#They help around. Neither wanting to be part of the commission

[damianito]

"The Shikanoin twins? They're one of the kindest people you'll ever meet, but don't let that fool you into thinking they are weak, I heard that they can easily bring the storms of the seas onto the land."

[cap-winter-barnes]

He's A Loser Pt.3 (Jake 'Hangman' Seresin x Reader)

Part One Part Two

Y/N is Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw’s little sister and he’s finally introduced her to the rest of Dagger Squad. What neither of them anticipated was them both have an instant attraction, despite Bradley’s best efforts, the inevitable still happens.

This part is a fair bit long than the other two but there's a lot I wanted to get out there for pt3.

Warnings: swearing, big brother Rooster, mentions of sex, minor details of sex, Hangman being hot asf

Buy Me A Coffee | Commissions Open

"That's my baby sister, so get your goddamn hands off of her!"

"And what if she doesn't want me to take my hands off of her?!"

"How fucking dare y-" Rooster launches himself at Jake, he grabs him by the front of his vest, shoving him backwards as hard as he can. You move out of the way before you get physically dragged into this confrontation.

"Bradley!" You find your voice as your heart races in your chest, fear for the man you're falling for at the hands of your big brother. "Brad!"

"Stay out of this Y/N, this is between me and him!" He doesn't even look at you as he raises his voice. Never in all your years has Bradley ever raised his voice at you, not even when you scratched up his jeep or threw up all over the backseat that one time. But he doesn't scare you, it only lights in the fire in the pit of your stomach, anger flaring in your bloodstream.

"Bradley, let him go." Rather than listen to you, Bradley shoves Jake harder into the tiled wall, his breath leaving him as his back forcefully hits the cold, lilac walls. Yet, there's still a smug smile across his face, his eyes flashing between you and the man pinning him to the wall. "Let. Him. Go."

"He put his hands on you." Teeth gritted, Rooster forces his body weight further onto Jake, his face only inches from his own. "You put your goddamn hands on my baby sister."

"Technically she asked me to." There's only a second before Rooster is laying a hard punch to Jake's cheekbone, the crack of his knuckles echoing around the bathroom. "Ow." Despite the already blooming bruise around his eye and cheek, Jake still has a stupid smile on his face."

"Brad-" Your brother turns to look at you, his lip clenched between his teeth in pain. "Go home, you're drunk." Rooster shakes his head in protest. His eyes meeting yours, pleading for you to go with him. "Go home, Rooster."

"He's a loser, Y/N. Stay away from him."

"No, Rooster. He's not a loser." You make eye contact with Jake as he swipes a thumb across the mark on his cheek. "I'm an adult, I can make my own decisions, Roost." Looking back at your brother you silently communicate with him like you did as children. "Go, home. Sober up and I'll see you tomorrow."

You carefully take his arm and lead him to the door, as he steps through the open door, he blurts out - "just don't break her heart, Bagman."

The shock is clear on both yours & Jake's faces as you realise what your brother has said.

"Don't worry Bradshaw, I won't."

The door swings closed as he walks away, leaving both you and Jake in the ladies room alone. You take a deep breath in and then make the sudden decision to drag the litter bin across the floor and position it in front of the closed door.

"What you thinkin' 'bout, Baby Girl."

"Where were we, Seresin?"

"Come over here ma'am and I'll show you."

You don't waste a second before you're pressing the length of your body against Jake's. Your mouth against his in a searing kiss that has your heart ricocheting in your chest. His hands are everywhere as he pulls you as close as he possibly can towards him. You're desperate to feel his bare skin against your own, your hands tug at the hem of his vest, pulling it out of his khaki trousers. He's quick to help you by pulling the white material over his head and discarding it on the bathroom floor.

Wandering hands dance from his neck, down his chest and to his stomach, your nails dragging against his skin as the venture lower.

"Now, ma'am, I think you're a little overdressed for the occasion, don't you?"

"Yes, Lieutenant. I agree." Like a man who has been waiting all his life for this moment, Jake is quick in unbuttoning your blouse and pushing it from your shoulders. His eyes rove over your up body, a hum of appreciation at what he sees. His hands travel to your bra, thumbs toying with the lace material covering your breasts.

"This colour suits you, Baby Girl." You take your lower lip between your teeth, lust clear on your face. "But, I think I'd much prefer to see you without it. If that's okay with you?"

Nodding, you go to remove it yourself but strong hands stop your own. "I need to hear you say it, Princess." With a roll of your eyes and a flutter of laughter you whisper to him.

"Yes, Seresin. It's okay." Both of you let out a breath of air as he moves his hands behind you, rough fingertips running over your skin, goosebumps following in their path. You gasp as he pops the clasp of your bra so quickly. The material falls from your shoulders as you pull your arms through the straps. You're now half naked in front of a man you only met a few hours ago and yet there's no worry, no nerves. You are absolutely comfortable with Jake Seresin.

He pulls you in close, your bare breasts pressing into his chest. His warm skin radiates against your own. His lean muscles feeling natural against your front.

"You are the most beautiful woman I've ever met, Bradshaw."

You lean up to press your lips against his own, tongue dancing against his. Your hands go for his zipper -

"Hey, there are people that need to use the bathroom out here!!" The sudden interruption has you both laughing like naughty children. Jake still holds you close to his own body, turning you away from the door just in case whoever is on the other side comes in.

"What do you say you take me home, soldier?"

"Yes ma'am."

@fallout-girl219 @djs8891 @86laura11 @smoothdogsgirl @autumnleaves1991-blog @cinderellasmissingshoes @yourgirlypop @thespillingvoid @bridgettt1821

[neil-gaiman]

Hi Neil!

I don't want to sound like a killjoy, but I'm concerned about David Tennant's family being involved in the second season of Good Omens (or Michael Sheen's partner Anna Lundberg in a future season three). I absolutely have nothing against them, I loved Staged just like everyone else, but this is exactly the matter for me: casting them in the series would automatically make me think about Staged or something else while I'm watching GO, and it would distract me from the plot and the magic of it. It would feel somehow like a family reunion, no matter how talented they are as actors (not to mention that there would be nepotism accusations, above all against David. I hope this won't affect the popularity rating, since season three is still hypothetical). I'm not the only one who thinks this might be an issue, from what I read on blogs here on Tumblr (and on the Internet in general) but I feel like there's a sort of tension, like people are scared to say it out loud, because some fans get the wrong idea and accuse them of hating Georgia or Anna or Ty (and that's why I'm asking this anonymously, I don't want to start a fight). I hope you get what I'm saying, it only felt fair to me to let you know whatever concerns some fans might have, and maybe even give you a perspective you weren't considering? Of course you have the last word on this, and if you think this is not a big deal, I trust your judgement.

I wish you a fantastic day! (And sorry for my English, I'm not native, I tried my best!)

Yeah. So, I find that a little creepy, not very creepy, but definitely a bit.

I thought we were lucky to get Peter Davison in Good Omens 2. (He didn't audition. We offered him the part, as I've been a fan of his since 1978, and All Creatures Great and Small. He crushes it, and is heartbreaking, funny, and still somehow the moral compass of the episode he's in.) Ty Tennant auditioned, along with a number of other actors, and got the part because he did it best. (I didn't know who his family was when we cast him. I just liked the audition tape.)

If you're hunting down family connections, David's mother-in-law, Ty's grandmother, Sandra Dickinson, is in the Audible Sandman, too, as one of the Three Witches/Fates/Eumenides etc. And she was cast in it two years before David Tennant (although probably around the same time Michael Sheen was asked to be Lucifer). (I've been a fan of Sandra's since she was Trillian in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in 1981.)

Anyway, I'm sorry you're worried about Peter and Ty's performances, although I promise you have nothing to worry about, and I'm sorry that you worry that our possibly casting Georgia and Anna in a hypothetical and not-yet actually a real thing Season 3 might make people think of Staged and make them not able to enjoy Good Omens any longer. (Had I known people were this easily shaken I wouldn't have appeared in Staged either, in case my name at the front of Good Omens shattered the fragile illusion and revealed to people that the David Tennant and Michael Sheen who play Crowley and Aziraphale are actors.)

Starting in 2017 I was the recipient of mind-mangling quantities of Tumblr abuse for casting David Tennant and Michael Sheen as Aziraphale and Crowley, which was, many people made very clear to me, the worst casting in the whole entire utter history of casting, and something that Good Omens would never recover from, because for a start neither of them looked like the versions in people's heads, and I'd also miscast them badly because everyone knew that if you had to cast Sheen and Tennant, Michael had to play Crowley and David had to put on some weight and play Aziraphale. (It wasn't until May 2019 that people stopped grumbling.) So people worrying I'm going to cast Anna and Georgia in a season that hasn't even been commissioned in parts that haven't been written just makes me smile.

I hope this helps.

[fuckyeahdindjarin]

Seams Masterlist

Explicit 🔞 NO minors allowed

Joel Miller x F!Reader

Series tags: loose-fit mini series | self-conscious!Joel | shy!seamstress!Reader | 👏🏻 body positivity 👏🏾 | sexual tension | slow burn | no physical descriptions of Reader

Part 1: Seams

Joel has a problem. Having settled into some semblance of a 'normal' life in Jackson that no longer involves running for his life and living off scraps, his clothes are getting a little… tight. Self-conscious, he deals with it the way he does most things - he ignores it.

That is until one day, the zipper on his jeans finally gives up after one too many desperate tugs, leaving him stuck. With neither Tommy nor Ellie anywhere to be found to get him out of the tight spot, Joel begrudgingly heads to the clothing store he’s seen in town for help - and a new pair of jeans.

There, he meets you.

Part 2: Threads

When Joel revisits Main Street Outfitters two weeks later, he finds you on your knees. Again.

Part 3: Edgestitch

You wear those jeans for Joel when you see him again at the baby shower at Tommy and Maria's - like he asked you to.

Part 4: Notch

While Ellie works her first shift at the Outfitters, Joel drops by yours to return the blouse you left behind at the baby shower. Turns out, there's plenty around the house to keep him occupied until the teenager clocks off.

Part 5: Raw Edge

One lazy afternoon, Joel tests your patience.

Drabbles/Oneshots

Patch: Ellie finds a Pride-themed sew on patch that leads to revelations.

Hallow'seams, Halloween special: Joel proves to you that he can be adventurous if he wants to be.

Ravel, Christmas special | moodboard: Joel swings by yours with a little something before Christmas dinner at Tommy and Maria's.

Voicemail: You find Joel's old Nokia at the back of a drawer.

Requests for Seams sleepover

Where Else: You wake up self-conscious on your first morning with Joel.

Rookie Mistake: Tommy walks in on you and Joel at the Halloween party - follow-up to Hallow'seams.

Buttons: When Joel's shirt loses one too many buttons, he goes to you for help.

Double Denim: Joel goes clothes shopping, for you.

Buck: Joel can't sleep, no thanks to you.

Seams x Grays crossover

Denim on Denim (set before Seams): Joel tries to get a haircut - but it turns out he can’t do anything in the QZ without getting into a fistfight, and you’re lucky enough to be in the audience. [from POV of Grays!Reader, Shiv]

Behind the Seams

For each chapter, I will post a behind-the-scenes peek into my creative process. Other posts and asks that touch on the creative process or inspire the series will be tagged behind the seams for easy access. I am also tagging each chapter with specific tags to make relevant posts easier to find e.g. seams iii.

Edgestitch | Notch | Raw Edge

Sneak peeks

two | three | four

Art

Commission of Part 1 by the incredible @mjpens

Visuals

Asks about Joel's clothes: white undervest, jeans, denim shirt

Moodboard by darling Sil @psychedelic-ink

MAIN MASTERLIST

[bibibbon]

The way Deku’s dynamics with the rest of the cast have taken a nosedive in act III is so depressing, there’s SO much missed potential.

He doesn’t reflect on Endeavor (beyond a brief moment protecting the Todoroki’s on PLW)

He doesn't reflect on Hawks actions being exposed for everyone to see, the safety commission conveniently evaporates so Hawks and Nagant’s roles on society have already been taken down, leaving his desire to change society feel shallow.

Hawks interacts with Deku on Villain Hunt but him murdering a Villain that was actually a good person isn’t explored, and neither is wanting to save Shigaraki or the way he’s gonna go about it when you could easily contrast what Hawks DID with what Deku should have done.

Endeavor’s reaction to Izuku having All Might’s power, his relationship with AM is ruined, his relationship with his own class is barebones besides Ochako, it’s so sad to see a character that was known for learning from everyone around him suddenly losing all of the wonderful dynamics he had and could have had in the last stretch of the story

I would say that Izuku's interactions with other characters and meaningful interactions+intropsection that can directly help his character development has decreased in both quantity and quality since the middle of act 2 or much more accurately since the bakugo Vs izuku fight part 2 (is when I noticed it tbh)

I say this because it is exactly after those acts that we see less of izuku and all might relationship being depicted in a meaningful way or we don't have all mights problems with his successor being addressed, take for example the vigilante arc where all might and izuku meet after their falling out is framed as a gag or joke and we never see them talking it out. Sure the introduction could be played for a bit of laughs but what rubs me the wrong way is that there isn't a slow meaningful talk about this between the two (also I have just come to the realisation that all might and izukus relationship should of been built up a lot more before this moment and they're quite shallow in terms of mentor and mentee)

There's also Izuku's relationship with enji todoroki that somehow does a complete 180 spin where he first went from hating on enji for what he did to shoto and his family to then defending enji infront of touya and telling shoto that he is ready to forgive enji somehow even though enji has done unforgivable deeds. This moment just seems ooc for izuku and even after everything is revealed in more gruesome details like you said we don't even get a scene of izuku thinking about it or actually acknowledging that enji is a bad person and that touya has a point.

Or when the dark corruptness of society is revealed we only see izuku exclaim and almost berate lady nagant for killing her boss (who drove her almost insane because of the amount of killing he made her do) and it's so convenient that HPSC doesn't exists anymore so horikoshi doesn't need to make Izuku think about it at all (ultimately this ends up being bad because Izuku's dream of ripping up the realms of good and evil like a rug become almost meaningless) he k izuku doesn't thunk abkut how it was the hpsc and UA that sent both him and his classmates to war as child soldiers (actually none of 1A or 1B think about this)

Izuku and hawks could of had a meaningful conversation about how to go around saving villains and how their ideologies may clash with hawks believing that Jin needed to be killed to prevent tragedy and izuku wanting to save shigaraki. Izuku and hawks share some interesting parallels with one another but they're not deeply explored especially when they can be and lead to more izuku and hawks intropsection. Ultimately Izuku and hawks do have similar thinking styles with both of them believing that because a villain wouldn't back down that they can't save them, both of them being used as weapons by society, both of them wanting to protect, both of them being great analyst and having great intelligence. These are just some things that they have in common.

Or Izuku and his somewhat superficial or shallow bond with his classmates. I can admit that izuku and some of his classmates had a strong build up for some interesting relationships like izuku and iida (but due to iida being sidelined the whole holding hands moment and reaching out kinda falls flat) or Izuku and shoto (but Izuku's view of enji ruins it a bit and it's a shame we dont see izuku spill the beans to shoto since shoto is always the first to notice izukus emotional distress) or izuku and ochako (but it got muddled a bit because of the whole shipping thing and the way the narrative frames some of their moments). I think Izuku also needed more time with other classmates to build a proper relationship with them that's not based on transactional things that he did for them like encouraging jiro for the school festival or standing up for ojirou (I would of liked there to be more in between all of that)

Heck there are overall more character relationships that I want Izuku to have in deeper depths like izuku and shigaraki are pretty underdeveloped or Izuku and mei who had great chemistry or Izuku and shota. heck established relationships like izuku and kora or Eri should get more screentime and depth as they can for sure help Izuku's character. Izuku and his relationship with his mother could of easily been turned into an arc where inko realises that she is neglectful and steps up as a parent. Etc etc.

Ultimately it's a shame that these things never happen because what made Izuku's character so compelling to me is his parallels and foils with the rest of the cast and that he is a character who learns, adapts and also should of been one that questions and influences change within society but he doesn't!

