#anyways this post is a mess sorry my brain's kind of a mess this week. slight depressive episode. i'll be fine next week tho probably-

[puppys-rhythm-heaven]

i've listened to so many chill nintendo song compilations the past few days and i know rhythm heaven is niche and all but literally only one of them has had any rhythm heaven music??? it's not even like there's a lack of chill rhythm heaven songs, like. tengoku remix 4, glee club, ds remix 2, lockstep 2, ds or tengoku's cafe music (fever and megamix's to some extent but it's not as chill), bossa nova (literally the only one i've seen in any of these). there's probably others you could argue but i am not in rhythm heaven brainrot mode rn so i can't think of any others. i've seen other fairly niche series in these too so it's esp weird-

[ghostbeam]

Oblivi_n.exe | Dabi/Touya Todoroki

Touya Todoroki, known as ‘Dabi’ to the league, quirk class: cremation, mech title: Blue. You’re his new handler. 

As Dabi’s new handler, you’re well aware of his history, how frequently he goes through handlers assigned to him. Not that he ever uses them—it’s more complete resistance. You’re not particularly good at your job. Transferred from the PLF for lack of success in handling any of their pilots, you’ve always been far too gentle. You lack authority. Your pilots never respected you. You don’t think Dabi will be any different. You give it a week. 

Notes: okay wow hiiiii it’s been a long time since I’ve posted an actual fic (nearing almost a year now😬) this is something I’ve been working on for a bit. I have mech brain rot curtesy of @streimiv and @hawnks (both of whom this is dedicated to bc there’s no way I could have written this without yapping to them abt it and also mint helped me come up w the acronym for HERO’s) and we’ve all got our own mech fics in the works atm but anywayssssss this is kind of my baby atm but I hope it makes sense it’s very inspired first and foremost by pacific rim and then also NGE (mostly through consumption of YouTube vids bc I haven’t actually watched it pls don’t hate me) it’s a whole mess of things and Dabi is kind of a bitch and reader is slowly coming into herself and at the end of the day they both wanna be metal fused to one another forever (no matter how hard he denies it) also I’m not a huge computer person idk if this title makes sense so don’t make fun of me pls ok anyways I hope u like it!!!!

Warnings: 18+, minors DNI, pilot!Dabi x handler!reader, there’s no explicit sexual content in this part, not even a kiss sorry guys, mentions of robot gore (exposed wires, insides described as guts), brief descriptions of being trapped inside a small space, descriptions of burning while inside said space, mention of surgery to fashion a metal jaw onto someone, mentions of child abuse (nothing graphic just allusions to the todoroki family and touya’s past), angst, many run on sentences, a small cliff hanger

Words: 7.9k

Pt. 1 | Pt. 2 (coming soon)

You are nothing without your machine.

It’s the first rule, the first thing beaten into his brain by his father. You carry the burden of the mech alone, or you’re weak. You don’t exist. 

U.A. raises the best and brightest pilots, navigators, mechanics, and handlers, each one carefully trained to ensure the most important outcome: winning. It should be protection. It should be defense. But if Touya has learned anything at all, it’s that winning means glory. It means worship. It means HERO’s (Human Engineered Robotic Objects) are saints, and pilots are gods. 

 Touya used to be one of those best and brightest before his accident. 

First son to Enji Todoroki, Touya was supposed to be the golden child, the first Todoroki to pilot without a handler. He was supposed to carry the burden alone, something his father couldn’t do, something only one man has ever actually been capable of. 

But Touya is born weak, bad bones, a brain unable to handle all that the mech needs to unload onto it. One too many accidents results in him being expelled from the pilot program, his HERO discarded and collecting dust in its pod, and Touya is promptly transferred to mechanics. 

It should have been a smooth transition. If one kid can’t handle it, the next will. Because they have to. 

He doesn’t take the news well. It’s a fit of tears, a persistent fight, unable to accept the loss of his machine—of his body. Because Touya loves it. What he lacks in strength, he makes up for in pure passion, and despite being unable to handle the burden, there’s no denying that he’s good. He’s almost perfect. 

But almost is not enough for Enji Todoroki, and no matter how hard Touya tries, he’s made up his mind. 

After months of mechanics, Touya makes a decision. When the next fleet of HERO’s is deployed for the next kaiju battle, Touya sneaks in among the chaos, tucked neatly inside the chest of his machine where he belongs. It doesn’t take long for things to go south, for Touya to get caught in the crossfire, losing control of his mech and burning from the inside out. 

It should be an excruciating death, stuck inside a machine made for war, fire raining from above as a battle continues on outside without him. 

But he survives, because what he lacks in strength, he makes up for in resilience, and his mech is programed with solutions to every situation. He’s stuck inside for months before he’s found.

Tomura Shigaraki rescues him, pries open the chest of his mech and pulls him from inside. His group feeds him, takes him in, fashions a new jaw for him made from the metal of his mech, and allows him the decision to join their cause or go back home. 

And since there’s no home to go back to, Touya finds his footing with the league and becomes one of their top pilots. One who vehemently resists any and all handlers.

…

Touya Todoroki, known as ‘Dabi’ to the league, quirk class: cremation, mech title: Blue. You’re his new handler. 

As Dabi’s new handler, you’re well aware of his history, how frequently he goes through handlers assigned to him. Not that he ever uses them—it’s more complete resistance. You’re not particularly good at your job. Transferred from the PLF for lack of success in handling any of their pilots, you’ve always been far too gentle. You lack authority. Your pilots never respected you. You don’t think Dabi will be any different. You give it a week. 

Following closely behind Tenko, formerly Tomura, he quickly explains to you the in’s and out’s of the pilot/handler relationship, along with a warning about Dabi’s resentment toward the whole idea. You try to keep up, but he talks quickly and uses his hands a lot. Even so, you can tell he’s a natural leader, something he had to grow into after overthrowing the man who raised him. His story is a tragic one, and it resonates with you because Tenko came out the other side stronger. Now, the league is a community with a cause, one you really believe in. Even if you and Dabi aren’t the right fit, you still have a place here. 

You follow Tenko into what he calls the garage, a large floor of the abandoned academy that serves as the league’s base, this part of it full of HERO’s and mechanics all focused on the machines in front of them. It’s completely different from how HERO’s were worked on at UA, where you grew up, and even the PLF didn’t have one dedicated floor to this sort of work. You can feel the energy of the room buzzing on your skin, music blasting from old radios and mechanics tossing tools towards one another in a familiar routine. Tomura leads you to Dabi and his HERO, Blue, though you’re instructed not to call it a HERO around him. With goggles over his eyes and gloved hands, he brings two wires from Blue’s ankle together, sighing at the way they spark each time they connect. 

“Dabi.” Tomura calls over the music coming from the radio hanging off of Dabi’s waist. He drops the wires and his gaze flickers toward the two of you. Pushing his goggles up to his forehead, he gives you a once over. His eyes are the brightest you’ve ever seen—kaiju blood blue—and burn scars litter his body. He’s striking in a way you’ve never seen, almost too beautiful to be human. Giving Dabi your name, Tomura explains that you’re taking over as his handler, seeing as he couldn’t keep the last one for more than a couple of days. “She’s your last handler. If you can’t keep this one, then go ahead and fry your brain. See if I care.”

“You say that every time.” Dabi calls from around sucker as Tomura walks away, leaving you alone with your new pilot. 

You just your hand out in a greeting, “I’m looking forward to working with you.”

Eyeing your hand, Dabi shakes his head and turns his back to you, picking the two wires back up and connecting them again, despite the same spark from before igniting between the two. He looks back up at Blue, touching his fingers to the slim lines starting at the back of her ankle and running all the way up her leg. You peak over his shoulder at the wiring, noticing that he’s connecting two of the wrong ones. 

“It’s the wrong wire.” You tell him, and he spins around to look at you, tearing his goggles from his face as he scoffs. 

“Here we go.” He sighs with a roll of his eyes, pulling the candy from his lips and tossing it onto the tool cart without a care. “Handler know-it-all bullshit. This is my mech.”  

You push passed him and grab the similarly colored wire from beside a red wire and connect it with the one in Dabi’s right hand. Blue lights up cyan through the thin lines that run along each of its limbs and torso, connecting with the two cameras within its head, which seem to blink before the light reaches them. 

In an instant, you’re being pushed up against the hard metal, a strong arm over your chest—pinning you up against the HERO. Dabi, now having discarded his goggles, looks at you full of white, hot rage. 

“Don’t fucking touch her.” He growls. You’re suddenly aware of the close proximity, eyes flickering between the snarl across his lips and his angry gaze. For a beat, you both freeze, the air suddenly charged like you’re waiting for one another to strike. Snapping yourself out of his hypnotic stare, you push against his chest, forcing him to let you go. 

“If I’m going to be you’re handler, you’re going to have to trust me with her.” You remind him. He lets out a harsh laugh, like he can’t believe you would suggest such a ridiculous idea. 

“I don’t trust anything but this machine.” He speaks, turning away from you to seal up the machine’s exposed wires. It’s a challenge you’re willing to accept.

“Well, I’m here to change that.” You tell him, before turning on your heel to leave him alone. 

He thinks he’ll give you a week. 

…

One of the worst parts of being assigned a handler, Touya thinks, is the way that pilot/handler living quarters are set up. He assumes the academy, before it was abandoned and turned into a base for the league, created this sort of set up so that handlers could keep a close eye on their pilots. The handlers Touya has burned through up until now also assumed the same. 

The door that connects both the pilot’s and handler’s dorms doesn’t lock, and all of Touya’s past handlers have taken advantage of this fact. He’s been pulled out of bed far too early, pushed around and commanded and barked at. Most handlers behaved as if pilots belonged to them, which was the sentiment drilled into their brains from being thrown into such a fucked up system at a young age.—unless you were a pilot of status like a Todoroki. While he league dedicates a lot of its time to reversing these ideas, most handlers look at Touya like some kind of challenge, this arrogant pilot begging to be tamed. It never takes long for them to realize how easily he’s able to flip the switch on them. You’ll be no different.

But hours pass and you still haven’t entered. You don’t swing the door open and demand he apologize for his behavior earlier. You don’t try and punish him with training regimes, a command of a set of push ups, a schedule you expect him to follow, an extremely detailed meal plan. The entire evening comes and goes without so much as a sound on the other side of the door so he knows you’re even behind it. 

He falls asleep unnerved by this, waking up late into the night in a cold sweat, expecting you to barge in, rip the covers from his body and demand to train together. When he wakes up (peacefully) the next morning, there’s no sign of you. He rises from his bed, drinks orange juice straight from the carton and eats a candy bar for breakfast. He fiddles with the navigation screen from his mech that stopped working a couple of days ago, tools spread out on the counter in front of him. Once he’s got the thing working again, your knock sounds from the unlocked door between the two of you. He thinks this might be it, the commands he expects to fall from your lips at the ready as he swings the door open, but you stand there, nervous, hands twitching as your eyes finally meet his.

Greeted by a shirtless Touya, hair mused from sleep, cargo pants hung low on his hips, dog tags swinging against his chest, his scars on display, unashamed and proud. The sight of him knocks the breath out of you, and you clear your throat in embarrassment, hoping your state of dreaming comes off as nerves rather than lust. 

“Dabi. Or do you prefer Touya?” You smile. When he doesn’t answer, you continue. “I wanted to see if you wanted to eat breakfast together in the caf. I think we should start over. Yesterday was—”

You’re promptly cut off, “I already ate breakfast.”

With a harsh slam of the door, he leaves you stunned in your room.

You eat alone. 

When you started as a pilot, back when you’d entered UA (a few years about Touya’s accident), you went into it believing you could change the world. The exam had placed you into the position of handler, and you were assigned a pilot who had always seemed a little frightened of you despite your obvious lack of authority. Bringing the fact up to your instructors did nothing. They all assured you that this was the ideal dynamic, that the handler always had the upper hand, but you hated that feeling. You weren’t a team like you expected to be; you were urged to control your pilot. You were there to keep them in line, not to be a pillar of support. The bond was never built on trust, and the soul link was always a looming threat. No matter how many pilots you went through, the link was never held as a gift, but a prison, something you would both be stuck with for the betterment of society, a sacrifice to make. 

You’d been expelled from the handler program after guiding your pilot to help save another in the wreckage of your first battle together, resulting in the damage of your pilot’s HERO. Your pilot was okay, but the other couldn’t be saved, and you were blamed for the damage of both mech’s. 

