#My first attempt at drawing the sky and sea at night | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lanasblood · 11 months

Text

𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐑𝐎𝐖𝐒 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐁𝐎𝐘 | Chapter 1: Skyracer

pairing: neteyam x f!reader

summary: after fate brought you to awa’atlu and you felt hope for the first time in so long, the sea became the lonely witness of a bittersweet love, making you quickly realize how life withers as fast as it blossoms.

word count: 4.9k

warnings: it's the remix. please check here and read at your own risk.

← previous | next →

in the depths of my mind, I kept you hidden, a treasure too priceless to be revealed, for your soul is pure, your beauty unbidden, a rose in the fields, unconquered, unconcealed.

On the night when it all began, the sky stretched above, clear and serene, while a gentle breeze rustled through the air. The moon, a slender crescent, cast its ethereal glow upon the dense forests of Pandora, drawing intricate shadows upon the tents nestled amidst the towering trees. Its radiance danced upon the still surface of the deserted lake, while the forest itself seemed adorned with a tapestry of fallen leaves and meandering vines.

Your body felt weak, your heartbeat faltered, its rhythm growing feeble, and your pulse felt strangely sluggish. With a heavy sigh escaping your lips, you sank down onto the ground, your trembling hands finding their way to the tangles of your hair. The wind, mischievous in its playful dance, toyed with the fabric of your loincloth and the flowers and feathers that adorned your form, teasing and loosening a single strand from the intricately braided locks that Kiri had graced with delicate handcrafted beads that evening.

With a desperate gesture, you pressed the balls of your hands firmly against your closed eyes, seeking respite from the world. Colors of light and dark swirled in a dizzying dance behind your lids, creating a kaleidoscope of sensations. The sharp pain that had taken residence above your temples intensified, causing another low, pained sigh to escape from your chapped lips, as if carrying the weight of your weariness.

You heard your name before you felt his hand on your arm, his knee touched yours and for a brief moment, your heart almost completely stopped. You couldn't bring yourself to look at him yet; your eyes were strangely veiled, as if they were watering. "What's going on?"

There was an uncomfortable metallic taste in your mouth, and you carefully put your hand to your lips, only to discover the crimson evidence of blood trickling on your lips from your nose. Images of that night were difficult to push aside anyway, but in connection with the headache, it was almost impossible to suppress the onslaught of memories.

You cursed under your breath, your voice cracked and feeble, as you looked up at Lo'ak with an awkward expression.

"Bro—" Lo'ak's voice trailed off as his eyebrows shot up, his gaze shifting to the blood on your hand and then on your face. Swiftly, he retrieved a cloth that was secured to his side near his hunting knife. "Take this, it's clean. I only used it to polish my knife."

Gratefully, you accepted the cloth and pressed it against your nose to stem the bleeding.

"You need to see Tsahìk," he said softly, his eyes fixed on your profile.

"That's—" you began to protest, but the pain cut through your words. It hit you suddenly and with greater intensity than before, almost violently, leaving you gasping for breath. You attempted to stand, but your knees gave way, and you slumped down. Lo'ak struggled to keep you upright, his arms straining to support you.

"You have to see Tsahìk," he repeated, and you could only weakly shake your head. Blood trickled down your chin in thin lines, dripping onto the edge of your upper piece, leaving dark-red stains on the feathers. "You've been feeling unwell all evening. I'm worried about you."

That's how he was, Lo'ak Sully. Caring and considerate, not towards everyone, actually towards no one, but towards a selected few, including you. Instead of enjoying the celebration held in his honor, he had barely left your side throughout the evening. Even now, he preferred sitting with you rather than accepting another drinking challenge. In two days, he would embark on another journey to the Eastern Sea as the Tulkun Season was about to begin, and you wouldn't be able to see him for a long, long time. Actually, you should be grateful; missing him would only be temporary, and you would have something to look forward to. Five years ago, when you thought you would never see the Sully's again, it looked quite different. Back then, external circumstances had forced them to leave your clan and seek shelter far away in the East, leaving you with a void deep inside you. Fortunately, those external circumstances had been resolved by now, and Lo'ak, he was both Omatikaya and Metkayina now, being the bridge between the two clans, with the tattoo on his side below his cummerbund serving as proof. You were very proud of him and loved listening to his stories about his other friends and adventures. However, the farewell was close, meaning until his return in six moons, you would miss him, so much.

"You're drunk," you managed to say with difficulty. Speaking was incredibly hard for you, and the words felt fragile on your lips. "The village is over an hour away. And I won't let you fly; I'd rather die a wretched death out here."

"As charming as ever," Lo'ak muttered but secretly agreed. "Y/n, I... Can you stand up?" Of course, you couldn't. He presumably realized that in the next moment. "I'm going to quickly run back to the party, and you'll wait for me to return, okay? I'll hurry, I promise. Do you understand me?"

Your nod came seconds too late; he had already headed back toward the direction of loud music and youthful laughter. The vibrations reached the ground, shaking the earth beneath you. You could faintly hear Kiri's laughter as someone played the blue flute in the background. The spots danced before your eyes without you having to close them, and while the pain in your temples had eased, every sudden movement felt like your skull was about to explode.

A small group of young Na'vi passed by on the other side, maybe ten meters away from you, laughing and drinking while heading straight into the forest, but without noticing you; two couples, maybe a year or two older than you, with their hands clasped and bottles sharing.

The following thought brought a crooked smile to your lips and, inexplicably, tears to your eyes. But it was true. Pathetic as it may seem at first glance, all you wanted was to be truly loved, to have your mate by your side; a man with a strong heart who would love you like Jake loved Neytiri, who would call you beautiful even in the mornings when you woke up with messy hair and a puffy face; who would create a safe haven in his arms, where you could be vulnerable and share your deepest secrets; who would make you laugh with his infectious sense of humor, turning ordinary moments into extraordinary memories; who would hold your heart in his hands and cherished it as if it were his own, loving you unconditionally, flaws and all, reminding you that you are enough. Sometimes, more than anything, you wished for that to happen. And on those days, even Neteyam te Suli Tsyeyk'itan seemed somewhat attractive with his fleeting, almost coy smile directed towards yet another girl.

Another girl, yes. By now you were convinced that not just the girls but your whole clan had developed a crush, no matter how tiny or big, on the golden boy, and he liked that, of course, he did, he loved the attention and praise from almost anyone; almost, leaving you to possibly be the only person in the whole village who he wouldn't willingly exchange a word with. Not that you minded, on the contrary, you'd never gotten along with Neteyam since you were kids and you knew that it was mutual.

It wasn't that you had never been in love before, experiencing the euphoria and joy of a promising and fulfilling future ahead. But once your heart had been shattered, it became challenging for you to trust in someone else's words, no matter how beautifully spoken. This is why stepping out of your comfort zone felt incredibly difficult for you.

"We're back," Lo'ak's voice interrupted your thoughts, and as he helped you up, you realized who we referred to. Indeed, Neteyam Sully stood before you, holding the saddle for his ikran, and looked down at you, almost with a hint of pity.

"Why him of all people?" you grumbled, giving Lo'ak a weary glance. You felt like tears were ready to spill at any moment. "What about Kiri?"

"I didn't want to interrupt Kiri in her debate on equality versus equity against that flute guy. Plus, Neteyam is probably the only one around here who isn't too drunk to fly."

"No one?" you exclaimed, unable to hide your disbelief. However, before you could receive a proper answer, Neteyam himself lifted you onto his ikran, who rested a few meters away beneath the canopy of flower trees, alongside the other majestic creatures. With a swift motion that would typically have prompted an eye roll of annoyance — your current state sadly left no room for such sentiments — he positioned himself right behind you, his presence uncomfortably close, your thighs almost touching. He gently patted his ikran on the head to greet him, before he encircled your waist with his arms in a way that made your back lean onto his torso. And then, with a profound connection, he established a swaheylu bond with his ikran.

"Hold on tight," he whispered to you and nodded toward a slightly lost-looking Lo'ak behind your shoulder. His voice trembled slightly, almost imperceptibly, as he continued. "I may not be fond of you, but I really don't want to bear the responsibility for your death. Got it?"

That night was the moment when you first grasped the gravity of the situation, realizing that it was indeed something serious.

When Neteyam, as carefully and gently as he could, lifted you off his ikran right in front of a village that seemed unfamiliar to you and carried you with quick, firm steps into one of the tents in his arms, the night air suddenly seemed terribly cold and biting, and you realized you weren't home. All the words on your lips vanished into the darkness, and you seemed even too weak to cry.

He whispered reassuring words to you, told you he had to bring you to the nearest village he could find, looked at you with so much concern in his eyes that you were sure you were hallucinating, asked you to try and stay awake as long as you could, but as soon as you had entered the tent, everything seemed to flow into a single moment. After Neteyam formally introduced himself, an elderly woman with red feathers in her hair told him to carry you right after her, anything else would have been a waste of time. She asked him a lot; your name, your age, what had happened that evening, whether anything like that had happened before.

You were almost surprised at how collected he was and how many of the questions he was able to answer so quickly, but actually it was only logical – he also spent as much time with Lo'ak as you did, so you, too, couldn't help but learn a lot about the oh-so-legendary Neteyam Sully. As if that mattered.

Inside the tent, there was an unusual calmness, contrary to your expectations. In your own clan, Tsahìk's tent was always bustling with activity, filled with people seeking healing or simply enjoying each other's company. But in this clan, it felt different. It was quieter, almost serene, yet it carried an air of solitude. You couldn't help but notice a middle-aged man seated on one of the mats, his head buried in his hands as if he were anxiously awaiting something. Or someone. Next to him, a little girl lay with a peaceful face, seemingly asleep.

You really had no clue why this man of all people was stuck in your mind so clearly – this inconspicuous man, the only steadfast memory of that night.

The night when it all began.

The last thing you felt was Neteyam's hand on yours. Then everything went black and the only thing that remained was the picture of golden eyes and the man in the healing tent.

Vawm na txon. As dark as the night.

When you felt his fingertips on your wrist, you involuntarily winced and looked up. "Hey, Lo'ak," you muttered, and he immediately pulled you into a gentle hug and kissed your hairline. His voice sounded hoarse and rough and the bittersweet smell of sweet yovo fruit mixed with a bit of salt hung on his skin; and heaven, you would have loved to never let go of him again.

For a moment he just looked at you in silence and frowned before he sat across from you on the grass. Lo'ak started to say something, but his voice failed and a low sigh caught in the air around you.

"You look tired." You almost laughed, and it didn't even feel wrong. You look tired. Tuk had said the same thing earlier that morning while sitting in front of her herbal tea and half of Neytiri's infamous sari seed bread. She had preferred eating her morning meal in her grandmother's tent, because you were there too, not for relaxation, but to drink the disgusting mixture Mo'at prepared for you every single morning for the last three moons. Uttering those words, Tuk had even cast the same concerned look at you, with the same worried expression on her freckled, delicate face, just like her older brother was doing now, and it had almost broken your heart.

"I didn't sleep well last night, that's all."

When he said your name, admonishing with a sigh, his voice quivered, teetering on the edge of concern, before he hesitantly continued, "Are you… okay?"

His unspoken words hung heavy in the air, etched upon his countenance. You could see the unvoiced questions etching lines of worry upon his face, 'In the past few moons you haven't gotten back to me or anyone else, nor did you answer a single radio call, I tried to reach out to you several times, but you ignored me, you never asked to speak to me, and when my family sent you my greetings you just smiled and made promises that you never intended to keep, nothing.' yet they remained trapped within the confines of his sealed lips. The restrained inquiry and underlying disappointment were palpable, like a suppressed ache that threatened to consume him; and deep down, you knew his effort to withhold his concerns only magnified your own pain, intensifying the weight of his unspoken concerns.

"You're my best friend," he finally just said and ran his hand through his already chaotic braids.

At the same moment, out of pure impulse, you brushed a tangled strand of hair from your face. You had already heard last week that Lo'ak and Kiri would return early to transport some rations from here to Awa'atlu, thanks to Max and Norm who had decided to expand their labs to the Eastern Sea. At the same time, you didn't want to get too excited because they would only stay for a maximum of one week before being away for three more moons. Nevertheless, you had missed him. Every day since that party and their department two days later, you had thought of the moment he and Kiri left for the Eastern Sea, how he had briefly refused to leave until you were feeling better, how hard it was for you and his parents to convince him that everything was alright; how Lo'ak had promised to check in on you over the radio every evening just before the eclipse, how he had kept his promise, but you hadn't, and how you were contemplating telling him what had happened in those three months since he was gone, too anxious of his reaction; even more than the one time you had to make an important decision almost ten cycles ago:

"Why is he so mean? His radio code name is Pathfinder, and he has the audacity to criticize mine? He called me Plain Grandma, can you believe that!?"

"He also called you Slow Vipertail which is far worse in my eyes," Lo'ak had commented dryly.

"Shut up, Eagle Eye!" you had crossed your arms in front of your chest, pouting, "What is so bad about Stargirl?"

"No offense but it couldn't be any girlier."

"Well, I am a girl."

"But do you want the enemy to know that?"

"I thought our frequency was secure?"

"You never know with them." When you had continued to pout, Lo'ak had nudged you encouragingly with his elbow, "Come on, you can be Silent Thunder if you like."

"Isn't that what you call your farts?" Kiri, who had remained completely silent during your discussion, was the one who had made that comment. You had made a disgusted face in response.

"Okaaay," Lo'ak had groaned, "Then be anything but Stargirl, Eywa, just choose something or I'll do it for you. Remember, your code name sticks with you forever."

In the end, the discussion had dragged on for so long that during the evening meal, the two of you had managed to irritate every clan member within a two-meter radius. Jake had taken it upon himself to bring it to a close and gave you your personal radio code name, which you cherished to this day. Not because it had come from your former Olo'eyktan, but from a person you loved and respected like your own father; it was more than an honor to you.

You looked at him now, at Jake's identical copy, a bittersweet smile forming at the corners of your mouth, tinged with nostalgia. His eyes were like the early sun rays that morning at Tsahìk's tent; two orbs of amber with irregular, whitish spots of cream – strange that this, of all things, crossed your mind at that second.

"Eagle Eye to Skyracer," he playfully nudged your knee in an attempt to lighten the mood, "Come on, tell me why you avoid me."

And then, then you said it out loud; a single little sentence of four syllables, and his once sunlight-radiating eyes were covered by lids streaked with fine, pale blue veins, holding a glimmer of melancholy, like a fading sunset.

"Please, no," he whispered, his voice filled with sadness, as you sought comfort in the embrace of his arms, burying your head in the crook of his neck. Salty tears mingled with your lips as you clung to each other, his fingers interlacing with yours, a desperate grip that turned his knuckles almost white, the weight of the impending fate pressed upon you both.

As the realization settled within him, Lo'ak let go of you and collapsed onto the grass, his shoulders shaking with uncontrollable sobs and trembling with the intensity of his emotions. You immediately wrapped your arms around him again, wanting to share his emotions, knowing that this pain was as much his as it was yours, while the air around you seemed heavy with helplessness as the two of you sat there, engulfed in the depths of your shared pain.

"No!" he cried out all of a sudden, his voice choked on his tears. Saliva glistened on his quivering lips, his breath was ragged and uneven; and his eyes, bloodshot and filled with more unshed tears, refused to accept the harsh reality you just told him.

"Why? Why you?" Lo'ak's voice cracked as the words escaped through clenched teeth. His fists clenched tightly, nails digging into the ground beneath you, as if trying to anchor himself to the pain, refusing to accept the meaning behind your words. His tears mingled with yours as you still held him close, feeling his agony reverberate through your own heart.

Lo'ak's voice was laced with raw fury. "This can't be happening! It's not fair!"

The wind whispered through the grass, carrying the echoes of his anguish across the desolate landscape, but leaving his voice hanging in the air. The setting sun, a silent witness to the unraveling of two intertwined souls, cast its pale light upon the scene, casting long shadows around you.

Lo'ak's emotions gave way to desperate pleas, his voice cracking with desperation. "Please, there must be a way. I'll talk to my dad, he… he can…" he choked on his tears once more, "Anything. I'll give anything."

You stroked his trembling cheek, tears flowing freely down your own face. "I know you would. But sometimes, there are forces beyond our control, Lo'ak, I need you to understand that."

Lo'ak's resistance crumbled, his body sinking into a heap of devastation. His nose ran, mingling with the tears streaming down his face. He clung to you, a lifeline in the midst of a tempestuous sea, refusing to let go even as the waves crashed around him.

The evening wore on, its grey hue mirroring the somberness of your hearts. There were no words that could ease the ache or undo the cruel fate, so, you remained there, seeking comfort in the silence, finding comfort in each other's arms for you drew strength from one another, offering support amidst the overwhelming feelings that engulfed you.

The next day, as the sun bathed the forest in a golden glow, you were sitting near the quiet stream by yourself, keeping yourself distracted and enjoying the gentle tickle of water, when you heard footsteps growing louder as someone approached you. You turned around, a calm expression masking the inner storm within you, just to see Neteyam, his expression hardened with determination

Your eyes met his, and you could see anger, confusion, and concern in his gaze all at once, catching you completely off-guard; it was strange that he sought you out in the first place, and then seeing him so… emotional, that was a first.

He stood tall before you, the sun at his back, giving him an angelic glow that he surely didn't deserve, and it was ironic, too, given his angry pout that you were sure Lo'ak would've made fun of if he was here.

Neteyam's voice was laced with a tinge of bitterness when he spoke, "You've broken my brother's heart. What did you do to him?"

"You already have your answer, apparently I've broken his heart," you said sarcastically to which he scoffed. You remained composed, refusing to allow his words to rattle you, and your voice carried a hint of indifference as you added, "Trust me, I haven't done and wouldn't ever do anything to intentionally hurt Lo'ak."

Neteyam's nostrils flared as frustration mingled with his anger. The man, normally composed, couldn't be further away from that in that very moment, when he took a deliberate step closer, his gaze locking with yours. "Don't play innocent with me. You must've betrayed him in some way."

"Betrayal requires intent, Neteyam," You held his gaze, unyielding in the face of his accusations, "Whatever you think I've done, it wasn't with the purpose of hurting Lo'ak."

Neteyam's anger wavered for a moment, replaced by a flicker of uncertainty. His brow furrowed as he tried to make sense of the situation. "Then why? Why is he crying and suffering if it wasn't your doing? What could have caused this?"

A bittersweet smile graced your lips as you shook your head gently.

"It's true, isn't it? What Ivät said at training this mor—"

"Don't say his name," you warned, your voice carrying a deep, growling tone from the back of your throat.

Neteyam's anger softened, replaced by curiosity and even a sense of empathy. Though skepticism still lingered in his voice, genuine concern emerged, "But why? Why would you go back to him? He should be exiled but here you are, running back to him after everything he's done to you."

"Tell me again why any of this matters to you?" you questioned.

"Lo'ak cares for you, deeply. I care for him, deeply. That means everything you do eventually affects me," Neteyam explained, attempting to convey the weight of his words. "Understand that your actions have consequences for everyone around you."

"I'm not having this conversation with you right now," you declared sighing, walking past him with determined steps.

"Just tell your parents you don't want to," he shouted after you, "I can… My family could support you, you know. You don't have to do anything against your will."

"Well," you turned around, snapping at him, "you can't fight against fate, can you?"

There was a brief pause as Neteyam absorbed your words, realization slowly dawning on him that there might be more to the situation than he initially believed. His eyes darkened, and his nails dug into his palms as he struggled to control his emotions, "You can try."

You let out an ironic huff, shaking your head slightly and biting your inner cheek to prevent a sarcastic comment from slipping out.

"I am not your enemy," he continued in a softer tone, seeking your eyes, "I'm only here trying to help you, yet you—"

"That, Neteyam, is not my concern," you interrupted him harshly. You met his gaze finally, the weight of unspoken truths hanging in the air between you. "I never asked for your help, nor do I need it. If you truly care about your brother, perhaps you should be there for him and ask him directly how you can help him instead of mingling with my private life and assuming the worst of me."

