#Smoke's name has nothing to do with his color. his name is Smoke because his fire has gone out

[churchydraws]

Smoke time :) he's very tired but he cares for his baby brother so much

Smoke's main rays are basically the default model for a Daycare Attendant since he never got the chance to get custom ones in Unwanted Siblings. Same reason he doesn't have the smaller thin rays. His colors are a much more dull orange compared to Blaze.

Mist is a slate grey-blue color since he didn't get the chance to even customize his colors cuz Smoke wanted to get him and himself the hell out of the bunker as soon as possible.

[moonstruckme]

babe you’ve got me obsessed with doctor remus!

can i request a drabble where reader gets into like a car accident and has been taken into a&e with like mid/severe injuries and remus has been assigned to treat her?

if not then that’s fine! love your work bae 🎀

Hi gorgeous! Thank you for requesting (I'm obsessed with him too) :)

cw: hospital

doctor!Remus x fem!reader ♡ 716 words

The nurse leaves, and you think you might finally get more than five seconds to yourself but then the curtain pulls back again, a tall doctor taking her place. You’ve been able to feel your heartbeat pulsing through every inch of you since you’d stumbled out of your smoking car, and this new man doesn’t help matters. 

He’s lovely. With a face smattered with warm freckles and silvery scars and a mop of brown hair that looks like it’s never once been brushed, this is the kind of person who would fluster you on a normal day. Now, you don’t even know the word to describe the effect he has on you. 

He has to ask his question a second time before you hear it. 

“Have you had allergic reactions to any medications?” 

You blink. It still feels like reality is moving at twice its usual speed. You don’t know if it’s just you shaking, but it feels like the whole room. “Uh, no. Sorry.” 

“That’s alright.” The doctor’s voice is businesslike but kind, with a Welsh lilt. He flips a page on his clipboard. “Anything we weren’t able to address in the ambulance? Any new aches and pains?” 

“I—I don’t think so.” 

He lowers the clipboard slightly, looking at you. His eyes are a lightish brown color, like honey left too long in the sun. “Has anyone talked you through grounding exercises?” 

You feel your brow wrinkle. “What?” 

He almost smiles. “I’ll take that for a no.” He sets down his clipboard on the edge of your bed, pulling up a rolling chair and sitting down in front of you. “I’m going to have you breathe with me for a minute, alright, sweetheart?” 

It’s not in your nature to contradict professionals, but you feel your head shaking as if from somewhere outside of yourself. “Why?” you ask. “Aren’t there more important things?” 

“There are still things left to do,” he allows, seeming unaffected by your questioning, “but you’re stable. It’s nothing that can’t wait for a few minutes, and it’s important that you’re calm so you can think properly.” He takes your hands in his, ignoring the odd padding of the splint around your broken wrist and holding your fingertips instead. “All I need from you is for you to copy my breathing. Can you do that for me?” 

You nod. As he starts to talk you through it, your eyes begin to sting, an effect of his gentle tone or the respite your body has been craving or both. Your doctor’s expression doesn’t change when he sees the silver lining your eyes, but he gives your fingertips a light squeeze. 

“Okay, in for eight this time,” he says in that lulling voice. “Good job, just keep at it.” 

You manage to breathe in for long enough to satisfy him, and after the exhale he drops your hands. 

“Well done,” he murmurs, mindful of the small cuts on your face as he thumbs away your tears. “Are you feeling a bit better?” 

“Yeah,” you answer honestly. The word comes out like a sigh, and his lip curves softly at the plain relief in the sound. 

“Happy to hear it. You were right earlier, there’s still plenty left to do,” he says, expression sombering somewhat as he looks at you intently, “but if you ever need a break, you tell me or someone else, okay? I don’t want you suffering in silence.” 

“Okay.” You wet your lips, feeling much more solid than you had a few minutes before. The world has slowed to its regular speed. “Sorry, I don’t think I got your name.” 

He smiles, which is altogether too charming for a place like this. It makes the long scar going across his cheek crinkle slightly and you could swear his eyes lighten a shade. “Well, see, that’s how I know you weren’t really with me when you came in, because we’ve already been introduced.” His expression lets you know he hasn’t taken any offense, but your face still heats at your impoliteness. “It’s Doctor Lupin, but you can call me Remus.” 

Something in you rings at this new knowledge, like a tuning fork has been struck. Remus, your consciousness echoes quietly. 

His smile softens. “We’ll probably be seeing a lot of each other today.”

[queenie-ofthe-void]

“Led Zeppelin? Never heard of them,” Steve lies, like a liar. Of course he’s heard of them, thinks maybe Hop’s mentioned them before. Doesn’t really know the band well, and probably definitely couldn’t name a song. But the comment serves its purpose, and the trap is set.

Eddie calls it the Zep Campaign. Every day they’ll listen to one album, and Steve will pick his favorite song from each. Eight days for eight albums. On the last day, they’ll narrow it down to one song to rule them all– because apparently even Led Zeppelin likes the Mordor books Dustin doesn’t shut up about. 

Each day, Steve struggles to pick a favorite. Day four isn’t bad– doesn’t mind a song that is actually called Rock and Roll, which is just a lazy title in his opinion– but they’re only half way through and the songs are all starting to sound the same. An endless stream of too-fast guitar melodies and weird, wobbly sounds he’s sure he’s never heard before. The vocals are his favorite part, but the lyrics are vague and confusing.

Long story short, he’s not a fan.

But this growing thing between him and this ridiculous metalhead is new, fragile. So if it’s important to Eddie, it’s important to Steve. 

“Stevie, we really don’t have to keep doing this,” Eddie concedes. It’s day eight, the final album, and he thinks even Eddie might be desperate to listen to something different. “You’ve listened to every other album and honestly this one is the worst. They were all on drugs, and this isn’t even their sound ya know? Like it’s not even real metal.”

And honestly, Steve does know. He’s been listening to this band for eight days and yeah, all the songs sound the same. But these ones are different. Softer. He’s made it this far, and he’s nothing if not persistent for the people he loves.

Sprawled out on the floor next to the boy he likes, passing a fading joint back and forth, he thinks he can suffer a bit longer. 

“No Eds come on, we’re halfway through anyways. Just flip it over and we’ll smoke while we finish.” Eddie huffs a sigh, but Steve can see the slight uptick of his lips, reminding him of why he’s doing this. He flips the record and crawls back, presses himself flush up against Steve’s side.

The next song is long, too long to keep his attention. They burn down their joint and Steve leans heavily onto Eddie’s open chest. He gets lost staring at the vinyl art. A guy dressed in a fancy white suit sits alone in a dive bar, the only splash of color against a dull background. The bartender looks gruff, like the rest of the bar, making the man stand out even more. He wonders if that’s how he looks posted up at the Hideout during Eddie’s shows. Wonders if he looks just as out of place in Eddie’s life as this man does, even though he looks comfortable there too. 

Eddie shifts his arms around Steve, bringing him back to the present. The song has changed and Steve feels the slow melody wash over him.

“Wait,” Steve cries out, flailing up and out of Eddie’s arms as he registers the new song. It’s soft with a steady beat. It’s got synth-- the sound Eddie told him he likes in pop music. This song isn’t loud and chaotic like the rest. The voice is soothing and the lyrics are mostly simple enough. It’s different, and he can’t believe it but–

All of my love, all of my love

all of my love to you, oh

“This one. I like this song. Like actually like it.”

Eddie sits up and stares at him. He can see the dramatic shock and annoyance on Eddie’s face. But it’s doing nothing to hide his broad smile and shining eyes. 

“Steven. Stevie. Baby, sweetheart, this absolutely cannot be your favorite Zeppelin song. Out of all the songs on all the albums and all the hours of poetic melodies I’ve forced upon you, you choose the most non-Zep Zeppelin song.” Steve laughs sweetly as he watches Eddie fail to keep the glee out of his supposedly annoyed voice.

The cup is raised, the toast is made yet again

One voice is clear above the din

“This song isn’t even metall!" Eddie screeches. He rants and raves, waiving his arms as he regales Steve with all of the reasons he should absolutely not like this one particular song. He's shining with happiness, dial turned up to a hundred and it's all aimed at Steve. He can't help but to gaze back fondly, enraptured in the adorably obnoxious spectacle.

"It’s all synth, almost no guitar because Page didn’t even write this one! He wrote all of them except two songs, Stevie, and of course that’s the one you chose. No one who knows good music even likes this album. It’s not even metal music and honestly I almost didn’t show it to you, that’s how bad it is!” They're both giggling, leaning falling slowly into the other's space. Facing one another, their feet tangled together, Steve twists and pulls on Eddie's rings. Just to touch.

“Well, maybe that’s why I like it,” Steve snarks, taking his hand. “Plus it’s a love song.” Daring to reach out.

All of my love, all of my love, yes

All of my love to you

Eddie’s smile dims a bit, softens at the edges as he grows serious. “It’s not a love song Stevie, not like that.” He’s looking at Steve but he isn’t. Looking past him into the back of his thoughts. “The lead singer, he wrote it for his son. His kid died of some kind of bad illness while he was on tour. Didn’t make it back in time.”

He pauses, and Steve waits. Knows Eddie has more to say, hoping his patience will pay off. Eddie’s sight refocuses and he heaves a heavy sigh. His eyes glisten as they lock onto Steve.  

“My mom used to sing it all the time. While she was cooking, or putting me to bed, or pulling weeds in the garden. She’d sing it constantly. Hell, she didn’t even know all the words, but she’d still try and sing the interludes– ya know, the music between the lyrics.” He laughs lightly, a stray tear just barely hanging on. Steve tightens his grip around Eddie’s hands and presses a kiss to his knuckles. A silent sign of gentle support and encouragement. 

“Sounds like a love song to me,” Steve whispers. Leaning forward, he presses a kiss to his forehead and pulls Eddie into a tight hug. 

All of my love, all of my love, to you now

“A love song just for you, from both of us.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've always headcanoned that Eddie loves Led Zeppelin, because he plays guitar and loves metal and reads Lord of the Rings so of course he would.

[morgluvsconnie]

eren yeager is actually a hopeless romantic and he doesn’t know it.

no matter how hard he may act or seem, he loves you way harder than that. he buys you anything you want, as an apology, when he’s bored, when you’re sad, almost every week you have to tell him constantly not to buy you something, but he really doesn’t listen, and he doesn’t care.

the amount of necklaces, earrings, bracelets, shoes, clothes, and snacks that you’ve gotten from this boy (and more than that if it’s a special event.) is insane. everything you’ve ever touched in the store, looked at online, or even just called cute, he’s gotten it for you.

and he just loves the thought of you. he can talk about you from the time he wakes up to the time he’s getting ready for bed. he loves everything about you. your hair, your eyes, your body, skin, lips, the way your nails are always done with a color you let him pick, the way you’re just completely comfortable around him, everything.

if he hears your name, he’s quick to brag about how much of a good girlfriend you are instead of how much he gives you.

“yeah, she just…” then he’d click his tongue. “ion know. it’s just sum bout her that make her different from everybody else. like, the way she act… and how she be smilin’ and shit.”

he’s so adorable when it comes to you.

you’ll catch him admiring you all the time and when you did, he’d try to play it off like there was something on your face.

before you, he was all “why i need one hoe if three want me?”

now a girl can’t even look at him. if a girl approaches him, he wouldn’t even think about anything beyond getting her the fuck out his face.

and he don’t care bout nunna that ‘go through phones’ shit, cus he really has nothing to hide. the worst that would happen is you finding an embarrassing middle school picture of him.

but other than that, it’s really nothing.

and no, he isn’t clingy. but he can’t be from around you for a long time. say you were too tired to go out, and he just wanted to go smoke wit his friends. he’d text you from time to time to make sure you’re okay, then go about his business.

give it like three hours, then that’s when he starts checking the time over and over again because he wants to make sure he has enough time with you when he gets home before you both go to sleep.

but he was just ready to get home so that you could scratch his head for him, do face masks (which he didn’t even like, he just liked how you’d rub his soft face every time you peeled it off, minus his forehead hairs ripping out), and then match pajamas for a random movie night.

every day, and every night was something different with you. that’s what he liked.

he also liked the fact that you and him were each others longest relationship (since tenth grade).

so even through all the arguments and ups and downs in your relationship, the only thing he knew, was that he would love you no matter how many times you said you didn’t need a gift, no matter how many times you’d tell him he’d already kissed you three seconds ago, and no matter how long he hugged you when he was only going to the kitchen.

you were really his best friend, and he wouldn’t change that for the world.

[lidiasloca]

more than this (azriel x reader)

summary: after Azriel and reader had a summer together, the last thing Az was expecting was to face her again. (angst).

previous chapter, next chapter

chapter seven

⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄☆

Days passed. Countless days passed. Nothing happened in between them. You woke up, you ate, and you went to sleep. That was it. Emptiness.

Two months ago, thought, it were different. After leaving Helion’s palace, an unbearable pain reigned your heart. You woke up, you cried all day, and you went to sleep. But now you had no more tears left.

Just emptiness.

And constant banging on your head.

Or is it a knock on the door?

Another knock.

Another knock.

You rose from the ground, ungracefully and dizzy. “Go away!” you shout as you walk to the door of the old and poorly lit apartment you had rented. But the knocking doesn’t subside.  

“What do y-” But your words fade as you see the person knocking.

“Hi,” she smiles faintly. “It’s been a long time, Y/n.”

You open your mouth. You close it. And you try talking again.

“Elain?”

Her forced smile fades into an empathetic look. Her expressive face has always been easy to read. Her next words are harder to understand, though. 

“I really hated you, you know. Utter, raw hate. And maybe I still hate you a bit. But… despite that, you deserve to know more about Azriel.”

She hates you. Understandable. She wants to talk about Azriel. That makes no sense at all. 

When you finally manage to word something, you ask her, “Know what?” 

“Well - could I come in first? It’s freezing here. And this may take a while.”

You let her in and guide here to the couch. Your mind is blank as you prepare some tea for the both of you. Is still blank when you start mindlessly listening to Elain talk about the weather, your family, and other things you can’t quite hear because your head is full of one clear scream:

Azriel!

“Elain,” you cut her off mid-sentence. “Please, just - what is it that you really came here for? Earlier you said something about Azriel.”

“I know. I know,” she replies softly. She inhales deeply. “I don’t know where to start...”

It was a sad day. Rain kept pouring and I felt lonely in my room. Only the drops of water accompanied me. 

Or at least that was until I saw them. Azriel’s shadows. And like smoke warns you about fire. His shadows only meant he was next. 

“Do not hide,” I commanded, no longer vulnerable against he who had broken my heart.

Then, he appeared, wearing black clothes, as obscure as his semblance. Sad eyes watched me back. Guilt and tears mixed in their dark color. 

“I am not hiding, Elain,” he said, softly as a whisper. “Not anymore.”

The pain in his voice moved me. He sounded miserable. He looked miserable. 

I walked to Azriel. Yes, I was mad at him. But that didn’t dismiss the love I still had for him - the worry I felt for him. 

The moment I laid a hand on him, barely a touch, he broke. He moved to hug me desperately as he cried and begged for forgiveness.

He confessed what we both knew I knew. That he had been with Y/n that summer. And that he still loved her after it. He said he wished he hadn't hurt me. And that he was sorry. So sorry.

He kept crying for so long it shocked me. He never showed me his feelings, but now, here he was, crying and sobbing as if he had never been touched by sadness before.

Once I accomplished to soothe him a bit, he told me what had happened. He told me trough sobs he had found his mate. He didn’t have to tell me her name. I knew. 

I had always known. Since the very first moment he had returned home after summer, I had known there had been someone. And I knew she was much more for him than just a someone. Even if he lied to me. Even if he lied to himself. 

But a bond… No lie can conceal the mating bond. 

Not even a lie to believe there is one. But he had tried to believe for so long that he would find one in me. In us. 

I felt like a disappointment every day that passed and the bond didn’t snap. I felt like that was the only way to prove myself worthy of his love. Had he had known we weren't mates earlier, I knew he wouldn’t have wasted a second on me. 

That was Azriel. A male obsessed with finding a mating bond and feeling unloved. It was a vicious circle he had entered. And I had jumped to the spiral with him… 

“And so did I,” you say.

Elain's eyes find yours in surprise when she hears you, like as she had been lost in her story. You know that feeling quite well. Memories with Azriel cut bone-deep and are always there to stay and come to the surface whenever they want. 

“And so did you,” she breathes. Then she chooses silence, still reeling from her confessions. 

You have a feeling that day she’s talking about was the day Azriel had left. The day the bond had snapped. The day you told him… 

You inhale deeply. Trying to think of something else.

“Y/n,” she calls. “The truth is, I hate you. You must have guessed that of course; I know I was rude to you when we first met. I pretended I didn't know anything so I could go on hurting you without consequence." She sighs and adds, "And I also hate him. I wish I didn’t, but I hate you both. He’s broken my heart, and you are the main reason as for he has done so. But, I had been thinking these months. About everything. But, especially, about where this anger comes from.” 

You watch as she wipes her tears. And your heart breaks for her. But, you can’t do anything, so you just continue listening to what she has to say. 