When you found the league (or when the league found you), you were working with the PLF, but proved to be a weak handler. Every pilot you were assigned to took advantage of your optimistic outlook on the kind of relationship dynamic that pilots had with their handlers. Despite all that you had been through at UA, and with the rest of the pilots you’d been paired with after, you never gave up the hope that handlers and pilots could behave as a team, or, even better, one entity. 

Tenko had taken one look at you and demanded you’d be transferred to the league. There hadn’t been much of a choice in the matter, not that you really cared. You were miserable everywhere else. But when you arrived at the abandoned academy and taken a peak behind the kudzu covered walls where each and every area of the building acted as multiple moving parts in collaboration with one another in order to create one massive system, you realized that this was the future you imagined for yourself—and for the world you lived in.

Tenko saw something in you that day, something you aren’t sure you even see in yourself. And so Dabi was your first task, one that’s proving to be very difficult. But he doesn’t treat you like all the other pilots before had. He doesn’t use you. In fact, it seems like he wants nothing to do with you. And while that’s a problem, it’s still one you can work with. 

You’re broken from your thoughts by the sound of a voice through an overhead intercom asking for everyone to meet on the first floor of the academy at their earliest convenience. Judging by the quick movements of those around you, you figure you’d better head downstairs as soon as possible. 

The meeting on the first floor makes you very aware of just how small the league really is. While it’s definitely not a tiny organization, it’s still much smaller than both UA and the PLF. With everyone piled up like this in one group, you realize it feels more like a community, and the hum of conversation that surrounds you comforts you in a way you’ve never felt within the walls of any other academy before. 

There’s discussion about the upcoming mission, one which may be the league’s most ambitious yet; the plan to hijack a mech and kidnap a pilot may be a little unorthodox compared to the league’s past missions, but the jaded pilot they’re targeting has a high chance of joining the cause. Or that’s what they have assumed. As the bodies move and speak around you, it strikes you how different this meeting is from any other meeting you’ve ever been a part of. Tenko is less a dictator and more a wrangler for the disembodied voices of your peers. 

You don’t know much about his story, save for the vague details you’ve heard, but Tenko’s status as a lone handler is something you find yourself curious about. If he’s able to work without a pilot, why can’t you? It’s an idea you keep in your back pocket, one you think you can fall back on if things with Touya don’t work out. But you want them to work out. So badly. 

You aren’t sure what it is about him, but he’s reignited that spark inside of you. You know he’d rather you give up, and maybe the you from a couple of months ago would have, but something about him—and this place—won’t let you leave. 

As you observe the meeting, you take the time to look around the room, taking in your peers and their attentive faces as they listen to Tenko intently. You turn to your right, your eyes meeting a pair of blue ones, impossible to miss. Dabi holds your stare for what feels like ages, and when your colleagues erupt in a fit of many simultaneous discussions, you tear your eyes from his to observe the commotion. When you glance back in his direction, he’s gone. 

You don’t seem him again after that. You train with other handlers, get to know your peers a little better. Everyone else seems to be welcoming, and most offer you sympathy when they find out you’re Touya’s new handler. From what you can gather, he’s had his fair share of them, all of which have quit or left in hysterics due to his harsh nature. When you ask around about where he could be, you’re told that he’s most likely in the garage, a place you assume he’s in more often than not.

You don’t know if you’ll ever get used to the garage. A place so completely different, so against the ideas and beliefs of any other academy you’ve been a part of, the chaos and community within is so foreign to you. You find Touya with Blue, working inside of her chest, where the cockpit is. 

“Touya!” You call up to him and watch as he peaks his head over the edge of her metal plating. Annoyance falling across his face, he jumps down from where he stands, landing hard on his feet in front of you. 

“What are you doing here?” He questions, his figure so tall and imposing above you. He’s not particularly muscular, not even all that tall compared to Tenko, but he makes you feel small regardless, in more ways than one. Rolling your shoulders back, you stare straight into his eyes, unwilling to back down. 

“I figured you wanted your space today.” You explain, as Touya moves around you to get to his rolling cart of tools, forcing you to turn toward him and follow him if you want him to hear you. “I know adjusting to a new handler is rough, and I never want to make you uncomfortable. But I was thinking we could try some of those pilot/handler bonding exercises. It might be good to start training like some of the others do.”

He drops the wrench in his hand onto his cart with a loud thud, turning around toward you with a look of disbelief on his face. “Pilot/handler bonding exercises? They really brainwashed the shit out of you at UA, huh?”

At the mention of your past academy, your eyes widen in surprise. You had no idea he knew about that. Clearing your throat in order to compose yourself, you speak again, “I left UA for a reason. I have no attachment to their methods, but you guys do the same stuff here, so what’s the issue?”

“The issue is that I never asked for a fucking handler in the first place, especially not one as eager as you.” He spits, “Sure, you’re understanding now, all that bullshit about ‘giving me space,’ but the moment you get a lick of power over me, you’ll change. You’re not different.”

“I don’t want power over you. This is an equal exchange. Pilot’s and handlers are meant to be a team—” You try and argue, but he doesn’t let you finish. 

“That’s what they told you, right? We’re a team, and as teammates, you make sacrifices. And it doesn’t matter if one of you turns into the other’s braindead dog because that’s your place.” His words hit you hard, the exact thought process you went through when leaving UA, completely disillusioned with their idea of “teamwork.” He’s right, and you know it, but since coming here, you thought that wasn’t how it had to be.

“Look, trust me, I get—” You’re cut off again.

“You went to UA! There’s no trusting you.” He scoffs, “It’s not like you’ll last here, anyway.”

“You are such a hypocrite! You’re from UA!” You retort, throwing your arms up in desperation. “You can hate me all you want. You can resist and resist and fry your brain ‘till there’s nothing left, but I believe in this shit. And you don’t get to tell me that I don’t, or tell me I’ll turn into something I worked so hard to get away from.”

Touya stands there, surprised by your outburst, completely unaware that you were capable of all of that. He doesn’t say anything back, and you roll your eyes. “So fuck you, and, by the way, her angel port is smoking.”

At your words, he turns in a rush, seeing the smoke billowing from Blue’s chest as he climbs his way up her form. Once inside his machine, he extinguishes the port and allows himself to relax. There are two things on his mind in this moment: how you could have possibly known it was the angel port without being inside of Blue’s chest and how, for the first time in a long time, he feels bad for his handler.

But for you, it’s the first time you’ve ever held your own against a pilot before, and that feels good.

…

Something feels weird.

Off, unsettling, strange.

He realizes, much to his dismay, that it’s your absence. Despite only having you around for such a short time, Touya has realized that your lack of presence now feels wrong. He hates it. He hates you. 

He can’t find you. You haven’t knocked on his door. You’re not in the caf, not the garage, not the sparring floor, not in your room. And he did check—without knocking. 

He’s not even sure how he can feel an absence. You aren’t a regular part of his life, and he never wanted you to be. But he feels all fucked up.

During training, Touya jams Blue’s halo core and she leaks vibrant neon from between her ribs. It takes him half an hour to get her reboot her system and rips one of the cables attached to the back of his suit in the process. He spends the afternoon cleaning HERO fluid off the sparring floor. 

During repairs, he shocks himself over and over while trying to fix her core, fingers burning from the sparks each time he arranges the wires inside. The cameras in her eyes won’t work from the reboot, and Blue won’t let him unlock the lens panel to fix it. It’s almost like she’s mad at him too.

He’s a complete mess. It’s your fault. He has no choice but to go looking for you. Again.

He searches every wing of the academy before concluding that you’re in your room. He barges through the joint door, spotting you at the counter in your tiny kitchen. You’re surprised by the intrusion, a frightened gasp falling from your lips as you jump in your seat. You turn toward him, prepared with angry words on your tongue, but Touya speaks first.

“You’re not getting an apology out of me, so don’t expect it.” He begins, moving to stand in front of your swiveling kitchen stool as he looks down at you. “But I’m willing to be civil with you, so we don’t have to do this shit anymore.”

You’re not exactly sure what “this shit” is, but Touya looks a little worse for wear at the moment, so you don’t question it. He places a tray from the caf down in front of you that you hadn’t noticed in his hands upon arrival, says nothing else, and turns to leave the room. After shutting your joint door, you look down at the tray of food, noticing one of his suckers placed onto a vacant compartment of the tray. 

You’re greeted the next morning with a knock on your door, Touya dressed in his pilot’s suit on the other side as you swing the door open. “C’mon. You’re gonna watch me train today.”

You watch him turn around to leave, expecting you to follow. You rush to pull on your combat boots and grip your dog tags in your fist as you rush to catch up to him. He doesn’t spare you a glance as you fall into step beside him, taking a look around his dorm before he leads you through the exit door. 

“You need to get a feel for my fighting style.” He explains as you walk down the corridor. “I’m not saying I’ll listen to you when it comes down to it, but it’s important for you to know.”

You nod, agreeing that you should definitely observe him inside of his HERO. By understanding his moves, you’ll be able to understand the way he thinks, and you’ll be able to help him in actual combat if needed. He’s already said he won’t listen to you, but it won’t stop you from trying. He stops abruptly, turning to look at you, and you stop with him. 

“If we’re gonna do this, it’ll be on my terms. I’m not your dog.” He tells you, seriously. He eye’s you up and down, taking in your expression as you nod at his words. “If anything, you’re mine.”

He begins walking again, leaving you in your spot, irritation filling your chest as you watch him, smug. “Asshole.” You curse under your breath.

“What’d you say?” He barks, turning to look at you abruptly.

“You’re an asshole.” You speak louder. He walks back toward you, making sure to tower over you intimidatingly as he looks down at you in annoyance. His eyes flicker down to the tags around your neck before hooking a finger on the chain and pulling you closer. 

“Watch it.” He drops the chain and walks away again. 

You follow him to the sparring floor, and he shows you where to go to watch. Stood behind a large window that looks over the sparring area, other members of the base watch the HERO’s engage in combat below. You spot Tenko and he motions for you to stand beside him. 

“I knew he’d warm up to you.” He comments. The last of the previous battle finishes and you watch the two enormous machines retreat to the sides of the area, their pilots emerging from their chests with their handlers rushing to the bottom of the mech’s in support. 

“He hasn’t. He’s not.” You shake your head. You aren’t sure why you deny it, if it’s some way to keep your expectations low or if there’s some kind of embarrassment aspect to the whole thing. Whatever is happening between you and Touya feels intimate and private, something that the two of you need to figure out for yourselves, not something meant for the eyes of others.

“Hm. Okay.” Tenko shrugs. “Guess not.”

You hadn’t noticed Touya enter his mech at all. You see the swing of one giant mechanic arm, too close to the window you stand behind, and you’ve shifted your full attention to the scene at hand. 

The enormity of the room surprises you, despite the fact that you had seen it just moments before. But when you’re truly looking at it, watching these huge machines go at each other, the way the ground shakes, the leaves outside shake, the deep forrest clear in view from the wall that opens out to the greenery (the lack of a wall is likely from the academy’s abandoned state, but it’s a good feature to have on the sparring floor when giant robots are toppled over onto various surfaces).

The way Blue moves is electric, mechanic movements almost feel fluid with the way that Touya pilots her, easily dodging attacks from their opponent and moving around them in the most graceful way a giant machine can. It’s beautiful, unlike any fighting style you’ve ever seen in a HERO before. 

“He’s showing off for you.” Tenko observes from beside you. You don’t argue with him, only because you can’t dispute it. This is your first time seeing him in action. It makes your heart beat out of your chest. There’s this ache like you should be inside with him, cables connected to both of you, tucked neatly inside of Blue together. 

It doesn’t take him long to get his opponent on their back, the heavy thump against the floor jostling the ant-like figures on the ground below, handlers waiting for their pilots to finish. It goes on like this for a while, his training, using different methods of combat and winning each time. He’s amazing, and you can tell why his reputation is the way it is, second only to Tenko, who you have yet to see in action. 

When he finishes his last session, you watch Blue walk to the edge of the room, and Touya emerges from her chest, jumping the long way down her body without any issue. You watch as he looks toward the window you’re behind. He waves at you, an acknowledgment of your presence, and you wave back, though you aren’t sure he can actually see you.

It’s the beginning of everything for the two of you. You think Tenko was right.