With that, you turned back around and kept walking away with determined steps, leaving Neteyam standing by the stream alone with his swirling thoughts, but you couldn't deny the flicker of vulnerability within you as a twinge of guilt tugged at your conscience for the way you had treated the only person who had recently saved your life, accompanied by a sense of regret for your harsh words, realizing that you had never even thanked him.

A few hours later, you were sitting on the wooden floor in your family’s tent; leaning your head against the slightly dirty rolled-up rug near the entry and pulling your knees so close to your body that the hem of your loincloth slipped a long way down your thigh. The evening had long since settled over the landscapes, and it was now dark outside. In your hands, you were holding a handcrafted mug with still steaming herbal tea that Kiri had brought you a few minutes earlier, and you clutched it so tight that your knuckles were clearly visible on your skin.

Kiri was now sitting at the opposite side of you next to your hammock as she thoughtfully twisted the hem of her loincloth between her fingers, like she always did when she didn't know what to say, before deciding to leave the fabric alone.

"Now tell me, what's going on?" You sighed softly and something in your friend's gaze brought tears to your eyes, but you didn't want to cry, not again. You liked Kiri a lot, she was the girl you were closest friends with, in the entire clan, but you hated to refer to her as 'best friend', although, strictly speaking, she was. You liked Kiri actually so much that you couldn't do it to her. Not after seeing what it had done to Lo'ak. You couldn't bear to see two broken souls within a day. But your previous encounter with Neteyam had taught you something: you had to be the one whom they heard the news of, not someone else, let alone a stranger. It had to be you. That much you owed them at least. And yet, it was so difficult.

"Everything's fine. Really." A weak smile crept on your face involuntarily, while you took a sip of your tea. "Come on, Kiri. Don't be stupid, you're missing out on the evening meal."

"You as well."

"I'm not hungry."

"You're always hungry." You sat up straight and leaned one leg over the other so you could look directly at Kiri. There was something in her gaze between concern and helplessness, but you could only vaguely make it out. She bit her lower lip lightly before continuing. "I met Lo'ak earlier, he looked... he really didn't look good, and he seemed kind of absent."

"He's probably missing Tsireya already."

"He said I'd better talk to you about it."

You kept quiet at that, unsure how to respond.

"You know, Neteyam said that you-know-who goes around saying… that he has approached your parents, seeking their approval to court you once again? Is that true?"

"Yes," you answered without any emotion in your voice.

"But there is something else that saddens you."

You lifted your shoulders slightly, just a tiny bit, and you already felt the tears threaten to fall down your eyelashes. You ran the back of your hand over your face, exhaled shakily, and pressed your lips together, but the first sob stumbled over your lips before you could have done anything about it.

You muttered a curse word, and it took you a moment to pull yourself together. "I'm sorry, Kiri. I am so incredibly sorry." The tears ran down your cheeks unsteadily, and dripped onto the feathers on your chest, leaving behind light stains that faded a heartbeat later. "So far only my parents know, and probably yours, too, along with Tsahìk, of course. And Lo'ak, he knows, too. The others will find out when it can no longer be avoided, and… and this moment, it will come, but… you really cannot tell anyone, Kiri."

Kiri stared at you blankly, a single hair strand had come off her bun and fell over her shoulder in a slight wave. She was afraid. You were too. You sniffed softly and looked down, just a brief moment before you pulled yourself together and looked up at her.

"I am dying, Kiri, and there is no cure."

taglist (let me know if I forgot someone, and also let me know if you want to be added or removed): @eclipseatsea @randxmthxughts @andraga12 @rexorangecouny @mightyneteyam

୨⎯ series masterlist ⎯୧

100 notes · View notes

sweet-star-cookie · 3 months

Note

i made a note to myself when i was half asleep and all it said was:

so i assume that 2 am me wanted to ask you about everything that has to do with the skymirror circus. What constellations are currently involved with the SkyMirror circus? What is Ura's character and personality like?

i know i already sent another ask regarding the circus, but you did say if i had any specific questions about the characters, i could just ask so here i am :DD

also, completely unrelated to the question, but i googled the wikipedia page for former constellations (to figure out how to properly spell uranoscopus' name) and some of the former constellations are just absolutely hilarious as concepts:

and my personal favorite:

Haha that's awesome xD I seem to get my best ideas in the middle of the night so I make notes on my phone too, and while I remember the context most of the time, there are other times where I'm like "girl what???"

And yeeesss you have discovered the goldmine of hilarity that I did during my own research xD Early identification of constellations seemed to be a lot of "just put whatever up there" and I love that so much. That's why I encouraged you to make your own constellations for your story if you wanted to, it's fun :D

And now onto the circus! Also I find myself switching how I spell its name a lot (SkyMirror, Sky Mirror, Skymirror, etc.) so feel free to spell it however you'd like.

As a side note, I don't have all of the designs finished for these so I don't have the full lineup image yet, so I'll provide the individual art and the current WIPs instead. I'll start with noting characters who are adjacent to the circus or who are former members before describing the current crew, though I have talked about some of them in previous asks already.

Pisces (The Fish) - While she was never an official member of the circus itself, she is often credited as the source inspiration for it via her carefree dancing and swimming. Meeting many of the future members of the circus is part of why Pisces decided to share her water magic with all of the sea creatures, allowing them to perform out of water. Though Pisces does not take away this gift, she does take issue with how Ura chooses to use it, and helps fight back to stop her. Piscis Austrinus "Austri" (The Southern Fish) - Formerly a juggler and performer at the circus, especially with imitation based acts given her shape-shifting abilities. After the incident with Urania's Mirror, Austri left the circus and became a companion to Pisces, but still takes any opportunity she can to foil any of Ura's future plans, having insider knowledge of how she thinks and makes plans.

[I've shown some of her art before but here's her initial design sheet from 2019 for now, I'll be updating it later] Volans (The Flying Fish)

Formerly a high-flying acrobat at the circus, capable of quickly changing between his two forms and flying through rings in his acts. His overall temperament is anxious and flighty, with what little confidence he does have appearing in his performances. When things went awry with Ura, he attempted to escape but was unsuccessful, instead being captured by her. His cowardly nature made it difficult for him to be anything more than a hostage, used as leverage to draw out Ura's next targets. Musca (The Fly)

Not technically a member of the circus itself, but instead is Ura’s informant and literal “fly on the wall” to spy on others. She loves to gossip, and her ability to change into the size of an actual fly makes her difficult to catch or detect. She doesn't have much actual loyalty to Ura though, she is merely drawn to all the drama surrounding her, and will always save herself first if she's threatened.

-------- And now for the current members! Uranoscopus (The Stargazer Fish)

The crafty ringleader, exuding the charisma and bravado you'd expect from a seasoned performer and showrunner. She is well known for her death-defying tricks and revels in putting others in danger for the sake of a good show. The ring around her waist can transform into a mirror (Urania's Mirror that she stole, prior to its return) that can trap anyone who touches the glass inside it. The mirror is then dropped from on high, and the captive “volunteer” must escape before it shatters.

In her attempts to keep her fame alive, Ura becomes fixated on illusion magic, which is essentially a manipulation of light magic. She often uses her title of "The Stargazer" when introducing herself, referring to her species name but also this ability to see and create illusions. With practice, she is able to project these illusions onto others, increasing its range when wearing her goggles. This makes her attacks very beguiling and confusing for her targets, creating the characteristic misdirection of a magician and making up for her general lack of physical strength. She's equally as "slippery" in her escapes as she is in her conversations; a prime manipulator, clever and sharp-witted.

She is drawn to sources of astral power, which eventually led her to Ophiuchus via his connection to the Sun Starglass. She initially tried to convince him to use his power to suit her aim, but he ultimately refused, believing his power should be shared with everyone and worried that she was chasing unhealthy endeavours. After his disappearance, she still searched for him in the hope that he'd return.

Upon Cassie's arrival, she changed tactics. Using Musca to spy on her and get an idea of who they'd be dealing with, Ura decided to play the actor and appeal to Cassie's kindness, viewing her as nothing more than a naive child. And while Ura is able to successfully trick her at first, Cassie finds out the truth and doesn't take kindly to being lied to, making a powerful enemy out of her instead.

Hippocampus (The Sea Horse)

Essentially Ura’s "getaway driver" when tied to her circus wagon, and is sometimes dressed up for extra flair in a show. That said, the other constellations aren’t sure if it’s actually sentient or merely an illusion conjured with Ura’s magic, as it only seems to move on her command and sits eerily still otherwise. The only sound it’s known to make is a hollow, ghostly neigh… Xiphias (The Swordfish) and Dorado (The Dolphinfish)

A duo of knife throwers, essentially the "hired goon" types for Uranoscopus once her pursuit of fame goes awry. They use their knife throwing skills in a more combative sense compared to their act in the circus's heyday, and their dexterity and aim shows through with how dangerous they can be as a result. While Dorado is definitely the "brawn" of the two, calling Xiphias the "brains" would be charitable at best, despite what the confidence in his own mischief would tell you. Both can be quite cowardly if one of their hair-brained schemes goes wrong, but Xiphias is usually fast enough (and Dorado strong enough) to avoid getting captured, though they're usually clobbered a lot in the process! Despite sharing one brain cell between them, they genuinely look out for each other the most, with one bailing out the other in most cases. If both are caught, they stay together. Delphinus (The Dolphin)

[Current WIP, the thing in her mouth in the front view is a lit match. She's based on an orca/killer whale, which if you didn't know, is actually in the dolphin family!] The pyrotechnics expert and cannon operator, skills that translated rather easily to villainy as soon as Ura asked for it. When most think of a dolphin, they think of a more cutesy, playful figure like the previous incarnation of her constellation, but this Delphi had a different idea in mind.

Her large stature lends her natural strength, something she uses to hoist her large cannons to aim them more effectively, sometimes mounting them on her back or shoulders to make them semi-mobile. She's a force to be reckoned with and can go toe-to-toe with Cancer's claw cannons in a fight, making her difficult to take down. She likes to make things go boom, and often doesn't care about the damage caused, even if it's collateral or friendly fire. Ura will usually save her for a "bringing out the big guns" moment, especially if her enemies think they've won, and the destruction will usually let her and the others escape if necessary. Anguilla (The Eel)

[Current WIP, drawn before I decided to add him to the circus, so I will be changing his outfit to match that aesthetic later on. He's based on a ribbon eel, though he also has a few attributes of the electric eel as well.] Originally the circus's musician, a dancer, and a tight rope walker, often combining these in some way for his acts. He can play multiple instruments, but favours violin music overall. Even after his turn to villainy, his passion for music still shines through. For example, he refuses to simply rake his bow over the strings to make an unpleasant sound to hinder his enemies, so he'll instead use a good performance as a luring distraction, a bit like a siren song. If you are close enough to him or you hear his music for too long, there's a chance that the sound will temporarily paralyze you.

His long and slender body makes his movements very swift and flowing, like that of a ribbon dancer, so he is notoriously hard to hit. As a result, he is often the first member of the circus you see if you ever tried to track them down, casually playing his violin. For anyone unaware of his tactics, they don't think much of him until his paralysis kicks in, he escapes, and the rest of them attack!

#this post is a lot longer simply because of the art itself lol oops #thanks for the ask! ^_^#asks #tabsters #my art #my OCs #Starglass Zodiac #SGZ #long post

3 notes · View notes

manwalksintobar · 9 months

Text

Words for the Body // Anne Michaels

Landowska, overheard during a heated argument on interpretation: “You play Bach your way, and I’ll play him his way.”

We knew we’d reached Dunn Lake because the trees stopped. Chilled and sweating under winter clothes we stood in the damp degenerated afternoon. We grew up waiting together by water, frozen or free, in summer under the cool shaggy umbra of firs, or in the aquarium light of birches. It’s always been this way between us. We reach lakes and then we just stand there. Silence fills us with silence.

When we were fourteen you read to me about Landowska, who “tottered the world and stopped the sun when she held a note.” We argued over interpretation until we were sixteen and discovered Casals: “The best musician learns to play what’s not on the page.” We decided music is memory, the way a word is the memory of its meaning.

The first time I knew what we were trying for I was waiting on the back porch while you practised. Piano flickered the leaves, evening in perfect summer, temperature the same inside and outside my body, night a pigment on my skin.

In that swathing twilight I knew you’d had a lover. Everything became part of that new perception. The yard disappeared. Sudden as my sense of your body, I knew you were attempting silence. To move an audience until they aren’t listening.

We believed in our head’s perfect version, but you couldn’t make your hands, and I couldn’t make my words, pronounce it.

Even now when I hear you play I think of a lover, gasping at the gate of another, who suddenly knows love has no power to make it right.

The summer you stopped playing we were driving home from the farm, windows full of stars on the dark highway, legs bare on vinyl seats, night air cold and new as from the sea.

In a voice that came from the highway you described the blackness where music waits, tormenting until you draw it out, a redemption. Then the fear of forgetting notes disappears, the fingers have a memory of their own.

You spoke of a kind of hunger that makes pleasure perfect. Then you said how it was to be opened and tasted by a hall full of people.

When we reached home you were crying.

Within a month you stopped playing. You stopped sleeping. Eighteen years old, exhausted, holding to the idea of perfect sound.

End of summer, rainy morning, your head in my hands. Across the room a jar of flowers made its small fire. Curtains held their breath against the wet screens.

Dunn Lake We skied there gracelessly through the woods. Desperate light pressured black trees to hold their pose. The moon reached under the ice where the lake moved, obedient.

Night pressed its thumbs over our eyes. Too dark to take the way we came, we went by road.

You reached the farmhouse ahead of me, I saw your figure in the porch lights.

We ate watching the fire, logs collapsing under the weight of flame, flames collapsing with their own weight.

Almost no word spoken since our silence at the lake, you said you’d play again.

Over two years since your hands were yours.

You asked, smiling, face torn with shadows from the fire: “haven’t you given up the perfect word yet?”

Fingers have a memory, to read the familiar braille of another’s skin. The body has a memory: the children we make, places we’ve hurt ourselves, sieves of our skeletons in the fat soil. no words mean as much as a life. Only the body pronounces perfectly the name of another.

This morning your letter. A photo of redwoods in winter, the half-frozen pond. Remember the way we walked each other home— one block further, one block further— the way we skated in the ravine, late winter afternoon, so cold the air seemed to magnify the world, sky the colour of plums.

We sang in harmony on the ice, breath echoing white under the bridge, our fifteen-year-old bodies perfect and young under winter clothes, warm from skating and singing, trees along the ridge a black lace picket fence against a plume of orange like a comet’s tail where the sun had been.

Remember climbing the hill, already dark, and stopping to hear trees shake their branches, how we’d enter your parents’ warm house in a daze of images.

Remember once, mauve and yellow tulips on the dining room table, remember the music when we said play those colours and turned Bach’s “Anna Magdalena” the colour of yellow, the colour of mauve.

Remember that October, standing in your farm’s back field, half a mile apart, while daylight collapsed under the weight of darkness, and trees thick with burning leaves shouldered the stars. Music emerged from those moments, from air, like a room’s white dimension in the window at nightfall.

Any discovery of form is a moment of memory, existing as the historical moment—alone, and existing in history—linear, in music, in the sentence. Each poem, each piece remembers our bodies, the way man and woman in their joining remember each other before they were separate.

It’s over twenty-five years and every love poem says how your music and my words are the same: praising the common air, the motive, the memory.

To praise memory is to praise the body.

And I find myself describing the joining of hips and eyes, the harbours of thighs and lips,

as the singing of two small bodies in a dark ravine, as two small bodies holding up the night sky in a winter field.

#poetry #Anne Michaels #Canadian poetry #winter #skating #skiing #Bach #music #love #love poems #piano #the Well-Tempered Clavier #Toronto poems #depression #stars #the beautiful body

3 notes · View notes

lattea-cakeezz · 5 months

Text

Solacia writing(for fun teehee)

Some context: Solacia is one of my fantasy oc worlds, all characters mentioned(except for Velvet and Ambrosia) belong to and have been designed by me!

This writing was inspired by a drawing I made and takes place after the events of it(with a touch of Velvetine and I’d say ‘if you squint’, but it’s right in your face/hj)

Drawing in question is below:

A bright full moon rode high in the sky, dark clouds hanging here and there. The sea glistened and shimmered under the moon, it’s light being the only light source on the large swaying, sailing ship.

While most of the crew retired and slept for the night, one member amongst them was out in the night.

The wind whistled past and lifted heyr hair like a curtain. Huffing, Clementine crossed heyr arms closer to heyr chest, dressed in a nightgown that didn’t quite fit, sleeves running down and exposing freckled shoulders no matter how many time shey tried to pull them back.

Resting against the railing of the ship, shey looked out at the sea of stars above, expression exhausted yet refusing to rest.

Shey couldn’t bring heyrself to fall asleep after what had happened only a few days ago, anxiety still eating away at heyr.

Despite being so far out at sea, some stranger- no, a bounty hunter trespassed onto the ship as if they were back at shore, dressed in silver armor and dark attire. Their feline ears flicking against the air and listening closely.

Their blue eyes had looked at each and every crew member, as if they were relishing in the confused and angered expressions upon their faces.

Shey remembered how they droned on about looking for someone, describing them as “I’ve heard this one’s quite the slippery one”. Clementine had thought it was tedious at first, but shey immediately trembled when they pulled out a missing poster.

With heyr name on it. And they immediately looked at heyr, knowing shey was here and hiding.

“Pirates? This seems quite beneath you, princess.”

The next minutes that had happened were a blur. Crew members rushing at the figure, some being thrown back or scratched, and the stranger merely weaving and dodging their attempts at stopping them.

In the chaos, shey saw them glare at heyr direction, a malicious grin wide on their face, scratching and throwing those who tried to stop them as they lunged towards heyr.

Their silver claws readying to grab and flee, and Clementine freezing up out of fear, they were so close. But Giovanni stopped them before they could so much as touch heyr, wrapping a muscled arm around them.

Unfortunately they had scratched him instead. All over and across one of his large forearms, slicing the bandages off and revealing deep slices and cuts from where they had attacked him. Grunting, he did not hesitate to throw them over the edge of the ship, and into the ocean below.

The next few minutes, despite the threat being dealt with, were still chaotic.

Giovanni and the other wounded crew members being ushered to go get their wounds taken care of, and Clementine still frozen and trembling. Even after Yū and Velvet checked to see if shey was okay, shey felt entirely the opposite for the rest of the day.

And couldn’t get a wink of sleep that night. Or the next several nights after.

How was a bounty hunter after heyr? Why were they after heyr?? They should be after criminals and bandits, not run away princesses.

Heyr anxiety ridden thoughts had only been getting worse and worse. If this hunter was after heyr, it was putting others in danger. They had no hesitation in attacking those that got in their way, what if they threatened to hurt or kill the others?

What if they would attack Yū or any other children on board? Or Velvet?

Shey could feel heyrself trembling as shey hugged heyr arms, breathing heavily as shey tried heyr best to calm heyrself.

But what if they didn’t have to be in danger? What if shey could help?

If they were after heyr, then they could follow heyr elsewhere. Shey could leave the ship and find some other way of transportation, the others could be safe and out of harms way. No one will have to get hurt because of heyr.

But then if shey took Yū, she’d still be in danger as well. Shey can’t just leave the little girl alone, either on this ship or at a town.

Letting out a long sigh, Clementine didn’t hear the pair of footsteps approaching from behind.

“Hey.” A familiar voice immediately shook heyr out of heyr thoughts, whirling around to see Velvet, tired and staring back at heyr. His hair, usually in locs that would cover half his face, were untied and loose, now coiled yet still covering part of his face.

Shey pursed heyr lips and turned back to the edge of the ship. “… Hello.” Shey could see him moving next to heyr out of the corner of heyr eye. “It’d be better if you stayed and rest… You look like you need it.” He huffed in response, shaking his head.

“I was going to tell you that…” Despite his obvious exhaustion, he looked at heyr with a softer expression. “I know you haven’t been sleeping. Ever since what happened with, y’know..” Just the mere mention of it made heyr shudder.

Shey glanced at him, opening heyr mouth to speak or to object, but sighed after a small pause. “.. Just worried that they’ll come back. Especially while the others are sleeping.” Speaking of sleeping-

“Wait, where’s-“

“It’s okay, she’s sharing a hammock with Ambrosia. She doesn’t like to sleep alone, I know.” Velvet chuckled quietly as shey breathed a sigh of relief, but his expression grew concerned once again. “… What are you thinking about out here?”

