as he pulled away from the kiss when he felt her warm hand travel down his shorts. “we can’t do this, i’m sorry, but we can’t,”

“what? why?” she pulled her hands back as she looked at him with a face of confusion.

“because i still like you, y/n.”

her face fell as she sighed and stepped back, sitting on her bed. “yeah, i figured.” she sighed and looked down.

“look, y/n,” he situated himself in his shorts, trying his best not to focus on his raging hard-on, “i know that you have a boyfriend, but-“

“we broke up.” y/n cut him off when the words slipped from his mouth, making JJ’s heart stop.

“…what?” he breathed out, “really? wh-why?”

“i mean…sure, he was an okay boyfriend. but, he just…he just wasn’t you.”

JJ sucked in a breath at her words.

“i think i like you too, J.” she told him, just above a whisper.

“oh.” was all he could say, although in his mind he was celebrating her reciprocation.

“maybe…maybe we could go on a date or something?” she asked as she stood up again, walking towards him again.

“yeah, i…i’d like that,” he spoke quietly, cupping her face.

“i take back what i said,” he said, pecking her lips, “we can definitely do this.”

the couple spent the night making love, one round after another.

her moans were music to his ears, it felt like a reward for every good thing he’d ever done.

he’d do a thousand good things if it meant he’d get to fuck her everynight.

they stayed in each other’s arms all morning long, tracing shapes on one another’s bare skin.

“JJ?” y/n whispered into his neck as the sun shined on them through her window.

“yeah?”

“thank you for saving me.

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raven-at-the-writing-desk · 1 year

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Because it looks like you’re already losing it do you have any extra thoughts on his voice lines? Mystery Shop Translations has them!

[Referencing this post!]

Yes, I know Mystery Shop TLs has the deets 👀 I'm the one that requested Rollo's voice lines dhabydsbiosaivfbifsan

To avoid spoiling anyone that hasn't had the chance to read his voice lines yet, I'll place my thoughts on them below the cut.

First thing's first! It seems like Rollo will be staying at NRC for a short amount of time. It’s disrupting the daily routine he usually has, so I wonder how he’ll adapt…? Apparently, this is because he has come to study at NRC for a brief period. So maybe there's some kind of student exchange program meaning we may get other "special" students in the future...

Rollo sounds SO unhappy (but in an emotionally-repressed way) when he says he would prefer not to step foot onto NRC campus. TOO LATE BUDDY YOU'RE STUCK WITH US WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT 🤡

QDBIUBSOYFVQE8FO8EQEFANOQEUTQEP OKAY, HE STARTS OFF STRONG... Just another monologue about he's going to be the one to create a just world and punish evildoers, how NRC is a place where evildoers dwell and how he has to observe them carefully... The usual Rollo talking points 😭 His Groovy line references the Just Judge and really shows how big of an ego Rollo has???? Like he's going to impart upon you "proper virtuous behavior"... BRO, I DON'T WANNA HEAR THAT FROM SOMEONE WHO WAS PLANNING TO ENGULF THE WORLD IN FLOWERS THAT SUCK OUT ALL THE MAGIC

On the topic of "proper virtuous behavior", I like that we get subtle hints of Rollo actually pushing for this in his lines. It shows us that he actually does think he knows what's best for others and has very particular expectations for what is "good and just" behavior (even thinking that he leads by example). For example, Rollo advises that Yuu "fulfill their duty to their utmost", something which he also prides himself on. Additionally, he commands Grim in their Duo Magic to do as he says, to which of course Grim protests, saying that he doesn't want to be ordered around. Rollo also frowns on Idia's use of an electronic tablet as a substitute for attending classes in person, calling it "laziness beyond reproach".

I find it hilarious that Rollo is SO angry at Malleus that he describes even the general area that Malleus resides in and the mirror that leads there as "absolutely repulsive". HIS HATE BONER FOR MALLEUS WILL NEVER DIE... Even funnier when you realize Rollo is (relatively) neutral toward Azul and only slightly negative about Idia (the other two SSR boys responsible for his downfall). Rollo even expresses curiosity about the Mostro Lounge (and I fully intend to write a fic with this premise in mind, it's just TOO good to pass up)! Both Idia and Azul are referred to as “[first name]-kun” whereas Malleus is referred to vaguely (“that man”) or just has his full name shouted 😭

It's... surprisingly cute??? That he compliments the quality of Trein's lessons. I wish we had more of Rollo's thoughts in this regard, because I feel like he's keeping a lot of his more detailed thoughts locked away. (Notice also that he calls Trein by first-name basis, “Mozus-sensei”.)