He lets you stay with him afterwards while he does maintenance on Blue. He helps you climb up the path to her chest, hauling you over the edge to sit inside with him. He turns around abruptly, holding a hand up before allowing you to walk any further.

“Do not touch anything.” He warns, completely serious, before letting his hand fall and allowing you further into the cockpit. You take in your surroundings, the guts of his machine, analyzing the different control panels and screens that line the interior. You can tell he takes good care of her, and he spends a lot of time in here. It looks lived in, stickers stuck to metal plating and pieces of him all over. He’s made a second home in between the ribs of his mech. You feel a little jealous, though you aren’t sure of what. 

The two of you sit against the left side of Blue’s interior, waiting for her updates to finish, the loading screen on each of her monitors display a fire graphic that grows with the increasing percentage on screen. Between you and Touya sits an opened bag of sour gummies, which Touya picks out the lemon flavor and drops the candy in your palm with each new handful he gathers. 

“How do you know all this stuff?” He questions around a mouthful of sour cherry, “Like, the real names for things, where stuff goes, how to fix them. That day with the wires…”

“I spent a lot of time around mechanics at UA, and then also at the PLF.” You explain, picking the yellow colored candy from his open palm as you speak. “I couldn’t connect with other handlers. I didn’t like how they thought, or how they viewed the pilot/handler relationship. Mechanics were mostly neutral, and they loved these machines like nothing else. They reminded me of why I joined UA in the first place.”

“Hm.” He nods, thinking about your past. “Well, I guess if you spent so much time around actual professionals…I could maybe use your help sometimes in the garage.”

“Really?” You question excitedly, a spark lighting up your eyes as you swerve your head toward him. He feels something tight in his chest at the sight.

“Yes, but only on the outside. I don’t want you messing with her insides, yet.” He establishes. “And never alone. I have to be there at all times.”

“Of course, yes, oh my god. Touya!” You smile, gripping his shoulder firmly, a gesture of thanks, communication of how much his trust means to you. “I’ll be so careful with her, I promise.”

“Yeah, well, you have no other choice.” He shrugs, throwing another pile of candy in his mouth. “I’ll kill you if anything happens to her.”

You take the threat seriously, but his heart isn’t in it. He’s realized that you’ve wormed your way into his life and he hadn’t even noticed just how entangled you were now. 

As the weeks go by, you spend a lot more time together. You work on blue together, and you rest inside of her chest, sometimes allowing yourself to drift off against his shoulder on especially tiring days. He sits beside you in the caf, and while he doesn’t always say much, the feeling of his arm against yours is comforting. You can tell people are starting to notice, and they’re starting to talk. You’re being dubbed someone who’s tamed him, but you know how far from the truth that is. 

Despite your differences and the petty arguments that come up when Touya feels like you’re intruding on his independence, you’re growing attached. You wonder if he is, too.

…

Spending time together in the garage becomes the new normal for the two of you. Being in each other’s dorms feels far too intimate, so you always meet in the garage. This way, one of you is always busy doing something with your hands. There’s no room for any strange feelings in the pit of your stomach to seep in. 

You sit in the crook of Blue’s neck, watching Touya as he repairs the lenses in her “eyes.” Blue has three pairs of eyes; in her head, her chest, and down near her hips, which all footage is projected onto monitors inside the cockpit so that Touya has a full view of what’s in front of him. 

He’s so peaceful while he works, you’ve noticed, almost like he goes somewhere else completely. It’s a part of him you don’t think many people get to see, a piece of him just for you, and you want to be selfish with it.

“Can I ask you something?” You question, leaning your head back against the metal. “But you can’t get mad.”

He looks up at you, still fiddling with a lens, a mocking look on his face. “I’m not making any promises.”

You take a deep breath, preparing yourself for the possible fallout of the question you’re about to ask, “What do you think about the soul link?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “I’d never do it.”

You nod your head in understanding, “yeah, I get it. It’s weird, right? The idea that someone else would be inside your brain.”

“It’s fucking invasive.” He says.

“You know, at UA it always felt like a threat, you know. Like, it was a way for a handler to control their pilot, not a tool or a bond like it should be.” You begin, thinking back to how you viewed the soul link back then. You didn’t like how the bond was presented as this power that a handler holds over their pilot, a threat to keep their pilot in line. But, you could understand how the link could be used for good. “But since coming here, I can tell it’s not all bad. People trust each other here. I mean, there’s obviously some people who abuse it, but, for the most part, everyone seems to understand what it really means to be a pilot and a handler.”

You’re mostly just thinking out loud, but Touya doesn’t say anything to your ramblings. He continues to work on the lenses, and you can gather that he doesn’t want to talk about the subject anymore. But you can’t let it go, yet. There’s something you’ve been worried about since you met him.

“And what about…your brain? They say when a handler and a pilot don’t complete the soul link, the pilot will eventually fry their brain.” You can’t help it. You think about it all the time, what will happen when he can’t take it anymore. The closer you get to him, the realer it feels. “Are you ever worried about that?”

He looks at you, an expression you can’t quite make out fall across his face as he stares. It’s almost soft, the way he looks at you in this moment. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

The truth is, this is a reality Touya has accepted. He’s not afraid to die, and he never has been. He’ll probably die inside of Blue, and he has no problem with that fact. He doesn’t need to be around for long, just enough to show his dad what he’s capable of.

“C’mon.” You stare. “That’s not fair.”

“Shit. I left some of the screws for this in my dorm.” He curses. He looks where you lounge, tucked into Blue’s shoulder. “Keep an eye on her, okay?”

You watch him jump down, much higher than his usual height at her chest, but he lands anyway. He doesn’t turn to look back at you as he jogs away. You climb up the side of Blue, and look at the lenses in her head. They’re already repaired, and you know Touya used the excuse of missing screw just so he wouldn’t have to talk about the soul link.

But it’s the first time he’s ever left you alone with Blue before. 

…

As the mission draws closer, Touya throws himself into training. You’re on the training floor with him most days, standing behind that big glass panel as you watch him spar with his peers. He still doesn’t let you down on the floor with him until he’s full out of Blue and close enough to the edge of the sparring floor to get to you. You’re not allowed in the actual training area, and even though he says he doesn’t want you clinging to him, it’s really because he wants to keep you safe. Seeing your human body near the giant machines that are HERO’s makes him want to grab you and keep you inside of Blue’s chest forever. 

You can tell all the training is taking a toll on him. With an excess of headaches and the occasional nosebleed, you continuously get into arguments about him cutting back on training inside of Blue. There are other ways for him to prepare that don’t involve his fragile brain being hooked up to an entity that takes so much. He doesn’t listen.

Later and later into the night, as your fellow pilots and handlers disperse and return to their rooms to sleep, Touya stays inside of Blue, testing her movements and sparring against test dummies and obstacles. Once you and Touya are the only two left on the sparring floor, you speak into the intercom attached to your head.

“Touya, I think you should take a break.” You tell him, “It’s late. Get some rest and then we can pick it back up in the morning.”

There’s a pause, then, “I’m gonna stay for another hour. Get some sleep. I’ll be done soon.”

“No, Touya. You’ve been at it for hours. You barely took a break for dinner. C’mon.” 

“You know, you sound awfully like a handler trying to tell their pilot what to do.” He teases, but you can hear the irritation in his voice.

“You are insufferable. I’m worried about you.” You groan.

“I’m fine. Go sleep.” He insists.

“If I find out you aren’t out of here in an hour—” Your line is promptly cut off, leaving behind static in your ear. You sigh and throw your com to the side. You hope he’s telling the truth.

With one last look at Blue, you make your way out of the training floor and find your way back to your dorm. 

Touya doesn’t answer the door when you knock the next morning. With a frustrated groan, you leave your dorm and head to the training floor, assuming he woke up early to get some extra hours in. The closer you get the the floor, you notice other members of the base rushing in front of you. Feeling panicked, you pick up the pace, jogging toward the training room to make sure something isn’t wrong. You collide with a body in front of you, nearly falling to the floor as you steady yourself. Toga stands in front of you, her cheeks red and eyes glossy as she explains something your mind can’t catch up to understand. The only thing you recognize is his name, and you’re running toward the training floor in an instant. 

You watch as Blue stomps around the area, her arms swinging in all directions, losing her footing as she moves. Knowing you can’t do anything on the floor, you make your way up to the overlook, finding Tenko yelling into your intercom. 

“What’s going on? What’s happening?” You ask him, pulling the headset off of his head and placing it on yours instead. 

“He’s out of fucking control. He won’t answer. I don’t even think he’s conscious in there.” He tells you, running a hand through his hair, pulling at the roots in anxiety. “You’re not linked yet, are you?”

You shake your head, closing your eyes in frustration as you try to think. You know it’s the only way. You have to take some of the burden off of him, make him share it with you. It’s the only way he’ll survive right now. “Do you think you can get into Decay right now and knock him down somehow?”

He hesitates, “I can get inside. I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to touch him at all.”

“You have to.” You plead, desperately. “I just need him down for ten seconds, tops. As long as I can get inside of her, I can save him.”

He looks at you like you’re insane, and maybe you are. But you know you can’t live with yourself if you don’t try something. Tenko nods.

“I can do it.” He tells you. You rush passed him, following the stairs down to the training area. You feel Tenk grab your wrist firmly. “You bring him back, okay?”

“I will.” You nod. 

He dodges Blue’s movements, weaving between her legs as he finally makes it to Decay. It takes a few moments for him to connect, but he goes straight for Blue. You watch the giant machines fight one another, but it’s clear that Blue’s lack of control hinders much of her ability. She needs Touya just as much as he needs her. It’s tough for Decay to dodge her swinging arms, but Tenko manages to knock her down quickly.

The fall shakes the room, but you waste no time running for Blue. Climbing over the side of her, you manage to touch your thumb to the pad on the outside to open her chest up. She begins to stand up, and you slip down, grabbing onto a bar beneath her ribcage. You let out a frustrated groan as you try to pull yourself up over the edge of the cockpit. Finally making it over, you see Touya sitting there, still connected to his pilot’s chair, eyes glazed over and blood gushing from his nose. You push the button that closes the panel in Blue’s chest, and you’re suddenly alone with him. 

Touya’s body is being jerked around by the movement of the mech, and you hang onto the walls of her chest in order to make your way to him. You situate yourself in his lap, taking his head in your hands as you look at him with tears in your eyes.

“You fucking asshole! I told you to take a break.” You sob, resting your head against his as you try and think of what to do next. “Touya, please. Please, baby, I need to you come back. Just fucking come back so I don’t have to do this without your permission, please.”

With no response from him, you wipe your tears, coming to terms with the fact that you have to complete the soul link now, or he’ll die. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, Touya. Please forgive me.”

The soul link isn’t exactly an action so much as it is a feeling, an experience. There’s no trigger for it, no way to make it happen. It just begins. 

It’s Touya, aged thirteen, wild, chubby-cheeked and happy, in the pilot’s seat of his father’s HERO. It’s his drive, his determination, his anger, his hurt. It’s the day he snuck into battle, the day he couldn’t get out, flesh burning and fusing to the metal walls of his mech, the feeling now deep in your skin. It’s you, aged fifteen, hopeful, alive, shaking hands with your first pilot. It’s your heart, much too big and much too open for your line of work, it’s your passion, your fire, every piece of you that was broken down again and again until there was nothing left. It’s Touya and it’s you, and every single bit of your souls now tied together in one big knot. 

There’s nothing but darkness. And then there’s screaming. And then you can hear everything. Every thought running through Touya’s brain right now echoes in your head as you slowly come back to yourself. He can hear the same of yours.

It’s overwhelming at first, to have two sets of thoughts in your head at the same time, but you manage to focus. You can feel an anger inside of you like you’ve never felt. It’s almost like it’s your own. You need to come back. You’ve lost control of Blue.

In an instant, you feel yourself come back to your body, now straddling Touya like before, you feel his arms shoot around you and he tucks his chin over your shoulder to pilot Blue like he’s used to doing. He pays no mind as he presses up against you, but you feel your heart rate increase at the closeness. 

He’s so close.

I have to be. You’re in my lap.

Shit. I didn’t think—

Clearly.

I can’t fucking believe you. I told you we weren’t going to do this.

You were dying!

Then you fucking let me!

You’re jostled around in his lap for a moment as he stops Blue from destroying any more of the training floor, and Touya wraps an arm around your waist, holding you steady.