“And the truth is - you’ve just gotten what I always had wished for. A mating bond. It’s the only thing I’ve always wanted since I met Azriel. I hated the thought of being tied to anyone before that. But with Azriel, I wanted nothing else. And now…now I will never have that. Because you have it.”

Silence breaks in through the truths she’s sharing. And you both just sit with them like that. Guilt and sadness filling your heart. 

You let Elain take her time, and even though she claims to hate you, her kind eyes tell you she’s thankful for giving her a moment. 

“And… well, that though I had for many weeks. That you shared the bond with him and I didn’t. And to go through those weeks, I tried to use something he’d told me. That you hadn’t accepted it. That you hated him. I tried to convince myself that that made us even. I didn’t have the bond, but you, in a way, didn’t either. However, that didn’t do anything to make it better for me. It even made it worse. You had what I would’ve killed for, and you just - didn’t care. You had let him go. And well - I guess that is why I’m here.”

“I don’t understand. You’ve come here because I didn’t accept the bond?” you ask surprised and shocked.

“Yes. And because I want you to accept it.”

Your jaw nearly drops, and you have to close your eyes as you try to make some sense of this. Azriel cheats on her, and she wants for him to have his mating bond accepted by the one girl he’s cheated her with. What -

And not only that. Does she not know how much damage he’s done to you to?

“Elain, but-”

“I know. I know. That day, he told me everything. I know what he did to you. I know you didn’t know about me. That doesn’t make me hate you less. But it also doesn’t mean you don’t love him still.”

“What, but I-

“You deny it?” she asks, her eyebrows accusingly risen.

Of course you don’t. You will never deny loving him. And so you stay silent. 

“Listen, I know you are angry at him. A lot. But not half as much he is with himself. He hates himself for what he did to me and for what he did to you. And I know exactly how hard it will be to forgive him, but, you have to. It’s as simple as that.”

“No, no it’s not,” you whisper, almost on the verge of tears. 

“It is. You are mated. You love him, and he loves you. And…” She swallows and adds, “He doesn't love you because you are mated, he loved you long before that. Even when he thought it was supposed to be me. It was always you for him. It is that simple.”

Your cheeks are wet and your eyes hurt from shutting them so tightly when you feel her hand on your arm, caressing you like as she held love for you. You think how you could have ever hated this girl.

“Elain.”

“Yes?”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry for me. Only be sorry for yourself if you let anger ruin the most precious treasure the gods have given you.”

“The mating bond.”

She cocks her head. “No.” You look up to find her eyes. “A soulmate. Someone that, with or without that bond, is made for you. And Azriel is.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, oh,” she laughs softly.

“But, I don’t think he wants it anymore. I told him some things that-”

“Y/n, listen. Azriel loves you still just as much as you love him. No matter what he did. No matter what you said, your souls are tied. And your love hasn’t gone anywhere. Do not waste it.”

And her clear words make it dawn upon you. 

A revelation; You have to go find him. See for yourself that your love still has a chance. 

You smile at her, and she returns your smile softly.

The path to here has been difficult and blurry. What Azriel did is not completely amended. His mistakes have been done. And so are yours. But you are ready to forgive, if he is ready to be better. And you know he is. Because now, with this love you let yourself feel for him, the path seems easier and clearer. 

You know you both have things to solve, and talk. But love will be there with you every step of the way. 

And not only love.

The mating bond. 

“Do not waste what so many wish for when they look up to the stars.”

HEY! IF YOU LIKED THIS, YOU CAN CHECK OUT MY AZRIEL MASTERLIST HERE <3

Just one more chapter to goooo. I know our little Azriel hasn't appeared on this one, but he will of course be on the grand finale. Prepare yourselfs for a lovely ending to this story. Hope you liked it as I've loved getting back here to write for More Than This. Please know I much appreciate when you engage with my posts, especially when you comment nice things :) Thanku for reading.

-Characters by Sarah J. Maas

tag list:

@kalulakunundrum @bubybubsters @goradgirl @kennedy-brooke @going-through-shit @starswholistenanddreamsanswered @linoisqt @minakay @nastynesta @lockedinmytower @stargirl1714 @justagingerliving @marvelpotter @mommyyyyyyyyyyyyyy @mis-lil-red@whyonearthisyourusernamethi-blog @e-dollly @emptyporsche @cwallace02sblog@impossibelle @sidthedollface2 @justdreamstars @nyotamalfoy @cryinghotmess @fightmedraco @strangersunghoon @acourtofbatboydreams @snatched-bubblegum-bitch

IF YOU WANT TO BE IN THE TAGLIST COMMENT IT ON THIS CHAPTER PLEASE.

[hellishjoel]

uneasy hearts weigh the most

7.3k / pairing: linecook!frankie x waitress f!reader Series Masterlist l Previous Chapter | Main Masterlist | Notifications Blog

summary: Benny hosts the party of the year where broken pieces of Frankie's past are unearthed. warnings/information: MA 18+ (minors DNI), smoking and drinking alcohol, reader is described to have hair (not descriptive of what color/length/etc.), house party, explicit smut, oral (f!receiving), swearing, pet names, allusions to bad parenting/parental abuse, vivid writing of a mental disorder [capgras syndrome] and an accompanied nightmare, descriptions of violence against a parental figure, descriptions of a parent abusing drugs and alcohol (please heed these warnings and do not read if you are concerned these may be triggers) A/N: I know this has been in the works for a while and I thank you for your patience! special shoutout to @thetriumphantpanda who beta'd this for me!! I owe her a 100 grand bar now! listen to the song uneasy hearts weigh the most and I'll kiss you on the forehead

Yeah baby, keep fuckin’ my fingers. “Do it again,” he mutters.  You moan louder as you gyrate your hips once more against his fingers, grinding your core against his knuckles.  “Fuck, baby,” he whispers with adoration.

The last time Francisco Morales saw his father was when he was punching his face in. 

It was a blur. 

Blood splattered across his face, neck, and shirt. His fist was crimson, his knuckles ached. But he couldn’t will himself to stop. 

Frankie would draw his arm back, using as much force as his little twelve-year-old body could muster, and plunge his whole body forward as he landed another hit. He couldn’t stop himself from crying, even when he was at his angriest. 

Why was he crying? Why couldn’t he stop crying? 

Frankie’s dad wasn't exactly father-of-the-year material. More like a drill sergeant with a drinking problem. When things got tough, he’d ditch his family for drugs and booze and only ever circle back when money turned to dust. 

His mom was falling apart before his eyes. His younger siblings were fearful because their mom, who was supposed to take care of them, couldn’t, and their father, who was supposed to love them, hurt them. 

Frankie was the oldest; he felt an obligation to protect everyone. But what can you do when you’re not even five feet tall?

If his father hadn’t been so strung out that night, Frankie wouldn’t have been able to tackle him to the ground like he did. He wouldn’t have been able to pin him down by fisting his ratty t-shirt and hit him like he did. As hard as he did. As many times as he did. 

Then, his father lay lifeless. Frankie blinked away his tears and let out a shaky sob. He got scared because he thought he had killed him. After all those puny hits, he laid limp. He wasn’t smart enough to know that he had just passed out from the drugs in his system. 

Frankie was so torn because how can you hate someone you’re supposed to love? How could his father leave the family he was supposed to be the foundation of? 

The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services intervened not long after. And he doesn’t like to think about it, any of it. 

Not growing up, not his family, nothing. 

But now he’s staring at a letter from his father. It’s his handwriting; the slant in the L’s, and the hook of his Y’s. Slightly smeary, written in pencil with eraser shavings damn near burned into the lined paper. He wrote this letter over and over again, trying to author the right words, to say the right things. 

Frankie’s heart stops, and all the memories rush back in a flood. It hits him like a fucking hurricane. 

Tommy’s Diner settles after its Friday night dinner rush. The hour before closing was always erratic, putting together to-go orders and ushering stacks of dirty plates from the tables to the back sink. 

Your shoulder blades collide with the swing door connecting the kitchen to the rest of the diner, using the force of your body to swing it open as you balance the ceramic plates in your arms. 

“Sorry, Lou. Just a few more.” You mutter tiredly as you set the stack beside the teenage dishwasher, hearing him sigh loudly before putting his earbuds back in place. He wasn’t one for many words. The most you knew about him was he listened to cringey, whiney rappers. 

You close your eyes for just a moment and lean back into the counter, craning your back and feeling each vertebrae realigning with anguish. Tina called in sick and you offered to work a double to pick up some extra hours this week. Besides, on days you didn’t work with Frankie, you were more… productive. 

The hum of customers gradually subsides, their chatter tapering off until the bell above the door chimes, signaling their exit. It’s nicer like this, when you don’t have to be the charming server who keeps up with all of their conversations from table to table. Especially after pulling a double, and your brain feels like it might melt. 

The staff worked diligently throughout the rest of the night, tidying up the tables and floors, not letting up until the countertops gleamed, the coffee pots shined, and the strong smell of cleaning fumes mingled in the air. 

You grow a fond smile thinking about spending the summer with Frankie. He adores being outside far more than you do. It’s impossible not to imagine how stupidly sexy he would look with his skin glowing a golden tan and a pair of sunglasses sitting lazily on the bridge of his aquiline nose. Loose, flowy shirt and a pair of shorts. Curls lost to the wind. 

He talks about taking you on nature walks through his favorite trails and driving you further out of your nowhere town so you can stargaze at midnight. Or maybe you could hit the beach and spend your days under the sun drinking margaritas and Coronas. 

Summer could change things for you. 

Admittedly, you’ve been fantasizing—romanticizing. You think about him even when he’s not around. You miss the home you’ve made on the open side of his bed, where you’d curl around his orange tabby cat with his arms circled around your waist. 

Worst of all were the nights you were back at your place, where there was no one around to cook you dinner or dish out goofy conversations. Having to snake touches over your own body, over the curve of your belly, and sinking your fingers past your panties where the only remnants of Frankie is you muttering his name at the peak of your orgasm, wishing it was him showering you with his affections rather than your fingers or toys. 

God forbid you enjoy solo sessions anymore because Frankie has totally ruined that for you. It wasn’t as fun knowing you had a brown-eyed, curly-headed man across town who would beg on his knees given the chance. 

Anyway. Enough of that. 

You count the till’s cash, level out the profit, and put it all in a small bank bag before your manager, Carla, tucks it inside the safe. The metal keys on your carabiner clip jingle upon flipping the lock, the cool night air tickling your skin as late spring shows its face under the velvet night sky. 

A truck rumbles up the drive, and you know the signature death rattle all too well. 

“What are you doin’ here?” You lean against the driver's side of Frankie’s truck once he pulls up to you, your sneakers shifting gravel, his mouth tilted in a smirk. He leans past the truck’s frame and kisses you, cradling the back of your head to keep you against him. 

“Mmm,” he hums against your mouth, tasting cherry chapstick as he glides his tongue across your lower lip. “Get in. Benny’s having a house party.”

Eyes narrowing, you run your thumb up his beard scruff and gently scrape your nails down the dark hair. “I need to go home to change. Plus, I need a shower. I smell like grease, and I have grime under my nails.” 

“Fine, I’ll take you back to your place. I can wait.” 

A breath stalls in your lungs, eyes unblinking as you stare at him for a moment. 

Frankie has yet to visit your place — your dungeon, a basement-level one-bedroom apartment made up by a measly excuse of a kitchen and a tiny living space. You’re by no means embarrassed of its appearance. You’re rather clean, and you’ve made it as homely as you possibly can with bright-colored rugs and wall art. But it was sort of your final boundary. He was literally about to pass the threshold. Master the final boss. 

He’s let you have your space and never pushed you. The least you could do was say,

“Okay.” 

A contagious grin catches his lips, pulling you closer by the hand still cradling the back of your head, and he takes you in for a few more slow kisses. 

A car’s honk and bright lights jolt your heart, and your eyes squint until the flashers go down on the car Frankie has parked in.

“Can you two lovebirds hurry it up?” your manager, Carla, yells from the driver's seat of her rust-red 2006 Honda Civic. “You’re blockin’ me in, Francisco.”

You purse your lips with embarrassment, heat flushing the back of your neck. Carla was going to find out one way or another that you two have been sneaking around. She knows everything about everyone. 

“Hey, sorry, mama,” Frankie nods as she shakes her head slowly, mouth tainted with a smirk. 

“I’ll follow you back to your place,” Frankie whispers and you nod shyly, wrapping around the front of his truck and letting him tail you home. 

Frankie takes two steps at a time down to your basement-level apartment. His boots thump against the cold stone, and you push the front door open with the force of your shoulder. 

His eyes drag along the different pieces of the apartment that make you, you. Soft blankets that drape along the back of a loveseat accompanied by little, fluffy pillows, different pairs of sneakers sit stacked beside the front door, and a small table for two holds random clutter in the criminally tiny dining room. 

He follows your lead and kicks off his shoes, watching you unfold into your natural routine: you drop your bag on the kitchen counter, and your fingers are already tugging a black hair tie loose. He trails you down a narrow hallway, squinting as you turn on the harsh overhead lighting to the bathroom. 

Out of your clothes without a second thought, Frankie can’t help but laugh at the way you fling your bra past his head, tunneling down the hallway and landing in what he presumes is your bedroom. The shower curtain is something abstract, most likely purchased from the Target down the road. 

“I’ll be quick if you wanna wait outside,” you offer, body shielded by the curtain. 

Frankie shrugs, eyes glancing to the toilet opposite the shower.

“I don’t mind waitin’. Wanna tell me about your day?” Frankie asks, taking a seat on the closed toilet lid. He sees you fight away a timid smile and slink behind the shower curtain. The beads of water hit your body and change the tune inside the bathroom. He can tell each time you shift and twirl. It takes you a moment to become acquainted, but you retell the details of your day in a sweet lull. 

“I, uh, I usually listen to music when I shower,” you admit between the spray. 

“Oh, so you want me to start singin’?” Frankie asks with a smirk, to which you quickly shout no! 

It doesn’t stop him from breaking into a pitchy rendition of a song by the Bee Gees. 

After a fit of laughter, you both settle down, and Frankie is back to smiling at the sheer, cheaply-made shower curtain. He can see your silhouette dance under the shower head, gathering your hair and rising out the suds, grabbing a loofa to scrub away the worst of the grime from Tommy’s Diner. 

Holy shit, Frankie thinks, you smell like heaven. Oh my god, he likes you. It hits him like a bullet to the chest, the impact rippling through his veins and making his heart beat so loud that it rings in his ears. It’s a silent reminder that feeling things are beautiful when they are about you. 

The bathroom grows steamy, fogging up the glass of your medicine cabinet mirror. His skin grows clammy and his knee starts to jump in anticipation. 

“I’m almost done!” Your voice sing-songs as he slips off his jacket, his eyes still cast upon your body beyond the curtain. He’s in love with the way your body moves, fluidly and without intention. You’re just taking a shower and he thinks you’re beautiful. 

Just as you’re about to flip the water off, the curtain rings screech to open. 

“Frankie,” you breathe, eyes falling to his exposed tan skin. No other words come to mind other than another breath of his name. 

His lips attach to your neck, slow but faltering. Like he’s searching for the one spot to push you over the edge and join him in oblivion. 

The tension in the air rises as the water cascades down his back and soaks his dark curls. His frame, large and broad, protects yours as his arms circle your waist like wild vines.

Your eyes slowly fall closed, lips parted as your head eventually tilts back and rests against the shower wall. It exposes more area for Frankie to explore, his palms kneading at your lower back, arching your torso into his own. 

His teeth skim along your skin, the steam already forcing your flesh to glow and rise under the growing pressure of his hunger for you. 

He begins to navigate a new path, his lips finding purchase above your breastbone. Your fingers start at his biceps, feeling the strong muscles protruding underneath. He’s so unbearably handsome, and you can’t believe his body is fitting in the small shower stall with you. 

Finally, a heavy breath slips, something that resembles a moan. After that, he’s starving for you. 

The teeth that were once just grazing your skin, now nipping and sucking. His hands fall lower down the curve of your ass, squeezing and lifting as you gasp into his ear. You're dripping with arousal that sits achingly between your legs. 

You place a slender hand over his more muscular one, guiding it between your legs and gently cupping your mound. 

“Please,” you whisper, like the only thing Frankie needs to hear. 

He paints your mouth in a wet kiss, drowning any better judgment that may have resided. 

Intertwining your feelings together, the steam buckles heatedly in the small space. 

His fingers curl in your hold, swiping between your folds and feeling you. There’s a whimper let out against his ear, nipping at his lower lip once his fingers push past your threshold. 

And he groans. 

You’re so fucking tight, so fucking perfect for him. His forehead lays against your temple, your nose brushing against the coarse hair of his beard. Frankie sinks his fingers into you, knuckle-deep, and leaves you squirming under his hold. His fingers are so thick, it’s a bittersweet symphony the way your moans mingle in the air.

He’s got you cornered in the shower, body pressed against the hot mold. Two fingers move fluidly inside, stretching your core and stoking the burning embers that rest low in your stomach. 

“There,” you breathe, gasping as he adds more pressure to one spot that makes your legs nearly collapse out from under you. He still has you locked with an arm around your waist, holding what’s left of your presence. 

He’s skilled, his thumb finding your clit, and you want to scream at the way his fingers are long enough to fuck into you and massage your aching pearl at the same time. He’s the only one who can make you unfold like this.  