Was shey really going to tell him what shey just thought about? What would he even say or do with that, really let heyr run away for a second time? Tell heyr where they kept the rowboats? A small part of heyr hoped so.

“Do you think it’d be better… if I left you guys?”

Shey spoke before shey could even stop heyrself. When shey was met with silence, shey spared a glance to Velvet and could see a confused yet wide eyed look on his face. Gulping, shey looked down at heyr hands.

“It’s just- With this hunter after me and what happened to you and the others, I just- I think it would be best if we parted ways…” Letting in a shaky breath, shey continued. Though at this point maybe shey shouldn’t.

“It’d keep you safe and you wouldn’t have to deal with this, it’s dangerous and it’s-“

“I don’t want you to leave.”

Shey paused and quickly glanced back up at him, surprise etched on heyr face. He looked back with what looked to be the same expression, as if he didn’t think twice to say it.

“Uh, it’s just- We promised to you that we would travel you both across the ocean, and to help you with Yū!” He seemed to be sweating, despite the biting chill in the night air.

“And…” Pausing for a moment, he seemed to try searching for more words, or what he shouldn’t say. “… And you’d be in more danger on your own.”

Shey furrowed heyr brow. “But… Giovanni could get hurt again, the others could get hurt too. Oh gods, Yū or Ambrosia too, I just- I can’t let you get hurt!”

“Then you can train to fight! To defend yourself or us!” He had suggested, never once breaking eye contact. “And I know you can use magic, you can fight with that too! Running away won’t stop that hunter.”

Of course shey knew how to use magic and shey knew it was powerful, but had never used it in combat and barely had any privacy to heyrself on this ship to even practice any at all. Like at heyr castle’s garden, sneaking out every night to practice at least one harmless spell, magic glittering and shining like stars.

Much different from heyr castle mage’s magic.

Clementine stayed quiet, watching as he spoke. Sighing, shey eventually looked away. “My magic… It’s difficult to explain. I don’t even know if I can.” It was Velvet’s turn to furrow his brow, more out of concern. “And it’s not entirely… normal?”

“Then I… we can do our best to understand it. We’ve seen stranger things before.” He reassured. “Some of the others can use magic too. Maybe… A crew member or two can help train you with that, as well.”

Again, Clementine was silent. Velvet could see heyr staring out at the sea. He couldn’t tell if shey had listened or even registered what he said, and just as he opened his mouth to repeat himself.

“… Okay.”

“okay?” He questioned.

“I’ll train.” Shey looked back at him. “And I’ll practice my magic. Anything to prevent anyone getting hurt again.” Thinking back to Giovanni’s wounded arm made heyr take a deep breath, to avoid the feeling of guilt and worry. “As long as they don’t, question my magic or origins… Too much.”

Finally, Velvet smiled at heyr, even inching closer, hoping it wasn’t enough to make heyr notice. “Okay… You’ll do good.” He reassured heyr, making a small smile spread on heyr face, but not saying another word.

Now the night felt silent and somewhat peaceful. Watching the stars and the sea in solitude was calming, but it seemed it was just as peaceful with good company.

“So… What was that you said about ‘not bonding with anyone’-“

“I’m going to bed.”

#original character #oc #original writing #non fandom #fiction #fantasy #Writing focus: 💫Solacia☀️#possible new sorting tag wooooo

0 notes

senpiecakes · 2 years

Text

I'm Sorry, I Can't Look at You Anymore

— Summary: You love them, but it seems like their heart still longs for someone else.

— Themes: Angst, breaking up, can’t get over their ex, hurt and no comfort

— Warnings: Major character death (reader dies on Scaramouche’s part), mentions of murder/violence on Scaramouche’s part, not really a person on Xiao’s part but more of an idea, mention of death in Kazuha’s part, some Genshin Lore spoilers

— Characters: Zhongli, Xiao, Kazuha, Scaramouche

— Notes: First time doing a Genshin thing (Genshin Player haha point and laugh), anyways I hope you guys like it :) Also Scaramouche is my favorite one.

— Aftermath: I'm Sorry, I Can't Look at You Anymore 2

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Zhongli’s eyes always wandered. You knew that for as long as you knew him. Gaze longingly staring out into the sea, up at the sky, even at others, but never at you. No matter how many walks down Liyue Harbor, how many silent nights with each other you and Zhongli shared, his eyes were always drawn away, voice so distant and touch so cold. You wondered if it was your appearance, the way you dress, the way you acted was off putting enough for Zhongli to not even dare look at you with the same fascination he would with everything else. Hell, he was touchier with the vendors than he had ever been with you. You began to shrink away from him to figure out within yourself what was wrong until he would notice and pull you back in- and that was enough to affirm your fears. It became an exhausting cycle of you drawing away only for Zhongli to pull you back into his game of loveless submission. It was until Lantern Rite that you decided enough was enough.

“I can’t do this anymore, Zhongli.” You said it in your most silent tone, your voice carried away by the winds, the happy cheers of the crowd and the tumultuous fireworks. But Zhongli heard you. For the first time in your relationship with him, Zhongli heard the pain and exhaustion in your voice. He felt your trembling fingers under his own. He saw how beautiful you looked. Your face illuminated by the soft glow of the lanterns, eyes tired and glossed over, cheeks a soft shade of red. He saw your pained face and marveled in it. The bit that hurt the most were the Glaze Lillies he had given you were pinned to your hair- in a manner Guizhong always did those many years ago. No matter how long he stared, you knew that in his gaze, he saw someone else. You understood now that his love had once belonged to another. His silence was enough of an answer for you to walk away. Only this time, Zhongli didn’t dare to take you back even though you begged the gods for him to do so. One more time.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Xiao is known to be distant. The last standing Yaksha forever fighting to repay a debt many knew one could never achieve. His work was grueling torture, so he’s bound to build walls around himself. Before that however, he was free. Perhaps it was fate that led him to you when you came bounding up into his life with the same freedom he once had, now a sullen dream he wishes he could devour. But you, vigilant as you were, tried to break down his walls that he had built so precariously in your attempt to get closer to the adeptus. Xiao knew better than to let you be associated with him- he would only burden you with his karmic debt and you would only burden him with your mortal life he would try so desperately to protect. As much as he hated to admit it, he wanted to keep you safe.

“Xiao.” You would call out to him, so carelessly, unabashed by your need to be by his side. And like a loyal dog, he would be there in the blink of an eye. He didn’t mind at first with how frequently you called out to him- whether it be to take a walk or to pick a Qixing flower from the highest peak of the mountain, Xiao would be there. It took a while for him to realize that maybe this was the closest thing he had to freedom, that you were the sweetest dream he could ever have to the once happy life he held before being bound to eons of debt. But Xiao knew better. The more and more you called, less and less would Xiao appear. He was afraid of you. He looked into your eyes and saw how carefree you were, how happy, unconfined by something as terrible as death and destruction. He saw his old self in you and was terrified. Terrified that he might one day tie you down in his karmic debt and he would have to relive his most painful days through you- an individual he swore to protect. You had no knowledge why he left- no matter how many times you called his name, he never showed. Unknown to you, he yielded back to his chains of being the Vigilant Yaksha for the sake of protecting your soul and his own.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kazuha was a peculiar individual. You knew of him from his famed poems, gentle manner and his reputation for being a runaway as well as a criminal from Inazuma. This strange boy piqued your interest once he became a member of the Crux Fleet, a crew you came to know as your family. You yourself was wanted from Inazuma for speaking against the laws of the Raiden Shogun and actively participating in strikes against her orders for Eternity until you were eventually caught and had to become a fugitive. Once this had reached the ears of Kazuha, he too became intrigued by you. He saw your passion, your courage, your willingness to fight for what’s right. You found yourself becoming closer with the Ronin, exchanging stories from your past down to Kazuha reciting you his poems in his most romantic tone. You fell for him, and you fell hard. It was difficult not to and Kazuha noticed that. He let you in his life freely until one day he showed you a masterless vision. You yourself were visionless and he had hoped to see that maybe the vision would glow once more in your hand. Your disappointment from the empty husk of electro was unmatched with the empty stare Kazuha looked at you with.

“You’re not the one I’m looking for.” His words came to you like a gust of wind knocking your breath away. The Vision barely sparked in your grasp and with that, Kazuha turned to leave you. He had high hopes that you would be the one to resonate with the Vision of the person he once held so dearly. You both were so passionate, so brave, but Kazuha thought that maybe you lacked the vigor his companion once had. You didn’t understand it then- you were left so confused and hurt by the suddenness of his leaving, especially with how loved he made you feel. The wordlessness and rapid disappearance of Kazuha from your life made you question if his words that seemed so genuine were even genuine at all. Maybe you were only a pawn in his attempt to bring back someone he knows he could never get.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scaramouche barely tolerated you. You were by his side just as fast as you were gone- just like he had before you. Scaramouche made it clear that he only let you stay for his own selfish needs, that he wouldn’t care if anything had happened to you, that you are just dead weight. But deep down, he would cut down an army for you just like he did for him before. And you knew that too, so you stayed because you thought he cared for you, not knowing he held onto you for a memory that drifted away from him. It was until you were kind to him, gentle and patient that Scaramouche felt something he had promised to lock away so many centuries ago. The way you looked at him with kindness, taking in all his stinging words and managed to smile at him all the same made him feel angry. Disgusted. Hurt. You were too much like the person they took away. You brought back the feeling of longing and joy he once taught Scaramouche to feel. But now it’s a burden and with that, so are you; it was clear Scaramouche wanted you gone.

“I hate you.” He would say. So full of disdain that the venom he spat at you day and night almost burned down to your bones. It made you run away but he clung onto you again and again. All because you were too much like him, so courageous and stubborn. You thought it would change. How naïve could you be?

“I HATE YOU.” Scaramouche would yell as he stood over your shaking form, wondering where all the courage from before had gone. Even now in your most vulnerable, you managed to look and sound like him with your wide eyes and pitiful pleas for mercy. It drove Scaramouche mad with rage as he finally cut you down like the army he had promised to fight for you. So merciless in his attempt to rid of the past that had burdened him for so long- only for it to come crawling back in the form of You. His eyes were cold like steel, staring down at your unmoving body, his once malicious smile now replaced by an unapologetic frown. Only then would he kneel and laugh, crazed, telling you to get up over and over again.

“Come on, Katsuragi, let’s dance like old times, yeah?”

2K notes · View notes

focsle · 2 years

Photo

[ID: Five amateur illustrations from an 1830s whaling logbook. The first is a watercolor running vertically down the side of the page of a ship under a starry night sky tossed on rough seas, with a list of the ship’s company written alongside it. The second is a watercolor sketch of golden land on blue water, with black hatched trees blowing in the wind. The third is a dark blue square, with the faint silhouette of a horse-like animal rendered in the same dark blue. The fourth is an ink drawing of a ship coming to land, bristling with the same black trees and birds flying from them. It also shows black whale tails with dotted lines where the rest of the whale is underwater, and anchors rendered with dotted lines. The last is a watercolor of the James Island Mountains rendered on brown earth and covered with blowing trees of different shapes and types. /End ID]  The condition of this logbook is way too challenging for me to attempt to read right now, but his artistic eye struck me so much. There is something so stunning about the particular way he translated what he saw. Like…I would love a print of all of these; they take my breath away.

#awhalin #misc logs

276 notes · View notes

sparxwrites · 2 years

Text

moon big; werewolves very

(such moon, very werewolf, wow. my half of a collab with rhy - we started with the same prompt, “scar gets fucking stabbed”, and worked mostly-simultaneously to make a piece of art and a fic that fitted together. very pleased with the end result!)

cw whump, blood, graphic depictions of injury, etc.

Art under cut by the lovely and insanely talented @rhydart - please go show her some love, and reblog the full piece when it comes out!

[ao3]

It’s a nice night. The sky’s clear, the temperature mild, the stars out in their glittering droves. The moon is… big.

Very big, Frighteningly big, actually. Scar’s trying not to think about it. The others have built a variety of things – an observatory, a religion, a panic bunker, a frankly absurd amount of explosives – in an attempt to deal with it but, in Scar’s opinion, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of good old-fashioned denial.

Besides, the extra light is pretty useful for a spot of night-time building, which is exactly what he’s currently indulging in. Not a good habit to get into, admittedly, but he’s had a touch of insomnia more often than not these past few weeks. He may as well make use of the sleeplessness to do something productive.

It’s definitely not the worry that’s keeping him up. It’s not.

The reason for his sleeplessness is a moot point, anyway. There’s plenty of work waiting to fill the nighttime hours, underbrush to be cleared, trees to be felled, bushes to be carefully sculpted and tended to. A builder’s work is never done, after all. Especially not when they’ve an inherited, long-neglected lodge and environs to spruce up.

The night is quiet. The rest of Boatem is asleep, as best he can tell, or at the very least staying cozy inside. No figures dart overhead on pale wings, and there are no half-distant explosions, no mechanical grind of redstone, no drag-hiss-scrape of shifting dirt from terraforming. Scar works solitary and methodical, pruning branches and planting trees, thinning the underbrush, packing down the dirt of long-overgrown paths to bring them back to use.

It’s slow work, hot work, enough so that the the night air is pleasant rather than chill. He discards his armour in a chest, and then his jacket over a helpful tree branch. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows within an hour, sweat beading in the downy hairs at the nape of his neck.

It’s hard work, but honest with it. As much as he’s a scammer at heart, there’s something nice about that.

Or, at least, it’s nice until the nighttime wildlife goes quiet. The hairs on the back of his arms prick up. Dead leaves rustle, from towards the sea, where he hasn’t been to clear yet. Something shifts in the darkness, too far too make out. He gets the abrupt feeling he’s being watched.

The niceness factor drops significantly, then.

Scar sets his shovel down, stuck tip-first into the soft dirt, and dusts off his hands as he squints through the gloom. He tries not to panic, despite how twitchy he is as a natural inclination. Most likely, it’s just a mob. He’s done his best to light the place up and ward them off but – with such a thick canopy of trees, and with so many less-than-methodical neighbours – the odd zombie or creeper does occasionally manage to make its way onto his property.

But, no, it moves with more intent than a shambling zombie. It has a more obviously walking-gait than the odd, smooth crawl of a creeper, is bipedal to boot. Too solid to be a skeleton, either. No gaps where the spaces between the ribs should be.

The figure draws closer, and resolves itself into Rendog. Kind of.

The kind of is what stays Scar’s hand from pressing in relief over his hammering heart. It’s definitely Rendog, though. It’s Ren, exactly as he usually is, no hint of a potion effect, or magic, or anything else untoward. There’s absolutely no reason the back of Scar’s neck should be prickling. Absolutely no reason his pulse should still be racing.

But there’s something off about the figure stalking towards him, and Scar can’t quite work out what it is. The slope of his shoulders, perhaps, the hunch of them and the forward lean of his spine. The hang of his head, low and forward, like a dog following a scent on the air. The way he’s moving, steady and unhurried and loping. There’s something uncanny to it all. Something not-quite-human.

It’s often easy to forget that Ren is, technically speaking, a predator. Undomesticated. Less so now, with the moon high in the sky, and the dark of the trees pressing in all around.

“Ren!” says Scar, brightly. The cheer sounds forced, even to himself. He raises a hand in easy greeting, and smiles a salesman’s smile that he absolutely does not feel. The back of his neck is still prickling. “Rendog, my friend, you nearly scared me there! How’re you doing on this amazing night?”

No answer.

There’s a sword in Ren’s hand, held loosely, bright with enchantments. The tip of it drags across the rocky dirt with a soft hiss. There’s a snarl on his face, ears flat against his head and lips pulled back to show off overlong canines. There’s nothing visible in his customary sunglasses, their tinted lenses turned flat and opaque by the darkness.

Nothing, that is, but the pale gleam of the bloated moon. The reflection of that is perfect, undistorted.

Scar begins to back up.

The snarl on Ren’s lips twists, deepens. A subaudible rumbling, rolling pressure in the air, resolves into low growling. When he steps over a patch of exposed rock, the sword-tip scrapes across it with a noise like claws on steel.

Scar begins to back up faster.

“…Ren?” He aims for placating, ends up at wary. Ren does not stop advancing. Scar’s back hits a tree. His heart rate spikes. In the unnatural quiet of the forest, his heartbeat seems impossibly loud in his ears. “Ren– haha, now, what in the world–”

Ren brings the sword up, still advancing. It’s not a defensive stance – the hilt is by his hip, held low and ready to strike. Ready to stab. Ready to kill.

Scar, belatedly, remembers his own sword, tucked somewhere in the mess of his inventory. He fumbles frantically to bring it up, hands shaking, clumsy with panic. With grim inevitability, he messes up. An empty bucket pops free, instead, and he drops it, hears the clang of metal on stone, watches it roll away into the gloom, grabs frantically again for his inventory–

The blow, when it comes, feels like nothing at all. It’s a cliché, but that doesn’t change the reality of it, the shock-numb point of entry. Time really does slow to a crawl.

The blade cuts through skin, fat, muscle with slick ease. The push of it, the slow slide, seems to take an eternity. Scar feels it when the blade hits the tree behind him with a sick lurch, the contact reverberating up his spine. Reverberating inside him. His stomach flips – or doesn’t, pinned in place by the sword skewered through his guts.

His hands, shaking, come up to– what? Pull the sword out? Staunch the bleeding? He presses a palm, uselessly, against the bladed edge of the sword, and gets only a hand slick with blood in return. There’s blood all over his nice shirt, too. A stupid thing to think of, when he’s just been run through, but his brain catches on it and sticks, like a faulty record. There’s blood on his shirt. He’s not sure how he’s going to get it out.

The full moon is huge in Ren’s sunglasses.

“That,” says Ren, his voice a half-octave lower than usual and edged with an uncharacteristic burr, “is for the life you took from me.” He speaks as though in a dream – distant, rehearsed. There’s blood dripping down his blade to run over the hilt, staining his hands red. He doesn’t seem to notice.

“Ren,” breathes Scar. His voice sounds hollow in his ears. There’s abruptly not enough space in his chest to breathe. His brain has gone numb, along with his guts. He can’t think. “You… you stabbed me.” His voice is weak with disbelief. “We’re– friends, Ren, we’re, you’re my friend–”

Ren snarls, and shoves the blade in another several inches.

It pushes deeper into the tree behind Scar’s back with the ease of a knife through butter. The wet meat of Scar’s body parts for it even more easily, cleanly – as though the keen diamond edge were merely opening a seam, rather than carving a bloody hole.

Scar chokes, convulses from the cold sharpness against the soft, half-numb warmth of his insides. His brain shorts out, though the worst of the pain is still damped by shock. The noise that eventually escapes his mouth is barely human. Words fail him entirely. He can only stare, shocked stupid with useless adrenaline, his pupils blown wide and dark and terrified.

“That,” hisses Ren, his hand curled tight around the back of Scar’s neck, “was for the Red Kingdom.”

Wrong world, Scar wants to say, wrong world, we’re free, we got out– But there’s a sword through his stomach and thinking is, for some reason, becoming very difficult. There is no space for thoughts, inside his head. There is only cold, and confusion, and the unyielding press of a razor’s edge against soft meat.

There’s something inside him. There’s something inside him, something where it shouldn’t be, a blade against organs that should never have been touched. There’s a distant sort of horror to that, though the thought slow to compute. His brain is occupied with struggling to parse the frantic signals from long-forgotten nerves, too busy to attend to such petty troubles as thinking or moving.

“…And this?” says Ren, leaning in, his lips pressed close as a lover’s to Scar’s ear. He twists the sword hilt with a vicious wrench of his wrist. “This is for Martyn.”

The signals, abruptly, parse. All other sensations yield to pain.

The sequence of events, here, gets blurry. Scar doesn’t black out, but things happen in snapshots, fragments – the blade removed, his legs giving way, Rendog stood over him like an omen of death. There’s a sword tip dripping blood by his ear, and his stomach soaking blood into the fine fabric of his waistcoat.

