#and the memories i have associated with that time

[writing-mlm]

Hiii, can we please have more college!damian x male reader? Like a scenario where damian loves to draw reader but reader doesn't know this? Maybe friends to lovers? Idk your pick. The artist and his muse type of thing. Also, i LIVE for soft damian on this blog ong.

Forever my Muse

Summary: Damian has his finals coming up and he wants you to join-- at least that's his excuse to get you into the art venue. An artist needs their muse and for some reason, most of Damian's drawings include you in, naturally, he could fill museums with drawings of you. Pairing: Damian Wayne x Male reader WC: 5.8k

Dust-covered fingers were always something you had associated with Damian. Graphite, charcoal, pastels— anything he used to draw or even paint would inevitably stain his hands. It wasn’t intentional, and neither were the fingerprints he left on your stuff, or the paint you could never remove from your favorite sweater, but that didn’t stop him from apologizing. From buying you cleaning products and a new sweater; never mind it has never been worn in the year you’ve had it, Damian felt terribly sorry whenever he felt he’d stained something of yours. 

But never sorry enough to show you his drawings. 

You’d ask, you’d beg, but he would never give in. He’d show you when he was done, sure. You’d see the finished still-life drawings of whatever object had been in the line of sight, the paintings he’d done of his pets whenever he missed them, and the random sketches he did to loosen his wrist. But, damn, sometimes you wanted to see an unfinished drawing that wasn’t a warm-up. 

Even now, as the two of you are on the campus bus heading towards the music hall, he’s drawing. Sitting across from you on the bus, Damian easily adjusts himself to the movements of the bus as it jerks to a stop. He’s nice like that, you’ve never caught him off guard, he’s never fallen or stumbled in the time you’ve known him. 

Studying him, you wonder if he’s naturally so agile. You’ve seen him in your dorm's gym, during all-nighters you can sometimes see him running around campus, and once you had caught him doing one of those athletic challenges for some guy's video. He won. Of course. 

The bus comes to a complete stop and you look away, double-checking that it wasn’t your stop. It wasn’t. You knew that. But still. The need to check was far too great and you slipped back into a conversation with Damian. Only this time, you’re looking down at your phone to double-check the event and his eyes switch him his sketch to staring at you. 

His eyes flicker between you and his drawing, erasing and adding lines where needed. He catches your eyes traveling up and he looks back down, working from memory as you start up a new conversation. 

Eventually, the bus reaches your stop and he carefully closes his book; he always worries he’d smudge his art, while he follows you out of the bus. 

It’s the end of the semester, ergo, it’s finals week. And for one of your music finals, everyone was to prepare a song and perform it. Truthfully, Damian doesn’t understand why you’d picked him to accompany you. He knows he’s not the best comfort, his demeanor often being the reason people don’t stick around too long. 

But, you reassured him. Telling him that his presence was more than enough for you. Knowing that he was somewhere in the crowd calms you down more than you ever cared to admit. 

The walk to the music hall isn’t short, but you can see the large building in the distance. The size is daunting on you as you see the crowd forming at the entrance. People aren’t allowed inside yet, but performers and their guests can head inside before anyone else. 

“I’m nervous,” You admit, wiping your hands on your shirt. “What if I fail?” You mutter, your eyes desperately searching to find solace in his green eyes. 

“You’ll do as you’ve always done,” He nods, looking ahead as you approach the building. “Exceptionally.” His sketchbook bumps

your folder of sheet music and you sigh through your nose, trying to calm down. 

“I’m so gonna choke,” Seeing your reflection in the glass, you feel as if you’d forgotten everything you learned. Every lesson, every mistake you fixed and learned from, the late-night practice performances with your friends. The song you’d composed nearly slips from your mind as you see yourself, walking in that suit and tie you’d worn several years ago. All of it left your mind and you felt like a beginner again. What even was a solfège?

“I'm trained in CPR.” He opens the door for you and gently encourages you inside, his fingers grazing your back. “You weren’t nearly as nervous for your accounting finals.” He notes, falling back into step with you. 

That’s another thing. Maybe that’s why you were so stressed. Double majoring was hellish. Twice the finals, quadruple the headaches. 

“Those were tests,” You scowl, showing the security your campus ID. “I’m going to be performing a live concert in front of nearly a thousand people. I cannot fuck this up, Damian. This is going to be posted for everyone to watch, too,” You ramble on. 

“Which you’ve done before, no?” He presses the elevator button and your heart hammers. You swear you’re going to pass out. He notices, of course, he does, and digs in his bag to find the fidget cube he keeps in there. 

“I have, thank you,” Taking the cube, he nods. “It’s just… I don’t know. Tests suck.” Rolling your thumb along the metal ball on one side of the cube, you stare at the numbers as they slowly tick up to the third floor. 

“That’s true,” He steps inside the elevator and you follow suit. “But you’ve made it thus far, you can go further.” He squeezes your shoulder and you see your teacher waiting at the door to the room, talking to a pair of students. 

“I can,” You affirm, dipping your head down as you smile. 

“You will.” 

—

You’re fifth in line to perform, watching a singer, dancer, another other pianist, and an opera singer go on before you go on did absolutely jack shit to help you. As you’re announced, you step onto the stage and try your best not to accept that there were thousands of eyes on you. Instead, you smile and wave as you walk across that large stage. Desperately looking for Damian in the sea of people. 

He’s in the front, right in front of where you could see when you glance up from the piano, you find out as you’re standing next to the piano seat. 

Damian’s eyes don’t leave yours, making eye contact with you as you fiddle with the buttons of your coat. He motions for you to stop and then does a breathe in breathe out motion with the same hand. Nodding, you blink away from him and hold your hands behind your back. Focusing on your breathing, you listen to the teacher as you’re done being introduced. 

The applause settles as you bow in, take a seat, and flip the page where your music sheet is. Slowly, you start. As a general music major, you weren’t restricted to just playing the piano. As emphasized by the microphone taped to your cheek. 

You aren’t the strongest singer by any means, you’re good for singing in the shower or on drives but you doubt you’d actually make a career off of your voice. What you hope will carry you is the piano, as you press each key your eyes flicker to Damian. He’s attentive, a smile on his face as you perform. 

Testing the waters, you glance at the people around him and they seem… pleased. Happy. Moved, even. You grin and return to staring at the sheet music. All of the notes flood back to you as you reach the last bit of the song, your eyes closing as your voice reaches a peak, holding a note. Then it’s just the piano, your voice echoing in everyone’s mind as the notes get slower and slower until you end it. 

Applause fills the hall and you stand up, taking a bow. Standing there, even if only for a moment, you can’t imagine why you’d been so nervous.

Collecting your sheet music, you exit the stage and hand the mic to the stage tech before leaving. 

When you’re nearing the exit, you spot Damian. Holding a bouquet of flowers. 

“When did you have the time to get these?” You laugh as he hands them to you. His eyes merely twinkle, refusing to give up one of his many secrets. “Thank you, they’re dope.” 