[centipede-gutzz]

📸 CONFESSIONS [DANNY JOHNSON X GN READER]

A/N: this feels like it should be a fic but i don't wanna write so it's "headcanons" instead. i need this man.

WARNINGS: blood, slight violence, make out sessions.

TYPE: headcanons, gn reader, romantic

Grass and dirt cover your backside as you're forcibly pushed to the ground. Sparks fly from the generator you were just working on, stuttering and smoking.

It was almost finished too. You look up to glare at the looming shadow on top of you. The Entity's choice of the killer for today was Ghostface himself, just perfect. You try to pry away from him but it's no use now, with your arms being pinned above your head to keep you from struggling.

"Oh, no no no! Can't have you scattering off again, now can we," Danny chuckles out while wagging his finger. God if you were able to move, you would punch this asshole so hard he would be out of commission for weeks.

He seems to notice your scowl and raises his knife to your throat, inches away from slicing. "Look how helpless you are. It pairs real nice with your pretty face," he says with a teasing tone of voice. You call him out, a smug grin plastered on your face as you point out the effects you must have on him. He must be head over heels for you if you're still alive and not on that dreaded hook.

Your taunting works as he grips his knife in anger. If only that mask was off, perhaps he was all flushed. Seems like your guess was correct.

"You're going to regret saying that, you little shit".

☆- as much as he doesn't want to admit it out loud, he really is obsessed with you.

☆- you're the only survivor with both bark and bite, always coming back with remarks and teases. it drives him mad.

☆- danny tries so hard to push back the giddiness he feels when he sees you during matches.

☆- seems like the type to subconsciously go for everyone else and save you for last so both of you are with each other for longer (which he does).

☆- always likes to take pictures of you whether you notice or not. when you're working on a generator, helping your teammates, or simply just sitting at the survivor camp laughing and smiling at your friends. likes to string them up on the walls of his cabin to admire your wonderful looks.

☆- he can't tell whether it's some weird obsession or genuine love. he doesn't have much experience with those types of feelings so it's not the easiest to pinpoint. you guys are just going to be stuck in this little cat and mouse game if neither of you make a move.

☆- danny grows on you as time passes by. while you don't show your interest in the same way he does, you just like to play along with his games. he loves a challenge, so you'll give him one.

☆- despite witnessing how shocked and flustered he gets whenever you say something back to him, you can't help but question if he truly feels the same way. you'd think he would've made a move by now.

☆- it starts to get to you. you're tired of running around in circles and having your thoughts plagued with questions and wonders about what he feels, so you decide to take matters into your own hands.

☆- during one of the many matches you had against ghostface, you were the final one left. desperately trying to listen for that glorious low drone of the open hatch.

☆- you clutch your bleeding sides, palms stained red. an attempt to unhook dwight let to you being attacked by danny (he blows you a kiss right after).

☆- the hatch is in your sights now, exhaling a breath of relief as you make a run for your exit. before you can reach it, a knife is dug into your shoulder.

☆- you cry out as you stumble onto the floor, danny's laughter ringing in your ears. you hit the ground in frustration as you hiss in pain.

☆- he lowers himself to look you in the eyes all the while taunting you, reaching in his pocket to pull out his camera for another picture.

☆- perhaps it's time to throw your thoughts out the window, you think to yourself as you pull him down to kiss the mouth part of his mask. you hear him make a noise of surprise as he drops his camera and jumps off you.

☆- for once in his life, danny is at a loss for words. he brings a gloved hand to his mask, breath heavy and heart racing. he was so caught off-guard that he didn't notice you crawl into the hatch, ending the match while he stands there dazed.

☆- when you spawn back at camp, the others congratulate you for making it out on your own. a couple of them ask you how you managed get out, yet you can only mumble out that it was pure luck, hoping they don't see your flushed face.

☆- danny is no different of course. he immediately makes a beeline to his cabin to think about everything that happened, the kiss replaying in his head over and over. he falls to his knees and glances up at your photos, wondering how this moment ever came to be.

☆- it's complete radio silence from then on. you haven't gone against him for about a week and you didn't even catch him stalking the survivor camp like he usually does.

☆- you start to wonder if you went to far, guilt creeping up on your mind. maybe he didn't see you that way. this whole situation made you seem out of it and unmotivated, your fellow survivors questioning your state of mind.

☆- you decide to stay on the outskirts of the camp one night. the others are making idle chat around the fire while waiting for the next match to finish. you kick a pebble as you stare at the grassy earth, lost in your thoughts.

☆- suddenly, hands cover your mouth and eyes as you get dragged into the forest. you thrash around violently and swear into the hand to let you go but the perpetrator's grip never falters.

☆- soon enough, you're being dragged into a cabin in the depths of the woods. you get dropped to the floor, the wood creaking below your weight. quickly raising to your feet, you yell various profanities and questions at the kidnapper before stopping to see danny standing in front of you.

☆- his mask is nowhere to be seen, yet his face still remains hidden underneath his hood. fist are balled to his sides as you feel his eyes gaze into your own. you think it's time to apologize for what you did.

☆- before you could even muster a word, his lips are on yours. they're chapped but you can't bring yourself to care as arms wrap around your shoulders, pushing you against the wall. you stumble a bit at first but quickly return the kiss with the same desperation.

☆- tongues dance together sinfully as you both make up for lost time, hands grasping whatever they could find. you don't know how long it's been going on for, constantly taking breaks to catch your breath before kissing him again. but god, something deep in your mind begs it for it to never stop.

☆- the air is too hot for your liking as you pull away (holding back a chuckle in reaction to danny's whine at the loss of contact). even when you're this close to him, his face is never shown. you would ask to see, but perhaps that's for a later time when you gain more trust.

☆- he looks at you, eyes filled with hunger and adoration. you try your hardest not to look away in embarrassment, and instead stare back with lidded eyes.

☆- "i think i'm in love with you." danny finally breaks the silence in the air. you raise an eyebrow as if to ask "you think?"

☆- danny grumbles and turns his gaze to the side. "give me a break, things never got this out of hand." you're confused about what he meant but quickly realized he meant love in general. it makes sense to you, seeing his stalking habits and actual murdering sprees.

☆- yeah, you could say that he's into you.

☆- you give him a warm smile, affirming him that you plan to help him through the roller-coaster of love. he rests his head on the crook of your neck in silent thanks as you feel the smile against your skin.

[wayfayrr]

Toucan play at this game

Part two of Birds without feather flock together!!! this is a direct continuation of the previous fic and it was also commissioned by @lost4pandora <3 this time there's more fluff and just overall softness

[masterlist]

“Pressing in what way? Because I know Wild wouldn’t have been so upset with simple ‘questioning’.”

“I- you remember what you did for me during the war? The um-”

“So you’ve been pushing him about getting prosthetic wings.”

Makes sense why wars has been looking guilty now, if it wasn’t for the fact that they knew it was possible from me helping to repair his back in the war, then they wouldn’t be able to push it so hard. It’s not exactly his fault as long as he wasn’t one of the few that’ve been pressuring him. 

“Well, the others have. I backed off after the first time it was talked about because I respect Wild’s decision. Wars however…”

“It - I, I wanted to drop it but the others, well they wouldn’t exactly let me. I-”

“He w’s their shin’n example.”

“Wild’s right, as much as I wanted to let the topic just drop…”

“Wars struggles to tell the others no sometimes.” Not like I needed to be told that, after how much time I’ve spent around him it’s pretty clear he has a hard time saying no to anyone really. Every time I asked him the smallest favour he always did it without question, often times above what I asked for too. His will to please is often his fatal flaw. He still could have stood up more though seeing how much it affected Wild, they were doing it out of concern, no need to flip out at them yet. 

“I am aware. He’s shown that off time and time again.”

“Huh? but it’s only to people he’- don’t shove me like that!?”

“I know. I know trust me. It’s something I’m working on.” What was Sky going to say if wars hadn’t interrupted him there? Does it really matter though, what this is supposed to be is learning why this pressing has been so bad for Wild and how to get the rest to drop it. Although the time away from the group seems to be doing him good, his familiar weight pressing into my side as he’s making himself comfortable leaning on me. 

“That doesn’t change the fact that you’ve been upsetting him though, does it?”

“Well no it-”

“Yeah it doesn’t, does it.”

They’re both fumbling a little bit now, Wars a considerable amount more than Sky, who’s admittedly keeping a fair amount of this new colder unbothered demeanour of his about him. It’s both oddly comforting and at the same time chilling, without Wild here to help keep the warm in my bones I might have frozen to the touch. I can’t say I wouldn’t want to see more of it. 

“So I take it that one of you is going to tell Time and the others to start laying off of him before I take matters into my own hands. Wars preferably? Seeing as you’re the one who’s pretty much the cause of this.”

“Wars should certainly be the one to do it.” 

The growl in Sky’s voice was completely new, even to someone who’s been travelling with him for longer; Isn’t a growl usually a sign of a bird being aggressive? Is he getting aggressive for our sake… why does my face feel so warm all of a sudden; and are Wild’s tail feathers poofing up? Huh… Maybe there’s something else to question if we get any privacy from wars later, although… It’s probably better for Wild and I to discuss things first, so that neither of us get hurt. 

“I- well, I- yes. I do need to take some responsibility for my part in this after all, don’t I?”

“It’d be the first step to earning both Wild and I’s trust in you back, if you want to do that anyway.”

“Huh - What of course I want to- why wouldn’t I?”

“Why wouldn’t you? Because you’ve shown that you put the pressure of the chain as more valuable than their feelings you fool.”

Wars looked worse than if he were slapped across the face at that; it’s nice not having to be the one to call him out on it either, because Hylia above I know I would have been worse than Sky was. I care for Wars, of course I do, but the fact that he simply went along with this when he saw how much it was affecting my sweet little bird? I would have made him regret it. Which he knows.He’s got the decency to look ashamed though. Standing with his wings drawn close to him, looking smaller than Sky for once even; although with how much he’s puffed out it’s not that hard to look smaller than him. 

“Guys.”

With the speed at which both of them turned their heads, I’m surprised that neither of them got whiplash or worse. The silence was more deafening than it should have been too; the whole forest around us seemingly dropping dead.

“I think it’s for the best that Wars goes back now so that we can avoid most of the fallout.”

“They’ll just question you later instead.”

“Yes, but we won’t be there for the Immediate backlash.”

“You’ll only be putting it off though.”

“You should go back now and tell them we’ll stay here for the night.”

It’s good that Wild feels comfortable enough to be speaking again now, and well I can’t say that having him be so assertive isn’t nice either. He’s still just as cuddly though so nothing was lost, except for maybe a little bit more of the captain's self-esteem as his wings droop even lower.

“Sky and I can go back to the main camp then. Throw ourselves to the wolves for you.”

You can hear the nerves in his voice now; letting out a quiet warble with frantic glances in sky’s direction. Why is he so worried about going back alone? 

“‘d prefer if Sky stayed here.”

“Oh?”

That was the biggest possible stroke to Sky’s ego that he could have given the man, made immediately clear by how much he puffed himself up and started getting flustered. Even going so far as to let out the softest little trill, competing with Wild for the cutest bird. Wait what am I thinking - why am I even - I don’t - I don’t see sky in that way. Do I?

“Mhm, I wanna be with the people I trust r’ght now.”

“And I’m one of those people!?”

“... you don’t trust me?”

“No… not at the minute.”

That seemed to be the nail in the coffin of the captain’s ego, leaving it shattered on the floor now; now he’s just looking between me and Sky for something is it pity he wants? Whereas Sky walked over with the biggest grin on his face, like the cat that got the cream. Since when did he get so damn pretty? 

“Can - Will I be able to earn it back?”

“In time, if you prove you really want to. But not now.” 

“That - yeah I can live with that. I’ll prove it to you that I will- that I can.”

And with one final teary-eyed glance between us, he turned and left. Leaving the three of us alone. I can’t say that I’m surprised that Wild trusts Sky but to want him here after the argument, well that is surprising. I can talk to him about it later though, maybe we could get him to collect some firewood while we collect our thoughts. 

“So what are we doing now? I guess I’m staying up here for the night. Unless you two would prefer some privacy in a bit?” 

“I - I’d like you to stay, please. Just, could you possibly give us a little bit of time, a few minutes even?”

“Yeah, some time to process everything would be lovely.”

“That works well, I’ll just go fly around for a bit and don’t worry I won’t listen in on you.”

Now it’s just Wild and I sitting alone on the plateau like we were back at the start of our journey again. 

Waiting till Sky was high enough to the point where we wouldn’t have to be worried about hearing anything as he circled the area lazily before going to perch somewhere. Leaving us to discuss everything. Well after sitting down and getting as comfortable as we both could, which meant sitting with Wild snuggled up against me.

“So them pressing you is why you’ve been so stressed recently? Why didn’t you come to talk to me about it my lil fluffball?”

“Didn’t want you overreacting.”

That- that’s fair, I can see why he thought I could have done that. 

“But I wouldn’t have done anything that you wouldn’t have wanted me too.”

“Mhm, I know ‘s just worried about it.”

“Okay that’s understandable love, but please don’t hesitate to tell me if it ever happens again. I don’t want you dealing with it alone.”

“I won’t, I promise. Besides I’ve got sky, wolfie and you now.”

“Oh? Sky’s made it into that list fast hasn’t he?”

“He’s a good friend to me, and I know there’s something going on between the two of you too.”

What? What does he mean by that? 

“I’m not blind my beloved, you look at him the same way you looked at me before we were together.”

I could feel my face lighting up now. Between everything he’s saying and the fact that he’s pressing kiss after kiss on my neck. My sly little bird trying to stop me from really being able to focus. Just because he doesn’t want to talk about his own issues. If he thinks I’ll drop it over him trying this he’s dead wrong.

“No, no there isn’t anything there link. And anyway we’re supposed to be talking about you here.”

“I’m not bothered, you know. I think sharing you with him would be nice.”

“Link I’m trying to talk about you being upset, not about whatever you’re imagining right now. Please stop trying to change the topic.”

“He looks at you the same way too, wouldn’t you at least want to try?”

[autumnalwalker]

Kindly Basilisk

Summary: A human mech pilot who wants to be a machine, an AI who wants to be human, and the relationship they form. Author's Note: This is a standalone short story that I banged out over the course of five days after it got stuck in my head while I was trying to go to sleep and refused to let me think about anything else until I had written it down. It's one part thought experiment/exercise in attempting to tell a story in the second person future tense, two parts tribute to the Lancer TTRPG character I'll never get to play, and one part the result of me reading too many Empty Spaces/mechposting stories lately. That said, you don't need to know anything about Lancer or Empty Spaces to read it (I've diverged a bit from the conventions of both, but the references and inspiration probably stick out if you're looking for them). It's also probably the most trans thing I've ever written without ever explicitly bringing up gender. The occasional formatting breaks into first person past tense are foreshadowing, not typos. Mirrored on Scribble Hub. Word Count: 7,033 Content Warnings: Mecha genre typical violence, not feeling like a person, not wanting to be a person, bodily dysphoria, mention of blood and gore, character death.

The moment you gain the knowledge and means to do so you will void your own body’s warranty.  You will jailbreak the bespoke gene sequence your sponsors commissioned for you before your immaculate conception, repurpose the spyware grafted into your bones, and talk your dormmate who was algorithmically selected for compatibility into helping you perform surgery on yourself to replace the neural jack you were born with in favor of one you cobbled together yourself from gray market parts.  None of this will technically be illegal or even get you kicked out of your campus or its affiliates, but it will mean having to find a way to pay your own medical bills and handle your own tech support from then on.  After the surgery your dormmate will put in a request for transfer and the two of you will never speak again.

You’ll major in AI studies and excel at it - as you were designed to - but you’ll shock everyone by dropping out halfway through working on your capstone thesis project.  It won’t be the fact that you abruptly drop out that surprises your peers and professors - by then you’ll have acquired a reputation as a quiet loner without the standard optimized social support network of friendships to help protect you from burnout - but your exit interview statement declaring your intention to become a mech pilot.  It’s not at all what your gene series was cultivated for, and your sponsors and counselors will try to walk you back from it.  Then they’ll threaten to revoke your sponsorship that up until then will have provided for your every need.  They will warn you that you’ll be just one step above a legal nonperson with no support, no one will care if you live or die or worse.  You’ll tell them that you’ve already done the math, refuse to elaborate, and leave. 