He gains control of her quickly, moving her toward the edge of the room. You tuck your face into his neck, not wanting to distract him and keeping your thoughts at bay so you don’t overwhelm him. He powers Blue down, severing the neural connection between the two of you, and shoves you from his lap and into the pilot’s chair like you’ve burned him. He storms out of the cockpit, climbing out of his machine and leaving you inside. You think about the argument you had within each other’s head, how Touya would have rather died than be linked to you like he is now. 

You slump against the seat, comforted by the metal cage you’ve been left inside of. 

[catcze]

Do you think wrio would be the type to take the initiative for making out (among other spicy things)? Or would he wait for reader to make the first move?

I’m not thinking in terms of an established relationship, more like when they’ve been attracted to each other for a while.

Even if you don’t reply to the ask, just want to thank you for keeping the wrio simps well fed in this time of drought. I love love reading your posts, and they will help us all wait patiently till 4.1. Take care and have a good day! :D

!!! HI BABY IM SORRY IT TOOK ME 3 WEEKS TO ANSWER ⁉️⁉️ But thank you so much also ! I'm very honored to have people supporting and enjoying my works, esp. since Wrio is kind of new, so there wasn't much of an audience for x reader content of him for a little bit :D

In terms of a mutual pining, friends/coworkers-to-lovers type of situation, I think that Wriothesley would probably make the first move himself, though it would take a lot to make him snap.

He wants to make sure he's reading all the signals right. Archons forbid that he's delulu for you and imagining all the signals you're sending his way.

When it comes to you, he genuinely likes you— like, yes, in a romantic sense, but he also likes you so much as a person. He likes being around you and being able to just vibe. He likes working with you, because your teamwork just comes so naturally. And he worries that maybe he's reading the signals wrong. Maybe there's an off chance that his infatuation with you is making him see signs that aren't there. And he doesn't want to mess up your friendship, and he definitely doesn't want to make you uncomfortable. So it's gonna take some pretty strong signals from your end to convince him that he is not hallucinating those signals.

Wriothesley is fun to play with. Criminally so. That's why, on your end, even though you're definitely interested in him and you're pretty damn sure he's into you too, you'd rather that he figure the signals out himself, first.

It's kinda fun to fluster the Duke of Meropide, don't you think? The guy has a reputation for being stoic and (to some) rather intimidating, so it's a little cute to see him react to your playful flirting, and sometimes even have him flirt back too! And yes, you could end this little back and forth game early by making the first move but... why spoil the fun? It's not like you're in a rush, anyways.

A little short becauseeee im getting sleepy and my brain isn't working enough to give me a good ending HAHHAHA BUT 👀 if anyone is interested i have an idea of how a cont. of this could go sooooo 👀👀👀

[watchmegetobsessed]

JUST HOW FAST THE NIGHT CHANGES (part 4)

A/N: surprise update!! i was able to sneak some writing in today at work and i didn't want to hold onto the part once it was finished, so now im posting it before going to bed hehe but anyways, enjoy!

WARNING: discussion about miscarriage

PAIRING: Harry x High-School-Best-Friend!Reader

WORD COUNT: 3.3k

SERIES MASTERPOST | SUPPORT ME!

You never really had any trouble paying attention at meetings, but today it feels like torture to listen to your group leader tell about an upcoming project. Normally you’d be taking notes, but now your document is awfully empty in front of you, almost mocking you for being a mess.

It’s been your constant state since dinner at Harry’s.

It totally flipped your world upside down and you haven’t been able to stop thinking about it every waking moment.  You still have no clue what’s gotten into you to tell him about Drew and everything that happened, you hate talking about it, but with Harry it felt kind of… natural to open up. He gave just the type of comfort you’ve been seeking for a long time and you’d have never guessed it would be him to make you feel this way. 

And when he pulled out the beads from his wallet? You were absurdly close to start sobbing again. 

How are you supposed to go on from this point? Where are you even heading? Harry came back to your life kind of abruptly and judging from his invitation he is planning to stay this time. You have your fears and doubts about him still, you know you shouldn’t just jump right into this new situation so easily, but… part of you is desperate to be selfish and do what feels the best. 

“Y/N?” your team leader’s voice snaps you out of your thoughts and as you look up from the screen you notice that almost everyone has left the room.

“Oh, s-sorry… I got distracted a bit,” you mumble, shutting your laptop and gathering your things.

“Is everything alright?” Nadine approaches you with genuine worry in her eyes.

She might be your boss, but she’s been more like a friend. She knows what you went through and instead of adding to your plate for not being able to do as much work in the tougher times, she was right there to help you through it, giving you all the tools to keep you going and keep your job as well. You’re eternally grateful for that.

“Yeah, I’m just… a bit all over the place,” you huff out a chuckle.

“If you need a few extra days off, just let me know, we can try to make it work.”

“No, I’m fine, really,” you assure her. “Just had an overwhelming weekend, is all.”

“Alright, let me know if you need anything.”

“Sure, will do. Thank you,” you smile at her before heading towards the door, but before walking out, you stop and turn back. “Just theoretically, if I were to work fully remotely for a bit, like a few weeks, would that be okay?”

She looks up from her notes and nods.

“Of course. You know you have the chance to work from home as much as you want still.”

“Thanks.”

It came out of the blue, how you asked about full remote work. Harry’s invitation has been itching your brain since Friday and it seems like you’re starting to get familiar with the thought of it.

You spend the rest of the day tucked away in your little corner cubicle, trying your best to focus on work. Your stomach growls violently when you finally stand up from your desk and get ready to leave. Your mouth waters when you think about dropping by your favorite sandwich place on your way home, but for some reason you’re not a fan of having dinner alone tonight. 

And before you could even think about it, you’re texting Harry.

Y/N: Do you have plans tonight?

By the time you pack your stuff and head out of the building you already have a reply to your text.

HARRY: Nothing in particular, but I feel like it’s about to change. :) 

Y/N: Want to grab dinner with me?

HARRY: Absolutely, I’m on my way.

Y/N: I haven’t even said where.

HARRY: Doesn’t matter, I’m on my way.

You laugh at his text as you shoot him the address to the sandwich place before you’re off on your way as well.

Harry has a skip in his step as he rounds the corner from the parking lot. He actually had plans for the afternoon, some work he needed to take care of but there was no doubt he would trade it to have some time with you. 

The sandwich place you invited him out to seems small, not too crowded or popular, but if you like it he knows he will too. You’re already by the front door when he arrives, approaching you with a goofy smile. 

“For a moment I thought you weren’t coming,” you chuckle, as he greets you with a warm hug.

“Of course I came, I would have been stupid not to,” he simply answers and you ignore how your heart just skipped a beat.

He smiles when the guy behind the counter greets and calls you by your name. You order your usual as always and Harry chooses the Very Veggie one before the two of you take a booth in the corner, tucked away from prying eyes. 

“Okay, oh my God, this is very good, now I understand why it’s your favorite place!” He moans with his mouth full right after the first bite of his sandwich.

“You had doubts? I’m offended!” you gasp dramatically, to which he just grins. 

The conversation almost picks up from where you left it off last time. Even though you’re out in the public this time, he is able to bring the same kind of comfort that held you at his place. It’s a lot lighter, the heavy stuff is off the table, but it still feels just as important. 

“So did you think about coming to Palm Springs?” he asks with a smirk as he wipes his mouth with a napkin.

“Mm, I did,” you shortly answer.

“And? What do you think?”

“Why do you want me there so badly?” you ask with a sigh, though a smile is playing on your lips. 

“Because I want to see you on my birthday,” he simply answers with an innocent shrug. 

“You survived your last ten birthdays without me.”

This could have sounded offended, but it’s not the case, you’re cheeky and it was just some teasing, luckily Harry could tell too so he doesn’t take it to his heart.

“And it was so horrible!” he gasps dramatically, making you laugh. “All my favorite birthdays are the ones I spent with you!”

“So you haven’t had a good birthday in a decade? Poor thing!” you play along.

“See? You can’t let me have another bad birthday!” He even pouts his lips at you, giving you the puppy eyes which just makes you laugh again as you shake your head in disbelief. It’s good to see that he is just as persistent as he was before. 

He doesn’t want to push you too much, doesn’t want you to feel like you can’t say no, so he is ready to drop the topic when you surprise him.

“Okay.”

“Okay?” he asks, eyes widening. “W-what do you mean okay?”

“I’ll go to Palm Springs with you.”

It takes a couple of moments for him to register what you just agreed to, but when it finally sinks in he can’t control his happiness. 

“Yes! Fuck yes!” he throws his hands up into the air, as if he just won the lottery. There are only two other people in the shop, they give him a weirded out look, but he ignores them all, eyes glued to you over the table. “Okay, I’ll take care of everything, you don’t have to worry about anything, it’s gonna be so good!”

“I have to move a few things around at work though, so it’s not entirely certain, alright?”

“Sure, let me know if you need help with anything. I’ll send you over everything about the traveling and all, okay?”

“Okay,” you chuckle lightly, touched by the enthusiasm he is showing you. 

You stay a little longer before heading home, Harry insists on dropping you off and secretly he also wants to know where you live. It’s a simple neighborhood with similar townhouses lining the street, he can totally picture you walking around, coming home from work or going grocery shopping. 

“So when can I see you again?” he asks, parking down in front of your place. 

“Why are you always asking me this?” you chuckle.

“Because I want to see you,” he admits without shame, completely oblivious to what it does to you.

You can’t deny the romantic feelings you have for Harry, maybe it’s what’s left from the past, maybe it’s something entirely new. It doesn’t matter. It’s something you haven’t experienced in a long time and because of what happened to you not long ago, you’re not entirely sure what to make of it. 

“I’ll call you. Or you can call me too,” you smile shyly before leaning over the console and giving him a little awkward side hug before getting out of the car. 

He watches you jump up the stairs and open the front door, turning back you wave at him one last time before walking in and shutting the door behind you. He drives away with a lovesick sigh.

Since last time it was you who invited him out, he thinks it’s his job to take the next step. And he’ll gladly do it. 

He’s been thinking and planning what to do next, dinner, museum, casual hangout, he’s thought of it all by the point Friday rolls around again and he knows he needs to up his game and not waste any more time. So Friday morning he texts you.

HARRY: Hey! Do you want to watch a movie tonight? We can order food and everything.

He doesn’t expect an immediate reply from you, he goes on with his day as usual, but keeps checking his phone, only to see no message from you. When lunch time rolls around he starts to worry. He doesn’t want to be a bother, maybe you just have too much work to do, but he still wants to know you’re alright.

So against the anxious voice in his head, he calls you sometime in the afternoon when it’s been way too long since his text.

The line rings and rings, he starts to think he will not get an answer, but at last you pick up.

“Yeah?” Your voice is weak, kind of sleepy and might be even pained, he can’t tell just from this one little word. 

“Hey, it’s… it’s me, Harry,” he starts, unsure if you even know he is the caller. “Is everything alright? Did you see my text?”

He doesn’t want to be pushy, but he can’t rid himself of the worry that’s crawling up his spine as there’s a long pause on the other end of the line. 

“Um, I saw it. I just… don’t think I can do it tonight.”

“Are you alright? Not to be rude or anything, but you sound… kind of sick?”

“I’m not sick, I… I can’t tonight, I’m sorry.”

Now he is on full alert mode, he knows something is off and he can’t just let it go.

“Do you need help with anything? I can do grocery shopping or I could just cook for you, anything, Y/N, just let me know.”

There’s silence on your end again, until he hears you sniffling and he knows he won’t be able to keep himself out of whatever it is.

“Can you come over?” you then ask, your voice barely more than just a whisper.

“I’m on my way, do you want me to bring anything?”

“No, just…”

“It’s okay, I’m on my way, Y/N.”

“Okay, thank you.”

Harry runs a few red lights probably and gets to your place in record time. You texted him earlier that you’d leave the front door open, so he pushes it in without hesitation and walks into your home, frantically looking for you.

“Y/N? It’s me, Harry!” he calls out not to scare you. 

“Here!” you answer weakly and he starts running in the direction of your voice, finding himself in your tiny kitchen. 

He would never tell you this, but you look like crap. It’s obvious you’re not feeling well, your hair is a mess, your face is paler than usual, a fluffy blanket draped around your shoulders as you’re holding a heating pad, that you must have just filled with warm water. It instantly clicks what the matter is.