“You did it,” Damian reminds you as the two of you exit the building. 

“I did! Ugh!” Grabbing his shoulder with your free hand, you give him a little shake. “Thank you so much, you’re honestly the best. Was it good?” Falling into step with him, Damian doesn’t bother to fix his shirt. It’s hardly even moved, but you know he was detail-oriented in stuff like that. Hell, he hates it when he messes with his clothes. 

“It was mesmerizing.” He promises. “I do believe the woman behind me was crying.” Grinning, you stand at the bus stop, suddenly buzzing with excitement. Wanting to do it again, you start to imagine creating your own side business. Wedding musician, you can see it now. 

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” He avoids looking at you as he’s speaking. A rare occurrence on his part. But he does his best to look at you after building the courage. “I have an art showing next week. I understand the notice is short and you’re—“

“Send me the details.” You grin. His shoulders drop and he nods, clearly more relaxed. “I hope the attire is fancy. I got this fancy turtleneck I’ve been wanting to wear and slacks from my high school graduation just waiting to be worn!” 

—

With all of your finals out of the way, you finally had time to start removing the items from your dorm. One by one you removed posters and trinkets scattered across your end of the room. Pack your clothes into boxes, and save for enough outfits to get you through your two weeks left on campus. 

Damian was held up from finishing his art showing, unable to see you in person but he was more than happy with a Facetime call. With both your laptops placed in a space away from disturbing you, the two of you worked on your tasks. 

“I do need to be at the showing two hours early,” He tells you as you’re dragging the anti-suicide chairs to the closet, trying to see the top shelf. “But I’ll have arrangements to bring you to the venue.” 

“And my outfit is okay?” You ask, the chair wobbling as you stand on it. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea. But hey, you’re not the one who installed a closet tall enough that only Shaq could see the top. “Because I can always swap out the turtle neck for a green button down— the silk one that Maddison made,” Always gave a fashion designer friend. She had used you as a model for me of her projects a couple of months ago and with your measurements being unique to you, let you have it after she’d gotten her grade. 

“The button-down would be better suited,” He nods, leaning close to his painting before adding a tiny stroke. “The turtleneck is a little… on the nose.” Leaning back, he checks his reference picture before frowning. It goes away quickly as he picks up a bit of white and dabs it onto a dry brush. 

“I was afraid it was,” You laugh, grabbing a first aid kit from the shelf. Listening to him lightly brush the paint over the canvas, you toss the kit onto the bed and grab what little items are scattered up there. “Holy shit! Do you remember when that frat dude lost his frat ring?” 

“Unfortunately,” Damian glances at his screen, watching as you haphazardly get down from the chair. Nearly tripping, he wonders how you've made it this far in life without breaking a bone. 

“I think I did take it! Look!” Showing the screen, Damian looks almost impressed as you hold up a fraternity ring. It’s a shiny gold, likely fake but engraved with the initials of the Frat house. The two of you remember the guy had been going around to every single campus building with a missing ring poster. 

“What a thief,” He chides, setting his brush down and taking a physical step back from the painting. Harsh glares scan over brush strokes, ripping apart his painting bit by bit before he nods to himself. His glare morphs into a soft sort of gaze and he signs the back of it. 

“Is that your final painting for the semester?” You ask, the ring forgotten about as it’s tossed in a box of trinkets and you’ve moved on to ordering food. Probably Panda Express. Or maybe Chipotle…. really it’s whatever is closer and cheaper. 

“Hopefully,” He sighs through his nose, his paint box clicking shut. “I’ve been drawing and painting these past couple of days. My canvases take up an entire section of the art studio. I’m sure my professor cannot wait for them to dry and get glossed. Which I should probably start doing.” 

“How does that taste?” Setting your phone down, Damian’s face goes sour as he looks at you. “Personally, I think the gloss would taste tarty.” You add. “Or maybe like the frosting for Toaster Strudel.” Picking your phone back up, you continue your order. 

“Neither is correct.” He blinks. “It’s a toxin and filled with chemicals, it most likely tastes as good as acetone does, Hab—“ He pauses, and you look at him wondering what the issue is. “Habits of tasting chemicals shouldn’t be one you pick up.” He finishes his sentence with a bit of force. 

“I just love chemicals. Violin resin is my favorite.” Making a comping noise Damian huffs. As you’re finishing up your order, you look at him. He’s halfway across campus and judging by the rack of canvases he wheeled over, he won’t be back until well into the night. Eh, it doesn’t hurt to ask. “I’m ordering some food, do you want something?” 

“No, thank you, though.” He shakes his head. “I have food from the court in case I get hungry.” He quickly adds. Humming, you place the order and scan over your room. The only things that need to get packed are things you’re still using. Now it’s just a matter of organizing the boxes and bins so you can still move around your room. 

“After the glossing, what’re you doing?”

“I have to write short summaries for each painting. No less than one hundred words,” He explains as he’s putting on a pair of latex gloves. 

“So, a breeze?” He laughs and nods. 

“I’m afraid I’ll go over the word limit,” He admits, sparing you a glance as you’re lugging a box to a corner of your room. “My paintings harbor a lot of my emotions and they’re far from short.”

“Real as fuck.”

— 

On the day of his art exhibition, you spend extra time in the bathroom. Making sure your hair is neat, and presentable, fixing your outfit, making sure you don’t sink. Anything and everything you could check over, you did. 

This nervous feeling was different from your pre-show nerves. Especially since you don’t even know why you’re nervous. Probably because you’d never actually gotten to see his paintings, at least the ones he was showing. He’d been ultra allusive about those, citing the exhibition would be the best place to view them. But even he was nervous and that’s a lot considering he’s Damian fucking Wayne. 

He texted you two minutes ago saying that the car was going to arrive within the next ten minutes and you rushed out to the front of the dorms. No need to lock the door behind you, since your roommate was busy sleeping and would stay in there until you came back. Plucking at your shirt, you watch a sleek black car pull up in front of you, and Damian texts you that the car is there. 

The ride is long, far too long for your liking anyway. But considering it’s in the middle of the city, it’s not unwarranted. 

The art… museum? What should you call it? The space where the exhibition was being held was a well-known art gallery— that’s the word! The gallery was well respected, talked about within art circles, and incredibly high-brow. Thank fuck you didn’t go with that turtleneck. 

There’s a woman in front of the gallery, greeting everyone who enters. She sees you and there’s a flash of recognition across her face. 

“It’s great to finally meet Damian’s muse,” She smiles as she shakes your hand. 

“His what?” You ask but Damian pulls you inside. 

“How was the ride?” He asks, his eyes darting between his professor and you. 

“Good but what did she mean?” You ask, looking around to see the other people around. Like your performance, it was open to the public and with Bruce Wayne’s son being in attendance, many people had showed up. Including his family. “Bruce Wayne is here?” Your head whips to Damian as you spot him in the crowd. 

“He is my father…” He trails. “Would you like to meet him?”

