#QUESTIONABLE tag for whatever this is

[vypridae]

first time drawing the Biblically Accurate Boys TM was a few days ago and i just forgot to post them so here you go

[scribz-ag24]

treasure town played telephone with the story of how dusknoir joined grovyle's side and it's getting out of hand

[flixiastar]

Happy twf again but the

[ponpox]

He just wants to know if it's on fire.......

[amaranthdahlia]

shout out to mothers whos children grow to be twice their size lol

[i-got-da-rubes]

“Thank you for asking what nobody else did.

What not even I considered.”

Drawn with my non-dominant hand.

[nyancrimew]

yknow it's possible to actually read articles i post on here instead of adding notes that make it clear you've only just barely read the headline at best

[kaleb0x]

hey shout out to this dilemma I had a few weeks back. Never came back to this. Forever a wip and arguably this is funnier

[boykingscourt]

boykingscourt can GIF???

[dizzybizz]

how long since the last magma dump

[agender-john]

Is this a safe space to share my candy timeline self indulgent rewrite?

Emphasis on self indulgent?

[mikkolas]

long time no post... i've had this shit ready to post for like a week. and should've done it then. but uhhh but uhhhh but uuhhhhhhhh. what's the deal with airplane food am i right. | <- omgggg prev

[ofswordsandpens]

imagining a house of hades au where percy encounters luke in tartarus...

[neverpathia]

so, tumblr, here's a little cheated x thorn thing I wrote. (I say 'little' as if I didn't spend three whole days on it. It's pretty long. Take heed.)

i don't exactly know if it's one of my best works? and it feels a little like multiple ficlets condensed into one, but hey, productivity is productivity.

just know that cheated and thorn are wholesome, flawed, adorable, bumbling little guys, who hurt and yet heal.

“Must it be so fucking cold?” The Cheated jerked his hand aside sharply, flinging some snow off the back of his palm—and nearly tossing that hand away with it. He narrowly caught the appendage in mid-air, muttering curses as he haphazardly jammed it back onto the bloody stump. 

The Thorn chuckled, her scarred fingertips playing with a barren tree-branch. “There’s trees and grass around. I could weave a coat for you.”

His face flushed—no, he wasn’t flustered or anything, pah, must’ve been the damned weather—and he quickly turned away. “There’s no need. Really.”

She twirled around to face him, tangled hair drifting with the winter winds. “Come on, then. We’re almost there.”

They crossed a couple of meanders, punctuated by someone’s constant grumbling and the amusement of another. 

The Thorn got bored of the journey at some point, and before he knew it, Cheated’s complaints were cut short by a snowball smack in the face. His grimace turned to a grin as he pelted one back at her. She retaliated in turn. He tried to strike, but she ducked in time. She got him as he was packing snow into another ball. It went on like that. 

Her smile was playful, catlike. He’d stared at that smile for too long, and his heart raced, and something hitched in his throat—until a fresh hefty dose of snowball interrupted his simpering.

And they chased each other about the Endless Woods, until Cheated was breathless and his legs were both on the verge of falling apart again, red flesh sloshing against flesh. 

Thorn propped him against a rock, fixing his limbs back in place. “I’m sorry. That…wasn’t what I took you here to do.”

He leaned back, trying (and failing) to wink at her. “It’s all good. No worries, I swear.”

She giggled. “That wink was nasty. Did Opportunist teach you?”

“Should’ve known better than to trust that smarmy shit-load.” He shrugged—

—or tried to, but she held his arm in place. “Ah, no. Not yet.”

Cheated rolled his eyes. “How much longer?” 

“When you finally decide to stop complaining and let yourself rest.”

He cracked a smile. “Bloody hell, we’ll be at this rock for ages.”

She laughed. “Hey, at least you won’t have to see that ‘smarmy shit-load’. Trust me on this one.”

But it took a little less time than ‘ages’ before the Thorn took his hand in hers, scratches and scabs brushing past each other, and led him across the snow again. His strides were brash and wide; her silent footfalls never strayed far. 

Eventually, the snow gave way to grass. He toed a close-set cluster of grass-blades, a dent left in the clumps of snow that flanked it. “Huh. What’s this doing here? Are the woods changing again or something?”

“There.” She pointed. 

He squinted into the distance, before he fully registered the sight and gaped in dismay. “No fucking way. A path in the woods.”

Her smile was subtle, but sneaky all the same. “Where it ended, no…where we began, again.”