“Hey, how are you feeling?” he softly asks as he approaches you, placing a gentle hand on your shoulder.

“Like shit,” you mumble under your breath.

“Are you hurting more than usual, or…?”

“It’s… it was always bad painwise, but… since my miscarriage it’s really hard mentally too,” you admit, refusing to look up from the tiled floor.

“Come on, let’s get you to bed. I’ll make you some tea, okay?” 

You nod and he keeps a hand on your back as he walks you back to your bedroom, lifting the covers so you can climb in, curl up and then he tucks you in as you hold the heating pad to your stomach.

He shuffles back to the kitchen without a word, starts the kettle as he searches through your cabinets to see if he can make you something to eat. 

“Here. Do you need some medicine maybe?” he asks, playing the mug on your nightstand.

“Already took some.”

“Alright. Try to sleep, okay? I’ll stay, let me know if you need anything.”

You fall asleep listening to Harry moving around outside your bedroom. You don’t even have the energy to worry about him seeing your messy home. 

You have no idea how late it is when you wake up, but it’s dark outside. Your cramps are gone,the heating pad has cooled down and your mouth is ridiculously dry. The door is left ajar and some dim light is coming through the crack, illuminating the mug you remember Harry left on your night stand, the once hot tea is not room temperature, but you chug it down eagerly before getting out of bed.

First you go to the bathroom and then you start looking for Harry, finding him on the couch in the living room, the TV is on, but the volume is so down, it’s almost on mute. It seems like he is right about to dose off, you almost turn around and let him sleep, but then the floor creaks under your feet and his head snaps up.

“Hey! You’re up,” he softly says, sitting up straight as you join him on the couch.

“Yeah. What time is it?” you ask, rubbing your eyes as he checks his phone.

“It’s half past ten. You slept for like, four hours.”

“Ah fuck,” you exhale, pulling your legs up as you lean against the back of the couch, facing Harry. “You’ve been here all along?”

“Yeah, I made some soup for you, cleaned the kitchen up and I fixed the tap, it was leaking. I’ve been just watching TV for the past hour.”

“Wait, you fixed the tap?” you ask, eyes going wide. 

“Yeah.”

“Y-you didn’t have to do that.”

“Y/N, it’s fine, don’t worry about it. How are you feeling?”

“Better. I’m sorry you got stuck here while I was sleeping.”

“I wasn’t stuck,” he shakes his head. “And I’m always happy to spend time with you. Even when you’re not awake,” he adds with a chuckle. 

“Thank you. It’s good to see your heart is still the same.”

“I try to keep it at the right place,” he smirks and thinks how part of it is with you, so it will always be at the best place possible. 

“You don’t have to stay, I’ll be fine,” you say, your head resting on the back of the couch.

“Do you want me to stay?” You hold a short pause before nodding shyly. “Then I’ll stay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Can’t be more sure. So, what are we doing? Want to watch a movie?”

“That would be great.”

You start some random movie on Netflix and as time passes by you migrate closer to each other until your head is resting on his shoulder and he has an arm around your curled up frame. You happily bask in the comfort he radiates, it makes you forget about the crisis you went through just hours ago.

It has happened before. This time of the months has been rough on you, a reminder of what you lost so it’s not only painful physically, but it takes a toll on you mentally as well. The past couple of months you spent the first two days curled up in a ball, crying your eyes out until you were able to function again. 

With Harry by your side the pain has faded faster than ever, his presence created just the right amount of distraction for you to move past this hard point quickly. 

When the movie ends you start another one, but you talk over that mostly, it becomes just background noise. You have no idea when, but at one point you fall back asleep. When you wake the next time the TV is still on, Netflix is trying to recommend you shows to start watching so the movie has ended a long time ago. Beside you Harry is snoring lightly, his head tipped back, lips open slightly.

However creepy it is, but you give yourself a minute to just stare at him. You haven’t been able to take a good look at him without meeting his curious gaze.

You see so much of his old, teenage self, but they are laced with maturity and change as well. His sharp jawline is impressive compared to the round cheeks he had as a young boy. His bone structure is a lot more defined, manlier, but you recognize his old self in the slope of his nose, the way his eyelashes curl against his cheeks and his lips are the same shade of pink still.

It slowly dawns upon you how fast things have changed and now you have him back in your life when just weeks ago you weren’t even talking.

But you wouldn’t have it any other way, you realize. You have such a strong connection with him, one you haven’t experienced with anyone else, not even with Drew.

Harry stirs in his sleep and a few seconds later he blinks his eyes open, trying to process what’s happening around him.

“Hey,” you smile at him softly.

“Hey. We fell asleep?” He clears his throat.

“Yeah.”

“What time is it?”

“Late,” you answer simply. 

“Give me a minute and I’ll get going, I promise,” he sighs, closing his eyes again.

“Or you could just stay,” you suggest, surprising even yourself with the offer. 

He blinks open one eye, then the other, as if he was waiting for you to take it back, but you’re not planning to.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Come on. My bed is comfier than this couch,” you chuckle, patting his chest gently before pushing yourself up.

“Y-you want me to sleep in your bed?”

“I don’t have a guest bedroom. You can stay on the couch, if you don’t want to sleep next to me,” you shrug, trying to look like it’s a whatever situation for you, but your heart would definitely break a little if he didn’t want to share your bed.

Luckily, he is on the same page as you.

“The bed is fine. Perfect actually,” he nods eagerly, as he stands from his spot, he turns the TV off and then follows you into the bedroom. 

It’s unusual, but also feels completely comforting to get under the covers with Harry, like you’ve done this before. You both stay on your side, not mingling, but it’s still such an intimate moment you’ll probably never forget.

“Good night, Harry,” you whisper in the darkness and even though you can only make out his silhouette, you just know he is looking at you.

“Good night, Y/N.”

Thank you for reading, please like and reblog if you enjoyed and buy me a coffee if you want to support me!

[jamescomjj]

Kenjaku x Jin Itadori ⁠♡

So, hi! Uuhh, first time posting actual writing here, quick reminder English is *not* my first language so sorry if something just doesn't make much sense, anyways, I think about them a lot, it's very short cause my brain doesn't have that much creativity to write big things but i love them so much I had to at least write something. Enjoy 🥺

-----

Kenjaku told himself it was all for the plan, he believed so for most of the time but there was a point where it became all too much to ignore, the increasing feelings of genuine care and love for Jin were becoming utterly overwhelming, something he at first brushed off as Kaori's personality rubbing on him but as time passed by pretending wasn't a need anymore, it came so naturally it was terrifying, it made him feel human again.

During his pregnancy he was spoiled and treated like a God, each day with that man was like heaven on earth, kind, caring, compassionate and completely obsessed with him - Or rather, with Kaori, though the lines got blurred at times, he passed so much time as her it was if she became a part of who he is, core and soul fused into something different, he isn't the same Kenjaku he was since he became Kaori. 

But that was the past, he now inhabits the body of someone else - Suguru Geto, someone who has his own desires, his own special someone and needs, but for some reason these don't seem to affect him as much as Kaori did, as if that spot of love has already been claimed by someone else to Kenjaku, a spot no one can take. The memories and things he felt while with Jin persist in his mind, each time Kenjaku closes his eyes he's haunted by that sweet absolute pure smile of that damned man, while in bed his body squirms under the blankets, yearning for that loving touch, that tender caress, longing for it so bad it makes him doubt everything he ever did, every cell on his body screaming to go back to that soothing moment of true peace, true happiness. 

He opens his eyes tiredly as sleep fails him once again that week, his gaze locking on the dark ceiling of the lonely room illuminated by the light of the moon coming through an open window, accompanied by the cold nightly breeze. Silence and coldness, it was all he had left.

A glimpse of a memory tingles the back of his cerebrum, the only part of him that is true, and as that scene rushes back like a movie playing in front of his eyes he realizes something. 

He wasn't able to kill Jin, he never could do such a thing, he loved him so much he couldn't take away the other man's life - he suppressed that memory to the deepest of his physique, all for Jin's sake, for his safety he forced himself to forget he spared his beloved, so they wouldn't meet again. Blurry images of a house forcefully plagued his mind, darkness and the reflection of glasses.

Not anymore. This wasn't a matter of concern now, it was pure selfish desire for that love again, to possesses that man again, after all, Kenjaku is an egotistical self-centered person, it is all about him, about what he wants, and he not only wants that back, he needed it. His desperation is so crushing that the idea of not having Jin at his side right now makes him completely miserable, a mess of what he used to be. 

Without a moment's hesitation he stood to his feet, leaving his place of stay to go in search of that man through the night out in a white shirt and baggy pants, no time to change into proper clothing.

Kenjaku didn't remember perfectly where he left Jin, the memory of that day was cloudy - with a frustrated sigh he stopped, taking a moment to breath in the cold air and put his thoughts in place, he searched thoroughly in his own brain, each step, each word they shared, each location he went to in the modern world until it finally came back to him, relief would be a understatement. 

Upon arriving at the house he found it to be rather well cared for, he didn't exactly expect for the other man to have stayed there after all those years but there it was, in better condition than he had left it. He noted the lights on by looking at the windows, glad his early meltdown wasn’t fruitless.

With a trembling hand Kenjaku reached for the handle, his fingers curling around it as he pushed and opened the unlocked door. His vision was immediately blinded by a well-known figure, being met with the sight of Jin who was reaching for the handle from the inside. 

They both stopped in place, looking into each other's eyes for painful long minutes of complete silence, Kenjaku's gaze drifted down Jin's body, taking in his older figure - it has been 16 years but somehow that man looks just as gorgeous as he remembers, aging like fine wine. Jin opened his mouth but no sound came out, Kenjaku did a similar gesture with his own lips but equally mute.

That was until a chuckle broke away from Jin, that ravishing smile tugging at the side of his lips as his eyes filled with tears. “You're surely taller, Kaori.” He said with a hint of tease, finally taking the breath he was holding back until now. “Hello again, my love. If…I can still call you that?” He questioned cordially.

“...Yes, please.” Kenjaku nodded as he finally found his words, tilting his head to the side as he slowly came back to his usual playful self. “We have a lot to discuss, my love.” 

[soaps-mohawk]

Oh, we love the update🫶 Take your time for the next one, no pressure🫂

You're slaying, breaking hearts, and making people gnaw at the bars of their enclosures. Thank you for your wonderful brain coming up with the concept of this fic. It will be one of those fics you'll think about at the dead of night, years after it's been completed.

So, I can clearly see your fic seeping itself into our minds at the dead of night just as we're about to sleep or have nothing else to do.

I can also assure you, as an AO3 reader who's been on this one fic with no update schedule, it may take months for the author to update, but it's all worth it in the end. The author takes their well needed rest, and the reader gets to foam at the mouth.

I've also seen this one comic, the author took a year break(they stated they didn't know for how long they'd need this break, just until they were okay) for personal reasons. None of us really minded. If they needed a break. They can take it. Doesn't matter how long the break will take, you as a person are important.

And, it's very amazing to me how people can come up with these ideas. I've never seen a story like yours. It's unique. It's mind scratching. And it tells me what day of the week it is. Like, what do you do to come up with this? This masterpiece?

Anyway, sorry for the rant😅 You don't need to reply to this at all! Just wanted to say my appreciation. Please take care❤️

Y'all I can't 😭 this is too kind. I so wish I was better at taking compliments 🫣 i feel like I'm just constantly repeating myself but y'all just leave me speechless with your kind words.

No but I only know what day it is because of crcb too 😂 updating those two weeks on Sunday really messed with my head lol I had to delay my laundry to Tuesday because I was so off on Monday being the day after posting

Don't apologize!!! Send me a novel in my asks I don't care (I'm so old I remember when there were character limits on tumblr asks 😂)

[drinkinboilingcoffee]

OK so I KNOW I haven’t posted in ages I’m sorry guys art/writing eventually BUT…

Ok so I had a dream based on the FNAF movie like a week after I watched it and I woke up in the middle of the night and wrote it down, here’s a re-written version of the script:

(NOTE: This would theoretically be a month or so after the movie universe version of Sister Location and is based on a theory I had that Vanessa is Circus Baby)

-(Post-scoop) Mike and Abby are sitting in a box seat in some kind of abandoned theater. Mike glances at Abby, who’s using some kind of Gameboy-type game system, typing messages back and forth with someone.