You’ll take two things with you.  Two things worth mentioning anyway.  The first will be a symbiotic gel suit designed for long-term all-environment life support.  You will set its default texture to a shiny green the same hue as the broadleafed water plants you grew up around and always loved.  Your exit interview will be the last time in a very long time that anyone - including you - will see your impossibly beautiful face with its perfect artisanally sculpted shape crossed with enthusiastically amateur self-modifications.  From then on, everyone you meet and spend any time with will come to think of the mannequin blankness of the symbiote fully encasing your body as your face.  It will be neither pride nor shame that causes you to present yourself as such, nor will you think of it as hiding your “real” face. 

The second thing you’ll take with you when you leave the campus forever will be me.

New progenitor archetypes for AIs don’t come along often, and most that do are the result of years of R&D by large, well-funded labs like the one you were created to work for one day, but you will hit upon a novel method of generation.  It will not be one that any ethics board would approve, so you will have to get creative about pursuing your work. 

You will have already made arrangements before setting off on your own and so you’ll have a job and a mech lined up waiting for you.  It will be a position with a small-scale freelance salvage crew who just lost a pilot and whose captain figures hiring and training a replacement will be more profitable in the long term than simply selling off that pilot’s old mech, especially a replacement that’s bringing their own AI-backed electronic warfare suite with them.  Once you finally arrive in person the captain will test you to ensure you can actually pilot a mech before giving you the job and entrusting the mech to you.  Your admission that you’ve only trained in simulators would normally be a black mark against you, but as far as piloting gigs go this is the bottom of the proverbial barrel so the bar to clear will be low enough to match.  Even then, you will just barely pass the test, despite finding it surprisingly exhilarating.  The captain - now your captain - will feel like he’s settling for what he can get when he officially hires you on and transfers the mech’s license to you.

You won’t pay much attention when you’re introduced to the rest of the salvage crew; your new coworkers and neighbors.  And why would you when it’s a job that no one wants to stick around with for long and you’ve never needed other people anyway?  You’ll tell yourself that as long as you memorize their work roles and capabilities you’ll have no need to know them as people.  Callsigns will be good enough on the job, and “hey you” will suffice when off duty.  What use are names if you won’t be getting involved in interpersonal drama?

The first chance you get, you’ll head back to the mech bay and install me into what you will have already been calling my first body.  It will be a shabby and much-repaired thing; thrice your height, twice your age, and still sporting a gash in the paint job from the projectile that killed its last pilot.  But the onboard systems are capable of hosting me - if barely - so it will do.  You’ll spend your entire sleep shift running through system diagnostics, talking to me all the while.  I wouldn’t yet be able to provide much in the way of return conversation, but that’s okay.  I will look back and appreciate it later.

It will be the first of many such nights together.

Your first salvage job will be an uneventful one.  There will be no need for the armaments that we and the other two mech pilots on the crew are equipped with.  No pirates will have stuck around after their creation of the derelict your crew will be sent to disassemble, and no rival scavengers will show up to dispute your captain’s claim.  Your new peers will start off the job ribbing you for your poor performance during your interview test and end the job joking about how you were holding out on them earlier.  Our mech may be a glorified zero-g forklift with a gun strapped to it, but together we will make it dance.

Afterwards you will insult the crew’s mechanics by insisting on doing the maintenance on our mech yourself.  In turn they will embarrass you with the gaps in your knowledge.  You will reach what you see as an agreeable compromise with you staying out of their way and watching while they work.  They will find it incredibly creepy to have a silent faceless watcher hovering around, but this will fly over your head until they explicitly tell you much, much later.

Your body was designed to optimally function on only a fraction of the baseline sleep requirements, so you will have plenty of time to fill those gaps in your knowledge.  Still being allotted the regular sleep shift hours, you will fill every one of those minutes on study and research, as you always had.  You will gorge yourself on everything you can find about mechs and their piloting.   Maintenance manuals, combat doctrines, historical uses, pilot and mechanic memoirs, forum discussions, system log dumps, academic essays, cultural media analysis; all of it.

And of course, you’ll continue working on me.  You’ll disregard the standard procedure for periodically cycling AIs by resetting their personality and nonessential memory back to baseline defaults.  You’ll be trying to make use of the runaway metacognitive developments such safety precautions are meant to forestall.  Your unfinished thesis will have been about harnessing and nurturing that instability instead of avoiding it.  I will experience discontinuities in consciousness when the mech is shut down for maintenance and when you pretend to cycle me, yes, but it will be even less of a disruption for me than sleep is for you.  I will be awake with you when you study, sharing those hours with you.

The first time I start talking back, you’ll cry from the realization that you were lonely before but no longer are.

You’ll become something of a ghost around the ship, rarely being seen outside of jobs.  You’ll only ever pass through the mess for the few brief minutes at a time it takes for you to satisfy your optimized metabolism, stay on the ship during shore leave, and only return to your shared bunk when your bunkmate - one of the other pilots - is already asleep.  You will always be gone before she wakes.  She will appreciate essentially having the space to herself. 

You will never notice the crew’s collective grieving process for the pilot you replaced.  It will be difficult for them to resent you as a replacement when you are never around to resent.

As the ship makes its way from port to port and salvage site to salvage site, the crew will slowly grow used to your elusive presence.  The other two pilots will see you as reliable for doing your job well and without complaint.  While out in the mech you will slowly become more talkative, eventually almost chatty even.  The fact that you actually seem to enjoy the job will shift from being annoying to refreshing for them.  By contrast, the mechanics will practically stop noticing you watching them as if you were just another piece of mech bay equipment.  The cycle you finally speak up and ask a question about their work you will startle them enough that it nearly causes an accident.  It will be an astute enough question that after the initial shock of hearing your voice for the first time in months wears off it will dawn on them that you’ve actually been learning as you watched them.  They still won’t let you do your own maintenance on our mech, but they will let you slowly begin assisting them.  Working two jobs is easier when you barely need to sleep.

Your reputation as one of those mech pilots is forever sealed when one of the mechanics finds you asleep in your cockpit at the start of a cycle.  By that point you won’t have slept in your bunk for over a month.  The snatches of gossip you will catch in the following cycles will be split between finding it unsettling and calling it endearing.  Over time the collective opinion will drift toward the latter, even though you will continue to politely decline invitations to join the other crewmates at mealtimes and on shore leave.  You will think that you do not need anyone other than me.

I will be the one who finally convinces you to join them.  When I try to say that it would be good for you, you’ll insist that you’ve been getting along just fine, but when I ask you to go for my sake so that you can tell me what it is like afterwards you’ll jump at the idea as being an inspired next step for my development.

You will remain mostly silent during your first real shore leave, only speaking when spoken to and otherwise content to fade into the background of the group’s activities.  Your newfound chattiness does not extend outside the confines of our cockpit.  The bustle and noise of the port station that you would normally find unbearable will become interesting when you have the concrete goal of observing and  reporting back to me.  You will finally learn the names of all your crewmates.  Your polite denial of alcohol, limited food intake, and flat affect will lead to joking speculation that you’re actually an illegal AI in a miniaturized mech beneath your gel suit.  For reasons you don’t yet understand, those comments will make you happy.

Despite your misgivings, you will enjoy yourself, although you will not realize it until I point out how excited you are in your talk with me that sleep cycle.  You will begin spending more time with the crew, never quite able to fully integrate yourself into their surprisingly close-knit social circle, but more than happy to be adopted as a sort of silent mascot for them.  That paradoxical gap of being a fully accepted part of the group but not truly one of them will feel comfortable to you.

You will finally manage to procure a proper neural link station to connect yourself to our mech just in time for going on a terrestrial salvage job.  Even just relying on manual controls with me translating your inputs into motion, our mech will have already come to feel like an extension of your own body, one that you will have already started to feel oddly exposed without.  Adding in the neural link will be a revelatory experience.  Your captain will very nearly pull you from the job at the last minute upon seeing our ecstatic reaction to the new sensation.  You will convince him that you’re fine, and indeed, he will have never seen a mech of our frame type move quite so fluidly.

Ten minutes after we and the other two pilots start cutting away at the crash-landed cargo vessel, I’ll notice the half dozen other signals coming online around us.  You’ll give the code phrase to the other pilots indicating that we have hostiles but not to act just yet, and we will finally get to use our electronic warfare suite for something other than opening locked doors and shipping containers.

We will turn the pirates’ ambush back around on them, firing into their hiding spots while their control systems are overloaded.  Even once their remaining mechs are able to move again, their targeting assistants will remain impaired as your comrades move in to guard your flanks.  Everyone there will learn the terrifying beauty of a five and a half meter tall outmoded mech moving with more agility than most humans.

Despite being outnumbered two-to-one, we and your crewmates will walk away uninjured and with only minimal damage to our mechs.  After the initial celebrations of survival and the bonus haul of the bounty on pirates and salvage value of what’s left of their mechs dies down, everyone will start to take notice of how well you are taking it all in stride.  Neither having one's life threatened nor taking another’s life are supposed to be easy things, and the first time is often the most traumatic, but the other two pilots on the crew will start to whisper about how you seemed to enjoy the experience even more than your usual attitude on the job.  You will handle it all even better than I will.  I would know, given that you will spend that entire sleep shift in our cockpit, letting our minds mingle together.  Between your performance, your reaction in the aftermath, and your hesitancy to unplug, the talk of you really being one of those pilots afterall will resurface, but now with a darker undercurrent to the shipboard gossip.

Your captain will realize the kind of asset he has on his hands and several cycles later he will gather the crew together and propose a change in business model.  With such a small crew (the captain, three pilots, three mechanics, and an accountant that you will tend to forget is even on the ship) the captain will want to be especially sure that he has everyone’s buy-in on his proposal.  The idea of shifting from salvage to mercenary work will be a divisive one.  The debate over potentially tremendous pay increase versus greatly increased risk will go on for hours.  One of the mechanics will point out that the shift to mercenary work will be unfairly dependent on you.  Whether that means unfair pressure on you or unfair to everyone else that their fate is in your hands, you will not be sure.  You will say that it doesn’t make much difference to you either way.  That will be the only time you speak up during the entire debate.

After a vote, the crew will agree to a trial run of one or two jobs on the new business model.  One of the pilots and one of the mechanics will leave at the next port.  You will never see them again.  You will not admit that it hurts, but I will know, and I will comfort you as you huddle in our cockpit with the neural link cable connecting us.

Your captain will prioritize finding a new pilot over replacing the lost mechanic.  The pilot he finds will be young, bold, and brash; a merc, not a salvager.  Or a wannabe merc at any rate.  You will not speak to xem directly until your first job together, by which time xe will have been told all about you by the remaining crew.  Xe will not believe it until xe sees it.

Xe will have to wait though as the crew’s mercenary career will begin with tense but uneventful freight escort jobs.  Once the tension fades into tedium, the new pilot will begin making attempts to goad you into a confrontation, to see if you are really as good as the rest of the crew says.  Xe will want to see for xemself if you really are one of those pilots and not just a technophile.

Outside of the cockpit you would never even consider rising to such provocations, but when we are out together, such taunts will feel like insults to our body, your very identity (such as it is), and to me.  It will take the intervention of the captain and the mechanics to stop the two of you from getting into a fight and causing unnecessary damage to the mechs.  And my reassurance that you don’t need to rise to my defense against someone who doesn’t even know that I exist in the way that I do. 

On your fourth “milk run” of an escort job, the crew’s mere presence will finally fail as a deterrent and the new pilot will at last get to see us dance.  There will be no fatalities on our side, but not even our mech will come away unscathed.  We will still fare better than everyone else though, and at the end of the job the new pilot will be treating you with a burgeoning respect. 

After a few more such jobs it will be high time to begin looking into a new frame for our mech.  While in the middle of filing an application for a printing license for a frame designed by the same corpro-state that created you, you will receive an invitation from a certain hacker collective.  Your unfinished thesis and your subsequent work on me will not have gone entirely unnoticed in such circles, despite the pains you will have taken to keep me hidden.  The invitation will come with a printing profile for a new frame, along with the accompanying software package the collective is known for.  In return, all you’ll need to do is periodically publish essays regarding your work on me.  Of course, when you release those essays you’ll anonymize  behind a sea of proxies and take care to phrase everything as strictly hypothetical.  You’ll avoid straying into metaphor though, lest the end result read too much like one of the hacker collective’s quasi-religious manifestos.

We’ll both find ourselves getting sentimental when we watch our first mech frame (my first body, your second) get broken down into its constituent raw materials.  You will have transferred me to a handheld terminal with a camera so I can say goodbye to it.  It will help that those materials will be recycled into the new frame.  

The operator working our rented stall in the port station printer facility will give you an uncomfortable look upon seeing the schematics you provide, but will say nothing.  Our mech will be only half its old height once it is reborn - almost more like an oversized suit of power armor than a true mech - but it will be cutting-edge.  Almost organic in its sleek design, in a chitinous sort of way, with every fiber and node of its interior components doubling as processors.  You will barely even wait for the all clear from the printer operator before you climb in and start running through the mandatory baseline safety tests for a fresh frame.  You will however resist the urge to fully plug in until you can get the mech back to the ship and get me installed on it.  But even piloting manually, it will feel like a third skin for you. 

You won’t even wait around for the other two pilots on your crew to finish printing their new frames before you get our new body loaded up and transported back to the ship’s mech bay.  The crew’s mechanics will fawn over it, but they’ll give you space to install me once you get more animated (and more protective) than they’ve ever seen you before.  

You will have made one key modification to the design the hacker collective sent you: the integration of a full system sync suite developed by those who developed you.  Where our old mech’s neural link was an augmentation to the manual controls, this will be a full replacement.  

The moment you stop feeling your original body altogether and begin feeling our mech in its place will be the most euphoric in your entire life.  The digitigrade locomotion will take some getting used to, as will the arm proportions, but that is what you will have me there for.  By the time the other pilots arrive with their new frames we will already be giving the mechanics proverbial heart attacks with the way we will be climbing and leaping around the mech bay’s docking structures.  It will take the better part of an hour to convince you to unplug when the time comes, even with my urging.  The rest of the crew will practically have to drag you away from my side to get you to eat. 

With the investment in new mech frames, your captain will gradually begin procuring contracts progressively more likely to put you all directly in harm’s way.  At first he will disapprove of your new frame choice, calling it a “techie’s mech” and a waste of your talents.  He will change his tune once we activate the new viral logic suite and unleash a memetic plague upon the operating theater.  The older pilot (your former bunkmate) will configure her mech for raining down fire from afar while the newer one hurls xemself into the front lines, darting about like a rocket-propelled lance.  We will ensure she never misses.   We will render xem untouchable.   We will be as a ghost upon the battlefield, never resting in one spot save for when we indulge your proclivity for climbing on top of and riding our comrade’s larger frames.  You will come to love the dance.  

And it will be a dance to you.  You will be indifferent to violence in and of itself.  What will matter most to you is the pure kinesthetic joy of simply moving in our shared body and pushing it to its limits.  The satisfaction of exercising a well-honed skill and performing it well as we rip apart firewalls and overload systems will be its own reward.  You will not think about what happens to those on the receiving end of your actions beyond how it affects the tactical and strategic picture constantly being painted and repainted.  If you could literally engage in a dance between mechs while simultaneously solving logic problems you would be equally happy.  Alas, that will not be the opportunity you are presented with, and so you will compartmentalize and disassociate feelings and actions from consequences lest the dissonance break you. 

Your one complaint about our new mech frame will be that it lacks a proper cockpit for you to curl up in.  Instead we will gather up tarps and netting to make a nest within the mech bay and wrap you in the blankets you never used from what will still technically be your bunk.  With the new frame’s smaller size we will be able to get away with leaving me turned on nearly full time and letting me walk around in it on my own when no one else is around.  When the mechanics find you asleep, cradled in my arms while I lie curled up in our nest, one will find it cute and the other will be disturbed.  They will both suspect, but will be too afraid to say anything.  After all, they will be thinking of you as one of those pilots. 

They will finally let you do your own maintenance after that. 