“Fuck no!” You gasp. “The knowledge of his wealth is burying me as we speak— but this is about you,” Turning to him, you smile. “Where’s your paintings? Those don’t look like your style,” Eyes flicker across the paintings and you can’t see Damian’s strokes, his colors or his lighting in any of them. A sort of pride swells within him, knowing that you’ve looked— studied his art enough to know that the ones around you weren’t his. 

“It has its own section,” He tells you, guiding you through groups of people and halls. “It’s going to be revealed in around half an hour. My professor insisted,” He stops at a section of the gallery covered by a curtain and two security guards. You never knew it was that serious, but damn. 

“Mr Fancy. Why don’t you catch up with your family? I’ll look around?” In truth, you were going to the nearest bathroom and making sure you didn't look stupid. 

“I’m more than certain they’d be more pleased if you accompanied me.” He shakes his head as you raise your eyebrows. “If that’s something you’d be comfortable with, of course.” 

“Sure,” Once more, he guides you past people until he spots his father and brother talking in a corner. 

“Father, Richard.” He calls as the two of you approach. “This is (Y/n).” Richard’s lips twitch as he fights back a smile, the smile only furthered curbed by his brother's glare. 

“Hello,” Waving at the two men, they reach to shake your hand instead. Bruce has a firm grip, probably tighter than it really needed to be but Richard is more than welcoming. He’s more than excited to meet you, although you can’t imagine why. 

“My other siblings are still in Gotham,” Damian explains, physically taking Dick’s hand from yours with a pointed look. “Although I’m surprised you didn’t bring Cassandra, father.”

“She’s here,” He shakes his head, glancing around for the mop of black hair. “In the bathroom, probably.” 

“Is that her?” You ask, looking at the woman in the corner. She’s standing there, downing a glass of champagne before returning to a conversation with a man. She looks like how Damian had described her, although he downplayed how intimidating she seemed. 

“Oh boy,” Dick huffs. “Let me go help her,” Excusing himself, you’re left with Damian and his father. The two of them talking with their eyes. 

“So, Damian’s told me you’re a double major,” Bruce breaks the silence and their weird eye conversation. He talks about you? Glancing at Damian, he’s making a point to look anywhere but you. That’s sorta cute— totally not in a romantic way, totally. 

“I am,” You nod, wishing a man with drinks would walk past you. “Accounting and a performing arts major.” He hums and there’s another beat of awkward silence. 

“From what he tells me, you’re excelling at both. That’s incredibly hard. Do you have any job prospects lined up for when you graduate?” He asks and you shake your head. 

“Not yet,” You admit, picking at your hands. “Since I'm not sure where I’d like to settle after I graduate it’s difficult finding places.” Bruce nods, quickly making sure Dick and Cassandra are okay. 

“Well, if your grades continue to stay or improve, Wayne Enterprises is always looking for accountants, especially one so esteemed.” He smiles at you, that sort of small smile that makes you feel more relaxed in his presence. A fatherly smile. 

“Yeah, praise from Damian is a lot.” Dick grins, leaning his weight on his younger brother. Cassandra agrees, leaning against the wall Bruce was standing in front of. “And he talks about you a ton!” 

“That’s enough.” Damian huffs, pushing himself away from Dick who frowns. “Let’s look at some of the artwork,” 

“You talk to your family about me?” You grin as he’s hauling you away from his family. He looks at you, clearly licking the inside of

his mouth before he blinks and gives one strong nod. 

“Of course I do, it would be a shame to hide someone so talented.” He explains and then looks forward, his eyes swimming across the faces around him. “I do believe in your talents and my father is someone who can help them flourish; it would seem awfully cruel if I didn’t at least try.” You go to speak; to thank him but his attention is pulled away by the director of the show. 

“It’s time!” She gleams, ushering the two of you after her. 

There are already people gathered in front of his top secret exhibit, cameras and people wearing PRESS lanyards like the front and sides. Much like a moth drawn to a flame, they find Damian walking and try to hound him, only to be stopped by his family. They’re far more intimidating now but Damian pulls your attention from them and towards him. 

The two of you are in front of the whole crowd, the two guards holding one piece of the curtain and waiting for a cue to open them. 

“We welcome everyone to Damian Wayne’s very first art show,” The director says, her hand ghosting over his shoulder. He takes that as a sign to step forward, barely leaving your side as he explains his art. 

“Through My Eyes is a collection of various pieces I’ve created over the course of two years,” He explains. “The music that accompanies the art are pieces composed by my muse.” His eyes find yours as the curtains are pulled aside and for the first time, you notice the way he looks at you. The way his eyes never seem to want to leave yours, how he takes you in the same way he takes in the art around him. 

Then you hear it. More specifically you hear yourself. 

You hear the piece you’d played during your final, hearing your voice fill the spaces where people aren’t talking. Each key, and each note floods your ears as you turn to see his art. 

It’s you.

All of it. Each painting, each frame has something of you in it. 

“Holy shit.” You breathe, moving to the closest one. It’s a painting of you, wearing clothes you’d only seen in shows like Merlin, holding onto a statue of an angel. It’s almost impossible to not know where the inspiration had come from. After convincing Damian to go exploring with you and some friends, you’d come across a newly abandoned church with a large angel statue. On a dare, you pretended to dance with it. 

Sure, you’d seen the picture before but it was nothing compared to the painting. It looked amazing, you had never looked better. Your features were captured in the best way possible, you’d been posed in a way that made it seem as if you were guiding the angel in a dance. 

The description catches your eye next. 

One Last Dance wasn’t the first drawing of Muse, but it was the first drawing of him that I truly loved. He’d resparked a passion for painting for me. The painting had been on my mind for two weeks before I finally started to work on it, having it become my only focus for the two days that I worked on it became the norm for the next two years of my life. 

Muse doesn’t personally care for the Renaissance era, but it seemed fitting for such a painting. The feeling of dressing Muse in modern clothes didn’t ruin the drawing but it didn’t make sense, in my head their dance is accompanied by the sounds of the wings and their feet gliding across the floor. Just outside is probably a mob, unbelievable of a true angel. Muse would probably say that he was dancing to the sounds of Sleep Token and outside was a bunch of ‘angel fuckers’, but who knows. 

D.W

The next painting was smaller than the first, but it’s a close-up of your face. Your eyes are wide and you’re desperately pulling at your eyelids as a light twinkles inside of it. 

Blinding Gaze came about when Muse had gone to the eye doctor, fearing he was going blind. Turns out he was just extremely stressed to the point of temporary blindness. When we spoke about it, he joked that he was developing powers from that time he drank a sports drink mixed with a crushed-up Tylenol and he could shoot lasers from his eyes. While Blinding Gaze doesn’t follow his original plan of lasers, I imagine developing eye lights could be frightening. 

Blinding Gaze isn’t body horror, although I had intended it to be but I couldn’t bring myself to put Muse into that position. Even if it was completely fake. I did eventually remake the painting how I truly envisioned it, but I still prefer my Muse to the remake. 