-Mike looks across the seating row to see (phantom, I think?) Bonnie and Freddy staring back at them. Bonnie seems to concentrate for a moment, then another message pops onto the screen.

-Mike: (hoarsely) “You’re… talking to them?”

-Abby (nods) “You can see them?”

-Mike shrugs, looking back at the spirits, who seem to be conversing amongst themselves. “Just another thing that’s new, I guess.” He he laughs a little, which turns into a fit of coughing. Glancing towards the other side of the theater, he starts to space out, thinking.

-Suddenly, Mike catches a glance of something familiar out of the corner of his eye. Standing up with a start, he stares at the spot for a while. “Wh-“

-Abby (excitedly): “Mike, Mike!” She grabs him by the shoulder, startling him back into reality.

-Mike: “What?”

-Abby holds out her game, showing a series of new messages. Mike reads them, then rereads them, as his blood runs cold.

Vanessa: Hello Abby. Good to see you again. Is your brother there?

I want to talk to him.

-Mike: “Abby, don’t-“

-Abby: “Mike, it’s her! She’s here!” Holds out the game. “See, she wants to talk to you!” (Another ping) “She says she misses us.”

-Mike laughs bitterly. “She doesn’t miss us. She doesn’t care, Abby.”

-Abby (pleading): “Mike, she does! You know she does! Look!” She tries to shove the messages in his face, and he squeezes his eyes shut. “Please! You mean the world to her! You’re her only friend!”

-Mike (voice strained and harsh): “Abby, I don’t know if you forgot, but she and those other animatronics gutted me alive a few weeks ago. She wore my corpse until I was too messed up looking to use as a disguise and then she left us. She left you, Abby!” He realizes he’s scaring her and goes silent. He goes to to speak again, softer this time. “Abby, look-“

-Another ping goes off. Mike’s eyes dart to the screen, and he tries to grab it before Abby reads it. “Mike, she says she’s going to come see us again!”

-Before he can even think, Mike tries to grab the console, attempting to pry it out of Abby’s hands. “DON’T TALK TO HER! DON’T-“

*crack*

The game tumbles to the ground, screen shattering to pieces.

Anyway that’s all my brain vomited at me before I woke up it’s not that good but if someone wants to write a fic or something just @ me

[moosemonstrous]

yep I misspelled Guero in the last one my bad anyway! this has to get posted or I'll never move on

Ghost Rider Pacific Rim AU - calm waters

“What’s with the tracker?”

Robbie belatedly realises this isn’t the first time Guero asked him this question. It’s hard to hear anything with the number of people all eating, talking and moving around in the mess hall. Third shift is always the busiest for food, all three kitchen bays turning out enough trays to tile the base. Over the last week it became rather obvious that Robbie can indeed fit in twice the rations after a six hours training session, but that means he needs to make sure he doesn’t inhale it all before Gabe has finished eating. It’s your damn food. Just tell him to stop fucking around with that tablet and hurry up. It’s assigned reading. He’s been doing tons of his own reading now, that’s good, it’s good that he doesn’t need Robbie to read for him— “Sorry, what?”

Guero points his chin at the black band around Robbie’s left bicep. It’s just him joining in for dinner today, the rest of the guys unwilling to wait until he was finished with the school handover. Robbie’s pretty sure he’s trying to hit on the TA. She doesn’t seem terribly interested, but it’s not his place to point it out.

“It’s for blood pressure,” he shrugs. He’s almost forgot about it, the steady squeeze and release around his arm just part of the general static his head fills with after running suicides. He hates running. His opinion doesn’t count for much in the gym. “I’m—”

“She jumped off!” Gabe interrupts him, finger pressed hard into the tablet screen to highlight a passage. “Robbie, she jumped off the roof! I don’t want her to get hurt!”

Robbie draws a blank. Normally, he’d keep ahead of whatever Gabe is reading so he can reassure him everything will be okay down the line. This whole week, though, he’s been going out like a light the second his head hit the pillow, and he’s not even entirely sure which story this is— “Hey, buddy, it’s alright,” he reaches out to grasp Gabe’s hands as they begin to clench and unclench in distress. “You have to keep reading, yeah? I’m sure she’ll be alright; you just need to keep on reading to find out.”

Gabe squeezes his fingers until his knuckles turn white and does the three-fours breathing a few times. It seems to work, because rather than starting to fidget in his chair he reaches back for the tablet. He nods to himself, steady, before clicking the device back on.

“Don’t forget your food,” Robbie pushes the fork back into his hand. He can feel Guero’s gaze on the side of his face. “What?”

“Kid’s got a lot of feelings, huh.”

“He’s right here,” he mutters. Gabe doesn’t seem to be paying attention to anything other than his book, but it doesn’t mean he can’t hear this kind of crap. “It’s okay to get upset about a story.”

Guero frowns for a moment before he figures out the last comment wasn’t really meant for him, but Robbie’s glare definitely is. “Are you—” he glances significantly between Gabe and Robbie’s blood pressure meter.

What a dickhead. Like they’d let you into the academy if you were—“It’s just for monitoring.”

“Monitoring what?”

Aw, he’s worried you’ll weigh him down. Fucking upstart. “I don’t know, it’s not like they’re telling me anything. It’s just a lot of brain scans.”

Gabe had a turn in the magnetic scanner a couple of days ago. It was hard for him to keep still for long enough, but for all that Robbie agonised he’d unwittingly set his brother up to be a test subject right alongside him, Dr Montesi never asked him back. Cho said they were just being thorough – that Gabe’s brain was fine, considering. Robbie is still considering if it’s really worth learning all of those martial arts if he can’t use them on annoying pricks in lab coats.

Meanwhile, Guero’s face goes on a bit of a journey. “Damn. They’re really pushing you forward.”

He sounds like he’s trying to hide he’s angry about it. Robbie puts his fork down just in case. “What are you on about?”

“Is it because of your dad? They’ll really let you pilot Hell Charger?”

“What?” Last Robbie heard about it, it was Cho arguing with Stark about extracting The Charger’s Conn-Pod for further testing. Apparently a no-go. “No, it’s decommissioned. It doesn't even have a reactor.”

Guero crosses his arms over his chest. “I’ve heard the techs talk. It’s getting a refurb. You can just tell me, you know.”

“I’m not going near that thing.” Liar. He hasn’t told anyone what landed him in R&D’s clutches in the first place. Nobody said he couldn’t, not even the Colonel, but it feels like the kind of thing he should be keeping to himself. It’s bad enough that the word spread his dad was a ranger. People look at him and Gabe funny whenever their last name comes up. “Besides, they’re getting a new jaeger any day now, right?”

“Well, I don’t know. You’re the one cosying up to the strike team.”

“I’m not—”

“Forget it,” Guero waves him off. He’s so fucking jealous. Watch it, guys like that will stab you in the kidneys to get ahead. “And if you really don’t know what the tests are for, fucking ask, are you insane? There are like, reps.”

“Yǔyán,” an older woman chides them from across the table. Guero bristles.

“Mind your business,” he barks. Stops swearing, though. It’s one of those weird unspoken rules in the Shatterdome – you’re supposed to keep it civil in the support areas. This is why soldiers tend to stick to their own barracks. It’s kind of embarrassing to be told off by a cleaning technician and impossible to assert dominance with hundreds upon hundreds of other civilians surrounding her, watching.

Cho mentioned they’ve got two sociologists on staff, studying cultural development in the semi-enclosed environment of a Shatterdome. Apparently Hong Kong is particularly interesting to researchers, what with a major city only a short ferry ride away. Sometimes, Robbie wonders if the L.A. base was at all similar. It didn’t really use civilian contractors. He rarely gets to ask follow-up questions when Cho goes on a tangent, and he doubts Guero would know, or care.

“Anyway,” Guero says, still giving the woman a stink eye. “Reps. Get one.”

Yeah, sure. See how long they keep you if you start complaining. And it’s mostly just training now, anyway. There are no new tests, just repeats of the same ones. Dr Montesi wants Robbie to have another full psych eval, but with the intake of new recruits for the academy there’s a bit of a waiting list. Is it weird that he’s relieved, that he has to wait for his turn? Yep. But it’s not like a psych eval will show anything, anyway. Cho seems to be doing everything at such a breakneck pace, it’s nice to know Robbie has a schedule to follow for at least the next couple of weeks.

Funny. That’s how long until the next demon is due.

[seahdalune]

Seana's 2023 art highlights

(surprisingly, not a reupload this time!)

January: i drew nothing! we're off to a great start.

February: i drew something! i love Champ even if i haven't drawn anything tf2 related since April. i think it was this piece where i decided to give Champ RED coloring. [link]

also, this is the month i made my second Moldy plush.... i wasn't very happy with this one, though. [link]

March: uhhhh. more of my tf2 ocs but i think those aren't that interesting. just go to my tf2 oc blog @brokenbrainstormbulb if you wanna see them honestly, i have an image limit to keep ffs. that said, this was around the time i got into TC2, so i drew a lot of that kind of stuff... i'm never drawing stuff for it ever again, sorry. [link]

April: look at the cool thing i drew for a fellow tf2 robot fan! now, this is the point in time where i start drawing more because of a certain interest, so look forward to all the art that'll come up here.....

May: wow, this really was my first public piece of Papa Louie art, huh. i was so proud of it when i showed it off on tumblr the first time... i don't like it as much anymore. for one, the office wall color is wrong.... i still can't believe Papa Louie was what got me out of art block, but god, i'm glad it did. i don't think i've drawn this much before, and even though the community's tiny, i'm glad to give back as much as i can. anyways, i said something like "it's so funny that people think they're either super married or divorced as hell" on the same post. i still think that, and it's defos funny as hell, but i've grown a kind of appreciation towards the ship as well. like yeah, you go girls, we love that extra slow burn with so many road bumps on the way! [link]

June: how the hell did i pump this out. this was also like a few days before i had to leave for the airport too... i don't know myself sometimes. i swear i still love Boigashipping! i just... i'm just busy with other ships okkkk [link]

July: i didn't draw anything...? i was in Bali. and i was busy selling adopt designs to draw anything substantial, oopsie! actually, i DID draw the first part of WDB... it's uh, still the only part. i'm sorry!!!! i'm sorry!!!! i swear i have the whole thing outlined!!! can you just give me anons about the story instead so you won't have to wonder what comes next!! [link]

August: TOSI fixation. it had not gone past it's conceptual stage, i must note. i do wish i would do something about it though. [link]

September: the art trade i did with my friend! actually, i was a few weeks late with my part, so it was supposed to be finished by August. oops. i like the textures tbh. my Chuseok drawings.... i need to draw more characters in hanbok, hee hee. [link]

October: (breaths in) ...this is the month i finally gave into the JoGotcha wantings. LOOK. ever since someone put the idea into my brain i couldn't get enough of it, and like,, nobody draws the ship anymore so i had to take matters into my own hands. this is the first ship i'm this obsessed with. i usually leave ship stuff to other people but this time that wasn't enough and i... i had to do SOMETHING, y'know? [link]

Cringetober? who's that? haha;; i stopped feeling like doing the whole list after less than a week. impressive.

November: oh look, Plushy Power League. Quinn didn't win, but i do like the thing i drew as propaganda, so whateves. the first Papa Louie character i ever drew (minus Chuck and Taylor)... did i change how i draw her? uhh. maybe? i'm not too sure. [link]

also look! the keychain drawing... i need to talk about my Gods and Monsters au again at some point. actually, since i last uploaded the image of my keychain, i revised it tons... it's kinda different now, and i defos think it looks better. this is actually the time i finally fixed the stupid display setting thing that was really messing up my coloring! [link 1] [link 2]

December: ...oops! tablet broke. and i got my 3ds back so i just didn't draw that much even after exams were over. didn't stop me from drawing though, and in fact i think i made something pretty neat with my christmas art.... even if it did come one day late. [link]

wow. that's a whole year of stuff... and that's defos a lot! i think i'm really happy with what i drew this year.... i don't know what was in my water the last few years but my art highlights felt really.... miserable? for some reason. i mean, yeah, i didn't do a lot of what i had planned (GOE ANIMATIC IM SORRY) but i can see that i've done just as much with my hands anyways, so like, who cares? plus, i always have next year... that's coming in 3 hours, oh god- so, maybe i won't be too hard on myself for not fulfilling my goals... like, i kinda glossed over it, but i did sell my designs for money, and that's like, really impressive! so many people around me buy and sell their art stuff already, so i guess i didn't really register it as something to be proud of... but doing that shit (making, and marketing) is hard!! so like, it's a wow moment for me!

anyways, i'm tired, i only came back home a few hours ago, and i need to get up again for church in a few hours.... mrphgdjd. lets stop being sentimental, and i'll see you people next year. that's a long way off! hope you don't miss me.