Noble Bell College doesn't have dormitories, which makes sense. It is stated in canon to be a much smaller school than NRC, so I'd imagine the student population is also smaller and thus having multiple dormitories to accommodate them all wouldn't be necessary. Laughing at the fact that Rollo just casually dunks on Ramshackle's name though 😭 I MEAN, HE AIN'T WRONG... The place was a bit of a dump before the renovations...

It's really interesting that Rollo continues to express a preference for "relaxing" places; he comments that he loves the Mirror Chamber because it's quiet and he finds it charming. There's also the previously mentioned interest in Azul's cafe, as well as a remark about the knowledge that NRC's library has. It makes me think he can be quite contemplative, although perhaps he doesn't direct his energy toward the most positive emotions at times.

In spite of all of this, the voice lines also maintain a sort of "distance" to them, which I love. This is most obviously seen in the voice line where Rollo asks Yuu if they need something since they were acting overly familiar with him. Rollo indicates that he believes Yuu mistook him for someone else. He doesn't seem to have friends, nor desire them, even if they're of a non-mage persuasion like Yuu. There continues to be this lingering sense of uneasiness and distrust between him and his peers, even when others like Yuu, the gargoyles, his aide and vice president, make an effort to reach out to him. HE JUST WANTS TO EXPLODE PEOPLE WITH HIS MIND, THIS ICY NeUTRALiTY IS tHE NICEST THIS MAn CaN MUSTER/j It really suits Rollo's character to refuse to properly "integrate" with NRC. He's also very actively avoiding making certain decisions which would prompt him to return to the campus, like not checking out any library books even though he's truly entranced by the information the NRC Archives hold. It implies that Rollo is, to some extent, being held back from his full potential because of how he walls himself off from others. He thinks of his own NBC classmates as noisy and stupid, wishes to remove the gargoyles, actively tries to spend time alone as often as possible, and hates on the community goats (bro was about to send one FLYING but decided against it only because there were too many potential witnesses). He doesn’t open up to his own parents about his feelings ever since the fire and claims that others cannot understand how he feels. Rollo has isolated himself 💀

Even his level-up line (not in Mystery Shop TL's post, but I still want to bring it up) is not friendly at all. In fact, Rollo acts suspicious of Yuu's friendship and demands that they come clean about their "true intentions". He then says that if You is actually being genuine, that's actually more bothersome than if they had been deceptive to him all along. He pities them for their circumstances, yes (being a non-mage constantly having to deal with the shenanigans of the wicked mages around them), but that doesn't equate to friendship or feeling "close" with Yuu. Rollo does not allow others to get close, he does not know what friendship is and nor does he seemingly want it or care for it.

Rollo draws a very strong divide between himself and those he labels as "villains" , as well as literally everyone else he encounters. That is, ironically, muddying his relationships and potential for self-actualization when he sees himself as a “savior” of sorts for people.

Overall, I really enjoyed this set of voice lines! It gives us more of what we really love about Rollo's personality without spoiling the events of Glorious Masquerade for those who haven't read it yet. My only complaint would be that I'm getting greedy and want even more Rollo content now, just these voice lines alone isn't enough to sate me anymore/j 😂

#twst #twisted wonderland #Rollo Flamme #disney twisted wonderland #spoilers #notes from the writing raven #question #Malleus Draconia #Idia Shroud #Azul Ashengrotto #Grim #Yuu #Mozus Trein

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fordtato · 27 days

Note

I've watched your newest video 3 times already (spaced out/separatedly, obviously. not consecutively, Jesus Christ) and I can't put into words how much I loved it. I love every single one of your videos, I love putting them on in the background while I do other stuff. You have a really nice voice and the things you say are always either funny or interesting.

I have two things to say right now (tho I might be back for more later, let's see)

First of all, I saw a video analysis a while back that made the observation that Ford is actually being kinda dumb in kicking Stan out and planning to close the Mystery Shack because the Mystery Shack is currently paying for food and keeping the lights on. It's been 30 years, Ford doesn't have his college grant anymore and, if the Mystery Shack closes, unless Ford has some other plan to make money, he's gonna go back to having no heat or gas in this huge empty house (whose mortgage Stan paid for as well). And, on that note, I'm not exactly sure if the money they're using to go on their boat adventure after the finale is money that Stan had saved up somewhere or what.