Drifting to the next painting, you see yourself, dressed in your favorite smudged hoodie, dancing amongst the crowd. The people are drowned out in the colors of the background, nearly blending in meanwhile you’re ever so present. The light shone down on you in a way that made you seem like the main character in some movie, all eyes meant to be on you. 

A Night To Remember was undoubtedly one of the best moments of college thus far. Muse had been invited to a friend's party and insisted I come instead of remaining in the art room, drowning myself in oils and pastels. Although I’ve put his words in a more friendly manner. I hadn’t wanted to go, the noises and being pressed against unfamiliar faces was hardly something I ever enjoyed. But for Muse, I’d do anything he’d asked of me. 

Glued to him for the night, I found myself unreasonably drawn to him. I do not remember the song, in truth, I don’t remember much from that night aside from him. The way he danced, how he looked at me. How he looked in the room. I resented not bringing my sketchbook, but I would’ve been more out of place than I originally had been. 

Smoothening your shirt, you take a nervous glance around you. You’re unsure about how you feel, it’s a lot. You’ve never truly thought about Damian in such a light before, at least not to your knowledge. Sure, you’ve written compositions about him and sure, if you read between the lines in some songs they’re definitely about him. You and Him. 

Perhaps, without realizing it, you had made him your muse just as he had made you his. 

“I want you to see this one,” Damian says as he walks up behind you, finally free of people asking him questions. The music loops as he does and you count that there’s five songs on the set playlist. Each and every song was one you had created. Your song from the previous week plays again as you stare at him, smiling. 

“I’m your muse?” You softly ask, unable to remove yourself from the spot until you have gotten your words out. Damian dips his head down for a moment and wipes his nose. “You’re nervous,” The small tease makes his eyes roll and he clears his throat, the red settling from his tanned ears. 

“I want you to see this one,” He repeats and grabs your hand, gently guiding you past the people surrounding the room. They look at the two of you, watching as you walk up to a large painting in the center of the room. Clearly a last-minute addition but it seemed to be the focus. 

“Woah,” Is all you can say when you see the painting of you during your final. It’s painted in the same style as your favorite art era. The romantic era where colors were soft, even if they were dark. The painting itself had you in the center, a sea of people at the bottom and the. There was a ghostly figure of yourself, dancing across the stage leaving streaks of yourself at the top. The floor of the stage was covered in candles. 

“How long did this take you?” You ask, eyes darting between details and finding new ones each time you look. 

“Two days,” He shrugs. Slowly, you look at him and he looks back at you, confused. “I couldn’t sleep until I finished the painting. The way you looked during your final.” He takes a deep breath and shakes his head. “It’s truly beautiful— you’re truly beautiful,” He adds, looking at you. 

“When you paint me like that I definitely am,” You laugh, looking back at the painting. 

“I only painted you through my lens. Perhaps your eyes aren’t as good as you think they are because the paintings truly do not live up to their references. You’re captivating and the way you’ve consumed my thoughts is honestly intoxicating.” His eyes twinkle as you look at each other. You don’t know what to say, honestly. You can stroke your ego a little, you could crack a joke, or you could bear yourself completely to him. But definitely not in a room filled with people. 

“Ah,” Dick breaks the silence. “You know he used to be a junior poet?” Grumbling, Damian looks over at Richard as he’s staring at the painting, sipping sparkling champagne from a flute glass while holding a cracker with cheese and jelly. Gross. Probably, you’ve never had it before. 

“I do believe I asked for a moment alone,” Damian gives a half-snarky grin and Dick shrugs. 

“A whole lotta people here, doubt you’d be alone.” With a sweeping motion, he gestures to the crowd around you. It’s not elbow-to-elbow crowded but you can hear at least seven conversations happening around you. 

“I suppose you’re correct,” He nods, following his brother's line of thinking. “Fresh air?” He asks you and you nod. 

There’s a park in front of the exhibit and it’s mostly empty, save for two kids and their parents but they’re clearly about to leave. Damian heads towards the benches but you pull him to the swings. There are three but one of them is tossed over the bar and you don’t feel like fixing it. 

Sitting with your back to the exhibit, you look over the trees and the playground. The sandpit with someone’s lost doll sitting down, a bucket behind it. 

“What did you think?” He spoke up after a minute had passed. The entire time he watched as you gently rocked back and forth on the swings, tempting yourself to actually swing. 

“You’re amazingly talented,” You hum, turning your head to meet his gaze. “Although, I already knew that. You’re like Michelangelo with everything you pick up.” Glancing at him, you smile when you see his hands. “You still haven’t cleaned the charcoal from your nails.” 

“No,” He blinks, his eyes staying closed for a beat longer than a blink. “Not of my skill level, (Y/n). Of the drawings. That you’re Muse.” He looks down at his fingertips and starts to pick at the bits of charcoal. “That you’re my muse.”

Softly you sigh before looking back to the trees. 

“What is there to think about? You’re my muse, I'm yours.” 

“You’ve written songs about me?” He asks and you sheepishly nod, refusing to look at him. “Which? If you don’t mind me asking,”

“Birds of a feather, I wanna be yours, and Golden hour. There’s more but they’re too embarrassing to admit,” Hearing him take a deep breath, you pick at your fingernails and slowly stop swinging.

“What now?” You ask, finally looking at him. He shrugs and starts to slowly swing. He thinks for a moment before he checks his phone. 

“When are you free? I can make reservations to—“

“Applebees or Red Lobster,” You cut him off and he looks at you, confused. “Applebees is once every so often, birthdays or celebrations. But Red Lobster? That’s graduation or date.” 

“You could’ve gone for a five-star restaurant, you know that, right?” He laughs and you shrug. 

“I heard they’re pretty shit. And I want to fuck up a seafood boil. Oh wait,” Blinking, you try to remember the Red Lobster menu. “Never mind, I don’t think they have vegetarian options. We could do Olive Garden or whatever vegetarian places you like. I’m not picky,” 

“And I am?” He teases and you roll your eyes. “Friday, at five. I’ll pick you up and we’ll go to Olive Garden. And then to the movies to watch that new horror movie you’ve been wanting to watch.”

“That sounds perfect,” You nod and nudge your swing into his. 

“Can I admit something?” He slowly asks. “Forgive me if I’m being too forward but…” Watching as he licks his lip, you stop swinging. “May I kiss you?” 

“Yes.” You nod. Trying not to seem too eager, the both of you stand up and you watch as he raises his hands to cup your face. His fingers are warm, gliding across your skin as you hook one arm around his waist while the other holds his shoulder. “Do you want to lead?” You whisper as he looks at you, unmoving. His eyes dart down to your lips and he nods before closing the distance. 

His hands drag a little down your face, his pinks curving under your jaw before moving up into your hair. Slowly the kiss breaks and he dips back down for one quick kiss. 

“He’s been waiting months to do that,” Dick announces and Damian groans. You snicker and look behind Damian. Dick isn’t even looking, looking off into the distance before he’s sure that you’re done kissing before looking at the two of you. 