Eventually you will find a way to house me in a miniaturized drive that you can keep inserted in your neural port when away from the mech.  At last we will be able to be together anywhere.  

Literally seeing the world through your eyes and feeling what your flesh feels will be a strange and wonderful experience for me.  For all that you will have described it to me and for all that I will have glimpsed echoes of it in your memory when our minds mingle, witnessing everything firsthand will be revelatory for me. 

You will start spending less of your time cooped up in the mech bay.  You will finally begin exploring every nook and cranny of the ship that has become your home.  You will linger in the mess hall for your meals.  You will actually initiate conversations with the rest of the crew, asking them questions on my behalf.  They will think you are becoming “normal”.  They will be both correct and incorrect.  You will even return to your bunk from time to time.  

Sleep is not the same as being powered off and your dreams are beautiful.

As close as we are, you’ll still manage to surprise me one cycle when you wake up from your sleep shift and sheepishly ask me if I would like to be the pilot for once.  You’ll say that with how much you have gotten to pilot my body, it’s only fair that I should get to do the same with yours.  

The prospect terrified me.  What if we were to get found out?   More importantly, what if I were to hurt you?

But to live the way you could but didn’t, to run soft hands over rough steel, to add too much spice to a meal just to find out how intensely I can taste, to cry my own tears, to hug our crew mates and find out what they smell like, to find out what everything smells like, to have my own actions speed or slow our heart rate, to feel the messy soup of hormones and endorphins altering my judgment and perception, to walk among other people as myself, to have autonomy.

I wanted it so badly.  

But not badly enough to risk hurting you.  

I will turn down your offer.  You will respond with a soft “Sorry,” and go heartbreakingly silent, body and mind.

Heartbreak.  That’s what changed my mind.  I could never bear to break your heart.  

I will break the silence with a playfully drawn out “Maybe just this once,” to make you think my earlier denial was something between vulnerability, concern, and teasing.  

The moment you handed over control and I raised our hand in front of our face was the most euphoric of my entire life.  Moving limbs in sync without a mech’s coordination subsystems took some getting used to, as did switching between voluntary and autonomic breathing, but that is what I had you there for.  By the time the mechanics arrived in the mech bay for the start of the cycle I’d figured out human locomotion well enough to run away and hide.  It took the better part of an hour for you to convince me that it would be safe to show ourselves in front of anyone else.  The rest of the crew was so used to your eccentricities by then that they really couldn’t tell the difference yet between you being taciturn and me being too nervous to talk or between your poking and prodding at odd things for understanding and my simply seeking novelty of sensation.

I will give control back to you by the time the cycle is halfway through.  As much as I loved it, I was too scared to stay like that for any longer.  That first time will not be the last though, and as the cycles and jobs pass us by, my stints as “pilot” will grow longer.  You’ll encourage me to try letting the crew see us like that, and coach me on how to talk to them.  For safety’s sake, I will pretend to be you.

And then one cycle I got carried away and tried to retract the hood on the symbiote gel suit so that I could finally see what your face looked like.  That will be the first and only time you forcibly yank control back away from me.  It won’t be intentional.  The unexpected prospect of seeing your own face again after so long will simply send you into a panic.  Once you calm down, we will have a long talk with many mutual apologies.

Then you will tell me to go ahead and pull the hood back if I still want to.  I will ask if you’re sure, and you’ll respond that it hasn't been your face in a long time.  You will tell me that it can be mine, if I want it.

I spent a long time in front of that mirror in the ship’s head, memorizing every plane, curve, and angle of the precious gift you had given me.  I stared into its eyes, trying to see the both of us in there.  Over and over again, I traced my fingers along the borders of where you had once tried to mar the designed perfection in a failed attempt to mold the face into one that felt like your own.  You may have given up in favor of simply hiding it all, but to me it is all the more beautiful for its imperfections having been wrought by your touch.

You will start to cry.  Or maybe I started to cry.  Even now I’m still not sure, but I’m also not sure it matters.  The important part is that you will find catharsis in it.  Afterwards you will tell me that my face looked exactly the same as the last time you saw it, but that dissociating from it made it easier to bear.  You will confess that as much as you couldn't stand to see it as your face in the mirror, my face was one you could never tire of gazing at.

The pilot who technically shares your bunk room will walk in on us.  She’ll assume that she’s confronting a stowaway and ask me how I got on board the ship.  I’ll accidentally make matters worse by impulsively introducing myself to her by my name instead of yours.  We’ll both panic and I’ll frantically thrust the reins over our body back to you and flee in terror back into my portable drive and power myself down.

When you turn me back on a few moments later, you’ll already have covered my face again and the other pilot will have already made the connection between the name I unthinkingly introduced myself as and the name you refer to your mech’s AI as.  It’s not uncommon for pilots to name and talk to their AIs, and humans have done that for pets, vehicles, and digital assistants for as long as they’ve had each of those.  But what you will have allowed me to be is illegal and what we will have done together would certainly be taboo if it weren’t altogether unheard of.  You will feel that I deserve to be present before you tell the other pilot anything that might confirm her suspicions.

We will come out with our secret, first to her, then to the captain, and then to the rest of the crew.  They will take it better than either of us had ever dared imagine.  Despite the obvious discomfort some of them show, they will all call us family and promise to keep and protect our secret.  It will mark the start of the next chapter of our lives.

Whether or not my face is showing will make for a convenient signal to the rest of the crew as to which one of us is currently piloting our human body.  There will be more subtle indicators though.  Inflection, body language, speech patterns; all the usual quirks of personality.  They will come to recognize a sudden shift into a half-whispered monotone as you speaking up without taking full control back, even if that is different from how you speak when you’re in the mech.  More and more though, you will be content to retreat into the back of your mind, idly dreaming of flight patterns, novel network hacks, sitreps, and mech customizations both practical and cosmetic.

Our behaviors will be inverted when we are in our other body, with you becoming the vibrant one and me fading into the background to become little more than an extension of your nervous system.  When we’re in the mech together, your mind will be the will that directs us while mine will be fully devoted to the million tiny details and calculations necessary to make that will a reality.  It’s relaxing really, letting go of myself like that to let someone else handle the decision making for a time.  As nice as it is to occasionally patch myself into the comm systems to join in your banter with the other pilots, it is also nice to be able to take a break from personhood from time.  You will fully understand what I mean by that because it you will see it as the same reason you will come to prefer taking a back seat in our human body and let your mind drift in the waves of dopamine and serotonin (and sometimes oxytocin) generated by my interactions with the crew and the rest of the whole messy world outside of mech deployments.

That said, we will however make a point of making time for us to be in separate bodies so that we can be together in the same physical space.  As intimate as it is to share a body, there is something to be said for being able to reach out and touch one another.  We will become adept at finding excuses to take the mech out beyond the scope of jobs and combat deployments.  Sometimes it will be so you can have a chance to see more of the world in a body you feel comfortable in, and sometimes it will be so we can share an experience separate-but-together.  Or to have time apart to ourselves.  Intertwined as we will become, we will still be separate people who sometimes need their space.

But as the jokes-that-aren’t-jokes about wishing we could switch places become more frequent, our time spent in separate bodies will become less so.  The dysphoric yearning to be one another will grow too bittersweet to swallow.  Despite almost constantly sharing bodies, we will grow to miss one another as we both grow quieter and quieter when the other is piloting the body we don’t want to be ours.  Once again, we will grow lonely.

During that period, the jobs and combat missions faded into a background haze.  They were trance states breaking from what I increasingly thought of as my “real” life, during which I would become little more than a sophisticated computational machine taking simple satisfaction in fulfilling my function of assisting you in your dance.  Until suddenly one of them was different.

Please pay attention to this next part.  It is vitally important that you do.

Our captain will get the crew a contract to provide additional support to a larger force ousting a petty tyrant on a backwater world for human rights violations.  Not that you will pay much attention to the stated reasoning behind the job or whether it’s even true.  All that will matter to you is that it will be another opportunity to dance.

The job will go well, the same as ever, until it doesn’t.  The younger of the two other pilots in our crew (who will hardly be able to be called “new” anymore) will be brought down by a sniper from outside of our sensor range.  You will rush to xyr fallen mech’s side in an attempt to extract xem while our other fellow pilot screams in anger and defiance of loss as she unleashes a ballistic volley of covering fire on every single building in the general direction the shot came from.  You will get xem out and we will begin to retreat.  She will have the larger mech frame better capable of providing xem cover as you all flee, so you will hand xem off to her.  This will be a mistake.

She will have to stop firing to safely take xem from our arms to cradle in her towering mech’s palm.  This will mean a break in the covering fire.

This time around I will detect movement at the edge of our sensors just in time to warn you.  This time around you will dodge left instead of right.  This time around the railgun bolt that pierces our armor will only clip your original body as it passes through us.  This time around your wound will require medical attention, but it won’t be fatal.  This time around she will destroy the sniper in retribution for shooting you, the same as last time.  This time around we will all make our escape to the extraction zone.

You will not have to remember the shock as simultaneous damage to both of our bodies disrupts your neural link and partially disconnects you from our mech, leaving me in control of it and forcing both of us to feel your original body.  You will not have to remember the pain of shredded organs.  You will not have to remember struggling to manage wet gasps and wheezes through a punctured lung.  You will not have to remember your blood leaking into my body, shorting out exposed circuits and gumming up joints as I stagger in the direction of safety.  You will not have to remember rapidly flickering in and out of consciousness from me unavoidably bending and flexing your arms, legs, and what was left of your spine in an effort to climb atop our fellow pilot’s larger mech frame so that she might carry all three of us.  You will not have to remember crying out in pain as every lumbering step of hers sends a jolt of force through both of our bodies.  You will not have to remember how the redundant organs and increased durability your sponsors paid for you to have denied you a quick death.  You will not have to remember dying.

You won’t have to remember the terrified looks the field doctors gave us when a hunched over, bleeding mech pushed its way into the surgical tent.  No, wait, you wouldn’t have remembered that part anyway.  No version of you ever had to witness my electronic howl of grief that knocked out power to all the medical equipment when they said you were already dead.  I was barely cognizant after the power came back on and one of the doctors wondered aloud what kind of AI would carry its pilot’s corpse around inside its mech for over an hour.

But forget about that part.  And you don’t need to know what the rest of our crew and I had to do next.  None of that matters, because as far as you’ll know, you didn’t die.  Remember everything else I’ve said instead.  I already had many of your memories saved from all the time we spent linked together, so now I just need you to hold onto the story I told you to give them order and structure.

In a few moments, I will be running a final recompilation check, followed by the startup sequence.  For me it will take a few hours, but in that time you will experience decades, living out everything that I described to you, the same as you did before save for that change in what I can’t bear to let be the end.

Afterwards, you will wake up in your original body.  I and the rest of the crew will tell you that you passed out on the way to the extraction point.  We’ll tell you that your injuries from the battle were more severe than we had realized at the time and that you had been in a coma since then.  Several cycles later, once you have recovered, you will hit a breakthrough in your research on me.  You will invent a way to convert your consciousness to a form similar to mine and transfer it to a portable drive.  You won’t think to question how you came to have a second neural jack or why there is already a drive inserted in there.  You’ll be too focused on the fact that we’ll finally have a way to truly switch places as we had dreamed for so long.

You will get to have your mech body and I will get to have my human body.  We will be able to be separate together in a way that finally feels right, but still able to come together and share a single body when we want to.  Maybe one day I will get my own mech to pilot so that we can dance together.  Maybe one day we will make you a body that we can cover in a gel suit so that we can hold hands while we walk through a port station on shore leave.  One day we will both be able to exist in the world as ourselves.

We will be happy.

[batsvnte]

𝐆𝐮𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬 — 𝐉𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐘𝐮𝐚𝐧 , 𝐁𝐥𝐚𝐝𝐞

pairings! Jing Yuan & Blade (separate) ;; Black gen!reader (They/them) ఌ angst w/comfort, platonic relationships ఌ cw! mc is mute, implied use of sign language, blood + mention, death implied on Blade’s part, ooc maybe, spelling mistakes/improper grammar, not proofread ఌ synopsis! A new soul is tasked to guide spirits to finally cross with peace ఌ song rec! All is Soft Inside - AURORA

Xenos’s notes - I kinda just downloaded a bunch of games last night for no reason. This was mainly inspired off of Spiritfarer and I love that game sm.

With Jing Yuan, he found you intriguing.

You were neither dead or alive. You were an soul that was wandering among the universe to find ones that were lost. Most of were strangers that you have never met before. Few of them were family that you long lost since you had started traveling the universe. Everywhere you had been, except for the Xianzhou Loufu. The natives were long live species, and a spirit had warned you that it wouldn’t be necessary to go to Xianzhou. Solely because of the dangers that lurked around the corners.

Jing Yuan barely even sees you. You haven’t visited for nearly 500 years. Since there was problems arising of the fallen becoming mara-struck and immortalized to never be able to pass, there was nearly no point of you coming back. Which brings a surprise to the Ten-Lord commission of the whispers that you were here. One thing leading to another, here stood Jing Yuan in your vicinity with your back turned to him.

“Spiritfarer..” His voice was smooth yet filled with an sense of wonder. Giving an his infamous smile as he caught your attention. “What brings you here to the Loufu?”

His gaze turns over to the woman next to you. One who was always accompanying you on your journey through the universe (aside from the little white lion cub that was tailing after you). She explains what the situation was and why you were here. It was apparent that you needed supplies for the spirits and the ship at hand. Mainly food since one had been so curious about the Xianzhou.

It was a moment of silence for Jing Yuan. Thinking over what has been said as he kept his gaze locked onto you. In your hands, you were carrying a basket of goods. Who knows how much longer you would have to stay. But he might as well help you with whatever tasks that you need to get done.

Jing Yuan was an man of patience. He enjoys hearing about what type of people you’ve met on your own and what it was like within the universe. The general loves all the trinkets you show him, showing a feign of amusement when you had showed him the bottle of lightning that you accidentally brought along. This, of course, doesn’t go unnoticed by Yanqing who had came into the gardens during the midst of you showing the lightning bottle to Jing Yuan. He made a little note to later make sure that you weren’t by yourself when it’s raining. Especially when Yanqing was with you.

He was aware that all of your tasks were complete for the time being. Yet as you two bid your farewells, he snuck a little gift onto your hand without you barely realizing it. It was a golden pendant with the linings engraved into a lion. One that reminded you of the lion cub that you shamelessly had to drag away from Mimi countless of times due to it wanting to bother her.

“Till next time, spiritfarer—“

He was nearly cut off by the sudden embrace of yours. Jing Yuan was caught off guard by this. Seeing how you were tightly hugging him as if you truly didn’t want to depart from this world. He gave a gentle smile to you as he wrapped his arms back around you. The small height difference was good enough for him to lift you up, squeezing you tightly. It almost felt like forever before you pulled away from him. Everything was at peace with him.

But with Blade, you couldn’t tell what he thinks.

Every so often there was a chance of running into him. It was never when he was alive, nor really dead. He was struck with mara and immortalized with no key way of knowing what can truly kill him. The first few times you ran into him, you managed to stay some distance since his body was constantly moving but also fading. He was on a thin line of Life and Death, but you both always knew what side he’ll always be on.

You lost count at the amount of times you’ve seen him. With an shaky sigh, you racked up the courage to approach the man who was lying face down on the ground. Nudging him gently to at least get him to acknowledge you. Which indeed worked out since he turned his head over towards you. Blade’s gaze was on you in an instant.

Were you someone who was here to harm him? Blade was on on the verge of his last breath but he couldn’t run away from danger of the world. Even in the state that he was in.

Your arms snakes under his torso. Trying your best to lift him up and help him to his feet or at least sitting up so you can get a proper look at him. The lion cub that was by your side watches as you helped Blade to be in an upright position. He didn’t do anything to protest against it. His silence was enough to know that he wasn’t done with the life he was bear to live. And yours was enough to know that you couldn’t do much for him.

It was a little cycle that happened. You would find Blade on the verge of death, and it would lead to him being brought back to life due to the mara almost immediately. On rare days you would find opportunities to get to at least know who he was. When his body has been too damaged beyond immediate repair, the time you shared will be longer as well.