He’s still making small noises, awful noises, and he can’t quite seem to stop. Ren’s growling, quiet and rolling, reverberates over his own desperate struggle for air.

Eventually, the growling ceases. The sword flicks in the corner of his vision, blood sluicing off into the scrubby grass. The boots by his head shift. Vanish. The crunch of foot against gravelly dirt lingers a while longer. Eventually, that too disappears. All that is left is the whistle of the wind, and his own whimpering, and the thick iron smell of blood all around. And the pain.

Scar lays there for an indeterminate amount of time – alone, cold, getting colder, hurting – before it occurs to him that he may be dying.

The thought should scare him, but it doesn’t. He can’t remember why. Maybe because the respawn will– but the details escape him. There was Rendog, and a sword. Which world is that one? Rendog, and a sword, and… the world with three lives, green-yellow-red, and a respawn that burns like hungry fire. The world that does not forgive. The world that may not let him wake, if he dies here.

And– ah. There’s the fear.

None of his limbs want to move. He moves them nonetheless, heavy with exhaustion and pain. He feels like he’s been split in half, not stabbed, his abdomen wet with blood and bright with agony. But he’s going to die here, if he doesn’t move.

The respawn will hurt worse than moving, besides. If he even respawns at all. Because he cannot remember, through his pain-thick thoughts, how many lives he has left.

Getting himself to his feet is a miracle, an act of god. He feels the strain it puts on his insides, muscle and ligaments moving, some of them in ways he fears they should not. His stomach lurches, and he splays a shaking hand over the wound in his front like he fears his guts may make a bid for freedom.

But get himself to his feet he does, boots planted unsteadily in dirt wet with his own blood. His waggons loom over him in the darkness, tall and imposing, and– that’s not right, because they’re not from the place with three lives, they’re from–

That thought is subsumed under a rolling wave of pain, and then surpassed by the slow-settling realisation that he cannot get up into them. He cannot climb. Not like this, hunched and wavering on his feet, an arm wound tight around his waist to keep his innards in. He nearly lays back down in the dirt at the realisation, blood on his lips and a hole through his stomach and nothing left to give. Because the only other option that he knows of, the only other stockpile of potions that he can remember, is in messy pile of someone else’s chests, tucked away in a shop down an alley. An alley across the other side of Boatem.

What he’s contemplating technically counts as theft – but that’s not what worries him. He’s stolen plenty from Grian before now, and always been forgiven for it, for a generous definition of forgiveness. If not, he can pay, or replace them, or offer a favour or– All of which is irrelevant, because the problem is that he’s not sure he can actually get there without collapsing.

There is, he supposes, only one way to find out. He starts walking.

The journey happens, simultaneously, in an endless greyish drag of pain and in rabbit-fast blinks. He loses time, finds himself on one path one moment and another the next – here veering towards Impulse’s base, here veering towards Pearl’s. The pain stays constant, though. It fills the gaps in his memory with its awful omnipresence. His waistcoat is saturated in it. Both hands, pressed over the wound in his belly, are soaked crimson and wet and dripping.

When he staggers through the door of Grian’s chest-monster shop, he leaves bloody handprints on the handle. On the doorframe. He leaves bloody footprints, too, and fat droplets of it that fall from between the hand splayed uselessly over the gaping hole straight through him. His breath wheezes in his throat.

There are so many chests, is the thing. Too many chests. He opens one, closes it again on a collection of dirt and gravel. Another, full of a load of old junk, and Scar’s blood-slick hand slips as he holds the lid of it up. It falls shut with a bang, loud enough to echo down the alleyway outside.

Another, full of flowers and sticks and bits of glass and glazed terracotta and a worn-out axe. He lets that one fall shut as well, too exhausted to close it quietly. He sways forward, panting through his nose, and reaches for the next chest with a shaking hand.

“What on earth do you think you’re– Scar?”

Scar flinches, and regrets it almost immediately. Pain tears through his stomach, up through his sternum, along his spine, with a dizzying intensity. The world briefly disappears beneath a welter of red and black splotches.

“H. Haaah. Hello, Grian.” The voice is familiar enough, even if the suddenness of it is alarming. Scar very carefully doesn’t turn around, because he’s not sure exactly what’s going to happen if he tries to move at this point, but he can only assume it’s nothing good. He’s barely standing as is, one hand braced bloody-wet against a barrel and the other wrapped tight around his own waist. “S’rry for the, the m– mmgh. Mess. Jus’ need– needed…”

It doesn’t sound like him, even to himself. The words are slow, slurred and gasping. His breath hitches in his chest. The rolling waves of pain flare through his torso again. One leg gives way, and he buckles, narrowly misses the edge of the chest with his wreck of a stomach as he falls to his knees.

Maybe he cries out; maybe he doesn’t. It’s hard to tell. The world’s getting blurry at the edges, that hint of visual distortion that only comes with massive blood loss.

“Scar!”

The panic in that single word is familiar. It sounds a little like a hot and unforgiving sun, like the biting cold of a desert night, like the distant boom of TNT and a feral whoop of joy. It sounds a lot like the hiss of a creeper, and the world dropping out from beneath his feet, and the fine bones of his face shattering under a closed fist.

It sounds, against all odds, like safety.

“M’fine,” gasps Scar, which is clearly a lie, but let it never be said that he told the truth in a moment of crisis. “Just– need, borrow a, a…” The word slips from his tongue. He curls bloody fingers around the edge of the chest, leaves his fingerprints writ crimson over the grain of the wood. “Grian.”

There’s a hand on the back of his neck, gentle, warm against the creeping chill. He shudders at the heat, half-leans into the touch until the motion tugs at the hole through his gut.

“Where are you– what’s wrong?” There’s a franticness to Grian’s voice as he drops to his knees at Scar’s back. The panic there is at odds to his careful hands, so painfully careful. The one on Scar’s neck stays steady, the other skimming over his back close enough for him to feel its heat. “Where are you hurt? Scar. Tell me where you’re hurt.”

Scar’s fingers are white-knuckled with pain, his unsteady heart hammering in his chest. “Stomach,” he manages, panting through his nose. Grian’s hands are so warm against his shoulder, the back of his neck. He slumps into them, gratefully, lets Grian catch him and lower him down to the floor. The floor is nice. Cool. Solid. Not pitching and yawing, like the rest of the world is around him. “Nnn. Back. Went. Went through…”

The front of his shirt is very, very wet, the red leeching into the thick fabric at the waist of his pants. Wet enough he’s half surprised there’s anything left in his body. Maybe there isn’t, with how cold he is, how hard his heart is beating in his chest.

“Oh my– Scar. Scar.” Grian’s hands, unerringly, find the wound on his stomach amidst the bloodsoaked mess that is his waistcoat and shirt, and press down. Scar cries out, and grabs at Grian’s wrist, one leg half-spasming against the floor in hindbrain-reflex. His nails dig in hard enough to draw blood of his own. Grian ignores it. “What happened?”

“Moon big. Werewolves– very,” mumbles Scar, and it’s incomprehensible, but it’s the best he can do. Everything feels very cold, and very slow. It’s getting harder to breathe. He clutches at Grian’s sleeve and has the brief, insane thought that at least his blood won’t show too much against the red wool. “Grian.”

“Rendog.” Grian’s eyes sharpen, and for a moment, there’s a ripple of deepest ruby through his dark irises. “I’ll kill him. I’m going to kill him–”

That’s the thing with the other place – it never really leaves you. It’s never really left any of them, apparently.

“Grian,” Scar says again, instead of it’s okay, instead of please, instead of I’m so sorry it’s still got you, too. He tugs on Grian’s sleeve, harder this time. His stomach has started to burn, with the flickering heat of stomach acid leaking into his bloodstream. “Need–”

Grian draws in a hissing breath through his teeth, and the red fades from his gaze. “Right. Right. Potions, right, got it, okay, where did I leave–” He catches his lower lip between his teeth, bites down on it hard enough that the chapped skin there threatens to split. “Scar. Scar, I need you to– you need to press down, okay? You need to, while I’m getting the potion, I need you to keep pressure–”

Scar groans, low and exhausted, but lets Grian fold his own unsteady hands over the hole in his gut. Obediently, with Grian’s encouragement, he presses down.

Lightning flashes, white-hot, through his abdomen. His brain stutters, tries and fails to reboot, and gets stuck in an ungodly loop of unfathomable, yawning pain. Someone, somewhere, is making an awful wounded-animal keening, and he wishes they would stop.

It takes him something like an eternity to realise that the someone is him.

Glass, cold and smooth, presses against his mouth, bruises his lip against the teeth behind it with shaky haste. He’s not aware enough to part his lips for it, but his mouth is already slack with pain, and the potion drips thick and viscous down his throat with relative ease. Some of it slides out the corner of his mouth, tracing the trail of blood there.

It’s cold on his tongue, and bitter, and ever so slightly effervescent. His stomach begins to writhe, intestines turned to snakes, and his whimpers briefly ratchet up to screams. They echo, in the hollow of the storage room.

Grian cries out with him – maybe his name, maybe nonsense. He can’t tell. He can’t hear through the agony of organs reforming, flesh knitting together, skin growing over in thin sheets.

And then, abruptly, it is over. The pain fades, like cold water tossed on a fire. He is left sick and bloody and panting, sprawled on the floor, trembling and cold and still whimpering softly.

“–I’m here,” Grian’s whispering, his forehead pressed to Scar’s, one hand fisted white-knuckled in Scar’s hair. He’s shaking. Scar’s blood is still wet in the cracks of his knuckles, in the whorls of his fingerprints. “I’m here, Scar, I’m here, I’ve got you, it’s– you’re going to be okay, you’re fine, you’re okay–”

“…Shh.” Scar is, for once, too tired for much artifice. He raises an unsteady hand, and taps Grian’s cheek, leaving blood smeared there too. “M’okay. All okay, thanks to you. C’mon. C’mon now.”

He takes a chance, and props himself up onto one elbow. It aches, but no more than a badly strained muscle, and he chances sitting up, shuffling himself until he’s slumped against a nearby barrel. His new skin, much to his relief, holds.

Grian draws in a shuddering breath, and then another, before exhaling slow and unsteady and curling close to tuck his head beneath Scar’s chin. He does not let go of Scar’s hair. “I’m going to kill him,” he mutters, against the sweat-soaked collar of Scar’s shirt. Scar, carefully, does not mention the hot tears against his neck. “I’m going to– Octagon, him and Doc, their whole base, I’m– I’m going to pack it with more TNT than they’ve seen in their lives, the whole place, all of their stupid walkers too, and then I’m going to–”

“Grian,” says Scar, wearily. “Not that I don’t love the enthusiasm, but I… don’t think that was Ren. Not really. Not… not our Ren, anyway.”

There’s a moment, and then some of the violence in Grian’s shoulders bleeds out, slowly. “I mean,” he says, and his voice sounds a little more him again, a little less the thing that the other world made him into. “Yeah, I know, moon big, things weird, Ren maybe possessed or whatever, but– Scar, he hurt you.”

Something about the way he says it makes Scar’s heart skip a half-beat.

“And you’ve done an amazing job fixing me up,” says Scar, though his stomach still feels like it’s held together with scotch tape and a prayer, soft and tender and aching. Grian’s hand tightens in his hair, around the collar of his shirt. “So it’s okay. It’s all okay now, isn’t it?”

“No.” Grian clutches at him harder still, hard enough his scalp begins to ache. “No, it’s not, Scar, and you know it.”

The thing is, Scar does know it. None of this – not the moon, not Ren, not the looming threat of that other world hanging over them like a sword of Damocles – is okay in the slightest. And he also knows, however much they might kid themselves, however much they might worry and plan and plot and rage, that there is not a single thing either of them can do about any of it.

“…Well,” he says, because he’s not sure where to even start with any of that, and because saying any of those things would be far too much honesty on top of an already regrettable number of lapses this evening. For some reason, Grian always brings out the worst in him, in that respect. Always brings out the truth in him. “Okay– say it’s not all okay. What can we do about it? What are you gonna do about it, huh?”

It’s not a challenge, but he can tell Grian takes it as one, because he untangles himself from Scar and sits back on his heels in an easy crouch, scowling. Scar’s hair follicles appreciate their sudden freedom.

“I’m not letting you out of my sight, for a start,” says Grian, determinedly, as though that will solve all their problems entirely. As though Scar gets no say in the matter. In all fairness, he probably doesn’t. “And I am going to kill Rendog. Big moon or no, you can’t just– just go around stabbing people, Scar! It’s bad manners!”

That shocks a laugh from him, followed by a groan, as the half-healed softness of his insides slide against each other with the motion. Grian rears forwards, alarmed, hands outstretched as though to– what? Keep his intestines in place, manually? Hold the edges of the new thick, ropy scar across his abdomen together, with only fingers? The thought is so absurd, it gives Scar a fit of the giggles. Painful giggles, but giggles nonetheless.

When he finally regains control of himself, Grian’s scowling, and there’s another potion bottle pressed to his lips. He drinks it, greedily, gratefully, and exhales unsteady relief as some of the residual pain bleeds out of him. “Stabbing people, bad manners, okay, got it,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of one shaky hand. “But taking someone’s base down to bedrock with more TNT than any man should own? That’s just the, you know, just the pinnacle of politeness.”

“Exactly.” Grian, despite his scowl, sounds almost smug. Without asking, without aplomb, he crawls into Scar’s lap – tucks his pointy elbows in close, folds himself so his head fits under Scar’s chin, hums softly to himself in the way he sometimes does when he gives out hugs. “It’s only fair! What’s that phrase Doc likes? Oh yeah – proportional retribution. Ren needs to learn that his actions have consequences.”

“Crazy,” murmurs Scar, faintly, fondly. He rests his chin atop Grian’s head, lets Grian’s hair tickle his nose, and just breathes for what feels like the first time in an eternity. There’s a deep warmth settling in his belly; probably the potion working the last of its magic. His eyes slip half-closed, heavy-lidded. “You’re a crazy man.”

Grian preens, which mostly involves tucking himself even more firmly against Scar’s chest with a small, pleased noise. “Well,” he says, smug no real reason that Scar can tell and oddly endearing with it. “You know. One of us has to be.”

Which is, of course, blatantly untrue, and a nonsensical thing to say to boot. But in the flickering torchlight of the shop, Scar – worn out, still aching, pinned down by the man in his lap – decides to let it stand. There’s no need to start an argument. He’s safe, for now, tucked somewhere warm and bright and hidden from the moon and Ren and whatever other horrors are waiting outside Midnight Alley. He’s got Grian, and a stomach without a hole through it, and sleep tugging at the corners of his thoughts for the first time in weeks.

And that, for now, is enough.

#goodtimeswithscar #rendog #grian #hermitcraft #scarian #but only if you squint #hints of treebark i guess also. but like. One Hint hrghg #hermitfic #hermits crafting #fic #other people's things #other people's art #rhydart #that is a LOT of admin tags woof #written to a bunch of songs:#the killing kind by marianas trenches #there's something in the water by rory webley #and apricots by bicep #also i SAY 'only if you squint'#but like............ lads is it platonic to threaten to murder someone and destroy everything they own bc they hurt your bestie???#can i platonically press my forehead to my bestie's forehead and cry with him for his pain. asking for a friend.#every fic im like. [character] do you want to talk about your feelings? 'i want to talk about my feelings' yes grian 'im sad' we know grian #also. also. that art am i right #that ART #rhy is fucking phenomenal and if you're not following her you should be #im in love w it it's just. so so good....................

112 notes · View notes

xsamsharons · 3 years

Text

i'd choose you - nikolai lantsov.

pairing: nikolai lantsov x reader

genre/warning: slight angst but other than that just fluff!

words: 3.1k.

summary: in which he finds you lost at sea and offers a place in his crew, but soon enough your past comes back to haunt you.

The first time he saw you, you were holding on to what was left of a rowboat, as the waves of the sea crashed around you and soaked your clothes. He immediately demanded that his crew pick you up and get you onto his own ship safely, to avoid the storm picking up and drifting you further away into sea. You had been rightfully shaken up once they’d managed to get you aboard, but between shivers and stutters, you’d been able to explain what had happened: the storm had hit your ship and sank it to the bottom of the ocean, along with everyone in your crew. Apparently, the reason why no one had been able to do anything about the storm, had been because the crew had just come out of a mutiny attempt, and everyone was trying to solve the mess it had left behind.

That night, he didn’t have to think twice and immediately offered to let you stay aboard his ship and travel with him, or drop you off at the nearest port, to which you replied with a smile and gratitude in your eyes that matched the soft look on his green ones. You’d told him that you would stay on the ship with them, seeing as anything that was waiting for you on land was currently at the bottom of the ocean along with any future plans you might’ve had.

Two months later, you were a vital part of Sturmhond’s crew, and had even grown close enough to other members of the crew, like Zoya, that you’d probably call more than one of them friends. You had quickly come to realize that something about your captain’s face was… weird, to put it lightly, but didn’t say anything for the first few weeks. Not wanting to bite the hand that feeds you and all that.

However, as time passed, you started to grow more and more suspicious, and once you finally confronted him about it, he told you the truth. You don’t know why he trusted you with his secret so early in your relationship, and, if he was being honest, neither did he. The rational part of his mind told him it was stupid to trust someone he’d known for only two months, and who, frankly, hadn’t told him much about his past. But Nikolai had never claimed to be a rational person by any stretch, and listened to the reckless voice inside his head once more, deciding to trust you against his better judgement.

After his secret was out, it felt like a barrier between the two of you had been lifted, and with it all the awkward small talk and formalities that seemed to linger around the both of you since the moment you met. Out went the formal captain, and in came the flirty prince.

Nikolai seemed to be everywhere you turned: relaxing against the railing and staring out at the sea? He’d appear a second later to tease you about being dramatic for staring out at it with such a somber look. Sparring with another member of the crew up on the main deck? He’d be there to make stupid remarks about your posture and technique. Finally going to your room after a long day? He’d be waiting by the door with a plate of food to share with you while sitting on your bed and talking about everything and anything, which is exactly what you were doing right now.

“Do you have a place you’ve always wanted to visit?” he asked you, back against your bed and eyes trained on the ceiling, one of his arms thrown under his head for support and the other placed on your thigh, rubbing his thumb in circular motions against your skin.

“Not really.” you shrugged, trying to ignore the blush that his hand placement had caused. “I had always liked Ravka when I was living there, and then always felt content at sea.”

“What do you like about the sea?” he asked, turning his head to face you.

“The freedom.” you replied, not missing a beat. He smiled at that, not smirked, but smiled. His smile was so soft and the skin by his eyes wrinkled at the motion, giving him a childlike look that melted your heart.

“The freedom?” he asked, and his eyes held so much emotion that they forced you to look away from him, staring instead down at your fiddling hands.

“Yeah.” you nodded. “Lots of things were expected from me back home, you know?”

“Oh, trust me, I know.” he laughed.

“Right, I forgot I was talking to a prince for a moment.” you laughed with him. “It’s just… no one expects anything from me here. Yeah, sure, I have to help on deck and follow orders, but I can just be myself. I don’t need to pretend to be anything I'm not.” you finished, and when you finally looked back at him, you found his eyes had never left your figure once while you talked.

You stayed like that for a while, staring at each other without saying anything out loud. The silence wasn’t awkward like it once had been when he’d just met you, instead, the silence seemed to be comforting; like an embrace on a cold rainy day or like a hot chocolate by the fire.

“What about you?” you asked, softly.

“What about me?” he repeated your words, dancing around the subject.

“Why the sea?”

“People like me here.” he shrugged, and you frowned.

“People like you everywhere.” you argued with a smile.

“You got that right.” he winked, causing you to roll your eyes. “People never like me for me back home.” he admitted, softly, his voice weak, as if that sentence was something he rarely said out loud. “I’m their prince, you know? They have to like me, but not here.” he finished.

“I like you for you.” you admitted, not used to seeing him be so unsure of himself.

“Do you, now?” he smirked, there was the Nikolai you knew. “If I knew all it took was a sob story to get you to be nice to me, I would've told you one sooner.” he continued, and you rolled your eyes.

“Don’t let it get to your head, Nikolai.” you told him, watching as he stood up and headed for your door, no doubt to make sure everything on the ship was in order and being taken care of before he retired for the night.