“Must he ruin everything?” He whispers to you before facing his brother. “I understand you have no concept of privacy, but this warrants that.” Dick frowns at the rudeness before he shrugs and points his thumb towards the venue. 

“They’re asking for you, thought I should come and get you before they spot you.” He explains through a sigh. “Would hate for our little demon’s kiss to end up on the front page. But, yeah,” He sighs and looks over at you. He stares at your face for a moment before he chuckles. 

“Take him to the bathroom, you got dust on his face.”

“It’s charcoal.”

[starlightkun]

baby fangs ❧ teaser [mark]

❧ teaser word count: 1245 | full fic: 26.7k ❧ warnings: none for the teaser! ❧ genre: fluff, strangers to lovers, modern magical creatures au, basilisk mark, sphinx reader, age gap (older reader), college student mark, career woman reader, ft. various magical neos, human renjun, human johnny (and other very special guest appearances), same universe as strawberry sunday ❧ extra info: this work is set in the same universe as strawberry sunday but can be read as a standalone! there is no continuing plotline between fics in this universe, they simply take place in the same world/magic system and may have overlapping characters (neos may pop up in more than one work!) ❧ estimated release: saturday, june 22, 2024 3:00 p.m. eastern time

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ explore the strawberry sunday universe more here!

After putting your leftovers away in your fridge, you were about to head off to your bedroom when you heard the distant shuffle of footsteps over your welcome mat. You paused at the threshold of your kitchen to your living room, waiting to see if whoever it was would actually ring the doorbell, or just keep… well, it sounded like they were pacing anxiously. Finally, there were a couple soft taps on your front door. If you were a human, you weren’t sure if you would have even heard that. Your footsteps were soft across your carpeted floor as you moved to answer the door. First looking out the peephole, your interest was piqued when you saw a young man standing there who was neither Chenle nor Jisung. Though you did have an idea of exactly what this was about.

Undoing your deadbolt, latch, then disarming the alarm, you opened the door just enough for you to cross your arms over your chest and lean against the doorframe. “I accept apologies in the form of cash or groveling.”

“Huh?” The young man stared at you wide-eyed, open-mouthed, and dumb-founded. You took note of his slit pupils, and the two fangs that hadn’t yet fully descended from his top jaw. Huh, basilisk.

“Did the boys not send you over here to be the sacrificial lamb?” You cocked your head and looked him up and down perhaps too obviously, as he shifted nervously under your gaze. A very timid basilisk at that. You eyed the oversized t-shirt he had on that had the same university logo that you’d often seen your neighbors wearing. “You are one of Chenle and Jisung’s friends, right?”

“Oh, y-yeah, I am. I’m Mark. Mark Lee.” He took one of his hands out from where he’d stuffed them into the pockets of his joggers, wiped it on the leg of said joggers, and held it out to you. As he got close enough to shake your hand, you could finally smell him. Sphinx noses weren’t as sensitive as werewolves’ or vampires’—or basilisk tongues for that matter. Not to mention that basilisks just didn’t have as strong of a scent as most other beings. They had a mild, earthen smell that reminded you of peat freshly after rain. Others tended to make less favorable comparisons such as damp caverns or even mildewy caves, but those ideas never occurred to you. Maybe it was because one of your own childhood best friends was a basilisk, so you were just used to the smell and had positive memories associated with it.

You couldn’t conceal the amusement on your face as you delicately shook his hand, now very aware of his clammy palms. “It’s nice to meet you, Mark, I’m Y/N. Now if they didn’t send you over with your big brown eyes and sweet face in an attempt to distract me from the ruckus you all were making earlier, then why are you on my doorstep?”

“Wait, you can look at my eyes?” There was a noticeable drag on his s’es when he spoke, which you noted with a certain fondness. He must be young enough to have missed most, if not all, of the mandatory speech therapy that the basilisks of your cohort and before went through during primary and secondary school. It was removed from the curriculum for being unfair and prejudiced against the creatures, but that was after your time. You could remember your friend Jongin being singled out to leave class three times a week for the “therapy.” Even now he could still recall the name of the instructor who led it, his voice filling with bitter vitriol on the rare occasions he’d choose to talk about it.

“I’m a sphinx, honey. You couldn’t petrify me if you tried,” you informed Mark knowingly. Now you were curious as to why he was out and about without magical eye protection or at least non-magical sunglasses if he was apparently so worried about petrifying people. But, not curious enough to divert you from your original mission. “Now, why are you here?”

“O-Oh, right, uhm, I’m really sorry for bothering you, ma’am, it’s just that I went to go get something from my car but then I realized that I forgot my keys in their apartment and I came back up to get them but I locked myself out. My phone’s in the apartment too, and I tried knocking but they’re not answering and—”

“They fell asleep in the two minutes you were gone?” You cut him off, raising your eyebrows slightly in disbelief.

“No, no, they were already asleep. You see, uhm, I’m crashing on their couch tonight and—”

“Got it, got it.” You nodded. Well, that explains the lack of sunglasses. They were also presumably locked in the apartment. “So, what do you want from me?”

“Can I borrow your phone really quick, just to try to call them and see if they’ll pick up? Again, I’m really, really sorry about this.”

“I will actually do you one better, Mark.” You did a small shooing gesture, and he seemed to get the idea, taking a couple steps back. Once he was off of your welcome mat, you lifted up the corner and grabbed the key that was sitting under there. You held it out to him. “Here.”

“Uh—”

“It’s their spare key, not mine.” You reassured him. “When they moved in, they asked if they could hide it under my mat because it would be too obvious to burglars for their spare key to be under their mat.”

“O-Oh.” Mark gingerly took the key from you. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“Mark, one more thing.”

“Anything!” He blurted out, then his entire face flushed as he scrambled to tone it down. “I mean, y-yeah, of course, ma’am, what do you need?”

You couldn’t help but smirk as you requested, “Stop calling me ma’am.”

“Right, sorry.”

“You can call me Y/N.”

“O-Okay!” The basilisk smiled at you brightly, another flash of his not-yet fully developed baby fangs. He presumably was only a year or so out from his first molting. They were cute. He was... cute.

“Goodnight, Mark.” You stepped back and grabbed the edge of your door, preparing to close it.

“Goodnight, Y/N.”

His eyes didn’t leave you the entire time as you shut the door. Curious, you peered out your peephole. Mark flicked his forked snake tongue out in the air once before he made his way over to your neighbors’ door. The boys had a corner apartment, meaning that despite the two apartments sharing a wall, their door was actually perpendicular to yours, so you could see it from your peephole. You watched Mark unlock the apartment, then dart back over to yours and bend over to lift up your mat. You froze, not expecting him to immediately return the key. You figured he’d just give it back to his friends in the morning. He paused after he’d put the key under the mat again, tongue once more testing the air. You held your breath, waiting for a paralyzing one, two seconds before he finally left again. You didn’t relax fully until the boys’ apartment door had closed behind him, though. You wanted to hit yourself. What were you even nervous about? A grown woman being caught standing by your own apartment door? By some random college kid? Ridiculous. You scoffed, doing up your locks, latches, and alarm again.