“Christ,” he mutters into your ear as he feels your walls desperately clench around him. “You can take another, can’t ya, baby?” 

His brown eyes melt you, waiting for your confirmation. You sigh weakly but ultimately nod. It’s all you can think about. 

He groans as he works a third into your entrance, and it burns, the way your pleasure mixes with the pain. 

You wrap an arm weakly around the tops of his shoulders, nails etching into his skin in a last-ditch effort to keep yourself able in his arms. 

“Fuck, Frankie,” you whine, long and bratty almost. You’re so close already, he knows just how to get you to the brink. 

You tingle at his touch, your muscles going numb as he fucks his fingers at a now unrelenting pace within your tight core. 

He works you to the edge, feeling the tick of the timebomb slowly begin to set off inside you. 

With all the energy you have left, you swing your leg up and hitch it on his hip. 

He looks bewildered for a moment, shocked eyes meeting your own as you rest your shoulder blades back against the shower wall with enough room to move your hips. You begin rolling your core down onto his fingers and he makes a noise resembling praise. 

Yeah baby, keep fuckin’ my fingers.

“Do it again,” he mutters. 

You moan louder as you gyrate your hips once more against his fingers, grinding your core against his knuckles. 

“Fuck, baby,” he whispers with adoration. 

He watches your body with fascination, Frankie’s eyes obsessively taking in your movements. His lips are quick to bow down at your alter, lips latching onto your exposed nipples that perk up in his mouth with all the attention. It makes a tingle shoot down your spine, only making your hips move faster as you fuck yourself down onto his fingers. 

Frankie kisses down your body until he’s sunk down onto his knees, damn near growling as your hips grind against his awaiting mouth. He latches his lips to your clit and harshly suckles, causing a high-pitched whimper to leave your mouth. 

You’re so close and he knows it, he can feel your thighs trembling under the heat of his palms. It’s the only thing holding you up at this point. Weaving your fingers into his watered-down locks, you grip them tight and keep Frankie close. 

He chuckles lowly, eyes flicking up to yours and seeing the desperate look cast over them. 

“You wanna come?”

Like he even has to ask. 

“Please,” you say, desperation leaking from your voice as you feverishly nod. 

Frankie tsks playfully, humming lowly against your clit. “Love when you beg for it, sweetheart.” 

Frankie circles your clit with the tip of his tongue, making out with your pussy and lapping away at your sweet juices. He hooks one of your legs over his shoulder, allowing his fingers to move with more precision. 

You can feel your muscles contort as he starts to massage your spongy sweet spot. It’s enough to make your jaw drop and heat to spill down your spine. Your fingers clench his curls tighter between your fingers, holding him against you as your orgasm finally breaches. 

The leg hooked onto his shoulder shakes with each uneasy wave of your orgasm. The shower’s heat leaves you breathless, crying out in pleasure as your body shudders. 

Frankie smirks as he slowly loosens his fingers from your entrance, taking each finger into his mouth, one, two, three. His tongue swirls around each digit before he inches your leg back to down to the shower floor, planting your feet on solid ground before he stands and twists the shower’s handle. 

It only takes a few seconds, but the high of your orgasm and the heat of the shower makes you lose your sense of self. Your legs tremble and your hands feverishly grip Frankie. 

The ringing in your ears slowly fades away as he snaps the handle on the shower, letting the room calm into gentle silence. 

“Hey, hey,” he whispers as he wraps you in his arms, feeling weightless as he talks you down. “Wow,” he breathes, “never had a woman faint from how good-”

“Stop,” you laugh breathlessly, peaking your eyes open, and seeing the glittering haze of the handsome man in front of you. Water droplets run down his face, cascading down his neck and gliding horizontally across his shoulders. 

“I like hearing you talk about your day.”

Innocent eyes meet his own and you nod. “Okay.”

Frankie wasn’t joking when he said his friends threw a house party. They threw a goddamn party. 

After winding down a long gravel road about thirty minutes out of town, you arrive at a two-story classic country home. It’s surrounded by acres and acres of green grass and tall trees in the distance. The most action this house has seen in years is most likely deer or coyotes. 

And now it was seeing the house party of a lifetime. 

“Frankie,” you breathe out in disbelief once he parks his truck in the grass and kills the engine. “Whose house is this?”

His mouth tilts in a smirk as he peers forward up at the house, not sure if he’s staring at the long string lights that reach from one side of the home to the other, or the drunkards climbing onto the roof. 

“Will and Benny’s, after their grandfather passed away. Pretty sweet, huh?” 

The crunch of a beer can under your shoe is the first thing you hear, other guests quick to park their vehicles and rush inside with cases of beer on their shoulders. The echoes of the partying inside could be heard from the dirt driveway, Frankie wrapping his arm around your shoulder as he escorts you in. 

A chorus of people bump against your shoulder as they step outside, laughing hard and obviously tipsy. 

“What is this place?” You mutter in slight amazement and curiosity. 

“Come on, I’ll give you the tour,” Frankie whispers against your ear, making a tingle slip down your spine as you playfully nudge your elbow somewhere between his ribs.

He walks you through the living room, easily the most filled room in the house by the looks of it. All the furniture has been pushed aside and a band resides at the forefront of all the chaos. The lead singer and guitarists stand on the sitting area of the recessed mantle. The cheering rings in your ears and the bass thumps through the floorboards, electrifying everyone’s bodies to move and dance. 

Off the dining room is the kitchen. You can’t really tell how modern or outdated it is due to the sea of people making drinks. Frankie reaches through the hoard and retrieves two beers, popping the top off yours and slipping the cold bottle into your hand. 

“Thanks,” you mutter as you clink your bottle with his. 

Aside from the noisiest parts of the house, there were chill places where people were talking and sharing ideas or the latest things that were happening in their lives. You try not to laugh as a woman swaying in a hammock accidentally falls out, landing with a thud. Thankfully, her friends in the bean bags below caught her with bellows of glee. 

“Best part,” Frankie whispers to you as he opens the door to a nearly pitch-black room, only lit by two lanterns at the very front of the mostly wood study. People are sat on the floor, whispering and shushing each other as you and Frankie fill in quietly towards the back.

“And now, may I present to you, Santi, the Significant!”

Your eyebrows furrow as Santiago steps in front of a white flashlight’s spot, bowing ridiculously as everyone laughs. 

“Santi the Significant?” You whisper as Frankie chuckles quietly and nuzzles his nose against your temple. 

“He thought Magnificent wasn’t spectacular enough, or kitschy.”

“He performs real magic? Isn’t that kind of…” At the risk of offending one of his best friends, he fills in the blank for you.  

“Nerdy?” Frankie snidely smirks and shakes his head. “Works better than you think. Watch.”

You're skeptical about the magic act, but you can't help but be impressed as the confident Santi pulls roses from his jacket sleeve and hands them to the most eligible ladies in the audience, eliciting gasps and enthusiastic applause.

“No way,” you shake your head as Santi continues a few close-up magic tricks, enough to keep his drunk audience convinced. After a few more card tricks and cheesy jokes, the crowd applauds and whistles.

“That’s all from me today, folks. If you want my number, please see me after the show.”

“Dear god,” you mutter, hiding your face in Frankie’s shoulder. “How is this working?” You ask as a group of young women circle Santi with praise and lusty eyes. “Should I go ask for his number? I was pretty wooed back there.”

Frankie tuts as he ushers you out of the study. “Absolutely not.”

The entire night thrives on high energy with a constant flow of surprises. The decor of pink plastic flamingos and a surprise disco ball is making this everyone’s night one to remember - as long as the guests don’t drink too much. 

You’ve let Frankie go to mingle with his friends while you keep an intoxicated Benny at bay sitting at the top step of the staircase that looks over most of the party. 

“Quite the bash, Benny.”

“Thank you, m’lady. You’re enjoying yourself?” He slurs and sways, even while sitting. 

“I didn’t even know this many people our age live around here.” Your head rests against old yellow wallpaper, the design mostly faded and lightly curling at the floorboards. Your finger plays with the exposed edge, fighting the urge to tear it off or keep peeling it. 

He hums and throws an empty beer bottle behind his shoulder, hearing it clatter against the wall. “The best distraction for someone like me is people. I like people. And everyone needs a good distraction.”

You narrow your eyes on Benny curiously, the disco ball flashing along the bedazzled beads hanging around his neck. “Distraction from what?”

Benny seems like a very happy person, but it’s moments like these that reveal one's vulnerability. He slowly shakes his head with a very telling smile, gently squeezing your shoulder as he sighs. “It’s okay,” he slurs, “it’s why our friend group gets along so well because we all need distractions.”

He speaks so knowingly, almost like a prophet speaking in riddles, so you decide to amuse him. 

“Yeah? What about Frankie? He needs distractions too?”

Benny hums and points at Frankie down below. You peer through the wooden balusters, seeing Frankie mix and mingle with a drink in one hand and a lit joint in the other. He takes a hit and sputters up a cough as he laughs at what his group is saying, making you smile. 

“Frankie… is a very special case. He’s uh,” Benny’s eyes droop, his head resting on your shoulder as he closes his eyes and relaxes with your presence. 

“He’s what?” You whisper, reassuringly running a hand up and down his back. 

Benny lets out another sigh, breath reeking of alcohol. “You’re a good distraction for him. ‘Nd I don’t mean a distraction like a bad thing. You’re… You’re very good for him. He’s had a hard life and y’know, I’m sure he’s told you. But now he’s happy again.” 

Your heart hammers in your chest and you’re afraid Benny might be able to hear it. The large grandfather clock standing by the front door chimes, and you can’t read the time from this distance, but by the multiple rings, it must be midnight. 

And before you can stop him from spilling, Benny shares maybe more than he should. 

“Y’know with his dad. His whole family, really. His mom has capybara… no, not capybara syndrome.” Benny pauses to laugh before finishing. 

“Capgras syndrome? She just wasn’t all there when he was growing up and she didn’t get the help she needed until later in… in life. Frankie was just a kid and all of his siblings were, y’know, younger than him. Plus his dad wasn’t around to help her, drunk asshole that he was probably wouldn’t have been much help anyway.”

You stare straight ahead, watching your happy goofball down below with a new view.

“So his mom was there but not really there. He hasn’t seen his dad in years, but now, he’s back around and sent Frankie a letter or some shit. I don’t know what about. But everything has just sort of sucked for him for a long time.” Benny scoffs and lays his forehead against your shoulder, muttering now. “Especially that damn letter. ‘Nd his damn dad. But you know about all of this already.”

No, you didn’t. You’re stunned into a soft silence, the hand on Benny’s back slowly falling. 

“This party and you, good distractions. But Frankie told me he started having nightmares again.”

Suddenly very awake and alert, Benny sits up straight and looks you in your eyes. “Don’t let him drink too much tonight, okay? He’ll start spiraling if he thinks about this shit too much. Keep… keep being a good distraction.”

Benny pauses and clenches his stomach, his face turning a little pale. “Fuck,” He mutters as he quickly shifts onto his knees and crawls up the opposite side of the staircase, pushing himself to his feet and rushing towards the bathroom.  

The buzz of the party slowly fades, like the sound of snow falling outside. It’s a silence that isn’t silence at all. Everything falls into slow motion, the confetti falling and the disco ball gleaming all halting mid-air. 

You weren’t supposed to know this much, or Frankie would have told you if he wanted to. But now as you stare down the staircase to Frankie, seeing him throw his head back in laughter, it’s hard to imagine someone like him had a past like that. 

Benny was drunk. Maybe he was mixing Frankie up with someone else? You didn’t know why, but instead of your usual instinct to flee, one of protection starts to come over you. 

“Hey,” Frankie breathes out with a big smile, his eyes glazed over and a little red from smoking as he watches you step down the staircase. 

“Hey,” you say with little to no masking of your emotions. 

He tilts his head adorably and rests his hand on your hip, pulling you in closer to him. “You alright?”

After nodding quickly with wide eyes, you know it’s more important for Frankie to believe nothing is wrong. 

“Yeah! Yeah, all good. Do you think we could head out soon? I’m getting pretty tired, worked a double and all.”

Frankie smiles and pulls his truck keys out of his dark blue jeans, doing the responsible thing and putting them into your very capable hands. “If you’re tired, I’m tired. Let’s go.” 

He’s cross-faded for sure. At one point on the drive home, Frankie hung his head out of the passenger-side window and stared at the stars, giggling, as the wind whipped his face. But he never let go of your hand. 

 The exhaustion from the night seems to hit you both once you return to the comfort of his apartment, a small orange fluffball hopping off the couch to run his body against your lower calf. 

“Hi, Leo,” Frankie whispers, squatting down to gently scratch the cat’s chubby cheeks. 

After stripping your clothes and turning on his television in the bedroom, the lull of a sitcom settles him into slumber. You lay with Frankie in bed, his arms slung low around your waist and his head nuzzled into your chest. He snores quietly as Leo curls up between you two. 

Sleep seems to escape you, because every time you close your eyes, you picture a young Frankie with a tortured past. A shit father, a not all there mother. How was he so seemingly pieced together as an adult? 

With one hand gently stroking his hair and massaging his scalp, you use the other to search capgras syndrome on your phone. 

The National Institutes of Health describes it as, the most prevalent delusional misidentification syndrome and is characterized as a delusion of doubles. Patients falsely believe that an identical person has replaced a person close to him or her… CS symptoms may result in intrapersonal and interpersonal conflicts, along with poor social relationships. An individual with this kind of disorder is prone to self-harm and violence. There are also implications for the patient's family, as the stress on the caregiver and stigma-related stressors could further compound the issue.

Clicking the lock on your phone as fast as you can, you shakily sigh and wrap your arms tighter around Frankie. 

It’s like nothing you’ve ever heard of and Frankie was at the center of it all. It felt like your stomach bottomed out thinking of what he had seen. 

Was his mother ever violent with him? Or to herself? 

And this letter from his father that Benny mentioned, what did it say? 

You manage to exhaust yourself to sleep, but it doesn’t last long. 

Frankie sweats bullets, his body rustling against the bedsheets that now make him feel confined. His heart hammers against his chest and pounds in his ears. 

These dreams would be just dreams if they were happy, but there’s nothing happy about what he sees. 

On a stormy night, his mother cries. The sobs fill the house, his younger sister fears it’s a ghost by the shaky howling that sways down the hallways to their bedrooms. 

“It’s okay,” his uncertain voice reverbs as he fluffs her light pink princess pillow and tucks a lilac quilt over her small body. He smiles convincingly and closes the doors to his closet. 

He walks alone down the dark hallway, his eyes anxiously peering from left to right. He spies his father downstairs drinking alone at the dining room table. The glass bottle shimmers as lightning strikes outside. 

Is he passed out or impossibly still? 

His mother lets out another wail. 

“Goddammit,” his father curses to himself, shaking his head and finding a coat from the closet before slipping outside and into the rain. 

It’s okay, Frankie thinks, because it’s easier to take care of her when he’s not around to intervene.

With a breath of relief, little ten-year-old Frankie walks downstairs and gets a glass of water. He’s so scared, his hands won’t stop shaking. No matter how much he tries to fill his lungs with air, the shaking doesn’t stop. Dribbles of water slide down his hand and wrap around the outside of his tiny wrist. 

He follows the cries with hesitant steps, lightly pushing open the door to his mother’s bedroom. 

“Mom?” He asks into the dark, his voice soft and squeaky.

“No! No, get out!” Her cries have turned to yelling, scrabbling up to the top of the bed and flushing her back against the bed frame. 

“It’s me, mom, Frankie,” he whispers, slowly walking forward with an arm extended with the water. 

She lets out another wail and shakes her head, causing Frankie to lurch back. He thinks the lightning strikes and the thunder booming outside is scaring her, and all he wants to do is soothe her panic. 

“D-do you want some water?” He asks as she sniffs, her wide and unblinking eyes enough to keep him awake at night. 

In a wake of reality, she wipes her face and whimpers. “Is that really you, Francisco?”

His bottom lip trembles as he nods feverishly. “Yeah mommy, it’s me.” Can’t you see it’s me?

She slowly lowers the covers that she had previously clutched to her chest, nodding slowly. But then she freezes again, horrified, unconvinced. 

“I-It’s not you.” She says with uncertainty, shuddering at another clap of thunder. 

“Momma,” he whispers as he moves closer, reaching out and touching her arm as he stands at her bedside. “Drink some water, momma.”

He offers the glass, her eyes shifting from Frankie to the glass and back. 

“No-no! Your smile is bigger! That’s not my Frankie, his smile is bigger! Stay away from me!” She yelps, harshly smacking the glass of water out of his hands. Frankie jumps but can’t pull away, the grip of her hand wrapping around his wrist burns. 

“You need to stay away from me, you hear me? Stay away from my family!” 

Frankie tries to pull away, his own tears sprinkling along his eyes as he yanks yanks yanks and finally he’s free, running out of her room as adrenaline pumps through his little body. He quickly closes her door on the way out, sobbing erratically as he runs to the safety of the staircase, black funneling around his imagery. 

Frankie’s eyes pop open, feeling the tight hold of your arms like the one of his mother. He shoots up and pushes your arms off, seeing your sleepy eyes tiredly open. 