“Oh, but I let everything get to my head darling.” he winked, disappearing behind your closed door right after, leaving just you and your giddy smile behind.

After that conversation in your room, Nikolai had seemed to become the touchiest person ever. He’d hug you every morning as a greeting, kiss your forehead goodnight every night, and braid your hair anytime you decided to wear it down. Zoya had noticed, and every time he caught sight of your hand in his or his arm around your shoulders, she shot a knowing smirk your way, which never failed to make you shy away from her.

Speaking of the devil, you felt a hand rest upon your right leg before you saw him, sitting down on the floor next to you, backs pressed against the lower part of the ship’s railing. It was night, and you were just admiring the stars from the top deck, head thrown backwards and eyes fixed on the dark clear sky above you. The city had never provided views this beautiful, so every time the sky was free of clouds, you liked to take a moment to admire it.

“What are we looking at?” Nikolai asked from beside you, for some reason whispering, as if he was afraid to disturb you with any loud noises that could come out of his mouth.

“The stars, Nikolai.” you explained, turning to look at him with a roll of your eyes. However, once your eyes landed on him, you felt your heart stop and your breath catch on your throat. His soft eyes were gleaming with the stars reflecting on them, his face looked angelic when accompanied by the soft glow of the moon, and his messy hair after a day of work was framing his face like a frame would a drawing. He looked so beautiful, and you couldn’t tear your eyes away from him.

“Well, right now I think you’re staring more at me than the stars, darling.” he teased with a soft smile, and moved the hand that was resting on your thigh up to your face. He didn’t cup your cheek like you thought he would, instead, he brushed his fingers against the side of your face softly, following the trace of his fingers with his eyes. “I’m not complaining, though.” he said once the movement of his hand halted, and he met your eyes once again.

“I bet you’re not.” you rolled your eyes. “You loved to be stared at.”

“By you? Of course.” he replied and you shook your head with a snort, looking down. Once you picked your head back up, he cupped your cheek and moved closer to you. His lips danced over yours as you breathed in shakily, hating the anticipation. “Are you sure you want this?”

You nodded before you spoke, “Yes,” you replied. “Please.”

He smirked at that, and finally leaned down to connect his soft lips with yours. You’d always laughed at anyone who’d ever told you that kissing the person they liked felt like fireworks, and while the kiss definitely made you feel like something exploded inside of you, you’d still laugh at them today. Because kissing Nikolai didn’t feel like fireworks, it felt calm; it felt the same way anything he did made you feel. Comforted, embraced, safe.

Nikolai kissed you that night, and he kissed you the next morning, and he kissed you more than once a day during the whole following month. Every time he kissed you, it felt exactly like it had that first night, and you found yourself thinking, more than once, how natural it all felt, and you easy it would be to get used to this - to him.

However, it seemed life had had enough of letting you be happy, for one morning when you woke up, everything came crashing down. The first indicator was that Nikolai was out of your, now, shared room when you first woke up; instead of waiting on his desk for you as he finished some work from the night before. Once you got upstairs, the second indicator of something being wrong, came in the form of a group of people all standing in a circle around something that you couldn’t quite spot, given that the crowd was shielding your view from it. And finally, the third indicator was him, the only memory of your past, standing next to Nikolai.

“He says he’s here to see you.” said Nikolai once he spotted you, his angry voice making you want to burst into tears. He didn’t sound like the Nikolai you had grown to know, he sounded like the ship captain that had picked you up that first night when you had been stranded.

“Can we not do this here?” you pleaded, somehow finding your voice and gesturing to the crowd of people around you with your hands. Nikolai didn’t look like he wanted to do anything you asked him to, but when his eyes met your pleading ones, he softened for half a second and nodded, before shouting at everyone to go back to their tasks and gesturing for you and him, who you hadn’t looked like a second time but could feel his eyes on you anyway, to follow him to his captain quarters.

“Care to explain who he is?” he asked you sternly, once the doors were closed behind the three of you.

“I’m-” he started, but Nikolai cut him off before he could even begin explaining.

“I don’t believe I asked you.” he said, focusing his eyes back on you.

“He’s my fiance, and I believe he’s here to take me… home.” you explained, unable to look at Nikolai in the eyes. The word ‘home’ in reference to that place felt foreign now, this ship had become your home during the past six months, the people in it your family, and Nikolai… well, you didn’t know what Nikolai had become but it was certainly more than the man standing next to you. As you lifted your head to meet his eyes, your heart broke into a million little pieces, his eyes didn’t just look hurt, they looked betrayed.

“That’s right.” The man beside you nodded, seemingly tired of you and Nikolai just staring at each other without saying anything. “We were arranged by our families, and the deal is the deal.”

“I’d advise you to stop talking and wait outside before I punch you in the face.” Nikolai said with the same stern tone he’d been talking in all morning, and your fiance reluctantly nodded his head before he went to stand outside of the room, closing the door behind him.

“Nikola-” you stared, before he interrupted.

“Are you going?” he asked, straight to the point. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked next, tears starting to form in his eyes and his voice breaking, the stern captain act dropped the second your fiance left the room.

“I thought he had died, he was with me on that ship and when it sank i… i just assumed he’d drowned with it.” you explained, tears of your own forming in your eyes and your voice sounding desperate.

“So, are you going or not?” he repeated his question, desperation evident in his voice as well.

“The deal is the deal, and when i thought he was dead that didn’t matter but my fami-”

“Screw them!” he shouted, interrupting you for the second time that day. “Do you want to? Because I remember you saying very clearly how you’d never felt free there, how only at sea you felt like you could truly be yourself!” he continued, stepping closer to you, his voice still raised. “Or was that just all a lie like everything else?” he asked, his voice no longer raised, but instead coming out as a whisper.

“Nikolai, nothing was a lie.” you shook your head, your hand coming up to cup the right side of his face and your thumb brushing a small stray tear away from his face. His eyes closed at your touch, and he drew in a shaky break that shattered your heart. “I would stay if I could, I would choose you.” you whispered, his eyes still closed and tears blurring your own once again as you thought about your next words. “I lov-” you began.

“No.” he shook his head, stepping back and grabbing your hand to pull it away from him. “Don’t say that, not now.” he continued once he had created enough distance between the two of you. “Just do what you gotta do. If you have to leave, then do so, but not like that.” he finished, and you nodded your head.

“Goodbye then, Nikolai.” you whispered, closing the distance between the two of you and planting one last kiss on his cheek. As you closed the door behind you, you heard a clattering noise and a shout come from his room, and you knew he had thrown all of the things that were neatly placed on his desk, to the floor.

You avoided everyone’s eyes as you climbed onto the stowaway boat your fiance had arrived in, and you avoided his gaze as well as he paddled you to the ship he’d used to navigate in open water. Members of his crew were waiting on the side of the ship, throwing a rope-made stair for both of you to use as a climbing method. He climbed first, leaving the paddles on your boat, and it wasn’t until you were about to grip the rope that what you were doing hit you. You couldn’t leave.

Not only couldn’t you leave Nikolai, but you also couldn’t leave the only thing that had made you feel free in so long for, what? Keeping a deal with your family? Your family will be pretty damn pleased once you return with a prince, you thought. Once you made up your mind, you grabbed the paddled that were still on the boat, and started heading back in the direction of Nikolai’s ship. You ignored the shouts that came from behind you that served only as a reminder of the life you’d let behind, they weren’t home anymore, Nikolai was.

Once you were close enough to the ship, you started shouting everyone’s name to see if they could hear you, not using Nikolai’s real name to avoid exposing him. Heads started to peek through the railing, and someone called for the captain to come see what was happening.

Once Nikolai finally appeared and glanced down at you, you couldn’t believe how you’d almost considered leaving him. The situation felt all too familiar; you in a stowaway boat and him pulling you up above his ship. Even tailored as Sturmhond, he looked as beautiful as ever, with the wind blowing the hair out his face and the sun making his green eyes shine brighter than usual.

“You gonna pull me up or what?” you asked with a smirk, and he smiled so wide you thought he might freeze like that forever.

Once you were safely aboard the ship, he tackled you into a hug so tight your lungs probably stopped breathing for a moment. “Please don’t leave me again.” he whispered into your neck, the crew quickly realizing how private the moment was and leaving you two to it.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” you hugged him back, using the same force as him. “I love you.” you finally spoke the words you had wanted to earlier in his room.

“I know.” he replied with a smirk once he pulled away, and while normally you would want to punch the smirk right off his face, now you could cry at the familiarity of his teasing nature and how much you would’ve missed it if you had left. “I love you too.” he said, cupping your face and leaning down closer to your lips. Though, before actually kissing you, he spoke against your lips once more. “Just to be clear, you don’t have any more life changing secrets? No secret child or secret superpower that you would like to disclose? Now is the tim-” this time, you were the one interrupting his teasing words, by pulling him by the collar of his shirts and finally pressing your lips to him.

“You’re an idiot.” you said once you pulled away.

“You love me, though.” he smirked. “You can’t retract it.”

“Can't I?” you laughed.

“No." he shook his head. "Hate to break it to you, love, no take-backs with me. You’re trapped now” he said and you laughed once again.

You were completely fine with that.

#nikolai lantsov #nikolai lantsov x reader #nikolai lantsov imagine #nikolai lantsov fanfic #nikolai lantsov fic #nikolai x reader #nikolai fanfic #nikolai imagine #nikolai duology #king of scars #rule of wolves #six of crows #shadow and bone #crooked kingdom #siege and storm #ruin and rising #grishaverse #sturmhond

413 notes · View notes

bokettochild · 3 years

Text

Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones

Angst! My Beloved!

Not a lot of whump here, but I put Wild through the wringer!!! Lots of BotW2 ideas and concepts here, but nothing really cannon.

Also, disclaimer: I think Flora is a wonderful person, a bit harsh and sometimes unkind, but I feel for her a lot. The prompt submitted to me however asked for her as an ass, so that's what's here, for angst reasons. THIS IS NOT HOW I PLAN ON WRITING HER NORMALLY!!!

When Wild left the Chain behind in the woods, it was with a soft smile and a hesitant wave of his right hand. It was with a gentle ‘See y’all later’ that made Warriors shake his head with a sigh while Twilight offered a wobbly grin.

He would join them again, he knew that. After all, Hylia wouldn’t have chosen him to go with them in the first place if he was only supposed to leave before they’d even really started to know what it was that they were meant to be doing.

He’d see them again, and he’d fall back into a routine with all of them, sparring with Warriors and teaching Hyrule to cook and shield surfing with Wind and learning to carve from Sky. He’d go back to sewing with Legend, to exploring with Hyrule, to learning the Ocarina with Time and teasing Twilight about his terrible singing. He could work with Four on the Sheikah Slate and experimenting with different plants he’d gathered. He would see them again, and he’d go back to being busy and smiling nearly every day.

For the time being however, he had to square his shoulders and harden his jaw as he stepped through the swirl of black that had repulsed all the others every time they tried to enter. He had to tame his mind and wild spirit and come to stand before the Princess of Hyrule in all of her stern glory and receive the scolding he was due for wandering off without permission.

He never had time to question what she meant by being gone for ‘two whole weeks’ before she was marching off towards the labs and explaining that there was a new task for them to complete.

Such a task was one that left in his mind no time for thoughts of his brothers save on the lonely nights in the sky when the islands above the clouds were silent save for the birds about him that reminded him of Sky, or when he ran across the forests and was reminded of the wolf that once ran at his side. And, alright, the tiny people in the grass and the fountains reminded him of Four and Hyrule. When the wind sang strong in his ears as he dove towards the earth from the highest places in the sky, he couldn’t help but envision a small hero whose laughter danced like the sea and who’s fingers mastered the currents of wind and sea both.

It was a lonely quest, just like his last before it, but somehow it was more painfully so, now that he knew what it was to have brothers at his side to catch a monster’s blade when he was too slow or to help him patch himself up afterwards. It was quiet when the Princess and he sat around the fires as night, she studying him as he sat still and stonelike as she worked.

The hand that had waved goodbye to his brothers now flickered green and ethereal in the night shades, iron bands clinging to the wisping appendage and acting as a bond to hold its form together. It was nothing like what he’d known or studied in the Sheikah technology, or even what he’d seen from the many worlds he’d traveled with the other, and it earned many a stare and twist of the lips from those he met and traded with during his journey.

The arm was only the first of many changes, it’s power seeping through his body and altering him before he even knew what was happening. He’d hated it at first, disliking how it changed him, made his eyes glow and his hair touch with the same ethereal shades, red bleeding through at the roots and earning him even more wary looks.

Ganon, in all his terrifying power, had been a surprising comfort during the quest, an aid to discovering his new abilities and training them to bend to his own will. The Princess had been wary of their relationship, but had accepted it when she saw what he learned to do, and every evening she would require a report of his newfound skills, as well as the occasional demonstration or examination.

It all came to an end both too soon and not soon enough.

Ganon was gone, as if he’d never been there at all, and the Princess was as cold as ever even after their second adventure at each other's sides. And now there was no use for the abilities that had fused to his soul like the arm had to his flesh. He’d asked Purah if there was something that could be done to restore his body to its normal Hylian state, without the glowing limb that earned his only stares and insults from the village people, but the Princess had overheard it and declared that such a thing should not even be attempted.

“You don’t understand, Link. Don’t be foolish! We have here a scientific marvel ready for our investigation and exploration and you want to get rid of it just because it looks odd?”

He’s shuffled his feet slowly, resisting the impulse to rub at his chest where the Hylian part of him ended and the eldritch horror began. “I can’t live like Hylian anymore.”

“Because you aren’t one!” Her Highness rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Sir Knight, after everything I certainly doubt that Hylian even applies to you anymore! Hylians do not possess the qualities that you now do, and they most certainly do not travel through stone or time or any other such thing at will. Think would you! You’re something else entirely, and I intend to find out what that is!”

Purah had frowned at that, eyes full of sorrow as they met his own with an apologetic sigh. But there was nothing the de-aged scientist could really say against the royal Sovreign of Hyrule, not as a Sheikah sworn to the service of the royal family. The woman/girl had offered him a sympathetic pat on the head later after climbing up to reach high enough to do so, as well as a few dumplings that Paya had sent on her grandmother’s behalf the day before. It was a welcome gesture, but amounted to so little on the grand scale of life. Not when so many others he had once called his friends had so blatantly rejected the mere sight of him.

Bolson and the other carpenters shied away from him with harsh whispers as they spat insults across the distance.

‘Half-blood’.

‘Gerudo Bastard’.

‘Freak’.

‘Demon’.

There were favorite insults spread from stable to stable and up and coming village to up and coming town and slowly all of Hyrule knew of the monster that had once been the hero. Gossip abounded, and he couldn’t even turn to shield his face with his hood without drawing attention to his arm.

It was only the koroks that welcomed him, themselves all too accustomed to the strange and ethereal. Them and the blupees.

Maybe it was the knowledge of how it felt to be shot at for his oddness that allowed him to ease into the graces of the flighty animals. And maybe it was his lonely heart crying for comfort, but when nestled in their midst, it almost reminded him of how it felt to be hugged by the salty veteran, on the rare occasional that the pink-haired hero had let down his guard.

The fairy’s tangled themselves in his hair and the blupees gathered at his feet, koroks dancing around him and flying to his side as if he was some sort of forest god, but the strange rise of his spirits in their presence shattered the instant a traveler caught sight of him.

Arrows and fire, once his favorite of weapons, were turned against him as words in every language of the New Hyrule had burst from the mouths of its people, and like his namesake, he ran before them, darting through the forest and fading in amidst the trees, hiding, incorporeal and translucent within the halls of the forest as those he’d once seen as allies pushed him away.

He’d begged the new Queen for aid, for relief or even just a word to the people that he wasn’t the evil they had come to think he was, but she only waved him aside with a purse of her lips. “You are not meant to be here without first asking.” The Child of Hylia declared, eyes as cold as the Shrine’s waters themself. “And why should I make a declaration on behalf of a man who refuses to even speak to me properly? You come groveling like a worm, yet for years it was I who you ignored. See how it feels, Sir Hero, to be the one left helpless at the hands of the country. Know what it is to be scorned by those who you thought would love you.”

He’d barely made it out of the window before the trainee guards of the newly repaired Hyrule Castle had caught him and Queen Zelda Diana Hyrule had stared after him with eyes colder than Hebra’s tallest peaks.

It was the Father Tree -the Deku Tree as the Queen had called it, but the koroks laughed at him for using the name, so he’d adjusted in kind- who suggested that he hide the changes, and he’d begun to wander Hyrule as much as possible to find the materials he would have needed.

The Queen still required his presence regularly so she could inspect him; her love of science no ways tainted as to stop her from ordering him to appear regularly, as there was now no need or safety in his acting as her guard. The Queen sought her people’s respect, and to employ such a being as himself, not Hylian and not quite mortal, would be to spark fear in the people. Indeed, when he skirted villages, he would wince at word of ‘the queen’s monster’ as gossip was traded. Those who didn’t see him themselves knew him as a beast of feral nature who lived amid the lost woods and destroyed any who came close.

“A specter that glows with the light of the shrines.” They would tell each other over campfires. “It has eyes like a ghost, empty and lost, with no care for humanity or Hylia’s chosen. They say it was once the Hero of this world, but he died ages ago.”

“I heard it’s the body, possessed by a being beyond this realm, a monster escaped from the edges of reality that tried to hide in our midst but corrupted it’s host so that it only scares away others, leaving it roam the earth in a shattered body. If you get too close to it though, it’ll take your instead.”

He’d stayed away from towns after that.

The blupees and koroks had been happy to help him to find what he needed to hide among the Hylians should he wish though, and two in particular guided him; the korok swinging little twigs like they were batons and humming swinging little shanties as it hopped along the path, the blupee snorting softly and nipping at his heels when he wandered too far, unnatural purple eyes staring up at him with something that was fondness and a reprimand all at once, and in their care he’d made his way across the land of Hyrule to find what would be needed to return to his once life.

The fairies and their Great cousins had been welcome help, and in time, he’d been able to walk amid the populace of Hyrule like any other, as long as he kept a long cloak about him and his hair pulled back to hide where the roots would begin showing again in gold and ethereal blue.

Once Hyrule had talked about needing to hide in his world, about the curse that followed him and made the Hylian people afraid. He’d thought it bizarre and ridiculous of the people at the time, but now he understood what it was to live it.

When the portal opened beneath his feet the day that the Queen had reprimanded him for concealing and potentially damaging the strange limb, startling the Skeikah scientists and Queen both, he’d nearly cried tears of relief.

He was going away, somewhere where he wasn’t a science project and where, unless they traveled to his world’s future, no one would know how much he had changed. His copy of the slate had enough hair dye to last him a few months, and he was certain he could make more over time, and as long as he continued wearing the tunics and gloves the fairies had helped him to adjust to hide the glow the others would probably never catch on. Or well, he could extend it anyway.

His brothers greeted him with open arms and teary eyes, and in a strange parallel to his adventure, he found himself thinking of blupees when Legend had curled against him, stiff and cold on the outside, but with fingers that clutched his tunic just a bit too tight to really be reluctant. And Four, Hyrule and Wind’s exuberant hugs and chatter brought to mind tiny forest people and koroks with twigs for batons.

It was good to be home.

It was good to cook for other people again, and they were glad to have him cook for them, even if his fondness for both Gerudo spiced dishes and fae like sweet things had increased exponentially during his newest adventure. It was good to fight at their sides, even if it was strange to once again have to take others into account before he could select a weapon. It was good to sit around a fire and talk with the others too, but that was perhaps the hardest one; it had been ages since he’d had a proper two-way conversation with anything other than a tree or a korok, and neither of those was good at either staying awake or staying focused for very long.

There were some harder things to adjust to though. Fire, for one. Unlike before when he’d have been happy to burn an enemy camp to the ground, now he was wary of using faming weapons or spreading heat further than necessary. The same went for hunting; he couldn’t bring himself to shoot an animal unless it attacked first or they needed the meat it would provide, and even then, he felt a bit bad for doing so. Is this what Twilight had felt like? Is this why the rancher never liked hunting? Because he too knew what it was like to be on the other end of the bow?