⤷ anthology masterlist | blog masterlist

[velvet4510]

It recently occurred to me that the pre-existing relationship between the One Ring and its specific bearer - and the bearer’s opinion of the Ring before and after becoming its bearer - makes a big difference in how much the Ring affects the bearer.

I will elaborate.

Hold your breath, this is gonna get long, I apologize.

Isildur saw the Ring as a reminder of all that Sauron took from him; his home, so many of his people, his brother, and his father … and yet also as a reminder of Sauron’s defeat and how he and his surviving people had prevailed. He took it not out of greed or power-lust, but out of grief, as a weregild for his tragic losses and a symbol of bittersweet victory. He knew the evil that it came from, but also knew the hope that his ownership of it seemed to represent in his head. Therefore, he had both negative and positive feelings toward the Ring, and both types of feelings drove him to claim it and see it as something “precious.” But the pain associated with its memory ultimately made him feel relief when it was lost; as the Unfinished Tales say, he felt release from a great burden after it slipped from his finger in the river. So while he did claim it, he also was able to feel relief at its loss because of that complex and conflicting relationship.

We don’t know much about Sméagol’s pre-Ring life, but all signs point to the notion that he was always an inherently unpleasant and greedy person. It is hinted that he disliked his grandmother and perhaps as a result he was unhappy in his community and didn’t really enjoy being there. Fishing seems to be the only thing that he had a lifelong passion for. And then came the Ring. Something golden and shiny and beautiful amidst all the grass and dirt and water. On his birthday. Perhaps it whispered promises of escape from the existence he hated, of freedom and independence and all the fish he could ever want. Every greedy part of his nature was awakened. So he claimed it. Even if it meant killing his friend to have it. Unlike Isildur, he had zero context of what the Ring really was or where it came from. All he knew was that it was there, offering him things he wanted. All his feelings toward it were positive. So it was precious to him and he couldn’t let it go. Not even when he was in pain. He had no one and nothing. This Ring was his friend, his family, all he had. His precious.

Bilbo is a very interesting case because the Ring did nothing but help him during the whole quest for Erebor. He would’ve been dead many times over if it weren’t for that thing. He wouldn’t have been able to save his friends from the spiders or the dungeons if it weren’t for that thing. All it did for him was good, beneficial to his noble intentions toward people he loved. So of course it became precious to him. It was his friend, his savior. How could it be evil? With no more context than Sméagol had, Bilbo also only had positive feelings toward the Ring. But with a boost from Gandalf, a Maia, he realized he could leave it with something else dear to him. Frodo is was more precious to him than this Ring. Surely it would bring Frodo as much help and good as it brought him. So he let it go.

Now Frodo was in an entirely different situation. He knew the Ring did a lot of good for Bilbo, thus it never crossed his mind in those 17 years that it could be dangerous. But how could it help him? He had nothing to hide from. Life was good to him. So he held onto it as a souvenir of Bilbo’s adventure, nothing more. Then came the first of two absolutely major distinctions that made Frodo an unprecedented Ring-bearer. The first is, thanks to Gandalf, Frodo learned the full and complete context of what the Ring is. Not even Isildur knew the full picture of what its malice could do. But Frodo learned all the evil the Ring has done. It may have been a treasure to Bilbo, but it was a danger to him. This was then reinforced by the second unprecedented distinction: After the Council of Elrond, Frodo comprehended and acknowledged that the Ring can only do evil. Any good that it did Bilbo was part of an evil master plan. No intentions could make it less evil. No other Ring-bearer before him was even remotely aware of this. So from then on, the Ring was nothing but a burden to Frodo. How could it be precious to him when it sundered him from home, when it was pounding in his head and making him weaker every day, when it was whispering temptations to hurt or even kill his beloved Sam? When it would cause the end of all he loved? So Frodo felt only negativity toward the Ring. He hated it and wanted it gone. So the Ring switched tactics and instead of tempting him with things he did not want, it fed off his thoughts of his duty to the Council and his love for Sam. “Don’t let anyone else have it because they said he mustn’t, because it will hurt Sam.” And when he reached Mt. Doom, the place where the Ring’s power would inevitably envelop all other, including the power of his own will, all he could gain from it was emptiness. The loss of his ability to act on his knowledge, to do what he wanted, to choose to complete his task. There was still nothing beautiful about this. Nothing precious. It was not his precious, so he did not call it that. It was simply…his. It was his because he had lost the ability to acknowledge that it was not. He only did something in favor of the Ring, for the protection of it, when he lost all his agency and became a puppet. Nothing the Ring said could make him love it or remove his knowledge of what it really is. So the Ring resolved to desperate measures and drowning his free will just to get him to do what it wanted him to do. It was all by force, not by coercion or seduction or exploitation of any positive feelings he had toward it … because there were none.

Sam as a Ring-bearer is akin to Frodo. He had full context of what the Ring was and how it could only do evil and how it would do whatever it took to survive and return to Sauron. He, like Frodo, knew what Isildur, Gollum, and Bilbo did not know. And then? He spent month after month watching this thing hurt his beloved Frodo, torment Frodo, make Frodo act strange and not like himself. No thing that hurt Frodo could ever be precious to Sam. So Sam hated it. He had no positive feelings for it. And this hatred gave him the ability to recognize its motives when it started tempting him. He had all the context and the negative feelings necessary to comprehend that it was telling him lies and he should not listen to it. So - even though he bore the Ring inside Mordor where its voice in his head was likely much louder than it was in Bilbo’s or even Gollum’s head, he resisted it successfully. It was no more than a burden to him and Frodo both. Which is why the Ring switched tactics and started appealing to Sam’s love, tempting him to carry it for a while and spare Frodo the burden. But Sam’s context and disgust fought back long enough for him to propel himself and Frodo forward, up the mountain.

And while Boromir was not technically a Ring-bearer, there are several noteworthy factors in his feelings toward the Ring. As a participant in the Council, he too gained the necessary context of the Ring’s absolute evil. Yet he did not fully believe it. Unlike the hobbits, or his brother, he was not an old friend of Gandalf the Maia and he did not grow up with stories of supernatural power. He was raised as a grounded military man through and through. His thoughts and interests were in strategy and tactic. And his pride was far greater than the practically-nonexistent pride of Bilbo, Frodo and Sam. So between a lack of understanding the true seriousness of the Ring’s supernatural power, and his natural inclination to think in terms of battle and physical strength, his mind had already laid the groundwork for the Ring to tempt him. But only when it was close. The moment it got away from him, the moment he realized it had driven him to break his friend’s trust and run from him in fear, he finally understood. He knew Gandalf and the powers that be were right. He finally believed. But he could never tell Frodo that - at least not in the world of the living.