“Frankie?” You whisper, soft eyes meeting his own.

Fear still possesses him, it was overwhelming like a heavy weight sitting on his chest. It was all-encompassing, his manifestations of terror and panic being linked to the feeling of being chased by something from his past.  

“It’s me, it’s me!” He shouts, his throat feeling like something was clawing at it. 

You nod your head and reach out for his arm to which he instinctively rips away from you. 

“It’s me!” He shouts again, causing Leo to scurry off the bed. His stomach felt uneasy, dread pounding a dent into his head. 

“I know it’s you, I know it’s you, Frankie,” you breathe out, pushing yourself up fully as you take his hand and reassuringly squeeze.

He swallows down an impossibly large lump in his throat, catching his breath seems impossible. He couldn’t escape it, overwhelming helplessness nesting itself deep inside. It’s always the same nightmare or similar variants from his childhood. He used to think that he had blocked them out, shoved them away to a teeny tiny part inside him, locked away inside a vault. But recently, they’ve been coming back in swarms. 

The reality that his nightmare is over suddenly hits him and his back slumps weakly. Like a human no longer possessed, his physical existence slowly turning from mush back to something concrete. Suddenly, a sense of relief washes over him. It wasn’t real, he was safe, he was with you. 

“Frankie, you’re crying,” you whisper, slowly moving your hand up to wipe away the streams on his cheeks. 

Frankie’s shaky hand holds yours, tight, and brings it to his heart, letting you feel the impossibly strong beat. 

“Fuck,” he breathes out, putting his head in his hands, “I’m sorry, I’m s-so sorry,” he quickly shakes his head, feeling his body subtly relax from the strong heat that was tingling from his head to his toes. 

“It’s okay, you’re safe now, it was just a bad dream.”

He knows now and he nods, but he still feels lost between his past and his present. 

He shouldn’t have drank as much as he did, and he certainly shouldn’t have smoked. He knows that now, but he was hoping it would help him sleep, keep him at bay until you were gone in the morning. But now you were here and he felt so exposed, his open wounds now out and in the open. 

Please don’t run. 

“I’m sorry,” he says on repeat as you slowly run a hand up and down his back, his body leaning into yours and nodding; he needed this, he needed you. 

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” you whisper, “can I hold you?” You ask so sweetly, your voice dripping in kindness lined with concern. 

He’s already nodding as you gently wrap your arms around his broad torso. He puts his arms over yours and sighs weakly, his fingers interlocking with yours. 

Comforting energy exudes from you, the thing he desperately needs the most right now. Your soothing voice is nothing like his mother’s anguished cries, breaking him into reality with the honey drip of your sweet whispers. 

“A nightmare?”

Frankie nods and closes his eyes, wiping the stray tears that still fall down his cheeks. 

“I never wanted you to see me like this,” he tries to laugh, but it just comes out wrecked and thick from crying. 

Why was he crying? Why couldn’t he stop crying?

Your chin rests on the dip of his shoulder and he can feel your slow breaths against his back. He aligns his wrecked breaths with your calm ones, your bodies slowly becoming in sync.  

He’s so tired. He wants to close his eyes, but every time he does, he sees the flashes of lightning outside his mothers window and hears her untrusting words. 

It’s not you!

You sit together like this for fifteen minutes and he’s becoming grounded again. He strokes the blankets and relaxes the clutching hold he has on your hand. 

“I’m gonna get a cold washcloth, you’re burning up.” You whisper. He doesn’t want you to go, but he knows it will help - something his mother never understood. Help was good. 

“Leo wants to sit with you,” you whisper as you round the bed, Leo already leaping up onto the bed and circling himself between Frankie’s parted legs. 

“Sorry buddy,” he whispers, his voice raw and still shaky, but no longer feeling like he was choking on the air his body was desperately craving. 

With hazy eyes, he watches your body move in his bathroom, the light making his eyes squint. Your soft legs tucked under his large t-shirt was a sight. He was definitely here again, in the present. 

Benny had warned you, but nothing could have prepared you for that. But again, your usual feeling to run wasn’t here, because Frankie really fucking needed you right now. Your own concerns about this relationship were pushed aside. He needed comfort and reassurance, love where there wasn’t any before. 

You soak a washcloth in cold water until your fingers turn numb under the streaming faucet. Squishing out the excess, you return to his bedside and gently dab at his neck. His honey-amber eyes have never looked so dark and lifeless. 

He blinks slowly, he must be so tired. Frankie rests his hand on your upper thigh, fingers sinking into your plush flesh. He’s trying to ground himself, you think. A reminder that this was real. 

“It must have been really scary,” you whisper as you bring the washcloth up to his rosy cheeks, then to his temple and across his forehead. “Does this feel good?”

He nods and squeezes your thigh reassuringly. “Really good.”

“Okay, baby.” You whisper, running the washcloth slowly down both of his arms. The cooling sensation should help him fully awaken. You rest the washcloth on the back of his neck and rest your hand on his now cool cheek. 

His words ring through your ears, begging to be heard that he was real, that it was him. It was a dream about his mom, it had to be. 

He lets out a breath of relief, smiling weakly. “You must think I’m insane.”

He grapples to find the right words, and you think it’s best to come clean. 

“Benny told me,” you whisper, seeing his eyes harden at your truth. “About your mom, Frankie. Is that… is that what your dream was about?”

He sits impossibly still, but something in his gut must condemn him to tell you the truth. “Yeah, it was.”

You nod and run your fingers delicately across his cheek, giving him a reassuring smile. “You can tell me what you want when you’re ready. But it doesn’t scare me off, and I don’t think you’re insane.” 

An exhausted breath of relief mingles between you both and he agrees. He’ll tell you when he’s ready. 

“My dad, he sent me a letter and the nightmares started again,” Frankie whispers, brokenheartedness laced in his words. 

You press a gentle kiss to his lips, one of understanding. 

“I wanna read it to you in the morning.”

You give him a tight-lipped smile, nod, and kiss him again.

After making Frankie a sleepytime tea in his favorite mug, he settles back into bed. He was so vulnerable tonight when he really had no other choice. He falls asleep with his ear to your heart, and his arms wrapped loosely around your hips. 

You stay awake and watch the television for as long as you can, hoping the comforting vibes of a sitcom will calm your racing heart. Gentle fingers draw shapes over Frankie’s back and you share a look with his cat. One that said you were both in this together. As the sun slowly slips across the horizon, your eyes finally close knowing this night of terrors is over. 

Series Masterlist l Previous Chapter | Main Masterlist | Notifications Blog

[eretzyisrael]

This account, first published in JewishNews, is written by an anonymous London-based Guardian employee who has family living on a kibbutz in southern Israel. It offers a look at life in the newspaper’s offices in the days since Hamas’s attack on Israel.

I wake up on October 7 to a text from my brother-in-law: “Thoughts are with your family in Israel. I hope everyone is safe.”

I check the news. Hamas has entered southern Israel. They’re in a kibbutz. My partner’s family is in that kibbutz. His cousin is nine months pregnant. He’s in contact with them; they’re in the safe room. Terrorists are outside.

I check social media. Reports of hostages, maybe three. I check again; perhaps ten.

There has been a massacre at a music festival. I look at the video. Who do I know there? I check social media again; there are videos of hostages. I look at their faces. Do I know them?

We lose contact with family in the kibbutz. I tell myself that the phone lines are down because the IDF are there. I watch Hamas footage as it is coming out. I go on Telegram for the first time in my life and I see a room full of bodies covered in blood. I see children gunned down. I see the bodies of raped women. I see families holding each other as Hamas livestreams atrocities. I look for people I might know.

My partner and I walk 30,000 steps. There’s nothing we can do. Late that evening we hear that his family is safe but their house is gone, neighbors are dead.

I don’t understand. I could have easily been there and part of me thinks I was.

I look at the papers the next day. The newspaper I work for has a tank on the front page: ‘Hundreds die and hostages held as Hamas assault shocks Israel’—victorious terrorists hold a Palestinian flag. The subheading reads ‘Netanyahu declares war as 150 Israelis die. 230 Palestinians killed in air strikes.’

I don’t understand. I know people, Israelis, who were murdered. They did not “die,” as if in some kind of accident. I saw footage of terrorism. It was not an “assault.”

The front page of The Observer, The Guardian’s sister Sunday newspaper, on October 8, the day after the Hamas massacre. (via The Observer)

On Sunday, we get more information about what happened to my partner’s family, about how Hamas set the family’s house on fire when they thought it was empty, how my partner’s cousin screamed for her life when the room filled with smoke, how her husband had to pin her down to stop her cries, how Hamas laughed when they realized the family would need to crawl out of the room, how they refused to leave the burning building. We hear that they somehow survived and walked out through pools of their neighbors’ blood, pieces of dead children littering the street; kids who’d been playing on a Saturday morning.

I’m safe, I’m fine, but I can’t comprehend the color of the sky or the rustle of the trees. I look around at people enjoying their Sunday and I think: Do they not know what is happening? I check the news again and see there are more hostages. I look through the names.

There are still terrorists in Israel.

I listen to the radio, one Israeli interviewee and then one Palestinian. I can hear that the interviewer is struggling as defenders of Hamas justify terrorism. I don’t understand. Is this how they reported the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Did they platform Putin’s people?

I check social media. A friend has posted: “They’ve broken out of jail.” Another has said: “Today is a day of celebration,” and someone else has shared an infographic of “Settler colonialism for beginners.” My old flatmate tells her followers she will be at the demonstration outside the Israeli embassy and she invites people to join her.

On Monday I go to work. How are your family, a colleague asks. When I answer, she squirms. Can’t they just leave, my colleague says. No, they can’t actually.

I look at the morning newsletter for the newspaper I work for. It breaks down the number of dead Palestinian children. It does not mention dead Israeli children.

My group chats are exploding as family and friends work out what has been happening, who is alive. I go back to the news. I type the name of the kibbutz into the wires. Nothing. I read how Hamas invaded “settlements.” They’re not settlements! They’re small, pre-state kibbutzim.

I find out that a friend of a friend was at the music festival and is missing. I’m shaking at work.

I see a colleague who had posted about “decolonization” all over social media over the weekend. They’re laughing with the rest of their team. They’re having a great day. I used to love their podcast, full of hot takes and celeb gossip. Now they’ve evolved into an expert on the Middle East. It doesn’t look like their family is in the middle of it, though.

No one else at work speaks to me about it. I nod my way through conversations about fonts and I stumble home.

I go back the next day. I look at the front page. A photo of Gaza and “violence escalates.” Israelis “dead” but Palestinians “killed.” If they can’t empathize with the Jews now, they never will.

I email the editors. I tell them that my newspaper’s coverage has been upsetting. They tell me that their thoughts are with my family but they stand by the paper’s reporting.

I hear colleagues complaining about the newspaper’s “American readers. They’re always accusing us of antisemitism.” They’re laughing.

I leave work early to go to a vigil outside Downing Street. People quietly weep. Everyone there is Jewish.

I’ve seen on social media that I know people going to a demonstration. Later, I see photos of it: people on lampposts, red flares, Jews hiding inside, the Israeli embassy boxed in. All kinds of people are united in the chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” In Sydney, they are shouting: “Gas the Jews.”

On Tuesday, I find out that my friend’s friend at the music festival is dead. I remember the day I’d spent with him on the beach in Tel Aviv last month. He’d gotten back from South America and was excited to travel again. He had been gentle and sweet. I don’t understand.

On Wednesday, I go to work again, and the next day, and the next day. Finally, the pictures from the kibbutz come out. I look at all of them. I rewatch the footage. I bear witness. No colleague asks me how I am again that week.

I go to synagogue at the weekend and cry with my community. The rabbi holds space for pain. I say Kaddish for the boy at the music festival I will never talk to again.

Back at work I see someone pointing to a photo of the Israeli flag burning in the newspaper. They laugh, “This is my favorite picture.”

I remember telling my family that when I next went to Israel I’d lie to my colleagues and tell them it was Spain. I’d lie because my colleagues had said to me of Israel: “You gotta go while you still can.”

Now another colleague asks me what I think of Netanyahu. Do I hold him responsible? I explain that I have protested against Netanyahu but the only people responsible for October 7 are Hamas. She keeps asking me about the settlements. I tell her they’re bad but she won’t stop. “Don’t you think Bibi has a lot to do with this?” I ask her if she has family in the region. She does not.

I’m on social media again. Friends share infographics from Jewish Voice for Peace and heavy-hitting images from the Gaza Health Ministry. I don’t disagree with what they’re posting but they said nothing when October 7 happened. I start unfollowing decades-old friends.

In the days that follow, my synagogue receives a bomb threat, my local rail station has photos of missing children ripped off, I hear of more friends of friends who have been killed. I hear of others who are now enlisted. I hear that a synagogue president in America has been stabbed to death and synagogues all over the world have been vandalized and destroyed.

The newspaper I work for is covering the bombardment of Gaza and I watch in horror. I think that Israel must defend itself. Yet when I say this, people will tell me I am justifying the murder of children. They will tell me it is a genocide.

As the events of October 7 draw on collective Jewish memory of pogroms and the Holocaust, the newspaper I work for will dispel that myth, publishing a piece entitled “Israel must stop weaponizing the Holocaust.” Am I wrong to connect our grief today with that of our past?

In the weeks that follow, I will apply for other jobs and speak exclusively to Jewish friends and family. I will hide myself away from the streets of London and the waves of social media.

I will not forget the photos and videos I saw on October 7, but I start to think about how this day will be marked; how my children’s children will take part in a new commemoration, where we will remember not the Romans or the Persians or the Nazis but Hamas, and how we survived.

Intergenerational trauma has been retriggered but now is not the time to dwell on our historical violent oppression. Now is the time to rise up, speak out, and defend our right to exist. Now is not the time for colleagues to dismiss Jewish pain or publish inflammatory op-eds that will spark more violence.

I will keep applying for other jobs.

[nanaminokanojo]

THAWING ICE QUEEN (part 88)

–one night of fooling around with the annoying campus king gojo satoru (he thinks so), turns into...well, something else more long term

CHARACTERS: gojo satoru x you | geto suguru | jjk characters

GENRE: college au | smut | smau | smau + prose | everything in between | ons | fubus to lovers | aged-up characters | idk where this is going

⚠️ TW/CW: strong/mature language | 🔞 | mentions of alcohol, smoking, etc. | this has narrations | god-awful pet names | will add more if something arises

MASTERLIST | CHAPTER INDEX

<<prev part 88 next>>

A/N: Contains prose. CW: slight violence (hello sukuna) | angst

“Guards?”

You swallowed hard, pausing a step behind your father when your cousin’s unmistakable low mocking tone jolted you from your tedium. Your old man made good on his word to obtain all the necessary requirements you would need for your transfer to London. Everything was going according to his plan, you thought bitterly, merely sitting down through the whole process in livid resignation as the dean of the students’ affairs babbled about losing an asset to your department.

Or so your father thought.

Tension rose like thick fog between your cousin and the four men who came with you per your father’s orders. The latter eyed Sukuna as if he wasn’t of any consequence, but you saw his shoulders square up ever so slightly. You were pretty sure he wouldn’t put it past Sukuna to do anything outrageous, and he hired people to watch you at least until the whole process was done.

“Damn, old man. Isn’t this going over the top?” Sukuna spat, leering at your father. You just stood there, watching his fists clenching and unclenching. There was no mistake in his intentions. You grew up with him after all. He took after your aunt, and when he sets his mind on something, regardless of what stood in his way, there was no stopping him.

Just then, his eyes shifted to you. “Are you just gonna stand there?” he snapped just as Yuuji appeared behind him, flashing you an imploring look. “Y/N, come with us.”

You swallowed hard. “I –”

“Get in the car. We had a deal.”

“Don’t move a fuckin’ inch, brat!” Sukuna hissed. “You’re coming home with us.”

“Enough.” The older male merely nodded, conveying his silent command for his men to handle Sukuna should be dare do anything. However, even they hesitated when Kento came into view, getting in between your father and Sukuna. Close behind him were Choso, Suguru, and…

“Sukuna, walk away,” you vaguely heard Kento say.

“Come on, man.” Suguru.

Satoru.

Everything seemed to slow down to a snail’s pace, everything quieting down to a dull hum as the images around you warped into nothing but blurry, distorted colors. Your breath caught in your throat the moment those striking cerulean eyes met yours. And like a dried up gorge, your mind filled with every waking moment you’ve spent with him, every word he ever uttered to you, the sound of his laughter, his smiles… his tears.

You didn’t think you’d see him so soon, and your eyes threatened to fill with tears. It took everything in you to suppress them along with the feeling of your knees about to buckle. Or maybe it was that feeling of just wanting to walk towards him, so near yet so, so very far, and melt in his warmth. Tell him you’re sorry. Hold him. Let him hold you together. Come clean.

Satoru’s eyes remained fixed on you, communicating with you without words, every single word he wrote to you in his messages trickling into the forefront of your mind.

‘I really miss you…’

‘Give me reason to let go…to hate you.’

‘I don’t regret anything.’

‘I love you.’

“No!” Sukuna growled, snapping you out of your reverie and making you remember just why you can’t even talk to him; why you can’t even explain anything to him. Because everything would be a lie anyway. It was better for him to just let you go than hear you spout bullshit about why you even hurt him.