Secondly, you mentioned you are hoping to make some non-Gravity Falls videos later in the future and I'm very interested in knowing what exactly are those video topics going to be. If you don't wanna reveal anything yet that's fine but I'm curious about what non-GF stuff you want to talk about.

you know, i believe stan says in the dvd commentary (if we consider those canon) that he's actually accumulated a small fortune from the mystery shack over the years, so thats probably where we get the boat stuff

as for non-GF stuff, i've talked about it more on patreon but i get nervous talking about upcoming projects because my vids take so long and then ppl get antsy and ask stuff like "so is [topic] video scrapped?" and i dont really have a good answer, my vids just take forever.

the only one i feel comfy setting in stone is a sonic/knuckles-focused one ive been working on for a while

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mjolnirswriststrap · 10 months

Text

I Know You Liked It

Steve x Reader x Loki

Summary: Loki uses his cloaking magic for good. You get the revenge against Steve that you deserve.

Warnings: fuckboy!Steve, gender bending, sexual confusion, ropes, ball gags and butt plugs.

Masterlist

Steve had never seen a woman so captivating. Charcoal hair accompanied by jade green eyes. Her skin was so fair she had a glow about her. He couldn’t keep his eyes off of her all night. It prompted Bucky to tease him and make bets that he wouldn’t dare walk up to her. Steve took him up on every bet, he wanted to talk to her even if there was no money involved.

So Steve found himself, tail between his legs, walking up to the mysterious girl. Besides her alluring aura and eyes that seemed to find his no matter where he was in the room. He would call her mysterious because he had never saw her at one of Tony Stark’s infamous parties. He’d been front and center of everyone. Tony’s favorite toys he liked to show off were the vintage ones, like Steve.

The woman must be new to the tower, or else she’d know better than to make eyes at Steve. He had a reputation for chewing women up and spitting them out. You knew that of course. It’s the reason you sent her in there all alone, looking so fuckable.

When you first started working for Tony, you knew certain aspects of the job would be unconventional. You didn’t know how unconventional they would be, but still you accepted. Steve made his intentions known to you, rather quickly.

At first you were flattered. Captain America, the world’s sweetheart, interested in a measly intern. You’re embarrassed by how fast you gave it up. All it took was Steve, walking into the office late one night. Every cubicle desolate except yours.

A bendable desk lamp and the light from your monitor lit up your tired face. He gave you a pitiful look, jutting out his bottom lip. Looking back, it was more than patronizing, he was torturing you, but you were too delusional to notice.

“What’s a pretty girl like you still doing at work on a Saturday night? Don’t you have better things to be doing?” He steps into your personal space, leaning back to sit on the reports you just worked so hard on. “Places to be, people to see?”. You were so nervous of saying the wrong thing, so you took forever to respond. You sat there, looking into his prying eyes, not that they were looking into yours. They were focused on the cleavage your shirt allowed.

“I um, I don’t have any plans.” You said, instantly blushing when he finally looked to your face. He nods, crossing his arms in-front of his chest. “I had such a long day, I couldn’t think of one good reason to go out.” His eyes lights up when you said that. Like it was an instant challenge. Of course you went out with him. You ended up at a club, tucked back in a booth. He had invited all of his friends, But insisted there was no time to call your friends to come.

He didn’t even let you go home to change, he said you looked perfect in what you were wearing. No one else at the club wore business casual, so you’d say it wasn’t perfect. He ignored you most of the night, one of his friends, a man named Sam, you’d never saw him before, he must be new to the team based on how they spoke. He gave you sad looks all night, like he knew your fate, but didn’t have the courage to warn you.

You never drank much, and you didn’t start that night. One fruity drink lasted you the whole time you were there. Steve kept trying to buy you new ones, and offering you shots but you always turned him down. You remember when the famous god of thunder brought out a wooden jug and poured Steve and Bucky mugs full of a golden liquid. He wasn’t the same after he downed it. It’s like all the drinks he had before hit him all at once.

He looked over to you and said “The guys wanna take the party back to my place, are you down?” You didn’t wanna ruin the vibe so you agreed instantly. No protests came from you as you and Steve rose from the table and made you way back to the tower. No alarms raised in your head when you got there and his apartment was dark. He kicked off his shoes haphazardly, not caring where they landed.

“Hey, when are your friends getting here?” You say, sitting on the couch, slipping off your work heels, blisters starting to form after 16 hours of wear. Steve comes and sits awfully close to you. “They should be here soon, they were leaving right after us.” He throws his arm around you shoulder, smiling innocently.