But the hardest thing by far to readjust to was his name.

‘Wild’ they had called him again, and after months of ‘the wild one’, ‘wild beast’, ‘monster’ and every other insult, slur or title that had been used on him, it made him flinch ever so slightly at the words. And unlike the other things where his brothers dismissed it as a change caused by his adventure or an increase of maturity, it was something that the others seemed to either not notice or to excuse as situational.

He had adapted though, learned to keep a smile on his face where blankness had once been required in his knightly duties, and the more he wore the mask the easier it was to put on again.

He’d reveled in traveling across time again, in dancing through battles and exploring the world without the Queen reprimanding him in her cold tones to stop wandering off. He’d pushed himself to learn more music in the last adventure, and even if his experience was more with what few instruments Ganon had had time to help him learn, he’d enjoyed sitting down with the others and borrowing one or another instrument to play a tune and sometimes he even got to sing.

He fell to comfortably into his role though, even with the changes, and he hadn’t even noticed when they’d come back to his world. To be fair, it was different in the daytime, and Hyrule had changed so much in the absence of her hero as he hid himself away from the eyes of civilization. Towns and roads had sprung up where there had only been fields before, and the Guardians that had littered the land had all been dug up and hauled to the castle to be either restored or destroyed by the Sheikah, depending on what Queen Zelda decided after she looked at them herself. The world was so different to him, so unlike that which he knew, that he’d failed to keep as alert as he ought to have been when he wandered about an open market with the others, laughing and chattering away with the other younger ones as Time and Legend herded them towards the needed stalls.

It was a traveler that was his downfall, a man who’d seen the Monster Hero and had been among the first to discover the disguise he wore.

No questions were asked when the word spread, and Wild hadn’t caught on to the whispers until a stone had struck his cheek and he was stumbling forwards on the path.

“Wild!” Twilight was at his side in a minute, Time right after him as Legend launched a barrage of insults at the guilty party who’d thrown the thing.

“’m fine.” He was careful to wipe the blood away with his cloak, holding the fabric to the wound to prevent bluish blood seeping down his face and exposing him to his brothers. He wanted to keep them as long as possible and proving himself to be a monster, not even Hylian, would surely have them turning their backs on him.

“Get away from him!” A woman scolded, grabbing ahold of two of the younger heroes while several other shoppers had like ways grabbed Legend and Sky. “Are you dears alright? He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“Freaking what?” Legend shrieked. “Who’s the injured party here?”

“I’d avoid that thing, son.” A man huffed through a frankly walrus like mustache, eyes hard as they trailed to where Wild stood, cloak still pressed to his cheek as he attempted to wave off a fussing Twilight and Time. “It’s not natural. Sure, it looks like a normal Hylian, but that’s just an effective ruse.”

Another villager nodded. “It’s one of the Calamity’s puppets, a Gerudo-Bastard set on destroying the kingdom!”

“He’s the freaking hero!” Legend shrieked, barely being held back by a steely eyed Sky. “He saved all your freaking asses and all you can do is insult his flipping guts? Who’s the-”

“Enough.” There were few times that Sky’s voice reached levels worse than Twilight’s growls, but the stern command, regal and firm, froze all present as the man stiffened with a cold nod towards the villagers. “I see we are unwelcome here, and with that being the case it would be wise to spend our rupees elsewhere. Legend,” A tug to the boy’s shoulders. “Let’s join the others and be out of their hair. If they cannot be welcoming and kind to our brother than they will not receive our patronage.” And like a swan gathering it’s cygnets, Sky swept down the street, cape fluttering as he ushered the rest of them out of the town and back to the safety of the wilds. The village stared after them with wide eyes, as if they’d just been judged by a breathing god.

The stiffness in Sky’s shoulders faded as they neared the edge of the forest, and instantly the Chosen Hero been tutting over Wild, gently but firmly prying his hand away from his face with a kind smile that almost set Wild at ease. Almost.

“It’s fine, it’s just a scrape.”

“Still.” Sky crooned softly. “I’d rather we clean it up now and make sure it’s nothing worse than let it sit and get infected later.”

And though he’d tried to fight, his single Hylian hand was no match for the firm grip of the Skyloftian, and within minutes his face was exposed to the shocked faces and flickering eyes of his brothers.

“It’s blue...” Wind breathed as Hyrule darted forwards, hands already glowing softly only for them to stutter to a stop over Wild’s skin.

“It’s... Wild, why is your blood- why is-” The healer’s eyes had flickered golden for a moment, wide as they stared up at him. “What happened to you-”

“What the freak!” Legend had startled, blinking in surprise as he stared. “Your eyes are glowing!”

Shit! The healing properties of the arm had already taken affect and it was making everything act up all weird! He shot a glance down at his arm, one hand raising to tangle in the long hair he couldn’t even see at the moment, praying silently beneath his breath that nothing was showing through. It wasn’t, but that didn’t change how Hyrule had come to fixate on his right arm, or how the healer's fingers hovered over it sparking and eyes twinkling as he whispered softly under his breath.

“Wild.” Time had sighed. “I think this one is going to need an explanation.”

All the breath left his lung in instants.

He’d panicked to say the least and Time had eventually shooed the others away to make camp as the eldest hero had sat at his side, waiting silently for him to regulate his breathing. Touch was too much right now, and any attempts from the others to ease him down or help him level out his breathes had only made him panic more. But when at last his blue eyes blinked back to clarity it was to see Time sitting at his side, a gentle tune wafting from the Ocarina at his lips.

“I’m sorry.” He whispered, trying his hardest not to startle Time or otherwise make the situation worse. “I should have said something, I know. I just- missed being Wild and I wanted to come back and be normal and I didn’t want to-”

“It’s alright.” Time’s voice rumbled softly, a single blue eye turning to him with a pained look, even as the man offered him a hint of a smile. “None of us talk about our adventures either.”

“Yes, but you’re people.” He sighed, rubbing the fingers of his glove together. “You’re allowed to choose things.”

There was pain in Time’s voice when their leader answered. “And you’re not?”

“I’m not Hylia anymore.” He whispered. “I don’t count.”

“You count to us.”

“That’s because you don’t know.”

Time shifted, turning to face him fully as the ocarina was set firmly in the grass. “That’s because you’re family and we care. Wild, I don’t care if Demise himself named you the king of the dead, you’re still my kid and Nayru knows I’m not going to let you go without a fight. If that means fighting you, alright, but you’d best better believe that no amount of physical or mental changes will break the bonds we all have with you.”

Something, something damaged and crushed and stitched up and torn open again clenched inside of him, tears pricking at his eyes as he stared up at Time’s royal blue gaze. “W-what?”

“You could be granted godhood, made a monster, I don’t care. You’re ours and you’ll have to deal with that.” Time smiled, warm even with the pain in his eyes as he looked down at him. “So how about you start again, maybe with the facts rather than the insults. Or,” Time softened, brows furrowing lightly. “If you want, we can just sit here and you can choose to talk about this later. We do need to know, so we can help you and keep you safe, but you don’t have to tell us right now. You can take some time to figure out what you want to say if you need.”

And, well, shoot him, but Time’s arms had always been a safe place and there was one thing he’d wanted more than anything since he had come back. Wild threw himself into his grand-mentor's arms with a soft sob, clutching tightly to the other, ignoring the armor and its sharp points and awkward shapes as he tried to hold back all the emotions swirling in his chest.

Time’s arms folding around him broke the floodgates though, and when the man’s hand had stroked through his shortened hair, he’d had to bury his face in Tim’s neck to muffle his sobs.

“There, there,” Time hummed softly, rocking slowly as he held the broken wild hero. “Let it out, little one. I have you, I’ve got you and I’m not letting anyone hurt you.”

#whumptober 2021 #linkeduniverse #linked universe #idiot writes angst #idiot writes whump #lu wild #lu time #lu sky #lu legend #sky is scary when he's mad #wild whump #botw2 #botw2 theories #mean flora #flora bashing #zelda botw bashing #I ACUALLY LOVE FLORE PLS DON'T HATE ME!!!!#father time

179 notes · View notes

kamotoshi · 3 years

Text

safe [chōsō x reader]

pairing: chōsō x fem sorcerer! reader

genre: fluff with (seriously faint) hints of angst

warning(s): contains manga spoilers for chapter 62!

word count: 2.3k

overview: after spending many years as a sorcerer, you’ve believed certain things to be true. but a chance meeting with a curse that’s developed into a deeper relationship changes your perspective.

notes: want some listening music? here are two songs that helped me write this: summer fling by kang + effervescent by toonorth

A quiet, but gasping breath fills your lungs with a pocket of cold air when you wake from a dead sleep with a start. Instinctively, your hand flies in front of you, directed towards the doorway to obliterate whatever intruder you automatically assume has roused you from your deep slumber. However, much to your surprise, you’re completely alone. Rubbing your eyes, you turn your head towards the alarm clock on your bedside table to check the hour.

Ah, it’s that time again.

With a gentle sigh, you slide out from beneath the warm covers, causing your skin to break out in a wave of goosebumps at the chill in your room that you throw on a sweater and pants to combat before heading to the kitchen of your small but cozy living quarters. Sleep refuses to relinquish its grip, and you ungracefully bump into a few surfaces in the process of preparing two, hot cups of tea and finding a blanket to drape around your shoulders.

The rush of crisp air that greets you when you finally make your way outside of your abode livens you up a bit, though, and you wrap your arms around yourself to retain as much warmth as you can. Following the stone path decorated with glowing lanterns brings you to the front gates of your school—a place you know to visit whenever you wake up with such a start in the dead of the night. The drinks in your hands radiate heat that staves off the bite of the cold as another gust of wind howls past you.

In the darkness of the night, only lit ever so faintly by the twinkling stars in the sky and the waning moon, your eyes search for the visitor who seems to have fallen into a habit of making their presence known around the same time on every odd evening. Sure enough, the thumping of heavy boots against the stone walkway winding near and through Jujutsu High’s campus draws your attention to a tall figure wandering around nearby. The baggy cream clothes draped over his body beneath a vest the hue of blood instantly give away his identity, along with the dark, spiked hair gathered neatly atop both halves of his head.

Before his name can leave your mouth, he turns around to face you, as if he senses your presence the same way you sense his on the nights that he chooses to visit. It’s almost as if he uses some unseen force to disturb you from your sleep so he can steal away anywhere from a few minutes to hours of your time. Of course, this possibility would seem at least the slightest bit insane to an average person, but, for you—a jujutsu sorcerer—it cannot be discounted for the sole reason of what your visitor is: a special grade curse.

Wordlessly, the man you’ve come to know as Chōsō after a twisted event that led to many more spontaneous encounters such as this approaches you. His dark gaze skims over your figure before settling on your own, making your heart thud gently in your chest. Placing his hands in his pockets, he glances at the drinks you’re holding and asks, “Will you come on a walk with me?”

As a sorcerer, it should be second nature to meet the request of a cursed spirit with a no followed by a prompt exorcism. However, in all the times that he’d come to visit, he hadn��t appeared to do so out of ill will or inclination to get some sort of revenge. He’d always sat on the outskirts of the campus or walked around the lush forest surrounding it with you, making as much or as little conversation as you’d liked. In spite of how powerful you knew he was and the nature of his being, you didn’t feel particularly put off by him. In fact, you often found yourself thinking about him and when he’d stop by next more than you probably should.

Slowly, you nod, passing him one of your mugs so the two of you can be on your way. “Thanks.”

The sky above is surprisingly clear, given the school’s location in Tokyo, aside from a few, lingering clouds that float past the moon on their way around the part of the world you call home. It’s oddly peaceful considering your company for the evening. But you’d never really felt uneasy in his presence to begin with. And you certainly don’t feel threatened now, with the way he only seems focused on trying not to spill any of the tea you’d so kindly prepared for him as the two of you traverse a dirt path near the school’s grounds.

It's also a bit ironic, you think, that the route you seem to have fallen into the habit of taking leads you near one of the many, small shrines—gems hidden amongst the forest’s depths—but he appears to have just as much of an affinity to the location since he never suggests going elsewhere.

Beneath the gentle, pale glow from above filtered through leafy branches extending over you, Chōsō’s features take on a soft, almost peaceful appearance. He seems to bask in the symphony of crickets singing as he takes a deep breath and sits down on the grassy hill directly beside you. His dark eyes dipping down to the lip of the mug in his hands before shifting over to meet yours catches you off-guard since you hadn’t realized you’d been watching him so attentively.

“Hmm?” he wonders and takes another sip of his tea. His voice and your own pounding heartbeat are the only things you can hear above the sea of noise.

Inquisitively, you ask him a question you’re sure he’s used to hearing: “Why do you keep coming here?”

He sighs and glances at the grass beneath the two of you before answering, “I get overwhelmed.”

“Overwhelmed?” you echo.

His head bobs in a slow nod as he tilts it up towards the sky once more, making his dark eyes twinkle in spite of the hint of sadness that seems to be lingering behind his gaze. “I’m always expected to do things. To pay the price of being granted my life here. And sometimes, all I wanna do is just sit and look at the sky.” There’s a small, but undeniable ache of empathy in your chest as you allow your eyes to flit over every feature of his face, searching for the words he’s not saying. But with his straightforward, unabashedly honest manner of speaking, it’s unlikely for him to leave you wondering.

After taking a drink to fight off the chilliness, another question leaves your lips. “You could go anywhere to cloud watch or stargaze, though. Why come all the way here?”

“I want to.”

Your fingers tap against the ceramic of your mug. “But being here puts you in a lot of danger. Why would you want to go somewhere like this to escape?”

Without a hint of hesitation, his dark eyes find your own once more as he states, “Because you’re here.” A moment of silence passes between the two of you filled with the ceaseless chirps of crickets during which you attempt to mask any effects of your racing heart and the heat crawling up your neck at his confession. However, the shock that strikes you like lightning must be written on your face, since his eyebrows furrow slightly with confusion at your reaction, and he adds, “I thought I made it clear I come here to spend time with you.”

For a few seconds, your lips make quivering, unsuccessful attempts at forming words your vocal cords won’t allow you to voice before you direct your attention to the mug in your hands filled with tea, instead, and try to regain your composure enough to speak. “W-Well, I knew that, but why?” is all you can inquire with a quiet murmur.

His chest rises and falls in a deep, shuddering breath as a cool gust of wind whistles through the trees. At first, you wonder, with the slight glossiness to his eyes and his sudden inability to meet your gaze, if his emotions are the source of the tremors you notice in his jaw. However, the realization that he’s cold soon reaches you at the sight of his arms folding across his chest. Wordlessly and without thinking, you close the little distance between your bodies and drape part of your blanket around his broad shoulders.

“Thanks,” he mumbles, uncrossing his arms so one of his hands can hold the side of the blanket you’ve given him while the other plants itself on the grass behind you. The unexpected warmth radiating from him that seems to engulf you in the tight space you’re now sharing makes it hard to resist the temptation of resting your head on his shoulder.

“I miss my brothers,” is the gently spoken truth that leaves his lips, “I wanted to give them a better life. My failure to fulfill my role as their older brother is something that weighs heavily on me, even though I know they’d tell me they forgave me if I had been there in their final moments.”

Following his moment of vulnerability, the two of you find enough courage to make eye contact, and you struggle not to lose yourself in the seemingly endless depths of his midnight-colored irises. With your faces mere inches away, you’re granted a closer look at him than you’ve ever had before, and it seems, from the way he’s watching you so intently, that you’re not the only one enjoying the unexpected intimacy of the moment.

The muscles in his neck tense with a thick swallow before he continues, “But when I’m here with you, I feel like it’s okay that I’m still alive even though they’ve passed. You don’t look at me with hatred in your eyes or expect anything from me in exchange for my existence. You accept me as I am.” Another gentle breeze dislodges a few strands of hair tucked behind his ear that you naturally move back into place for him before your hand warm from the drink you’d been holding comes to rest against his cheek. “Why?”

His fingertips ghosting along your own neck and cheek leave sparks of electricity on your skin in their wake. But you manage to organize the thoughts threatening to escape your mind at the tenderness of his touch enough to whisper, “When you fought with me instead of against me, I realized that maybe the way I’ve been taught to view the world we live in isn’t entirely accurate. You risked your life to save mine. You defied the rules about the world I once thought were true. And because you showed me that you cared about my life, I want to do the same for you.” A hint of a smile playing at his lips brings a warmth to you that you don’t think even the heaviest of blankets could provide. Taking a deep breath to slow your heart—which had been racing since he’d locked eyes with you—you ask, “Is that why you want to come here?”

“Hmm?”

“Because you care about me?”

He nods earnestly as his thumb skims over your cheekbones, and the adoration glimmering in his eyes like the stars in the night sky above brings your face closer to his. With a timidness you wouldn’t have expected from him, his lips meet with yours in a short, fleeting kiss, as if he’s testing the waters. The way you chase his after they separate, though, serves as a silent confirmation and has him deepening the kisses your lips return to his to share. Given his relatively blunt yet quiet personality, you’re pleasantly surprised by the slow, sensual manner with which his lips move against yours. You’re sure the two of you could remain in this secluded part of the woods forever, under the cover of the shadows masking you from the pale moonlight as you lose yourselves in the moment, but the reality of the situation marks its painful return when you pull away.

“I care about you a lot, and I want to see you more often,” he breathes, “But the last thing I want is to put you in danger. That’s why I’ve been visiting every once in a while and in the middle of the night.”

Moving your hand to his shoulder to rub it gently, you murmur, “I know; I want to see you too, Chōsō.” In an instant, his arms are around you, pulling your body flush against his, and the action fills you with a bittersweet feeling, since this is only the first time you’ve been so close to him, yet you’re unsure of when you’ll get to share more affectionate moments with him like this one. “We’ll find a way to make it work,” is the promise you whisper into his neck while he nestles his face in yours.

After a few, long moments of silence have passed during which your mind exhausts itself by tirelessly attempting to form solutions to an issue you never could’ve imagined you’d have in your lifetime, you start to relinquish your grip around Chōsō. He, however, isn’t ready to do the same, and refuses to budge.

Instead, he answers your curious hum with, “I’ll let you go back to bed soon, but is it okay if I hold you for a little longer?” Even though fatigue is starting to settle in, you consent and wrap your arms around him once more, resting your head against the side of his and nestling your face in his hair as you let your heavy eyelids close. “I’ve just never felt this way before.”

“Which is…?”

Your heart flutters against his chest in cadence with his own against yours at his answer.

“Safe.”

#jujutsu kaisen x reader #jjk x reader #jjk spoilers #choso x reader #chōsō x reader

615 notes · View notes

luffles424 · 4 years

Text

Luminous

☼ Pairing: Jimin x reader

☼ Genre: tentacle monster!Jimin, some fluff, smut, mostly just pwp

☼ Count: 9k

☼ Warnings: 18+, public sex (no ones around but they’re on the beach), tentacles (kind of a given), big dick jimin, manhandling, lots of cum, some cumplay, creampie, cum inflation/belly bulge (not a whole lot, just a small bump) unprotected sex, restraints, choking, multiple orgasms, overstimulation, tit fucking, thigh fucking, oral (m recieving), deep throating, anal, double penatration, minor nipple play, praise kink, mating cycles, slight impreg kink

☼ Summary: The Busan summer festival is your favorite event of the year. You like all the food and things to do, but your favorite part is watching the fireworks at the end of the night, gathered with friends and family. It’s fun and joyous. Except this year you’re spending it without them. So you find a secluded spot on the beach to watch alone. Except... you might not be as alone as you thought you were out here.

☼ a/n: This was written for Sol’s (jamaisjoons) collab event ‘The Summer Bucketlist’ and my prompt was ‘watching fireworks.’ Uhhh this idea was originally very different and then I started thinking about tentacles and now here we are 🥴🥴🥴 Hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! My ask box is always open ~ 💙💙💙💙

☼ Banner made by the absolutely amazing @jamaisjoons (who did such wonderful work on it and I hope the fic lives up to the beautiful banner she made me 💕💕💕)

You let out a small contented sigh as you slip your feet into the water. This is your favorite place in all of Busan, this hidden little jutty of rock just off one of the smaller, less popular beaches, more popular among locals only. You’ve spent more time than you can count out here hanging out with your friends, passing the time and using the salty sea breeze to help combat the heat of summer. You’ve been out here plenty on your own too, just like how you’re out here alone right now.