Stepping forward, you stepped towards Sukuna and Yuuji, flashing them a warning look. “Don’t do this.”

Kento inconspicuously jerked his head towards the waiting car just a few paces away.

Your father shrugged, his cold eyes finding Satoru. It didn’t escape your notice how he smirked at the latter’s direction and held you back, grabbing your arm and dragging you behind him. “I said get in the car, Y/N,” he stated again, voice deceptively calm.

“WHY?!”

You knew Sukuna’s question was directed to you, the anger and sadness in his tone slashing at you, but you kept your resolve strong and shook your head.

“You promised you would stay with us. Was that a fucking lie? You’re just gonna leave us?”

You shook your head. “Let’s talk tomorrow.” To your father, you said, “Let’s go.” You turned to walk towards the car.

However, he just had to talk. “You have nothing to do with this –”

It all happened so fast. None of your father’s hired security personnel were able to react fast enough. Yuuji was just a beat too late holding Sukuna back, and Kento wasn’t able to anticipate it either. You stood there, barely able to turn your head to their direction when you saw a flash of pink and black, one large fist speeding towards your father who flew backwards on the pavement, ending up on his bottom, his mouth busted. All that happened in a matter of seconds. Probably not even.

“Sukuna!” you heard several people call his name, but all you could think about was how he would do anything to protect the family while you stood on the opposite side of the spectrum, unable to do just that.

Before you knew it, tears were falling from your eyes as chuckles started to erupt from your throat, soft at first and then becoming more audible, enough for everyone around you to snap their heads towards where you stood. You covered your mouth at first, not really understanding why the hell you were laughing of all things. You just were.

“Y/N…” Suguru was about to walk towards you, but one of your father’s men held out an arm while you started laughing, unable to stop it despite how much tears were falling from your eyes.

“You think this is funny?” Sukuna, who is being held back in a headlock by both Yuuji and Kento, asked you scathingly while your father looked at you strangely, seemingly unable to recognize you. But when did he? He didn’t even seem to linger much on the thought as he was helped up, jabbing a finger at your cousin.

“I’ll make sure you’re locked up for –”

“No.” Through your hysteria, you stood in front of your father, glaring hard at him through clenched teeth. Your hands balled into fists beside you, so tight that you could feel your nails ripping your palms open as you swallowed your misplaced laughter for your next words: “You p-promised. You fucking promised!”

At that, your father seemed to calm down a bit, merely glancing at Sukuna before turning away and getting in the car. You just stood there, breathing so hard that you were seeing black spots in your vision.

And then you felt that familiar warmth seize you as long fingers gently wrapped around your upper arm, making you turn around, but before your eyes can meet those blue drowning pools that threatened to pull you into their owner’s arms where you wished to stay – with each and every nerve on your body firing with nothing but pain – you made him unhand you, prying off his hand from you before walking away and feeling your body turn freezing cold despite the burning sun above you.

Just then Sukuna spoke, making you pause.

“Coward.”

 I know.

And then you boarded the car without sparing a single glance towards the people you knew cared deeply for you, the same ones you were hurting deeply with your decision to leave.

All because you fell in love.

You both did.

A/N: Gonna leave this update for you guys. I'll be doing the rest in the following days. Please enjoy! Thank you all so much for reading. It's getting long, but I don't want to make this half-assed or rushed. We'll get to the end soon enough. Again, thanks!

TAGS LIST: @arxliana @neeneee @charlie-xo @aelynaneedsalottathing @arizzu @cloudxp @justpuddinglol @mikkies @nyfwyeonjun @whats-humanity-lol @letthewindlead @whore-of-many-hot-men @localgaytrainwreck @pikibee @bloombb @mr-underhills-things @lysaray @chocoyanchan @poemzcheng @bookswillfindyouaway @dreamxiing @koutaroo @taelattecookie @kazuhasmaid @weebbuscuit @moonmalice @taengkatsu @reagan707 @lysaray

© ORIGINAL WORK BY nanaminokanojo. CHARACTERS ARE INSPIRED BY GEGE AKUTAMI’S JUJUTSU KAISEN. [20240223]

PHOTO/IMAGE/GIF/FANART/ANY MEDIA CREDITS TO THE RESPECTIVE OWNERS.

[cuubism]

Okay but AFTER Dream dramatically storms into Desire's realm yelling "WTF did you do to Hob" I can't imagine Desire just...ignored that. They 100% had to go check out this human and see what is so interesting that Dream is all twisted up in knots over him. Can very much picture Desire swanning into the New Inn in their craziest Lady Gaga outfit already drinking a cosmopolitan and introducing themselves to Hob. Because Desire realises that rather than plotting Dream's downfall they can fuck with Dream INFINITELY more by bothering his immortal crush. It's the sibling instinct.

oh. they DEFINITELY will. and like. eventually dream explains his whole thought process, and the fact that desire has fucked with him in the past (hob: dear god why is your family so fucked up), and dream is basically like: DO NOT. ENGAGE WITH DESIRE. IF THEY TRY TO TALK TO YOU. just call me (he still does not have a phone so unclear how this will work) and i'll kick their ass.

critical point: dream did not in any way tell hob how to IDENTIFY DESIRE.

---

The person who struts -- it's really the only word Hob can think of -- over to the bar at the New Inn makes him uneasy, though he can't say why. Hob is not made uncomfortable easily, he's lived too long and been in too many scrapes to feel intimidated in his own pub, of all places.

But something about them makes his hackles rise. The eyes, maybe. They're too cunning.

But he's not in the habit of throwing people out on looks so he just offers a tight smile and says, "Get you something?"

He's tending bar himself, today. Gives him something to do between terms. And he finds himself strangely grateful to have the bar between him and his strange customer as they slide onto one of the bar stools.

"Cosmo, please," they say, voice like sugar halfway to caramelizing, a bit of pop and smoke in the smooth glide.

This is a bit of an odd drink selection for eleven in the morning, but Hob has, at various points in his life though thankfully no longer, done lines of cocaine before even having breakfast, so he really has no pedestal from which to judge.

"Coming right up."

The bar at the New Inn is well-stocked nowadays. Used to be, they served mainly beer and wine, nothing fancy. Then Hob made the horrible mistake of promising his students an end of term cocktail-making class if they came to all the exam review sessions -- because he does actually know how to make drinks, he's been alive for six centuries, thanks very much -- and now it's become a thing and he's stuck doing it forever.

Then Dream took to his drinks, and alcohol is no substitute for food but getting Dream to eat or drink anything is a bloody miracle, so if that anything is the bougiest mixture of alcohols Hob can come up with, well--

Actually. Actually that might be worse than nothing at all.

Makes Dream happy though, so what is Hob to do? Keep ordering luxardo cherries and elderflower liqueur until he outlives them, that's what.

He finishes shaking the drink under the heavy gaze of his guest and pours, sliding it across the table to them.

Hob feels like he's being sized up by a predator as they take a long, delicate sip. The color of the drink matches the pink of their blazer. Hob is struggling to recall if said blazer was actually pink when they arrived.

"Ah. You mix a good drink, Hob Gadling," they say, propping their head on their hand, looking a him from under their lashes, and, ah, so that's what this is.

Hob leans on the bar. "What sort of... entity are you, then?"

Their whole face brightens in what Hob thinks is delight. "Oh! So you are a perceptive one. Get a lot of entities in here, do you, Robert?"

"'Bout as many as can be expected. That's not an answer."

They pout. "Neither is yours. And can't a being just pop by the local speakeasy for a drink without being interrogated?"

"Seems a little unfair that you know my name, and I don't know yours," Hob points out. "Names have power, and so on, isn't that the thing?"

His guest studies him. "You are both far more normal and far less normal than I'd been expecting. Fascinating."

Um.

Before Hob is forced to respond to that, the door swings open to reveal Dream, shrouded in darkness and nighttime and vibrating with electrical fury. Shadows crawl up the windows. All the lights in the inn flicker out.

Oh boy.

"I," Dream says, each word a thunderclap, shining gaze fixed on Hob's guest at the bar, "Explicitly. Forbade. You. From. Interfering."

"What are you going to do, hit me?" taunts the other entity, leaning back on their stool, drink balanced in one hand.

Hob looks back and forth between them, wondering if he should fetch a weapon. He keeps a cricket bat here somewhere, surely...

"Dream, love," he says, once he's decided it's better to try to deescalate the situation rather than introducing further weaponry, "your usual?"

Dream nods, stalking over to the bar. His gaze flits briefly to Hob, softening, before snapping right back to the other being.

"I see you remain incapable of heeding a warning," he says, all ice.

"It's not really part of my nature," they say. "I see it, I like it... well, you get it."

Oh. Oh no.

Cautiously, Hob slides his drink over to Dream. Without breaking eye contact with... Desire? it must be, and thanks, Dream, for the complete lack of description, Dream picks up his drink and downs the whole thing in one long swallow.

Ooooooh boy.

"Desire," Hob says, and they perk up at his realization of their name, looking over at him, "might be better if you were going now."

Desire lets out a frustrated huff. "Ugh, of course. I certainly don't want to upset 'ole Nightmare here."

"You certainly don't want my fist in your jaw," Hob says, more audible threat in it than he intends -- but he remembers Dream's halting confession, about how often love had turned out to be manipulation, and he thinks he should be congratulated on his restraint, actually.

Desire just laughs, and-- ah, Hob is starting to see that there's no winning with this one. Even and especially when you haven't agreed to the game.

"I suppose I'll be going then, before the fists start flying." They slide out of their seat and glide towards the door, waving. "Nice meeting you, Robert! I'm sure we'll be seeing each other again, soon."

I don't doubt it, Hob thinks.

They take their drink with them. Hob's not feeling particularly inclined to chase down that glass.

Dream still hasn't moved. He stares after Desire, empty glass about to crack in his grip.

"Dream?"

"I said that you should call for me," Dream says, the ghost of words.

With what means, exactly? Hob thinks. Damned enigmatic shadow of a man. "You didn't tell me who to look out for."

"Oh." Dream finally snaps out of his daze. "Yes. I apologize."

"Come sit down."

Hob fetches a glass of water and drags Dream over to their usual booth, pushing the water into his hands. "Drink that."

Dream stares down at it. "Why?"

"Because you just chugged a drink you usually sip for hours. Drink."

"I will not get drunk unless I choose to," Dream says.

"Have you tested that?" Hob asks.

Dream's brows furrow. "...No."

"Then let's not do that now. Drink. Come on."

Dream sips at the water. "I am sorry," he says, slowly, "about Desire."

"And I'm sorry I didn't actually punch them," Hob says, making Dream look up at him in surprise. "Well. Sort of. Wouldn't want to make it worse."

A smile tugs at Dream's lips. "You would... defend my honor?"

"Always," Hob vows. "I'd defend you. Don't care if the devil himself has it out for you."

"That may well happen," Dream says.

Hob stares at Dream. Dream stares back.

"Oh," Hob says, or maybe just hopes, "you're making a joke."

"No," says Dream. "Lucifer and I are on poor terms at the moment. She may seek revenge."

Hob keeps staring at him. Dream meets his gaze evenly.

Hob scrubs his hands through his hair. "Lucifer and you..."

Why was it always like this?

When he looks up again, Dream is smirking at him. "You're a menace," Hob tells him. "One day, you're going to give me the full rundown of everyone who has beef with you so I can be prepared."

"That will be a long list," Dream says.

"Of course it is," Hob sighs.

Dream takes his hand as if he can comfort Hob through all of the insane interactions he's sure to have with strange beings in the near future. The worst thing is, it works. Hob squeezes his hand and immediately remembers why he's willing to do anything for him.

"I'd go to Hell for you," he says. "I'd prefer not to, though, if it's all the same."

"That is my preference as well," says Dream.

There's a lot Hob would do for Dream. It's probably unhealthy. But what's the point of living six hundred years if you're going to spend it all being healthy, anyway.

"Why do so many people have problems with you, anyway?" Hob asks.

Hob knows. Hob fucking knows why.

Dream pouts. "Matthew tells me my social skills are 'less than adequate.'"

That's one way to phrase 'you act like an arrogant dick 85% of the time.' Matthew should receive a medal for his tact.

Hob loves that arrogant dick, though, God fucking damn him.

"All the more reason to get me that list, then," Hob says. "Maybe we can prevent you from creating an interdimensional incident."

"Will you accomplish this by threatening to punch them in the face?" Dream asks, completely neutral.

"Okay, you know what? Fair," Hob admits, and Dream chuckles. "Perhaps neither of us is cut out for diplomacy. The point, though, is: of course I'd defend you. I love you."

Dream kisses the back of his hand. As if he's only just now realized what he's done to Hob's pub, the lights all flicker back on.

"Thank Christ, I thought I was going to have to replace all those bulbs."

"Do you think I would do that to you?" Dream says with a tiny smile, Hob's hand still pressed to his lips.

You've done worse than that to me, Hob thinks. Better, too. So much better.

"No, love," he says, "I know you wouldn't."

[tinyozlion]

“And Its Name is επυον”: Where Did Epyon Come From, Literally and Figuratively?

On the pillars before the Oracle of Delphi, the navel of the ancient world, an inscription carved read: “know thyself”. 

Inside the Oracle’s inner sanctum sat the Pythia, bent over smoking fissures in the temple floor, breathing the sacred poison that would let Apollo in. It is a dreadful ecstasy– dangerous, body-wracking; gaining knowledge of the future shortens hers. 

Far in the future, a man exiled to a gilded oubliette speculates his own worth and relevance to history, surrounded by ghosts, becoming a ghost himself. Alone with his doubt, he looks for the god in the machine, seeking answers: “Why do we fight? For what should I fight?”

But the god he built is silent.

The world of automated warfare becomes increasingly bleak and devoid of reason. He is terrified that the pilots who so inspired him will lose their purpose just as he has, and join him in miserable freefall. 

Out of this wild abyss Treize builds the Epyon. Not for himself–  he will never pilot it. There is almost nothing of Treize in this suit, not that we can recognize from its exterior. It is not the heroic Tallgeese with its Attic crest– it is something clawed, stygian, one of the bat-winged Erinyes with a torch and whip. 

Epyon is not a weapon; it is a punishment. It is retribution for a world that has forgotten its humanity, its rites, its propriety. For its pilot, it is a scourge– the cracking whips of the Furies in their brain, driving them into a frenzy. Madness. Holy poison, to let the future in. 

Its name, επυον, is meant to mean "Next", or “After”. 

To guide the future, you must shorten yours. 

You must not be a victor, when you pilot this suit. 

Where did Epyon come from, in the mind of its creator? Everything we see of Treize forms a cohesive aesthetic: Roses, swords, romanticized old-world decadence, heroic motifs, gold, blue, white, red. Where did this thorny, tyrian-purple chimera live in him? Shouldn’t we have seen it lurking somewhere? Or does it seem to come out of nowhere precisely because he designed it to be his antithesis? 

Whether or not “Frozen Teardrop”, the novelized sequel to Gundam Wing, can be considered canon is a source of contention amongst many fans, but looking at it purely as a way to judge script-writer Katsuyuki Sumizawa’s intentions when he wrote the series, I find many parts of it to be informative. 

To paraphrase the fan-translation, it states that Treize found blue and white to be emblematic of heroism, colors associated with victory, and so their complementary opposites, black and red, could be seen as the colors of the defeated, associated with loss. For Treize, defeat and loss are tied inexorably to his vision of the future: “it was the defeated who changed the era and began the next”, as it says in the novel. 

Epyon is meant to negate the ideal of the conquering hero, the counter for a world beset by victorious cowards who command legions of dolls to do their killing and dying for them. As Treize designed it, Epyon has no projectile weapons; it is a suit purely for one-on-one combat, a suit that demands you risk everything when you fight.

No surprise then, that he gives it to the first Gundam pilot he meets– remarkably, the one whose self detonation caused everyone in his orbit to question their involvement in the war-- though one gets the feeling that any of the pilots would do. Treize hopes that Heero will use the Epyon to navigate the chaos to find the true purpose he is fighting for, and determine what course the future will take. 

But Heero has never been concerned with this sort of navel-gazing, and has no interest in discovering whether or not battle itself has a grander purpose or ultimate meaning. He fights the enemy in front of him and will continue to do so until either his life, or the supply of enemies, runs out. Heero does not overthink the future; he does not dwell on consequences. Treize does nothing BUT overthink the future and consider the fractal spread of consequences. They are mutually incomprehensible to each other, but perhaps not at cross purposes. 

Heero enters the cockpit convinced that he is expendable and redundant, that his only goal is to survive. When he returns from his test flight in Epyon, he can barely stand or speak. From that point on, he thinks about the future, about who and what will be important for what comes after the fighting has ended.

Eventually, the Epyon passes to the only person more disillusioned and estranged from his sense of purpose than Treize is– to Zechs, where it seems it was always meant to go.

• How And When Was Epyon Built?

Whew! Now that the metaphysical stuff is out of the way, let’s talk about the physical development of Epyon, and how that must have come about.

As we know, after his confinement by Romefeller, Treize, lurking around with the lights out and questioning his place in the universe, uses his now copious free time to build this gundanium dominatrix using only his laptop and the power of depression.