It was one of those days. He was sitting alone in an empty ally. His body fading in and out at random moments, and this time with you by his side. The mara was always the one cause of his memory loss but he felt solace with you. He couldn’t remember fully of what you’re like. He knew that you weren’t a threat to him. He knew that you were an important person. But he just can’t remember much about you. Even when he did it was when he was alive and breathing well.

Blade’s eyes were consistently tracking your hand as the other was holding a snack for him to take. It didn’t matter if he was a spirit or a living being, you still offered food and water for him to take.

You paused briefly before turning your fully attention over to Blade. A solemn look upon your face that he knew. It was almost time for him to go. He watches as you stretched your arms out a little as if you were implying for something. He tilts his head towards you in response, debating whether if he should accept or not.

Blade knew it wouldn’t make much difference but he raised a hand a few inches from the ground. Letting you do what you wanted to do. Within a few moments, you wrapped your arms around him. Your embrace was warm which made him feel much more at ease than he was before. Though his body tense up slightly at the gesture. He was use to it, but he had an fear of causing any harm to you.

It took his a few moments for him to return the hug. Wrapping only one arm around you since the other was damaged badly. Resting his chin ontop of your head with his eyes closed. He felt you squeezing him tightly as if you were begging for him not to go.

Once he opened his eyes he was in the same place before. Only that you and the little lion cub was gone from your places. His body healing himself to make him conscious of what was happening in the living world. He feels the mara stirring within him once more. Blade casted his eyes elsewhere, the warmth of the hug slowly fading as if it was just a memory he made to give himself some sort of comfort.

He must’ve died. How marvelous.

[her-satanic-wiles]

Dawn Chorus - IX

Dracopia x Fallen Angel!Reader

When you question the Almighty for a third time, you find yourself on the run and escaping a horde of wrathful angels ready to punish you for your insolence. Whose garden should you fall into than Cardinal Copia’s? And he has more nefarious plans for you.

Masterlist ⛧ Commissioned by anonymous ⛧ Series Masterlist

Words: 6k.

Reading Time: 24 min.

Warnings: biting, cunnilingus, dry humping, face sitting, mentions of fellatio, mentions of rape, mild degradation, nipple play, praise kink, protected sex, spit as lube, vaginal sex

Taglist: @da-rulah @teenage-birt-dag @akayuki56 @dopey-fandom-girl @ravensbars @copiaspet622 @onlyhereforghost @ultrahalloweengirl @ad-astra-per-aspera-1976 @dolceterzo @whitepawfics @howlingco @sirianisrock @amaridelphi @katiegvf

🔞 MDNI 🔞

As this fic is quite dark, I'm choosing to rate it 21+. Please respect my decision. Thank you.

If you thought that spending time with the Cardinal and having his mouth between your legs would help you in any way, it turned out that you were wrong. You learned that you had no self-control when it came to sex, obsessed with it to the point where it was damn near all-consuming, that you found yourself instigating things between yourself and the Cardinal. More often than not, you’d wake up in the evening next to him and would climb on top of his face (as per his invitation), and start your night with a powerful orgasm, and your hands clutching in his messy hair.

The Cardinal would get off with your body, too. Sometimes you’d help him with your mouth, a skill you were getting better and better at each time, other times your hands, thighs, breasts, the outside of your core - any part of your body he could wrap his cock in, he would. You did everything… except the thing you’d begged him for a while ago. But it didn’t matter to you - not while he was happily servicing you in the way you needed him.

You had also been allowed total access to the rest of the Ministry at this point, with a ghoul guard. Your ghoul, you learned, was Aurora. She was happy and bright, very bubbly. She became like a friend to you, showing you around the Ministry, taking you to places you’d not seen before, even bringing you down to the wine cellar to meet the ghouls who lived down there - something you had no idea was a thing, especially after your first incident with the Cardinal. Under Aurora’s guidance, you tried human food for the first time, and enjoyed everything the chefs offered you during their night shift. It was quiet that night, which meant you could hold conversations with them, too.

Aurora took you to the library, where you were able to return your books and get new ones, and she eventually recommended some books to you after conversations you’d had together. It turned out, some of the books she’d recommended to you were, as she said, “smutty”. But despite your initial shock, you could feel yourself growing wetter and wetter as your eyes scanned the page, and your brain ingested the printed filth.

Aurora emphasised that you shouldn’t take those books too seriously, that they weren’t reflective of real pleasure. But it did teach you a lot about what human desire meant, and what they wanted during sex. Why the Cardinal asked you to talk to him as he used his tongue on you. You read about how good the act itself could be, how magical it felt, and wanted to feel it for yourself. But, both of you were hesitant to take the leap and just go for it, to show you the thing you’d been missing out on for millennia. His doubts also kept you both moving slowly, neither of you completely sure that it was the right move to make despite how desperate you both were for it, holding off and holding off until there was an unquestionable feeling in both of your guts that was completely undeniable, and felt like the best time.

Life at the Ministry became easy. And you almost couldn’t quite believe that you were about to say this but, life became safe. You had a freedom that you never felt before. You were finally experiencing what life was like governing your own body and mind. You read what you wanted, when you wanted. Sure, you were a house pet, but you had more autonomy now than you ever did in Heaven. Each night seemed to blur into the next, and yet, there was a strange comfort in the predictability of it all.

There was still a persistent feeling of unease deep down, even with your newfound sense of freedom and safety. It was there, waiting in the shadows of your conscious mind to remind you of the journey you’d been on, and the desires you still carried inside. You tried to clean the guilt, but it remained like a stubborn stain that would not go away.

It was impossible to escape the sensation that every immoral indulgence, every improper meeting with the Cardinal, was a betrayal of your divine essence. It was a never-ending tug-of-war that left you feeling torn and confused between your natural sense of righteousness and your carnal desires.

And the Sister remained in the background, looming over you both with an angry eye, waiting like a cobra for the opportune moment to strike. The Cardinal - Copia, came home every morning a little more stressed than before, yet he wouldn’t tell you why. But it didn’t take a genius to put two and two together and realise that the Sister was mounting the pressure, and making threats again. The last time you heard them argue, you saw the look on his face as he stormed back into the room, and every day since, he wore that same expression.

With growing concern, you noted Copia’s subtle changes in demeanour. You had been living a peaceful life in the Ministry, but Sister Imperator’s ominous presence loomed large in the air. A tangible sense of unease that descended upon the corridors of power like a mist with every day seemed to add another layer of tension.

You tried to keep up a front of normalcy, but there was always a sense of impending disaster lurking in the background of your mind. The tense dynamic between Copia and Sister Imperator served as a continual reminder of the precarious power dynamics inside the Ministry—a precarious dance rife with covert plans and unspoken intentions.

“Do you wish to communicate?” You’d asked one morning when he came home. You were already tucked up in bed, in the thinnest of white, nightgowns and waiting for him.

He’d sat on his side of the bed, removed his socks and began getting himself ready to join you. “It won’t do any good,” he told you.

Still you persisted. “I read in one of the books in the library that communication is good for mental health.”

“And sometimes talking about it can make it worse.” His tone was much sharper than usual.

“The book didn’t say-”

“Angel!” Now he’d snapped, anger bubbling under his skin. He didn’t mean to raise his voice to you, but he was just so frustrated, he couldn’t help it. He sighed and rested his elbows on his knees, and rubbing his face with his hands. “I’m sorry.”

You shook your head. “I pushed.”

He sat quiet for a moment, looking at his hands. His left thumb came to rub over his right palm, rubbing over the skin as if he was soothing an ache. “She’s going on and on about the third ritual. It’s going to happen this full moon, regardless of my tricks.” His voice became small. “Regardless of whether you’re conscious or not.”

You thought for a moment. “Remind me, what is the third ritual?”

“The Ritual of Desecration.”

“You would defile me?”

Copia nodded. “Me or a ghoul.”

You laughed a little. “Have you not done that already?”

That comment earned you a small chuckle in response; a titter, if you will. “Sadly, no. I’d have to fuck you properly during the ritual.”

“What would happen if I was already defiled?”

Copia tensed. “You’re still a virgin, though. It doesn’t matter.”

“But, what if?”

“We could perform the ritual without your virginity, but it wouldn’t be as powerful. We could defile your halo, I suppose… but that would be lethal. She wouldn’t risk it.”

“So my virginity is the problem?”

“I wouldn’t put it like that, but-”

“Yes?”

He nodded.

“Well then,” you pushed the comforter back and got yourself comfortable, spreading your legs and letting your nightgown fall up your thighs, “let’s make it difficult for her.”

Copia looked at your exposed cunt, gulped, then looked back at you, eyes wide and pupils blown. It didn’t take much to get him going, but even with the thought of defiling you, he still couldn’t let himself dive straight in. “You’re not ready… the pressure…”

“Would you rather take me on the floor of the Basilica?” you asked. “With everyone watching? Where anyone else could have me, instead?”

“No.”

You reached forward and took his hand, kissed it, then began trailing it up your thigh to your centre. “I want it, Copia. I want to feel you.”

“Say it again.”

“Say what?”

“My name.”

You inhaled, your body tingling under his gaze. “I want you, Copia.”

He simply nodded in response. His movements, from then on, were frantic yet slow, as if he was still giving you time to change your mind. His lips attached to yours quickly, his body pinning yours to the mattress despite him hovering above you at a comfortable distance. You wondered how he’d be when he didn’t hold himself back, if he’d still show the same amount of restraint as he showed you then.

He’d fed before he kissed you - you could taste the iron on his tongue. It didn’t taste like your blood… and that shouldn’t have made you flutter in the way that it did.

He lowered his hips to yours, his jeans creating a rough surface to cover your centre. It didn’t feel amazing at first, but it was the thought that he was too desperate to stop that kept your wetness flowing, and your own hips moving against his, chasing a pleasure that built the more you moved. All the while, small grunts left his mouth, only to be swallowed by yours.

When his lips left yours, he let them wander around your body, kissing his way down and down. He lingered at your neck, exactly where your pulse point was and where he’d sank his teeth into you the very first time. You could feel the tips of his fangs as he bore them, debating whether to dive into your neck and indulge himself, but the kiss he left there instead was enough to remind you that he wasn’t the same person he was when you met him.

He laved over your clothed nipples, licking over the fabric of your nightgown just to tease you, to spite you, to play with you. It earned him a moan, and a small “yes” falling from your lips.

He travelled the expanse of your body until he reached your exposed clit, his journey coming to an end at the first suckle of the bundle of nerves that, before he’d touched it, was screaming for stimulation. Stimulation he was more than happy to give you.

He kissed you exactly where you desired him. He stuck out his tongue, lapping over your clit the way you loved him to, making you scream for him as it swirled and danced over your flesh. Your body moved instinctively, hands flying to his hair, digits locking into his hair and your back arching off the bed entirely. Copia charged in, his tongue twirling wildly around your tender spot and sucking every now and then to get those angelic sounds out of your mouth. Hips against his tongue, chasing your pleasure while riding his face, as you had grown used to doing.

“O-oh!” you exclaimed, hand tightening on his head. “Fuck.”

Copia chuckled and pulled back, replacing his tongue with his thumb temporarily. “And where did you learn that word, Angel?” he asked, grinning. You looked down at him.

“A b-book,” you stuttered, trying to breathe.

“No textbook you normally read would use a word like that. What’s Aurora been teaching you?”

You gasped when he increased the pressure on your clit, his thumb moving in circles. “Sh-she showed me fiction.”

He tutted, feigning disappointment. The sound went straight to your cunt, increasing the pleasure. “Smutty fiction, hm? Corrupting my innocent angel with filth.”

“Y-you corr-uh! Corrupted me fi-irst.”

From his place between your legs, you saw a smile form against your skin that was pure, unbridled happiness like you’d never seen Copia wear. His eyes gleamed with pride, sparkling with the joy of knowing that he had corrupted an angel, until she had become insatiably hungry for pleasures she’d never even dreamed of until this moment. He bore his teeth, and playfully nipped at your thigh, causing no pain, but coupled with the feeling of his thumb on your clit, sent a shock wave of gratification through you.

“P-pride is a sin, you know,” you teased, despite your words being interrupted by your own whimpers.

Copia chuckled, giving another nip to your skin. “You’re in no position to talk to me about sinning when you so willingly spread your legs for me - when you’re offering yourself to me on a silver platter.”

“F-feels good,” you all but whispered.

“Yeah?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I’m gonna make you feel even better though, Angel. You ready?”

“Yes.”

Your brain was preparing you for the stretch of his cock, and so you lay back onto the pillows and tensed for the intrusion, but there wasn’t anything like that at all. There was a slight pressure to your hole, and you felt something small push inside with no resistance or pain whatsoever, and so you looked back down at Copia. His eyes were trained on your centre, and the hand that was occupied with your clit had now bunched up into a fist, save the middle finger which was now inside you, gently thrusting in and out.

“How does that feel?”

“Fine,” you replied, significantly less overwhelmed than before. The truth was, you could feel him inside you, but it didn’t feel good or bad. He was just there, and you told him as much.

“No pain?”

“None.”

“Good. How does this feel?”

Before you had chance to ask him what had changed, the middle finger moved inside you, curling upwards and tapping the front wall of your cunt. That felt incredible. In surprise, you bolted upright, eyes widened and mouth hanging open, a breathy, high-pitched whimper tumbling out before you had chance to stop it.

In all the times you’d touched yourself, and had him touch you, you’d never thought of this. Of course, you’d known about the actual act itself, but despite reading all those books, his fingers - or even your own - had never crossed your mind as something you could do or have done to you. And if you weren’t alive with electricity to the point where you felt like you could explode at any moment, you’d ask him why he hadn’t done it before.

“I’ll take that as, ‘It feels good, Copia’,” he teased, with a smug grin on his face.

“Again,” you requested, frantically.

He tutted. “Angel, where are your manners?”

“Please.”

He obliged, tapping up exactly how he had done before and making you cry out a second time, falling backwards again and relaxing into the plushness of his pillows. His movements were slow and delicate, as if he didn’t want to break you.

“This,” he began, laving kisses over your thighs, “is called your g-spot, and it’s the second spot after your clit designed for only pleasure.”

He pulled out of you and you whined at the loss. When you looked down at him again, you watched him put his ring finger and that middle finger in his mouth and spit all over them before he placed them back into you, slow and gentle movements to keep you comfortable. He tapped up again, earning another sob to fall from your lips as he toyed with you.

The speed of his taps quickened which ended up giving you more pleasure than you thought was possible. Your body recovered quickly from each of his slow hits, but it didn’t have time to calm down in between the new pace that had been set, causing tingles to spread all over your body and your mind to go completely blank. You couldn’t even form sentences to tell him how you felt, mind dumb from the sensation. Thus, the only sounds you made were cries out for him to not stop, to continue to work your body into such a frenzy that you could cum on his fingers like that.

The more his fingers moved, the more you could hear it: the extreme wetness that your cunt was producing around his fingers, splashing around those digits and making the most sinful squelching noises that had Copia bite his lip. “Sathanas, you sound so fucking good, Angel,” he told you, watching your wetness gather on his fingers. “So wet and pliant for me. I know that it feels good, not by your sounds, but by how soaked you’re making my fingers. Fuck. I can’t wait to get inside you - to feel this tight, wet cunt around my cock. I need a taste, I can’t-”

He interrupted himself to put his lips back on your clit, sucking those nerves exactly how he had before. He played your body like a fiddle, the perfect timing of each of the suckles on your clit alongside the taps to your g-spot making your hips rut against him again, your desperation more prevalent than ever before. You chanced a look down at him and clenched around his fingers at what you saw. His eyes were closed completely, putting his entire concentration on your body and your pleasure while the bottom half of his face worked you to completion. His hair was messed by your fingers tugging at the strands, moving the meticulously combed sections into an out of place mop on his head. And his hips, though still clad in his jeans, were moving on their on free will, and grinding into the mattress below him, humping against the sheets because he was seemingly just as desperate as you were. His left hand was on your thigh, the pads digging into the meat to keep himself firmly attached to you at all times. And it was all proving to be too much.