His gaze followed the path. It snaked uphill, and he could barely make out scattered red blossoms, further at the end…

He nearly choked. “This one? The exact same place?”

She sidled closer to him, giving his hand a squeeze. “I told you, I did have something to show you.”

The Thorn had to yank him back pretty hard before he could recklessly scramble up the hill. 

“No-no-no-no-no—” He nearly fell flat on his face, but Thorn’s grip on him never faltered— “how? This isn’t—the woods are endless, endless, there’s a crap ton of cabins just lying around—how did you find this one?” 

She ascended the path, at times in unsteady stumbles, at times with easy grace. “I’ve been wandering for a while.”

She tripped, but Cheated held her steady—except he teetered and went off-balance himself, and the two of them soon went careening into the dirt. Lesson learned: floundering around does not prevent you or your companion from getting a mouth full of hill. 

She leant over him, a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Peeling his face from off the floor, he spat out a glob of something unidentifiable. “Are you okay?”

She shook some mud off her face, off faded burns and pink-white wounds. “I didn’t expect the climb to be this...tough.”

“Nor did I,” he admitted. “Hell, I didn’t pay much mind to the climb myself the first time.” 

As she got up, her smile was wan. “You weren’t this cut-up the first time, were you?”

“Damn getting cut-up. I survived it better.”

Her tail gave a little flick, curious. “What do you mean?”

“This one was way worse. I was a lot more worried about, I don’t know, the fact that I’d just gotten stabbed—”

As soon as the words left his mouth he knew, he knew that he’d fucked up. 

Of course. 

Of course she’d know that he got stabbed, she’d been the one who stabbed him, they’d built that trust here so precariously, so in spite of all that had happened between them…and he’d remind her of that, here, now?

But Thorn only gave a tinkling little laugh. “Well, I do know, and I can’t blame you. I was a little preoccupied with getting stabbed myself.”

Oh. Well, he did stab her too, sort of…but she didn’t seem too mad about it. Cheated felt himself exhale. “That wasn’t my fault, by the way.”

She shrank back and covered her mouth in mock-surprise. “Oh, I definitely never knew that. It’s totally not like you’ve said that before, perhaps just once—”

He groaned. “Hey, now...” 

“—oh, maybe you said it twice, no, a thousand times already—”

“Come on, it can’t have been—”

She leant forward and placed a single, dainty finger on his lips. “You grouchy little thing. Of course I know. But we’re over that, aren’t we?”

He had forgotten how to breathe. Or move, or speak. Or keep the blood from rushing to his cheeks again, too warm, too fast; or to keep his face from betraying just how much he felt, and could never help but feel—

The Thorn skittered ahead. “Follow me. You do want to see this, don’t you?”

“H— Now, how dare—” He finally remembered words again. “How-dare-you-do-something-like-that-not-fair-what-the-hell-you-little-not-fair—”

She winked at him. 

And he had to admit that it was a lot better than his shoddy attempt from earlier.

They trudged on. 

They fell against the soil and stones, again, again. She got up. He flailed about. She picked him up by the back of his collar and nearly considered carrying him the entire way uphill, but he protested so hard that she mentioned something about tossing him back down instead. Oh, she couldn’t have meant it (surely?), but it shut him up nonetheless.

They reached the top together. Red poppies in full bloom lined the path, in rich clumps and heavy clusters. Thorn bent down, pawing at the flowers. 

“Huh. I knew there were poppies.” Cheated paused. “But I never really asked why.”

She gingerly reached for a single blossom, handling it by the stem. “I don’t know either.”

“No?” He lowered himself to the ground, sitting cross-legged beside her. “I guess I always thought you were behind them somehow.”

“Maybe I was.” She gently tilted the poppy, angling it, red petals tinting light in the diffusing dusk. “Subconsciously, perhaps. I never actually saw them, not until I…until we left.”

The Cheated shifted in his seat, closer to her. “I saw them when I came, I think.”

He paused.

“I just didn’t know what they meant.” Cheated gazed at the flower she was handling. The petals were the same colour as her wounds, and his own. “If they really did mean jack-shit.”

Wordlessly, Thorn snapped the poppy from its stem. “Maybe they didn’t.”

“Ah.” He had no idea how to respond. “Well, fuck that then—”

“Shh.” She lifted the flower between her thumb and forefinger, tender as a lover’s embrace. With her other hand, she probed the side of his head; his choppy matted locks, the slashed wings he had in place of ears. 