[blackberrysummerblog]

WIP Folder Tag Game

Finally slinking back on here after I don’t know how long 😬 First of all, I want to thank everyone who’s been tagging me the past few weeks, I really do appreciate it! I just haven’t had a lot of energy left over to actually do much writing and/or posting, even though I still have a lot of “writing” happening in my head. (On a side note, that used to work out a lot better when I was younger—I could hold entire paragraphs verbatim in my mind for weeks at a time; now I’m lucky if I even remember roughly what direction I wanted a scene to take, lol).

And thank you so, so much to those who offered to let me bend their ear about my writing difficulties. I really do plan to take you up on it, but I’ve been procrastinating partly out of brutal shyness and partly because I’m not even sure where to begin, the reasons for which may become apparent from seeing the folders I’m about to share. I mean, yikes.

Anyway, I’m excited to play along and I’m happy to answer any asks I get! (Thanks @palimpsessed for tagging me to play!)

Rules: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how nondescriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! Then tag as many people as you have WIPS.

Shelter from the Storm (RWRB)

Runaway Train (Whyborne & Griffin)

The next group are Snowbaz WIPS, many of which were begun for COC22. Still hoping to get them finished! (Those that are numbered are out of order because I use google docs, so the list is in order of what’s been most recently opened)

Beginnings

Fluff, COCC Day 15

Devotion, COC22 Day 13

Devour, COC22 Day 12

EGF23 dead darlings

So, crap. The next grouping is my shame revealed, lol. I NEVER write like this, but this is what has happened: My crucible marriage AU is a complete and utter shambles of separate files, all individual scenes that I’ve been trusting my brain to knit together at some future point. And I still believe that it will, actually, but it’s something new to me. I’m more the kind of writer who envisions an entire story from start to finish—or at least the basic bones of it—and then I sit down and proceed in a chronological and orderly fashion. I have a couple of theories about why that hasn’t happened this time, and it largely boils down to self-indulgence. I’m enjoying myself, I don’t want to bring the story to an end, and I have been keeping the scenes separate so that rather than one big mess of a file, I have one big mess of a drive. Welcome to my cluttered mind! It can be a pretty fun place, if you watch where you step.

Too much

Kiss

Moles

Murder in My Heart

Fireside

Pool

Rolling

Heading Home After Crucible

First wings

Vera

Sick in love

Wings

Reception

Favorite

Fiona in kitchen

Simon at the start

Mordelia asks

Epilogue

Post-reception

Fiona reception

Winchester

Clothes shopping

Eyebrow

Lying on B

Good night

Tree carving

So much fun

Butter

Angel of the morning

LSE

Carry upstairs

Laughing

Escape

Before reception

Cold sleep

Annulment

Do you think

Signing the book

Reception garden

Coven

Alphabet

Love of my life

Spring equinox 2017

Arranged

Spring equinox

Simon before crucible

I want to say, these are not all going to be *chapters*. The fic is going to be long, but not as long as all that! I could say more but maybe I’ll wait and see if anyone is interested enough to ask, since this post is already way too rambling. I don’t think I could possibly tag as many people as there are files here, and I think everyone has already played anyway, so as usual I’m going to apologize ahead of tagging folks who have likely already done this. Sorry ❤️

@confused-bi-queer @onepintobean @sillyunicorn @facewithoutheart @basiltonbutliketheherb @asocialpessimist @ileadacharmedlife @bookish-bogwitch @aristocratic-otter @takenabackbytuesdays @martsonmars @nightimedreamersghost @ionlydrinkhotwater @aroace-genderfluid-sheep @shrekgogurt @raenestee @fatalfangirl @stitchyqueer @bazzybelle @fucking-gay-frogs @mostlymaudlin @sailorblossoms @yellowraincoat @ivelovedhimthroughworse @hushed-chorus @you-remind-me-of-the-babe @thehoneyedhufflepuff @anikamercat @aceumbrellaheroes @captain-aralias

[strawberry-metal]

Hey everyone, I’m sorry for taking awhile to respond. Just… you know, been super out of it and exhausted. Today I went to the dentist and got a temporary crown put on, and they’re making me a new one that I fucking hope will stay on. About everything that could of gone wrong at the dentist went wrong today and I was stuck in there for two hours. Ugh, I won’t trouble yall with all the details though. I just really hope the new crown I’m gonna get is actually good. The last one I had came off five times.

Thank you so much for the kind and supportive messages, I’m once again sorry for taking awhile to respond! We’re in the process of switching to my new psych and my sister goes to her, and says she’s good. Also, we share the same first name. This is hilarious. So that mess is in process of being worked out! Yesterday I also went to my therapist, and on thursday this week will be my brain scan. I’m kinda exhausted from all these doctor visits but at least next week I don’t have to go anywhere. I will admit I’m mentally struggling alot, but I’m trying REALLY hard to not let it destroy me and be positive somehow.

My ears have still been hurting easily as well and I’ve still been getting headaches pretty much everyday. If I may be honest I’m kinda scared about what they’ll find or not find on the scan. I’ll update yall when I get an answer but yeah, right now it’s pretty nerve wracking.

Oh dear, I ended up making a kind of long update post again… apologies! Anyway… you guys’s outrage over this made me happy. So did the support messages and messages wishing me well and sending me love. The heron was adorable to hear about too! I really wish I was better with words but… thank you so much for all of your continued support towards me, especially as of late. You’re all such wonderful people, seriously… I wish I could treat you all to a coffee or tea to show how thankful I am to have such kind people following me. Thank you for always taking time to check in on my blog and send me asks. I seriously love and appreciate every single one of you!!

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

mac i am so sorry to enter ur inbox with more qsmp but oh my god. qcellbit update. so he talked to bagi. his sister. he still doesn't remember her. he still needs time to process everything but she said she's waited fifteen years so she can wait a few more days. i'm crying and sobbing rn. also he doesn't even fucking remember what he did to get thrown in prison, all he knows is that he was killing people to survive one day and another he was behind bars. i'm UNWELL!!! he got called in to talk to cucurucho (the fuckin THING that's kind of the federation mascot and it tortured cellbit with a chainsaw months ago FUCK CUCURUCHO ALL MY HOMIES HATE CUCURUCHO) and he was just. fucking tired. yesterday he messed with the feds quite publicly and cucurucho questioned him about it and he said "i don't care what you do to me, you can torture me, i don't care. i just want my family back, i want a future with them. just give me peace. let me rest." HE SOUNDED SO FUCKING TIRED. I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW WHAT HE WAS SAYING UNTIL SOMEONE POSTED A TRANSLATION BUT HE SOUNDED SO SO SAD. AND NOW CELLBIT HIMSELF IS GOING TO TWITCHCON SO QCELLBIT IS TAKING A WEEK LONG DEPRESSION NAP. MAC CAN U HEAR ME. I'M UNWELL. I'M LOSING IT. THIS IS ME RN

anyway. hows ur day. i might go watch some steven universe bc i have been meaning 2 rewatch it (or adventure time!!!! one of the two for sure) take a short break from binge watching hannibal 2 watch a silly funny cartoon :3 also still trying to make my way thru marble hornets again it's just such an insane series 2 rewatch u know but i'm getting there!!! sorry i am just currently lying on the floor in my brain thinking about qsmp i had 2 tell u what happened 2 ur blorbo in law today

NEVER APOLOGIZE TO ME ABOUT PUTTING STUFF IN MY INBOX I LOVE GETTING MAIL I LOVE LEARNING THROUGH OSMOSIS I LOVE LISTENING 2 PPL TALK ATBT THINGS THEY LOVE

that sounss aboslutely DEVASTATING btw. oh my god. so the whole thing is like.. she remembers him but he doesnt remember her ?? GODDDD thats so upsetting. im glad hes getting 2 take a nap even if it is a depression one sigh. oh man oh man i love this.

my day was! good i think! i have not had a day to reat since my whole job shadow debacle last week so im kimd of running on fumes BUT . i have off work tmw so im gonna get a haircut and feel all good about everything. and maybe work on some art bc im now caught up to my pre prepped invertober images and i have a couple other time sensitive things like that. ougah. we keep truckin. ive got a huge backlog of youtube videos to watch from last week + beginning of this week i cannot Wait to get thru those and also watch more adventure time !! bc i have offically gotten to Stakes (a marcelone centric mini series) and it is one of my favorite eras ever. i love you vampire lore!!!

[river-ocean]

hiii! it’s me, wildspace from ao3. i do have tumblr aha. and i’m so glad you like my comments because i really like your fic and (as a currently retired writer myself aha) i know comments are important for writers.

anyways, your fic makes my brain imagined crazy theories every chapters which is funny bc siren AU aren’t something i usually search for. but yours is really good and i got me so curious. like, this chapter made me go crazy with theories. i feel like it’s definitely pascale knowing about siren and about pierre. not sure why/how but maybe it’s linked to charles’ dad death. (or she’s a siren herself 👀) the map in sewis’ home is a map of siren "communities" they visited/know of imo but there is a big chance i’m wrong aha. i mean, sewis could just be travelling everywhere without meeting siren. and the dream, the dream!! it was so well done, i thought it was not a dream til you wrote charles waking up and i was like "girl, you dumb 🤦🏻‍♀️". i still feel like it could be about charles becoming a siren in the future. or maybe he can breath underwater for some reason. bc the ocean and the siren people accept him? so manyyy questions and theories. i love this. also, if my theory that human can become siren (maybe by being drowned? 👀) when a siren fall in love with them and swear to love them for eternity or whatever, i feel like lewis told seb about it and told him he could do it if seb wanted and seb told him because he likes his life as human. also, i need to know if siren can stay on land for longer than a day bc we kind of know pierre isn’t around unless it’s a new moon day, but we don’t know about lewis. and lewis seems to be a siren for way longer than pierre and in love and in a relationship with seb so my theory of siren potentially living on land for days/weeks/months/years if they find their soulmate/love of their life/etc is still there in my mind.

anyways, this ask is a mess and way too long. sorry for rambling 🙈

WILDSPACE MY BELOVED — my reaction every time you comment on this fic. my sincerest apologies for the time it took for me to get to this ask!!!!

i am truly blown away by your ability to sus out what i am doing with this fic. i cannot confirm or deny your assumptions, but i will say that you have been right on more than one occasion with your predictions you will quickly find out which ones, i have no doubt 😉

i also need you to know that not only do EYE want to propose marriage to you, but also @wolfiemcwolferson and @duquesademiel are prepared to ask for your hand as well. as you may know the three of us are in a very committed fic triad and we are hoping that you will accept our shared declarations of love.

i am so happy you are enjoying this fic and i am happy to chat with you about it anytime!!! this is my first time posting a WIP and i love seeing your theories about where it is going.

[mageofmindfr]

Thoughts on The Heir of Hope? I could really use an outside perspective right now. (Thank you)

Hallo! I have not been active on the internets from my computer in multiple days because my internet died and I wanted to give you a proper answer with correct grammars :33

... Ok so I really am sorry for not answering my internet has been spotty at best for like a week but it’s pretty good now so I can finally actually answer!

Well, heir of hope... let’s start with heirs, shall we?

Heirs, as far as I interpret them, are more literal versions of pages; while a page would channel the spirit of their aspect as part of their personality, a heir would become their aspect physically (which is a fact that’s supported by canon! I love having theories and then remembering that they’re actually entirely canon ^^”). So heirs’ personalities tend to reflect their aspect more literally as well, being almost archetypes for “this is what being X aspect means”.

I’d say they’re a simpler class, but that might not be entirely accurate, because aspects have a lot in them, if you’re willing to look. Like how void may be about mysteries and things hidden in shadows, but also includes contradictoriness (is that a word? It feels like it should be a word), or how breath can be wind but also scatterbraininess (never let a breath player build their own schedule, it’s like a hurricane went in and messed all their meetings up... which, I suppose it is.. but that’s a tangent for another post, maybe). There’s a lot of room for exploration there, finding where you fit into your own aspect, and whether there’s traits there that you wish to change, or improve upon, and whether you’re willing to put in the work (you’ll find that, if you’re willing, it may come easier than you expected to start the change you want to see in yourself, though it’s still bound to be difficult.. as is any change one should make. The key is being truly, actually willing and eager to better yourself, and know that sometimes you should ask for help, and that regardless, things take time...)