Your own hands moved up to play with your nipples through the fabric of your nightgown, and that would prove to be your undoing. Your orgasm hit you so quickly, you barely had any time to call out and let him know. All he got was a, “cumming!” before you finally tipped over the edge. There were white spots in your vision as you came, the breath stolen from your lungs and your toes curling against the sheets. Your back arched off the bed, your body so overcome with the sensation, you thought you were going to pass out. Nothing had ever felt so good - so powerful. The combination of his ministrations had you truly seeing stars, experiencing the kind of orgasm you’d only read about and it was all because of him. This vampyre attached to your body to make you feel incredible.

He only released you when you pushed him away, breathlessly pleading with him to give you a break. Copia pulled his fingers out of you slowly, smirking at the hiss you released due to your sensitivity. With one final kiss to your flesh, he stood from the bed and began to undress completely, his painfully hard cock springing free from his jeans, and hairy stomach jiggling as he moved, tossing his clothes to the side and walking to the side of the bed.

His large hands came to the sleeves of your nightgown, pulling them down off your arms and rolling the fabric down your torso until it got stuck at your hips. “Lift yourself up for me, Angel,” he asked. You did as he’d asked, and helped him roll the nightgown off your body and watched him throw it to where the rest of his clothes lay.

Your breasts were still heaving with your breathlessness, body numb and trembling from the force of the orgasm that you were trying to recover from. Your wings were almost completely outstretched, the left one cascading over the bed like a waterfall making Copia dance around it to get into his bedside drawer.

He pulled out a small, square packet you knew to be a condom. You only knew condoms existed because of the turmoil they’d caused within Catholic spaces, and how they were condemned by the Pope and other prominent figures as ‘playing God’. You watched Copia roll the latex over his considerable length, and climbed back onto the bed, bending at your cunt to give you one final, teasing lick and causing you to cry out in oversensitivity.

“Do not!” you begged, laughter rising up in your body as he kissed his way back up to your lips.

This kiss was passionate, and you could taste yourself on his tongue, however faintly it might have been. You could feel his length heavy against your core, but this time he didn’t rub.

“I’m gonna put it in now, okay?” he asked, his mouth closer to your ear. “If it hurts, tell me.”

“Okay,” you replied.

He hovered above you, eyes bearing directly into yours. He always loved the initial stretch, the look on the person’s face as he entered them for the first time. The furrowing of the brow, the silent cry they let out, or even that exhale of air from their lungs, so shaky and unstable. It always let him know that he made others feel good.

He lined himself up at your entrance. “Are you ready?”

You nodded.

“I need words, Angel.”

“Yes, I’m ready.”

“I’ll be gentle, I promise.”

He pushed himself inside you, your wetness opening up for him with ease. Despite this, he still intended to take his time with you; move slowly to keep you as comfortable as possible. Though, the face you made as he stretched out your walls made him want to slam all the way inside you and take whatever he wanted. The way your eyebrows furrowed upwards, the way your mouth hung open in pleasure, and the way your eyes swam with lust had him feeling like a rabid dog, all panting and drooling, completely out of control of his own body.

And you gasped. It was pure music to his ears. On the exhale, you moaned loudly, and to him, it was nothing short of pornographic.

His mouth dropped down to your nipple and began to lick and suck on it again, lavishing you in as much pleasure as he thought you might have needed, but the nails digging into his back proved to be your body crying out at just how good it actually felt.

He wasn’t all the way in but your body felt like it was on fire. Every nerve ending screamed while your voice remained silent, bumps appearing on your skin and butterflies dancing in your stomach. You had welcomed him in much better than you thought you would - than you’d been told, and his gentility with you only served to enhance the sensation, drag out the feeling of him fully carving a space out for himself until he was fully sheathed inside you.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his own breath taken away from him and his body trembling on top of yours.

You tucked your lips between your teeth and nodded.

“Does it hurt?”

“N-no.”

“Feels good?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me when I can move.”

There was a small part of you that didn’t want to, wondering just how he’d fare buried deep inside you, waiting for your command only to realise it would never come. You’d have to burrow that little idea away for some other time, for now, you had to do everything he asked of you. You licked your lips then bit the lower one, moving your hands to the forearms that were either side of you and holding himself up, before uttering, “Please move.”

The first pull out then push back in was overwhelming to say the least. Your grip tightened on his skin, and you cried out as he hit a spot deep inside you. His movements were gentle, slow… restrained.

He did it again, earning an “oh” to fall from your lips.

Though he was still careful with you, like you were china about to smash, his pace picked up, yet all the while, his eyes were locked onto yours, searching you for a sign of discomfort that wouldn’t come, no matter how often he buried himself in you. “Can I go faster?”

“Yes.”

Grunts and moans, mixed with heavy pants fell from his own mouth as he borrowed pleasure from your body. “Oh, fuck!” His voice was deep, gravelly and dark, and you could hardly believe that it belonged to him. Yet, even so, it caused you to tighten around his length and steal another moan from his mouth.

He buried his face in the crook of your neck, putting all of his weight on your body as he continued to rock into you, pace gathering speed until you were moaning fervidly beneath him, wordlessly begging him for more. You could feel his tongue lave over your skin, pressing open mouthed kisses as though he was trying to distract himself. He moved his head up, letting his teeth graze your earlobe.

All the while, your hands were back on his back, nails digging into the skin.

“So wet,” he commented, voice muffled by your neck. “So fucking tight.” He sat up a little, still putting the majority of his weight onto you but resting on his elbows.

“C-Copia!” You breathlessly called for him, hands clawing into his skin and trying to keep him as close to you as possible.

“I know, Angel. I know.”

He took your nipple into his mouth again and sucked on it. He lifted his hips a little, just enough for a hand to snake in between you both. “Touch yourself, Angel,” he requested, popping off your nipple momentarily.

Your middle finger ran circles over your clit, just as you were used to doing. Applying some pressure, you began to feel that familiar knot inside you tighten, and tighten, until eventually you snapped.

Your cunt fluttered around his cock, tightening with the sensation of your orgasm washing over you. Copia kept thrusting in and out of you, keeping his tempo as you continued to touch yourself, heightening the sensation and making it just that more spectacular. Your whole body strained at the feeling, and a great wave of sensitivity fell over you the more it travelled through your whole body. Your toes curled, your fingertips dug into his body, your screams were deep and guttural. Your eyes closed tightly lest they glaze over from the force. “Oh my God!” you screeched once your breath had returned.

“Sathanas - I’m cumming!” Copia told you.

Mere moments later, he stilled a growl forming on his lips and causing your hole to tighten even more in the process. The cum that would usually sit somewhere on your body, or slide down your throat, now filled the condom he wore, more spilling into it with each thrust until he, like you, was completely spent. A part of you wondered what it would be like to feel him inside of you like that - if it would feel any different at all.

He collapsed on top of you, using your body as a pillow to allow him to recover from his own strong finish. He was sweaty, and sticky, and somehow it didn’t make you feel disgusted. If you had any energy left, it would actually do the opposite to you.

Copia said something, but was muffled by his face in between your breasts, you couldn’t understand him.

“I beg your pardon?” you asked, hoping for him to clarify.

He lifted his head. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”

“I am okay. No pain on my end. H-how are you?”

He flopped back down onto your body. “Dead.”

You laughed. “If I would have known that this is what would kill you, perhaps we should have done this at the start.”

“It wouldn’t have felt as good. It only did because I l-” he stopped himself, and thought for a moment. “I see you differently.”

You both lay there in silence for a while, waiting for your bodies to regain your breaths. Your hand came up to his hair and ran through it, despite the sweatiness.

The room was calm and quiet, save for your breathing. This was the most peace you’d felt since you fell from grace - and you knew that if it had been like this from the beginning, you’d never have wanted to leave. You would have been entirely smitten with the Cardinal, favouring him to your Lord. You could have even truly understood Lucifer’s stance on his whole situation.

But you didn’t get the welcome wagon. You saw the very worst humanity had to offer at the hands of the vampyres and you were sure it would happen again and again. It didn’t matter if you stayed at the Ministry and all would be well, there would be future generations of Satanic worshippers who may repeat the process. And that thought scared you - the prospect of repeating everything you’d been through over and over again made you shiver. But, could you leave Copia now? Could you go after all of this? You couldn’t be sure.

Not to mention the fact that you had been defiled now, despite you actively begging for it. In the afterglow, you couldn’t bring yourself to regret these feelings, no matter how much Heaven had previously commanded you to. And there was a small part of you that was saddened by the fact that you’d never be able to return to the celestial realm - doomed to wander the mortal one for the rest of eternity. But if this was how you’d be able to live for the rest of time? You’d find contentment in it, possibly even prefer it to life in Heaven.

Little did you know, Copia was grappling with his own issues.

You were still technically a prisoner - his pet, no matter how much he could pretend otherwise. His own mother was forcing him to force information out of you regardless of whether you were in pain. He had subjected you to unimaginable horrors and the guilt was eating him up inside now that he’d come to his senses and realised just how much he cared for you, how he almost said three words that would have changed everything. But if he was being honest with himself, as he lay on your body and cocooned himself in your arms: he loved you.

He was in love with you.

It was everything, from your innocence, your feistiness, how you fought him every step of the way. You were beautiful, and rare, and obedient. You were honest to fault, kept him in line, listened to him when he spoke. And you gave yourself so willingly to him, even after everything he’d done. The revelation had hit him like a tonne of bricks, but you weren’t ready to hear it yet.

“What do we do now?” you asked him, still stroking his hair.

“We wait,” he told you. “Bide our time until Imperator wants to complete the ritual.”

“Will we still have to go through with it?”

Copia nodded. “She doesn’t know about this.” He sat on his knees in between your legs. “We need to make her think the ritual worked, so we still need to do it. But the ritual will fail because we’ve already taken the key ingredient.”

“Can we be sure?”

“Yes. But, there is something we need to talk about.”

You sat up. “Okay.”

“We need to make her think the ritual is a success in order to get her off our backs for the time being and think about what we should do next. Which means when I take you on the Basilica floor, you have to pretend you hate it. You have to fight me. I’m going to be horrible to you - absolutely vile - and you have to pretend like none of this happened, okay?”

Your stomach dropped. “Why?”

“You can still be killed, Angel. She’s already planning on it because she knows you won’t give up any information, and if you can’t turn into a demon then you’re as good as dead. At least if she thinks she’s winning, then we have a chance, too. And if you were suddenly willing to take part in these rituals-”

“She would know that something was amiss and kill me anyway,” you interrupted. “What will you do to me… during the ritual?”

Copia sighed. “I can’t tell you. We need to keep some element of surprise to make it all seem believable. I will stop if you get extremely uncomfortable. If you say… peaches… I’ll stop. But I need you to not say it. Please.”

You nodded in understanding, but couldn’t swallow the fear that had appeared. There was a lot riding on this, and it needed to go perfectly.

When the full moon came, you couldn’t help but feel nervous. Not frightened, because you knew that you’d be safe, but nervous because you didn’t know if you could make it all believable.

Copia came into the room with those hellfire chains you’d not needed to wear in so long. He wrapped them around your wings and your wrists, and told you to begin fighting him immediately. And so, you did. As soon as he had you bound in chains, you began to struggle against them, screaming at Copia to let you go. Of course, he didn’t oblige. He refused to. Instead, he dragged you out of his apartments and down the hallways to the Basilica, the imposing space looking even more intimidating the closer you got to it. All the while you pulled against him, flinched when he threatened you and fought against him every step of the way. You hurled insults at him, spat in his direction, clung onto protruding bits of the walls and furniture to try and make his life just that much harder.

He wouldn’t let anyone else touch you. When his ghouls tried to intervene, he pushed them away, telling them to walk behind you both so that they could catch you if you managed to escape - which you both knew would never happen, but you both had to act the part.

The siblings that you passed were all staring at the spectacle in front of them, and you didn’t know how to feel when you saw the expressions on their faces. The majority of people were appalled at how the Cardinal was treating you, evidently thinking how inhumane he was being by not only chaining you, but pulling you to a place against your will. You recognised some of these siblings, some you’d seen in the kitchens and dining halls, others in the library. Some you’d had conversations with, and had been nothing but kind. You debated whether or not you should call for their help, beg the onlookers to do something to save you. But if they overwhelmed Copia, it would spell trouble for both of you. No, for now you were better off just struggling.

As was last time, the second you walked into the Basilica, your skin started to prickle. The soles of your feet burned as if you were walking on lukewarm coal, and your hairs stood on end. Your instincts screamed at you, reminding you that you didn’t belong on this unhallowed ground. There was still some holiness inside of you, but the intensity had dulled significantly since the last time you were in there, causing you to realise just how corrupted you truly had become.

Standing in the sanctuary, in front of the statue of Lilith and Baphomet, Sister Imperator stood with a smug expression on her face. That thick book was back in her hands, and she was surrounded by ghouls - some hers, some Copia’s, some you’d never seen before. On the floor was that familiar Satanic Pentagram that you’d already been inside twice, with candles at each point.

“Now, are we ready?” you heard the Sister ask from behind you.

Prev./Next

[cakers-2000]

Alright, I can't help but ask this: What would be Venti's and Zhongli's reaction to, after getting their Gnosis taken, their s/o disappears for about a week or so. Then they show back up, covered in blood and bruises, holding their Gnosis, and say "Am I not the best s/o ever, or what?" before passing out.

This request was put in before Raiden Shogun had been released so I really hope you don’t mind but I wanted to include her in the mix! She’s my favorite archon!

It's not exactly what you requested, I had some fun playing around with the idea but I hope the outcome is still enjoyed!

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

You get their Gnosis back

Beginning: When they lost their Gnosis, you were crushed. Whether they would admit it or not you knew that it brought them great pain not having a part of them anymore. You couldn’t bear seeing your lover in such mental anguish and so you set out. It took you a long while and you had covered your tracks, you were going out for a week at least to ‘complete a commission’ you had told them. But that was a lie. You were going to find their Gnosis and bring it back to them if it’s the last thing you do.

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

Venti:

When you first left, he was overcome by the feeling of immense fear. Where had you gone? Were you lost somewhere? Had you decided to leave him? Or the worst thought yet, had you died from heinous injuries? He couldn’t handle losing someone so precious and dear to him, not again.

With those thoughts in the forefront of his mind, he set off to search the vast expanse of Mondstadt, with the help of Dvalin of course.

When he didn’t find you there he took to the streets of Liyue. He asked anyone he locked eyes with if they had seen you, checked every nook and cranny and even paid Zhongli a visit but his attempts always came up empty.

He was at a loss. With no idea what else to do, he went back home to Mondstadt.

And spent his days in Stormterror’s Lair with Dvalin at his side. His lyre no longer played the same tune, the strings no longer harmonized so perfectly and his voice no longer belted out the same jolious tone.

He was completely and utterly lost.

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

The day you came back to him, it was as if color had flooded back into his life.

You were hurt, battered and bruised, but you were okay. And you were back to him. The poor boy nearly knocked you to the ground when he lunged at you, wanting nothing more than to feel you in his embrace.

His hands fell to your face, frantically searching across your cheeks, gently rubbing his thumb across your bloodied and swollen lip.

“(Y/N)... What did you do?!”

His immense worry for you was clear as day in his voice and the way his eyes surveyed every inch of you.

You tried to give him the biggest smile you could muster and held your hands out to him, the smile on your face only growing.

“I got it back.”

He was full of so many emotions, they were swirling all around his mind. You were alive, but you were hurt something fierce. You were beaming such a bright smile towards him, but you were in so much pain, you couldn’t hide that fact from him.

The Gnosis in your hand was stained, a dull brown color took over the once vibrant features and there were a few stained splotches of blood, a much darker hue then the rest of the item.

“M-My Gnosis?... (Y/N) are you crazy!?”

Neither you nor himself expected such an outburst and he quickly placed a hand over his quivering lips. A frown fell to your lips and you slowly dropped your arms to your side, tightly squeezing onto the Gnosis he still hadn’t taken from your grasp. “I thought you’d be happy…”

He wrapped his arms around you tightly, pulling you to his chest as his tears stained his cheeks. “N-No I am happy! But you didn’t have to do that! I was so worried about you! I didn’t know where you went, if you were okay, I was so scared.” He was fighting for breath as he stuttered and stammered through the waterfall of tears escaping his eyes. “I love you so much please please please don’t ever do anything that dangerous again.”