“What are you doing?” he asked, but he never drew away.

She raised the poppy-flower to his temples. “I trust you now,” she said simply.

 The Thorn slipped it into the Cheated’s hair, placed it snug above a wing, and fixed it with a few deft motions; an eternity softer than the hues of sunset before them…before, at long last, she pulled away. 

“Maybe the flowers don’t mean anything.” Their eyes met, her green against his gold. “Not by themselves. But they can be so much more, to us.”

“What…” He felt the side of his forehead, where the flower was. The petals were soft beneath his coarse, calloused fingers. “You…You—That was…”

He let it linger for a few beats. 

She retreated a few steps, eyeing him. “It does suit you.”

“I—” He shot to his feet. Air hitched in his throat, and if he hadn’t blushed enough earlier, he certainly did now. A lot. “That was—you devious little—! That—the flower—you—it…”

“That flower.” Thorn rose with both hands clasped behind her back, smirking just subtly. “Me.”

“Bah.” He let his hand fall from the flower. “You know, Thorn?”

“What is it?” Her scars, her burns, those delicate features, those eyes crafty and cautious; they caught the fading sunlight and played with it, danced with it and bathed in it. Just like the flower she had picked, soothing soft, better somehow.

His eyes fell away from hers. “I don’t know why I find you so damn pretty. But I do. And you are.”

She stepped closer to him, came before him, next to him. “It’s a little hard.” Her hand slipped into his, fingers intertwining. 

“What is?”

She turned, and her stare fixed steely. “To say ‘I love you.’”

The ruins were still there. 

“Um…” Cheated followed her gaze. He shot her a quick glance before looking back, hesitant. “Fuck, I don’t know if it feels right here. Should we enter?”

The wood was just as charred and broken as he remembered, the brambles and thistles that overran it just as wild. But it never deteriorated: there were no new splinters, no unfamiliar growths. Only the same encroaching vines, creeping in place, ever-threatening to devour something that once was whole. Something that had given up. Something surrendered to nature.

And yet it remained frozen in this little enclosure of flowers and grass.

She reached out, eyes closed. She took a deep breath, and another, until her arm flinched back and uncertainty flickered over her face. 

His grip on her hand tightened. “Something’s wrong, right?”

“Not really…” She took a wary step forward. “No, we should go.”

Cheated raised an eyebrow. “Sorry, but all the signals I’m getting right now are telling me that we should, in fact, not go. Look, I know a good wager when I see it—”

“Do you?” Thorn was already walking, leading him along. 

He scowled. “Maybe not, but this is…Thorn, this is where you were bound. I remember it, and I remember it well, but just now—I’m sorry. This isn’t just where we met again for the last time. This is…this is a fucking place of pain.”

Her face fell. “I know.”

“Then we don’t have to go.” Gently, he tugged her hand back.

She shook her head. “The wilds speak to me. They were more welcoming last time—they bent to my will.”

“And now they don’t?”

She didn’t meet his eyes. Fuck. 

“Thorn.” He swivelled around to face her and gripped her shoulders. “I know you probably brought me here to show me this place, but I’m not trusting this place, you know how it tried to hurt us—”

“We go.” A resolute growl lay beneath her tone. 

“You can’t be serious.”

She was silent for a long while, and then she sighed. “I really am sorry. I don’t want to hurt you. But maybe it’s wrong because it’s supposed to be. Maybe we need it, the closure it brings us, whatever it is.”

Cheated winced. “Well, I sure as heck don’t like the feel of this place. But, alright, if you insist.”

Thorn didn’t smile.

They slipped past the empty door-frame and descended in near-silence. The only sounds Cheated could hear were their breathing—hers slow and measured, his erratic as ever—their footsteps, and the faint rustling of the prickly roots that now writhed and shifted. 

“Is this your doing?” he asked about the wilds’ movements, after nearly tripping over an unwelcome bramble. 

She never looked up. “I can’t tell anymore.”

One step. Another step. Hand in hand. Wordless. Another step, another step. Cheated really didn’t like how grim it all felt, how dreadful. Like a bad hand played before you send your deck to shit.

They reached a narrow clearing. Flanked by vines, tangled and knotted into shape, leaving behind some hollow mimicry of a basement. More thorns crept over the ground, blanketed it fully. A few lay limp and lifeless, some thick and some thinner, all severed and scabbed over where the Cheated had cut through and set the Thorn free.