The sun’s dipping below the horizon, the sky slowly turning an inky black. The perfect backdrop to what’s going to happen soon and the main reason you’re out here at all to begin with rather than at home. The summer festival is happening and once the sun disappears, the sky will be decorated with fireworks, and you and your friends discovered years ago that this is the best spot to watch them, unobstructed and no one around to fight for seats.

You kick your feet idly in the water, enjoying the warmth of it as you lean back on your hands as you watch the last few rays of light slip away. You wished your friends could’ve made it though. But Namjoon was stuck in the city for work and Taehyung was out with his girlfriend at the festival. A brief feeling of sadness overcomes you because you had been planning to go with Taehyung and his girlfriend and your own boyfriend as a double date. Until he dumped you a week ago over text because he’d moved to the otherside of the country and apparently was nothing like the man you met since he didn’t even have the balls to break up in person.

You suspect that there was a lot more than his flimsy excuse of it’s just not working and long distance is hard. It most likely has something to do with the new girl that you’ve been told about that has shown up on his socials.

For what it’s worth, Taehyung and Namjoon both offered you company but you waved them off. Namjoon’s job opportunity is much more important and as much as you love Taehyung and his girlfriend, you didn’t particularly feel like being third wheel to their (normally adorable and heart warming) love.

You think this is better anyway. It’s peaceful out here. The smell of salt being carried by the breeze brings a myriad of memories that all bring a smile to your face and it’s easy to forget about the hard things in this moment. It’s healing to be out here. As much as it sucked that you got dumped, you can’t be too upset. You saw the cracks forming the more he opened his mouth and talked, if he hadn’t done it, you likely would have been doing it soon anyway. You let your head fall back, letting your eyes slip closed as you simply enjoyed this. You should tell the others that you all need to make another trip out here soon.

Plus you’d come much earlier when the sun was still high and swam some. Using the ebb and flow of the ocean to erode your worries and stress. Then you’d sprawled out on your beach towel on your rocky perch and let the sunset dry your skin before you slipped back into your shorts and tank top and allowed the peacefulness to swallow you.

You startle slightly when there’s a loud, echoing boom and color flashes across the sky. You’d been lulled into such calmness and had almost forgotten why you were out here to begin with. You watch the sky passively, watching the occasional flash of color and shapes as the firework people warm themselves and the crowds up. You know the real show won’t start for at least another 45 minutes, knowing the tell by the fact that there’s still the faintest of traces of blue on the horizon.

Your feet continue their idle movements in the water, until something slick brushes the bottom of your foot and you scream on instinct, quickly jerking your foot free from the water. You back up an extra foot from the edge, to the safety of the blanket that you spread across the rocks, just as an extra precaution. You’re sure that whatever touched you was probably just seaweed. Maybe a plastic bag or some other trash that someone carelessly threw into the ocean. But anything touching you in the water when the water is nothing more than an inky black expanse is enough for you to decide that’s enough soaking for the night.

Just as your heart rate is returning to normal, something slips over the edge of the rocks where you’d just been sitting. It gleams in the moonlight, silver, smooth, and shiny, as it makes a cursory probe at the edge, like it’s looking for something. It’s probably no thicker than your thumb and you deliriously wonder if octopi are even capable of coming up on dry land, let alone the reason why one might be coming up right now. Though the longer you stare at it, the more you realize that it’s far too smooth to be from an octopus, completely devoid of the telltale suckers.

You shuffle a little further away. You really don’t want to move too quickly, not if you don’t know what it even is and if it can follow you or how fast whatever it is. But your slight movement only seems to catch it’s attention and to your growing horror, it lashes out almost faster than you can see and wraps itself firmly around your ankle. You scream again, because aside from that, there’s really very little you can do out here all alone with it on you.

Any attempts to free yourself prove futile, the slender appendage is far stronger than you would’ve expected from such a jelly-like creature. It gives its own experimental tug, one that pulls you marginally closer to the water before you once again scramble backwards. It lets you and that just serves to freak you out more.

Then, a few more tentacles appear over the edge of the rock, watering dripping and spreading out around them and then there’s a… hand? You frown as a seemingly human hand, if perhaps a little ashen looking, plants itself on the rock right alongside the tentacles. The fingers flex for a moment before something, somehow even more surprising, appears. A fairly human face, or at least up to the eyes as that’s the furthest it raises, peaks up over the edge, gaze quickly zeroing in on you. Your heart stutters in your chest as your eyes meet and its pale silver eyes gleam like its tentacles. It’s hair is wet and slicked back and, though the locks are currently water logged and a few shades darker, it’s clearly also a similar shade of silver as its tentacles and eyes.

Another hand joins the first along the edge of the rocks and for a moment it doesn’t move at all. You stare at it, you know it’s definitely bigger than an octopus now. You don’t think you could take it. It’s dead silent aside from the gentle lapping of the waves and you’re terrified to move for fear of what it’s going to do to you. It gives the slightest of tugs on your ankle and when you don’t budge it finally lifts itself from the water.

You try to back away again, but it’s grip keeps you in place and you let out a startled scream when another tentacle darts out to wrap itself around your other ankle. The… monster… sits on its knees at the edge for a moment after pulling itself from the water.

It, he?, looks almost perfectly human. Skin a dimmed golden shade, frame small but packed with lean muscle… apparently well endowed in human terms. You jerk your gaze quickly away when you realize just where you're staring. Your life is on the line, now is not the time to to fucking ogle the monster and think about if he can get hard like a human and if it possibly gets bigger. You force yourself back to his face, cheekbones prominent and lips plush as he seems to be looking you over as well, though his gaze continually seems to dart behind you, brows knitting in confusion.

His eyes appear almost human except that it doesn’t seem like he has a pupil, silver swallowing the whole of the iris. It’s slightly disconcerting. His tentacles shift behind him, drawing your attention to them finally. The ones not on you shift behind him restlessly, never seeming to settle. A thin one drapes itself on his shoulder before slithering across his skin to the other side, forming a strange sort of living necklace. It’s hard to pin down an exact number with them constantly moving, but there seems to be a lot and they seem to come in primarily two sizes, thinner ones like the one draped around his throat and wrapped around your ankles and thicker ones easily the width of 3 or 4 fingers, you try very hard not to compare their girth with what you had glimpsed between his legs.

You’re trying to formulate a plan to get away when there’s another boom of a firework, bathing everything pink for a moment. And what you’re certainly not expecting is for the way the monster startles at the sound. The tentacles around your ankles tighten almost painfully and then before you can completely comprehend what’s going on, you’re being pulled closer to him. Once you're close enough, he’s leaning down over you and you squeeze your eyes shut, unsure of what’s about to happen but positive that it’s unlikely to be good.

But nothing happens and as the seconds stretch, you slowly peek an eye open. His face is almost directly above yours, but it’s not you that he’s looking at. Instead, he’s studiously scanning your surroundings, looking tense and on edge. When you glance at the way that he’s leaning over you, you realize that he seems to be almost… protecting you? Which only serves to confuse you more.

Deeming there to be no immediate threat, his gaze turns down to you and you freeze now that you're faced with him this close. He blinks down at you before his lips part and he makes a strange sort of clicking sound, but you’re more focused on the sharp teeth revealed when he makes noise. Definitely sharp enough to tear into you and eat his fill.

“Please don’t eat me,” you squeak out, hands coming up to cover your face.

There’s silence for a moment before a deep chuckle sounds from him. You peek between your fingers at him and there’s a smirk stretching his lips.

“Oh, I have met your kind before.” His voice is soft and surprisingly melodious given the higher pitch the clicking was.

You can’t help the words that slip from your lips. “My kind?”

His lips twitch and he tilts his head. “Humans. Are you not human?” He pushes himself up slightly to inspect you again. “You do not appear to be one of my kind.”

“There’s more of you?”

His gaze darts around. “A few.”

You swallow, about to speak again when another firework goes off. He startles above you and drops closer once more, body pressed firmly to yours as he glares around, trying to discover the source.

You’d laugh at his constant startling if your throat wasn’t suddenly so dry. His chest is every bit as firm as it looked and you can feel every shift and ripple as he looks around. It’s incredibly distracting. Why did the monster have to be hot? You squeeze your eyes shut again. You should not be thinking about how it’d feel to touch the monster with your hands. Or how other parts of him would feel.

He shifts off of you slightly. “It is safe for now.”

You blink your eyes open, frowning at him. “Safe? What are you talking about?”

His head tilts and he reminds you of a confused puppy. “Do you not hear the loud noises?”

A giggle slips out and that seems to perplex him further. “No, no. I do. It’s just… Have you not been around here before?”

“I have always lived here.”

“Have you… been on land before?”

His brows pinch and there’s the slightest of flushes coloring his cheeks a deep blue-gray. “I come up here every year.”

“How have you not heard them before then? They’re just fireworks.” You see the streak of a new one and point to it quickly, drawing his attention to it just before it reaches its peak and explodes in a sparkling cascade of gold. “They’re for entertainment. They’re not dangerous.” You pause. “Okay they are. But not at this distance. The only people who could possibly be in danger would be the ones firing them.”

“Fire… works?” He mumbles, sitting back on his haunches as his face remains tilted towards the sky even though the phosphorus has long since burned out. “Will there be more?”

You slowly push yourself up, cautious of what he might do but his focus remains firmly upwards. “Yeah, they’ll keep shooting some singles off for a little bit longer then they’ll start the big show.”

He says nothing else and you wonder if you can use the time to slip away before you realize that he still has two tentacles wrapped around your ankles. There goes your chance for escape. At least he doesn’t seem interested in eating you. Yet.

Another firework goes and you watch his eyes widen as he follows its trajectory up until it stops in an explosion of color and sound. But you’re far more taken watching the childlike glee on his face and the way the colors gleam on his skin and tentacles. The colors add another level to his already stunning looks, making him look far more ethereal and angelic. He grins as he watches and he looks much less like a terrifying monster. Though you worry what will happen once the fireworks stop and there’s nothing to distract him. Maybe when the real show starts he’ll be so engrossed that you can slip yourself free of the tentacles and make a quick and quiet escape.

You shake your head, looking away and up at the sky too. There’s nothing much you can do right now with their grip on you still too tight, so you might as well also watch the show. The fireworks are slowly starting to increase in frequency and he seems to squirm in excitement the closer together the pops of color come.

“Do you have a name?” You ask suddenly, looking back over at him. Maybe you can text Namjoon or Taehyung and tell them that if you disappear to look for something with that name. Probably Taehyung. He’d be more likely to believe that you’ve been taken by a monster than Namjoon. He’d probably ask if you’ve drank or smoked anything. Get too drunk camping once and claim that bigfoot tried to kidnap you and you never get believed again.

He doesn’t answer right away, doesn’t even seem to acknowledge that you spoke. But then his lips purse and he looks over at you for a moment. “Jimin.”

“Jimin?” He bobs his head and turns back to catch another firework going off. “My name’s Y/n.” You murmur, unsure if he’s even interested.

It hurts a little that he didn’t seem interested in you back, but you suppose that you don’t know whatever his monster customs are. And you really shouldn’t look too deeply into why it hurts that a monster doesn’t seem interested in you. That should be a good thing. It means you have a better chance of getting away.

There’s a long break in the fireworks and Jimin’s lips push out into an adorable pout as he turns to you with sad eyes. “Is it over?”

You laugh and shake your head. “No. It’s actually just getting ready to get started. Now it’s the big show. You thought it was good before. Just wait.”

He gives a simple nod and turns back to the sky, content to wait patiently for the rest. Silence descends on you both and you feel like you should be more worried about the tentacle monster sitting in front of you. But Jimin seems harmless enough, he certainly hasn’t tried to eat you or anything and that’s certainly got to count for something. He seems far more interested in the fireworks than in you now anyway.

You’re just starting to relax when something cool and damp brushes the skin of your lower back. You freeze, back stiff as whatever it is tentatively touches the warm skin before slithering further up your shirt. You bite down on the urge to scream, you don’t want to startle Jimin again. Just because he was protective before, doesn’t mean that a scream coming from you would produce the same result. And before you can twist to see what is crawling up your shirt, the tentacles around your ankles slide a little further up your legs, ends timidly probing along your flesh as they go.

Another tentacle, one of the thicker ones, slides across your arm, wrapping once around your wrist and nestling the tip into your palm. The cool sensation is bizarrely familiar and it takes you only a moment to realize that whatever crawled up your shirt a moment ago is another tentacle. You’re about to speak when a thin tentacle trails up your arm to rest against your shoulder, gently tracing your jaw and neck.

You swallow. “Um, Jimin?” All you get is a hum in response. Does he not realize what’s going on? “Jimin? What’s happening?”

Either your words or tone finally pulls his attention to you and when he sees his tentacles wrapped around you, he flushes a pretty blue. He scoots away, working to encourage them to release you, but this time of year they always have a bit more mind of their own. He makes an irritated clicking noise when they don’t move.

The one in your hand seems to respond to his sound though you’re not sure if it’s the way he wanted it to or not but it tightens around your wrist slightly before becoming… slicker?

You look at it, a weird mix of horror and maybe a little arousal. Maybe you shouldn’t have watched so much hentai when you were younger. You look back up at Jimin, at a complete loss. “Jimin?”

Jimin looks incredibly embarrassed, burying his face in his hands and making more distressed clicking noises. Probing tentacles aside, he looks adorable all flustered like this. A few of his tentacles wrap around his wrists and shoulders, patting his skin soothingly but that only seems to make him more distressed.

The tentacle at your back has reached the tie to your bikini top beneath your shirt and is prodding at the knot with interest. You don’t know what to do to stop the distress you can practically feel coming from Jimin. The tentacle in your hand squirms slightly, drawing your attention back to it. You swallow, sneaking a quick peek at Jimin as you do the only, seemingly illogical, thing you can think of right now and you close your hand around the rowdy tentacle and squeeze.

The result is instantaneous and certainly not what you had expected. Jimin moans. So then even if he’s not in control, he can still feel through them. Interesting to know. Jimin’s mouth hangs open for a moment before his gaze is meeting yours and you suddenly feel like maybe that was the wrong thing to do.

There’s simmering fire in his eyes as he tries to speak as calmly and evenly as possibly. “I told you I come here once a year, correct?” You nod and he continues. “I come here to mate.”

You blink at him, mind completely blanking out. “M-mate?” You hate how high your voice sounds.

He nods, sending a glare at the tentacles touching you. “When I saw you here, I had assumed you were one that I have spent the mating period with before.”

“Fuck, did I ruin your hookup?”

“Hookup?”

Your body heats with embarrassment. Maybe if you ask nicely, Jimin will let you go drown. “Whoever you were supposed to meet here. Did they not show up because I was here?”

He’s quick to shake his head. “I did not have plans. But sometimes if someone is near they will stop by. If they are not, I can take care of myself.”

The image of Jimin splayed out on the rocks by himself, tentacles sliding across his skin, wrapped around his cock, drawing more of those noises from him shoots straight to your core. Your pussy clenches around nothing and your hand accidentally tightens around Jimin’s tentacle again, drawing a gasp from him.

“I apologize for not warning you sooner. The fireworks distracted me but it appears that it did not distract them.” He gestures to his tentacles. “Give me a moment and I should be able to free you so you can leave.”

His eyes slip closed and your gaze drags over him, startling slightly when you realize he’s started to grow hard too. You feel crazy that the first thing you think is how badly you want to touch.

This is such a bad idea, but before you can stop yourself or second guess, you’re speaking. “What if... you didn’t though?”

Jimin freezes, but the tentacles seem to grow more restless at your words. Another thick one stretches the distance between you both to rest against your thigh, slicking your skin wherever it touches.

“You do not know what you are saying.” He grits out.

The tentacle in your hand squirms and you give it a small squeeze, maintaining eye contact with Jimin as you do so you get to fully enjoy the shudder that ripples through him. “I um, think I have a pretty good idea what I’m saying.”

He shakes his head, hair falling over his eyes. You didn’t think it would be so hard to convince a tentacle monster that you wanted him to fuck you. This was by far the stupidest thing you’ve ever done. For all you know, he could eat his partner afterwards. If you live past this encounter, no one would ever let you live it down. If they even believed you. Your gaze drops involuntarily back to his cock and you find that he's fully hard now. And it’s almost a little intimidating how big he is, longer and thicker than anything you’ve ever taken before. You don’t think your fingers would be able to wrap around the girth. But any apprehensions you think you’d feel normally are nowhere to be seen, all you feel is overwhelming want. You want to try to fit him, to feel the burn as he stretches you out. You want to taste and you want him to absolutely ruin you.

Unsure of any other way to convince him that you do want this, you switch tactics. If you can’t convince him with words, you’ll just have to show him what you want. You release the tentacle in your hand, though it keeps itself wrapped around your wrist, and move to remove your shirt. Seeming to know your plan, or maybe just through a stroke of luck, the tentacle that has been exploring your bikini top seems to have discovered how to undo the ties and as your top hits the ground beside you, your top slips to your lap.

His eyes dip to the scrap of fabric in your lap before they trace slowly back up, expression worryingly blank. You belatedly realize that this might not even be a good signal to him that you do want this. You don’t know what others of his kind look like, if any of them look anything like you. For the most part, he looks human enough, you’d think that maybe this was enough, that maybe this is at least sort of familiar to him. You feel suddenly self conscious, this was such a dumb idea. You really shouldn’t let the horny brain lead. You’re just about to cross your arms to cover yourself when the tentacle that had been on your thigh slithers up your stomach to sit between your breasts.

You glance at Jimin and his eyes seem darker, jaw clenched tight. His tentacles seem to grow more agitated behind him and the ones around your ankles tighten to tug you closer, both to your surprise and apparently also Jimin’s. He flushes, staring down at you with wide eyes as your thighs come to rest against his.

The tentacle on your chest squirms and Jimin’s gaze drops to watch. Your gaze drops too, intending to look at the tentacle currently writhing around on your chest and smearing slick there but you only make it halfway. Because Jimin is now fully hard, thick cock curving up towards his belly and the sight of it has you enraptured. He looked big when he was still soft, but now fully hard, or at least what you assume is fully hard, he looks positively massive. The skin of his cock is the same muted tan of the rest of him, the tip almost blue-gray, close to the color his cheeks turned but deeper in color, and it’s leaking more silvery looking fluid. You wonder if it’s the same thing that is leaking from his tentacles.

Jimin shudders and it takes only a moment for you to realize that the reason is because a thin tentacle has wrapped itself around the base of his cock. It makes you want to touch too. So tentatively, you reach out, gaze flicking between his cock and his face to gauge his reaction and giving him more than enough time to pull away.

He watches your fingers brush against the tip, dragging a smear of slick further down the shaft but he makes no move to stop you. He lets out a shaky exhale and, emboldened by the noise, you wrap your fingers around him. Or you at least try your best to because his girth keeps your fingers from meeting.

Jimin makes a rumbling noise and then there are two more tentacles massaging at your thighs, working their way up until they meet the edge of your shorts. They only probe along the fabric for a moment before slipping beneath and continuing their exploration towards the apex of your thighs. They trace the edge of your bikini bottoms before one of them presses against your pussy through the thin fabric.

You gasp and Jimin’s gaze is back on your face, attention wholly focused on you as his tentacles press again, but this time with a little more pressure. One happens to brush past your clit and you jolt, a moan slipping from your lips and the tentacles seem desperate to recreate that reaction as they narrow their focus to your clit.

Jimin groans again and his hands come up to cup your cheeks, his tentacles all stilling for a moment. He waits until you look up at him. “Are you sure? It will be harder to stop once we start. Are you positive you can handle it? I do not mind spending the time alone.”

It’s sweet how concerned he is about you. But now that he’s started, all you can think about is being fucked by him while his tentacles play with every inch of you. You squirm back slightly and he seems to take that as rejection, if the flash of disappointment you catch on his face is anything to go by. You quickly undo your shorts, tugging them down your legs, assisted by his tentacles once they reach your ankles.