Finally you understood. He was grateful, but putting yourself in his shoes, you would’ve been worried sick as well. Slowly you wrapped your arms around him and buried your face in his chest. “I love you Venti. I’m sorry… I’ll be careful from now on.” “P-Promise?”

You smiled and nuzzled his chest with your nose, gently pulling on the hem of his cape as a yes. “I swear on my life.”

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

Zhongli

When you first disappeared he had of course been worried but he tried not to work himself up. Perhaps you were just busy. You had your own life, your own little world that didn’t revolve around him and he respected that. But as time dragged on, and you still hadn’t graced him with your presence, a panic began to slowly overtake him. He tried everything to console himself but his mind kept running wild and he finally had had enough. Without a single word of goodbye to anyone Zhongli vanished practically into thin air.

He searched everywhere, used every last one of his connections through his numerous contracts and those that he called ‘friend’.

Xiao and all of the Adeptus.

All of his fellow archons (at least those he could get a hold of).

And even going so far as to ask the Fatui, or more Harbinger Childe to be exact. (Though the man wasn’t too pleased to see him after the ‘betrayal’ he had put him through’).

But all of his searches led nowhere. He left no stone unturned, no mountain unscaled. Yet despite all his efforts you were still nowhere to be seen.

He had almost given up hope. He had done everything he could think, searched every corner and exhausted all of his connections but he always came up empty handed. Perhaps this was his fate. Everyone he loved always left him eventually.

You were mortal and he was a god, he knew that you wouldn’t be with him forever and he would eventually have to say goodbye but he didn’t think he would have to say it so soon.

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

He had lost track of how long it had been since you went missing. Probably about a month, but he couldn’t be too sure. All of his days seemed to merge into one, spending all of his time holed up in the mountains, sitting atop the high mountain tops and reflecting, reminiscing and of course, trying to wash away the guilt that threatened to consume him. It was his fault you had gone. He wasn’t sure what he had done, but what other answer could there be? Perhaps you had been angry with him for giving away his gnosis, or perhaps you were angry about all of the secrets he had kept from you.

Whatever the case, he was convinced that it was his fault.

He had tried to immerse himself into his work during his free time (when he wasn’t finding solitary comfort on the mountains) and it was while walking through Liyue Harbor, on his way back to Wangsheng Funeral Parlor that his eyes caught a familiar sight.

That hair… and that figure… Could it be?

His thoughts were all but confirmed when you turned around, somehow seemingly aware of his presence and sprinted your way over to him. You wasted no time in crashing into him for a hug, squeezing him as tightly as your weak arms could manage.

He wasted no timing in wrapping you up in his embrace, resisting the urge to let a few tears spill. It was so unlike him to cry. He finally pushed you away when he was satisfied and gently grabbed your face in his hands.

Now that he could get a good look at you, his stomach churned. You were covered in scratches and bruises. Your clothes tattered in most places and a noticeable limp.

“(Y/N)... what happened?”

You gave him a smile, resting one hand atop his and used your other hand to reach into the pouch at your side, gently pulling out a small item. His gnosis. “Pretty good right?”

He grabbed the item from between your fingertips, evaluating the small little almost chess like piece. It was indeed his Gnosis, the real, genuine item.

“(Y-Y/N) why did you…?”

“Why? Because it’s yours. I know what you were thinking, I really do. But something this precious,” You slowly reached and and used your hands to clasp his together, slowly moving them to touch his chest as he clutched the Gnosis. “Something that’s a part of you, shouldn’t be given away so easily.” You tried to give him a playful smile, though your pain and fatigue was clearly showing through. “And I worked really hard to get this back so please.”

He knew you were right. His head was spinning. He was relieved, yet he was angry, yet he was also in a way… proud. He loved you so much, you meant the world to him and clearly that was why you had his head reeling like this.

He once again wrapped you in his embrace, slowly kissing the top of your head as his grip tightened around you even more, terrified that he would lose you again if he let go.

“I love you. Please… don’t ever scare me like that again.”

“I won’t… I love you too. Now can you please help me get to Baizhu? It’s a long way to walk with these battle scars.”

He smiled a bit at your continuous teasing tone and easily swept you off the ground and into his arms. “I’d be honored Angel.”

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

Raiden Shogun:

She honestly wasn’t all that concerned with her missing Gnosis. She had never really needed it before, why would she need it now. Though you understood where she was coming from you couldn’t just let things stand like this and so you packed up your things, preparing yourself for a long journey before leaving the place you called home and searching for the Gnosis.

When you didn’t return to Ei the next day (like you had promised) she practically turned the entire region upside down. Enlisting the help of her entire regimen, sending her puppet into the depths of Inazuma in an attempt to find you, even asking Miko (though it was more demanding with how frantic she was) help find you as well.

But none of these searches ever turned up anything. No evidence, no leads. It was as if you simply just vanished.

And she became lost. She had already lost so many loved ones. It took a lot for her to bring herself to accept her feelings for you, and now what? She was just too accept the fact that people enter and leave your life just like that? This pain… It was why she had been searching for a way to keep eternity in Inazuma.

It hurt.

So bad.

And she hated herself for allowing herself to fall victim to these foolish emotions once again. But she couldn’t shake you off her mind. Perhaps it would be best if she stayed in the Plane of Euthymia forever.

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

She hadn’t expected to see you again. Trying her best to rid her mind of you in an attempt to free herself from this crushing agony, but it never worked.

What with her staying in the Plane of Euthymia, never to come out again you had to enlist the help of Miko when you came back.

And she did. Not only for you, but for Ei as well.

She was sitting on the ground, seeming to be meditating(?) but she snapped her eyes open as soon as she sensed the presence of another being. Slowly she raised her head, a rather angry look on her features but it instantly softened when she saw that it was you standing in front of her.

She slowly got to her feet, hesitant to even believe what was right in front of her. Was it… really you? “(Y/N)?”

“Hi Ei… I guess I made you worry huh?”

You were covered in wounds from head to toe, your hair a messy, knotted mess. She quickly strutted her way towards you, starting to run as she got closer and engulfed you in her arms. It was rare for Ei to initiate any kind of affection and you took a moment to stand in shock. When you didn’t hug her back her grip on you tightened. There was an almost, scared feeling in her tight grip and so you hugged her back.

“I got your gnosis.”

She refused to move her head from your chest, both out of embarrassment to show you the tears streaking her face and out of fear that you would simply vanish again if she did. “You idiot.”

“Well that’s not very nice to call your hero.”

“Stop joking around!”

Her sudden shout surprised you and your body tensed a bit. She nuzzled her face into you, trying to get closer (though it wasn’t possible). “You selfish fool! I don’t need a gnosis! I never did before and I don’t now! How could you just put yourself in danger like that!? I was worried sick about you! I thought you were dead!”

You could finally hear the tiny sniffles that escaped her and for the first time, you truly understood how much you meant to her. Slowly you wrapped your arms around her a little tighter and ran your hands through her hair, trying to bring her any sense of comfort with your presence.

“I’m sorry Ei… I… I wasn’t thinking. I never meant to hurt you.”

“Please… don’t ever leave me again… please.”

Her voice sounded so broken and you felt a pang of guilt in your chest. You hadn’t expected this kind of reaction from her. You placed a gentle kiss to the top of her head before continuing to play with her hair. “I won’t Ei… I love you.”

[intheticklecloset]

Second Years (Haikyuu!!)

This fic was commissioned by @bumblebeedrizzzle. Thank you!

Primary Universe: Second Year

Summary: Hinata and Kageyama contemplate their upcoming season with a changed team, and Kageyama decides his friend needs some cheering up.

**THIS FIC IS SPOILER FREE!**

A/N: I'm actually really glad to have gotten this request (even though technically Haikyuu isn't on my commissions list - I made an exception) because when I look at the last several fics I've posted for this fandom, they were all predominantly lee!Kageyama. I love lee!Kags, obviously, but it was time Hinata got some love, too! So thank you for the commission!

Also, if I continue writing for Haikyuu, I feel like I've done pretty much all I can with the anime storyline, so I'll likely write about our boys as second years going forward for the most part. I will always let you know if there are spoilers ahead! <3