Thorn knelt and pressed both palms over her former prison. She shut her eyes.

“Careful,” warned Cheated. “The thorns are, well, thorny.”

Despite everything, she gave him the slightest smile. “Of course I’d know.”

He wanted to kick himself. Of course she would, these very thorns bled her. 

She frowned, opening her eyes, and jerked a hand back as if it had been stung.

“Woah, hey.” He leant down, though he wasn’t sure how he could help at all. “Are you sure you’re okay? Really—”

“Yes,” she snapped. “Wait, no. No. Something’s wrong.”

“Tell me,” he urged. “We can leave, we can always leave, you don’t have to deal with this, not now and not ever—”

“This is where you cut me free.” She stood. “This is where we embraced. You released me. We healed.”

“And it’s also where you were hurt!” Cheated couldn’t understand. What was this? What was going on at all, what was he supposed to do, what the fuck would the right move be in this situation? “It’s also where…I hurt you. You hurt me. Let’s just get all of this over with.”

“I hurt you,” she echoed. “The roots are lonely, yearning. They retain where we forget. I read them, and they show me pain…” 

She sighed.

“But you trust me. You do trust me.”

“Yes!” Could anything be truer? “No shit, now, if you told me to jump off a cliff, you bet your life I’d jump off that fucking cliff—”

“Would you?” Her tone was wary. “Is it still the same?”

He didn’t know. What could she mean? “I don’t know, nothing’s changed, I just—it’s gotta be the same, dammit, what else—” It couldn’t be like this, everything they built couldn’t be this fragile, it couldn’t be like this, so sudden…He slumped. “Do you trust me? Have you ever?”

She didn’t speak. 

He didn't know how to read that expression, and it—it troubled him. 

And why did he fucking ask that? Why, just why? Why didn't he just let it slide, why didn’t he just grumble a little and move on, why didn’t he ever think before he fucking spoke, god-damned loser, why…

The Thorn's voice came out in a single whispered breath. “I want to.”

Why was it like every sentence he spoke was the wrong choice? “Good. Now let’s just—”

Cheated was abruptly cut off when something knocked him back into the ground, his mangled body tumbling down, hands closing around his throat, claws digging into rough skin, of scars closed and re-bled. Her eyes were wide, suspicious, faltering, keen—

“You trust me!” She yelled, straddling him, her maimed chest rising and falling with every rapid breath. “Don’t you—you don’t and you never have, but you do, you do—”

“I—” he gasped, even as he could feel every rough scar on her hands digging deeper into the skin of his neck. “—what are you—Thorn, it’s me—don’t…”

“And how long will it take before I return to my nature?” Her voice trembled even in...no, this wasn’t anger, this couldn’t be anger, it couldn’t. “How long before I need to save you from myself?”

He couldn’t speak. But this couldn’t be it. This couldn’t…no…not again, they couldn’t return to the hurt, the lying and hatred and schemes…

“I’ll make you trust me for as long as you live.” She whispered, leaning down, her lips almost brushing his. “I’ll make sure you never think about betraying me ever, ever, ever again, never in your life. And…and I won’t do it again. I can’t hurt you, not if I never get the chance. This is kind.” 

She strangled him, harder, tighter. 

“I’m being kind. I have to be.”

Gold eyes searching, pleading, beseeching into green. 

“I can’t…hurt you again. Don’t struggle…don’t hurt—”

And suddenly, everything let go all at once. He gasped, he could gasp. Something horrible, weighted, heavy had cleared away. Her hands fell back. The claws retracted with a soft click. She stood and knelt again, bending listless over him, like a poppy-flower close to withering away. 

He rolled over and retched and coughed, chest roiling and heaving as the air rushed in, deep and all too welcome. 

Only tension remained. A breath. Then the Thorn shifted, veering aside, wrapping her tail around herself. 

“I can’t be sorry enough,” she said. She gazed at him, something between loving and remorseful, so remorseful. “Cheated…”

It trailed off into the quiet. 

He sighed and pulled himself up. He dusted himself off. Sure, his limbs were still falling off every which way, but at least he didn’t get decapitated. But everything felt loose, about to rip apart. 

That wasn’t the point. 

He walked over to the Thorn and offered her a hand. “You coming?”