Now, even if we are to accept that Treize is a programming and engineering savant on top of all his other accomplishments, it would still be beyond even His Excellency’s considerable talents to pull an entire Gundam out of a hat in the basement of an abandoned Disney castle. 

Where did he get the gundanium? The crew? The construction equipment? Isn’t he under house arrest? Why would Romefeller leave him unsupervised to build a demon robot that predicts the future? 

These questions have been annoying the fandom since 1995. But, if you look carefully (VERY carefully, one might even say obsessively), it's possible to find the connective threads that make Epyon’s construction less of a magic trick. 

--Let’s go through the list of these unclarified canonical whoopsie-daisies in order of most to least glaring!:

If Treize is being kept in confinement in the Romefeller headquarters, why is he allowed to design and build a mobile suit?

*:･ﾟ✧ Our princess is in another castle! *:･ﾟ✧

The mansion that Treize goes into during episode 27 is NOT the castle that we see him in during episode 34. This switcheroo would probably have happened sometime in the MIDDLE of episode 27– which I guess might as well be the case, since episode 27 is a dreamlike, nonlinear stroll through Treize’s spiraling existential crisis.

Between Treize being confined in the Romefeller headquarters and developing the Epyon, Treize is in fact liberated by the Treize Faction and moved to the blue-roofed castle in the middle of the forest near the Luxembourg Base, which is where the faction has made their headquarters.

Presumably the crew and equipment needed to actually manufacture a new mobile suit were available at the base.

Treize’s confinement at this point is largely self-imposed; he could rally the factions loyal to him and make a move on Romefeller (as he does later), but he doesn’t believe he has the ability or the right to do so. Instead, he builds Epyon, and just kind of winds it up and lets it loose on the world to see if anything interesting happens.

And it does! The interesting very much happens.

Where did Treize get the gundanium alloy to build a Gundam?

The shipment of gundanium that Heero destroys in episode 4 was being transported on an OZ carrier, and it had to have been going somewhere. This gundanium was ordered WAY before Zechs’s gundam rebuilding project, so its purpose is left unidentified– someone in OZ clearly wanted to experiment with this new material for developing mobile suits. 

Adding to that, the gundanium that Zechs had access to when he was rebuilding the Wing Gundam had to come from somewhere, and that somewhere was probably the very deep pockets of a guy who likes to keep his best friends happy.

Regardless if any given shipment of gundanium made it home in one piece, what it means is that OZ has a way of obtaining gundanium, and if OZ has it, then Treize has it.

How would Treize know how to build a Gundam?

During the process of rebuilding the Wing Gundam from the ground up, Zechs and his engineers would probably have kept extensive records and made new Gundam blueprints that Treize would know about. Also by this point in the series, several Gundams and their pilots have been captured, and the Gundam’s engineers forced to build Vayeate and Mercurius for Lady Une. OZ would therefore have all the data they need to build a fresh Gundam, and once again: if OZ has it, then Treize has it.

Okay, but how would Treize know enough about the ZERO system to be able to reverse engineer it?

As mentioned in the entry about the ZERO system, the AI of the Taurus mobile suits eventually becomes the Mobile Doll AI. This is a predictive battle algorithm OZ already had in the works long before the Wing ZERO was discovered. 

Additionally, Treize is likely to have had access to the data being recorded by Trant while his team was researching the ZERO system, even if he was getting it covertly via a Treize Faction infiltrator, or a member of OZ who was still loyal to him. 

How does Treize know so much about designing mobile suits and their cockpit systems?

One has to remember that Treize was the instructor at Lake Victoria Base (the same position Noin holds when we first meet her in the series), responsible for training OZ’s elite pilots, and (according to “Frozen Teardrop”) involved with crucial tactical developments and improvements to OZ’s lineup. 

Yes, he’s a fancy-pants aristocrat, but you can’t say he doesn’t know his way around a mobile suit. He’s best friends with Zechs, after all– nerds of a feather flock together.

But how would he know to program the security system to accept Heero Yuy?

Well, ever since he was captured and hospitalized Heero’s biometric data would have been on file with the Alliance military, and therefore available to OZ, and therefore (again) available to Treize– so by now His Excellency will have certainly been made aware that Heero’s bones run on a third-party Adobe Photoshop plug-in.

But who cares about that crusty old data? All of the Gundam pilots have been accounted for and fingerprinted and scanned and microchipped up in Fortress Barge! They could probably 3D print Heero Yuy out of PLA and sell action figures if they wanted.

As to why Treize picked Heero specifically, I have two theories:

The first is that he simply programmed the computer to accept any and all Gundam pilots that might want to drop in for tea and assassination (and probably Zechs too, just in case he was in town).

The second is that Dorothy’s presence in the Sanc Kingdom means that Treize has a little bird keeping him informed about everything happening there, including that both Heero and Quatre are attending the Peacecraft’s School for Wayward Radical Pacifists. 

True, Dorothy is technically there to be her grandfather Duke Dremail’s little bird informant, but Dorothy’s loyalties are her own, and she very much likes and respects her cousin Treize. She’s probably beaming news of the Gundam pilots directly to him on their shared eyebrow-frequency the whole time she’s there.

Eyebrow-to-eyebrow communication.

As one final note– I’m aware that the more recent manga adaptation, “Glory of Losers”, contains its own version of events that attempts to reconcile the building of Epyon with other events in the series. However, while I appreciate that they made an attempt to resolve the big, lingering Epyon Questions, I find that like most of their retconned material involving Treize, I… 

I don’t like it. 

Or to put it less personally, I think it creates an even more dubious timeline of events that is somehow less credible than the original. In this version, Treize begins the planning and construction of both Epyon and Tallgeese at the beginning of the series, before the original Tallgeese has even been brought into play and LONG before the ZERO system is introduced– somehow with the foreknowledge that these suits will be vital for the development of the new era. 

I think this is a contrived way of making Treize into an omniscient puppet master who was retroactively steering everything in the correct direction from the very beginning, and was therefore always right and always assured of his role in the future– and I think that does his character an incredible disservice. In a story about the deep significance of changing people’s hearts and minds, the fact that Treize is retroactively scrubbed of his flaws and morally questionable decisions runs counter to the central thesis of Gundam Wing, and what has made it such a memorable story. 

“Glory of Losers” is a beautiful manga and I do think it does an incredible job of presenting the rather garbled narrative of the series in a new light, with some truly masterful tweaks that add depth to the characters and story. But it’s also guilty of some egregious changes to canon that serve no purpose other than to reconcile the main series with the events of “Frozen Teardrop”, and as an excuse to redesign all the mobile suits to be cooler and sell more model kits.

…On the other hand, in this version of the story, Treize was already familiar with Tallgeese from his earliest days in OZ. 

This is obviously another very unnecessary and suspiciously convenient retcon that I feel is in dubious taste– HOWEVER: it does mean that Howard gets to meet young whippersnapper Treize Khushrenada, who just so happened to be the one to ask him to paint it white because he thinks one day he’d like to pilot a Big Damn Hero Machine himself, and he wants it to be a more "elegant color." 

And that is the funniest shit I can possibly imagine. So I’ll give it that.

I'd like it to be at least 20% more elegant

[wormdebut]

!!!!! 6 for the wrapped blurb? A way to honor the song that didn't quite make it 🕯🖤

Hi there Vec! Six on my Spotify Wrapped was You Only Live Once by Suicide Silence. This one was actually super difficult for me to figure out, but We did it! Enjoy!

----

It's your heart that's beating inside that keeps us alive.

----

"Hey, Steve?" Eddie whispers, from his hospital bed and Steve freezes. He was headed out for the night. He wonders if Eddie remembers.

'Hey Steve--Make him pay.'

He's got to right? Steve hasn't stopped remembering it.

Steve whips his head around--no he's not eager to keep talking to Eddie. Leave him alone.

Eddie smiles. It's a small thing, but its been a week and half since--everything. Steve has thought about a lot of things. He's talked to Robin about a lot of things. It's been a week and a half since Steve Harrington carried Eddie Munson out of the upside down, hanging on by a fucking thread.

It's been two days since he opened his (very pretty) eyes and Steve is struggling.

Steve inhales, letting out a quick, "Yeah?"

That soft smile on Eddie's face, grows. He's still healing, but it's good to see him smiling. "I'm glad you made it out okay, Harrington."

Steve doesn't love that. Simply because, he's about to walk out of here, on two working legs. He's about to walk out of here, and go to his big as hell, empty fucking mansion and Eddie is lying in a hospital bed, with tubes all over his body, hooked to far too many electrical devices and Eddie is telling Steve that he's glad he's alright.

And yet-- "I'm glad you made it out okay too, Munson." Steve returns Eddie's smile.

Eddie cocks his head. "I'll see you soon?"

'I'll be back tomorrow', Steve thinks. He doesn't say that though. He just nods his head once. "Yeah, Eds. I'll see you soon."

——

Things are fine. Eddie keeps coming over to Steve's house--of course he does. Steve keeps inviting him. Steve just can't get over the fact that Eddie keeps saying yes.

They're doing what they usually do, these days, lounging by the pool--absolutely not swimming, thank you very much--smoking weed and just existing.

Steve is quite happy with the way things are going. He just wishes he could fucking say something. Anything.

Eddie pulls him out of his thoughts.

"Does it ever get any better?" Eddie asks and Steve raises an eyebrow. Eddie continues, "Living with knowing? Knowing that there's a real actual hell just--underneath our fucking feet? Knowing that people are as evil and twisted as I always thought they were? Knowing that the people of Hawkins are safe because of a bunch of teenage nerds? Does it--" Eddie pauses, turning his stupid (very pretty) wide eyes up to meet Steve's "--ever start making sense?"

Steve stares back into Eddie's eyes for a minute--he is high, leave him alone--before shaking his head.

"Better? No, I don't really think so--but, you have people who know what you do. You have people who went through what you went through. We stick together. Does it get any better? I don't really think so--but, it does get easier."

Eddie's face goes soft, his smile is that sweet thing again and it makes Steve's heart, ache. "Having you makes it easier I think."

Steve feels the color that rushes to his cheeks. "Yeah, well--you've got me."

——

He's going to go insane. It's been three months and things with Eddie are fine. They are fine, and nothing is changing and--well--except for--okay…so maybe they--Look. Listen. Eddie is a tactile guy and Steve does not mind. Maybe they cuddle on Steve's dumb couch everyone in a dumb while, but that's--Eddie isn't making any moves, and Steve doesn't know if he should--and--

And and and--

"Rob, I don't know what to do." Steve whines over the phone line.

"Oh my god Steve. I leave for the weekend. The weekend, Steven Augustus." She sighs. She has to go pulling out the pretentious middle name. Cool. Great. "Just--" she sighs, "just talk to him--or--"

"Or what Robin Evangeline?" Steve fights back. Robin has a pretentious middle name too.

Robin scoffs. "Okay, first of all? That's fuckin' rude. Point B? Just--I dunno--kiss him about it or something."

Steve laughs--cackles really. "Oh yeah, I'll just kiss him real quick and it should fix everything right?"

Robin sighs. "I don't know Steve. You only live once--and honestly? The fact that you and Eddie for that matter are still breathing is pretty fucking phenomenal and--You just--you--life is too short to worry about the what ifs. Talk to him, kiss him, fuck him. I don't care. Just--do something about it."

----

Steve watches as Eddie slings his jacket over his shoulders. He's just gonna let him walk out of his house again.

"Hey, Eddie?" Steve breathes. Eddie turns, that soft smile--the smile Steve thinks is maybe meant for him--on his plush lips.

Steve takes a breath and then grabs Eddie's arm, pulling them chest to chest. He almost loses his cool when they lock eyes. Eddie's are wide and searching.

Steve is done searching he knows what he wants. He leans forward, crashing his lips to Eddies.

Eddie kisses back.

----

You only live once, so just go fucking nuts!

[starkeyshirt]

Kitchen Calls

jj x john b

i wrote this quite while ago! it's not necessarily an age regression story, but i imagine jj as an age dreamer of sorts, so i figured it kind of fits. enjoy!

tw//: abuse, blood, injuries, crying.

<<•>>

    JJ's ribs stung with an undeniable pain; echoing through his body with every kick. Blood dripped from his lips and his vision blurred in and out.

  "Piece of shit!" Luke screamed at his son, kicking him in the ribs one last time before chucking the almost-empty bottle at his head. The glass shattered against JJ's skin, causing it to erupt in an unbelievable amount of pain. "You're the damn reason your momma left, you know it too! Should've killed you a long time ago, boy."

   JJ watched with bleary eyes as his father stomped off, slamming their crappy door against it's hinges. He could hear the stomping until his truck started, then, he was gone. JJ knew he wasn't in the clear; his father would return, and nobody wanted to be around when he came home. Coughing up more blood, the blond boy forced himself into a sitting position. His soft, golden mop fell over his eyes, mixing with sweat, blood, and tears on his face.

  JJ's ribs throbbed almost unbearably as he stood up, leaning against the counter for stability. He was damn sure his stomach was blotches of any color but the pale tan it should be. It always was when his dad was done with him.

  JJ has learned overtime what to simply expect from his dad, what to know was going to happen before it did. He knew what pain was coming when he showed up at home after weeks without money for his dad. He knew what names he would be called, and that he probably wouldn't even make it to his room to grab the belongings he came there for. JJ knew all these things, yet he still went back. He probably always would; until the day his father killed him.

  Somewhere in his slightly brainwashed methods of thinking, JJ completely believed everything his father told him was true; Ungrateful, stupid, useless, unlovable. They were all things his father called him the most, and in some ways, they did in fact apply to JJ.

  He convinced himself he was ungrateful. He still cried when his father gave him what he deserved, even when he did nothing to contribute to their poverty. He did nothing to help his dad; he didn't give him enough money, he pushed him to drink. He was ungrateful.

  JJ convinced himself he was stupid. He failed classes in school and barely tried, too preoccupied with himself to focus on class. He led his friends into dangerous situations with dangerous people, simply because he didn't use his head. He thought with the weed he smoked, and all that did was give him a false sense of confidence. He was stupid.

   He convinced himself he was useless; never really needed to anyone, just there. He mooched off of everyone and everything around him, barely contributing to his friends or his own father. He didn't do them any good, only weighing them down with his own mental and emotional baggage. JJ was useless.

  And most of all, JJ convinced himself he was unlovable. It's the perfect word to describe him, in his own mind. Unable to be loved by his own father, who despises him because of his mother. At one point in time he earned his mother's love, only for her to rip it all away when she left without a warning. Without a goodbye. Unlovable to everyone and anyone, because nobody could love somebody as messed up as JJ Maybank.

  "Fuck!" The blond screamed, fist colliding harshly with the cheaply stained wood creating his father's joke of a kitchen. Tears flowed heavily down his cheeks, an expression filled with none other than emotion on his face. Simple emotion, that's the only way he would put it.

  Cuts from the glass dropped coppery blood down his face, and his ribs pounded from their squished position against his knees. JJ's hands intertwined into his hair, pulling desperately against his blond locks in a weak attempt to stop the wave of emotions threatening to rip through his tear ducts. JJ kept a firm grip on his hair, attempting to stand himself upright to no avail; waves of pain ripped through his ribs, sending him to the ground with a yelp of pain.

  He weakly wiggled his phone from his pocket, punching in a number he had memorized by heart. JJ hated with everything he had to call for help, fully believing he didn't deserve it. But he was wasting time, and he really didn't want to be lying on the floor when his dad stormed in again, more drunk than he was before.

  "J? What's taking you so long, I thought you only went for clothes?" John B's warm, concerned voice broke through the ringing, filling JJ's heart with a love he felt he didn't deserve. Sobs ripped from the boy's mouth; violent, harsh cries filled to the brim with pain and suffering, immediately making John B fill with panic. After all the years he'd been friends with JJ, been with JJ, he'd never heard him cry like that.

"I can't take this anymore," JJ sobbed, hearing the faint start up of their van, the Twinkie, while John B left the chateau. "I'm so tired."

  "Hey, babe, you've gotta breathe. I'm coming to get you, just breathe. Remember what we talked about?" John B soothed, listening to JJ's breathing becoming increasingly uneven and rapid, the boy spiraling himself into an anxiety induced panic attack quickly.

  "Yeah." JJ replied faintly, bringing his left hand up to his face. He held his thumb merely a few centimeters away from his lips, blowing gently onto it. As a kid, JJ would suck his thumb to calm himself down. He stopped by the time he was nine, his father having broken his left thumb after he caught him with it between his lips. Men don't need comfort, was what he had said. From that time until just a few months ago, JJ was at a loss for a way to comfort himself, always spiraling into horrible panic attacks until he'd choke on his own tears and throw up or breathe too fast and pass out. He hated it. After multiple situations in which John B was left to slow his boyfriend's rapid breathing, he noticed how he always had his left hand near his face, fisted with only his thumb out. Anybody else might not have noticed it, but after multiple times, John B caught on. Together, they had done some testing and came up with another thing that helped JJ focus and calm himself, a coping mechanism without the trauma his father caused him so early in his life.

   John B smiled fondly as he sped down the street light roads, listening to JJ softly blowing against his thumb time after time again, his breathing obviously recovering in the slightest.