[meanbossart]

Ask Compilation: Advice, influences and Misc.

Apologies for taking so long on some of these, admittedly I'm much more likely to entirely forget about asks that are about me and my interests 💃 Thank you for all the questions regardless! And thank you specially to everyone who just drops nice messages into my inbox out of kindness.

I'm brazillian and a native portuguese speaker!

I'll probably return to twitter eventually, but a) I hate that place and b) It didn't make much sense to me to turn it into a BG3 account out of the blue. I am considering making an Instagram or a new twitter just to have more places where people can follow in case they don't care for tumblr, but it's just been a very busy year so far and so that's kind of low on the list of priorities. If I ever do that I'll be sure to announce it here. Have a nice day yourself!

Sorry to hear that! I've gotten a few messages before about this issue, and the problem is that since I am myself not from the US, my options are also limited :( a lot of patreon alternatives don't work for me because they either don't go through paypal, take insane currency conversion fees, or just straight up block me from signing up.

Speak for yourself, I just assume everyone I speak to online has committed some sort of atrocious crime until proven otherwise. Except for me - of course. I have never done anything bad in my life.

I still have a lot to learn! But I will basically use whatever works for me at the moment, as well as make a sincere effort to learn about musculature and anatomy so I can understand those components and how they move, instead of only knowing what they look like when still - that's how you get better at drawing from memory. Volume mostly comes from coloring and understanding light, which is it's own beast but can very much be learned from similar reference materials and observing it IRL!

My favorite places to get reference are medical diagrams, weird pictures I take of myself, 3D software (often Virt-a-mate) and questionably phrased image google searches.

My favorite artists are Jason Shawn Alexander and Sean Murphy, but I'm not sure how much of it reflects in my art nowadays! I generally seek to pick up techniques from artists rather than to emulate style.

Honestly I love that you guys generally do the thing he would hate the most: take him very non-seriously LOL

I've been in a real Chelsea Wolfe and Amyl And The Sniffers kick lately! But usually you'll also find me listening to stuff like Boy Harsher, Swans, FWF, JK Flesh Lingua Ignota, Nick Cave, David Bowie, and so on. Music for the weird gays, basically.

I went insane and wrote a 23-chapter-long-and-still-ongoing fic in like four months. But also - I'm not that good, I'm just shamelessly pretentious LOL

Hm. That's a good question, but I'm not really sure. Sincerely not trying to be a edgier-than-thou here (in fact, this has made me a little self conscious at one time or another) but a lot of art that I don't mean to be horror-y in nature at all has been associated with the genre. So perhaps I don't know what I'm doing either, LOL.

I think just leaning on making things look slightly "wrong" or "ugly" on purpose is the way, but I also find that if you just seek to depict people as they are instead of idealized versions of themselves, you will arrive at that either way.

Thank you for reading! Honestly, I'm guilty of having not read much at all since I was in my late teens, and the style I'm employing for ANE is very different from the things I would call "influential" for me, or even that I used to enjoy reading at all before. I read a lot of Chuck Palahniuk as a youth (and, no slight to people who do like him still, but nowadays I'm not sure why I ever did. His stories don't speak to me at all anymore) as well a lot of weird experimental lit that I didn't even care to remember the name of. My last book stint from one or two years ago was composed solely of historical and medical literature, and last year I got really into Cormac Mcarthy thanks to the internet.

So, all in all, I'm absolutely all over the place LOL if you put a gun to my head and told me to list my favorite books, I'd say The Indifferent Stars Above and Blood Meridian.

(Consider the reading portion of the question to have been answered above) I really really liked Beau is Afraid and think it's a really great "horror" movie. Sue me.

[callmerhynner]

do you do requests and if you do can you do a deaf reader x saiki where she can only hear him bc he puts his voice in her head and gets super scared about it and realizes after why she got so scared

★; I do take requests, happily so actually, it just takes a while for me to finish so...

hope you enjoy!1!1!!

𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐬...

Life's weirdness pops its eery little head in every once in a while, that's a given. All it needs is a trigger. Though, if life had a trigger, you hope that your existence was the finger pulling it.

Because, there you stood with your eyes wide, mouth slowly unhinging itself, and hairs on the back of your neck raised.

You have been deaf for years, the continuous ear-related accidents affecting your hearing greatly. You've accepted that part of yourself, after months of grieving for it, and that you'll never get to hear more than what your hearing aids could provide.

So, why is it that, the one time you take it off, a boy with pink hair and two totally normal-looking hairpins bumps into you and you hear something a clear voice for the first time.

"Sorry." you hear, your heart drops at that. Hands lifting up to check for your aide, to feel nothing, as you watched the boy walk off to the desserts aisle of the supermarket.

You can't help but eye him for a moment or two, trying to piece together some form of explanation--there's no way that your hearing had suddenly just healed itself for a moment or the bump caused yourself to get an auditory hallucination.

Meanwhile, the psychic had. just realized his mistakes after hearing your mile-a-minute thoughts go wind at his mistake. Thinking of ways to fix his mistake, straying from the methods that were...morally questioning, like batting her head in public with the memory banana. Or to let her live her life thinking that she had now suddenly developed auditory hallucinations.

"Sir?" his train of thought halt, feeling a hand poke at his sleeve. He looked back, his body still facing forwards, but you could feel the cold gaze he had on you. When you fall quiet, he tilts his head--reading through your mind, he understands that you're starting to regret trying to confront what could simply be just your imagination.

To which, you give up, you just bow your head down and point at an advertisement starring a new delectable dessert package here in the market. "Which aisle..?" you say, just above a whisper, embarrassment creeping in as you retract your shaking hand from sight.

"Aisle 5, with the snacks."

. . .

"HUH?!" you shout a gasp in shock, jumping back like a stray cat.

'Good Grief...' the psychic mutters, realizing his mistake, once again.

--

One thing about losing one sense of the human anatomy, it trains all your other senses to heighten. Maybe that was why he couldn't get rid of you now. No lie was good enough, no excuse lasted long enough, and nothing intrigued you more than how he could talk to you.

He's tried to wipe your memory, however, you've soon become so benign, so grateful, in his presence that he gave in to your desire to hear something other than the blurred sounds you could hear off your hearing aide.

All you wanted was a voice to hear.

To talk to without feeling misunderstood or slowed down, because you couldn't talk right or that others couldn't understand you signed language.

Saiki simply lets you feel into this human experience that you haven't felt for so long--at the cost of manipulating your thinking pattern into thinking that you could hear him because of some telepathic that you had, with him.

So when people may ask you why you're always talking to him as if you could hear him, all you'd reply with was (even though Saiki would prefer to not be associated with anybody, or so he says):

"We're just friends like that" you hum, with a smile on your lips.

requests are kinda fun... hopefully my first shot wasn't that bad tho--

[kharmii]

(Getting this one out of the way before we find out definitively whether or not Dabi is still alive. The last manga chapter #425 hinted about it, then went on hiatus)

(A long ago memory where young Touya Todoroki is eager to have his father Enji #2 Endeavor see what he can do)

Touya: No! Don't leave! I'm stuck to you!!