You don’t remember why you ignored the chill that ran down your spine, or your rapid heart beat; screaming at you to get out. You looked into his blue eyes and got lost. Tangled up in the different shades. You leaned in and kissed him, pulling away and coving your face. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.” He grabs your hands and pulls them away from your eyes. “It’s okay, I want to try it again.” He kissed you like he needed you. Like he actually wanted you. You were just another girl to him. Just another girl to get fucked and never get called back.

At first, you were hurt, you never saw it coming. Your crush kept you from seeing his red flags. Once you got over it, you easily moved on, if he’s whoring himself around, then the jokes on him. You didn’t find yourself thinking about it again till you overheard the girl in the cubicle beside yours crying to a group of coworkers. “Then he told me he’d call, but when I got home, and tried to text him, my number was blocked.”

“I told you, you weren’t special. He did the same to me when I started here. You didn’t want to listen though.” A blonde girl says, shaking her head. You keep quiet, not wanting to share in the office embarrassment. Of course, you weren’t special either. You didn’t want to know how many of your coworkers shared your experience, but you wanted revenge for all of you. You had no plans curated till the man with the golden liquid brought his brother to work.

You instantly had a connection with Loki. You both seemed to flow so freely with each other. It wasn’t exclusive and you both understood and wanted that. He was too wild to chain down, and you didn’t want to be the reason he lost his spark. But being with him opened you up to a whole new world of dating. You no longer spend your Saturday nights behind a desk in a dark office. You’re at a different club, kissing a different stranger. Loki showed you how beautiful you really are, and beautiful girls don’t deserve guys like Steve.

At first Loki laughed when you told him how naive you were, letting Steve take advantage of you so easily. He didn’t believe that you could let that happen, not the woman he’d grown to love and adore. But when he saw how much hurt the memories caused you, he was furious. His laughs turned into quick pacing, “So I can either kill him or I can kill him.” He said. You faced him, shaking your head “You know how Tony feels about work place drama. I don’t wanna get fired for causing problems.”

Loki watched as your shoulders sagged in defeat. He would do anything to change how you felt in that moment. “I have an idea, but you have to promise not to get jealous sweets” he grins widely. You look at him, worried about what he had planned “What?”.

“If Steve has no repercussions for sleeping with half the building, why would I?” He said, holding his arms out to his sides like he just laid out the most perfect blueprint. “I’m sorry, I’m not following.” You say, utterly confused. “I’m saying, let’s humiliate him like he humiliated you.” He strode over and sat beside you “I wanna do this for you.”

That’s how you ended up in the back of the room, sipping on your second glass of champagne for the night. You watched as Steve tiptoed up to Loki, hands in his pockets. You gag, not because of the alcohol, but because of the way Loki as a woman turned you on more than Steve ever did.

You watched as Loki gripped on the captain’s tie, throwing her head back like what Steve said was the funniest thing in the world. She was throwing herself at him, knowing he wouldn’t be able to resist her. You wouldn’t be able to either, when Loki transformed himself into herself, you instantly felt so many emotions, you didn’t know if you wanted to be her, fuck her, or you were insecure that your boyfriend is prettier than you no matter what gender he is.

You followed behind them as they made their way to Steve’s apartment. Loki pretended to be tipsy, acting like Steve was the only source of gravity in the hall. You stayed back as they tumbled into his door. The plan was, after Loki subdued him, you’d sneak in, take some pictures that would find themselves in the weekly newsletter.

You waited for five minutes and went for the handle but it was locked, you figured Loki hadn’t found the right moment to unlock it. Weird you think, since they’re magic and all. After another 10 minutes you hear the lock click and the door slowly creaks open. You step inside, whispering “Hello?” Loki reveals himself, walking from the bedroom, already transformed back to his usual appearance.

“Is he asleep?” You say, wiping your nervous palms on your pants. Loki just looks at you, “Something like that, just don’t forget, this is what you wanted.” You were unsure after his response. When you walked into the room, Steve was tied to his headboard, a ball gag stuffed into his mouth. “Loki!”

“He deserves it sweets, I could be hurting him, would you rather me hurt him?” Loki looks at you, hurt that you don’t appreciate his efforts. “No, no baby, I just didn’t expect this.” You raise the Polaroid to your face and snap the first picture.