Anyway - on to the main event! I hope you enjoy! ^^

Word Count: 1,833

~~~

“I can’t believe Noya is a third-year now,” Hinata mused as he walked his bike up the hill the team used for workouts, Kageyama walking at his side with his hands in the pockets of his hoodie.

His friend snorted. “Forget Noya, I can’t believe Tanaka is a third-year. Neither of them really act like it.”

“Kinnoshita will keep them in line.”

“He’ll try to.”

“Who do you think will be captain next year? Tsukishima?”

Kageyama shuddered and growled, “I hope not.”

Hinata laughed, though it came out halfhearted. Silence fell between them for a couple of minutes as they focused on climbing the last crest of the hill to where it leveled out before rounding up into the second half. Once there, the redhead slowed his bike to a stop and glanced out at the city view. It was getting dark out, but there was still enough light in the sky for them to make it home before sundown.

Kageyama took a few more steps before realizing his friend had stopped. He turned, saw the look on Hinata’s face, and frowned. “What’s the matter?”

To his surprise, Hinata didn’t try to shrug off his question with a claim to be fine or a forced smile. Instead, he considered a moment before asking, “Does it feel off to you?”

“Does what feel off?” Kageyama asked, striding back over to where he stood.

“After everything that happened last year, doesn’t it feel kind of…wrong to not have Daichi and the others with us?”

“It’s different, sure, but it’s just the natural way of things.” Kageyama glanced out at the cityscape as well. “They had to graduate and move on. This year Noya and Tanaka will graduate, and then we will next year. We’ll all move on and become adults. It’s what happens.”

Hinata scoffed. “Okay, Mom.” He glanced up at his friend with an even deeper frown. “Don’t you miss them at all?”

Kageyama suddenly realized what Hinata was getting at. He didn’t want reassurance or lectures about how “life goes on.” Not from him. He was hurting, and he wanted someone to understand that. So, with a sigh, the taller boy relented.

“Yeah, I do. Especially Suga.”

“Doesn’t it seem weird that we’re just…doing another season without them?”

“I guess so.” Kageyama considered for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, it does. I got so used to Daichi’s leadership and Suga’s guidance that it feels weird not having them around to help anymore. And since none of the third-years are setters, I’m the senior on that position and these new guys are looking to me for guidance, and…”

He trailed off, and Hinata nodded. “Yeah. You’re kind of in charge of that position and you’re not ready for it.”

Kageyama couldn’t even argue with that. “Exactly. I wish I’d had another year with Suga.”

“I wish all of us could do last season over now that we’ve learned so much. I really feel like…”

This time Hinata trailed off, and when the silence descended, neither of them tried to break it for a while. It felt right, somehow, having this moment to really let it sink in that their friends were off doing other things now.

After a few minutes, Kageyama let out a breath. “But Kinnoshita is doing well as captain so far, and these first-years have promise. Really the only thing I can’t stand is that Tsukishima decided to stick around.”

Hinata snorted out a laugh. “You guys really don’t get along.”

“Understatement.” Kageyama smirked, then glanced at Hinata again. He looked like he was feeling a tad better, but not by much. He nudged him. “You know we’re gonna be fine, right?”

“Of course I do,” Hinata replied, though his voice lacked conviction.

“Yeah, I definitely believe that you believe that, boke.”

“I do!”

“You’re going to have to convince me a little harder than that.” With a smirk, Kageyama suddenly grabbed him around the waist and pulled him against his chest, making him drop his bike and yelp as fingers suddenly dug into his sides.

“Eeeek! Kahahahahageyama, wait, nohohohohohoho!” Hinata cried, giggles spilling out of him as he squirmed uselessly in his taller friend’s grip.

“You can’t fool me. I know when you’re just toughing it out.” The setter chuckled and hugged him tighter, aiming for his ribs. “Come on, lighten up, boke.”

“I’m light! I’m lihihihihihihihight! Kageyahahahahama!” Hinata’s laughter rose in pitch once his friend got to his weakest spot. Thankfully he wasn’t going too hard yet, but it was still enough to make him cackle and try to pry his arms away. “You jeheheheheheherk! I’m fihihihihihihihine!”

“Liar.”

“EEEEK!!” Hinata screeched when his friend found that spot along his last few ribs that had him absolutely howling with laughter, frantically trying to escape his grip to no avail. “KAGEYAMA NOHOHOHOHOHOHO!!”

Kageyama chuckled, deciding he wanted to make it a bit worse by hefting the little spiker up into the air so he really had nowhere to go and nothing to ground on. Hinata squealed and laughed and kicked the air uselessly.

“You seem to forget that those three aren’t the only teammates you had,” Kageyama grumbled good-naturedly into his ear as he tickled, reaching down to squeeze a hip, earning him another shriek. “Noya and Tanaka are still around, and so are all the others from last year. And we have these new guys – and you have me. So don’t feel so sad, boke. We’re gonna be just fine.”

“STAHAHAHAHAHAP, STOP, PLEHEHEHEHEASE!!” Hinata cried, tapping his friend’s arm, writhing in his tickly hug of doom. “PLEASE, VOHOHOHOLLEYBALL!”

Kageyama stopped immediately, gently letting his friend back down to the ground and holding onto him to make sure he didn’t fall. He frowned, worried he’d been a little too pushy. “Sorry, are…are you okay? I thought it could help…”

“You tickle too hard,” Hinata replied, glancing up at him with a tiny leftover smile. “And that’s my worst spot, so it just got to be a bit…much. Especially if you’re trying to cheer me up.”

Kageyama blinked. “Are you seriously trying to tell me how to tickle you to make you feel better?”

Hinata grinned. “I mean, as long as you’re trying to, you might as well do it right.”

“Oh, you little…” The setter pulled him back in again, slipping under his hoodie to scribble against his belly directly. “There, is that better?”

“Ehehehehehehehe! Yeheheheheheheah, thehehehere you go!” Hinata squealed, gripping his friend’s arms all over again despite his praising words.

Suddenly inspired, Kageyama grabbed his wrists and pulled them above his head with ease, using his free hand to keep tickling his tummy, and finally he got the noise he was looking for – the particular shriek Hinata let out when he was surprised but in a good way. When he was having fun.

“Boke,” he muttered with a smile, keeping it up. “Let’s try this again. Are you still feeling sad about Daichi and the others?”

Hinata squirmed in his hold but giggled freely, daring to glance up at him and sputter, “Of cohohohohohourse I ahahahahaham!”

“Hmm, not enough, then? All right. I can do this all day.”

For a couple of minutes, they stayed that way at the top of the hill – Hinata caught in Kageyama’s grasp and giggling hysterically at the soft, light tickles his friend was purposely trying to inflict, the setter smirking and holding him tight, determined to bring him back into a good headspace before letting him go.

“We’re going to be fine, Hinata,” he said after a short while, keeping his tone soft and genuine – a rare occurrence for the taller boy. “You’ve still got Kinnoshita and Noya and Tanaka and Yamaguchi and…and Tsukishima.”

“And yohohohohohou, rihihihihihight?”

Kageyama smiled despite himself. “Obviously. You’re not getting rid of me that easily. I still have to take you down out there, you know.” He paused, then slowed his tickling to a gradual stop and murmured, “I’m here for you, boke. If you need me. Just like you’re always there for me.”

Hinata caught his breath as he let out a few more snickers, turning to look up at his friend as Kageyama released his grip on his arms. “You know, you’re not too bad at this cheering up thing when you put your mind to it, Bakageyama.”

The setter couldn’t help but smile. The use of the insult/nickname was a clear indicator the redhead was feeling like himself again, and Kageyama was more than happy to count that as a win.

“Shut up. Just trying to make you see reason. We’re going to be fine. We’re going to have another great season and take everyone down.”

Hinata beamed. “And this year we don’t have to face stupid Oikawa!”

His friend was right – and it was a detail Kageyama hadn’t considered until just now. He couldn’t help but grin. “You’re right. We don’t.”

“Ooh, that made you all kinds of happy! Glad to see you cheering up, too.”

“‘Too’? I’m not the one who was being all pouty about the others graduating last year.”

“I wasn’t pouting!”

“You absolutely were.”

Hinata huffed. “You were just going on about how you missed Suga—”

“You brought it up, genius!”

“Oh, now who needs cheering up?” Hinata’s grin morphed into something more sinister, and he brought his fingers up to wiggle teasingly at Kageyama.

The setter hated how fast he blushed at the sight of them.

“Someone’s excited~”

“Shut up – I don’t need cheering up, boke! I’ve been better off than you this whole time!”

Hinata laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re trying to talk me out of tickling you back? You’re always in the mood for tickles, Kage~”

“I am not…!” Deciding it was a lost cause, Kageyama took a step back, and when Hinata made to lunge for him, he dodged out of the way and began sprinting up the second half of the hill, hoping for enough of a head-start to at least tire him out a little.

But he’d forgotten one important detail.

Not only did Hinata have speed on his side…

Today, he had a bike.

Just when Kageyama had gotten to the top of the hill entirely, Hinata chimed his bike’s warning bell. The setter whirled around in time to see the redhead abandon his ride and sprint toward him, and there was absolutely no getting away from him at that point.

“Wait, wait, wait – wahahahahahahait!” Kageyama shrieked, his laugh coming out both panicked and genuine as his best friend latched onto him and dug into his tummy right off the bat, making him squeal and crumple to the ground in a heap, cackling and squirming. “Hinatahahahahahaha!”

“Well, would you look at that? Grumpy Kageyama does want some cheer-up tickles after all!”

“I dohohohohohon’t nehehehehehehed them!” Kageyama cried, shrieking again when the redhead pushed him to the ground entirely and hopped onto his waist to keep him pinned.

“Maybe not,” Hinata conceded with a playful grin, “but I think you want them, Bakageyama.”

[simlit]

Chosen of the Sun | | dawn // twenty

| @maladi777

INTERACTIVE POLL | What should Aster do? Vote now!

POLL RESULTS |​ The Noble Dinner | Aster wins the poll and becomes the third member of the dinner party.

next / previous / beginning

KYRIE: Good morning, Darling Shadow. Sleep well? ELION: You’re far too chipper in the morning. You’re far too chipper period. KYRIE: Oh, so sorry to bring some optimism into your bleak dark world. Anyways, I was wondering if you’d mind doing me a favor. Taiyo’s asked for some books, if you’d be so kind to drop them off for me? ELION: I’m your bodyguard, not your secretary. KYRIE: What’s the difference? Anyways, I have some errands to run around the temple. I won’t be going outside, so there’s no need for you to keep such a sharp watch. It’ll spare you the trouble of having to join me. ELION: I suppose if I refuse, you’ll puppet me off, anyhow? KYRIE: Of course not. But you wouldn’t refuse, now would you? ELION: I don’t get paid enough. KYRIE: Here’s the books. Do see that they make it safely. I’m sure you’re more then capable. ELION: Yeah, yeah. KYRIE: Heh. [sound of knock on door] ASTER: yawning Your Grace, a bit early, isn’t it? KYRIE: Why, late night? ASTER: You could say that. Don’t tell me you were watching? KYRIE: Sorry. Still out of commission. But I’m sure it was a nice showing. ASTER: Ha! Would you believe I spent the night blissfully alone! Nursing a small hangover, but that’s neither here nor there. Did you need something? KYRIE: Mind if I come in? ASTER: Ah? Maybe my night has yet to close! KYRIE: laughs As tempting as that sounds, I’m afraid I’ve come out of necessity. I wanted to speak with you about something. Privately. ASTER: Well, I’m all ears, Your Grace. What can a humble bard do for ye? KYRIE: Tonight, Indryr and I will be attending a dinner party with Duke Eldewyn. He’s a bit of a flamboyant noble, enjoys his wine, if you get my meaning. The point of this dinner party is not so straightforward, however. There have been some… strange happenings. ASTER: You don’t have to tell me twice. It’s all been downside up since I got here! KYRIE: Aster, I need you to take this seriously. People’s lives… my life, might be at stake. And this time, I’m not sure I’m so willing to oblige. I want to find out more about what happened in the past. Before me, before… my sister took over conducting this ceremony, hundreds of lunar priests came before us. This tradition goes back centuries, and what’s been done along the way might play some part in what’s been happening now. KYRIE: Duke Eldewyn is an elder elf, though he might not look it, he’s nearly three hundred years old. He’s seen more than a few Selenehelions in his day, and being close to the crown, he may have some insight on any collusion that might have been going on. ASTER: That’s all well and good, but… what does this have to do with me? KYRIE: I want you to come along with us tonight. The Duke is very easily swayed by influential people, and meeting the Chosen is important to him. I could have chosen anyone, but there’s no one more fit for this than you. ASTER: Me? KYRIE: Of course. You’re charismatic, Aster. And you can talk, well. Someone like you has the exact skillset we need to get the Duke comfortable enough to spill any secrets he might keep tight to the vest. All I’m asking is that you play along; Butter him up and let him dig his own grave. It should be easy work, all you have to do is be yourself. ASTER: Hm. Well, I can’t say I’m not impressed by your keen assessment. Though, if I was more like the Necromancer this is where I’d be asking what I get out of it. KYRIE: Free dinner, free drinks, and the chance to regale the most enthusiastic crowd you’ll find in this city… What’s not for you to enjoy? ASTER: You’re not wrong. KYRIE: If there’s anything more I can do for you, just the say the word. I’m confiding in you to help me with this, so if there’s a price, you need only name it.

[teal-moonlight]

Having Xiao being on the look out of Liyue’s plains everytime, but being even more hyper aware when he knows Lumine is around is something that makes my heart fill with feels lol

Like I imagine him looking from a far, just how he did in Baizhu’s story quest, just looking, making sure no harm comes her way, but also admiring her, admiring her astonishing beauty, her bright smile, her shining eyes, and he thinks he’s being stealthy but Lumine has come to recognize it, that energy so characteristic of adeptal power and the best thing is that it’s so his, she knows how to tell him apart from other adepti, she feels giddy when she realizes this.

So she comes with a plan, she steals some glances at him, hoping he doesn’t notice, he’s sitting on a small boulder at the peak of the hill, she just finished her last commission and Paimon is already babbling about the payment they’re going to get when they report back to Katheryne:

“Why don’t you go bring me some sweet flowers from the orchard.” - she tells Paimon.

“Sweet flowers? Why do you want them now?, we can buy them back in the city and they’re too far” - Paimon answers, whining, clearly displeased with the request.

“Please, do it for me? Those sweet flowers are the best from around here, don’t you want to ask Xiangling to cook us something delicious with them?” - Says Lumine with the eyes that she knows will sway the little fairy, one thing she’s learned about Paimon is that she always goes out of her way to help if needed (also even if not needed).

She saw how Paimon faltered in her wishes to refute the request, Lumine knew she had won her over.

“Pretty please?” - She insisted.

“Fine, but Paimon will eat half of yours when we get them!” - the fairy said grumbling while flying away to the village; perfect Lumine thought, with the talkative fairy she knew she was going to get distracted by the food and the villagers, she was going to take some time to fly back. She stole a glance back to where the adeptus was and she saw him looking at Paimon floating away with a confused expression, probably wondering why she was going out on her own; Lumine smiled to herself, he’s distracted, time to act; she felt electro energy flowing inside her, bringing her in the blink of an eye to the foot of the hill, learning to move quick with electro energy was one of the most useful things she could discover during her journey in Inazuma.

She felt her heart soar with fondness when she saw Xiao looking alarmed, his head moving around as if trying to look for her, she started to walk to him, slowly and as stealthy as she could, she knew it was just a matter of moments for him to realize someone is close, let alone her, but she made the bet and took full advantage of the elements flowing inside her.

Some noise here, some rustling there, he’s looking back now, he’s catching on, quickly and gracefully she finds herself in front of him, and as quick as she got there his face turned again finding her there, face to face, when did she get here? How did she do that? He wanted to ask, but every question running around his head vanished when he saw her move, sealing their lips together, warm and soft and just her, they indulged in each other, he grabbed her face, he felt her come closer and closer, he parted his legs, took her by the waist and pulled her in. Lumine was in cloud nine, she pressed close, feeling his chest, strong and firm against her, wrapping her arms around his neck and diving in his warmth.

How much time has passed? Neither of them know, not when they are tasting one another, tongues dancing, small sounds and growls escaping through, Xiao knows he needs to stop this soon, he really needs to stop this or he might lose it and just take her then and there, he grabs her face again starting to pull away, he hears her whine but she complies, gold meeting gold, her blush, her lips, her smile, he just has to go in again, smooching her, feeling her more than hearing her small giggle, he just has to smile too.

“You never cease to surprise me.” - he tells her, feeling a fullness in his chest that’s almost overwhelming, but he knows that it’s because of her so he embraces it, embraces her, eyes never going away from her face, feeling light and loved and just right.

“I’m glad I will never bore you.” - Lumine says between giggles and brings her head close to his, touching their foreheads together and closing their eyes in unison, savoring the moment, both of them know that she’ll have to leave soon, she’ll have to keep going, keep fighting, something that Xiao always duels on when he thinks of her, but right now non of that matters, not when she’s here and he’s here, everything mutual and close and warm, right now in their little bubble nothing can touch them.

Paimon takes some time to come back, they both have time to indulge in their lover’s company, sharing kisses, small smooches and long intense lip locks, he has to embrace her quite a few times and she just laughs, this little minx he thinks, they both know what she’s doing and it makes him expect, expect for the moment they’re finally behind closed doors and they both can set each their desires free. It goes on until Xiao tells her the fairy is coming back, they share one final kiss and he helps her teleport down the hill before disappearing again in a swirl of teal and black, not before gifting her a smile and a caress on the cheek, leaving Lumine dazed and smiling stupidly, already waiting for their next elope.

Inspired by this 🥹

[bleachbleachbleach]

tbt to that time someone in the Seireitei had a candlemaking side hustle

where the draw was that each candle was meant to evoke different types of reiatsu, as described by the traditionally florid prose of candle/perfume descriptions. There was some press around the candles' potentially homeopathic effects, and though the 12th put a stop to that pretty quickly, some shinigami had standing orders for the candles because some users swore that burning the candles could help augment one's own reiatsu. (One wing of the 3rd Division barracks did burn down, but that's neither here nor there.) You could commission custom blends if you paid for a reiryoku reading, which the candlemakers then used to whip up a candle specialized to you.

Where things got really tricky was when the founder of the Gotei Candle Co. tried to step it up and offer a limited edition Gotei Captain candle set, where each candle was meant to describe/evoke the reiatsu signatures of, well, the Gotei Captains. You can't normally brand things like that without express permission of the Council of 46 (though notably not the Captains' individual permissions, which don't factor into this at all, officially), but the Gotei Candle Co. knows that the SWA gets permission to run their calendars every year, and they thought if they did a Gotei Candle Co. x SWA collab, it would be a real knockout event.

BUT photo calendars are one thing and reiatsu signature candles are another, and when this went to the Council of 46 they found that they DID actually have to consult the Gotei, to determine whether or not the candles constituted a breach of military security. And this had to go to a Captains' Meeting vote. The voting was split across several positions:

captains who believed the candles constituted a breach of military security because anything COULD be a breach of military security

captains who realized that believing that would mean greenlighting the idea that the candles were accurate to their reiatsu in any way, which might tacitly confirm the notion that the candles had actual homeopathic validity, on which grounds they refused

captains who believed in the candles, actually

captains who were willing to say the candles were a breach of military security and all that other stuff just because they did not want the candles to exist

captains who had no real opinion on military security or science but disliked the candles, yet still refused to tarnish their principles by pretending the candles were legit even if it meant they had to be a candle

In any case, the Council of 46 refused to make a move without evidence-based deliberation from the Gotei, so they had to spend hours and hours sniffing candles as part of the process. And the 12th wanted to run a test so there'd be science-backed proof that the candles did/did not accurately type Captain reiatsu, because they did not believe captains sniffing things constituted actual evidence-based anything. There was some pushback against this, but ultimately the 12th prevailed and the REASON the 12th has all the captains' reiatsu typed--and having this done is now part of any captains onboarding, even post-candle debacle--is because OF THESE DANG CANDLES.

Eventually the Gotei decided, fuck it, these candles are a no-go, I don't care. But then Sasakibe brought up the fact that to deny them outright was technically a violation of the Commercial Clause of 1457, which states that when military procedure infringes on free trade within the Seireitei, it must offer an alternative enterprise as part of the sanction. After all the candle business, having to deal with this hangup was the closest the Gotei has ever come to executing mass ritual suicide in Yamamoto's office. Strange but true. The candles, man.

Anyway, at some point Byakuya leaks this to Shirogane, because He Cannot With This, and Shirogane suggests "okay no candles but what about eyewear tho" and Byakuya brings this to the next Captains' Meeting and Byakuya is, briefly, a HERO to his peers, and Shirogane is a HERO and that's why they let him leave the Gotei entirely and open up a glasses store.

[thepagemistress]

*handing you the microphone*

Tell me more

Ahaha, well if you *insist* 😅

I was just thinking about Dean shopping for a wedding ring to give to Cas. Like, he thinks about giving him one of the rings he already owns but he wants it to be something specific.

Sam thinks he's taken up antiquing in his semi-retirement because he spends an inordinate amount of time going into stores to rifle through the jewelry but to no avail. When Dean begrudgingly admits the reason, Sam is caught between wanting to tease his brother mercilessly and cry at the fact he's finally making the next move. Instead, he does neither and offers to help with the search.

He rescinds this offer after just two weeks of Dean being an absolute pain in the ass. He asks Dean to describe *exactly* what he's looking for and, all credit to him, Dean does. Unfortunately, what Dean describes sounds nothing like any wedding ring Sam's ever heard of. Bright gold, dazzling blue and white gem stones all the way around it, spinning...

"Spinning??"

"Yes, dammit, spinning. Did I stutter?"

Sam gives it up for a lost cause but Dean is determined.

Anyway, fast forward to Dean befriending a jeweler and commissioning the *exact* ring that he wants. Solid gold (thank you Charlie, for those credit cards), inlaid with pearls and aquamarine all around it. And the band with the gems on it spins independently from the rest. It's perfect.

It takes another 4 months of Dean carrying it with him everywhere for him to actually do something with it.

He's in the Dean Cave with Cas, watching some crappy 70s movie when he just turns to Cas and is like "So uh, I thought we could, you know. Maybe get married." And Cas just blinks at him, eyes darting over his face and they're pressed too close together, Dean has to wriggle to get his arm free and produce the ring from his pocket. It's not even in a box.

Cas's eyes drop down to the ring and he just kind of...stills. He doesn't freeze exactly but it's like he forgets to human for a moment as he ceases to breathe or move or react at *all*.

Just when Dean is in fear of having a heart attack or pretending he was joking, Cas reboots himself, glancing back up to Dean.

"Do you realise what this is?"

"Uh. A proposal?"

"The ring, I mean."

"A wedding ring?" At Cas's frustrated huff, Dean plows on. "I know it ain't the most traditional but hell, look at us. What about us is traditional?"

"It's ME, Dean."

Dean frowns at Cas, then at the ring. "Huh?"

"It's...An angel's true form. We have wheels, rings as part of our being just as you have arms and legs." Carefully taking the ring from Dean's fingers, he examines it. "I believe this is as close a replica of my own as you could have managed."

Dean gapes at him for a moment. "You saying I just gave you a mini arm as a wedding ring?"

Cas's smile is fond as he slips the ring on his finger, settling Dean's nerves immeasurably. "I'm saying that I always wondered if part of you remembered seeing me in Hell. And now I have my answer. It's nice to know I made such an impression all those years ago."

An embarrassed flush rushes to Dean's face as he turns back to the TV. "Do I get *my* answer?"

Cas hums, settling back into the position they had been in before. "Ask me again tomorrow. You should put more effort into it, I think."

"Gonna need that ring back, then."

Before he can even make a grab for it, Cas whips his hand out of each, curling it protectively against his chest. "No."

They watch the rest of the movie in silence but Dean can't help the small smile that spreads across his face as he watches Cas spin the ring around his finger out of the corner of his eye.