  "Good boy, J. You're doing so good." John B praised softly, pulling in outside JJ's broken home. He didn't hesitate to fly up the old steps and into the other boy's kitchen.

  The sight would've been deemed precious by John B if it we're for the circumstances. JJ was sat against the cupboards, his right arm tightly around his knees, holding them close to his chest. His thumb was still held against his lips, although his mouth was parted slightly. Instead of blowing on his finger he had settled for resting it in-between his lips, having grown tired of blowing air out of his lungs.

  "Hey, c'mon. Let's get home," John B offered, crouching down carefully next to his wounded boyfriend. JJ shuffled ever so slightly, just enough so John B could swoop one arm under his legs and his other supporting his back. A whine escaped his breath when his ribs were jostled, John shushing him. JJ stuck his face into the other's horrible, horrible brightly colored shirt, breathing in the scent he loved so much.

  John B hummed softly as he carried JJ to the car, hating how small and fragile the boy seemed in his arms. He was probably one of the only people to ever see this side of JJ; he was always cracking jokes and rambling off, making himself the loud, boisterous one of the group to cope. JJ was never sad, and it hurt to see him hurting. John B would never get used to it.

  "Hey, I'm gonna run in and grab your clothes and stuff, okay? I don't want you coming back here for a while," John B explained gently placing the blond down in the front seat. Not much more than a wince escaped his lover's lips, a small nod being given in response to the question. "I'll be right back."

  JJ's busted lip left an imprint of coppery blood on John B's lips when he gave him a small peck, only making the brunette feel guilty. Guilty, only that he couldn't protect his boy.

  John B gathered both things JJ needed and things he knew JJ would want, because those were two completely different things. Shirts, shorts, sunglasses, toothbrush (JB would never admit it out loud, but he truly didn't appreciate sharing his own toothbrush every single morning); all things JJ would need. Then, he tossed in extra hoodies and his blanket, grabbing his fluffy (and in JJ's words very manly) pillow and stuffing it under his arm. That's another thing he's learned about JJ over the years. Despite living in the Outer Banks, the blond boy always insisted on piling himself under as many soft things as he could find after something traumatic happens. It was always a few hours later, after things settled and his wounds or anything else were cared for, but it happened everytime without a doubt. The first few times John B had witnessed JJ do this, he quite frankly thought the boy was going to suffocate himself. Overtime, though, JJ even managed to get John B to join him under all the blankets and pillows, cuddling together as if they were in Antarctica and freezing to death. It was a comfort thing, he supposed.

  The sky was dark already, the day having passed quicker than either boy expected. JJ was slowly bouncing back to his usual self on the way back, still very much hurt and upset, but just a little tiny bit less miserable.

  "C'mon, Princess. It's time for the chateau nurse to take over your injuries," John B joked, playfully bowing down as he opened JJ's car door. He (carefully) scooped the boy into his arms, listening to the small, wet giggles escaping his boyfriend's throat. JJ sniffed repeatedly, having been too stubborn in the car to blow his nose. Sometimes, John B wondered how he ever started dating such an man-child, but he'd love him nonetheless.

  John B carried everything in with only one trip, JJ in his arms, the bag slung over his neck. JJ held onto his pillow. Everything got tossed beside the couch, JJ being set delicately on one of the cushions. John B turned towards the bathroom for their medical supplies. "Don't move."

  "It's not like I'm gonna limp to Figure 8," JJ replied sarcastically, rolling his eyes.

John B rolled his eyes as well. "Happy to see you're feeling better."

  John B returned within seconds, carrying an arm-load of bandages, antiseptic, cotton rounds, and a joint. He handed JJ the lit joint, placing it in-between the boy's lips directly. John B then bent down to lift JJ's shirt over his head, the smaller blond purposefully blowing the smoke from the joint into his face.

  John B sighed, glancing at the variously unnatural colors covering his boyfriend's midsection. JJ's ribs were swollen black and blue, bits of yellow mixed in with it. It hurt him everytime he had to see his love like that, beaten like a dog by the person supposed to love him most. John B knew JJ saw the look on his face, watching with soft eyes as the boy looked away guilty, looking much like a kicked puppy.

  "Hey, look at me," John B instructed, dragging his hand up to JJ's chin. He redirected his focus, turning his head until the boy was meeting his eyes. "None of this is your fault. You don't deserve to be treated this way, by anyone. You're perfect."

  Instead of avoiding his gaze, blue orbs simply stared into brown ones, a sinful guilt trickling out of them. "I do deserve it, John B. I drove him to be like this."

  "You didn't drive anyone anywhere, JJ. He's not a real man, only an excuse for a coward who takes his own misfortunes out on his child," John be signed, dabbing a cotton rounds with alcohol, bringing it up to JJ's face. "This might sting, bud."

  The alcohol did in fact sting, strangled and suppressed whimpers escaping the blond's lips until John B was finished. "Sh, we're all done now."

  With his face now free of glass shards and blood, the only noticable injuries were the scrapes left and the puffiness of his busted lip. John B could see the tiredness in his boyfriend's eyes, releasing the boy from his couch captivity whilst he left to return the first aid supplies to their normal places.

   JJ was quick to hop back off the couch, scurrying around in a slightly handicapped manner; gathering all the blankets, pillows, and hoodies he could find. He made a small nest on the couch, draping a fuzzy blanket over his bare shoulders, wrapping it around himself before holding it tightly against his chest.

  Bundled up and content with the amount of soft items he found, JJ set off towards John B's bedroom to find the older boy. John B was stood by the bed, preparing to toss an old Heywards hoodie over his bare torso. JJ assumed that Pope left that hoodie at the chateau sometime a year or two ago, and it ended up being one of the 'community' hoodies. JJ was pretty sure everyone in their group had worn it at some point, even Kie.

  John B caught his boyfriend's eye quickly, stopping his movements when JJ shook his head firmly. "I can't wear a hoodie?"

  "Nope," JJ stated firmly, shuffling forward to grab the brunette's hand. He tugged him right to the couch, shoving them both into the small den of blankets formed. John B didn't even have time to protest before he was covered in soft material, not that he would anyway. JJ was quick to curl himself into John B's bare torso, feeling all the tension slip from his body at the contact. Skin-to-skin contact was another thing JJ loved, it calmed him effectively and quickly. John B knew this, giving he was one of the only people JJ would allow himself to be that close with. Kiara and John B, that was it. He didn't know why, but stemming from his home life, JJ assumed he saw them almost as parental figures - except he was dating John B. It may not make much sense, but a lot of things about JJ don't make sense.

  "Can we go surfing tomorrow?" JJ asked suddenly.

  John B laughed, lightheartedly, loving everything about the boy in his arms. Giving a quick kiss to JJ's head, he smiled fondly.

  "Of course we can go surfing tomorrow, sunshine."

[pompomegranate]

shotgun

chainsaw man | aki hayakawa x gn!reader | 1.2k

warnings | smoking. mentions of death. making out. mild suggestiveness.

a/n | thought about aki quitting smoking and helping him out by doing the smoking for him. and this happened! not beta’d, edited lightly. please be gentle this is my first aki fic !!

read on ao3

It’s rare that you see him visibly on edge like this.

Aki squirms on the sofa, hands fisted in the soft wool blanket that’s draped over the both of you.

The film that plays is nostalgic and warm, no need for subtitles when you’re both barely paying attention, comfortable on the couch cushions on Aki’s day off. Despite the coziness, he’s clearly worked up over something.

“You good?” You ask, covering his palm with your own, coaxing the tension out.

He looks down at his hand, and he blinks, like he’s surprised at the inadvertent clenching of his muscles.

“Yes.” Aki nods, and meets your eye. Soft irises say much more than his lips ever do.

Even on the days he’s at home, he’s still worked up about something. Even if his mind is in relaxation mode, his body is tense.

A flash of bright light and thunder booms overhead, followed by the crescendo of rain, from gentle pattering to a heavy downpour. The white noise of the weather fills the room, and Aki seems to settle further.

“Something seems to be bothering you, Aki,” you say, rather boldly.

It’s an understatement and a slap in the face all at once, because of course there’s something wrong.

You know that there’s something bothering him. Of course there is.

Death hangs over him, a dense stormcloud much like the one that darkens the evening sky and steals the last rays of sun – a thief in the night. Watching as many people die as frequently and as violently as Aki has, there’s no reason for him to open up to you. To confide in you.

But he does so anyway.

“I haven’t smoked in a week,” he murmurs, rotating his hand till your palms are flat against each other, lacing your fingers in his with ease. “It’s getting to me.”

“You quit?”

“It was supposed to be a surprise, but I’m afraid my body’s betraying my mind,” Aki chuckles humorlessly, shaking his head.

His dark locks sway with the movement, bangs tickling his pale cheeks. He’s pretty like this.

“Quitting cold turkey is difficult. No one will fault you for a few slip ups, baby,” you reassure him with a squeeze of his hand.

Aki sighs, lips curling into a warm smile at the pet name. “Quitting is odd enough, but failing at quitting is even harder for me to stomach.” 

You think of the spare pack hidden beneath the stack of intimates in your top drawer. There has to be at least one left, you’re sure of it.

“Wait right here,” you say, throwing the sheets off to pad down the hallway towards your room, but not before leaning in to kiss Aki’s waiting lips.

You shout at him to clothes his eyes before you stuff the small box in the waistband of your shorts – a pair of Aki’s that you stole – and you find him with his lids tightly shut.

Taking advantage of the moment, you cross the living space and climb onto his lap, knees framing his hips. His hands flutter to your waist – pinkies slipping past the stretchy fabric of your waistband, thumbs curled under your shirt, hands splayed as wide as they can go.

You don’t mean to, but you tighten your thighs around him, and he does nothing to hide his excitement at knowing how easily he can make your body react. A single touch, and you’re putty in his hands.

You prop a cigarette between your taut lips, mumbling a gentle command. “Open.”

When his dark blue eyes register what’s right in front of him, he sucks in a sharp breath.

“Tempting, but I’ll have to pass.”

“What if you aren’t the one smoking?” You ask, so close to him that you can see the fading shadows under his eyes, the slender bridge of his nose, the flush of color in his cheeks. You’ll never get over how handsome he is. 

Beneath the shag of his bangs, you can see a brow lift in question, prompting you to answer.

Instead of explaining, you dig the pack of cigarettes from your waistband, ignoring the flutter in your stomach when his grip tightens around you. With a pop of the top and a shake of your wrist, the lighter slides from the box with ease and into your waiting palm.

Flick, flick, flick, and the flame’s warm glow illuminates the room.

Aki is staring at the flame, the cigarette, you – completely entranced by it all. You revel in the power for a moment before lighting the end with a cupped hand.

You bite back a laugh at the awe-struck expression painted on his soft features, child-like wonder wrapped in a lean, toned package.

You hollow out your cheeks, sucking in a deep breath, chest rising as your lungs fill with smoke.

He watches your every move, gaze trained on your pursed lips.

You lift to your knees, till Aki is sunken in the sofa cushions, head craned back, all consumed by you. Going a step further, you use your free hand to tip his chin back, and he not-so-subtly gulps at you taking charge, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down his throat.

You lean in, ghosting your lips over his. Your heart thumps wildly – and his does too. When you press closer, his pulse nearly syncs with your own.

And you kiss him.

You kiss him with parted lips and exhale, breathing the smoke into him with a low hum. His arms tighten around your waist, looping tightly like he can’t bear the thought of your skin not touching.

Pulling back, you brush your nose against his, the sharp scent of tobacco lingering in the sliver of space between you.

Aki breathes out of his nose, the thin smoke flaring outward. His eyes flutter closed with a smile, a soft laugh escaping him.

“Shotgunning. Clever.”

You lean in and press a sloppy kiss on his neck, suckling the sensitive skin lightly, his throat rumbling with a groan underneath your mouth.

You kiss all the way up to his pierced ear, down his jaw, your final destination where you started – his plush lips, open and wanting. He watches you through heavy lidded eyes, drunk on the mere sight of you in his lap.

The acrid smell is heavy on both of your breaths, but it’s one you’ve come to associate with Aki. Tart and bitter and earthy and full, but never unpleasant.

You take a deep drag and close the gap again, blowing a plume into his mouth. His hands snake up towards the middle of your back, hands splaying between your shoulder blades, holding you firmly in place while he kisses you.

His tongue works against yours, mouths working at a languid pace – there’s no rush, aside from the burning embers of the cigarette between your fingers.

It’s stormy outside but there’s only you and Aki amidst the gloom. Nothing else registers but the smoke in your lungs and the kiss you share.

Aki kisses you, and the taste of him overwhelms you.

Aki kisses you, and you feel him in your veins.

Aki kisses you, and time halts – world shrinking to the two bodies on the couch – and the moment is immortal (as are you).

Tendrils of smoke rise from the lit cigarette, ash crumbling away onto your favorite blanket. You cup his cheek, velvety smooth under your fingertips, and smile.

“You okay?”

He blinks slowly, registering that you’ve asked him something.

“Never better.”

And Aki kisses you.

[olath124]

✨️TELL ME ABOUT YOUR OCS✨️

Random shot from my... At this point scary big stash of shots. And brace yourself... It's long.

♡Name: Violet Wright.

♡Nicknames: V, just V.

♡Age: 32

♡Pronouns: She, her.

♡Sexuality: Pansexual. Doesn't care about the gender, has to feel the ✨️vibe✨️.

♡Hair Color and style:

Her natural hair color is dark brown, but she always dyes them in turquoise with pink accents. She varies a lot with her hairstyle. Usually, she keeps her hair long but mostly tied up in buns. Only when she feels really comfortable she keeps her hair down. Since she’s with Kurt she wears her hair more and more often down, preferring softer and more feminine hairstyles. After the surgery, she’ll cut her hair short and return to her natural color, but she’ll grow it back and will go back to her turquoise and pink color. 

♡Eye Color:

Her natural color is green, she tries to keep her Kiroshi as close as possible to her real color.

♡Height: 165 cm (5’5”)! Short queen! But well, Hansen canonically is 5’9”, so he can suck it!

♡Body Type: She’s athletic. She’s used to running around a lot.

♡Personality:

Violet would say normal. She’s a bit skittish with relationships, a bit insecure, very irrational and volatile.

Really affectionate, needy and whiny with those she really cares about.

♡Tattoos:

A tattoo Misty designed for her with a mandala on her neck. (I want to redraw it and make it more like a big peony, tough, we’ll see! Yes, Violet is a big WIP)

♡Piercings: Many on her ears, nothing else.

♡Any definable features such as: Birthmarks, Scars, Freckles, Beauty Marks, Accent when they talk, Lisp, Natural slurring of words, Walk with a subtle limp, ect.

She has a bunch of birthmarks on her face (not really freckles) and many different scars around her body. On her right leg now she has a scar in a shape of “K” that the two dumb-dumbs keep refreshing now and then.

♡Hobbies

Does killing Maelstrom and Scavs count as a hobby? If not, she likes to cook (with poor results because she can’t really follow instructions and tends to improvise). Only, and I mean it, only when she’s alone (or well, with Johnny at most) she sings. She’s actually not bad at it!

♡Gang/Occupation {Mox, Max Tac, etc}

None. She’s a free merc. 

Who are we kidding? At the end she’s with Barghest. Or at least under their protection.

♡Do they smoke?

She started to smoke with Johnny. Now she smokes with Kurt. Not really a habit, she smokes only if she’s stressed out or if the person she’s talking to is smoking.

♡Do they drink? Is so, what's their poison of choice?

As with smoking, she’s a social drinker. Doesn’t drink alone, but loves to drink in company. She rarely gets drunk, though. Doesn’t really like to lose control, only to get tipsy to make social interactions easier!

♡What do they usually wear on a normal day?

Synth-leather pants, a t-shirt or a top, a synth-leather jacket, sneakers, or boots. She loves black and blue stuff.

♡What do they wear when they "Get dressed up"? And what would be considered a "special occasion" to them {such as an "Oh they're gonna be there so I have to look my best." Or an "It's our anniversary".}

A special occasion is when Kurt asks her to get dressed up. She doesn’t care about dresses too much, but she likes it when he buys her dresses and asks her to wear them. Her favorite one is a short blue velvet dress, with a deep cleavage and exposed back with little dainty silver chains that cover the cleavage.  Maybe because it’s his first gift to her.

♡What do they smell like? {For example: they smell like cinnamon flavored liquor, cigarettes, leather, and motor oil.}

Blood, sweet and jasmine. After she got her shit together mostly simply jasmine.

♡How do they walk? Do they sway their hips? Do they walk with a sense of determination? Do they bounce as they walk? Etc.

When she doesn’t think of it she walks almost as if she’s hiding. Always keeping her surroundings under control, finding possible hiding spots or advantage points. When she’s in a good place or feels protected she’s straighter and more confident in her stride.

♡Are they more of an early bird or a night owl?

An always exhausted pigeon. She doesn’t have fixed hours and sleeps whenever she can. Used to sleep in the morning but with Kurt she got used to waking up (at least briefly) at 6 to have breakfast together and a morning talk.

♡If you had to use one word to define them, what word would you use?

Impulsive.

♡What words or catchphrases do they say that's unique to that character?

For everyone probably some kind of swear: “Fuck!” Or “Fuck It!”