“Did you enchant him?” You ask. “Of course, how else do you think that ropes still holding? I made him think he couldn’t break free, and he can’t scream.” You look into Loki’s eyes and you’re amazed at his attention to detail. He’s absolutely insane, but it’s for all the right reasons.

You look down at the crying super soldier, “Do you wanna say something, hmm?” Steve nods vigorously. You unbuckle the strap, letting the ball fall to his chest. “Let me go, I won’t tell anyone about what happened if you guys just let me go now.” You hear Loki stifle a laugh behind you.

You grin at his giggles. “And why would we do that?” You bat your eyelashes at Steve’s pleading eyes. “You’re getting what you deserve.” And you snap another picture of his tear stained face. You reattach the strap to the gag and walk over to Loki. “What did you have in mind?” “I was thinking about getting him on his knees, plugging him.”

You lean down, making eye contact with Steve, “You like it when girls are on their knees, don’t you captain?”. Loki raises his hand, causing Steve to flip over, with his other hand he conjures a large silicone plug. “Oh, we can’t hurt him.” You laugh as Loki changes models.

You snap picture after picture, eventually you started to feel like a snuff director. Steve found himself in many compromising positions. Loki used his magic one more time before you left, Steve wouldn’t remember a second of what happened, but his body would. Just like your body remembers being used by him.

As you’re looking through the collage of photos, spread out on your bed, Loki walks into the room. “I’ve been wondering something. What took so long?” You say, questions your boyfriend. “What do you mean?” He says. “You said it would take a few moments once you got him inside. It took 15 minutes.” You blink at him.

“It took more than I thought to get him to the bed. He wanted to sit on the couch. I had to persuade him to move it to the bedroom.” Loki says, scratching the back of his head. “Plus you agreed not to get jealous.”

“What did you do exactly?” You say, putting away the photos you plan on digitally scanning later. You move back till you’re pressed against the headboard, watching Loki. He transforms back into the beautiful woman from the night before. “I walked up to him, and sat on his lap.” Loki mirrored her spoken actions on you. Sitting on your lap, wrapping her arms around your neck. “I may have kissed him, like this.”. You gasp when her full lips press against yours. She straddles your legs and grinds herself on your lap. “Then I leaned back and let him touch me, like this.” Loki grabs your hands, running them up and down her sides, feeling the curve of her breasts. You feel yourself get turned on by the sight of her.

“Okay, I’m starting to feel like I didn’t experiment enough in college, I get the idea Lok’.” You say, tapping her thigh to signal to move. “He was practically drooling when he climbed into that bed.” Loki says, shifting back to being male. “I really hope this works and I didn’t pimp my boyfriend out for nothing.”. He cracks up, falling pack into the pillow beside you.

“The look on his face was enough revenge for me. That felt better than fighting him.” Loki says, proud that he chose plan b. “I think you messed him up pretty good. If you hadn’t enchanted him, I know he would have scars from seeing you turn into a dude after sticking his tongue down you throat.” You both burst out into a fit of laughter. Loki was quite literally the god of mischief and you had no qualms about indulging him.

You turn over to look at the guy who changed everything for you, “Gosh, I really don’t know what I’d do without you.” You say, petting his long locks. He reaches up and holds your hand, placing a kiss to the palm. “You’re perfect all on your own.”

The next morning, the newsletter made its way to everyone’s inbox. A staff meeting was scheduled instantly. You and Loki strolled in, knowing smiles on your faces. Everyone was smiling, especially Sam, like he was seeing justice in action. Tony started by saying Friday will be working to find the person who sent the newsletter out, even going as far as saying Friday would find the exact copier the photos were scanned on. You knew your home setup was untraceable, there’s a reason you got the internship with Tony. Not only did you pull the god of mischief, but you were a tech guru too.

As you all filed your way out of the room, Loki walked behind Steve, whispering in his ear “I know you liked it.” Steve jerked his head to look at Loki, “What did you say to me?”. You could see his rage emitting from his face. “Oh don’t be coy, everyone saw the photographs, you looked like you were enjoying yourself, that’s all I’m saying.” Loki slithers his way into manipulating Steve. He stomps his way past the group of people trying to exit, looking like a pouting toddler. You and Loki, hold in your laughter as you wait your turn to leave.

#loki x reader #steve rogers x reader #captain america #captain america x reader #marvel masterlist #avengers fanfiction #fanfic #fanfiction #steve rogers smut #loki laufeyson #loki odinson #mcu #avengers #loki fanfic #steve x reader #loki x steve

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