She only looked up at him with those mournful, cautious eyes. “You don’t understand. I—”

“Oh, I do know that getting strangled fucking sucks!” He snapped. “I hated it, what the fuck? I’m done with this damn load of bullshit, I’m fucking done, who the hell—Fuck this, fuck all, and fuck you, and why would you even think of going here, and what the fuck told you that strangling someone was a fucking good idea, and—and…”

She only looked down at her hands, still as stone. 

He cursed himself. Whatever the right move was, this certainly wasn’t it.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I guess—you didn’t mean to do that. I…yeah, I think I understand. I didn’t mean to lose my shit with you either. Really. I didn’t mean that.”

There was no response. 

“Sorry,” he tried again—

“No,” said Thorn. “I’m the one who should be sorry.”

This wasn’t going anywhere.

“How long will it take before I return to my nature?” Cheated slid onto the unfurling vines, coming to a seat beside Thorn. “It’s not like I’m all sunshine and rainbows myself, you know.”

She buried her face inside her palms, littered with pink scratches. “It’s…you’re different.”

“How? It’s just as you said. You hurt me, I hurt you.”

“Yes.” She brought her knees close to her chest, huddling into herself. “But you stopped it. You gave me a chance.”

He scoffed. “We started it, and you were only protecting yourself. It wasn’t fair, not for you.”

“Such a righteous heart.” Her smile was wry, but it flickered false. “I guess we really are the same.”

There was another quiet moment, one of careful hesitation; a tentative dance over a bed of thorns.

“Do you think I wouldn’t forgive you?” Cheated finally said.

Thorn looked away. 

“Okay. I forgive you.” Blunt, stupid, but there. It was out. “Not that it felt very nice, but I—you said it yourself, you were trying to save me in some twisted way. I’ve got to respect that.”

“But you were hurt—”

“So? We all play a bad hand from time to time. Does that mean you straight-up lose the whole game?”

She pursed her cracked lips. “I might. And when I lose…what I stand to lose now, it terrifies me.”

“Alright.” He drew himself closer. “Look at me, Thorn.”

She didn’t budge, not at first. 

“Look. At. Me. You have eyes.” 

It was slow, but at last she turned. Shameful, tense, wavering in her uncertainty. 

She saw him, drank in the sight of him: all sliced-up flesh, grisly scars, a tattered suit smeared with grime. He wasn’t a pretty thing.

And still the poppy bloomed snug in his hair. Red as roses, red as blood, red as a love borne and bathed in pain.

“Damn you,” he spat, “if you think I need saving from you. I know bloody well what it means to trust and lose, thank you very much. And damn you if you think I’d stop caring about you, damn you if I’m not sitting through it and waiting, waiting, even if you cut me and bled me and slashed me up and skewered me a billion times—well, damn the pain, I’ll still be here…but you never would. ‘Cause you’re too good for that.”

She fidgeted with a single tendril from her hair. “I wouldn’t be so confident about that. Especially not…”

She paused. 

“I don’t ever want to go back,” said the Thorn. “Not to the lying and the hatred and the schemes.”

“You’ve changed.” His gaze hardened. “The old you would never take anyone out because she was scared of what she’d do to him. She’d lure him off and leave him to rot.”

“Mm.” A genuine smile, finally, played across her gaunt face. “I would. But dead is dead.”

“And gone is gone. Like the Witch, who’s now the Thorn, and if she’s the same little monster, I’m wrapping myself up and heading straight to Razor’s door.”

That made her chuckle. “So you really think I’ve changed.”

“No shit. I…” And there, there were the words that were never easy for him to say. “I love that. And I love you.”

“Oh?” It was gradual, almost imperceptible, but something lightened within her poise. “Then I must say…I do. Love you too, I mean.”

“Let’s go.” Cheated couldn’t help himself from grinning like a total idiot as he stood. Thorn laughed, and he swatted at her in jest. What ensued was a disgruntled Cheated and a smirking Thorn both scrambling to reattach his elbow.   

Hands clasped, the two of them left the thorns behind and stepped out into the ebbing day.

[lynnlyrae]

Jun didn’t give us Vincent in 20th anniversary collab because she knew these two together would be unstoppable / unsafe / unstable

just so you know, originally I intended to type only “unstoppable”, but t9 kept suggesting other words and they made sense so~

[buwheal]

Hello, Spamton!

How's life? Also, do you have any opinions on the Addisons? (Pink, blue, orange, and yellow)

If so, what do you think of them?