For Kurt… they have a ritualistic phrase she uses when she needs him to be rough with her and it's: “I want you. I need you. I'll always be yours” (the final part may vary). So it's her phrase in his eyes.

♡Favorite Season

Winter.

♡Favorite type of weather {Thunderstorms, sunny, etc}

She likes those cold winter sunny mornings. She’d love to see the snow, but not a thing she’s gonna see in NC.

♡Do they have someone they're with relationship-wise? If so, who?

Yeah. Where she’s at in (my yet unpublished) writing she’s officially with Hansen. In the published part they are together only in his head XD.

♡Main Ship/Pairings

Kvio. So yeah, Kurt/Violet.

♡Side Pairings

Do I have to count them??? Between official characters only, Vio has been with: Jackie, Judy, River. Not Panam because she’s not interested (but damn, Vio tried hard!). There’s also the weird thing she has with Johnny. If she never met Hansen they would have probably end up together.

♡Favorite/Self-indulgent Pairings

The favorite remains Kvio… The self-indulgent is an Aon/Vio/Alt sandwich XD! 

♡How do they show affection to their loved one?

TOUCH. She don’t generally like to touch people… But with people she likes she’s very touchy. Not in an extreme way, but if she’s close to a person she loves she’s probably touching their arm, or slipping her hand under their or laying her head on their shoulder. She is really affectionate and really needs a lot of physical contact.

♡How do they sit in a chair?

Normally? But usually quite comfortably, legs slightly open or a leg over the other. Definitely not feminine or elegant

♡How do they sit in a chair {uncomfortable version}

Legs closed, straight back, probably fidgeting with her hands.

♡What do they wear to bed?

T-shirt and underwear. But she’s been gifted a blue silk nightgown and she likes it too. She still thinks it’s too fancy for sleeping in it, though.

♡How do they usually sleep? {Side sleeper, back, fetal position, backwards, nest sleeper, blanket mountain, etc}

She starts in fetal position, or all cuddly, she ends sleeping on her back, sometimes she throws her arms and legs around.

♡How do they sleep in a place they don't know? {Can't due to anxiety, in small bursts of sleep that are short lived, holding themselves, etc}

If she's in a “safe space” the same as usual. If it’s not so safe she wakes up now and then checking her surroundings. She also is very receptive to any possible sound.

♡Do they have to have a form of "white noise" in order to sleep? {The sound of a fan, the sound of rain, the sound of a city, etc}

No, but she appreciates the sound of the waterfall behind Kurt’s bed a lot.

♡What's a place they go to feel comfortable, that's their "spot" they always go when they're upset?

El Coyote Cojo, Misty’s shop, or Viktor’s clinic. Like a stray cat who makes a tour of her favorite places for food and cuddles.

♡What do they do when they're nervous? {Fidget with jewelry, pick at nails, bite nails/lips, play with knife/zippo lighter, etc}

If she needs to fake it, she focuses on something repetitive. Like the tap of her finger on something. If not she usually avoids other people's eyes and tries to make herself invisible, she tends to do things with her hands but it's more uncontrollable.

♡What is their "tell" for lying?

She tends not to watch people in the eyes when she’s lying about something personal. If it’s professional stuff, though it’s quite harder to tell.

��What is their favorite color?

Turquoise and blue.

♡Favorite flower/plant

Peonies.

♡Favorite sweet of choice

She's not really a sweet person. But well, who doesn't like chocolate?

♡Do they have any pets? If so, tell me about them

She had Nibbles, but with her erratic schedules she preferred to leave him with Misty.

*Takes a deep, sad breath* Violet Norris is technically her pet. And well, Shark Norris, too. If Kurt really has a “Proudest Shark Daddy” shirt, she has a “Proudest Shark Mommy'' shirt. Just to freak her out. That shirt is always in the laundry basket anyway. And if she wears it she becomes extra clumsy and spills something on it.

But of course, she's not allowed to tinker with the aquarium or to feed them without supervision. Not that she would anyway.

♡What are their triggers {If they have any}? If so, what calms them down?

The only real trigger for her is the feeling of abandonment or the fear of losing people she cares about. Only realizing that she’s not being left alone, preferably with physical contact calms her down.

♡If they could visit anywhere in the world, where would they go and why?

She… doesn’t know! She has seen very little outside of Night City and Atlanta, so the world… It feels so overwhelming. 

♡What is their favorite comfort meal?

Mama Welles’s food. Doesn’t really matter what!

♡Do they have a food they hate?

Food is food, she could eat everything. But well, she doesn’t love industrial-made food, but that’s what she eats the most anyway.

♡What is their favorite {non-alcoholic} drink?

She likes Tiancha Pomegranate.

♡What are their plans for the future {if they have any}?

She doesn’t make plans for the future. But if she could she would keep everything as it is. Living in the Black Sapphire with Kurt, doing gigs without being completely swallowed by them.

♡What's a song that "fits" them?

There’s a whole playlist…

But if I had to choose one this is her song.

♡Give me 5 facts/random bits of information about them

She once cooked a cake that tasted like fish. She still doesn't know what went wrong that time. Poor Jackie, it was for his birthday.

Still has a shark plushie and a T-shirt Kurt gave her when she was 3 years old. She couldn't sleep without both when she was a kid.

Violet secretly likes both Shark and Violet Norris a lot. Mostly because they bring out a silly/boomer side in their owner she didn't know before.

Violet can't dance. For real. She simply wiggles her arms around without any coordination.

She knitted a sweater for Nibbles. Never finished it though.

♡Give me their backstory {can be long, or brief.}

Born in 6th Street’s turf. Her father killed her mother, but she doesn't remember most of it. It was gruesome, though, so that even a 15-year-old Kurt was shaken by it at the time. He killed her father and she was under his protection for a few years until he joined the army. In one day she lost both her best friend and her mother because he used to lie about her death.

Since then she hated living there but didn't know what else to do until she ran into Valentino's turf at 13.

She was lucky enough to meet Jackie and become friends with him. He introduced her to his mom and friends. The first time she felt loved like in a family. They eventually got together from 15 to 18. But she didn't love his affiliation with Valentinos and to avoid being sucked into another gang she broke up with him and moved to Atlanta. She moved back after 5 years. Jackie was no longer with Valentinos and they started to work on gigs together as friends. They never got back together, though, in truth they really weren't right for each other.

That's until the Heist and everything else (which happens a lot of years later).

She met Kurt again, but they didn't recognize each other and hooked up. After they found out who the other was, everything seemed terribly (and a bit freakily) right and perfect. (The truth is that if they did know beforehand they would have lost every inch of sexual tension between them xD)

Now they're mostly together. With ups and downs because communication is hard for both of them.

♡Free Space! Give me any sort of extra information about them you'd like to share

Really, I think I've exhausted everything xD

~

Template from @vincentmatthews, template here. Have fun !

Can I tag people??? Of course I'll tag people!

Obviously with no pressure.

@ouroboros-hideout @blackrevell @cybervesna @cyberholic77 @streetkid-named-desire

@astellehope @dustymagpie @sofia-in-nc @theviridianbunny

And everyone who wants to!

[mangekyuou]

Hey Mangek, i hope your doing fine

I just wanted to know if you could do monster triox teen!reader

Reader is a loyal and strong individual but reckless and maybe they sacrifice themselves, like taking a bullet for their big brother figure and I wanna know how the trio would react to reader almost dying for them

Please and ty!❤️

⟡    ֺ   𓂂  headcanons  ,  with a crewmate who sacrifices themselves to save them

!!     characters! . . .  luffy, zoro, & sanji.

!!     cw(s)! . . .  platonic. gn!reader. no pronouns used. depiction of a panic attack. [ luffy ] mentions of blood. violence. wounds. chain-smoking. [ sanji ] not proofread.

!!     notes! . . .  i wrote something similar to this a year ago. and it did really well. so it's nice to write an updated version of it a year later to see if my writing has changed any. it hasn't lol. thank you so much for requesting !! <333

when he saw you take the bullet and fall to the ground right behind him, he froze. the world around him froze

he dropped to his knees and held you in his arms. the color drains from his face as he sees the wounds and the blood quickly seeping into your clothes

focused on you, he failed to even notice chopper had made his way over to tend to your wounds. he had even failed to notice that he was crying, tears streaming down his cheeks

as chopper takes over, luffy tries to climb back to his feet but his legs feel wobbly. his vision becomes blurry. it feels hard to breathe. he clawed at the denim fabric of his shorts, he feared for the worse

he's lost someone he viewed as a sibling before just like this

and now here it was happening again before his very eyes

jinbei does his best to comfort luffy, helping him through his panic attack, reassuring him that you are a strong person, you'll make it through, and that he has nothing to worry about

it does work, but he's still worried sick, sitting outside of the sick bay on the sunny, staring down at the ground, blaming himself for what happened

this would have never happened if he was stronger and faster

when the door to the sick bay opened and out walked chopper with a smile, he raced into the room where he saw you

he hugs you tightly. he's so happy he could cry, and he does

you two compare scars

"luffy! look at this sick new scar i got!"

"we're like scar buddies now!"

zoro knew something had felt off the very second, you all had stepped foot onto this open field

his worry would be proven correct when he heard your gasp and you suddenly push him out of the way. before he could even get pissed at you for pushing him, he heard the gunshot, seeing the bullet into your shoulder

before you could fall, he catches you, his eye was already trained on roughly where the bullet was shot from

he swore he could see who shot you, and they damn sure were not going to get away with it

despite the pain in your shoulder, you could feel just how angry he was

it wasn't often you saw zoro lose his temper, he was always so cool and badass, which is one of the reasons you looked up to him

but this zoro was seething with anger

he was angry at everything. more importantly, angry at himself for not seeing the bullet a mile away and letting you get shot

he hands you to chopper, who he entrusts with your safety before going to kill fight the bastard who did this to you

zoro tries his best to not show just how worried he is. but it finally breaks through after he knows you're okay

all of that built-up stress from thinking you weren't going to make it because you took a bullet that was meant for him

tears flowed down his face. you realize that you've never seen him cry before

"i thought...i thought i lost you" his voice breaks

you knew it was ill-advised to hug him after you got shot in the shoulder of all places, but you had to, he needed one

he didn't know why he froze up. it was a mistake that nearly cost him his life if it wasn't for you jumping in front, taking the bullet for him

not before shooting down the enemy yourself

he yells your name, realizing you had been hit...realizing that you saved him

he sees you stumbling over your feet, nearly falling. he catches you before you fall, looking over your wound and the blood you're already losing

he's trying to remember what chopper told everyone to do if they were ever in a situation like now and he wasn't around. he pulls up your shirt, placing a clean cloth over it and applying pressure to stop the bleeding

it hurt like hell, and you made sure to let him know by wincing.

he feels terrible for hurting you like this. he apologizes profusely as he's trying to keep calm because one of you has to...and it definitely wasn't him

he's freaking out more than you, the one who got shot...

when help finally arrives and you are able to get back to the sunny to sick medical help, he's unable to even rest

his hands are trembling as he lights his 4th cigarette out on the deck. he's beating himself up on the inside. if he would have never frozen, you'd be okay

when he gets the ok to see you, when he sees you laying in bed, that's when he starts crying

"i'm supposed to be the one who protects you, but i failed. i'm so sorry, ( y/n )" he apologizes. he felt like a failure of a big brother, nearly losing you because he froze

"no, we're supposed to protect each other" you tell him, shaking hands on it, forming a promise

though he's never ever going to let you jump in front of a bullet for him again. that was RECKLESS

© MANGEKYUOU — do not copy, repost, or translate my works.

[knyinfinity]

OC Intro Post:

Link to Drawing

The art was done by none other than my bestie Leon @risingscorchingsuns 🥰💜

Name: Amari Karita

Age+Birthday: January 29 and she's 15.

Breathing Style: Smoke Breathing

Nichirin Sword Color: Pale Red/Pink Blade

Crows Name: Gakuto! They hang out quite often. He's very efficient in carrying messages and missions back and forth.

Rank: Kinoe/Tsukugo

After she lost her siblings and her parents vanished, she found an ex Hashira, named Hayate in the mountains. There are six forms for her technique and she worked her way up the ranks, hoping that traveling from being a demon slayer would help her find her parents and that it would help distract her from the grief and guilt.

She ends up becoming Muichiros Tsuguko (it wasn't her first pick tbh). After meeting him, she considers them to be far too similar for her to really gain anything. But she trusts Master Kagaya.

Shes loyal to a fault and incredibly passionate. Outwardly though, she appears apathetic and rather dull. Shes introverted and chooses not to speak much. She prefers observing and learning.

However, during training and battle she also tends to be a bit argumentative and has a bit of a one track mind. This is also true once she's able to open up to someone. Shes not worried about hiding her emotions as much and she'll become more talkative.

Relationships to the Others:

Hashira

Sanemi: She loves sparring with him. They're both people of few words and very rough around the edges in the beginning. He understands she wants to get stronger to slaughter demons so he helps her, in turn she brings him ohagi as a thank you/bribe.

Obanai: She keeps her distance quite a bit. He's snippy at times and she doesn't speak to him much so she'd rather just not interact with him at all. However she doesn't hate him, more like awkward colleagues/friends (through Mitsuri).

Mitsuri: Amari never had a big sister before so she had no idea this is what they were like. She enjoys Mitsuri's good nature and understands her physical prowess in battle...but she has to keep her distance because she can't handle the constant sunshine positivity. Mitsuri is too extroverted for Amari, personally but they still have a sisterly type relationship.

Rengoku: Another extrovert that Amari would rather keep her distance from (awkward at first), however she also really enjoys training with him. She enjoys being pushed to the limits of her mental fortitude.

Himejima: After she went to train with him, she found him already closed off and so they came to a sort of amicable standstill. They understand that they don't exactly trust each other on a personal level, but they will always have each other's backs when it comes to saving lives. She also still has that big sister heart that she shares with him from time to time

Giyu: Rocky at the best of times. They definitely work well together because they don't talk much and she believes his attitude needs to change.

Shinobu: After noticing how Amari was almost always learning or observing, Shinobu decided to take on the role of mentor/tutor (again). Amari only comes to help when Ms. Kocho's short handed but its not all educational. They're able to connect on a more interpersonal level at times, though they do mostly work in quiet

Muichiro: Amari's mentor. They usually end up having a discussion about the differences in breathing styles, ways to improve, playfully arguing about which style is more deadly at full power (its Mist Breathing, she knows that but she'll never admit it). She argues with him when he's being too much of a perfectionist and her arguments are amusing to him. As their relationship evolved from mentor/student to relationship, things get more complicated.

Kamaboko Squad

Tanjiro: She understands his goal and will aid him whenever she's sent on missions with him. She begins to develop a slight distaste for him after the events of SSV and a mild jealousy during Pillar training. Nothing that she would care to do much about but she definitely side eyes him here and there and is shorter when addressing him than most.

Nezuko: She hears the rumors but doesn't interact with Nezuko much.

Inosuke: She respects his self taught style and enjoys his strength as a training partner. She can handle him in small doses here and there, usually during meal times. After she's begun to open up she begins to tease him here and there which starts their 'train on demand' regiment.

Zenitsu: He was quiet around her and when she asked, he said she reminded him of a wisp or a spirit. Whatever that means. She didn't appreciate how easy zenitsu appeared to be with his feelings at first until she learned to read between the lines a bit more. They're kind of awkward friends

Kanao: They're the quiet and introspective type. They'll enjoy lunches and training sessions in the quiet together while being in complete understanding that they're enjoying each other's company. Whenever there's not a hashira available, Amari and Kanao are the Tsuguko they send instead.

Smoke Breathing Facts:

It requires you to be light on your feet with a smaller frame, almost like a dancer.

There have only been 4 known Smoke Breathing users so far, with only Hayate being the first known Pillar.

Amari's uniform/haori is designed with a smokey haze over it so it gives the illusion that she's moving even if she's standing still. This haori was actually a gift from Hayate before her Final Selection because he was so scared she wouldn't make it back and she was his first student.

This breathing technique works best in forests and cities since it primarily works to obscure the enemy's field of view.

There are 6 original forms and the most common death for demons by Smoke Breathing users is a combination of beheading and suffocation.

This breathing style usually requires the user to remain in the shadows or, at the very least out of arms/blades reach in order to build up power to be effective.

It's adaptable like water breathing but not AS adaptable. Amari is later able to learn combine it to 4 others! Mist, Flame, Water, and Wind. She's only able to come up with two full fledged forms for each combination though

Sidenotes/Random facts:

1. She's got faded full body scarring.

2. She originally had a blue jay, named Nobue assigned to her after final selection. She asked to have a kasugai crow instead to be more uniform with the rest of the corps.

3. Her favorite sparring partner is Sanemi, though she still has to bribe him with ohagi to convince him (IDC if this is repeated I love this dynamic with them)

4. Speaking of favorite foods, hers is plain onigiri (rice balls). She can't cook well and they were one of the few things she was able to make for her siblings while their parents were working. It's a bittersweet reminder anytime she has some

5. She's insecure about her laugh and covers her mouth whenever she laughs hard enough to make any sound.

6. She's traumatized by fire and explosions, even particularly loud thunderstorms. She's able to remain self aware at times and reinforce her Total Concentration Breathing.

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