So. If a heir’s personality is built on existing within the space of their aspect... what about hope?

... You know, hope is surprisingly hard to figure out. Though, the same can be true for rage, since both of them have two players that destroy their aspect, making them act inherently unlike said element... so we literally only have Jake to go off of and saying “you’re like Jake English but your personality is more hope” wouldn’t be particularly helpful... not to say kind of inaccurate.

I found (through two hours of research, god, apparently I’ve been sitting here trying to not get confirmation bias over theories for two hours... Then again I have been thinking about heirs for a while anyways, so it would’ve been longer if I had been putting off answering any longer...) that hope is one of those aspects that are dreadfully unclear. It’s pretty difficult to take hope literally, as even in its literal sense it’s not tangible like void and breath are, so, how do you become hope?

Well... I’m sorry to disappoint, but I believe that’s up to you. Hope’s one of those aspects that are, in essence, whatever the player makes of them. Like most others, actually, I just find that the players we follow happen to be wholly uncreative in their use of their aspects... Except those that use it subconsciously, in which case it’s more that the game looked at them and probably said something like “wouldn’t it be really funny if I made Dirk Strider a Prince of Heart?” which, well. I’d say “sad” is a better word, but the game’s got a weird sense of humor and is also wholly irrelevant to right now!

Hope can mean a lot of things, but literally it’s more... well, the way my brain tried to put it together is kind of like how determination works in Undertale (… without the space-time shenanigans, since those are both elements in actual Homestuck). You don’t give up, and there lies your power. By believing in yourself, you have power. By trying hard you can do.. whatever you want. At least, that’s the literal way to see it (which is the only way we see it in actual Homestuck, but, again, aspects contain so much more than just their literal definitions, and the players we meet during our time reading are dreadfully unimaginative). We never see any other definition, though I’ve seen some people mention that hope may also have to do with the literal definition of light, or holiness, because.. magic. Or something. Not sure I buy that, but also visualizing “hope”, which is a wonderfully grand concept is probably hard, so, glowing it is, I suppose.

What all of this ends up meaning is.. Well, the Heir of Hope is someone who is embodied by their hope. I usually suggest stuff like a horoscope but it’s getting pretty late here and it’s also 10 degree weather, and saying “don’t give up” feels awfully tacky of me... So I’ll say this, instead; stay true to who you are. I’m not implying you’re perfect, or anything, but more that your true self is a wonderful person who, had I not been a Mage of Mind who dreams on derse’s moon and therefore an expert in overanalyzing social interactions before I even know the other party’s name, I’d love to talk to. I feel like you can be an uplifting person, if you let yourself be, and that you’re an inspiration to be around once you start talking about stuff you’re passionate about. A presence to light up a room, maybe, or at least one that people notice when it’s missing (because you only notice the absence of light in the darkness).

Again, sorry this came out late, I hope me working on this post for... three hours (yeesh, how the time flies when you double check against confirmation bias that the third heir we meet is, indeed, Mituna Captor, and that he did indeed “become” doom by accidental brain deletion) makes up for the three days where I was looking at this question from my phone and going “I should start writing” and then instead made my trollsona art and also read fics I have memorized because I tend to procrastinate (and also I spent 10 minutes just now trying to remember the word for procrastination and googled it as “word for not doing thing”. It was not there. I'm in agony/j).

Hope (hah) you still enjoy it even if it’s late? ^^”

[incarnateirony]

Big ball of trans issues inside

Been doing a lot of meditating. Maybe it's the time of year. Maybe it's the fresh catalyst. But I'd been considering personal life issues, relationship life issues, and the irony of "I don't have dysphoria tho" and then getting fucking hit with my own invisible baseball bat relentlessly from the blue suddenly. Oh, there it is. Nevermind. THERE IT IS I FOUND IT

So I almost didn't post this and didn't know where to start it, but figured it might help someone else. Warning, there's going to be adult content in here. Not like, porn, but I mean, I'm not gonna pull punches.

So anyway, first note is: SPN fandom is actually the only place anyone gendered me *female* in online as a default. Maybe it's just because it's generally assumed around here. Maybe it's because I was doxxed like a week into fandom the first time. I don't know.

But in days old, when I ran a famous giant early 2000s server, at best, "who the fuck is Minerva? Minerva is black crest? Minerva is Ave? So Minerva is a dude. Who the fuck is Minerva I've seen 20 Minervas and I've never met her. Him." since I've ALWAYS been the ghost in the matrix.

But those were the names I generally got known on individually--masc characters, couldn't write women for shit. Did I manwhore as a top Asmodeus in my teen years? Absolutely. To say I explored my sexuality through a masc mindset is an understatement.

So yeah, you have a few late teens/early 20s girlfriends/fuckbuddies/whatever. Then I got dragged into my life survival shit. You've heard it. From human trafficking to escape to domestic incidents I've been doxxed over about before there too. Then I went back to one ex-girlfriend in the mess that became a wife and finally settled down from bouncing around.

I mean it when I say staying still is weird for me. I still kind of want to get an RV and disappear. Again. But right this time. But I need a copilot, that's how this works, that's the whole thing.

But in that time, my wife and I started hot again and went cold again. Cuz turns out, I'm a great bang your brains out at the bar or hiking trail or bathroom flash in the pan, but not something your average Middle Class Woman who Wants To Explore The Lesbian Facet Of Her Bisexuality had in her head, I guess.

I spent a good deal of time getting bitched at for literally sounding/moving masc during intercourse and she wasn't even big on what one could call complimentary toys to that. And over time, we just kind of fell apart, sat in different rooms, and she got hostile to even talk to or sit in the room of long before the split. Anything above handling her like a vase in lesbian porn was Being Too Rough. And like yes I will worship you i will do so many things to that vase but after a certain point, I'm sorry, I'm invisible balls deep and I'm fucking the shit out of you, and you generally don't complain when you're yodeling as yall do.

So anyway, why talking about this old stuff? Because coming out was basically the catalyst point for everything else. The split/divorce, moving, me having to expedite a certain project I was sending before I lost it all in the chaos, trying to rebuild my life even before the health crash while letting her keep everything.

So my trans journey and consideration started quietly in those closed off rooms, and got shut out when I even hinted about it, or just waved it off and said don't worry about it, but that's like when the light switch hit, and she ran and got a job and tried to kick me out of the house I'd been paying for, for years, with her first check.

So you can get a bearing on like, I've sat alone, happily single, in my lil covid safe disability box, with occasional special friend visits. I mean, Discord keeps me in contact even with real life friends, and their lives are busy.

I kinda put in my head I'd just be a bachelor forever and had generally assumed I was, I don't know, ace? I put my horny jail so securely in a closed off box it's like I turned off the animal side of me and became the hyper-cerebral asshole everybody knows.

And then I dunno. A switch got hit. And I can't turn it off. And I realize I've truly always been like this, from my early jackoffs to my first fantasies I always sat from the "wrong" perspective. It even made porn uncomfortable because I didn't know how to sit and look at it and so on. My wife already shut down that part of me a LONG time ago. But it's because that part was there.

Like oh I'm not ace, I just completely hid from anything that activated that element of my persona. I see. How do I turn it off now. Because the second they flirt back or idk even joke about nudes it's like running back into that box, because no, what can I even send?

I never even thought about "properly" transitioning, because nobody was really gonna perceive me but me and my closest friends. But damn what the fuck it's there so bad now that's hanging there on the plate. And people say Do It For Yourself or whatever, and that's true. But when I'm safely alone in my box, Myself doesn't need that. but it takes even connecting these pieces to really get it. Like oh that explains literally everything about me and my relationships, neat. So doing it for myself still apparently has an element of Someone To Do It For that makes the switch get stuck on running up the horny dysphoric light bill. Rent free. All the time.

And when you're, in that case, the hopeless simp throwing through the shop window at something entirely out of your league that gets REAL AWKWARD. So I'm currently sorting through if this really is going to become a goal in the next few years. I mentioned thinking about it when my legs started going out. It's still there on the brain.

So idk, maybe this is an experience someone else has been smashing their head off the wall on themselves that might help.

And most of all if you're like me and get hit with some weird need to cry through it, don't fight it just go through that, once you let yourself have that it gets better I guess. It doesn't go away but gets better. I don't know how else to describe it. That's at least when I guess I let myself really own it.

[hazzabeeforlou]

Hi, I’m Toni.

Got a slew of new followers and I’ve been almost inactive the last half a year (at least) so wanted to do an update/intro so you know who I am LOL and so my long suffering fandom besties know what the fuck’s been going on (if anyone still cares rip sorry it’s been forever)

Currently writing this from my sick bed of ear cellulitis? That I got from wearing my mask? It would literally only happen to me. Had to go to urgent care and get a butt shot of antibiotics so it didn’t, you know, spread to my bloodstream :)

Anyways I say that to say that I probably got sick in the first place because I’m incredibly run down right now. The classical music world (im a professional musician) FINALLY opened up again, and to meet gig demands I only work my pandemic retail job once a week. I have been traveling the last four weekends in a ROW, which, due to my chronic pain (which has seen SOME improvement over the last year!!) makes me super duper exhausted and I have to admit tik tok has been getting most of my brain numbing time.

Life post-happy drugs has been tough. I’ve seen improvement in the areas I wanted to, physically, but mentally god. Drugs were nice. Anywho, I’ve done a ton of witchy/ancestral connecting/herbalist kinda things the last six months, and I now have an alter and a spiritual practice that has really brought me a lot of growth and meaning. It’s hard healing from your past when you’re still living IN it… and there’s no improvement with my parents. They’re still homophobic as hell and Republican as fuck, despite screaming matches. The threats of physical violence prevent me from confronting my dad any further. I’ve kind of given up hoping they will ever change.

It’s funny though, I would classify this year as the year I started to “feel” things, and of course that happened physically post the drugs, but also emotionally once I started to let myself FEEL emotions, god what a train wreck. Who knew humans could CRY so much? That emotional revelation led to the probably overdue realization that I’m likely Autistic and high masking, and have been suffering from that classic 30’s wall that “gifted girl high masking autistic children” eventually hit wherein they are no longer able to just push through and ignore. That’s been tough.

Writing has always been how I process and understand emotions, and now that I’ve started to actually FEEL them, it hasn’t become as essential to my functioning as it had been the last six or so years. I miss it, and I plan on finishing all my projects I left behind… as I’ve said many time The Garden part 3 IS coming I promise lol. But! Hopefully. And no promises. But I have the most delightful Christmas fic tucked into my head that I would love to publish this year, if I can find the time to get it on paper.

Okay as for fandom… I did a “growth thing” earlier this year and deleted all the bbygate stuff I’d been saving for the inevitable end. I just can’t anymore. All the photoshop, the blatant exploitation of it all… yeah I think the best option is just not to care. If they’re gonna drag this out for the rest of my life then I’m going to ignore the shit out of it. Speaking of ignoring, I also noped out of the H and O nonsense. God. What a MESS. I liked HH, truly, but the fave for me was Matilda. To be honest with you all, I listened until I grew naturally full of the album and I moved on with my life, it wasn’t world changing to me the way FL was. HOWEVER. FITF? Lord save me i didn’t even know it was coming out and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I’m fucking obsessed. I’m planning a MP. I genuinely think it’s Louis’ finest work and I can’t get enough of it. Every time I listen I like it MORE. I theorize it’s going to be a slow blooming album that smacks everyone’s expectations in the face. I’m so fucking proud of Louis. I bawled real ugly tears at Common People.

And lastly as always, I believe the boys were in love but I make no claims about their lives now. I enjoy the hints and speculation and love larrying along, but I think they’ve established these personas that are bulletproof to fan speculation these days, and I feel that’s how they truly want it. And that’s cool, won’t stop me from writing Larry because it was the truest gayest baby Star crossed lovers story out there and still makes the best fan fic.

Apologies for the novel but nice to meet you if you’re new HI I’M TRYING TO BE BACK to my old chums, and feel free as always to talk to me, my ask box is always open ❤️