He swallows and you watch as the tentacles from your ankles relocate to your thighs to keep you spread wide as the two that had been in your pants resume their work on your clit, now free of the hindrance of cloth. You bring your slick fingers to your mouth and keep eye contact as you lick them clean. It’s salty like the sea, but rather than the bitterness of cum, his has a hint of sweetness to it. It’s slightly addictive.

He stares at you for a moment and then he’s making another clicking noise and the tentacle that had been around your wrist unwraps itself and slips between your legs to join the other two already there, though it bypasses your clit to circle your dripping hole instead.

“Needy.” He coos, though you’re not sure if it’s directed at you or his tentacles. Maybe both.

He shuffles in close again, seemingly content to just watch his tentacles play with you. You whine, you like the feel of his tentacles, but you want him to touch with his hands and lips too. You want more. Maybe the needy was directed at you after all. He glances up at your noise, watching the way your mouth drops open as his tentacle finally wriggles it’s way into your pussy. It’s firmer than you expected from touching it, but still much more malleable than a cock would be. But it’s softer nature allows it greater freedom to explore your walls as it moves slowly in and out of you, certainly a different experience for you but you definitely can’t find it in you to hate it when it can reach all the right spots inside of you easily.

You reach out, grabbing the first part of Jimin you can grab, his arm, and tug him insistently down on top of you. He complies easily, seemingly curious as to what you want. You wonder if he’s ever kissed a partner before, if that’s something that his kind does. You hesitate and Jimin immediately notices, head tilting in curiosity.

“What is wrong?”

You’re gasping before you can formulate your question, the tentacle inside you having quickly found your g-spot and is now making sure to rub it with every thrust, sending waves of pleasure rippling through your body. Jimin’s head dips down and his nose rubs against yours.

“Are you okay? I have never been with a human and so I am unsure of what might hurt or bring pleasure. Please tell me if they are hurting you.”

He looks so sweet and it makes your heart stutter a little. You tilt your head, capturing his plush lips in a kiss. They’re warmer than you expected, giving the cooler temperature of his tentacles. It takes him a moment of inaction before he seems to catch on to how to kiss back. He makes a small noise when your tongue brushes his lips but he easily parts them for you. His sharp teeth skim your lip and it leaves you gasping into his mouth. He seems pleased with the response and he trails his lips across your jaw and down your neck.

“You did not answer my question.” He murmurs, teeth gently teasing the skin of your neck, mindful of their sharpness.

His tentacles are driving you mad, bringing you so close to your orgasm but seeming to know exactly when to slow back down to draw it out even longer. “What… question?” You gasp out.

“Are you okay?”

You’d scoff if the tentacles around your clit hadn’t started circling in tandem, winding the coil in your belly tighter. “So… so okay… Fuck, Jimin, are you sure you’ve never been with a human before?”

He pulls away from your neck enough to look down at you, a pleased smile stretching his lips. “I have not. Am I doing good?”

You nod enthusiastically, hands tangling in his hair to pull him back in for a messy kiss. He makes a pleased sort of clicking noise in the back of his throat and his tentacles speed up. And this time when your orgasm draws near his tentacles keep their speed rather than slowing again and you cum, back arching off the blanket as your pussy convulses around the tentacle. His tentacles continue their ministrations and Jimin pulls away to stare down at where his tentacle disappears inside you with wide eyed wonder.

He groans as he watches with rapt attention. “Does it do this every time?”

You squirm, oversensitivity quickly setting in as his tentacles refuse to let up. The borderline painful feeling robs you of words to tell him to slow down and give you just a moment to breath. The tentacle inside of you swells and then everything grows a little slicker as Jimin chokes on a gasp. You struggle to reach out to grasp any one of the tentacles, to just lessen the sensations ravaging your pussy just a little, but before you can even make contact, another tentacle is wrapping around both wrists and dragging them above your head.

“J-Jimin, please…”

Jimin pays you no mind, tentacles working faster under his focused gaze and it doesn't take long for you to be thrown into a second orgasm, though it feels almost like the first one never ended. You cry out, much too loud even if the beach is seemingly deserted right now. You shudder as your orgasm crests and Jimin’s tentacle seems to stiffen inside you before you feel suddenly wetter and stickier and full. The tentacle slips out of you after a few weaker thrusts and a small gush of thick liquid follows and the tentacle suddenly seems much less enthusiastic than its counterparts. Fuck, did that mean…?

“Jimin,” you whine, waiting until he finally tears his gaze away from your dripping pussy. “Do… do your tentacles cum too?”

His head tilts in confusion. “Come?” He thinks for a moment before realization seems to overcome him. “Ah. Do you mean do my tentacles also release?”

Embarrassment creeps over you. Something so clinical shouldn’t have you aching to be filled again when you just came twice and apparently already filled. You nod shyly.

“Yes. They also release. It is to give the best chance of a successful mating.”

You swallow, eyeing the tentacles behind him wearily. “Do they all have to?”

He shakes his head, a hint of amusement dancing in his eyes. “They do not. Only the big ones release. And from those, they do not all release every mating.”

You feel equal parts relieved and disappointed, though you know that you should probably question your disappointment. But you’ve already come this far, no reason to start questioning your potentially bad decisions now.

He tilts his head. “Does it bother you? They do not need to do it near you if it makes you uncomfortable.”

You choke, unsure how to respond for a moment. This whole situation should really terrify and appall you. But you only find yourself growing hotter at the idea of being used by his tentacles and covered in their cum. You chew your lip before giving a small nod.

His eyes trace over your face before he seems to light up and he leans down to press a kiss to your lips. “Does the thought of that arouse you, sweet? I must admit, most of my previous partners were less than enthused about that aspect of mating.”

You groan, wanting nothing more than to bury your face in your hands in shame but Jimin’s tentacles keep your hands studiously bound above your head. Even his own kind didn’t like it. Why were you so weird? He giggles, leaning down to brush your nose with his own. His face is set with a kind smile, but his eyes still dance with mirth and lust.

“I find it very arousing that you like it so much. Tell me what you are thinking about, sweet.”

To punctuate his words, another tentacle slips between your legs, rubbing along your sticky slit. You moan and Jimin’s eyes shine with fire. “I… was thinking about you fucking me and filling me up and leaving me all messy.”

He smirks. “I can do that, sweet. Just ask.”

“Jimin, please, fuck me… Fuck, ruin me…”

Jimin’s grin turns positively feral, sharp teeth on display. And for a moment, fear ripples through you as Jimin looks truly like a monster for the first time since he’s surfaced. But then his tentacles shift around him, eager for their chance to touch. Jimin shoos the thick tentacle away from your pussy, the ones around your thighs assisting him in situating you how he wants. He runs the tips of his cock through the mess left there by his tentacle and a pleased chirp leaves him.

“You are already so full. Do you think you can take more?” He purrs.

You nod and his cock presses against your entrance. He presses just the tip in and he stretches your pussy more than the tentacle did. You gasp, breath robbed from you as the stretch borders on too much. But Jimin seems to sense it and pauses with just the tip inside, allowing you all the time to adjust to his massive cock.

Jimin’s hands skim up your thighs, the tentacles resting passively on your clit once again coming to life and the jolt of pleasure has you squirming on Jimin’s cock. His hands rest on your hips, gripping them with bruising strength to keep you from moving. You whimper at the casual display of strength, at the way that he seems to not even be trying to hold you still while his tentacles slowly circle your clit to get you to relax.

Two other tentacles slip up your body, pressing against your breasts and kneading at the flesh experimentally. The sensation is different, while the tentacles don’t have the surface area the way a hand does, they are capable of moving in ways a hand simply can’t. They grope at the flesh, exploring and testing the limits. One brushes past your nipple, causing you to gasp and suddenly both are on the pebbled buds, playing with them to draw even more noises from you. Their motions mimic the motions on your clit and pleasure sparks across your body once again.

The tentacles shift slightly, long bodies draping down the sides of your breasts and then they press the mounds inwards, forcing the flesh together around the tentacle still resting on your sternum. Jimin grunts at the sudden pressure around his tentacle and your gaze drops to watch with fascination as the tentacle starts to thrust into the tight space, silvery tip gleaming with each press through.

Your pussy clenches at the thought of it slipping a little further up and into your mouth, of tasting that salty, sweet slick from the source. A high pitched noise sounds in Jimin’s throat as his hips stutter forward at the feeling of your pussy tightening around him and you moan as he slips a little further into you, stretching you just a little more. Now though, the stretch makes you ache for more, the burn finally passed with the aid of the tentacles playing with your clit and nipples and slowly pulling your pleasure back to the surface.

You really need him to be completely inside of you and when you dig your heels into his ass to try to get him to move, he seems hesitant. His tentacles, however, seem more than thrilled at the idea and more than happy to help you in your pursuit. The ones around your thighs tighten and pull you closer, until Jimin is buried to the hilt in the clutch of your pussy. The noise is filthy, the mess from his tentacle spilling out around his cock to smear on your thighs and drip down your ass.

Jimin goes rigid when he’s fully inside you, eyes trained on where you’re joined. He seems transfixed by the sight of your cunt swallowing down every inch he has. Your whine has his head snapping up to look at your face, drinking in the way you’re moaning. The tentacle between your breasts slips a little further up, tip bumping your chin once before it’s shifting to your lips. Your tongue darts out, swiping through the salty fluid. Jimin shudders, hips flexing where they press into you and you let your mouth fall open for his tentacle to slip in.

Your tongue swirls around the tip and it squirms, pushing in further than you expect and causing you to gag. It pulls itself from your mouth with a pop and you frown at it’s loss before shifting your gaze to Jimin, who seems to be glaring at the tentacle like it did something wrong.

“Jimin?” When he looks at you, you give him an amused smile. “It’s okay. It just takes me a minute.”

His head tilts but the tentacle makes its way tentatively back to your mouth, hovering until you open again for it to slip back in. It goes a lot slower this time, keeping its thrusts shallow. You hum encouragingly, tongue pressing and massaging the underside as it moves and the tentacle slides a little deeper. You gag only slightly this time, much more prepared now, and after a few thrusts you grow used to the intrusion and it can slip just a little bit more down your throat.

Jimin watches for a moment before groaning and then he’s pulling his cock out until just the tip remains before slamming back in. You moan around his tentacle, noise muffled as it delves further down your throat. It stays there for a moment and the lack of oxygen has your head start to spin. Your hands twitch where they’re still bound above your head, but before the real need for oxygen comes and you have to try to alert Jimin that you need to breathe, the tentacle is pulling out, switching to shallow thrusts while you get a quick break to breathe. The sudden rush of oxygen has you feeling nearly euphoric and you can only hope that the tentacle does it again. When you whine around it, it pushes back into your throat and the rest of the whine is muffled by it’s girth.

Jimin’s fingers flex against your hips as he watches and feels how much of his tentacle slips into the waiting warmth of your mouth and with a moan he starts fucking into your pussy with a quick pace. Your hands grab at the tentacle binding you, needing something, anything, to ground yourself as Jimin fucks you senseless. You feel wholly overwhelmed at the way his cock fills you, the way the tentacles swirl around your clit, your nipples and breasts, at the way the one in your mouth begins to stiffen up.

The tentacles shift on your breasts, kneading the soft flesh once again before pinching at your nipples. You moan around the tentacle in your mouth and it gives a shudder before flooding your mouth and throat. You choke slightly, jerking your head slightly at the sheer volume being released into your mouth, far more than you can handle. Spit and cum drip from the corners of your mouth as you struggle to swallow and the tentacle pulls itself from your mouth before it's finished, painting the lower half of your face even more in its silvery essence. Jimin’s eyes gleam at the sight, seeming to become even more frantic with his thrusts.

“J-jimin…” You whine, voice rough from use. You’re not entirely sure what you’d finish that statement with.

“You are doing so well.” He coos and the praise has your mind going fuzzy. “You look so pretty like this.”

He reaches up, sliding a hand through the mess on your cheeks before letting his hand drag the mess back down your body, leaving a shiny trail down your throat, in the valley between your breasts and across your stomach. He slams in particularly hard and you cry out, voice echoing across the empty beach and ocean, much too loud but you no longer care.

Jimin glows golden, the light haloing him and your fucked out mind is sluggish to make sense of the sudden color change. Then you remember why you were out here to begin with and you make the connection just as the resounding boom of the firework follows just after the shower of color. The fireworks show must be finally starting because the next second Jimin is bathed in blue, then pink.

But as quick as your attention was taken by the colorful shadows splashed across Jimin’s beautiful face, it’s taken back as he shifts suddenly, hands leaving your hips to push your thighs together as he continues to fuck you. Your calves come to rest on one shoulder and Jimin uses the new position to fuck you even harder.

Something slick drags along the crease where your thighs are pressed together and a second later a tentacle is pushing into the tight space. Your skin tingles where it presses into your skin and with every thrust it makes through the tight press of your thighs, it bumps the tentacles on your clit. Jimin presses a kiss to your leg and you feel the breath leave him as his tentacle speeds up and he hisses.

The sensations are nearly overwhelming, to the point that you almost miss the new slim tentacle kneading the flesh of your ass. It delivers a pinch to the skin that leaves you gasping and you’re much more aware of it as it runs along the seam of your ass. You squirm, or at least attempt to, because between the tentacles restraining you and Jimin’s firm grip on your thighs, you’re left nearly immobile as you get fucked. The tentacle slips a little further up, gathering some slick before it’s dipping back down to prod at the tight ring of muscle of your hole.

You shudder and if you could move, you’d press down onto the tentacle, force it to fill you because you need it as much as you need Jimin’s cock in you. “Fuck, please, don’t tease…”

Jimin’s face is set in concentration and you don’t think he heard you, except a second later the tentacle breaches your ass. You moan, glad that it was a smaller one to start. It thrusts tentatively, growing bolder as your noises raise in pitch and then a second slim tentacle is joining, slipping past the tight ring of muscle to thrust in counterpoint to the first.

Jimin’s thrusts slow, his head tilting back as he pants. He looks like a sculpture, so beautiful that it aches a little. Something that people should look at and marvel over. A moan slips past his lips as the tentacles in your ass speed up a little, taking some time to also shift apart and spread you open even more.

“You… are endless…” Jimin breaths out. It sounds reverent.

The tentacles slip from you and you have no time to mourn the loss before they’re being replaced by one of the thicker tentacles. The stretch hurts a little, but with so many other things happening to your body at the same time, you’re quickly distracted from the ache. The tentacle stills anyway, allowing you time to adjust to its thick girth.

“You are so full of surprises.” He says, head dropping forward once more to let his gaze rake over your shuddering figure.

The tentacle in your ass thrusts in response to Jimin’s words and when you don’t indicate any pain, both pull out and thrust roughly back in. The tentacle between your thighs and in your ass thrust opposite Jimin, keeping you full and stimulated when Jimin pulls out.

“Please… Jimin please, fill me up, you said you would…” You feel slightly delirious with need, every thrust of his tentacle adds extra pressure to your clit and you feel so close to cumming, teetering on the edge.

Jimin gives you no verbal response, only that of him pressing your thighs together a little harder. A few more thrusts of the tentacle between your thighs has you clamping down on Jimin’s cock and the one in your ass as you cum, body shuddering as the tentacles and Jimin continue to thrust. You squeeze your eyes shut, vision nearly whiting out entirely as your orgasm slams into you. The tentacle between your thighs lasts only a handful more thrusts before its stiffening and releasing, splattering your chest, belly, and thighs in the silver cum. It gives a few weak final spurts before slipping back through your thighs as Jimin parts them once more.

His cock twitches as his gaze falls over you messy form, the normally silvery liquid lighting up in splashes of color with every new explosion that happens above you both. He’s never seen a more beautiful sight. One of his hands lands on your thigh as the other bats his tentacles away from your clit, an action that you're grateful for for only a moment because he quickly replaces them with his fingers. You arch and cry out, jerking your hands with enough force that you seem to startle the binding tentacle and it releases you. Your hands wrap around his wrist, tugging futilely at it to get him to let up.

You moan his name desperately, trying to squirm away from the sensation as his tentacles keep you held close as he continues to fuck you through your overstimulation.

“Can you do that for me one more time? You feel so good when you do that, sweet.”

You whimper. You want to say no, that it hurts a little and that you really don’t think you’re capable of another orgasm. But the pout he wears stops you and you find yourself nodding without even thinking about how you’re going to get past the too much feeling currently overwhelming your body.

Jimin gives you another feral grin, eyes roving over your figure as his fingers work quick circles around your clit. For no experience with a human, he’s an incredibly fast learner. He seems to know your body better than your ex had and the two of you had been together for almost 2 years.

The tentacles on your breasts move to collect some of the slick covering you, smearing it around your nipples as the pinch and play with them, the slick adding a new layer of feeling to the actions.

“Come on, sweet.” Jimin purrs as his cock seems to swell ever more and the tentacle in your ass starts to stiffen.

Another rough thrust and a few twists of his fingers and you’re cumming again with a cry of his name. Your pussy and ass convulses around him and Jimin lets out a series of clicks and chirps as he finally cums, flooding your pussy and ass with more silvery slick. There seems to be a never ending stream from his cock and after a few moments, pressure on your lower stomach makes you look down, groaning at the sight of your slightly distended belly.

Jimin makes a contented noise, rubbing gently over the swell. “You would look so beautiful swollen with my children.”

His cock gives another twitch and a feeble last spurt of cum and Jimin and his tentacles seem to deflate. His chin presses to his chest as he takes in slow, deep breaths. The tentacles all slowly slip from your body and you mourn the slight warmth you lose. Another few moments pass and then Jimin is gingerly pulling his cock from your abuse pussy and gazing over your whole body with almost reverence.

You feel too exhausted to do much more, but you can feel his cum dripping from you, forming a puddle beneath your ass. At least you're next to the ocean for easy clean up. If you had the energy to do that. Maybe in 5 minutes… Or an hour. You can’t even feel your legs right now. You’re pretty sure you’d just drown.

Jimin stretches out beside you, arm coming to wrap around your middle, seemingly unbothered by the fact that it lands in a mess. You blearily realize that his tentacles seem much smaller now too. His head tilts and you realize that he’s watching the fireworks again. Like he didn’t just fuck you within an inch of your life and leave you ruined for anyone who comes after him.

You watch in silence for a while, endeared by Jimin’s ohs and ahs as he discovers new types of fireworks, the different shapes and effects that can happen.

“Jimin.” You call softly. His nose brushes your shoulder in response. “Will… Nevermind. It’s stupid.”

Jimin pushes himself up enough so that he can look down at you, frown marring his pretty face. “What is it?”

You fidget, suddenly hating that you’re naked and still covered in him. You glance over at the water.

“Do you wish to go in, sweet?”

It’s an easy out and you don’t feel strong enough to ask the real question yet, so you give him a simple nod. He grins, scooping you up and gracefully sliding you both into the water, arm wrapped tight around your middle to keep you afloat.

Colors flash around you as you stare into Jimin’s eyes, every color reflected there as well. Before you can second guess yourself, you lean forward and press a kiss to his lips. He lets out a surprised noise and then giggles when you pull away.

“Do you wish to go again?”

Embarrassment fills you and you shake your head. “No. Um…” You take a deep breath. You can do this. “Will I see you again?”

Jimin’s face is unreadable for a painful stretch of time, though you’re sure it’s only a few seconds before he’s grinning. “I find myself quite taken by humans. I could certainly use a guide.”

You grin back, pecking him again. “First lesson, when humans like someone and want to spend time with them and go on dates, they give them kisses.”

He hums, giving you a kiss of his own, just a little deeper than yours. “I think I quite like kisses.” Then he grins and it’s full of mischief. “I think fireworks are my favorite though.”

You snort, prodding him with a finger. “You sure it’s the fireworks you like?”

He makes a thoughtful noise before nodding. “They make you luminous, sweet.”

#bangtanarmynet #btsguild #kwritersworldnet #ksmutclub #magicshopnet #btswriterscollective #bangtanhq #bts x reader #jimin x reader #bts smut #jimin smut #bts fanfic #jimin fanfic #jamaisjoons summer collab #tsb event 2020 #tsb collab 2020 #monster au #tentacle au

2K notes · View notes