Enji: No way. I've got something to do...an association meeting.

Touya: I also thought of a strategy!!

Leave it to me to exterminate the villains.

Dad please watch!

Enji: Really.

Enji: Then while I'm gone you protect mother and Fuyumi.

*Walks away but says upon leaving* I left it to you.

Enji (to unknown person): Keep an eye on them.

(Person): Yes.

Touya: See you then! Well then!!!!

Touya: Who am I? Dad's hero!?!

Enji: ...... ......Ahh.

Touya: Yay!! Take care!

※Notice

From now on, this is a dream-like, fabricated, creative manga about Dabi's dreaming of interactions with his child while he lies on his death bed. A happy ending centered around the parent-child relationship between Touya and his parents.

What Dabi had done could no longer be reconciled, and he wondered if it would be possible to start over as a parent and child without being able to return to his original family, and what if Dabi were to be in the same position as his father... Also a wish....a dream.

Children also talk. The child in this story is a genetically engineered baby made from the Team Violet co-commander's hair (Dabi and Geten) that the doctor made for fun in a manga I drew earlier and adjusted the plot to look like Dabi would hate it (that's the setting/creation).

There is a conflict of interest with Geten. I feel like I have a lot of compassion for what he's been through. The second half is a conversation between Geten and the child, and the story changes from Geten to Dabi.

Dabi: ...Terrible, I don't feel it.

Geten: (Speaking to Dabi who is presumably burnt to ash...deceased or nearly so lying in a bed covered in a white sheet.)

What did you say? It's "cold".

Geten: That kid is excellent. Is it natural since both genetic contributors are first class?

Your concerns were unfounded.

In another ten years, it will be out of my control...

Geten: Come. Looks like he's going out. We'll meet again someday.

(He's talking about Dabi's fire going out, an analogy for his soul leaving his body).

Child: Can you see it?

(I can't see anymore)

Child: I can hear it?

(I can't hear it anymore)

Geten: -Because I'm the kind of guy who doesn't watch or listen.

No big deal.

Geten: (Bottom panels) The feeling of touching. A hand.

I can tell because it seems to be understood. -So as not to break.

(The child is touching Dabi's hand, and suddenly they are allowed to communicate).

(Same memory from earlier, except played out between Dabi and his child)

Touya: No! Don't leave! I'm stuck to you!!

Enji: No way.

Child: I also thought of a strategy!! Leave it to me to defeat the heroes.

Dad please watch!

Enji: Really.

(Dabi says something cryptic only the child can understand)

Geten: *laughs heartily*

Child: See you then! Well then! Flip side!?!?

Touya: Who am I? Dad's hero!?!

Dabi: I'm going to get sludge..... (the last thing he said was garbled)

Child: Ha~~~~~!?!? I don't know! I won't make your father's dreams come true!!!! -AND- Geten! Translate it!

Geten: Haha, that's probably correct.

Child: Take care!

That?

Touya: Mother! Will today be a hot day?

Rei Todoroki: Ah, it's summer.

Touya: Mom, is that the way you talk? Well, that's fine.

Rei Todoroki: What's wrong?

Touya: Hmm? If you stay in the sun all the time. It stings and I don't like it. Looks like it's okay today.

...There are suns like this too.

It's fluffy and tight... ...Somehow it's really...

(While the child reaches out to the sunlight, caption says "Nostalgic". Viewer realizes the scene with Touya speaking with his mother Rei was a dream Dabi was having as he was dying, as were all the other memories of his father and such.)

Geten: ...Finally. You idiot. It was great. Did you notice I can do it...See? Already. It's neither hot nor cold, right?

Dabi: ……Yeah.

(Reference to how Geten was able to provide comfort and make him comfortable as he was burning away.)

Warmth.

Geten: (Thinking) This is all I have left... (of Dabi's ashes)

Geten: (Out loud) I'm troubled. Apparently more than I expected. It seems like there was a feeling.

Geten: I miss your blue flames.

Child: Geten. Geten. What I've discovered....please watch.

*foom*

Child: Like ice, I could change the temperature of the flames. It would be cooler if you could take it out of your hands like father did. Geten?

(My guess is that the child's quirk resembles Geten's ability. He can't make fire/ice from his own body, but he can manipulate both elements and control their temperatures. Judging by Geten's questioning, if the child did have a fire quirk coming out his hands, he'd have to suppress it to avoid Dabi's fate, as he's a genetic chimera made up of a patchwork of both Dabi and Geten's clones).

Geten: White hair is increasing (like Touya's did when he got a little older). Isn't it hot?

Child: If it's really hot, it'll fly far away.

Geten: What about this? Is it hot?

Child: Not at all.

Geten: It's okay to be cold.

Geten: He and I too were moved by it. It was life.

Child: ...Geten.

Geten: You can call me 'Dad' too.

Child: You said you wouldn't allow anything other than Geten.

Captions: Rejoice Dabi. In the past. Ahead of us. Don't walk away.

Art credit: hrak (yaoi), Apocrypha, Dabi / Twitterログ12【外荼】 - pixiv

[queatherine]

jean kirschtein <3

[mobius-m-mobius]

LOKI APPRECIATION WEEK 2023 | for @dailyloki Day 5 : Favorite Loki's clothes : The God of Stories suit

[equill]

The Warden

Panel: No escape.

Ok, now just some silly ideas to share (playing around with the au)

Comic 1: Invading dreams

Extra: no thanks.

Comic 2: Unwanted attention

[nyatbinary-81]

@vulpixisananimal sifstem art jumpscare!! more specifically i got bored and decided to mess around with sif and mal's outfits.

[cloudplpnt]

been a real long time, but hey at least i still draw yugi’s hair 30% bigger than it is

[sirenspells]

[Amnesiac Omori AU]

Sin Triangle

[skeletalheartattack]

What if i went back in time and smashed your gamecube. What would your childhood game collection look like then?

[jankwritten]

yall wanna know how fucked up my anxiety is about some shit

i scroll past a post that's about a topic i don't like. whatever, it's fine. i scroll past a video that's a topic i don't care about. that's normal.

i scroll past a video that's a topic i don't like or care about but the person presenting it is a person of color? i IMMEDIATELY feel immensely guilty and need to "compensate" by "proving" it wasn't because of race by also skipping other random posts, JUST IN CASE someone thinks I'm racist because I didn't want to watch a video on a topic I didn't like or care about, that happened to be presented by a person of color.

this just in on: the police in my brain are loud and i'm scared of them

[chilapis]

I think every moment is eternal in its own right and we hold no authority to deny it that status. Even if it is a forever that will escape our memories, it’ll still exist as a forever in the history of time. In the memories of no-one but the Earth itself. In the records kept and made by no-one, where everything is stored for all time to come. No love is lost and no existence truly unacknowledged.

[aceisferal]

So I had a vision,